CHAPTER IV.

 

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE INNOCENT VI. TO THE DEATH OF GREGORY XI.

A. D. 1352-1378.

 

 

AT the death of Clement VI the cardinals had reason to suppose that John, who in 1350 had succeeded to the crown of France, would endeavour to set up a pope of his own nomination; and, notwithstanding their devotion to the French interest, they resolved to preserve a show of independence by making their election before any intima­tion of the royal will could reach them. It seemed as if John Birelli, general of the Carthusian order, were about to be chosen; but cardinal Talleyrand warned his brethren that the Carthusian, if he were to become pope, would reduce them to primitive simplicity of living, and would degrade their splendid horses to drag the waggon or the plough. The cardinals then determined to choose one of their own number, under a system of capitulation such as had sometimes been practised in elections of bishops, and had lately been usual in the elections of emperors. Every member of the college was to swear that, if chosen, he would make no new cardinals until the college should be reduced to sixteen; that he would never raise their number to more than twenty; that he would not create, depose, or arrest any cardinal without the consent of the whole body; and that he would make over to the cardinals one-half of the revenues of the Roman church. By these terms the future pope would have bound himself to be­come a tool of the cardinals; and, although all took the oath, some of them did so with the reservation “provided that these laws be agreeable to right”.

On the 18th of December the choice of the cardinals fell on Stephen Aubert, a Limousin, bishop of Ostia, a man eminent for his learning in civil and ecclesiastical law, who styled himself Innocent VI. Soon after his election, the new pope took advantage of the reservation which he had made in swearing to the late agreement, by declaring that he had found such engagements to be contrary to the decrees of some former popes; and also that they were void for attempting to limit the power which God had bestowed on St. Peter and his successors. And the cardinals, who seem to have become aware of the evils which might result from such capitulations, acquiesced in this determinations

Innocent betook himself earnestly to the work of ecclesiastical reform. He did away with the system of reserves, and in his bull for that purpose he dwelt on the mischiefs which had arisen from them—such as the neg­lect of pastoral care, the dilapidation of churches, and the decay of hospitality. He abolished many of the corrup­tions of the court, and did much to restrain the extortion of his officials. He suppressed the scandalous abuse by which prostitutes had been allowed, on payment of a tax to the papal treasury, to ply their trade at Avignon. He insisted on an abatement of the excessive luxury in which the cardinals had indulged, and himself set an example in this respect; and those members of the college who offended him by their laxity of life were awed by threats that he would remove the court to Rome. The bishops who haunted Avignon were compelled to return to their dioceses. He discouraged pluralities : there is a story that when a favourite chaplain, who held seven benefices, asked for some preferment in behalf of a nephew, Innocent desired him to give up to the young man the best of his own preferments; and, as the chaplain showed dissatisfaction at this, he was further required to resign three other livings, each of which the pope bestowed on a poor clerk. Innocent was careful in the disposal of his patronage; and, although he is charged with too great fondness for advancing his own relations, it is admitted that in general the kinsmen whom he promoted did him no discredit.

Innocent was able to act with an independence un­known to the earlier Avignon popes; for king John, weakened by the disastrous war with England, in which he himself was made a captive at Poitiers, was unable to exercise a control like that of Philip the Fair, or of his own father, Philip of Valois.

In the meantime Italy was a prey to disorder. While every division of the country had its own little tyrant, the Milanese family of Visconti had gained such a predominance in the north that the ancient parties of Guelfs and Ghibellines forgot their enmities in order to combine against a foe who threatened them all. On the death of Lucchino Visconti, in 1348, the lordship of Milan fell to his brother John, who was already arch­bishop of the city. By violently seizing on Bologna, a city which belonged to the pope, he incurred threats of excommunication and deprivation from Clement VI; but by bribing the king of France and other powerful intercessors, including that pope’s favourite, the countess of Turenne, he was afterwards able to make terms, and was allowed to retain the place for twelve years, on condition of paying tribute. It is said that, when required by a legate to choose between the characters of archbishop and secular prince, he desired that the message might be repeated in the face of his clergy and people; and when this was done on the following Sunday, after he had celebrated mass with great pomp, he rose from his throne, holding in one hand his crosier, and in the other his drawn sword—“These”, he said, “are my arms spiritual and temporal; and with the one I will defend the other”. He signified, however, his willingness to appear at Avignon; but the proceedings of his harbingers, who set about hiring all the houses that could be got in the city and for leagues around it, as if to lodge an overwhelming train, alarmed the pope to such a degree that the archbishop’s visit was excused.

 

The citizens of the Italian republics, devoting them­selves to the accumulation of wealth, ceased to cultivate the art of war, and relied for their defence on the mercenary bands which now, under the name of free com­panies, overran both France and Italy. These companies were at first composed in great part of soldiers who, by the conclusion of peace between France and England, had found their occupation gone. They admitted into their ranks men of various nations, and enlisted them­selves in the service of any power that could afford to hire them—keeping their contract faithfully so long as it lasted, but holding themselves at liberty to go over to an opposite party at the end of the term; and when not thus engaged, they plundered and ravaged on their own account. Among the captains of such mercenaries the most famous was Sir John Hawkwood, an Englishman, who, after having distinguished himself in the French wars, passed into Italy, and there served for thirty years under the Visconti, the pope, and lastly under the republic of Florence, which at his death com­memorated him by a colossal equestrian portrait, still existing in the cathedral. Hawkwood had the reputation of being the most skilful commander of his age; and in our own day he has been characterized by an eminent histo­rian as “the first real general of modern times; the earliest master, however imperfect, in the science of Turenne and Wellington”. Avignon was repeatedly threatened by these companies, which laid waste the country around it; and the popes endeavoured to protect themselves, some­times by uttering anathemas, sometimes by engaging the aid of princes and nobles, but more successfully by the payment of large sums of money, by which the adven­turers were persuaded to transfer themselves to some other quarter. Thus Innocent in 1362 bought off the “White company”, which thereupon crossed the Alps, at the invitation of the marquis of Montferrat, and engaged in the wars of Italy. With a view to defence against such assailants, Innocent fortified his palace and the city of Avignon—enclosing within the walls an extent of ground which left room for the future increase of the place.

Rome had been in a state of confusion since the time of Rienzi’s withdrawal, in January 1348. With a view to recovering his power over the city, and over the territory of the church, Innocent in 1353 sent into Italy an army under Giles Albornoz, cardinal of St. Clement, a Spaniard, who had been a knight in his youth, and after­wards archbishop of Toledo—a man eminent both for military and for political talents. With this legate was joined Rienzi, who had been released from prison, and invested with the dignity of senator, in the hope that he might be able to resume his influence over the Romans, and that he would use it in the interest of the papacy. But although the citizens, weary of anarchy, appear to have begged that their former tribune might be restored to them, and received him with enthusiasm, he speedily forfeited their favour by his misconduct. The faults which had led to his earlier fall were repeated in a worse degree than before. The people were oppressed by heavy taxes levied on the necessaries of life. His power was exercised with caprice and cruelty; and especial distrust was excited by the death of one Pandulf, whose only crime was the possession of influence, and by that of Walter de Montreal, a famous Provencal condottiere, who, from having been formerly a knight of St. John, was commonly styled Brother Moreale. This man had offended against the public peace by acts which pope Innocent describes as worse than the outrages of Holofernes or of Totila; but his brothers had laid Rienzi under great obligations by advancing sums of money which were necessary to the fulfilment of his mission; and when the senator, in disregard of this, treacherously decoyed Moreale into his power, tortured him and put him to death, the victim’s faults were for­gotten in indignation at the manner of his end. Mean­while Rienzi’s personal habits became grossly sensual; he fed immoderately on sweetmeats, drank strong mixed wines at all hours, and showed the effect of these indul­gences in the swelling of his body, which a contemporary likens to that of a fatted ox or of an abbot of unreason. His reputation was lowered by failure in an attempt to take the fortress of Palestrina from the Colonnas. Rome became impatient of his yoke, and his oratory had lost its power over the multitude. A rising took place, there were cries for his death, and Rienzi was arrested while attempting to escape in disguise. For an hour he was exposed to the derision of the mob, who then fell upon him, cut him to pieces, and treated his remains with indignities which showed the violence of their exasperation against him. Although, however, the attempt to turn Rienzi to ac­count had utterly failed, the legate Albornoz, a man of a very different stamp, conducted his affairs with such skill that he succeeded in recovering Bologna and the Ro­magna, with almost all the other ecclesiastical territories.

In 1354 the emperor Charles, with the pope’s sanction, proceeded into Italy for his coronation. He found that the formidable archbishop of Milan, John Visconti, had died in consequence of a surgical operation, and              been succeeded in his secular power by his three nephews, of whom the eldest, Matthew, was soon after poisoned by his brothers Bernabò and Galeazzo, because his excessive dissoluteness endangered the in­terests of the family. Charles received the iron crown at Milan on the Epiphany, 1355, and, leaving Bernabò Visconti as his vicar (an appointment which greatly offended the pope), he continued his progress towards Rome. The smallness of the force by which he was accompanied—a mere escort of three hundred horsemen—disarmed the suspicion of the Italians, and, because of his very weakness, Charles was everywhere received with an extraordinary show of respect; even the rigid Guelf republicans of Florence did homage, and bound themselves to the payment of tribute. At Pisa he was strengthened by the arrival of those Germans whose duty required them to attend the emperor on such expeditions, so that he found himself at the head of a considerable force, composed of the Rower of the German nobility. A condition by which he had pledged himself not to enter Rome before the day of the coronation, had been in so far relaxed by the pope that, on arriving on Thurs­day in the holy week, he was allowed to visit the churches and the cardinals as a pilgrim. But his solemn entry was deferred until Easter-day, when he and his empress were crowned in St. Peter’s by the cardinal-bishop of Ostia; and on the same day, agreeably to his engagement, he again left the city. Without having made an attempt to recover any rights of the empire which had been invaded, or to establish any authority over Rome, Charles returned northward so hastily, and with so little display, that his journey almost resembled a flight; and Petrarch, who had urged him to revive the glories of Rome, and had been summoned to meet him at Mantua on his way to the coronation, expressed strongly the bitter disappointment of the hopes which he had rested on the emperor. In July 1355 Charles arrived again in Germany, enriched by the money which he had levied on the Italian cities, but without having increased his reputation.

Charles had announced from Piacenza that, if he should be permitted to return to Germany, he intended to do some good thing for the benefit of the kingdom and, in fulfilment of this promise, he summoned a diet to meet in January 1356 at Nuremberg, where the document known as his Golden Bull was enacted as a fundamental law of the empire. By this bull many circumstances of the election to the crown were settled—the forms to be observed, the duties of the chief officers, the time within which an election must take place after a vacancy, the election at Frankfort, and the coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle. By a provision which doubtless originated in Charles’s own rare knowledge of languages, it was ordered that, whereas the empire consisted of various nations, the sons of the lay electors should, from their seventh to their fourteenth year, be instructed in Italian and Slavonic. But the bull was chiefly important as determining to whom the right of sharing in the election should belong. For as to this there had been much difficulty and un­certainty, from the circumstance that the rule of inherit­ance by primogeniture had not been established in the families of the lay electors, and that consequently their territories were liable to be broken up among several heirs, each of whom might claim the electoral suffrage. By the “golden bull” it was settled that in every case the vote should be attached to a certain portion of territory, which was to be regarded as the electoral land, and that this portion should descend according to the order of primogeniture. The claim of the pope to interfere with the election was not mentioned at all; and it was assumed that in Germany, at least, the king or emperor had full power from the time of his election, so as to need no confirmation in his office. The “priests’ emperor” had secured the crown against the pretensions of the papacy; and Innocent was greatly annoyed at the result.

After a pontificate of nearly ten years, Innocent died on the 12th of September 1362. Twenty cardinals assembled for the choice of a successor; but they were unable to agree as to the promotion of one of their own body, and their choice fell on William de Grimoard, a native of the diocese of Mende, and abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles. The new pope, Urban V, who was sup­posed to have been elected under a special influence of the Holy Ghost, had attained the age of sixty, was respected alike for his sanctity and for his learning, and had exerted himself greatly in the service of the church. Like his predecessor, he showed himself an enemy to the corruptions of the court, to simony, pluralities, and non-residence. He took away from the houses of the cardinals the privilege of sanctuary, which had been much abused. As pope he retained the monastic dress and the simplicity of monastic habits but, while thus spar­ing of expense on himself, he laid out vast sums for the benefit of the church, as on the restoration of the Roman churches and palaces, the erection and endowment of a monastery and a college at Montpellier, and the encouragement of learning by maintaining a thousand students in various universities, and by liberally supplying them with books. He chose his cardinals for their merit alone, whereas the late popes had limited their choice to such persons as were devoted to the French interest. Nor did he fall into the usual fault of en­riching his own kindred, whether laymen or clergy, at the expense of the church; for only two of his near relatives were advanced to the prelacy, and of these it is said that both were deserving, and that one was promoted at the special request of the cardinals.

The south of France continued for a time to be infested by the free companies; but at length they were put down under this pontificate. In Italy, however, the evil endured longer, and the country suffered greatly from the power, the tyranny, and the ambition of Bernabò Visconti, who was now the head of his family. Innocent had proclaimed in 1356 a crusade against the Visconti for detaining certain cities which belonged to the church; but the design was marred by the misconduct of the preachers, who endeavoured to make a profit for them­selves out of the indulgences which they were authorized to offer, and the payments for exemption from service.

Bernabò showed himself especially hostile to the clergy. For instance, it is said that he seized a priest who had been sent to preach the crusade, put him into an iron cage, and roasted him to death on a gridiron; and that he caused some Franciscans to be shod with iron, like horses, the nails being driven into their feet. He declared himself to be both pope and emperor within his own dominions; he tore up papal letters, and imprisoned the bearers of them; Urban himself when sent to him as legate by pope Innocent, had been forced to swallow the bull which he carried, with the leaden seal and the string by which it was attached to the parchment;  and he compelled a priest of Parma to utter an anathema against Innocent and the cardinals. The pope de­nounced him excommunicate, authorized his wife to separate from him as a heretic and unbeliever, formed an alliance against him with the emperor and with some Italian states, and put off, in favour of a crusade against Bernabò, one in which king John of France and many of his nobles had enlisted themselves for the recovery of the Holy Land. But Bernabò was able to hold his ground, and the pope was glad at length to conclude a peace with him, by which Bologna was recovered for the papacy, while Urban undertook to mediate for him with the emperor.

Urban before his election had been strongly in favour of restoring the papal residence to Rome, and he was now entreated to act on the desire which he had expressed. The emperor Charles urged him; the Romans invited him to take up his abode among them; Peter, a prince of Aragon, who had become a Franciscan, brought the authority of visions in support of the return; and Petrarch renewed the suit which he had so often made to preceding popes. The poet represents the desolate state of Rome, where the holiest and most venerable buildings lay in heartrending decay, while the pope lived in ease and splendour on the banks of the Rhone. He dwells on the beauty of Italy, which wanted nothing but peace, while he sneers at Avignon as the “native country of the winds”. He even argues from Urban’s name the duty of returning to the city. He endeavours to gain over the cardinals, whom he supposes reluctant to tear themselves away from the wines of Burgundy, by assuring them that Italy too has its delicious wines, and that in any case they will be able to import the other vintages. In a loftier strain Petrarch admonishes Urban by a compari­son between the ancient capital of Christendom and the French city which had become infamous for its vices from the time when the popes made it their residence; and, after setting forth the terrors of the judgment-day and of the account to be then exacted, he asks the pope whether he would rather choose to rise with the notorious sinners of Avignon, or with St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Stephen and St. Laurence, and the thousands of other saints whose relics or whose memories were connected with Rome.

On the other hand, Nicolas Oreme, an ecclesiastic attached to the French court, argued in behalf of Avignon and of France, insisting especially on the superiority of that country in literary fame. But Petrarch indignantly rejoined that many of the men to whom France owed its renown in letters were of Italian birth, as Peter Lombard, Thomas of Aquino, Bonaventura, and Giles Colonna; and, as he had been blamed for calling Gaul a place of exile, he justified the phrase by referring to the banish­ment of Herod and of Pilate.

In May 1365 the emperor Charles visited Avignon, professedly in order to concert measures for the crusade; but the visit resulted in an agreement that both the pope and the emperor should go to Rome in the next year but one. The cardinals were opposed to the removal of the court; but Urban, who had never been a member of the college, set light by their opposition, and is said to have made two new cardinals by way of showing his power April 30, over them. On this they took alarm, and while some of them reluctantly accompanied him, breaking out into lamentations and reproaches as they put to sea, others made the journey by land, although five stubbornly remained at Avignon.

On landing at Corneto he was met by the legate Albornoz, to whose prudence and warlike skill the papacy had been indebted for the recovery of much of its temporal power, but this eminent man died at Viterbo during Urban’s stay there. The insolence of a cardinal’s servant, who washed a favourite dog in a public fountain, excited the populace of Viterbo to a tumult, in which cries of “Death to the church!” were raised, and it was suspected that the outbreak was contrived by the cardinals in the hope of disgusting the pope with Italy.

At Rome, however, he was welcomed with enthu­siasm; and within a year from the time of his arrival he received the homage, not only of the queen of Naples and of the king of Cyprus, but of the emperors both of the west and of the east. John Palaeologus, whose object was to obtain the aid of the western Christians against the Turks, acknowledged in all points the faith of the Roman church and the claims of the papacy. Charles behaved towards the pope with the deepest show of reverence : he led his horse from the gate of St. Angelo to St. Peter’s, and then officiated as deacon at a mass celebrated by Urban, who placed the crown on the head of the emperor’s fourth wife. But we learn from an eye-witness that, while the clergy were exulting over this subordination of the temporal to the spiritual dignity, other persons viewed with deep disgust a scene which they regarded as a humiliation of the empire. The pope himself was disappointed at finding that Charles, instead of carrying out an alliance against Bernabò Visconti, made peace with him on condition of receiving a large sum of money. In like manner the emperor allowed himself to be bought off by various cities on his way homewards; and, as after his former visit, he returned to Prague with the general contempt of the Italians.

Urban’s favourite place of residence was Monte Fiascone, which he preferred to Rome on account of its quiet and of its more salubrious air; and there, in September 1368, he increased the preponderance of the French party among the cardinals by adding six Frenchmen to the college, while of other nations there were only one Italian and one Englishman.

After three years spent in Italy, the pope announced his intention of returning to Avignon. To the Romans, who remonstrated, he expressed gratitude for the peace which he and the members of his court had enjoyed among them, and assured them that he would still be with them in heart; but he alleged the necessity of public affairs—a plea which, although it might have been war­ranted by the renewal of war between France and England, is supposed to have really meant that the French cardinals would no longer endure to be at a distance from the de­lights of Avignon. St. Bridget of Sweden, whose oracles exercised a powerful influence on the age, solemnly warned the pope that, if he returned to France, it would be only to die; Peter of Aragon added his monitions to the same purpose; and these prophetic threats were supposed to be fulfilled when Urban’s arrival at Avignon was followed within three months by his death. In his last sickness he formally retracted anything (if such there were) that he might have taught or said contrary to the faith of the church. The general reverence for his character was expressed in a belief that miracles were done at his grave and it is supposed that his canonization, which was solicited by Waldemar III of Denmark and others, was prevented only by the troubles which soon after came on the papacy.

 

GREGORY XI. MASSACRE OF CESENA

 

On the 30th of December, Peter Roger, cardinal of Sta. Maria Nuova, was elected to the vacant chair, and took the name of Gregory XI. He was a nephew of Clement VI, by whom he had been advanced to the cardinalate at the age of seventeen or eighteen; but Clement, “lest he should seem to have conferred with flesh and blood”, had been careful to place the young cardinal under the best tutors, so that Gregory was respected for his learning in civil and in canon law, as well as for his modesty, prudence, and generosity. The chief defect noted in him was that same regard for family interests to which he had owed his own early promotion.

Gregory took an active part in the affairs of Italy, where Bernabò Visconti and his brother Galeazzo con­tinued to be formidable. In 1372 a bull was issued by which they were excommunicated, their subjects were re­leased from allegiance, and all Christians were invited to take part in a holy war against them. There were serious commotions in the papal states, where eighty towns threw off their subjection to Rome. Robert, cardinal of Geneva, was sent into the Romagna as legate, with a band of Breton mercenaries, whose acts of license excited the detestation of the people. At Cesena a rising took place, in which some hundreds of them were killed, and the rest were driven from the town. The legate, having secured the co-operation of the famous condottiere Sir John Hawkwood, persuaded the citizens to admit him peaceably, allowing that they had received great provocation from his troops, and even (it is said) swearing that no vengeance should be taken if they would lay down their arms. Having thus lulled them into security, he then gave loose to a massacre in which, according to some writers, three thousand perished, while others reckon the number at four, five, or even eight thousand. A thousand women were saved by the humanity of Hawkwood, who furnished them with an escort; but atrocious acts of cruelty were committed by the infuriated Bretons; and it is said that the cardinal overcame the scruples of Hawkwood and his men by desiring that all the inhabitants might be killed indis­criminately.

The Florentines, for their resistance to the papal authority, against which they had formed an extensive league, were put under ban and interdict in March 1376. It was even declared that they might be made slaves, and advantage was taken of this against many of them who were in England, while their old rivals of Genoa and Pisa, by scrupling to act on the permission, incurred the penalty of interdict against themselves. The Florentines entreated the mediation of St. Catharine of Siena, whose austerities were supposed to be connected with prophetic insight and she, having repaired to Avignon for the purpose of pleading their caused, used the opportunity to set before the pope the misgovernment of the ecclesiastical states, and to urge his return to Rome. The voice of Petrarch was no longer to be heard in the cause which he had so often advocated but St. Bridget of Sweden, who had seen the beginning of Gregory’s pontificate, had solemnly warned him, on the ground of revelations, that, unless he returned to Rome within a certain time, the States of the Church would be rent asunder, even as her messenger was charged to read the letter which he conveyed, and her prophetical authority had been inherited by her daughter, St. Catharine of Sweden, who now joined her representations to those of the virgin of Siena.

It is said that Gregory had vowed that, if he should be chosen pope, he would return to Rome; and, in addition to all other incitements, he was now convinced that his interest in Italy suffered, and was even in danger of being absolutely ruined, through his absence. The Bolognese had driven out the legate and all the papal officials; the sovereignty of the church was hardly anywhere acknow­ledged throughout the ecclesiastical states. It is said, too, that the pope was much influenced by the repartee of a bishop, who, on being asked by him why he did not go to his diocese, retorted the question on Gregory himself. In 1376 Gregory announced his intention of returning to Rome; and, although it was opposed by the French king, by his own relations, and by many of his cardinals, six of whom refused to leave Avignon, he set out on the 13th of September. After a tedious journey, performed partly by land and partly by sea, he landed at St. Paul’s on the 15th of January 1377, and his entrance into Rome was welcomed with great demonstrations of joy. The “Babylonian captivity” of seventy years was ended.

Gregory, however, soon found that his course was beset with difficulties. Although the hostility of the Visconti had been appeased by a compact that Galeazzo should retain certain towns on consideration of paying a sum of money to the papal treasury, the differences with Florence still remained, and the nobles of Rome and of the ecclesiastical states were insubordinate. The pope could not feel himself at home in his capital. The ruinous state of the walls, the churches, the palaces, and other buildings, depressed him. The long absence of the court, and the anarchy of Rome, had produced an offensive rudeness in the manners of the citizens. Even his want of acquaintance with the language of his subjects—the meaning of which he could only guess at by the help of Latin, French, and Provençal—aggravated not a little the discomfort of Gregory’s position. It is believed that he meditated a return to Avignon, when he was seized with an illness, which, acting on a weak constitution, carried him off on the 27th of March 1378, at the age of forty-seven. His feeling towards the saints whose prophetical admonitions had influenced him in his removal to Rome is said to have been remarkably shown on his death-bed, when, holding the holy Eucharist in his hands, he warned those who stood around against the pretensions of enthusiastic men or women who uttered as revelations the fancies of their own brains.

A Florentine embassy had been well received at Rome but the terms of reconciliation which Gregory proposed were too severe to be accepted; and when the pope in turn sent some envoys to Florence, the citizens not only refused to submit to their proposals, but compelled the clergy to defy the interdict, which had until then been so far respected that the offices of religion had been performed with closed doors. The pope retaliated by aggravated denunciations; but at length certain terms of peace had been agreed on, when the death of Gregory put an end to the negotiation.

The eagerness of Charles IV to secure the imperial crown for his own family had furnished Gregory with an opportunity for asserting the papal claim to a control over elections to the empire. On the emperor’s pro­posing that his son Wenceslaus, then only seventeen years of age, should be chosen as king of the Romans, some of the electors (perhaps from a wish to hide their own dislike of the scheme) expressed an apprehension that the pope might object; and Charles, in contradiction to the principles asserted by the union of Rhense in 1338, and afterwards in his own golden bull, applied for the pope’s consent. The election of a son during his father’s lifetime was opposed to the Roman policy, which discouraged the idea of inheritance in the imperial crown, and even Rudolf of Hapsburg had failed in a similar request. But Gregory, in consideration of the advantage which the papacy might derive from the acknowledgment that his sanction was necessary, assented after some delay, although with the warning that his assent was not to become a precedent. Although Charles himself, in his golden bull, had charged the electors to give their votes gratuitously, and had pre­scribed that they should swear to do so, he was obliged to pay heavily, both in money and in capitulations, for his son’s election, and even to pledge or alienate some cities and territories which belonged to the imperial crown.

In another quarter Gregory obtained a success which was rather apparent than real. The long contest between the Angevine dynasty of Naples and the house of Aragon for the possession of Sicily was ended in 1372 by a treaty which Frederick of Sicily concluded with Joanna and her husband Lewis. By this, the island was to be held under the Apulian crown, on condition of paying tribute, and of furnishing soldiers in case of war; and the title ot king of Sicily was to belong to the sovereign of Apulia, while the actual ruler was to style himself king of Trinacria. The “Sicilian monarchy”, which, although originally sanctioned by a pope, had been a grievous offence to his successors, was to be abolished; and in other respects the treaty was greatly in favour of the papacy. But these terms were never carried into effect. The papal confirmation was not sought either by Frede­rick or by his daughter Mary, who succeeded him in 1377. Sicily never performed the feudal obligations which had been stipulated; and its sovereigns, so long as the island remained a separate kingdom, bore in their title the name, not of Trinacria, but of “Sicily beyond the Strait”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V.

 

THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST, TO THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF PISA.

A. D. 1378-1409.

 

 

AT the death of Gregory XI the Romans were resolved to put an end, if possible, to the residence of the popes in France, by insisting that one of their own countrymen should be chosen. Gregory, foreseeing the danger of a schism, had, in the last days of his life, made a decree that a pope chosen by a majority of the cardinals should be acknowledged, whether the election were made in Rome or elsewhere, and although the usual formalities of the conclave were not observed. But the Romans were bent on carrying out their purpose. In order that the cardinals might not escape from the city, they took the keys of the gates from the officials of the church, and replaced the sentinels by partisans of their own; they expelled the nobles, and, with a view to overawing the electors, they called in a multitude of armed and half-savage peasants from the neighbouring mountains, while Italian prelates, within and without the city, were busily employed in stirring up the people. The number of cardinals then at Rome was sixteen—four Italians, a Spaniard (Peter de Luna), and eleven French­men, of whom seven were Limousins; while of the other seven members of the college one was employed as legate in Tuscany, and the rest had remained at Avignon. It was with difficulty that the electors were able to make their way through the threatening crowd which beset the Vatican, and, as they entered the chamber appointed for the conclave, they were alarmed by a violent thunderstorm, which seemed like an omen of coming evil. But they were yet more terrified by the behaviour of the multitude, which had forced its way into the palace, furiously clamouring, “We will have a Roman, or at least an Italian!”. After a time the greater part were turned out, but about forty persisted in remaining; they searched the beds of the cardinals and the most secret corners of the apartment, in order to discover any men who might be hidden, or any private outlet by which the electors might escape; and, as the Romans had not allowed the usual form of walling up the entrance to be observed, the intruders were able to terrify the cardinals by their menaces and by their display of force.

The French cardinals, although more than twice as many as all the rest, were weakened by a division among themselves; for the Limousins, who for six-and-thirty years had enjoyed the papacy and its patronage, wished to choose one of their own number, while the other section, headed by Robert of Geneva, was resolutely opposed to the election of a Limousin. Each of these factions, if unable to carry a candidate of its own, would have preferred an Italian to one of the rival French party; and thus the Italians, although few, found that they held the balance in their hands.

As the tumult increased, two bannerets of Rome (the chiefs of the regions into which the city was divided) asked admittance, and urged the expediency of yielding to the wishes of the people. But they were told that the election was a matter with which no personal regards must interfere; that the cardinals, after having celebrated the mass of the Holy Ghost on the morrow, would be guided by Him alone in their choice. All through the night the uproar waxed wilder and wilder. The ruffians who had remained in the palace, after having unwil­lingly consented that the conclave should be shut, took up their position in the room below; they plundered the papal stores of food and wine in their heightened excitement, they dashed their swords and lances against the ceiling, so as to add to the terror of the cardinals, and even made preparations as if for burning the palace; while the multitude without kept up their cries for a Roman or an Italian, mingled with shouts of “Death to the cardinals!”. The great bells of St. Peter’s and of the Capitol were beaten with hammers as if the city were on fire.

In the morning the numbers of the mob were greater than ever. When the cardinals were at mass, the words of the service could not be heard for the noise without; and now the cry was for a Roman only. The cardinals again met for the election, while the door of the conclave was assailed with violent blows, and the noise became louder every moment. It was suggested that someone should be declared pope, in order to appease the multitude, and that another should be privately chosen, with a view to his being afterwards substituted for the first. The cardinal of Florence proposed Francis Tibaldeschi, cardinal of St. Sabina, and archpriest of St. Peter’s, the oldest member of the college; but the motion met with no support; and on a second vote, all, with the exception of James Orsini, who de­clined to act under such coercion, agreed in the choice or Bartholomew Prignani, archbishop of Bari, who was not a cardinal, but, as being at once an Italian and a subject of the French sovereign of Naples, might be supposed to be acceptable to both parties. On the announcement of the election an accident led the multitude to believe that it had fallen on Tibaldeschi. They plundered his palace, according to the custom on such occasions, forced a way into the conclave, and overwhelmed the old man with violent congratulations, while he strove to make them understand their mistake, and desired them, even with curses, to let him go. In the meantime the cardinals dispersed in terror, leaving their hats and cloaks behind them, and some of them were severely handled by the mob.

Next day, however, they met again; and, although the announcement of the archbishop of Bari’s election caused some tumult, as his title was mistaken for the name of James of Bar, a Limousin of the papal household, he was peaceably invested with the mantle of office. It is said that, in answer to his doubts as to the validity of his election, the cardinals assured him that all had been rightly and fairly done. He received their homage, and they all took part in his coronation, which was solemnly performed on Easter-day. The elec­tion was announced to the sovereigns of Europe, not, as had been usual, by the pope himself but by the cardinals; and they also reported it to their brethren at Avignon in a letter which declared that their choice had been made unanimously, and (as they professed to believe) under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Urban VI (as the new pope styled himself) was a Neapolitan of humble birth, and a man of strictly ascetic life. He was deeply read in ecclesiastical law, but was more especially respected for his devotion to the study of Scripture, and for the humility, the disinterestedness, the equity, and the compassion which were supposed to mark his character. But almost immediately after his elevation, it began to appear that some of the virtues by which he had been hitherto distinguished were exchanged for qualities of an opposite kind. He was open to flattery, while, in dealing with his cardinals and with other high ecclesiastics, he behaved with a haughtiness and a rudeness which were felt to be intolerable, and called forth open remonstrances. Even his good actions were so done as to produce an unfavourable impression. He announced reforms of an unpopular kind, without any consideration for the prejudices or the interests which might be affected by them. He threatened to reduce the luxurious cardinals to one dish at table, after his own example; to overwhelm the French influence in the college by the addition of Romans and Italians; and he further provoked the French cardinals by absolutely re­fusing to go to Avignon. Preaching in his own chapel, he denounced the bishops who were at the court as per­jured for neglecting their dioceses; to which the bishop of Pampeluna immediately replied that the charge was in his case untrue, as he was there on diocesan business. The pope desired the cardinals to repair to the churches from which they took their titles, and to reside at them. At a consistory he charged such of them as had been sent on embassies with having allowed themselves to be bribed; to which James de la Grange, cardinal of St. Marcellus, retorted, “As archbishop of Bari you lie!”, and the cardinal, who was one of the French king’s coun­cillors, went off to use his influence with Charles V in opposition to Urban. Joanna of Naples had celebrated the election of the Neapolitan pope by public festivities; she sent him magnificent presents of money, food, and wine, and deputed her husband, duke Otho of Brunswick, to convey her congratulations and respects to him; but Urban, although he had formerly been on terms of friend­ship with the duke, now treated him with such discourtesy that Otho returned to Naples indignant and alienated. St. Catharine of Siena, although she adhered zealously to Urban in the differences which afterwards arose, found herself compelled to remonstrate with him on his irasci­bility and on the impolicy of his behaviour.

The majority of the cardinals, angry and disgusted at his treatment of them, and the more so because they saw that he endeavoured to ingratiate himself with the people of Rome, began to question the soundness of the pope’s mind, and to consider how they might rid themselves of him. One by one they made their way out of the city, and assembled at Anagni, where they invited Urban to join them. Instead of complying with this request, he summoned them to Tivoli, where he was with the four Italian cardinals; but they answered that they could not conveniently leave Anagni, as they had laid in large stores of provisions there. Their design, which had probably been nothing more than to draw Urban into a capitulation, was now carried further. In the presence of three of their Italian brethren, who had conveyed the pope’s invitation, they swore on the Gospels that their consent to Urban’s election had been extorted only by the fear of death; and on the 9th of August, after having cele­brated a solemn mass, they sent forth a letter in which they renounced him as an apostate and a deceiver—professing to have chosen him in the trust that, as a man of integrity and acquainted with the canon law, he would feel himself bound to regard as null an election which had been made under constraint, and to take the earliest safe opportunity of declaring its nullity.

Yet, although the election had unquestionably been influenced by fear of the Roman populace,—although the cardinals, if they had been free, would probably have chosen otherwise,—their choice of Urban had really been rather a compromise than a compliance with the will of the multitude, who had cried out for one of their own fellow-citizens, and, far from wishing for the archbishop of Bari, had been eager to enthrone the cardinal of St. Peter’s. And, whatever might have been the original defects in Urban’s title, the cardinals appear to have debarred themselves from insisting on these. They had, it would seem, gone through a second form of election, in order to make the matter sure; they had accepted him after the restoration of peace in the city; they had with apparent willingness taken part in all the forms which were necessary in order to put him completely into possession of the papacy; they had announced his elevation to the Avignon cardinals and to the sovereigns of Christendom as having been made in due form, and even under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They had assisted at his celebration of the most solemn rites. They had solicited and received preferment at his hands, for themselves or their friends, even since their withdrawal to Anagni. In all possible ways they had acknowledged him, until driven by his outrageous behaviour to seek for pretexts which might warrant them in forsaking and superseding him.

The cardinals now hired a band of Breton and Gascon soldiers to protect them. They got possession of the papal jewels and insignia, which had been deposited in the castle of St. Angelo. They entered into an understanding with the queen of Naples, and removed from Anagni to Fondi, within the Neapolitan territory, where the count of the place, a turbulent man of the Gaetani family, who had long held the government of Campania under the Roman church, was induced by his enmity against Urban to support them. They persuaded three out of the four Italian cardinals to join them—it is said, by holding out to each the hope of being chosen as pope. They endeavoured to fortify their cause by procuring the opinions of emi­nent lawyers; but in this their success was imperfect, as the jurists in general held that the election of Urban had been regular, or that, if it were not so, the power of amending it belonged, not to the cardinals, but to a general council.

 

CLEMENT VII, ANTIPOPE

 

The aged cardinal of St. Peter’s was the only member of the college who still adhered to Urban; but he did not long survive. Urban now announced an intention of creating nine cardinals; but in the Ember-week of September he proceeded to bestow the dignity at once on twenty-nine persons—a number which exceeded that of the French and the Italians together. Many of these were Neapolitans like him­self and recommended by powerful family connexions, or by other circumstances which might enable them to exercise an influence in his favour among their countrymen.

On the 20th of the same month, the rebellious cardinals at Fondi renewed their declarations against Urban, and, although the Italian members of the college withdrew before the election, chose as pope Robert of Geneva, cardinal of the Twelve Apostles and bishop of Cambray, who took the name of Clement VII. The antipope, who was recommended to them by his enterprising spirit, as well as by his birth—which connected him with almost all the chief princes of Europe—was only thirty-six years of age. His qualities were rather those of a warrior than of a prelate; he had been the leader of a company of Breton mercenaries, and had been deeply concerned in the massacre of Cesena, and in other barbarities by which the late contests of Italy had been stained. The election of Clement was accepted by the cardinals of Avignon and thus was begun the great schism of the west, which for nearly forty years distracted Latin Christendom, between rivals who hurled against each other the spiritual weapons of excommunication and anathema, while each loaded the other with charges of the worst of crimes. France declared for Clement, although not until 1379, when Charles V requested the university of Paris to give a judgment on the question. The faculties of theology, law, and medicine, with the French and Norman nations in the department of arts, pronounced in favour of Clement, and the neutrality of the English and Picard nations of “artists” was over­powered. England was on the side of Urban, because France was with Clement; and Scotland was for Clement, because England was with Urban. Germany and Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Portugal, tired of the long series of French popes, were in favour of Urban; so, too, was all Italy except the Neapolitan kingdom, which he had alienated by his behaviour to queen Joanna’s husband, and by showing an inclination to favour the pretensions of Charles of Durazzo as a rival claimant of her throne. Castile and Aragon were brought, after some delay, to declare for Clement—in great measure through the skilful negotiations of his legate, cardinal Peter de Luna. Within a short time after the beginning of the schism, changes occurred by which the chief thrones of Europe were transferred from experienced sovereigns to princes whom a writer of the time describes in general as voluptuous youths, and whose authority was not such as to exercise much influence in the question. In France, Charles V, a king distinguished for his prudence and for his love of learning and the arts, was succeeded by his son Charles VI, a boy of fourteen, who from his early manhood became subject to fits of lunacy, in consequence of which the kingdom fell a prey to the rivalries of the princes of the blood. In England, Edward III had been succeeded in 1377 by the young and feeble Richard II. In Germany and Bohemia, Charles IV was succeeded by his son Wenceslaus, whose slender capacity was obscured by continual debauchery. Nor, while the power of sovereigns was thus ineffective, was there any predomi­nant saint who, like Bernard in an earlier age, could, by throwing his influence into the scale of one of the claimants of the papacy, have made the other to be generally regarded as an antipope. On each side there were saints and prophets whom their contemporaries regarded with veneration : while Urban had with him Catharine of Siena, Catharine of Sweden, and the royal friar-prophet, Peter of Aragon, Clement was supported by the great Spanish Dominican preacher, Vincent Ferrer, and by a prince of Luxemburg, Peter, bishop of Metz and cardinal, who, although he died at the age of eighteen in 1387, continued after death to throw over the cause of the Avignon popes the lustre of innumerable miracles. Nor has the question as to the legitimacy of the two popes, and of the lines founded by them respectively, been ever decided by any authority which is regarded as final. It was carefully avoided by the councils which were assembled with a view to healing the schism; and in later times, while writers of the Roman communion in general have been in favour of the Italian popes, the Gallicans have maintained the title of the French line. As to the practical question of communion with the popes of one or the other party, the judgment of St. Antoninus of Florence appears to be commonly accepted—that, while Christians in general are not bound to have such knowledge of canon law as would qualify them to judge of the elections, they are safe in following those who are set over them in the church.

Soon after his election Clement proceeded to Naples, where he was received with great honour by the queen. But the people were on the side of Urban, as being their countryman, and he had strengthened his interest by including several Neapolitans in his late creation of cardinals. Cries of “Death to the antipope and the queen!” were raised in the streets and Clement, after a time, found it expedient to make his way by Marseilles to Avignon, where he settled under the protection of the king of France, and found himself obliged to endure the miseries of a dependent position.

In the meantime Urban was successful in Italy. A mercenary force which he engaged, under a native cap­tain, Alberic of Barbiano, defeated and broke up the Breton and Gascon bands which were in the pay of the opposite party. The castle of St. Angelo, which had been held for the cardinals, was now for the first time assailed by artillery, and fell into the hands of the Romans, who dismantled it and barbarously mutilated it by pulling down a large part of the marble facing, and employing the stones in paving the streets.

Urban was resolved to make Joanna feel the weight of his enmity. He stirred up Charles of Durazzo, the last representative of the Angevine dynasty, to make an attempt on the Apulian crown, instead of waiting until the course of nature should give it to him. The enterprise was favoured by the oracular utterances of St. Catharine of Siena, and in order to contribute to the expenses of it, Urban sold the plate, the jewels, and other precious ornaments of churches, and even alienated ecclesiastical property without regard to the will of the incumbents. In April 1380 he pronounced Joanna, as a heretic and schismatic, to be deprived of her kingdom and of all fiefs held under the Roman see, released her subjects from their allegiance, and proclaimed a crusade against her. Charles was received at Rome with great honour, was anointed as king of Sicily, and was invested in the dominion of all southern Italy, except the papal city of Benevento, with Capua, Amalfi, and other places, which Urban wished to form into a principality for his nephew, Francis Prignano. On the other hand, Joanna resolved to call in to her assistance Lewis, duke of Anjou, a prince of warlike character, whom she adopted as her heir; and the Avignon pope not only sanctioned this, but pro­fessed to bestow on Lewis a portion of the papal states, which was to be styled the kingdom of Adria, on con­dition that neither he nor his successors should accept an election to the German crown, or to the lordship of Lombardy. The gift was one which cost Clement nothing, as the papal territory was in the hands of his rival, and there was a hope that, by professing to give a part, he might gain the assistance of Lewis towards the acquisition of the rest. But the plan failed. While Lewis remained in France, busily engaged in securing the inheritance which had fallen to him by his brother’s death, Charles invaded southern Italy. Otho, although distinguished for his military skill, was without money, and was unsupported by the people, who had been irri­tated by the demand of a heavy war-tax; and Charles, after having defeated him at San Germano, got possession of Naples. The queen was compelled to surrender herself to the victor, and it is commonly believed that by his command she was smothered or strangled in prison. Her death and the manner of it are said to have been determined by the advice of king Lewis of Hungary, who thus avenged, even in its very circumstances, the murder of his brother Andrew. When at length Lewis of Anjou was able to enter Italy at the head of a powerful and brilliant army, he found that the policy of Charles had raised up difficulties which beset him in his passage through Lombardy. His troops suffered severely from the want of provisions and from the inclemency of the weather, while Charles declined meeting him in the field, and left these enemies to do their work,—so that the soldiers, according to the expression of a contemporary, “died like dogs”, and Lewis himself was carried off by a fever at Bari. His force was utterly broken up, and gallant nobles, who had accom­panied him in full confidence of victory, were obliged to beg their way in rags back to France, while Charles remained undisputed sovereign of Naples.

To Urban it seemed that the new king, of whose success he regarded himself as the author, was slow in showing the expected gratitude for his support, and especially in contributing to provide a territory for his nephew, Francis (who was commonly called Butillo). He therefore resolved to go in person to Naples, and when his cardinals endeavoured to dissuade him, he burst into a fury, which seemed to confirm their suspicions of his sanity, and threatened to depose them. At Aversa he was met by Charles, who received him with a show of honour, and acted as his esquire; but both at Aversa and Naples he was closely guarded, from fear that he might engage in political intrigues; and when this restraint was about to be relaxed, a difficulty was caused by the misconduct of the foolish and profligate Butillo, who seduced and carried off a noble and beautiful nun of the order of St. Clare. For this he was condemned to death by the king’s court of justice; but Urban (who usually excused his nephew’s excesses by the plea of youth, although Butillo had reached the age of forty), declared that he himself was suzerain of the Apulian kingdom, and that in his pre­sence no other tribunal had jurisdiction over a grandee. Charles was unwilling to carry matters to an extremity, as the French invasion had not yet passed away. The cardinals, therefore, were able to compound the dispute, by arranging that Butillo should marry a lady related to the king, and Urban withdrew with all his cardinals to Nocera.

During his stay at Naples, Urban had deprived all such clergy of that city as were suspected of leaning to the opposite interest, and, in filling up the vacancies, he had put many low men into dignities for which they were grossly unfit. He had promoted at once thirty-two Neapolitans to archbishoprics and bishoprics. He now resolved on a new creation of cardinals, among whom he wished to include the three ecclesiastical electors of Germany; but these all declined to bind themselves to his fortunes by accepting the doubtful honour. And when he offered it to a number of the Neapolitan clergy, he had the double mortification of finding that they refused from fear of offending the king, and that the cardinalate was discredited in the general estimation by the characters of those whom he had thought worthy of it.

Charles invited Urban to a conference, but was told in answer that it was for kings to wait on popes, not for popes to wait on kings; and he was charged to relieve his subjects from the heavy taxes which he had imposed on them. On hearing this he indignantly exclaimed that the kingdom was his own,—that the pope had no concern with the government of any but the priests; and that he would go to Urban, but at the head of an army. For some weeks the pope was besieged in Nocera, where he showed himself at a window three or four times a-day, pronouncing with bell and lighted candle the sentence of excommunication against his besiegers. He even talked of deposing Charles in punishment for his ingratitude. The old man’s perverseness, self-will, and irritability became intolerable even to the cardinals of his own promotion; and some of them submitted to an able, but somewhat unscrupulous, lawyer, Bartoline of Piacenza, a set of questions, among which was this—whether, if a pope should conduct himself in such a way as to endanger the weal of Christendom by negligence, obstinacy, and engrossing all power, to the exclusion of the advice of the cardinals, these would not be warranted in placing him under the charge of curators. Bartoline replied in the affirmative, and other opinions to the same effect were obtained, although some of those who were consulted thought otherwise. Urban, on being informed of this proceeding by a cardinal who was not concerned in it, caused six of the cardinals to be thrown into a dungeon which had been formerly used as a cistern, and after a time brought them to trial before his consistory. By the application of torture, they were driven to confess anything that was required; and while Butillo stood by, laughing immoderately at their agonies and shrieks, his uncle walked up and down in the adjoin­ing garden, calmly reciting his canonical hours in a loud tone, so that the executioners might be aware of his presence, and might do their work with vigour. The cardinals were then remanded to their prison, where they suffered from hunger and thirst, from darkness, stench, and vermin; one of them, De Sangro, whose place of confinement was seen by Theodoric of Niem, had not room to stretch himself in any direction.

At length Urban, for whose surrender 10,000 florins had been offered, was rescued from his uneasy position by Thomas of San Severino, and hurried, with his prisoners, across the country to a place on the Adriatic coast, between Trani and Barletta, where he had arranged that a Genoese fleet should be ready to receive him. The bishop of Aquila, who was unable from illness to ride so fast as the rest of the party, was killed on the way by the pope’s commands The six cardinals were carried to Palermo, and thence to Genoa; and there five of them were put to death, with circumstances of mystery which have given rise to a variety of reports—that they were beheaded in prison, that they were buried alive, or that they were put into sacks and cast into the sea. The sixth, Adam Easton, cardinal of St. Cecilia, was spared at the intercession of his sovereign, Richard II, but was degraded from his dignity, and was kept in rigorous imprisonment until after the death of Urban, by whose successor he was reinstated. Two other cardinals, alarmed by the fate of their fellows, made their way from Genoa to Avignon, where they were admitted into the rival college by Clement; one of them, Pileo de Prata, archbishop of Ravenna, having publicly burnt his official hat at Pavia. Within little more than a year after his arrival at Genoa, Urban quarrelled with the doge, to whom he had been indebted for his safety; and he left the city in the middle of December 1386 for Lucca. There he was urged by envoys from the princes of Germany to take measures for ending the schism; but he answered that he was the true pope, and could not throw doubt on his title. From Lucca he removed to Perugia, but he was compelled to leave that place by the scandal which had been occasioned by his nephew Butillo’s licentiousness, and in August 1388 he returned to Rome.

Charles of Durazzo, having firmly established himself in the kingdom of Naples, set off, in compliance with an invitation from a party in Hungary, to assert his claims to the throne of that country, where Mary, the daughter of king Lewis, notwithstanding a law which excluded females from the crown, had been chosen “king” on her father’s death in 1382. Charles had sworn that he would not disturb the daughters of Lewis in their inherit­ance; but Mary was persuaded to resign, and he was solemnly crowned in her stead. He was not, however, long allowed to enjoy his new acquisition. Through the contrivance of the late king’s widow he was treacherously attacked by assassins, and he died of his wounds soon after; when the Hungarian crown again fell to Mary, who had been betrothed to Sigismund, son of the emperor Charles IV, Urban made difficulties as to allowing Christian burial to Charles, and refused to invest his son Ladislaus, a boy only ten years old, in the Neapolitan kingdom; but by thus indulging his enmity against Charles and his family, he encouraged the interest of his own rival, who favoured the claims of the younger Lewis of Anjou to the Neapolitan crown. The kingdom was for a time a prey to anarchy, while the effect of the schism in weakening the papacy aided the designs of John Galeazzo Visconti—a deeply politic and utterly unscrupulous man, who had deposed and poisoned his uncle Bernabò—to gain a predominating influence in Italy. Urban, on his return to Rome, had been coldly received, and he afterwards in­creased his unpopularity with the citizens. With a view at once of conciliating them and of bringing money into the treasury of the church, he announced a jubilee. Out of tenderness (as he professed) to those who might be too severely tried by the interval of fifty years between such solemnities, the time was to be reduced to thirty-three years, the length of the Saviour’s earthly life; and by this calculation he determined that the next celebration should fall in the year 1390. But some weeks before the beginning of that year, the pope, who had been severely shaken by a fall from his mule, died; and benefits of his preparations were reaped by his successor.

From time to time attempts had been made to put an end to the schism. Thus in 1381 the university of Paris, disgusted by Clement’s proceedings, gave an opinion that a general council should be called for this purpose. In 1387, Clement, feeling himself pressed by the autho­rity of the university, professed himself willing to refer the question to a council, and offered, if Urban would submit to him, to give him the highest place among the cardinals. Urban also professed his readiness to submit to a council; but he added a condition which made the offer nugatory—that he himself should in the meantime be acknowledged as the only pope. Clement is said to have induced persons of influence in the French court, by frequent and costly presents, to refrain from exerting themselves for the closing of the schism; and, as the princes of Latin Christendom had been guided by their former political connexion in the choice of sides as to the question of the papacy, it is remarked by a writer of the time, Richard of Ulverstone, that but for the quarrels of nations the schism would neither have been so lightly begun nor so long kept up.

On the 1st of November the cardinals of Urban’s party chose as his successor Peter Tomacelli, cardinal of St. Anastasia, who took the name of Boniface IX. The new pope, according to some authorities, was only thirty years of age; but others, with greater probability, make him fourteen years older. He is described as possessed of some showy personal qualities, but without any learn­ing or any such knowledge of affairs as would have fitted him for his position—although this last defect was afterwards in some degree remedied by experience.

The schism, by throwing on western Christendom the cost of maintaining a second pontifical court, added greatly to the burdens which had before been matter of com­plaint. Clement VII endeavoured to swell his income by the most unscrupulous means, and the grievances of his administration excited loud outcries from the church of France. He surrounded himself with a body of no less than thirty-six cardinals, for whom he provided by usurping the patronage of all the church-preferment that he could get into his hands. A new kind of document was introduced under the name of gratia expectativae by which the reversion of a benefice was conferred, and the receiver was authorized to take possession as soon as a vacancy should occur. The old resources—such as reservations, tenths, dispensations of all kinds, and the jus exuviarium (which was now exercised on the property of abbots as well as on that of bishops)—were worked to the uttermost, and were developed in ways before unknown. Promotion was bestowed for money or other improper considerations, without regard to the merit or fitness of the receivers; and, as learning was no longer regarded as a qualification for preferment, schools and colleges were broken up, and even the university of Paris found itself comparatively deserted by students. While the French church and people groaned under these evils, the pope, by bestowing a part of the spoil on princes and powerful nobles, contrived to secure their connivance but a royal edict of 1385 in some degree, although very imperfectly, corrected the abuses which had arisen.

While the French pope was endeavouring to swell his revenues by simony and rapacity, Urban VI was honour­ably distinguished by his freedom from such practices; and his successor, Boniface, is said to have so far regarded the opinion of the elder cardinals that for the first seven years of his pontificate he refrained from open simony. But when the old men were dead, he entered on a course of rapacity grosser and more shameless than anything that had ever been known. Boniface reserved to him­self the first year’s income of all bishoprics and abbeys. Persons who aspired to preferment of this kind were required to pay for it in advance, and, if unprovided with ready money, they were obliged to borrow at extravagant interest from the brokers who hung about the papal court. Unions of benefices were simoniacally made, and men utterly ignorant were allowed, if they paid sufficiently, to be exempt from the laws against pluralities. Spies were sent throughout Lombardy and other countries of Boni­face’s obedience, to discover whether any incumbents of rich benefices were ill, and to give early notice of any vacancy to their employers. The “spoils” of prelates and cardinals were plundered before the owners were actually dead. The same reversions were sold repeatedly, the last buyers having their papers marked for preference, but as this practice became so well known that after a time purchasers could not be found on such terms, a form of precedence over all other preferences was devised in order to attract and assure them, and was, of course, sold at a much higher priced The pope affected to check these abuses by enacting rules, and found a new source of profit in granting exemptions from his rules. By a like policy he revoked the indulgences, privileges, and other benefits which he had irregularly bestowed, and made the revocation a ground for fresh exactions. Even after the first year’s income of a benefice had been paid in order to secure the presentation, the purchaser was liable to see it carried off by a later comer who was willing to pay more highly; for in such cases the pope professed to believe that those who had made the lower offers intended to cheat him. The system of corruption became continually more ingenious and refined. Mem­bers of mendicant orders were allowed, on payment of a hundred gold florins, to transfer themselves to orders which did not profess mendicancy; and the world was astonished at seeing such payments made by persons who were bound by their rules to possess nothing. The traffic in indulgences was carried out more thoroughly than before. The pope himself was not above accepting the smallest gains, and his mother, who is described as the greediest of women, with his three brothers, found opportunities of enriching themselves. The theory which some had maintained at an earlier time, that a pope could not become guilty of simony, was brought forward by Boniface’s friends as the only plea by which his practices could be justified. Among those who obtained preferment by such means as were then neces­sary were many worthless and unfit persons, and for a long time afterwards the clergy of the “Bonifacian plantation, which the heavenly Father planted not”, were noted as the least reputable of their class. In some countries, such as England or Hungary, the extravagance of the charges exacted by the Roman court on appoint­ment to ecclesiastical dignities produced an effect which Boniface had not reckoned on, as the clergy of those countries ceased to resort to Rome, and the connexion of the national churches with the papacy was practically suspended.

 

JUBILEE OF 1390.

 

Boniface, at his accession, found the jubilee of 1390 prepared for him by his predecessor; and, notwithstand­ing the difficulties of the time—the separation of France from the Roman papacy, and the consequent absence of French pilgrims, with the disturbed state of affairs, which placed extraordinary hindrances in the way of travellers—a large number of visitors appeared, and great sums were contributed to the papal treasury. In consideration of the impediments which made the journey hazardous, Boni­face sent emissaries into the kingdoms which acknow­ledged him, with a commission to offer the benefits of the jubilee and a dispensation from the necessity of visiting Rome in person; and although it is said that much of the money paid for this indulgence was embezzled by the collectors, it brought in a large addition to the profits of the jubilee—which, while a portion of them was bestowed on the repairs of the Roman churches, were mostly retained for the pope’s own use. The difficulty as to Naples, which Urban had left to his successor, was over­come by Boniface’s acknowledging Ladislaus as king, and thus securing himself against the risk that the kingdom might fall under the spiritual obedience of the Avignon pope, who had crowned the younger Lewis of Anjou as its sovereign. Boniface also complied with the wishes of Ladislaus by sanctioning his groundless and scandalous divorce and re-marriage, and by crowning him as king of Hungary. But in that country Mary and her husband Sigismund were so firmly established that Ladislaus withdrew from the attempt to dispossess them.

With his own subjects Boniface had serious discords, which obliged him to leave Rome for Perugia in 1393; and from that time he lived in provincial towns until the approach of the jubilee of 1400, when the Romans, considering that the absence of the pope would probably reduce the number of pilgrims and the profits of the celebration, made overtures for his return. Boniface, although he had already benefited by the calculation which fixed a jubilee for 1390, was very willing to fall back on the scheme which allowed him to celebrate a second jubilee within ten years; and, feeling the import­ance of his presence to the Romans, he took advantage of it to make stipulations which, among other things, removed the democratic bannerets from a share of the government and placed the control of it in the pope’s own hands. The jubilee was attended by great multitudes; the French had been eager for it, and flocked to Rome, notwithstanding their king’s prohibition, and in defiance of the dangers with which the journey was beset from robbers and from the rude and licentious soldiery who swarmed in Italy. From those who were unable or unwilling to undertake the expedition, Boniface contrived to draw large contributions by allowing them, on the payment of offerings, to commute it for the visitation of certain churches in their own neighbourhood. By the wealth derived from the jubilee, and by the produce of the exactions already described, the pope was enabled to repair the fortress of St. Angelo and the harbour of Ostia, to fortify the Capitol and the Vatican, to recover some portions of the papal territory, and to gain such a power over Rome itself as no one of his predecessors in late times had enjoyed.

Early in his pontificate Boniface endeavoured, by repeated letters and missives, to draw the French king into renouncing the obedience of Clement. The uni­versity of Paris was diligent in endeavouring to heal the schism, and in January 1394 obtained leave from the duke of Berri, who was then in power during one of the king’s attacks of lunacy, to give its judgment on the subject. A chest was set to receive the opinions of members of the academic body, and it is said that up­wards of ten thousand papers were thrown into it. The plans proposed in these opinions were found to be redu­cible to three—that both popes should abdicate; that they should agree, by a compromise, on a list of persons to whose arbitration the matter should be committed; and that it should be referred to a general council. On this basis the judgment of the university was drawn up by Nicholas of Clemanges (who was styled the “Cicero of his age”), with the assistance of Peter d'Ailly June and Giles Deschamps; and it was submitted to the king, who had again become capable of attending to business. But Charles, although he thanked the members of the university for their pains, was persuaded by cardinal de Luna and other friends of Clement to desire that they would not concern themselves further with the matter; and the professors suspended their teaching until their representation should receive due attention. The judgment was forwarded to pope Clement, who declared it to be defamatory of the apostolic see, full of venom and detraction, and unfit to be read; but on finding that his cardinals were inclined to the opinion of the university, he was thrown into an agitation which in a few days put an end to his life on the 16th of September 1394.

On this, Charles of France, at the instigation of the university of Paris, and with the hope of bringing the schism to an end, wrote two letters to the cardinals of the Avignon court, desiring that they would not be in haste to elect a new pope. But his first letter found them already assembled in conclave, although not yet shut in; and suspecting its purport, they resolved to leave it unopened until the election should have been decided. Each member  of the college took an oath that, if elected, he would labour for the extinction of the schism, even to the extent of resigning, if such a step should be for the benefit of the church, or if the cardinals, or a majority of them, should think it expedient; and they chose Peter de Luna, cardinal of St. Mary in Cosmedin, who styled himself Benedict XIII. The new pope, a Spaniard, had been noted for his ability as a negotiator; he had obtained for Clement the adhesion of Castile, and at Paris had raised up a party in opposi­tion to the university. Although he was one of those who had begun the schism by the election of Clement at Fondi, he had been accustomed to lament that step, to blame Clement for the policy by which the separation was continued, and to profess an eager desire for the re­union of the church at whatever sacrifice. But it soon became evident how little he was disposed to act sincerely on his former professions. He had at the election avowed an opinion that the oath which was proposed could not bind the pope except so far as every Catholic was bound by right and conscience; and although he still con­tinued to speak as before—declaring that, if he himself only were concerned, he would put off the papacy as readily as if it were a cloak, that he would rather spend his remaining days in a desert than give occasion for prolonging the schism—he was now able to put his own interpretation on his late engagement.

The university of Paris took continually a more active part in endeavouring to heal the schism. It offered its advice to Benedict, and requested him to exert himself for the union of the church; but the letter received only an evasive reply. The leaders of the university, Peter d'Ailly, Nicolas of Clemanges, and John Gerson, were opposed alike to the papal despotism and to any schemes which would have proposed to remedy this by a revolution in the system of the church. But in the meantime the increasing pressure of the evils which arose out of the schism drove others into speculations as to the means of healing it which touched the very foundations of the papal power.

On the Festival of the Purification, 1395, a national council was held at Paris. The king was prevented from attending by an attack of his terrible malady; but the princes of the royal house were present, and among the clergy were the titular patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem, seven archbishops, and a great number of bishops, with representatives of the monastic orders and of the universities. Simon de Cramault, patriarch of Alexandria and administrator of the diocese of Carcassonne, presided. Before this assembly was read the judgment of the university in favour of the plan that both popes should resign. It was adopted by a majority of 87 to 22;  and after it had been formally reported by the prelates to the king, a mission, headed by the dukes of Berri, Burgundy, and Orleans, proceeded to Avignon, for the purpose of laying before Benedict the various courses which had been proposed with a view to end the schism, and of recommending the way of cession as the speediest and most dignified. At the same time a letter of similar purport was addressed to Benedict by the university of Paris. The cardinals, although it is said that high words passed among them, for the most part declared themselves in favour of the proposed scheme; but Benedict, after much delay and many evasions, professed to think that a confer­ence between himself and his rival would be more hopeful; while to one who visited him he declared that he would rather be flayed alive than resign, and he wrote letters of remonstrance both to king Charles and to the duke of Burgundy. The representatives of the university were indignant at the rudeness which they experienced from the pope’s servants and at his refusal to receive them publicly, and the embassy left Avignon in disgust,—the duke of Berri, in the name of the rest, refusing an invitation to the pope’s table. The proposal of a conference was received with general disfavour, as it was suspected that such a meeting would result in an agreement for the partition of Christendom between the two popes, and consequently would prolong the schism.

Still eager to bring the schism to an end, the king of France endeavoured to enlist other princes in the same cause, while the university of Paris entered into correspondence with universities of other countries on the subject. From Cologne a letter had been received, exhorting the Parisians to labour for peace, but showing an inclination to the side of Boniface. From Oxford came a declaration in favour of a general council; but king Richard of England preferred the scheme of a cession, and wrote to both popes in recommendation of it. The university of Toulouse maintained, in opposi­tion to that of Paris, that not even a general council has authority to judge the pope and in this, as in other matters, the Dominicans held against the Parisian uni­versity, from which they had been excluded some years before on account of their resistance to the doctrine of the immaculate conception. Provoked by opposition, Benedict condemned some members of the university to the loss of their preferments; whereupon the academical body appealed against him to a future, sole, and real pope; and when he declared appeals from the pope to be unlawful, it repeated the act, asserting that schismatical and heretical popes were subject in life to the judgment of general councils, and after death to that of their own successors.

In March 1398 the emperor Wenceslaus and the king of France met at Reims, with a view to settling the ter­mination of the schism. It was agreed that abdication should be recommended both to Benedict and to Boni­face, with a view to the appointment of a new pope, who should be chosen by the cardinals of both parties; and, if this recommendation should be neglected, each of the sovereigns undertook to depose the pope to whom he had before adhered. Peter d'Ailly, now bishop of Cambray, was sent to the courts of Rome and Avignon with a charge to announce this resolution; but the mission was ineffectual, as each pope, although he did not absolutely reject the proposal, insisted that his rival should be the first to resign.

Another national council was held at Paris in May 1398, under the presidency of the patriarch of Alexan­dria. The question was proposed, whether, if Benedict should obstinately refuse to resign, the French should continue to acknowledge him, or whether they should withdraw their obedience, either entirely, or in so far as regarded the patronage and temporalities which he had usurped? A committee of twelve, chosen equally from among the friends and the opponents of Benedict, drew up a statement of the reasons, on the one hand, for adhesion, and on the other hand for total or partial withdrawal. After a discussion of twelve days, two hundred and forty-seven members out of three hundred pronounced for a total withdrawal; and, some weeks later, this resolution was con­firmed by the king, who had then recovered in some degree from an attack of madness. The subjects of the crown were forbidden to obey Benedict, or to pay any of the ecclesiastical revenues to him. The king declared that capitular and monastic elections should be free from the control which popes had exercised over them, and he annulled the “expectative” presentations which Bene­dict had granted. But Benedict, on being informed of the resolutions of the council, declared that nothing should make him resign the dignity which God had been pleased to bestow on him.

On this, the marshal of France, Boucicault, was sent with a force to Avignon, where the citizens admitted him within their walls, while the cardinals with­drew across the Rhone to the French town of Villeneuve, leaving one of their number, whose tastes and habits were military, in command of Avignon. The pope was besieged in his palace, but on each side there was an unwillingness to proceed to extremities; the besiegers, although they tried to enter the papal fortress by various ways, refrained from attempting to take it by storm; and Benedict, in the hope of profiting by the intrigues of the parties which surrounded the throne of the unfortunate Charles VI, refrained from uttering the usual denunciations against the French.

The plans which had been arranged for bringing the influence of sovereigns to bear on the popes, and com­pelling them to resign, were foiled by the deposition of Richard of England in 1399, and by that of the volup­tuary Wenceslaus, who in the following year was set aside, as having shown himself unworthy of his office by alienation of the imperial territory and rights, by cruelty, misgovernment, ill behaviour towards the church, gross personal misconduct, and general neglect of his duties. The king of Aragon, on being requested by Benedict to assist him, had answered, “Does the pope think that, in order to keep up his tricks, I shall go to war with the king of France?”. But he exerted himself as a mediator, and through his influence a compromise was arranged after Avignon had been besieged for seven months. The pope, who had been reduced to great distress, was to be allowed to receive provisions into the palace, but a strict watch was kept lest he should escape with his treasures; and this state of partial imprisonment continued from April 1399 until March 1403, when Benedict, by the aid of a Norman gentleman, Robinet de Braquemont, escaped from Avignon, and made his way down the Rhone to Chateau Renaud. There he was under the protection of Lewis of Sicily and Provence, and his cardinals returned to their obedience.

 

A.D. 1398-1403. RUPERT, KING OF THE ROMANS.

 

Rupert, count palatine of the Rhine, had been chosen king of the Romans on the deposition of Wenceslaus; and Boniface, although he acted with caution, had given the electors reason to suppose that he would sanction the change. But Rupert, although personally far superior to Wenceslaus, found the force of circumstances too strong to admit of his asserting the rights of the empire with effect; for the princes of Germany, by weakening the power of the crown, had in reality caused the anarchy for which they now blamed the existing sovereign. On going into Italy, to which he had been urgently invited by the Florentines, he found that his citations were little heeded, while his authority was openly treated with contempt by John Galeazzo of Milan, who declared that he had received his duchy from a legitimate emperor, and would not give it up. Discouraged by such manifestations of the temper of the Italians, by a defeat in an encounter with Galeazzo near Brescia, and by the defection of some princes who had accompanied him across the Alps, Rupert returned to Germany without having advanced beyond Padua, and without having obtained even a promise of the imperial crown from the pope. Boni­face, however, soon after condescended to confirm the election; for, while his own position was in jeopardy, he continued to hold the lofty language of Hildebrand and of the Innocents. The death of John Galeazzo, who was carried off by a plague in September 1402, threw the north of Italy for a time into frightful anarchy; but although circumstances seemed to invite Rupert to a second Italian expedition, and Boniface granted him a tenth of the ecclesiastical income for the expenses of his coronation, the clergy refused to pay this impost, and the king felt himself compelled to remain at home.

In the meantime circumstances had favoured Benedict. The king’s brother, the duke of Orleans, espoused his cause, in the hope of being able to use the papal name as a counterpoise to the influence of his kinsmen, the dukes of Berri and Burgundy. The most eminent theologians—Peter d'Ailly, Nicolas of Clemanges (who had even become the pope’s secretary), and John Gerson—were on his side. The university of Toulouse, which had always been with Benedict, urged a return to his obedience. Even in the university of Paris, the French and Picard nations were for a return, while the Normans were against it and the Germans were neutral. It was urged that the withdrawal of obedience had been ineffectual, inasmuch as no one of the powers which acknowledged the rival pope had taken a like step; that Benedict had deserved well by accepting the scheme of abdication, while Boniface had rejected it. A national assembly resolved that France should return to the obedience of Benedict, and the king, who was enjoying an interval of reason, was brought forward to take part in the solemnity by which the return was celebrated. It was agreed that Benedict should resign in case of Boniface’s resignation, deposition, or death; that ecclesiastical appointments which had been made during the suspension of obedience should be ratified; and the pope promised that he would speedily call a general council, and that he would carry out the resolutions which it might decree. But he soon showed an inclination to evade these terms, and the royal authority was found necessary to enforce the article as to the confirmation of benefices.

In 1404 Benedict sent a mission to his rival with proposals for a conference. But Boniface refused to allow any equality of terms,—speaking of himself as sole pope, and of Benedict as an antipope; and, although the envoys had a safe conduct from the Romans, and even from Boniface himself, he required them to leave the city. “At least”, said they, provoked by this treat­ment, “our master is not a simoniac”; and it is said that the words affected the pope so strongly as to produce an illness which carried him off in three days. Thus had occurred one of the contingen­cies in which Benedict had pledged himself to resign; and the Roman cardinals asked his representatives whether they were furnished with authority for that purpose. The envoys could only reply that their commission did not reach so far; but they entreated that the cardinals would refrain from any fresh election. This request, how­ever, was treated as a jest, and the cardinals proceeded to choose Cosmato Migliorati, cardinal of Holy Cross, who took the name of Innocent VII. Every one of the electors had bound himself by oath that, if chosen, he would labour in all possible ways for the healing of the schism, and, if necessary, would even resign his office; but the value of such oaths had by this time come to be generally understood.

Innocent VII. was a native of the Neapolitan king­dom. He had been eminent as a canonist, had been employed by Urban VI as collector of the papal revenue in England, and had afterwards been promoted to the bishopric of Bologna. In himself he was a mild and unassuming old man, free from the pontifical vice of rapacity, an enemy to the pontifical practice of simony, and most especially desirous of a quiet and easy life. He attempted to begin a reform by making his secretaries dismiss their concubines; but the greed and the am­bition of his kinsmen were too strong for him, and abuses which Innocent had at first reprobated were afterwards adopted into his own practice. His short pontificate, while uneventful in other respects, was full of trouble for himself. The Romans attempted to recover the power which Boniface had wrested from them; the Colonnas renewed the turbulence by which their family had been marked under earlier pontificates; above all, Ladislaus of Naples played an equivocal and alarming part. To the scheming and perfidy of John Galeazzo Visconti, Ladislaus added the quality of personal courage; he was animated by an ambition which exceeded that of John Galeazzo, so as even to aspire to the imperial dignity; and, while affecting to protect the pope, there was reason to believe that, with a view to his own interest, he secretly incited the citizens of Rome to rebellion. In August 1405 Innocent was driven to Viterbo, chiefly in conse­quence of the act of his nephew, who had treacherously put to death eleven deputies of the Romans; and for a time John Colonna, who professed to be in the interest of Avignon, was master of Rome, being ironically styled John the Twenty-third. But after some months the Romans found it expedient to recall their pope, offering him all the power which had been enjoyed by Boniface. Innocent returned in March 1406. He denounced Ladislaus as a perjured traitor, declared him to be deprived of the kingdoms which he held under the Roman see, and proclaimed a crusade against the Colonnas. Ladislaus, in order to propitiate the pope, surrendered the castle of St. Angelo to him, and a treaty was concluded by which the king took an oath of fealty, and was appointed standard-bearer of the Roman church. But before this measure had produced any considerable effect, Innocent died on the 6th of November in the year of his return. It is said that he had intended to call a general council with a view to the reunion of the church, but that the troubles of his pontificate prevented the execution of this design.

The Roman cardinals, after some hesitation whether they should elect a successor, went through the form of choosing a pope under a promise that he would resign if the benefit of the church should require it, and that he would invite his rival of Avignon to join with him in this sacrifice of private interest to the cause of unity; and thus, says Leonard of Arezzo, the person to be elected was to regard himself rather as a proctor for resigning the papacy than as a pope. The election fell on Angelo Corario, cardinal of St. Mark and titular patriarch of Constantinople, who styled himself Gregory XII. Gregory was a man of seventy, greatly respected for piety, learn­ing, and prudence. It was he who had proposed the engagement by which the cardinals had bound themselves before the election; and it was believed that the straight­forward honesty which was supposed especially to mark his character would secure his zealous performance of the obligation. Theodoric of Niem, however, who held an office in his court, speaks of him as a dissembler, a wolf in sheep’s clothing;  and although this unfavourable representation may have been partly caused by some personal enmity, the writer’s statements have an appear­ance of truth which has won general belief for them. Gregory began by professing an intense desire for the reunion of the church. He renewed the oath by which he had bound himself to resign for the sake of this objects He wrote to urge the duty of cession on Bene­dict in terms which were entirely inoffensive, except that the Avignon pope’s right to the title was questioned in the superscription; and Benedict, adopting his rival’s style of address, offered in return to take his cardinals with him to a conference, and to resign if Gregory would do the like. Gregory professed himself to be like the true mother, who was ready to give up her child rather than suffer it to be divided; he declared that for the sake of re-establishing unity in the church he was willing to go to any place, however remote; that if ships were not to be had, he would put to sea in a little boat; that if he could find no horses, he would go on foot with a staff in his hand. It was only feared that he might not live long enough to carry his noble designs into effect. But even if these professions were sincere, Gregory was under influences which made it impossible for him to act on them. His nephews and other relations exerted themselves to prevent an abdication which would have destroyed their importance and their wealth while Ladislaus of Naples was resolved to oppose a reconciliation which was likely in any case to tell against him, and which, if it should be followed by the establishment of a French pope, would have involved the acknowledgment of a French pretender to the Neapolitan throne. Ladislaus, therefore, harassed Rome by a succession of attacks which—perhaps through an understanding with Gregory or with his nephews—were so timed and conducted as to afford pretexts for delaying the attempts at a recon­ciliation; he even got possession of the city in April 1408, and remained there until the end of June. Benedict, in answer to Gregory’s overtures, proposed a meeting, and after much negotiation, and many attempts at evasion on the part of the Roman pope, it was agreed that it should take place at Savona, on the Gulf of Genoa, between Michaelmas and All Saints’ Day 1407. The terms were arranged with elaborate precaution for the security of the parties, and Gregory at length set out as if for the purpose of fulfilling his engagement. But when he had reached Lucca, he professed to feel apprehensions and difficulties which must prevent his appearance at Savona; and Benedict, on being in­formed of this, endeavoured to gain for himself the repu­tation of greater sincerity by going on as far as Porto Venere, near Spezzia. As Benedict advanced, Gregory retreated. It was, says Leonard of Arezzo, as if one pope, like a land animal, refused to approach the shore, and the other, like an inhabitant of the sea, refused to leave the water. And Theodoric of Niem tells us that the project of a conference was generally compared to a tilting-match, in which it is under­stood that the champions are not to touch each other, but are merely to display themselves before the spectators. The scandal presented by the intrigues and insincerity of the two aged men, each of whom professed to claim the holiest office in Christendom, with the mysterious blessings and prerogatives attached to the see of St. Peter, excited general disgust, and it was com­monly believed that they had made a secret agreement to prolong the schism for their own benefit.

France had again become impatient of the pretexts under which a reconciliation was continually deferred. In July 1406, after a warm discussion in the parliament of Paris, a letter of the university of Toulouse in behalf of Benedict had been condemned as derogatory to the honour of the king; and it had been decreed that the original should be burnt at Toulouse, and copies on the bridge of Avignon, at Montpellier, and at Lyons. In November of the same year a great national assembly was held under the presidency of the titular patriarch of Alexandria. All agreed that a general council was necessary for the solution of the difficulties which had arisen, and after long and full discussions it resolved that obedience should be again withdrawn from Benedict, unless within a certain time he should come to an agreement with his rival. The publication of this resolution, however, was not to be immediate, but was to be determined by circumstances. The king soon after despatched an embassy to both popes, but neither Benedict nor Gregory could be persuaded to resign, and the agreement for the meeting at Savona had already been concluded between them.

About the time when the failure of that scheme became known, Benedict lost his most powerful friend, the duke of Orleans, who was as­sassinated in the streets of Paris through the contrivance of his cousin, John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. The irritation of the French soon after manifested itself in a declaration of renewed subtraction from Benedict and of neutrality between the claimants of the papacy; but although this was communicated to the two rivals, and although the king exerted himself to draw other sovereigns into the same policy, the document was not yet formally published. Benedict, perhaps encouraged by the dis­tresses which he saw gathering around his rival, replied in April 1408 by sending to Paris two bulls. The first of these, dated eleven months earlier, was intended to counteract the decisions of the French national council by excommunicating all persons, of whatever rank, who should take part against the pope, interdicting the territories of princes who should oppose him, and releasing their subjects from allegiance; thesecond bull, dated in April 1408, was conceived in a tone rather of complaint than of anger, but warned the king that by persistence in his unkindness towards Benedict he would incur the penalties of the earlier bull.

But the French were no longer disposed to endure such threats. At a great assembly of nobles, ecclesiastics, representatives of the university, and lawyers, John Courtecuisse, an eminent divine, made a discourse in which he charged Benedict with heresy and schism, with trifling and insincerity in negotiating with his rival, and with having shown himself an enemy of all Christendom by hindering the reunion of the church. The bull of excommunication was cut by the king’s secretary into two parts, of which one was given to the princes and councillors, and the other to the representatives of the university, and they were then torn into small pieces and burnt. The messengers who had conveyed the bulls were pilloried and imprisoned; the archbishop of Reims and other dignitaries, who were suspected of having been privy to the bull, were arrested. The neutrality of France was now proclaimed, and the pope was publicly denounced as guilty of heresy and schism. Orders were sent to Marshal Boucicault, governor of Genoa (which was then subject to the French crown), that Peter de Luna should be made prisoner until he should conclude a real peace with his rival; but Benedict took the alarm, and, after having issued declara­tions against the conduct of the French king and others, he made his escape by sea from Porto Venere and took up his abode at Perpignan.

In the meantime Gregory had begun to distrust his own cardinals, who urged him to resign. Fearing lest they should take some steps against him, he forbade them to leave Lucca; and, in disregard of the engage­ments by which he had bound himself both at his election and in correspondence with his rival, as well as of the remonstrances which were addressed to him by the car­dinals and by many bishops, he announced an intention of creating four new cardinals, of whom two were his own nephews. By this step the older cardinals were roused to action. They refused to acknowledge those who had been obtruded on them, and, in defiance of Gregory’s command, all but three, who were detained by sickness, removed from Lucca to Pisa, where they sent forth protests against the pope’s late proceedings.

The cardinals who had been attached to Benedict now repaired to Leghorn, where they were met by those of Gregory’s party, and the two sections joined in issuing a summons for a council to meet at Pisa in March of the following year. In this course they were supported by the universities of Florence and Bologna, as well as by that of Paris. They an­nounced their intentions to both popes, inviting them to appear and to resign their pretensions, agreeably to the engagements which they had made at election; otherwise, it was added, the council would take its own course. Gregory replied by declaring the cardinals to be degraded and excommunicate; he professed to make a new pro­motion to the college, and announced an intention of holding a council of his own. But for this purpose it was not easy to find a place. The authorities of his native state, Venice, to whom he applied, advised him rather to send representatives to Pisa; and various towns —even Ephesus, which was then for a time in Christian hands—were proposed. At length, when the council of Pisa was far advanced, the Venetians allowed Gregory’s council to be held at Cividale, in Friuli; but it was ineffectual for any other purpose than that of showing his impotence.

Benedict also summoned a council, which met at Perpignan in November 1408, and was attended by a considerable number of prelates, among whom four had been decorated by him with the empty title of patriarch. But this assembly, instead of seconding his wishes, almost unanimously advised him to resign, and Benedict soon found himself deserted by all but a few of his partisans, who themselves urged him to abdicate or to send re­presentatives to the council which had been summoned by the cardinals. His indignation vented itself in furious threats against those who had thwarted him, and in declaring them all, from the cardinals downwards, to be deprived of their dignities and excommunicated.

The emperor Rupert had promised to Boniface IX that he would accept no other solution of the question by which the church was divided than the suppression of the papacy of Avignon; and Gregory had conciliated him by declaring that, while the right of summoning general councils belonged to the pope, the emperor, as general advocate of the church, was more entitled to take such a part than the cardinals. At a great assembly, which was held at Frankfort in January 1409, a cardinal appeared on behalf of the Pisan cardinals, and cardinal Antony Corario, Gregory’s nephew, as representative of his uncle. Rupert, whose leaning to the interest of Gregory was manifest, agreed to send representatives to Pisa, but declared that he would not forsake the pope unless convinced that Gregory had forfeited his support by misconduct. But in this feeling the majority of the assembly did not concur.

The obstinacy with which the rival popes clung to their pretensions, the manifest insincerity of their professions as to a desire for unity, the charges with which they mutually blackened each other, produced an increasing effect on the minds of men; and, as the hope of their voluntary resignation vanished, the idea of a general council as an expedient for healing the schism gained ground. Among those who, after having favoured the scheme of resignation, adopted that of referring the matter to a council, the most eminent for abilities, repu­tation, and activity was John Charlier, whose surname is usually superseded by the name of his native place, Gerson, a village near Rethel, in Champagne. Gerson, born in 1363, had studied under Peter d'Ailly and Giles Deschamps, and in 1395 had succeeded his old master d'Ailly as chancellor of Paris and professor in the uni­versity. The opinions which he had now formed as to the manner of ending the schism were expressed in various writings, especially in a tract “Of the Unity of the Church”, and in one “De Auferibilitate Papae”. He believed the authority of the church to reside in the whole catholic body, and in a general council as its representative. He supposed that, although the power of convoking general councils had in later times been exercised by the popes alone, the church might resume it in certain circumstances; that this might be properly done in the case of a division between rival popes; and that in such a case a council might be summoned, not only by the cardinals, but by faithful laymen. He held that, in case of necessity, the church could subsist for a time without a visible head; he greatly mitigated the pretensions which had been set up in behalf of the papacy; and, on the whole, he expressed far more distinctly than any one who had written since the appearance of the false decretals, that theory of the church to which the name of Gallican has been given in later times. Yet Gerson had been unable to take part with the university in its extreme pro­ceedings, and had incurred obloquy by the moderation of his counsels at the national assembly of 1406. And, although his influence was strongly felt in the Pisan council, he himself was not present at it.

The council of Pisa met on the 25th of March 1409, in the cathedral of that city, which three years before had been sold by its doge to its old rivals and enemies, the Florentines. Among those who took part in it (although many of them did not arrive until later) were twenty-two cardinals and four titular patriarchs, with archbishops, bishops, abbots (including the heads of the chief religious orders), envoys of many sovereign princes, proctors for cathedral chapters, and a host of masters and doctors who represented the new and powerful in­fluence of the universities. Henry IV of England, who had laboured for the extinction of the schism, and had practically enforced his counsels by detaining the pope’s revenues from England until a reconciliation should be effected, had taken order for the representation of his kingdom; and at the head of the English members was Robert Hallam, bishop of Salisbury. As the cardinals, in their need of support, were desirous to avoid the risk of provoking jealousies between various classes, it was arranged that all the members should sit together as one house, and that there should be no distinction as to the privilege of voting. Guy de Maillesec, bishop of Pales­trina, presided as senior cardinal.

At the opening of the council a sermon was preached by Peter Philargi, cardinal of the Twelve Apostles and archbishop of Milan, who lamented the distractions of the church, and exhorted his hearers to take measures for the restoration of unity. At the first session it was asked by proclamation at the doors of the cathedral whether Angelo Corario or Peter de Luna were present, either in person or by proxy; and as the question, after having been repeated at the second and third sessions, received no answer, the council, in its third and fourth sessions, pronounced both the rivals to be contumacious.

The emperor Rupert, although favourable to the in­terest of Gregory, had sent the archbishop of Riga, the bishops of Worms and Verden, and others, as his ambassadors. At the fourth session, the bishop of Verden brought forward twenty-three objections to the course of proceedings; and it was pro­posed, in the emperor’s name, that the council should be adjourned to some other place, where Gregory might be able to attend. But this proposal, which was evidently intended to break up the assembly, found no favour; and at a later session the German objections were powerfully exposed by Peter de Ancorano, an eminent doctor of Bologna. Meanwhile Rupert’s ambassadors, finding the tone of the council un­promising for their master’s policy, had withdrawn, after having made an appeal to a future general council, main­taining that Gregory was the only legitimate pope; and, as Wenceslaus acknowledged the council, he obtained its recognition in return, although his want of energy allowed this advantage to remain unimproved as an aid towards recovering the imperial dignity. At the fifth session thirty-eight charges were brought forward against the rival claimants of the papacy, and at the tenth session a commission which had heard evi­dence in support of these charges made its report. The opinions of the universities of Paris, Angers, Orleans, Toulouse, Bologna, and Florence were alleged in favour of the proposed course, and at the fifteenth session it was declared that both were guilty, as notorious schismatics, obstinate and incorrigible heretics, perjurers, and vow-breakers; that by these and other offences they had scandalized the whole church, and had rendered themselves unworthy of any dignity. The sentence of the council, which was solemnly pronounced by the titular patriarch of Alexandria, while his brethren of Antioch and Jerusalem stood on each side of him, condemned both Benedict and Gregory to be de­posed and cut off from the church; the sentences uttered by them were declared to be null, their nominations of cardinals since the spring of the preceding year, when they had ceased to labour for union by means of cession, to be invalid; and it was added that, if either of them should despise this sentence, he and his partisans should be coerced by the secular power. Thus, although the cardinals, who summoned the council, could not have entered on the investigation of the schism without ex­posing themselves to fatal questions,—inasmuch as every member of the college had either shared in the election of one or other of the rivals, or owed his appointment to one or other of them,—the council itself assumed the right to decide the matter, in absolute disregard of the pretension which had been maintained for centuries, that the pope could not be judged by man except in the case of manifest heresy.

At the eighteenth session some envoys of the king of Aragon appeared, and one of them, on speaking of Benedict as pope, was assailed with hisses and mockery. The council, however, out of respect for the king’s intercession, agreed to give an audience to certain representatives of Peter de Luna; but on the entrance of these, an outcry was raised against them “as if they had been Jews”; and when one of them, the archbishop of Tarragona, gave the title of pope to Benedict, there was a general outburst of derision, with cries that the speaker was the envoy of a heretic and schismatic. The archbishop was silenced, and, with his companions, immediately left Pisa.

It had become evident to all discerning men that the extinction of the schism would be no sufficient cure for the prevailing evils, unless accompanied by a reform of the church, “both in head and in members”. With a view to this, each of the cardinals, before proceeding to the election of a pope, pledged himself that, if he should be chosen, he would continue the council until a “due, reasonable, and sufficient reformation” should be effected; and it was agreed that, if the election should fall on any one who was not then present, a like pledge should be required of him. On the 15th of June, twenty-two cardinals entered the conclave, and, after eleven days of deliberation, they announced that their choice had fallen on the cardinal-archbishop of Milan, who, as we have seen, had preached at the opening of the council. Peter Philargi was a native of Candia, and had never known his parents or any other relation. When begging his bread in childhood, he attracted the notice of a Franciscan friar, and, in conse­quence of this patron's kindness, he became a member of the same order. He had studied at Paris and at Oxford, and was much esteemed for his theological learning. As pope, he took the name of Alexander V.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

WYCLIF.

 

 

We have seen that, ever since the submission of John of England to Innocent III, a spirit of disaffection towards the papacy had been growing in the minds of the English people, who held themselves degraded by their sovereign’s humiliation; that the popes throughout the thirteenth century had unwisely provoked this spirit by their exor­bitant claims on the English church, and by their shame­less interference with the disposal of English preferment; and that, although the feeble Henry III was afraid to place himself at the head of the nation as the representa­tive of its feelings towards the papacy, the strong will and hand of Edward I were exerted in opposition to the Roman usurpations. Under Edward II the crown of England again became weak; but the antipapal spirit continued to increase among the people, and was swollen by the circumstance that the popes at this time took up their residence at Avignon, and became subservient to the interest of France. While the college of cardinals was full of Frenchmen, Edward II was unable to obtain, by repeated entreaties, that a single Englishman might be promoted to it, even although a vacancy had been made through the death of an English cardinal. It was found that, in the great war which arose out of the pre tensions of Edward III to the French crown, the popes, while affecting neutrality, were always favourable to the opposite side. Edward, able, vigorous, and successful in war, was not disposed to imitate the submissiveness of his feeble and unfortunate father; and the growing power of the commons in the legislature was strongly adverse to the assumptions of the papal court.

Even the privileges of the English clergy were now becoming less than before. The representation of their grievances presented to Edward II in 1316, and known by the title of Articuli Cleri, shows a great practical abatement of the system which Becket had endeavoured to establish; and the answer which was made in the king’s name, while it admitted some points, refused to concede others, and treated some of the alleged griev­ances as imaginary. The immunity of the clergy from secular authority, for which Becket had contended, was greatly infringed. When Adam of Orleton, bishop of Hereford, was brought before his peers in parliament, on account of his share in the politi­cal intrigues which had resulted in the deposition and murder of Edward II, he was carried off, without having pleaded, by the archbishops of Canterbury, York, and Dublin, as if his clerical privilege exempted him from the jurisdiction of the house. But Edward III, instead of relinquishing the proceedings against the bishop, or transferring them to an ecclesiastical tribunal, caused him to be tried by a common jury of the county in which his see was situated, and, on his conviction, confiscated his property. When Stratford, archbishop of Canter­bury, was embroiled with the same king, the ground on which he rested was not that of the clerical immunities, but his privilege as a lord of parliament—a circumstance significant of the change which had taken place in the minds of men. When Simon Langham, archbishop of Canterbury, had been created a cardinal by Urban V, without having previously consulted the king, Edward seized the temporalities of the see, and Langham submitted to spend the rest of his days in exile, without venturing to remonstrate in the tone of Becket, or, like him, securing for himself the sympathy of all Latin Christendom.And in the civil distractions which marked the end of the fourteenth century in England, the treatment of great prelates was yet more regardless of the pretension to exemption from secular judgment. Even the claim of freedom from taxes had been prac­tically decided against the clergy by Edward I, in de­claring them to be out of the protection of the law; and all that they retained of privilege in this respect was the right of assessing their own order in convocation.

Collisions frequently took place between the papacy and the English crown. The popes took it on themselves to nominate bishops, in disregard alike of the right of chapters to elect, and of that of the sovereign to permit and to confirm the election: and in conferring the spiritual character on new bishops, they omitted to request, as had formerly been customary, that the sove­reign would invest them in their temporalities. But in order to meet this, the kings compelled the bishops to renounce by oath all things in the papal letters which might be contrary to the rights of the crown, and to acknowledge that the temporalities were held of the sove­reign alone. And this system of imposing contradictory obligations continued to later times.

The attempts to burden the benefices of the English church with foreigners, who were unacquainted with the language, who were wanting in qualities suitable for their office, and probably never set foot in the country,—who, perhaps, might also be in the interest of France and opposed to that of England,—such attempts, in proportion  as they became more impudent, were more strongly resented. Thus, when Clement VI took it on himself to provide for two car­dinals by English benefices to the value of 2,000 marks a-year, his agents were ordered to leave the kingdom; and he was sternly warned against attempting by his own authority to assume the patronage of bishoprics, or to bestow patronage on any who would not reside on their preferments. The encroachments and abuses of the papal court were now met by the legislature with the statutes of provisors and praemunire, which enacted heavy penalties against receiving presentations from the pope, and against appealing from the king’s court to any foreign tribunal.

Among the causes of offence during this time, the mendicant orders were conspicuous for their assumptions and their rapacity. They attempted, by acting as confessors and otherwise, to engross all spiritual power, to the preju­dice of the secular clergy; to divert to themselves the income which the seculars were entitled to expect from the administration of penance and other sacraments. They attempted to get into their own hands all the teaching of the universities, where they enticed young men of promise to enter their ranks, even in defiance of the will of parents; and it is said that, in consequence of this, the number of students at Oxford was reduced from 30,000 to 6,000, as men chose that their sons should become tillers of the ground rather than that they should be thus carried off by the friars. By these and other practices, the mendicants raised up determined enemies, of whom the most noted was Richard Fitzralph, an eminent teacher of Oxford, and afterwards archbishop of Armagh. Fitz­ralph inveighed against the prominent faults of the friars—their pride, their greed, their notorious disregard of their rules, their usurpations on the parochial clergy. He tells them that all the privileges which they laboured to acquire for themselves were such as were attended with temporal gain; that they showed no eagerness for those unpaid duties in which they might have usefully assisted. Fitzralph carried his complaints against the mendicants to Avignon ; but he was strongly opposed by the interest which their money acquired for them in the papal court, where the funds supplied by the English clergy for the support of his cause were soon exhausted; and while the question was yet undecided, he died there in 1361.

In many respects, therefore, the practical grievances of the Roman system had provoked the angry discontent of the English people; and by this feeling the minds of many had been prepared to welcome an attack on the doctrine of the church, as well as on its administration. The opposition to the doctrines of the church of Rome, how­ever formidable it had been in some instances, had never yet been of such a kind as to be fitted for attracting general sympathy. Sometimes it had been carried on by enthusiasts, who were evidently weak or disordered in judgment; sometimes by men whose opinions were so utterly remote from the traditional system, that they could have little chance of acceptance with those who had been trained in it; nor had any one of the sects which arose during the middle ages been able to gain a footing in England. A reformer of a new and more dangerous kind was now to arise—a man who, before appearing in that character, had gained a high reputation in literature and philosophy; one who was fitted either to address him­self to the learned, or to adapt his teaching, in language and in style of argument, to the understanding of the common people; a reformer whose opinions were not, indeed, free from extravagances, but yet were professedly grounded on Scripture, and appealed from the prevailing corruptions to the standard of an older time.

The earlier part of John Wyclif’s life is involved in much obscurity; and such discoveries as have lately been made respecting it have resulted rather in disencum­bering the story of errors which had long prevailed than in the establishment of any new truths. His birthplace was probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of Richmond, in Yorkshire : the year usually given for his birth, 1324, is perhaps somewhat later than the true date. He studied in the university of Oxford; but the statements that he was educated at Queen’s college, and that he took a prominent share in Fitzralph’s controversy with the mendicants, are not warranted by any sufficient evi­dence.®The first certain notice of him belongs to the year 1361, when he appears as master or warden of Balliol college; and this preferment he exchanged in the same year for the parish of Fillingham, near Lincoln, to which he was presented by his college. It would seem, however, that with the bishop’s permission he continued to reside for the most part at Oxford. The statements which were long received as to the offices and benefices held by Wyclif are very perplexing, especially as they seem to show a glaring contradiction between his own practice and the opinions which he professed as to the possessions of the clergy. But it now appears that the reformer has been confounded with another person of the same name, or one nearly resembling it,—and that to this other John Wyclif or Whytecliff are perhaps to be referred the fellow­ship of Merton college, the living of Mayfield, and the mastership of Canterbury Hall—to the loss of which last preferment, by a papal sentence in 1370, Wycli’s entrance on the career of a reformer has often been ascribed by his enemies. By others among those who have wished to charge him with interested motives, it has been supposed that his zeal was awakened by disappointment as to a bishopric in the year 1364; but his earliest appearance as a reformer has been more truly referred to the time when he became a doctor in divinity, and in right of this degree began to read lectures in the university. He was already eminent as a philosophical and scientific teacher, and, having adopted the theory of Realism (which had for a time been discountenanced by the authority of Ockham and other popular masters), he had produced a treatise “On the Reality of Universals”, which was regarded as marking an epoch in the history of opinion. If a book entitled “The Last Age of the Church” were really Wyclif’s, it would prove that he was at one time affected by the ideas of abbot Joachim and the fraticelli. But it seems to be certain that this was never the case; and the tract in question is clearly the work of a Franciscan.

In 1366 Urban V demanded from England thirty-three years’ arrears of the tribute which king John had bound himself to pay to the Roman see. At a former time, John XXII had obtained from Edward II a similar payment of arrears as a condition of his favour in the conflict with Robert Bruce; and throughout the earlier years of Edward III’s reign the money had been regularly paid. But during the costly war with France it had again fallen into neglect; and when in 1357 a claim was made by Innocent VI, the king answered by declaring himself resolved to hold his kingdom in freedom and independence. On the renewal of the claim nine years later, the parliament, headed by the bishops (who gave their opinion before the lay peers), resolved that king John had had no right to bind his people or future generations to such subjection. Wyclif, who was already one of the king’s chaplains, appears to have been consulted by the government on this question; and in answer to a challenge by a doctor who belonged to some monastic order, he defended in a determination at Oxford the course which had been taken in answer to the Roman claim.

The employment of ecclesiastics in secular offices was denounced by Wyclif as an abuse; and of this system the most conspicuous representative was William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, a man whose dignities had been won by his own talents, and whose name is honourably preserved to this day by the great foundations on which his wealth was munificently spent. Against him, therefore, the efforts of a party in the state were chiefly directed. While Edward III, towards the close of his long and glorious reign, had fallen under the domination of a worthless woman, and his son Edward, the favourite hero of the nation, was sinking under long disease, the king’s next surviving son, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, headed the party of the old feudal aristocracy. Lancaster was a man of corrupt life, of selfish ambition, closely allied with Wyclif’s enemies, the mendicant friars, and bent on humiliating the clergy, whereas Wyclif’s object was to purify them. Yet the two co-operated towards what was nominally a common object, and, with the aid of the commons, Wykeham was in 1371 driven from office and impeached, while other ecclesiastics were also deprived of their secular employ­ments, and the bishop was not summoned to the next parliament.

In July 1374 Wyclif was sent to Bruges, with the bishop of Bangor and others, for the purpose of conferring with some envoys of the Roman court on certain points as to the relations of the English church and the papacy, while the duke of Lancaster and other representatives of England were engaged in political negotiations at the same place with French princes, bishops, and nobles, and with prelates appointed by the pope to mediate between the two nations. The English commissioners complained of the levying of exactions unparalleled in any other country, of the reservations of benefices, and of the pope’s interference with the election of bishops; while on the other side it was urged that papal bulls were not received in England as in other kingdoms, and that the represen­tatives of the pope were not freely admitted. After much discussion, a compromise was agreed on, of which the chief articles were, that the pope should give up his claim to reservations, and that the king should no longer confer benefices by the writ of Quare impedit. In this arrangement the statute of pro­visors was over-ridden by the royal prerogative. Nothing was, however, concluded as to the important subject of elections; and in the following year we already find a renewal of the complaints as to the encroachments of the Roman court in the matter of reservations. The “good parliament”, as it was called, of that year, while it took up the cause of William of Wykeham and his fellows, and procured their restoration to the royal council, showed itself resolutely hostile to the corruptions of the Roman administration. It was said that the money drawn by the pope from England was five times as much as the taxes paid to the crown; and a formidable list of English preferments held by cardinals and other members of the papal court was exhibited. Such representations were frequent; the statute of provisors was twice re-enacted, and each time with increased severity; but the popes continued to violate these statutes, and to carry on the usurpations by which the mind of the English nation had been so long provoked.

In the end of the year 1375 Wyclif was presented by the crown, in right of a patron who was under age, to the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire—a parish which was his home throughout the remainder of his life, though his residence there was varied by frequent visits to Oxford. The experience which he had gained at Bruges had probably made him more fully acquainted than before with the faults of the Roman system. He had satisfied himself that the pretensions of the papacy had no sufficient foundation; and this conviction he published indefatigably, in learned lectures and disputations, in sermons, and in tracts which for the first time set before the humbler and less educated classes, in strong and clear English prose, the results of inquiry and thought in opposition to the existing state of the church. He denounced the pope as “anti-Christ, the proud worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and purse-carvers.” He inveighed against the pride, the pomp, the luxury of prelates, against their enmity to the power of sovereigns, against the claims of the clergy to immunity from secular jurisdiction, their ignorance, their neglect of preaching, the abuse of the privilege of sanctuary to shelter notorious criminals. He held the temporal lords were entitled to resume such endowments of the church as were abused ; and that it was for the temporal lords to judge of the abuse as well as to execute the sentence, and probably also to benefit by the forfeiture.

It was natural that such opinions should give great offence to those who were attacked, especially as the political connexion of Wyclif with the duke of Lancaster invested them with a more alarming character. Wyclif was summoned to appear before the primate and the bishop of London in St. Paul’s church on the 23rd of February 1377; and the character of the prosecution is shown by the fact that, although errors of doctrine had already been laid to his charge, those which were now brought forward related entirely to political and social questions. The reformer had with him two powerful supporters, the duke of Lancaster and Lord Percy, earl marshal, and the scene was one of great violence. In­stead of the proposed inquiry, there was an exchange of reproachful words between Wyclif’s friends and the bishop of London—William Courtenay, a son of the earl of Devon—while Wyclif himself appears to have been silent throughout, as if ashamed of the unruly conduct of his protectors. Lancaster threatened to bring down the pride not only of Courtenay, but of all the prelacy of England : he charged him with relying on the power of his family, but told him that, instead of being able to help him, they would “have enough to do to defend them­selves”; and when the bishop replied with dignity that he trusted not in his kinsfolk, nor in any man else, but in God alone, the duke, unable to find an answer, declared that he would rather drag him out of the church by the hair than endure this at his hand. The Londoners who were present, furious at this insult to their bishop and to the privileges of their city, broke out into tumult, and it was with difficulty that Wyclif and his friends escaped. It happened that on the same day a proposal was made in parliament to transfer the government of the city from the lord mayor to a commission of which Percy was to be the head, and the report of this increased the exaspe­ration of the mob, who next day attacked and plundered Lancaster’s palace of the Savoy, barbarously murdered an ecclesiastic who was mistaken for the earl marshal, and might have committed further outrages but for the interposition of the bishop of London, who hastened to the scene of the tumult and succeeded in appeasing it.

Before the meeting at St. Paul’s, nineteen articles of accusation against Wyclif had been submitted to Gregory XI, and in the end of May 1377 the pope addressed bulls to the king, to the archbishop of Can­terbury and the bishop of London, and to the university of Oxford, reproving the ecclesiastical and academical authorities for their supineness, and requiring an investigation of the case. Wyclif was said to have revived the errors of Marsilius and of John of Jandun—to have maintained doctrines subversive of ecclesiastical and civil government—to have denied the force of papal commands and the power of the keys—to have asserted that excommunication is a nullity, unless a man be ex­communicated by himself—that the endowments of the church may be taken away if abused, and that the clergy, including even the pope himself, may be accused and corrected by the laity. In the letter addressed to Oxford it was ordered that such teaching should be sup­pressed in the university, and that the chancellor should arrest Wyclif and bring him before the primate and the bishop of London. But before these documents could reach England an important change took place through the death of Edward III, who was succeeded by his grandson Richard, then only eleven years old.

The university authorities of Oxford, jealous of its in­dependence, showed no eagerness to carry out the papal commands; but the archbishop and the bishop of London required the chancellor to present Wyclif before them for trial. In the meantime a new parliament made strong representations against the encroachments of the papacy, and consulted certain authorities on the question whether the king were not entitled to prevent the exportation of treasure from the realm, although the pope might have required it to be sent to him. To this Wyclif, always a partisan of the crown as against the claims of the papacy, answered that for the defence of the country such a seizure would be warranted by the law of Christ, even although the pope’s requisition should be made on the ground of the obe­dience due to him, and should be enforced by the penalty of his censures.

By the death of Edward the duke of Lancaster's in­fluence was lessened, and the clergy felt themselves stronger than before. In December Wyclif was cited to appear again at St. Paul’s within thirty days; but the place of hearing was changed to the archbishop’s chapel at Lambeth, where, early in the following year, Wyclif was required to answer to the nineteen articles charged against him. But immediately after the proceedings had been opened, a message was received from the young king’s mother, desiring that the bishops would carry the inquiry no further; and while the latter were deliberating whether this order should be obeyed, a mob of Londoners, now favourable to Wyclif, as from special circumstances they had lately been opposed to him, broke into the chapel and compelled them to withdraw.

Wyclif had already replied to the charges against himin three tracts, of which one would seem to have been intended for the clergy and for academic readers, while another was laid before parliament, and the third is a vehement attack on some opponent, whom he styles a “medley divine”. The obscurity and over-subtlety which have been imputed to these papers arise in part from the scholastic method of argument. Wyclif en­deavours to explain and to justify, on grounds of scripture and of canon-law, such of the questioned opinions as he admits to be really held by him, and to obviate the misconceptions which his language might be too likely to produce. He speaks of himself as a sincere son of the church, and as willing to retract wherever he can be convinced that he is wrong—a profession which, as it is often repeated by other reformers of the period, may be presumed to have been in their minds something more than a nugatory truism. Wyclif was not further cen­sured at this time than by being warned to avoid the danger of misleading the ignorant; and he thought him­self at liberty to put forth ten new propositions, which were chiefly directed against the interference of spiritual persons with secular power and possessions.

The death of Gregory XI put an end to the commission under which the late proceedings had taken place; but the great schism which followed, while it was favourable to Wyclif by supplying him with fresh arguments against the papacy, and by weakening the power of the clergy everywhere, yet told against him by removing so much of the cause for the anti-papal feeling of the English as had arisen from the connexion of the late popes with France; for England, as we have seen, acknowledged the Roman line of popes, and disowned that of Avignon. Wyclif himself had at first hailed the election of Urban VI as a reforming pope; but he found his hopes disappointed, and, after some observation of the schism, he declared that the church would be in a better condition if both the rival popes were removed or deposed, forasmuch as their lives appeared to show that they had nothing to do with the church of God.

In his preaching at Oxford and elsewhere, Wyclif vehemently attacked the mendicant orders, which he declared to be the great evil of Christendom. He charged them with fifty errors of doctrine and practice. He denounced them for intercepting the alms which ought to belong to the poor; for their unscrupulous system of proselytizing; for their invasion of parochial rights; their habit of deluding the common people by fables and legends; their hypocritical pretensions to sanctity; their flattery of the great and wealthy, whom it would rather have been their duty to reprove for their sins; their grasping at money by all sorts of means; the needless splendour of their buildings, whereas parish-churches were left to neglect and decay.             

That these complaints were well grounded there can be no doubt; but it must be remembered that the faults which Wyclif rioted were for the most part deviations from the intentions of those by whom the orders had been founded. Indeed, Wyclif himself had much in common with those founders. He held that tithes and other endowments were in their nature eleemosynary; that the clergy ought to receive only so much as might be necessary for their support; he insisted on the idea of apostolic poverty which had been advocated by Arnold of Brescia and by many sectaries—not considering that the effect of reducing all clerical income to that which is merely necessary will not be a removal of all secular temptations to enter into the ministry of the church, but will leave such temptations as can attract only an inferior class of men. In his earlier days he had distinguished the mendicants favourably from the other monastic orders; and it was probably not until their faults had been brought home to him by special circumstances that he entered on a declared opposition to them. In order to counteract the efforts of the friars and to spread his own opinions, he instituted a brotherhood of his own, under the name of “poor priests”, who were to go about the country barefooted, roughly clad in russet frocks,penetrating, as the mendicants had done, to the humblest classes of the people, and giving such elementary re­ligious instruction as they could. These simple teachers were employed under episcopal authority throughout the vast diocese of Lincoln, and perhaps elsewhere; but they appear to have been suppressed in a later stage of Wyclif’s career. Wyclif refused to admit the monastic preten­sions in favour of a life of contemplation and prayer; he regarded the idea of such a life as selfish, and held that the clergy ought rather to labour in preaching, as being a work beneficial to others.

In 1379 Wyclif, while residing at Oxford, had a dangerous illness, in which it is said that four doctors, belonging to the mendicant orders, visited him with the design of bringing him to express contrition and to retract his sayings against their brethren; but that he astonished and scared them away by declaring, in scrip­tural phrase, “I shall not die, but live and declare the evil deeds of the friars” : and he was able to keep his word.

He now entered on a new and important portion of his work—the translation of the Holy Scriptures ’into the vernacular tongue. In the prologue to the version by his follower John Purvey, the vene­rable examples of Bede and king Alfred are cited in favour of such translations; but whatever means of attaining a knowledge of Scripture through their native tongue may have been open to the English in earlier ages, they had for centuries been without such aids, and in the meantime the reading of Scripture had been for­bidden, as being dangerous to the unlearned. Of late, however, renewed attempts had been made to exhibit the sacred writings in an English form. About the beginning of Edward III’s reign, William of Shoreham, vicar of Chart Sutton in Kent, rendered the Psalter into English prose; and he was soon after followed by Richard Rolle, “the hermit of Hampole”, who not only translated the text of the Psalms, but added an English commentary. But no other book of Scripture appears to have been rendered into our language for centuries before the time when Wyclif undertook a version of the whole. How much of the gigantic labour was done by his own hands it is impossible to determine; but to him we must refer at least the general merit of the design and the superintendence of the entire work.

The effect of thus bringing home the word of God to the unlearned people is shown by the indignation of a contemporary writer, who denounces Wyclif as having made the gospel “common, and more open to laymen and to women who can read than it is wont to be to clerks well learned and of good understanding; so that the pearl of the gospel is scattered and is trodden under foot of swine”; and he applies, as if prophetical of Wyclif’s labours, some passages in which William of St. Amour had denounced the “everlasting gospel” of an earlier party. It is said that the bishops attempted in 1390 to get the version condemned by parliament, lest it should become an occasion of heresies; but John of Gaunt “with a great oath” declared that the English would not submit to the degradation of being denied a vernacular Bible, while other nations were allowed to enjoy it; and other nobles added that, if there were danger of heresy from having the Scriptures in English, there had been more heresies among the Latins than among the people of any other language. The attempt at prohibition, therefore, failed, and the English Bible spread far and wide, being diffused chiefly through the exertions of the “poor priests,” whom Wyclif employed to publish his doctrines about the country, and furnished with portions of his translation as the text which they were to expound, and the foundation on which they were to rest their preaching.

Soon after having engaged in the translation, Wyclif, who had thus far shown himself as a reformer only in matters relating to ecclesiastical and civil government, and as to the powers of the clergy, or as a maintainer of philosophical opinions which differed from those generally accepted, went on to assail the doc­trine of the church in the matter of the Eucharist, by putting forth certain propositions, which he offered to maintain in public disputation. This, however, the authorities of Oxford would not allow; the chancellor, William Berthon, with some doctors, condemned Wyclif’s opinions, whereupon he appealed to the king—an act which naturally excited the anger of the clergy, as being an attack on the church’s right of judgment. His old patron the duke of Lancaster, who took no interest in such ques­tions, charged him to refrain from teaching his doctrine as to the Eucharist, but Wyclif, instead of obeying this order, put forth a “confession” in which he asserted and defended his opinion. He maintained that the sacra­ment of the altar was not a mere sign, but was at once figure and truth; that all teachers since the year 1,000 had erred, with the sole exception of Berengar,—the devil having been let loose, and having had power over the “master of the Sentences” and others. He distinguished various modes of being, and said that the body of Christ was in the consecrated host virtually, spiritually, and sacramentally, but that it was not substantially, corporally, or dimensionally, elsewhere than in heaven; that, as St. John the Baptist, on becoming the Elias, did not cease to be John—as one who is changed into a pope still remains the same man as before—so it was with the bread and wine of the sacrament. And he severely reprobated the holders of the current doctrine as being “followers of signs and worshippers of accidents”. It was, he said, beyond the reach even of almighty power to cause the existence of accidents without any subject. Thus an important addition was made to the subjects of controversy between Wyclif and the ruling party in the church; and in order to set forth his views in a popular form, he produced a treatise which is known as his “Wicket”.

In the same year took place the rising of the peasantry under Wat Tyler—a movement similar to those which somewhat earlier had been designated in France by the name of Jacquerie. It was the policy of Wyclif’s enemies to connect him with this insurrection, by repre­senting it as the effect of his teaching;and one of the leaders, a priest named John Ball, declared in his con­fession that he had been two years a follower of Wyclif, whom he described as the chief author of the revolt. But, in truth, this connexion was imaginary. The fury of Tyler’s followers was especially directed, not against the clergy (as would have been the case if the impulse had been derived from Wyclif), but against persons in secular authority and administrative office, against lawyers, gen­tlemen, and men of wealth, especially those who had become rich by commerce. It was not on account of his spiritual office, but as chancellor of the kingdom, that archbishop Simon of Sudbury was beheaded on Tower Hill. Ball, instead of having learnt his principles from Wyclif, had, for twenty years before this outbreak, been notorious as a preacher of communism and revolution; he had been censured by three successive primates, and at length, for his irregularities, had been committed to the archbishop’s prison at Maidstone, from which he was released by the rioters. Another priest, who, under the name of Jack Straw, was prominent as a leader, held opinions akin to those of the fraticelli. There were no demonstrations against the popular superstitions of the time; the insurgents were in alliance with Wyclif’s enemies, the friars, and were furious against his patron the duke of Lancaster, whose palace of the Savoy underwent a second spoliation and serious damage at their hands. In the suppression of this rebellion, a conspicuous part was borne by Henry Spenser, bishop of Norwich, who had obtained his see as a reward for military services rendered to Urban V in Italy. He took the field in armour, delivered Peterborough from the insur­gents, contributed to discomfit them in the neighbouring counties, and, when peace had been restored, made over the local ringleaders to execution, after having, in his episcopal character, administered to them the last conso­lations of religion.

For Wyclif the result of the insurrection was unfavour­able, as the place of the murdered primate was filled by his old enemy Courtenay, who was not likely to distinguish in his favour between political and doctrinal innovations. Immediately after having received his pall, the new archbishop brought the question of Wyclif’s opinions before a council of bishops, and other ecclesiastics (mostly belonging to the mendicant orders), with some lawyers, which met at the Dominican convent in Holborn. As the session was about to begin, a shock of an earthquake was felt, and some of the members in alarm proposed an adjournment: but the archbishop, undisturbed by the omen, declared that it signified the purging of the kingdom from heresy.Wyclif was not present, nor does it appear that he had been cited to defend himself; but twenty-two propositions were brought forward as having been maintained by him—ten of them being branded as heretical, while the others were only designated as errors. Among the heresies were the assertions that the material substance of bread and wine remains in the sacrament of the altar; that accidents do not remain in it without a subject; that Christ is not in it “identically, truly, and really, in His proper bodily substance”; that the ministrations of bishops and priests who are in mortal sin, and the claims of evil popes over Christ’s faithful people, are null; that contrition super­sedes the necessity of outward confession; that God ought to obey the devil; that since Urban VI no one was to be received as pope, but the Christians of the west ought to live, like the Greeks, under their own laws; and that it was contrary to Holy Scripture for clergymen to hold temporal possessions.

Among the propositions noted as erroneous were several relating to the effect of excommunication; the assertions already mentioned as to the power of secular persons to take away ecclesiastical endowments, with others of like tendency; and some denials of the utility of the monastic life.

The council held five sessions, and in the meantime the archbishop wrote to Oxford, denouncing the preaching of uncommissioned persons, and ordering that the opinions of Wyclif should be suppressed in the university. The council condemned the doctrines which were brought before it, and three of Wyclif’s most prominent followers—Philip Repyngdon, Nicolas Hereford, and John Ayshton—after having been examined before the primate, were sentenced to various punishments. The archbishop brought the matter before the house of lords, and an order was obtained from the crown, by which the sheriffs were required to assist the officers of the bishops in arresting heretics. But in the following session, the bill which the lords had passed in accord­ance with the archbishop’s wishes was disowned by the commons, who declared that they had never assented to it, and prayed the king that it might be annulled; chiefly, it would seem, in consequence of a petition which Wyclif had addressed to the king and to the parliament.

The reforming party was now attacked in Oxford, which was its chief stronghold. The chancellor, Robert Rygge, although he had subscribed the former condemnation, was inclined to favour the Wyclifites, and to maintain the exemption of the university from the power of the archbishop and bishops. He appointed Repyngdon, and others of like opinions, to preach on some public occa­sions. On being required by the archbishop to publish a denunciation of Wyclifism, he declared that to do so might endanger his life. And when a Carmelite, named Stokes, appeared at Oxford, with a commission to carry out the archbishop’s mandate, it is said that the chan­cellor made a display of armed men, so that the friar withdrew in terror, without having executed his task. Rygge was, however, compelled to appear in London, with the proctors of the university, and to ask pardon on his knees for having favoured Wyclifism. He was com­manded by the archbishop to allow no new doctrines to be taught or held; and, in obedience to a royal order (which had, perhaps, been obtained by representing Wyclif’s opinions as connected with the late revolutionary movements), he published the suspension of Repyngdon and Hereford. The bishop of Lincoln, Bokyngham, within whose diocese Oxford was situated, exerted himself vigorously for the suppression of Wyclifism in the university. Repyngdon, Hereford, and Ayshton recanted, after having in vain attempted to gain the intercession of the duke of Lancas­ter; but their explanations were not deemed sufficient, and it was not without much trouble that they procured their restoration. Hereford, in order to clear his ortho­doxy, went to Rome, where he was committed to prison by Urban VI, who, in consideration of the support which he had received from England, was unwilling to inflict the extreme punishment of heresy on any Englishman. Having recovered his liberty through a popular outbreak while the pope was shut up in Nocera, Hereford returned to England, where he was again imprisoned by the archbishop of Canterbury, and was denounced by the bishop of Worcester as a preacher of Lollardy in 1387; and ended his days as a Carthusian monk. Repyngdon be­came one of the bitterest opponents of the party to which he had once belonged; and his zeal was rewarded with the bishopric of Lincoln, and with the dignity of cardinal. According to some writers, Wyclif himself appeared before the archbishop and other prelates at Oxford, and explained himself in terms which are treated by his enemies as evasive; and it would seem that his explanation was accepted by his judges as sufficient to justify them in dismissing him.But the party at Oxford never recovered from the effects of these proceedings.

The remaining two years of Wyclif’s life were spent in his parish of Lutterworth; and such was the effect of his labours in the surrounding country, that, according to the writer who is known by the name of Knyghton, a canon of Leicester, “You would scarce see two in the way, but one of them was a disciple of Wyclif.” During this period of his life his pen was actively employed. When the warlike bishop Spenser, of Norwich, led into Flanders a rabble of disorderly recruits, to fight as crusaders for pope Urban against pope Clement, Wyclif sent forth a pamphlet “On the Schism” and one “Against the pope’s Crusade.” In these he denounces the system of indulgences in general, and the abuse of holding forth such privileges as an inducement to enlist in such an enterprise, the taking of arms by the clergy, the nature of the war itself, the secular and unchris­tian motives from which it originated, and the share which the mendicant friars had taken in promoting it.And to this time belongs one of his most remarkable works— the “Trialogue,” which, as its name intimates is in the form of a conversation between three persons, bearing the Greek names of Aletheia, Pseustis, and Phronesis—Truth, Deceiver, and Thoughtfulness. In this book Wyclif lays down a rigid doctrine of predesti­nation. He exposes the popular errors of reliance on the saints, declaring Christ to be a better, readier, and more benign mediator than any of them; he mentions without disapproval the opinion of some who would abolish all festivals of the saints, and who blame the church for canonizing men, inasmuch as without revelation it can no more know the sanctity of the persons so honoured than prester John or the sultan. In like manner he reprobates indulgences, on the ground that the prelates who grant them pretend foolishly, greedily, and blasphemously to a knowledge which is beyond their reach. He maintains the superiority of Holy Scripture to all other laws; if there were a hundred popes, and all the friars were turned into cardinals, their opinion ought not to be believed, except in so far as it is founded on Scripture. It is chiefly in the last book of the Trialogue that Wyclif shows himself as a reformer. He states his doctrine of the Eucharist, which, he says, had been held by the church until Satan was let loose. As to the hierarchy, he says that the only orders were originally those of priest and deacon, that bishops were the same with the priests, and that the other orders were the inventions of “Caesarean” pride.The pope he considers to be probably the great antichrist, and the “Caesarean” prelates to be the lesser antichrists, as being utterly opposite to their pretensions as Christ’s vicar and his representatives.He declares himself strongly against the endowments of the church; he tells the story of the angel’s lamentation over the gift of Constantine, to which he traces all the corruptions, abuses, and decay of later times; he holds that the error of Constantine and others, who thought by such means to benefit the church, was greater than that of St. Paul in persecuting it; nay, he says that the princes who en­dowed the church are liable to the punishment of hell for so doing. And, as a simple remedy for the evils of the case, he recommends that the king, on getting the tempo­ralities of a bishopric or of an abbacy into his hands through a vacancy, should avoid the mistake of restoring them to the next incumbent. He denies the necessity of confession, and attacks the penitential system, as also indulgences and the sacrament of extreme unction. And he is severe against the clergy—more especially against the monks, canons, and friars. These last he traces to antichrist, and declares to be the means of spreading all heresies; he even charges their idle and luxurious lives with rendering the land less productive and the air unwholesome, and so with causing pestilences and epidemics.

Although Wyclif’s last years appear to have been wholly passed in his retirement, his constant and varied activity, and the influence which he exercised, were not to be overlooked; and it has been supposed that in 1384 he received a citation to appear before Urban VI. The paper which is commonly regarded as his answer does not clearly state the grounds on which he excused himself; but he had been disabled by illness, and espe­cially by a stroke of palsy. On the 28th of December 1384, as he was engaged in the service of the church, he was struck down by a second attack of the same sort: and on the last day of the year he expired. His enemies found a pleasure in relating that his seizure took place on the festival of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the champion and martyr of the hierarchical claims, and that he died on the festival of St. Sylvester, the pope on whom the first Christian emperor was supposed to have bestowed those privileges and endowments which Wyclif had pertinaciously assailed.

It is remarkable that, although Wyclif had many points in common with the Waldenses, he never shows any trace of acquaintance with the history of that party, but seems to have formed his opinions in entire independence of them. Attempts have been made to connect him with the school of Joachim of Fiore; but although the con­stant use of the word gospel may naturally recall to our minds the “everlasting gospel” of the earlier party,—although there was in both parties a tendency to apoca­lyptic speculations, and although Wyclif’s followers were infected with that fondness for prophecies, partly of a religious and partly of a political tendency, which had prevailed widely from the time of Joachim downwards,—it would seem that these resemblances are no proof of any real connexion.

Wyclif opposed, either entirely or in their more ex­aggerated forms, most of the corruptions and superstitions which had grown on the church—such as the system of indulgences, the reliance on the merits of the saints, the trust in supposed miracles; and if he held the doctrine of purgatory, and allowed the utility of prayers and masses for the departed, he was careful to guard against the popular errors connected with these beliefs. He denied the usual distinctions of mortal and venial sin. He re­garded confession as wholesome, but not as necessary; he limited the priestly power of absolution to that of declaring God’s forgiveness to the truly contrite, and blamed the clergy for pretending to something more than this. He denied the effect of excommunication, unless when uttered for just reason, in the cause of God, and agreeably to the law of Christ. He opposed compulsory celibacy, and the practice of binding young persons to the monastic life before their own experience and will could guide them in the choice of it. With regard to marriage he is said to have held some singular opinions—that it had been instituted as a means of filling up the places of the fallen angels, and that the prohibition of marriage even between the nearest relations had no other foundation than human law. He admitted the seven sacraments, but not as all standing on the same level; and he found fault with confirmation, as involving a pretension on the part of bishops to give the Holy Spirit in a new way, and thus to do more than give that Holy Spirit who was be­stowed in baptism. He objected to the prevailing excess of ceremonies, although he admitted that some ceremonies were necessary and expedient.As to the splendour of churches, he rejects the authority of Solomon—an idola­trous and lascivious king under the old covenant—foras­much as our Lord himself prophesied the destruction of the Temple. He did not condemn images absolutely, but the abuses connected with the reverence for them. He also found fault with the elaborate music which had come into use in the church, declaring it to be a hindrance to study and preaching, and ridiculing the disposal of money in foundations for such purposes.

As to the constitution of the church, Wyclif held that God had not bestowed on any man that plenitude of power which was claimed by the papacy; and, while he did not refuse to style the pope Christ’s vicar, he con­sidered that the emperor was also His vicar in the temporal sphere; that even the pope might be rebuked, and that even by laymen. With some of the schoolmen he held (as we have seen) that bishops and priests were one and the same order; but it does not appear that he countenanced the practice of some of his followers, who claimed for presbyters the power of ordination. We have already seen that he wished the clergy to cast themselves, like those of the first days, on the oblations of the faithful for maintenance; that he would have allowed them to enjoy only so much as was absolutely necessary, and held it to be the duty of secular lords to take away from them such endowments as were abused. But he disavowed the idea that this was to be done arbitrarily, and limited the exercise of the right by the conditions of civil, eccle­siastical, and evangelical law. And, although his enemies are never found to charge him with inconsistency, he confessed that his own practice had been short of his theory,—that he had spent on himself that which ought to have been given to the poor.

In some respects Wyclif seems to have been justly chargeable with the use of language which was likely not only to be misunderstood by his opponents, but to mislead his partisans. Thus the proposition that “Do­minion is founded in grace” seems to imply a principle of unlimited anarchy and fanaticism, but is explained in such a manner as to lose much of its alarming character. Wyclif’s conception of dominion was altogether modelled on the feudal system. He believed that God, to whom alone dominion could properly belong, had granted in fee (as it were) certain portions of His dominion over the world, on condition of obedience to His commandments, and that such grants were vitiated by mortal sin in the holders. But this Wyclif admitted to be an ideal view, which must be modified in order to accord with the facts of the case; and by way of corrective he advanced another proposition, of at least equally startling appear­ance—that “God ought to obey the devil.” In other words, as God suffers evil in this world—as the Saviour submitted to be tempted by the devil—so obedience is due by Christians to constituted authority, however un­worthy the holders of it may be. The wicked, although they could not have dominion in its proper sense, might yet have power, so as to be entitled to obedience. And thus there is no ground for the imputations which have been cast on him by his enemies as if he had advocated the principles of insurrection and tyrannicide. Wyclif considered that, while the pope and the king are each supreme in his own department, every Christian man holds of God, although not “in chief”; and that hence the final court of appeal is not that of the pope, but of God. In like manner, when he asserted that one who was in mortal sin could not administer the sacraments, the proposition was softened by an explanation—that a man in such a condition might administer the sacraments validly, although to his own condemnation.

Wyclif’s opinions as to the doctrine of the Eucharist have been already stated. On predestination and the subjects connected with it, his views were such that his admirers are said to have given him a name derived from that of St. Augustine. He held that all things take place by absolute necessity; that even God himself cannot do otherwise than he actually does; that no predestined person could be finally obdurate or could be lost; that no one who was “foreknown” would have the gift of final perseverance, or could be saved; and that while in the body we can have no certainty who those are that belong to the one class or to the other. Yet with these opinions it is said that he professed to recon­cile a belief in the freedom of man’s will, so that in this respect he expressed his dissent from the teachers whom he most revered, as Augustine and Bradwardine. Philo­sophy mingled largely with his theology; he maintained that true philosophy and true theology must go together; and thus, as his own views were strongly realistic, he concluded that the nominalists could not receive the truth of Holy Scripture.

A document is extant which professes to be a testi­monial in favour of Wyclif, granted by the university of Oxford in 1406; but it is very inconsistent with what is known as to the disposition of the university authorities towards his memory at that time, and it is supposed to have been forged by a noted Wyclifite named Peter Payne, who published it in Bohemia.

After Wyclif’s death the Lollards (as his followers were called) rapidly developed the more questionable part of his opinions. They became wildly fanatical against the Roman church and the clergy. Some of them denied the necessity of ordination, maintaining that any Christian man or woman, “being without sin,” was entitled to con­secrate the eucharist; or they took it on themselves to ordain without the ministry of bishops. Some declared the sacraments to be mere dead signs; and, whereas Wyclif had held a sabbatical doctrine as to the Lord’s day, they denounced the observance of that day as a remnant of Judaism. With such opinions in matters of religion were combined extravagances dangerous to civil government and to society; and prophecies, which were in great part of political tendency, were largely circulated among the Lollards.

Notwithstanding the defection of some of the most eminent clergy of the party, it still numbered among its members many persons of distinction, who encouraged the preachers in their rounds, gathered audiences to listen to them, and afforded them armed protection. But its main strength lay among the humbler classes. London was a stronghold of Lollardism, as were also the counties of Leicester and Lincoln, where Wyclif’s personal influence had been especially exerted.

In 1394 the Lollards affixed to the doors of St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey placards in which the clergy were attacked and the current doctrine of the sacraments was impugned;  and they presented to parliament a petition, in which the peculiarities of their system were strongly enounced. The bishops took such alarm at these movements that they urgently entreated the king to hurry back from Ireland in order to meet the new dangers which had arisen; and during the remaining years of Richard’s power active measures were taken for the discouragement of Lollardism. In 1396 Boniface IX entreated the king to assist him in suppressing heresy, as being dangerous alike to the church and to the crown; and in the same year archbishop Arundel, immediately after his elevation to the primacy, held a synod, in which eighteen propositions, attributed to Wyclif, were con­demned. The democratic and communistic opinions which had become developed among the party, while they attracted the poorer people, must have tended to alienate those of higher condition, and thus were, on the whole, disadvantageous to its progress.

But most especially the Lollards suffered from the change which placed Henry of Lancaster on the throne instead of Richard. Archbishop Arundel, their bitter enemy, had a powerful hold on the new king, whom he had greatly aided to attain the crown; and Henry, in his feeling of insecurity, was eager to ally himself with the clergy, the monks, and the friars—so that under the descendants of Wyclif’s old patron, John of Gaunt, the condition of the Wyclifites became worse than it had pre­viously been. Henry in his first year sent a message to the convocation, that it was his intention “to maintain all the liberties of the church, and to destroy heresies, errors, and heretics to the utmost of his power”;and in the following year, after a repre­sentation by the clergy to parliament as to the necessity of checking the growth of heresy, was passed the statute De haeretico comburendo. By this it was enacted that any one whom an ecclesias­tical court should have declared to be guilty, or strongly suspected, of heresy, should, on being made over to the sheriff with a certificate to that effect, be publicly burnt.

The first victim of this statute is supposed to have been William Sautre, priest of St. Osyth’s, in London, who had before been convicted in the diocese of Norwich, and suffered as a relapsed heretic in 1401, chiefly for the denial of transubstantiation.When the parliament in 141 o asked for a mitigation of the statute, the king answered that it ought to be made more severe.There is a succession of measures intended for the repression of the Lollards. In 1407 an ordinance was passed which condemns their opinions as to church property, and seems to connect the party with those who used the name of the deposed king as if he were still alive. In the following year a synod assembled in London, under the presidency of the archbishop, decreed that Wyclifs books should not be read, unless allowed by one of the universities, and that no English versions of the Scriptures should be made, because of the difficulty of securing a uniform sense, “as the blessed Jerome himself, although he had been inspired, avers that herein he had often erred.” It was ordered that at Oxford the authorities should inquire, once a month or oftener, whether Wyclif’s opinions were held by any members of the university; and in 1412 two hundred and sixty-seven propositions from his works were con­demned there, “as all guilty of fire.”  The pope, John XXIII, at Arundel’s request, confirmed this sentence; but he rejected the archbishop’s proposal that Wyclif’s bones should be dug up and burnt.

During the reign of Henry IV the statutes against Lollardism were but partially enforced; but Henry V (whatever may have been his conduct in those earlier years, as to which we have received an impression too strong to be effaced by any historical evidence) showed himself, when king, strictly religious according to the ideas of the time, and conscientious, even to bigotry, in the desire to signalize his orthodoxy and to suppress such opinions as bore the note of heresy. Under the influence of his Carmelite confessor, Thomas Netter, one of the bitterest controversial opponents of Wyclifism, the laws were now rigorously executed. The victims were of all classes; but the most conspicuous for character and for rank was Sir John Oldcastle, who, in right of his wife, sat in parliament as Lord Cobham. Oldcastle, who seems to have been a man of somewhat violent and impetuous character, had been highly distinguished in the French wars, and had been on terms of intimacy with Henry in his earlier days. Having taken up the opinions of Wyclif with enthusiastic zeal, he endeavoured, by encouraging itinerant preachers and otherwise, to spread these doctrines among the people; and it was feared that his military skill and renown might make him dangerous as the leader of a fanatical and disaffected party. The king himself undertook to argue with him; but Cobham, knowing his ground better, withstood the royal arguments. After having been called in question by the archbishop of Canterbury for his opinions (as to which he appears, while denying transubstantiation, to have consistently maintained that the very body and blood of Christ are contained under the form of the eucharistic elements), he was excommunicated. He then made his escape from London, and for some years lived obscurely in Wales; but he afterwards re­appeared, and, as he was supposed to be concerned in revolutionary designs, was arrested, and was brought to the bar of the house of lords. The sentence which had before been pronounced against him on a mixed charge of heresy and treason was read over in his hearing, and, as he made no defence, he was forthwith, in pursuance of that sentence, hanged and burnt in Smithfield on the 18th of December 1417.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

BOHEMIA.

 

The reforming tendencies which appeared in Bohemia towards the end of the fourteenth century have been traced to the ancient connexion of that country with the Greek church, from which it is assumed that peculiar usages—such as the marriage of the clergy, the use of the vernacular tongue in the offices of the church, and the administration of the eucharistic cup to the laity—had been continued through the intermediate ages. But this theory, which was unknown to the Bohemian reformers of the time with which we are now concerned, appears to be wholly unsupported by historical fact. Nor, although some Waldenses had made their way into the country, does it appear that the reforming movement which we are about to notice derived any impulse from that party.

The first person who became conspicuous as a teacher of reformation in Bohemia was not a native of the country, but an Austrian—Conrad of Waldhausen,canon of the cathedral of Prague, and pastor of a parish near the city. Conrad appears to have adhered in all respects to the doctrine which was considered orthodox in his time, and his burning zeal was directed against practical corruptions of religion. He denounced, with indignant eloquence, the mechanical character of the usual devotions; the abuses of indulgences and relics ; the practice or simony in all forms, among which he included the performance of charitable duties for money, such as that of tending the sick; and on this ground, among others, he censured the mendicant friars. But he also assailed the principle of their system altogether, offering sixty groats to any one who would prove from Scripture that the Saviour gave his sanction to the mendicant life; and he strongly opposed the practice of devoting young persons—in some cases even children yet unborn—to the cloister, without allow­ing them the power of choice. He required usurers to disgorge the gains which they had unjustly acquired; whereas the friars used to quiet the consciences of such persons by teaching them that the iniquities of usury might be sanctified by bounty to the church. Yet Con­rad, although he strenuously opposed the corruptions of monasticism, set a high value on the idea of the monastic life. His power as a preacher is said to have been very extraordinary; sometimes he found himself obliged to deliver his sermons in market-places, because no church was large enough to contain the multitude of hearers. He carried away from the mendicants all but a handful of “beguines”; even Jews crowded to listen to him, and he discountenanced those who would have kept them off. Conrad was favoured by the emperor Charles ; and, although the Dominicans and Franciscans combined against him, and in 1364 exhibited twenty-nine articles of accusation to the archbishop of Prague, he continued his course without any serious molestation until his death in 1369.

Contemporary with Conrad of Waldhausen was Militz, a native of Kremsier, in Moravia. Militz had attained the dignity of archdeacon of Prague, and, in addition to other benefices, possessed some landed property; he stood high in the favour of Charles IV, and was greatly respected in his ecclesiastical character. But the desire after a stricter religious life arose within him, and, resigning all the advantages of his position, he withdrew to the poverty and obscurity of a parish priest’s life in a little town or village. After a time he reap­peared at Prague, and, unlike Conrad of Waldhausen, who had used only the German language, he preached in Latin to the learned, and in the vernacular to the multitude. At first, his Bohemian sermons had little effect on account of his somewhat foreign pronuncia­tion; but this difficulty was gradually overcome, and Militz was heard four or five times a day by enthusiastic audiences. Usurers were persuaded by his eloquence to give up their gains, and women to renounce the vanities of dress; and so powerful was he in exhorting prosti­tutes to forsake a life of sin, that under his teaching a part of the city which had been known as Little Venice acquired the title of Little Jerusalem. Like Conrad, Militz attacked the mendicant system; but, whereas Conrad had confined himself to practical subjects, Militz plunged into apocalyptic speculations. Seeing in the corruption of the church a proof that antichrist was already come, he wrote a tract in which he fixed the end of the world between 1365 and 1367; he even told Charles IV to his face that he was the great antichrist, yet he did not by this forfeit the emperor’s regard. In 1357 Militz felt an irresistible impulse to set forth his opinions to Urban V, who was then about to remove to Rome. He arrived there before the pope, and by announcing his intention of discoursing on the coming of antichrist, provoked an imprisonment in the convent of Ara Coeli; but he was able to justify his orthodoxy before Urban, and was allowed to return to Prague. From this time he abandoned apocalyptic subjects, but was unwearied in his labours as a preacher; and he established a school for preachers, at which 200 or 300 students were trained under one roof, but without any vow or monastic rule. Some years later, twelve charges against him were brought before Gregory XI,—among other things, that he disparaged the clergy from the pope downwards; that he denounced their possession of property; that he denied the force of excommunication; and that he insisted on daily communion. In order to meet these charges, Militz repaired to Avignon, but while his case was pending he died there in i374.

Among the pupils of Militz was Matthias of Janow, a young man of knightly family, who afterwards studied for six years at Paris, and thence was styled “Magister Parisiensis”. In 1381 Matthias became a canon of Prague, and he was confessor to the emperor Charles. The influence of Matthias, unlike that of Conrad and of Militz, was exerted chiefly by means of his writings. One of these—a tract, “Of the Abomination of Desola­tion”, mainly directed against the mendicant friars—has been sometimes ascribed to Hus, and sometimes to Wyclif. His chief work, “Of the Rules of the Old and New Testaments” (which is described as an inquiry into the characters of real and false Christianity), has never been printed at full length. Matthias went considerably beyond those practical measures of reform with which his predecessors had contented themselves; indeed it may be said that the later reformer Hus rather fell short of him in this respect than exceeded him. Matthias professed to regard Holy Scripture as the only source of religious knowledge, and declared himself forcibly against human inventions and precepts in religion. He was strongly opposed to the encroachments of the papacy on the church; he regarded the pope rather as antichrist than as Christ’s vicar; and he describes anti­christ (whom he declares to have come long ago), in terms which seem to point at the degenerate and worldly hierarchy. He denounced the clergy in general for the vices which he imputed to them, and appears to have reprobated the greatness of the distinction which was commonly made between the clergy and the laity. Matthias was especially zealous for frequent communion of the lay people. He denied the sufficiency of what was called spiritual communion : “If we were angels”, he said, “it might possibly be enough; but for our mixed nature of body and soul an actual reception of the sacrament is necessary”; and this he deduced from the doctrine of the incarnation itself. Those (he said) who receive but once a year come to the sacrament in a spirit of bondage, and cannot know the true Christian liberty. It was supposed in later times that Matthias had advo­cated the administration of the eucharistic cup to the laity; but this appears to be a mistake. For some of the opinions imputed to him—among other things, for insisting on daily communion of the laity—he was condemned by a synod held at Prague in 1388, and, having submitted to make a retractation, was suspended for half a year from ministering beyond his own parish church.But he appears to have continued his teaching with little change, and to have been suffered to remain unmolested until his death in 1394.

As to the orthodoxy of these men (who, although not the only Bohemian reformers of their time, were the most distinguished among them) there have been various opinions within the Roman church, as the Bohemian writers generally maintain that they were sound in faith, and in favour of this view (which is commonly rejected by writers of other nations) are able to point to the fact that they all lived and died within the communion of Rome.

Thus far the reforming movement in Bohemia had been wholly independent of any English influence. Indeed no country of Europe might seem so unlikely to feel such influence as Bohemia—far removed as it is on all sides from any communication with our island by sea, and with a population wholly alien in descent and in language from any of the tribes which have contributed to form our nation. Yet by the accession of Charles of Luxemburg to the throne of Bohemia, and by the marriage of his daughter Anne with Richard of England, the two countries were brought into a special connexion. The princess, whose pious exercises and study of the Scriptures were afterwards commemorated in a funeral sermon by archbishop Arundel,had been so far affected by the reforming movements of her own land (where each of the three men who have been mentioned above had enjoyed the favour of her father), that she brought with her to England versions of the Gospels in the Germanand Bohemian tongues as well as in Latin; and when, after her death, her Bohemian attendant returned to their own country, it would seem that they carried with them much of Wyclif’s doctrine. A literary intercourse also grew up between the countries. Young Bohemians studied at Oxford; young Englishmen resorted to the university which Charles had founded in the Bohemian capital. Wyclif was already held in high honour there on account of his philosophical and physical works, which were regarded without any suspicion on ac­count of his religious teaching; thus Hus said in 1411 that Wyclif’s writings had been read at Prague by himself and other members of the university for more than twenty years.

John Hus, the most famous, if not the most remark­able, of the Bohemian reformers, was born in a humble condition at Hussinecz, a village near the Bavarian frontier, in i369, the year of Conrad of Waldhausen’s death. His education was completed at Prague, where it would seem that he was influenced by the teaching of Matthias of Janow; and among the writers whom he most revered were St. Augustine and Grossetete. By such studies he was prepared to welcome some theological writings of Wyclif, which were introduced into Bohemia in 1402. In his earlier years he had been devoted to the prevailing fashion of religion; at the jubilee of 1393 he had gone through all the prescribed devotions in order to obtain the indulgence, and had given his last four groschen to the priest who heard his confession; and, although he had already adopted Wyclif’s philosophical principles, he was at first so little attracted by his theology that he advised a young student, who had shown him one of the books, to burn it or to throw it into the Moldau, lest it should fall into hands in which it might do mischief. But he soon found himself fascinated; Wyclif’s books gave him new light as to the constitution of the church and as to the reforms which were to be desired in it, and from them his whole system of opinion took its character. It would seem, however, that on the important question of transubstantiation he never adopted Wyclif’s doctrine, but adhered throughout to that which was current in the church. When, at a later time, the testimonial in favour of Wyclif, under the seal of the university of Oxford, was produced in Bohemia by Peter Payne and Nicolas von Faulfisch, Hus eagerly caught at its supposed authority; but in this he seems to have been a dupe, not an accom­plice, of the forgery.

Hus became noted, as even his enemies allow, for the purity of his life, his ascetic habits, and his pleasing man­ners. In 1402 he was chosen as rector of the university, and in the same year he was ordained to the priesthood, and was appointed preacher at a chapel which had been founded eleven years before with an especial view to preaching in the vernacular tongue, and to which the founders—a merchant and one of the king’s councillors—had given the name of Bethlehem (the house of bread), on account of the spiritual food which was to be there distributed. Soon after this, Hus became confessor to the queen, Sophia, and acquired much influence at the court of Wenceslaus. He was also appointed synodal preacher, and in this character had the privi­lege of frequently addressing the clergy, whom he rebuked with a vehemence which was more likely to enrage than to amend them. He charged them with ambition and ostentation, with luxury and avarice, with contempt and oppression of the poor and with subserviency to the rich; with vindictiveness, which is said to have given rise to a proverb, “If you offend a clerk, kill him, or you will never have peace”;  with usury, drunkenness, indecent talking, concubinage, and incontinency; with gaming, betrayal of confession, and neglect of their spiritual duties. He denounced them for exacting fees, for simoniacal practices, for holding pluralities : thus, on one occasion, when requesting the prayers of his hearers for a deceased ecclesiastic, he said, “Saving the judg­ment of God, I would not for the whole world choose to die with so many and valuable benefices”. It was a natural result of such preaching that Hus raised up against himself much bitter enmity on the part of his brethren.

In 1403, Zbynko of Hasenburg was appointed to the see of Prague, which, through the influence of king John, had been detached from the province of Mayence, and invested with metropolitical dignity by Clement VI. The new archbishop, although a man of the world, so that he took part in warlike enterprises, was desirous of reforming eccle­siastical abuses; and for a time Hus enjoyed his favour. It was by Zbynko that the office of synodal preacher was conferred; and he even invited Hus to point out any defects  which he might observe in his administration.

The archbishop’s confidence in Hus was especially shown by appointing him, with two others, to investigate an alleged miracle, which had raised the village of Wilsnack, in Brandenburg, to a sudden celebrity. The church there had been burnt by a robber knight, and the priest, in groping among the ruins, had found in a cavity of the altar three consecrated wafers of a red colour, which was supposed to be produced by the Saviour’s blood. The bishop of Havelberg and the archbishop of Magdeburg, within whose jurisdiction Wilsnack was situated, took up the tale; innumerable cures were said to have been wrought by the miraculous host; by making vows to it, prisoners had obtained deliverance, and combatants had gained the victory in duels; and the offerings of the pil­grims whom it attracted were enough to rebuild the whole village, with a new and magnificent church. The Bohemian commissioners, however, detected much imposture in the alleged cures; and Hus set forth a tract, “On the glori­fied Blood of Christ”, in which he combated the popular superstitions as to relics and the craving after miracles, and strongly denounced the frauds of the clergy, who for the sake of money deluded the credulous people. In consequence of this archbishop Zbynko forbade all resort from his own diocese to Wilsnack, although the miraculous hosts continued to attract pilgrims until they were burnt by a reforming preacher in 1552.

But it soon became evident that the archbishop and Hus must separate. Hus’s attacks on the clergy were renewed, and charges of Wyclifism were formally brought against him. The archbishop complained to the king; but Wenceslaus is said to have replied, “So long as Master Hus preached against us laymen, you rejoiced at it; now your turn is come, and you must be content to bear it.”

In the university also Hus became involved in quarrels. The founder, Charles IV, had divided it, after the ex­ample of Paris, into four nations—Bohemians, Saxons, Bavarians, and Poles. But as two of these were Ger­man, and as the Polish nation, being more than half composed of Silesians, Pomeranians, and Prussians, was under German influence, the Bohemians found that in their own university they were liable to be overpowered in the election of officers, and in all sorts of other questions, by the votes of foreigners. Hence a feeling of hostility grew up, and extended itself even to matters of opinion, so that, as the Germans were nominalists, the Bohemians were realists, and were inclined to liberal principles in religion. Into these differences Hus eagerly threw him­self, and he found his most zealous supporter in a layman of noble family, named Jerome. Jerome was a man of ardent and impetuous character, restless and enterprising, gifted with a copious eloquence,  but without discretion to guide it. He had travelled much—to England, to Russia, to Jerusalem—sometimes affecting the character of a philosopher and theologian, sometimes that of a knight and man of the world, and in many places meet­ing with strange adventures; he professed to have gradu­ated as a master of arts at Prague, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Paris. He himself states that, when in England, he was induced by the celebrity of Wyclif’s name to make copies of the Dialogue and of the Trialogue; and he was zealous for the English reformer’s doctrines.

It was a law of the Bohemian university that, while doctors and masters were at liberty to lecture without restraint, bachelors were required to use as texts the lectures of some reputed teacher of Prague, Oxford, or Paris; and in this manner Wyclif’s writings came to be much employed and known there. But this naturally excited opposition, and in forty-five propositions ascribed to Wyclif—partly derived from the council of the earthquake, and partly a new selection—were condemned by the nations which predominated in the university. Hus declined to join unreservedly in this condemnation; he called in question the genuineness of the proposi­tions, and declared that, although no devoted follower of Wyclif, he believed the Englishman’s writings to contain many truths. Others took a similar part, and the impugned articles found a defender in Stanislaus of Znaym, who afterwards became one of Hus’s bitterest enemies. The contest went on. In 1405 the archbishop was desired by Innocent VII to be zealous in suppressing the heresies which were said to be rife in Bohemia; and in consequence of this he uttered denunciations against the adherents of Wyclif, especially with regard to his eucharistic doctrine. In 1408 Stephen, a Carthusian, and prior of Dolan, put forth a formal treatise against Wyclif’s opinions, and in the same year the forty-five propositions were again condemned by the university.

Wenceslaus, although deeply angered at the part which the popes had taken as to his deposition from the empire, was unwilling that his kingdom should lie under the im­putation of heresy, more especially as such a charge would have interfered with the hope which he still cherished of recovering his lost dignity. In 1408, therefore, he desired the archbishop of Prague to inquire into the state of religion; and the result was that the archbishop, with a synod, declared Bohemia to be free from the taint of Wyclifism. But he ordered that all copies of Wyclif’s writings should be given up for examination and correction—an order, which, even if seriously meant, appears to have been ineffectual; and it was forbidden that Wyclif’s propositions should be taught in the univer­sity in their heretical sense (for as to the real meaning of some of them there was a dispute), and that any one should lecture on his Trialogue or on his work on the eucharist.

The part which the university had taken in the late proceeding incited Hus and Jerome to attempt an im­portant change in its constitution; and their plans were favoured by the circumstances of the time. The council of Pisa was about to meet. Wenceslaus, influ­enced by France and hoping to recover the empire, took part with it, while the university, under the dominating influence of the German nations, adhered to Gregory XII.              Hence the king was disposed to fall in with Hus’s scheme; and in January 1409 he decreed that the Bohemian nation should for the future have three votes in the university, while the other three nations collectively should have but one vote; in like manner (it was said), as the French had three votes at Paris, and the Italians at Bologna. It was in vain that the Germans petitioned against this; and, after having solemnly bound themselves by an engagement that, if the decree should be carried out, they would withdraw from Prague and would never return, they found themselves obliged to fulfil their threat. Out of more than 7000 members of the university, only 2000 were left; of the 5000 seceders, some attached themselves to existing universities, such as Cracow, while others founded the universities of Ingolstadt and Leipzig. Hus was again chosen rector of the Bohemian university; but, while stories to his discredit were sedulously spread in foreign countries by those who charged him with having expelled them from Prague, he found that his success had also raised up against him many enemies at home, especially among those citizens of Prague whose interests had suffered through the with­drawal of the foreign students.

Hus had been zealous for the council of Pisa, as promising a better hope of reform than any that was to be expected from a pope, and he exerted himself actively in detaching those whom he could influence from the party of Gregory XII. By this he drew on himself, in common with others who had opposed Gregory, a sen­tence from the archbishop of suspension from preaching and from all priestly functions; while, on the other hand, many of the clergy who adhered to Gregory were severely treated by the king. The prohibition of preaching was unheeded by Hus, who seems to have believed that his ordination gave him a privilege as to this of which he could not be deprived. The chapel of Bethlehem resounded with his unsparing invectives against the vices of all classes of men; and cardinal Peter d’Ailly seems to have had reason for telling him, long after, that he had done wrong in denouncing the faults of cardinals and prelates before audiences which were not qualified to understand or to judge of such topics, and could only be inflamed by them. Fresh charges were now brought against him—that by his preaching he fomented quarrels between the Bohemians and the Germans; that he abused the clergy and the archbishop, so that a mob excited by him had once beset the archiepiscopal palace; that he persisted in his attacks notwithstanding all warnings, and drew people from their parish churches to listen to them; that he had spoken of Wyclif as a venerable man, who had been called a heretic because he spoke the truth,and had expressed a wish that his soul might be with that of Wyclif; that he denied the power of the church in punishing; that he mocked at the authority of the church and her doctors; that he denied the validity of ministrations performed by one who was in mortal sin; and that, without distinguishing between exactions and free gifts, he condemned as a heretic any priest who received money in connexion with the administration of a sacrament. As to some of these points it would seem that he was not really chargeable with anything more than the indiscretion of using language which was almost certain to be misunderstood. Thus he declared that in his words about Wyclif’s soul he had not taken it on himself positively to affirm the English doctor’s salva­tion; and he admitted that God’s sacraments are validly administered by evil as well as by good priests, forasmuch as the Divine power operates alike through both.

Archbishop Zbynko at length found himself obliged to yield as to the council of Pisa, and to acknowledge his pope, Alexander V. The change was unfavourable to Hus, as the pope was now more likely to listen to the archbishop’s representations. In consequence of these, Alexander addressed to Zbynko a bull, stating that the errors of the condemned heresiarch Wyclif were reported to be rife in Bohemia, and desiring him to forbid all preaching except in cathedral, parochial, or monastic churches. In compliance with this bull, the archbishop ordered that preaching in private chapels should cease, and it was understood that Bethlehem chapel was especially aimed at. The bull was received with great indignation by the Bohemian nobles. Hus declared that it had been surreptitiously obtained; that he could not, out of obedience either to the archbishop or to the pope, refrain from preaching; he appealed “from the pope ill-informed to the pope when he should be better informed”; he contended that Bethlehem chapel did not fall under the prohibition, and, in reliance on the deed of foundation and on his appeal, he continued to preach as before.

A fresh order was issued by the archbishop that all copies of Wyclif’s writings should be delivered up; and a commission of doctors, being appointed to examine them, condemned not only the Dialogue and the Trialogue, with the treatises on the Eucharist, on Simony, and on Civil Dominion, but a work on the Reality of Universals, and other writings of a purely philosophical nature. It was announced that there was to be a great bonfire of Wyclif’s books. The university petitioned the king against this, and Zbynko assured him that it should not be carried out without his consent. But in violation of this promise, and under the pretence that Wenceslaus had not expressly forbidden the burning, the archbishop soon after surrounded his palace with guards, and caused about two hundred volumes of Wyclif’s writings, with some works of Militz and others,—many of them precious for beauty of penmanship and of binding—to be committed to the flames, while Te Deum was chanted and all the bells of the churches were rung “as if for the dead”. Two days later Hus and his associates in the late protest were solemnly excommunicated. Yet the condemned books had not been all destroyed, and fresh copies were speedily multiplied.

By these proceedings a great excitement was produced. The archbishop, while publishing his ban in the cathe­dral, was interrupted by a serious outbreak; and there were fights in which some lives were lost.The arch­bishop was derided in ballads as an “alphabetarian”, who had burnt books which he could not read. Hus, in his sermons, condemned the burning in a more serious strain. It had not, he said, rooted out any evil from a single heart, but had destroyed many good and holy thoughts; it had given occasion for disorder, hatred, even blood­shed. He also set forth a treatise in which he main­tained, on the authority of fathers and ecclesiastical writers, that the books of heretics (under which name he would not include any one who did not contradict Holy Scripture “by word, writing, or deed”), ought not to be burnt, but read.He de­clared, with reference to the archbishop’s prohibitions and censures, that he must obey God, and not man; and he, with some friends, announced that on certain days they would publicly defend certain of Wyclif’s books against all assailants.

On the election of John XXIII as pope, Hus renewed his appeal; and the king and queen wrote letters in his favour, requesting that the prohibition of preaching except in churches of certain kinds might be withdrawn, so that there should be no interference with Bethlehem chapel. Commissioners were appointed to inquire into the case, and Hus was cited to appear at Bologna;  but he was advised by his friends that his life would be in danger, as plots were laid to cut him off by the way. It seemed to him that to expose himself to death without any prospect of advantage to the church would be a tempting of God; he therefore contented himself with sending advocates to plead his cause, while the king, the queen, and the nobles of Bohemia, the university of Prague and the magistrates of the city, entreated the pope by letters that he might be excused from obeying the citation in person, and might be allowed to carry on his ministry as before. The representatives whom Hus sent to Bologna were un­able to obtain a hearing; some of them were imprisoned and otherwise ill treated; and Cardinal Brancacci, the last commissioner to whom the affair was referred, pro­nounced against him—excommunicating him with all his adherents, and decreeing that any place in which he might be should be interdicted. Archbishop Zbynko soon after uttered an interdict against Prague, whereupon Wenceslaus, in anger, punished some of the clergy for obeying it, while both he and his queen continued their intercessions with the pope in behalf of Hus, and entreated that the orthodoxy of Bohemia might not be defamed through misrepresentations. After a time, the archbishop, finding that he was unable to make head against the opposing influences, and that pope John was not likely to give him any effective support, became desirous of a compromise. A commission of ten persons, appointed by the king to consider how peace might be restored, advised that the archbishop should report Bohemia to be free from the infection of heresy, and should request the pope to recal the cita­tion of Hus with the excommunication which had been pronounced against him. To this Zbynko consented; but, although a letter to the pope had been prepared, the execution of the plan was prevented by the archbishop’s death, when on his way to invoke the support of the king’s brother, Sigismund of Hungary, in the religious distractions of Bohemia.

In September 1411 Hus addressed to the pope a letter which was intended to vindicate himself against the mis­representations which had been made of his opinions. He denies having taught that the material bread remains in the sacrament of the altar; that the host, when elevated, is Christ’s body, but ceases to be so when lowered again; that a priest in mortal sin cannot consecrate; that secular lords may refuse to pay tithes, and may take away the possessions of the clergy. He also denied that he had caused the withdrawal of the Germans from Prague; it was, he said, the effect of the resolution which they had taken in the belief that without them the university could not subsist. He maintained that Bethlehem was not a private chapel, explained his reasons for not complying with the citation to the papal court, and entreated that he might be excused on this account, and might be released from the consequences which had followed.

The successor of Zbynko was Albic of Uniczow, who, before entering into holy orders, had been the king’s physician. The dean of Passau, who conveyed the pall for the new archbishop, was also the bearer of a papal bull, by which a crusade was proclaimed against Ladislaus, king of Naples, as being excommunicate, with large offers of indulgences and other privileges. Wenceslaus allowed this bull to be published in Bohemia, although he was soon disgusted by the impudent pretensions and proceedings of those who undertook the publication, as well as by the serious drain of money which was paid for commutation of per­sonal service. The German clergy of Prague obeyed the papal orders; but Hus and Jerome vehemently opposed the bull, denouncing it as an antichristian act that, for the non-fulfilment of the conditions 0n which the kingdom of Naples was held under the papacy, a crusade should be proclaimed against a Christian prince, and that indul­gences should be prostituted by the promise of absolution as a reward for money or for bloodshed. A new and formidable commotion arose. Some who had hitherto been associated with Hus—especially Stephen of Palecz, an eminent doctor of theology—now took the papal side; and thus a breach was made in the party which had until then been bound together by community of national feel­ing and of philosophical and religious opinion. Palecz became one of the bitterest among the opponents of Hus; he and other doctors of the university wrote against him, and denounced all opposition to the bull; but Hus per­sisted in his course, and, when some preachers inveighed against him in the churches, they were interrupted by the laity, who in general favoured the reformer. Hus offered to maintain his opinions in disputation, on condition that, if proved to be wrong, he should be burnt, provided that the other party would submit to the same fate in case of defeat. But as they offered to sacrifice only one out of the many who were banded against the solitary cham­pion, he declared that the terms were unequal, and nothing came of his strange challenge.

The exciting discourses of Hus and Jerome were heard with enthusiasm by the students, who showed their zealous sympathy by escorting them home at night. But this was not enough for some of their friends, who caused the bull to be paraded about the city, fixed to the breasts of a prostitute who was seated in a cart, and afterwards to be burnt at the pillory. The chief contriver of this scene was Woksa of Waldstein, one of the king’s courtiers; but the impetuous Jerome was so far favourable to it that it was generally ascribed to him, and afterwards became the foundation of one of the charges against him at Constance.

Wenceslaus now forbade all language of insult against the pope, and all resistance to his bulls, under pain of death. But Hus continued his preaching, and the ex­citement became more alarming. One day, as a preacher of the crusade was setting forth his indulgences in a church, he was interrupted by three young men, belonging to the class of artisans, who told him that he lied, that master Hus had taught them the vanity of such privileges, and that the pope was antichrist for proclaiming them. The three were carried before the magistrates of the city, and next day were condemned to die, in accordance with the king’s late decree. Hus earnestly interceded for them, declaring that, if any one were to be put to death, he was himself more guilty than they; and the council appears to have promised that their lives should be spared. But when the popular agitation had been thus calmed, the young men were hastily executed. The passions of the multitude were now stirred to the uttermost. When the executioner proclaimed, in the usual form,  “Whoso doth the like, let him expect the like!”, a general cry burst forth, “We are all ready to do and to suffer the like!” Female devo­tees dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the victims, and treasured it up as a precious relic; some of the crowd even licked the blood. The bodies were carried off by the people, and were borne with solemn pomp to interment in the chapel of Bethlehem, which thence took the name of the Three Saints or Martyrs. Hus himself did not hesitate to speak of them as martyrs in sermons and writings; and, although he had not even been present at the funeral procession, he continued to the end of his life to be charged with having been the author of the movement.

The agitation at Prague continued. Hus combated the abuse of indulgences with untiring zeal, in sermons, disputations, and tracts; he denied that any human judge could with certainty forgive sins, and maintained that an excommunication unjustly uttered was no more to be dreaded than the ban of the Jewish synagogue. The parties became more violent and exasperated; the Germans were for pulling down Bethlehem chapel, while, on the other side, Hus had often to lament the discredit brought on his cause by partisans whose zeal was neither tempered by discretion nor adorned by consistency of life. Archbishop Albic, feeling himself unequal to con­tend with the difficulties of the case, exchanged his see for a lower but more tranquil dignity, and was succeeded by Conrad of Vechta, a Westphalian, formerly bishop of Olmütz, who, after having acted as administrator of the diocese for some months, was enthroned in July 1413.

The university of Prague had again condemned the forty-five propositions ascribed to Wyclif in July 1412; the clergy of the city had addressed to the pope a letter against Hus; and on the festival of the Purification, 1413, it was decreed by a council at Rome, under John XXIII, that all Wyclif’s works, of whatever kind, should be burnt, inasmuch as, although there might be truth in some of them, it was mixed with error. Hus was excommunicated and anathematized for his disregard of citations to the papal court. Every place in which he might be was to be interdicted; all who should coun­tenance him were to be partakers in his condemnation; and it was ordered that the sentence should be every­where published with the most solemn forms of the church. The new archbishop proceeded, with the king’s consent, to carry out these decrees, pronouncing an interdict on all Prague except the royal quarter, and ordering that Bethlehem chapel, as being the centre of the reforming movement, should be demolished. Hus protested against his condemnation; he set forth an appeal to the Saviour, in very earnest terms, and, after having caused a protest to be engraved on the walls of Bethlehem chapel, he withdrew from the tumults of Prague, at the king’s request, and with an assurance that Wenceslaus would endeavour to bring about a reconciliation with the clergy. For a time he lived in retirement, partly in the castles of nobles who favoured his opinions, but chiefly in the neighbourhood where the Hussite town of Tabor was afterwards founded. He kept up a lively correspondence with his followers at Prague, whom he exhorted not to allow the old place of his ministrations to be destroyed; and, notwithstanding the sentences which had been pronounced against him, he continued his preaching, which, wherever he went, aroused a strong indignation against the system of the Roman church, with its corruptions of doctrine and of practice. His pen, too, was actively employed in the production of writings in Latin, Bohemian, and German; and to this time belongs the treatise ‘Of the Church’, which is the most important of his works.

Resting on the rigid doctrine of predestination, Hus says that to be in the church is not the same as to be of the church. Some are in the church both in name and reality; some neither in the one nor in the other, as the foreknown heathen; some in name only, as the fore­known hypocrites, some in reality, although nominally they are without, as those predestined Christians whom the officers of antichrist profess to exclude by ecclesiasti­cal censures. No one can be assured of his predestina­tion, except through special revelation, so that it is sur­prising how the worldly clergy can have the confidence to claim the true membership of the church. Christ alone is head of the church; St. Peter was not its head, but was chief of the apostles. The pope is the vicar of St. Peter, if he walk in his steps; but if he give into covetousness, he is the vicar of Judas Iscariot. The pope and cardinals are not the body of the church; but they are the chief part of it as to dignity, if they follow Christ in humility. The pope owes his pre-eminence to Constantine, whose alleged donation Hus believes as firmly as he believes the tale of pope Joan. He repro­bates the flattery which was commonly used towards the pope, and denounces the luxury and other cor­ruptions of the cardinals. He disowns the charge of disobedience to the church, justifies himself as to the matters which had brought him under censure, and declares that excommunications, interdicts, and other sentences, if unjustly pronounced, are of no effect, and are not to be regarded. God alone, he says, knows to whom sin is to be forgiven; and Christ is the only true Roman high-priest, whom all are bound to obey in order to salvation.

This treatise was written in consequence of the pro­ceedings of a synod at Prague, where Hus was represented by John of Jessinitz, a doctor of canon law; but there was no definite result; and it was followed up by other writings against the chiefs of the ecclesiastical party. While Hus had been compelled to leave Prague, Jerome, too, withdrew, probably of his own accord, and betook himself again to travel—in the course of which he made his way into Russia.Before his return, Hus had already set out to present himself before the council of Constance.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE ALEXANDER V TO THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE.

A.D. 1409-1418.

 

 

The hopes of union and of reformation which had been connected With the council of Pisa were not to be realized. Both Gregory XII and Benedict XIII continued to maintain their claims to the papacy, so that instead ef two popes there were now three, or, in the language of a writer of the time, the church had received a third husband in addition to those who already claimed her affections. Soon after the election of Alexander V, Gerson addressed to him a discourse on the duties of his office; but Alexander was not inclined to benefit by this advice. Although a learned theologian, he was altogether without the strength of character which is requisite for government. His easiness of disposition led him to grant all that was asked of him. Himself careless as to matters of business, he advanced many Franciscans to places for which they were unfitted by their want of pratical habits; in order to provide for the multitude of applicants, he increased the offices of his court to such a degree that they fell into contempt; and although, having no kindred, he was free from the temp­tations of nepotism, he was lavish in gifts, especially to the order of which he had been a member, and in whose society he continued to live. Such was his profusion in his new dignity, that he spoke of himself as having been rich as a bishop, poor as a cardinal, but a beggar as pope.Instead of attempting at once the work of reform, he professed to reserve it for a council which was to meet in 1412; and on the 7th of August 1409 he dissolved the council of Pisa.Soon after this Alexander displayed his partiality for his associates, and added to the subjects of discord which already existed in the church, by a bull, in which he authorized the members of the mendicant orders to receive tithes, and not only to hear confessions and to give absolution everywhere, but to administer the other sacraments, without regard to the rights of bishops or of parish priests; and the parochial clergy were charged to read in all churches this annihila­tion of their own rights, under pain of being punished as contumacious and obstinate heretics. Immediately a great ferment was excited. While the Augustine friars and the Franciscans took advantage of it, and the latter especially displayed much elation on account of their new privileges, the Dominicans and the Carmelites disowned it, as something which they had not asked for and of which they had no need. The university of Paris, headed by Gerson, sent envoys to the papal court for the purpose of inspecting the original document, as if nothing less than such evidence could be enough to warrant its genuineness; and, as it professed to be issued with the consent and advice of the cardinals, the envoys waited on the members of the college individually, whom they found unanimous in disavowing all concern in it. By this bull were rescinded no less than seven bulls of former popes. The papal privilege was met in France by the expulsion of the Franciscans and Augustinians from the university of Paris, and by a royal order, issued at the request of the university, forbidding the parochial clergy to let the mendicants hear confessions or preach in their churches.

Gregory XII, after his attempt to hold a council at Cividale, had withdrawn to Gaeta, where he lived under the protection of Ladislaus, to whom it is said that he sold his rights to the sovereignty of Rome and the papal states. Ladislaus got possession of the city; but after a time it was regained for Alexander by the legate of  Bologna, Balthazar Cossa, who was aided by Lewis of Anjou, by the Florentines, and by an insurrection within Rome itself. Alex­ander was driven from Pisa by a pestilence; but instead of complying with the invitation of the Romans, who sent him the keys of their city, he was constrained by Cossa, whose ascendency over him was absolute, to make his way across the Apennines through snow and ice to Bologna, where he arrived on the Epiphany, and died on the 3rd of May 1410. His end was generally explained by the ready supposition of poison, and this was supposed by many to have been administered through the con­trivance of the legate.

On the 16th of May—the third day after the conclave had been formed—Cossa was chosen as pope by seven­teen cardinals, and took the name of John the Twenty-third. The accounts of his earlier life are such that we can hardly conceive how, if they may be believed, he should have been able to gain influence as an ecclesiastic, and eventually to attain the papal chair by the votes of his brother cardinals; yet all contemporary writers agree in the substance of the story, and the very blackest parts of it were brought against him without contradiction at the council of Constance. Born of a noble Neapolitan family, Cossa had early entered into the ranks of the clergy; but his clerical profession had not prevented him from engaging in the piratical warfare between Naples and Hungary; and in this stage of his life he acquired a habit, which afterwards adhered to him, of waking by night and sleeping by day. After having resided for some time at Bologna, where he affected the character of a student, he was made archdeacon of that city by Boniface IX, who afterwards transferred him to Rome and appointed him papal chamberlain. In this office Cossa exercised his genius in devising new forms of corruption for the benefit of the ecclesiastical revenues. To him is ascribed the system of sending out preachers to vend indulgences with the most impudent pretensions, while he himself was notorious for enriching himself by­simony and bribes. In 1403 he was sent back to Bo­logna as cardinal-legate—partly, it is said, with a view of removing him from the neighbourhood of his brother’s wife, with whom he carried on a scandalous intercourse.

At Bologna he established a despotic and tyrannical power. The people were ground by taxation, monopolies, and plunder: licenses were sold for the exercise of infamous occupations—of usury, keeping of gaming­-houses, prostitution.His cruelty towards those who offended him was so widely exercised, that it is said to have visibly thinned the population of the city; his lust was so inordinate, that within the first year of his legation two hundred maidens, wives, or widows, and a multitude of consecrated nuns, are said to have fallen victims to it. He is charged with having bribed the cardinals to desert Gregory, whose arms he defaced on the public buildings of Bologna before setting out for the council of Pisa; and in that council he took a prominent part, although, on being proposed for the papacy, he found it expedient to put forward Alexander, as one whom he might make his tool, and who was not likely to stand long in his way.At Bologna, the conclave was subject to the legate’s control, and various stories are told as to the manner in which he carried his own election, by the use of bribery and of terror;  but as, in the course of the later proceed­ings against him, no charge was brought on this point, these stories may perhaps be safely rejected.

John began his pontificate by promulgating rules for his chancery which sanctioned the worst of the existing corruptions, and by uttering curses, according to usage, against his rivals Gregory and Benedict. The growing power of Ladislaus gave just ground for alarm; and John had a personal cause of dislike against him for having condemned two of the pope’s own brothers to death as pirates—from the execution of which sentence they had with difficulty been rescued by the intercession of Boniface IX. John declared the king to be excom­municate and deposed, and proclaimed a crusade against him with those offers of indulgences which, as we have seen, excited a commotion in Bohemia; and, in conjunction with Lewis of Anjou, he carried the war against Ladislaus into southern Italy. At Rocca Secca, near Ceperano, the pope and his allies gained a victory; but Lewis was unable to follow up this advantage, and found himself obliged to return to Provence, from which he made no further attempt on Italy.

After a time John found it expedient to enter into negotiations with Ladislaus, who agreed to abandon Gregory XII, but exacted heavy conditions—that the pope should disallow the claim of Lewis of Anjou to Naples, and that of Peter of Aragon to Sicily; that he should acknowledge Ladislaus as king of both territories, should declare him standard-bearer of the Roman church and empire, and should pay him a large sum of money. Gregory, finding himself obliged to leave the king’s territories, made his way from Gaeta by sea—not without danger from hostile ships—to Rimini, where he found a refuge with Charles Malatesta, the only potentate who still adhered to him;  and through this friend he carried on for a time negotiations with pope John—each of the rivals en­deavouring to persuade the other to resign by liberal offers of compensation.

As if in fulfilment of the engagements into which his predecessor Alexander had entered, John affected to summon a council to meet at Rome in 1412, with a view to the reform of the church. But the number of bishops who attended was very scanty, and the only result seems to have been a condemnation of Wyclif’s writings, which were burnt on the steps ot St. Peter’s. The council broke up without any formal dissolution, in consequence of the troubles in which the pope was involved.

At Rome John had been received with acclamations and festive displays; but he soon made himself detested by the heaviness of the taxation which he imposed. The richer citizens were drained of their money; officials of all kinds were com­pelled to pay largely for their places; a rate was levied on trades and mechanical occupations; the coin was debased; the duties on wine were increased to such a degree that the growers found themselves driven from the Roman market. On this account, and because Ladislaus did not support the pope in an attempt to extort a second payment of fees from prelates and others who had held office under Gregory, a fresh rupture took place. The king got posession of Rome by surprise, while John fled to Viterbo and thence to Florence and Bologna. The palaces of the pope and cardinals were plundered; many of the churches were turned into stables. The castle of St. Angelo, after having held out for some time, was treache­rously surrendered; and Ladislaus overran the whole country as far as Siena.

In the distress to which he was now reduced, John found himself obliged to turn, as his only resource, to Sigismund, the emperor-elect. At the death of Rupert, in May 1410, it had seemed as if the empire, like the church, were to be distracted between three claimants; for, while some of the electors wished to bring forward the deposed Wenceslaus again, one party chose his brother, king Sigismund of Hungary, while another party chose Jobst or Jodocus, marquis of Moravia. But Jodocus, who is said to have been ninety years old, was speedily removed by death, and Sigismund received the votes of those who had before stood aloof from him—among others that of Wenceslaus himself, with whom he was formally reconciled. For a time Sigismund’s energies were chiefly occupied by a war with the Venetians for the possession of Dalmatia; but a truce of five years, concluded in 1413, set him free to attend to the affairs of the empire and of the church. Sigismund was the most powerful emperor since the days of Frederick II, and at this time his influence was the stronger because France and England were about to re­new their great struggle, and France, in addition to its dangers from the foreign enemy, was a prey to the bloody feuds of the Burgundian and Orleanist factions. The emperor’s noble presence, his accomplishments and knightly deportment, his love of splendour and mag­nificence (although this was continually restrained by pecuniary difficulties arising out of the imprudence of his youth), procured him general popularity. The faults of his earlier days—among which faithlessness, harshness, and excessive love of pleasure are noted—appeared to have been abandoned as the great dignity which he had attained brought with it a deep feeling of duty and responsibility. Most especially he was desirous to heal the schism of the church. As king of Hungary, he had acknowledged John, and at his election to the empire the archbishop of Mayence had exacted from him an oath that he would not accept the crown from any other pope than John or a successor of the same line. With re­gard to Ladislaus, Sigismund’s interest was one with that of John; for Ladislaus, in addition to the ambitious projects which he had formed as to Italy, directly claimed Sigismund’s kingdom of Hungary, and even had views on the imperial dignity.

With a view to the reunion of the church, Sigismund urged on John the necessity of a general council. If such an assembly were to meet, the question as to the place of its meeting was important for John’s interest. He himself told his secretary, Leonard of Arezzo, that it must not be in any place where the emperor was too powerful; that, while professing to give full powers to the commissioners whom he was about to send to Sigismund, he intended secretly to limit their choice to certain Italian cities : but at taking leave of the commis­sioners, acting on a sudden impulse, he professed entire confidence in them, and destroyed the list of places. On finding that they had agreed to fix on Constance, a town beyond the Alps and within the imperial dominions, he burst out into bitter reproaches against them, and cursed his own folly in having departed from his first resolution.At Lodi he had a meeting with the emperor, and urged on him that the council should be held in some city of Lombardy; but Sigis­mund, who had already issued his summons, was not to be diverted from his purpose. The plea that the patri­archs and cardinals would be unwilling to cross the Alps was met by the answer that the ecclesiastical electors of the empire would be equally unwilling to do so in the opposite direction.

Sigismund, in respectful terms, exhorted the pope to amend the courses by which he had scandalized Chris­tendom, especially as to simony; and John promised compliance. The emperor accompanied him as far as Cremona on his return towards Bologna. The French reformers, finding that the influence of their own nation had been insufficient to heal the schism, had now turned their hopes towards the emperor, and Gerson had urged the assembling of a council on him as a duty of his office which could not be neglected without mortal sin. In accordance with this view, Sigismund, as temporal head of Christendom, had sent forth his citation for a general council, while John, as pope, was persuaded to do the like. The time fixed in both documents, as if by independent authority, was the first of November in the following year. The emperor invited both Gregory XII and Benedict to attend, with their adherents, but refrained from giving to either of them the title of pope.

John was already committed to the council, when he was informed that Ladislaus, against whom he was en­deavouring to enlist troops, had suddenly died at Naples. By this event his position was rendered easier, and less dependent on the alliance of Sigismund, so that he entertained the idea of taking up his abode at Rome instead of fulfilling his promise to appear at Con­stance. Some of his friends endeavoured to alarm him by telling him that, if he should go to Constance as pope, he would return as a private man. But the cardinals, fear­ing lest he should plunge into hazardous schemes for re­covering the whole of the church’s territory, insisted on the fulfilment of his promise, and he unwillingly set forth from Bologna.In passing through the Tyrol, he had an interview with duke Frederick of Austria,whom he knew to be hostile to Sigismund; and it was agreed that in case of necessity the pope might reckon on the duke’s protection. As John was descending the Arlberg he was upset in the snow, and vented loud curses on his own folly in having set out on such an expedition; and when he arrived in sight of Constance, its appearance drew from him the exclamation, “So are foxes caught”.

Almost from the beginning of the schism the cries for a reform of the church had been loud and frequent. Nicolas of Clemanges, then rector of the university of Paris, had led the way in 1394 by a forcible appeal to the king of France; and about 1401 appeared a tract ‘Of the Corrupt State of the Church,’ which has been usually, although perhaps wrongly, ascribed to him. In this the condition of things is painted in very dark, and per­haps somewhat exaggerated, colours. The writer enlarges on the decay of the church from the simplicity of its primitive days. The three great vices of the clergy he declares to be luxury, pride, and greed; vices which prevail among every class from the pope downwards. He censures the popes for their usurpation of patronage, for the unworthy bestowal of it on ignorant and useless men, whereby the whole order of clergy had fallen into contempt, and for the exactions by which they oppressed the clergy. He is severe on the corruptions of the Roman court; on the pride of cardinals, their monstrous pluralities, their simony and venality, their unedifying manner of life. Bishops neglect their dio­ceses and hang about the courts of princes, under the false pretence of being needed as their counsellors; they are intent on getting money by discreditable means, and spend their time in frivolous and indecent amusements. Canons imitate in their degree the faults of the bishops. Monks are so much worse than others as by their pro­fession they ought to be better; and mendicants vitiate the good deeds which they claim by their unseemly boasting of them, so that they are the Pharisees of the church, and our Lord’s condemnations of the Jewish Pharisees are applicable to them. In conclusion the writer warns of dangers which are at hand, and declares that the only safety for the church is in humiliation and amendment.Peter d'Ailly, now cardinal and arch­bishop of Cambray, agreed with other writers in desiring reform, but saw greater practical hindrances in the way; and in 1410 he put forth a tract, ‘Of the Difficulty of Reformation in a General Council’, urging the vacancy of the empire, the disorganized condition of the church, and the danger that the cardinals might not agree in an election, or might increase the existing perplexities. To this a reply was made in a treatise ‘On the Ways of Uniting and Reforming the Church in a General Council,’ which has been commonly (but perhaps incorrectly) attributed to Gerson. The writer is strongly opposed to the assumptions and to the corruptions of the papacy. He considers that the necessity of the case is so strong as to overpower all ordinary difficulties. The pope, he says, is not above the gospel; he received his office for the general good, and for the general good he ought to resign it, if necessary. The popes should be urged to cession; and if this cannot be obtained, it would be legitimate to pursue the great object even by the use of fraud, violence, bribery, imprison­ment, and death. In such a question all Christians, even to the lowest in station, are interested; all, and more especially those in high authority, are entitled to interfere. The emperor, as general advocate of the church, ought to call a general council, and a new pope ought to be chosen, who must neither be one of the exist­ing claimants, nor a member of the college of cardinals; for cardinals ought, in the writer’s opinion, to be always regarded as ineligible on account of the danger of collu­sion, which might lead to the choice of unsuitable men. And the work concludes with suggesting some reforms which the future council ought to take in hand.

The influence of the school to which these writers belonged had been apprehended by John, and he had endeavoured to gain them by bestowing large privileges and other benefits on the university of Paris, and by raising Peter d’Ailly, as one of its most eminent mem­bers, to the dignity of cardinal.

The eyes of all Christendom were now turned with intense interest to the expected council. It was not merely to decide between the claims of rival popes, but was to settle the question whether a pope or a general council were the highest authority in the church. As the time of meeting drew near, multitudes of every class poured into Constance, and the arrivals continued for some months after the opening of the council. Of the ecclesiastical members, some appeared in plain and simple style, and others in pomp which displayed the union of secular wealth with ecclesiastical dignity. Among the latter class John of Nassau, the primate of Germany, distinguished himself by entering the city in complete armour, attended by a splendid train of 352 men, with 700 horses. The whole number of eccle­siastics present, with their attendants, is reckoned at 18,000. During the sittings of the council there were usually 50,000 strangers within the walls of Constance; sometimes twice that number, with 30,000 horses. Among those who were attracted to the great ecclesi­astical assembly by the hope of gain were persons of all sorts—merchants and traders, lawyers in great numbers and in all their varieties, artists and craftsmen, players, jugglers, and musicians to the number of 1700, and no less than 700 avowed prostitutes.

John had obtained from the magistrates of Constance certain privileges as to jurisdiction. He ordered the arms of his rival Gregory to be torn down from the lodgings of Gregory’s representative, the cardinal of Ragusa; and when this act was afterwards called in question, the majority of the council justified it on the ground that such a display ought not to have been made within the territories where John was acknowledged, nor unless Gregory himself were present.

On the 5th of November the council was opened with a solemn service; and on the 16th the first general session was held. Among the members of the council (of whom, however, many did not arrive until later) were the titular patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem, twenty-two cardinals, twenty archbishops, nearly a hundred bishops and thirty-three titular bishops, a hundred and twenty-four abbots, and two hundred and fifty doctors, with many secular princes or representatives of princes.

Of the Italian prelates, the most active in the council was Zabarella, cardinal-archbishop of Florence; of those from the northern kingdoms, the leaders were Peter d’Ailly and the bishop of Salisbury, Robert Hallam, who had already borne a conspicuous part in the council of Pisa.

The treasures which John had at his disposal enabled him to exercise much influence. He contrived, by underhand movements, to divide the interests of the various nations, and to distract them from an agreement in action; and it is said that he made himself master of secrets through informants who resorted to him by night, and whom he was accustomed to absolve formally from the guilt of perjury which they incurred by their revela­tions.

Very early in the proceedings of the council there were indications of a spirit which it was impossible for John to misinterpret. Thus, when it was proposed by some Italians, on the 7th of December, that the council of Pisa should be confirmed—a step by which the new assembly would have bound itself to the pope of the line there established—it was resolved, in opposition to this proposal, that the council should be regarded as a con­tinuation of that of Pisa, and therefore could not confirm its acts; and it was evident that the intention was not to decide between the rival claimants of the papacy, but to persuade all three to a cession of their claims, and to elect a new pope to the vacant office.

On the morning of Christmas-day, before dawn, Sigismund, who had lately received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle, arrived at Constance, having crossed the lake in a boat: and forthwith he proceeded to assist at a solemn mass which was celebrated by the pope. Habited in a dalmatic, and with the crown on his head, he read (according to the privilege of his office) the gospel of the decree which went out from Caesar Augus­tus; and the words were heard as betokening an asser­tion of the imperial superiority over the papacy. John put into his hand a sword for the defence of the church: and the emperor swore that he would always labour for that end to the utmost of his power. But, although this engagement was sincerely made, Sigismund was firmly resolved to pursue his own policy, instead of lending himself to the pope’s schemes; and it was in vain that John, knowing the necessities by which he was encumbered in the attempt to maintain the state of im­perial dignity, endeavoured to propitiate him by presents or loans of money.

Three days later, cardinal d’Ailly preached before the emperor, from the text, “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars”. The sun he interprets as representing the papacy, the moon as the imperial power, the stars as the various estates of the church. There can, he holds, neither be real reform without union, nor real union without reform. The pope, if he deviate from the likeness of the sun by entering ill, by living ill, by ruling ill, is but a false image of the sun. There cannot be three suns, but only one true sun. The emperor attends the council, not that he may be over it, but that he may benefit it; not to define spiritual and ecclesiastical matters by royal authority, but to maintain by his power those things which the synod shall determine. The members of the council—the stars—are assembled by the call of the supreme pontiff, who alone has the right to convoke general councils. The stars are to have their share of influence, as well as the sun and the moon. The power of decreeing and defining belongs, not to the pope alone, but to the whole general council; and to assert the contrary is a flattery of the pope which deserves to be severely reprobated.

In order to avoid disputes as to precedence, it was arranged that the members of the council should sit promiscuously, and that this should not be regarded as infringing on the privileges of any one.But questions arose as to the right and as to the manner of voting. In earlier councils the power of voting had been restricted to bishops and abbots; but d’Ailly argued that it ought now to be extended to other classes; that the precedents of ancient councils showed much variety; that as the present questions did not relate to the church’s faith or to the sacraments, the examples of former times were not binding; that the titular bishops, of whom many were present at the council, were not entitled to be held of the same account with the bishops of the earlier church; that the learning possessed by doctors of theology and of civil and canon law—a class which had arisen out of the uni­versities, and had, therefore, been unknown in the days of the older councils—was of such value as to render them fitter to be members of a council than an ignorant bishop or abbot; and that the representatives of princes, of ab­sent prelates, and of capitular churches, ought also to be admitted. Fillastre, cardinal of St. Mark, in arguing on the same side, maintained that many parish priests were, both by the weight of their character and by the importance of their charges, more to be regarded than some bishops; and he declared “that an ignorant king or prelate is but a crowned or mitred ass”. The arguments for extending the right of voting prevailed, to the disad­vantage of John, who had relied on the numbers of his titular bishops. But his interest was yet more seriously affected by a novelty which was introduced as to the manner of voting. Hitherto the decisions of councils had been determined by a majority of the whole body. But as John had at his command a host of insignificant prelates—titulars, officials of his court, and needy occu­pants of petty Italian sees—it was proposed, in order to counteract this undue influence, that each nation should debate by itself, and that the final decision should be given by the representatives of the several nations, which were thus to be on an equality. This proposal, derived from the arrangements of the university of Paris, was carried by the emperor’s influence; and the four nations—Italian, French, German, and Eng­lish—proceeded to their separate deliberations. Their meetings were held in the refectories and chapter-houses of the various convents in the town, while the general sessions of the council took place in the cathedral.

Cardinal Fillastre, who, as dean of Reims, had for­merly been a zealous champion of the papacy, sent forth a paper, in which, after a considera­tion of other expedients, it was proposed that each of the rival popes should cede his claims, and should receive valuable preferment in the church by way of consolation. On becoming acquainted with this scheme, John is said to have been violently angry; but stronger measures were at hand.

A paper of charges against John was produced before the council—it is supposed, by an Italian.These charges were in part so dark and monstrous that it was said that they ought to be kept secret, out of reverence for the papal office, and in order to avoid the general scandal of Christendom. John, who through his secret informants became aware of the movement, was inclined to admit some of the accusations, to deny others, and to take his stand on a supposed principle that a pope could not be deposed except for heresy; but he was persuaded by his confidential advisers to await the progress of events. In the meantime the German, French, and English nations, without knowing that he had any sus­picion of the charges, resolved that he should be advised to resign his dignity; and John, alarmed by intelligence which he had secretly gained, agreed to the proposal, with the condition that his rivals should also resign. Immediately after having entered into this engagement, he began to attempt an escape from it; he rejected two forms of cession which were proposed by the council, and the council rejected a form of his proposing; but at length he was induced, at the second general session, to swear before the high altar of the cathe­dral, after having himself celebrated mass, that he would freely resign the papacy if the other claimants would also resign, or if in any other way his resignation might extinguish the schism and re­store peace to the church. This promise was received with unbounded joy; the emperor kissed John’s feet, and thanked him in the name of the council, and the patriarch of Antioch added the thanks of the whole church. Te Deum was sung, and the bells of the cathedral announced the happy event to the world. When, however, John was asked to put his engagement into the form of a bull, he refused with vehement anger; but on being requested by Sigismund in person, he saw that further resistance would be useless, and on the 7th of March he issued a bull of the desired tenor.

It was Sigismund’s wish that the council should settle the religious difficulties which had arisen in Bohemia, as well as the great schism. He therefore requested his brother Wenceslaus to send Hus to Constance, and promised him a safe-conduct. Hus, who had always pro­fessed to desire the opportunity of appealing to a general council, willingly accepted the summons. He presented himself before a synod held by the archbishop of Prague in August 1414, and publicly challenged any one to im­pugn his faith, on condition of suffering, in case of defeat, the same penalties which would have fallen on Hus if convicted.The challenge was not accepted, and Palecz describes the Hussite party as so exasperated that it was unsafe to call them by their leader’s name. The arch­bishop, on being questioned by the nobles who befriended Hus, declared that he had no charge of heresy to bring against him, but that as he had been accused by the pope, he must make his excuses to the pope; and they wrote to Sigismund, requesting that Hus might be allowed to defend himself freely, lest Bohemia should be unjustly discredited. Hus obtained certificates of his orthodoxy from the king, from the archbishop, and from the papal inquisitor for Bohemia—Nicolas, bishop of Nazareth, to whom he had submitted himself for examination. Yet in truth his position was one which it is now hardly possible to understand; for while he believed himself to be a faith­ful adherent of the system established in the church, his opinions were, in some respects, such as later experience has shown to be altogether subversive of it.

On the eve of setting out for the council he showed some signs of misgiving. He was warned by friends not to trust the promised safe-conduct; and some letters which he wrote by way of farewell indicate a foreboding that he might never be allowed to return. On the nth of October, without waiting for the arrival of the safe-con­duct, Hus began his journey under the escort of three noblemen appointed by the Bohemian king, John and Henry of Chlum, and Wenceslaus of Dubna. As he passed through the towns of Germany, he offered to give an account of his faith, and engaged in frequent discus­sions. Notwithstanding the old national quarrel as to the university of Prague (which was afterwards revived as a charge against him), he was well received everywhere, especially at Nuremberg; nor was there any attempt to enforce the interdict which had been pronounced against any place in which he might be.

On the 3rd of November Hus arrived at Constance, and two days later (on the very day of the opening of the council) he received the promised safe-conduct, which Sigismund had granted at Spires on the 14th of October. In answer to an application by John of Chlum, John XXIII declared that Hus should be safe at Constance if he had slain the pope’s own brother; and he suspended the interdict and ban, although he desired that Hus should refrain from attendance at mass, lest some excite­ment should arise. But Hus never ceded his right to perform the priestly functions, and he continued to cele­brate mass as before. In the meantime two of his bit­terest enemies arrived at Constance,—Stephen of Palecz, whose breach with him has been already mentioned, and one Michael of Deutschbrod, who, after having been a parish priest at Prague, had become a projector of mining speculations, but had since been appointed by the pope to the office of proctor in causes of faith, and thence was commonly styled De Causis. These and other adversaries posted upon the doors of churches bills denouncing Hus as an excommunicated and obstinate heretic; they supplied the pope, the cardinals, and other members of the council with extracts maliciously selected from his writings; they circulated tales and rumours against him, representing his errors as of the darkest kind, and yet as so popular in Bohemia that, if he were allowed to return, the lives of the clergy would not be safe there.

Proposals were made by which Hus might probably have been allowed to escape easily; but he had always insisted on a public hearing, and he looked for the ex­pected arrival of the emperor. By the industrious exer­tions of his enemies, and by a false report that he had attempted a flight from Constance, the authorities were persuaded to place him under restraint. On the 28th of November he was decoyed into the pope’s residence, and was thence removed for custody to the house of the precentor of the cathedral; and on the 6th of December he was transferred to a dungeon in the Dominican con­vent, where the stench and other inconveniences soon produced a serious illness, so that his medical advisers prescribed a removal. Meanwhile his friend John of Chlum protested loudly against his imprisonment as an insult to the emperor, who had granted a safe-conduct. He reproached the pope to his face, and, by an appeal to Sigismund, procured an order that Hus should be set at liberty;  and as this was disregarded, he affixed to the church doors on Christmas-eve, when the emperor was approaching the city, a protest in Latin and in German against the treachery which had been practised towards Hus, and the neglect of the emperor’s warrant for his liberation.

While confined in his noisome prison, without access to books, and almost at a loss for the means of writing, Hus composed some tracts on religious subjects, at the request of his keepers and for their instruction, and was required to draw up answers to a set of charges brought against him by Palecz and Michael de Causis, the pope having on the first of December appointed certain commissioners for the investigation of his case. These charges were partly grounded on extracts unfairly made from his treatise ‘Of the Church’ and other books, partly on the evidence of unguarded letters which had been intercepted. On being questioned as to the articles, he explained the sense in which he believed them; but on being asked whether he would defend them, he answered “No,” and added that he stood at the determination of the council. He declared his wish to adhere to the church, to the tradition of the fathers, and to the canons, except where these were opposite to Scripture; and he professed himself willing to retract any errors, and to be instructed by any ma—of course, with the secret condition that the instruction should agree with his previous convictions. As being accused of heresy, he was not allowed the assistance of an advocate; where­upon he told the commissioners that he committed his cause to Him who would shortly judge them all, as his advocate and proctor.

With regard to the treasury of the merits of the saints, their intercession, and the power and dignity of the blessed Virgin, he expressed himself in accordance with the current theology of the time. As to the eucharistic presence, he held that it was enough for a simple Christian to believe the verity of the Saviour’s body and blood; but for himself he acknowledged the change denoted by the name of transubstantiation, and made use of the term itself. This change he held to be wrought by Christ himself through the medium of the priest; and therefore that a wicked priest might consecrate effectually, although to his own condem­nation. One of the charges against him related to the administration of the cup to the laity. The neces­sity of this had been maintained by one James (or Jacobellus) of Misa, a parish priest of Prague, after Hus had set out for Constance; and Hus, on having his attention drawn to the question, declared the practice to be scriptural, primitive, and desirable, but would not affirm the necessity of it.

Unfortunately for Hus, the liberal or reforming party in the council was not disposed to favour him. The Parisian school, while bent on limiting the power of the papacy, insisted on strictness of orthodoxy, and regarded Hus as likely, by opinions which to them seemed extravagant and revolutionary, to bring danger and discredit on their own projects of reforms; moreover, as nominalists, they were opposed to the realism of his philosophical tenets. Gerson had written to the arch­bishop of Prague, urging him to use severe measures against the errors which had arisen in Bohemia, and, if ecclesiastical censures should be insufficient, to have recourse to the secular arm. He had obtained from the Theological faculty of Paris a condemnation of twenty propositions extracted from Hus’s writings; and in for­warding this condemnation to the Bohemian primate, he had spoken of the doctrine that one who is in mortal sin has no dominion over Christian people as one against which “all dominion, both temporal and spiritual, ought to rise, in order to exterminate it rather by fire and sword than by curious reasoning”.  From Gerson and his party, therefore, no sympathy was to be expected by the Bohemian reformer.

Sigismund, on receiving from John of Chlum the first notice of Hus’s imprisonment, was indignant at the violation of his safe-conduct, and threatened to break open the prison. After reaching Constance he was still so much dissatisfied on this account, that he even withdrew for a time from the city; but it was represented to him that, if he persisted in such a course, the council must break up, and he shrank from the thought of not only endangering his own reputation for orthodoxy, but rendering all his labours void and perpetuating the division of Christendom. He was plied with arguments and with learning from the canon law, urging that his power did not extend to the protection of a heretic from the punishment due to his errors; that the letter which he had granted ought not to be used to the injury of the catholic faith; that he was not responsible, in­asmuch as the council had granted no safe-conduct, and the council was greater than the emperor.It would seem, too, that his feelings with regard to Hus were altered by the reports which reached him, so that he came to regard the Bohemian reformer as a teacher of mischievous errors, both in politics and in religion. The king of Aragon wrote to him that “faith is not broken in the case of one who breaks his faith to God”; and unhappily the emperor consented to violate truth, honour, and humanity by declaring that the council was at liberty to take its own course as to inquiries into charges of heresy. At a later time he attempted to palliate this concession by alleging the importunities with which he had been assailed, and the difficulties of his position.

The consent which pope John had given to the violation of the imperial safe-conduct in the case of Hus was to recoil on himself; and it was in vain that, when the council proceeded against him, he appealed to the promises which had been made to him. In the hope of propitiating the emperor (of whom it is said that he habitually spoke in very contemptuous terms), he be­stowed on him the golden rose, which was the special mark of papal favour;but Sigismund was not to be diverted from his purpose by this gift, which, instead of keeping it, he dedicated to the blessed Virgin in the cathedral of Constance. Strict orders were issued that no one should be permitted to leave the town; and John, after some urgency, was brought to promise that he would not depart until after the council should have ended its sessions. Some differences of opinion now began to show themselves between the nations. The Germans and the English were bent on sacrificing John for the unity of the church; Hallam, bishop of Salisbury, told him to his face, in the emperor’s presence, that a general council was superior to the pope, and the speech met with no rebuke from Sigismund, to whom John com­plained of it. But the Italians had always been with John, and the French now began to show a milder disposition towards him—chiefly, it would seem, from a spirit of opposition to the English members, whose king was at this very time preparing to carry his arms into the heart of France

In the hope of effecting some diversion, John pro­posed that the council should remove to Nice, or some place in its neighbourhood, or that he himself should repair to the same region for a con­ference with his rival Benedict; but these schemes met with no favour, and he found himself driven to another course. On the evening of the 20th of March, while the general attention was engrossed by a tournament given by duke Frederick of Austria (whom, as we have seen, John had before engaged in his interest), the pope escaped from Constance in the disguise of a groom, and fled to Schaffhausen, which was within the duke’s territory. Thence he wrote to the council that he had no intention of evading his engagements, but had left Constance in order that he might execute them with greater liberty and in a more healthful air; and he declared that duke Frederick had not been privy to his flight.

On the 23rd of March, when the council was about to send envoys to the fugitive pope, Gerson delivered a discourse in which the principles of the reforming party were strongly pronounced. The Head of the church, he said, is Christ; the pope is its secondary head. The union between Christ and the church is inseparable, but the union of the church and the pope may be dissolved. As the church, or a general council which represents it, is directed by the Holy Ghost, even a pope is bound to hear and to obey such a council under pain of being accounted as a heathen and a publican. A pope can­not annul its decrees, and, although it may not take away the pope’s power, it may limit that power. A general council may be assembled without the consent or man­date of a lawfully elected and living pope—among other cases, if he should himself be accused, and should refuse to call a council; and also if there be a doubt between rival claimants of the papacy. And the pope is bound to accept the decisions of a council with a view to the termination of a schism.

About the same time the university of Paris sent two papers of conclusions, which, although not fully adopted by the council, were of great use to it. In these papers it was laid down that the pope could not dissolve the council, and that any attempt to do so would bring him under suspicion of schism, if not of heresy; that the church is more necessary, better, of greater dignity, more honourable, more powerful, more steady in the faith, and wiser than the pope, and is superior to him; that the pope holds his power through the church and as its representative; and that the council may judge and depose him, even as it may be necessary to take a sword out of the hand of a madman.

The language of Gerson’s sermon became known to John on the same day by means of the envoys to whom it had been addressed. In the hope of breaking up the council, he immediately sum­moned his cardinals, with the members of his household and the officials of his court, to join him; and seven cardinals, with many of the inferior persons, obeyed the summons. Yet it would seem that the pope was made a coward by his conscience; for, instead of hurling ana­themas at his opponents in the lofty style of Hildebrand, he could only have recourse to complaints and evasions. He wrote to the king of France, to the duke of Orleans, to the university of Paris, and others, querulously setting forth his grievances against the emperor and the council.

There was indeed reason to fear that the council would be unable to continue its sessions; some were even afraid that it might end in a general tumult and plunder; but Sigismund, by firmly exerting his authority and influence, succeeded in keeping the great body of the assembly together, and in holding them to the pursuit of the object for which they had met. At the third general session, on the 26th of March, it was affirmed that, notwithstand­ing the withdrawal of the pope, or of any others, the sacred council was not dissolved, but remained in its integrity and authority; that it ought not to be dissolved until it should have effected the extirpation of the schism and a reform of the church in faith and morals, in head and members; that it was not to be transferred to any other place; and that none of the members should leave Constance without its permission until its proceedings should be duly concluded.

In a general congregation, on the 29th of March, Gerson proposed a strong censure against John on account of his flight; but the cardinals succeeded in averting it. At the fourth session, on the following day, it was resolved that the council’s power, derived imme­diately from Christ, was superior to all dignities,—even to that of the pope, who was bound to obey it in matters relating to the faith and to the extirpation of the schism. When this document came to be read aloud by cardinal Zabarella, he was persuaded by his brother-cardinals to leave out such parts as were most strongly antipapal; but, as the nations complained loudly of this, the omitted passages were at the next session read out by the archbishop of Posen. At the same session it was resolved that Sigismund should be re­quested to bring back John, who, in alarm at the intelli­gence which he daily received as to the proceedings of the council, had removed on Good Friday from Schaffhausen to the castle of Lauffenburg.There, in the presence of witnesses, he executed a written protest, declaring that his concessions had been made through fear of violence, and therefore were not binding; and he wrote to the council, alleging the same motive for his flight. From Lauffenburg he withdrew further to Frei­burg, in the Breisgau, where a deputation from the council, headed by two cardinals, waited on him, with a request that he would appoint proctors to carry out the promised act of resignation. The pope received them in bed, and answered roughly, but promised to send proctors after them.From Freiburg he sent to the council a statement of the terms on which he was willing to resign—that he should be legate throughout all Italy for life, and should have a like authority in the region of Avignon, with an income of 30,000 florins, and a share with the other cardinals in the emoluments of the capella. But the council regarded the proposal as a proof that John intended to trifle with them by requiring extravagant and impossible conditions. Frederick of Austria was cited to answer for his complicity in the pope’s flight, and, as he did not appear, was put under the ban of the empire as a traitor to it, the council, and the church.His neighbours, both ecclesiastical and secular, were summoned to chastise him, and, in conjunction with the imperial forces, they overran his territories, so that he was compelled to sue at the emperor’s feet for forgiveness, to promise that he would give up the pope, and to receive submissively by a new investiture a portion of his former dominions, to be held at the imperial pleasure.

From Freiburg John, still wishing to be at a greater distance from the council, proceeded to Breisach and to Neuenburg, but Frederick, in fulfilment of his engage­ment to bring him back, desired that he would return to Constance; while the papal officials, finding no prospect of advantage in adhering to John, deserted him and rejoined the council.

In the meantime argument ran high in that assembly. The patriarch of Antioch, although hostile to John per­sonally, asserted the papal pretensions in their extremest form—quoting from Gratian a dictum that if the pope, by his misconduct and negligence, should lead crowds of men into hell, no one but God would be entitled to find fault with him. But to this d’Ailly replied in a tract, which was afterwards embodied in his larger treatise ‘Of Ecclesiastical Power’, maintaining the authority of the general council over the pope, and taxing the patriarch with having been one of the flatterers who, “by feeding John with the milk of error, had led him to his ruin”. Wearied and irritated by John’s evasions and artifices, the council, at its seventh session, cited him to appear in person within nine days, in order to answer charges of heresy, schism, simony, maladminis­tration, notorious waste of the property of the Roman and other churches, and diminution of their rights; of incorrigibly scandalous life; and of having attempted, by his clandestine flight, to hinder the union and reformation of the church. John proposed that, instead of appearing, he should appoint three cardinals as his proxies; but those whom he named declined the task, and the council resolved that in a criminal case proxies could not be admitted. Witnesses were examined in support of the charges.On the 13th of May, there seemed to be a chance of a diversion in John’s favour, as Sigismund received letters informing him that the Turks were ravaging Hungary, in alliance with the Venetians; but his answer was that, even if he should lose the whole kingdom, he would not forsake the church and the council. On the 14th the pope was cited, and, as he did not answer, was pronounced contumacious; on the following day sentence of suspension was publicly pro­nounced against him; and the council resolved to proceed to deposition, if it should be necessary. A fresh examination of witnesses—thirty-seven in number—was then undertaken, and some of John’s wrongful bulls and grants were put in evidenced.The heads of accusation were seventy-two, but there was much of iteration among them. Some of them were not read aloud, out of regard for decency and for the reverence due to the papacy. Carrying back the inquiry to his earliest years, the indictment charged him with having been rebellious to his parents, and given to all vices from his youth. He was said to have got his preferments by simony; to have been guilty of gross maladministration as legate; to have contrived the death of Alexander V. As pope, he was charged with having neglected the duties of religion; with rape, adultery, sodomy, incest; with corruption of every sort in the bestowal of his patronage. He was styled a poisoner, a murderer; he had denied the resurrection of the dead and eternal life; he had intended to sell the head of St. John the Baptist, from the church of St. Sylvester, to some Florentines for 50,000 ducats. It was alleged that his misconduct was notorious and scandalous to all Christen­dom; that he had obstinately neglected the admonitions which had been addressed to him from many quarters; that he had dealt deceitfully with the council, and had absconded from it by night in the disguise of a layman.The evidence was considered to be so strong that his deposition was resolved on, as being guilty of simony, mal­administration of his office, dilapidation of the church’s property, and scandalous life.His seal was broken; all Christians were released from allegiance to him; and he was condemned to be kept in custody until the election of a new pope, to whom the further disposal of him was to be left. It was decreed that no election should take place without the consent of the council, and that no one of the existing claimants should be eligible.

John had been brought back by duke Frederick to Radolfszell, near Constance, whence, on the 26th of May, he addressed a letter to the emperor, reminding him of favours which the pope professed to have done to him in helping him to the crown, in seconding his wishes as to the council, and in other ways, and imploring him to observe his promise of a safe-conduct. But Sigismund, instead of being softened by this letter, appears to have been rather irritated by the contrast between its tone and that which he knew to be employed by John in speaking and writing of him to others. On the second day after the sentence of the council had been passed, it was announced to John by a deputation of five cardinals. He listened to it with submission and calmness, begging only that regard might be had to his dignity in so far as might be consistent with the welfare of the church. He voluntarily swore that he would never attempt to recover the papacy, and, strip­ping off the insignia of his office, he declared that he had never known a comfortable day since he had put them on.

The ex-pope was made over to the care of the elector palatine; for it was considered that the iniquities which had been proved against him, and his attempt to escape, had annulled the imperial safe-conduct. For some years he was detained as a prisoner, chiefly at Heidelberg; and this continued even after the council, at its first session under Martin V, had decreed that he should be transferred transferred by the emperor and the elector to the pope. At length, however, by the payment of a large sum to the elector, he obtained leave to go into Italy, where at Florence he made his sub­mission to the new pope, and from him received the dignity of cardinal-bishop of Frascati. But within a few months he died at Florence, without having taken possession of his see.

The council had, after John’s flight from Constance, again directed its attention to the case of Hus, who, having been discharged from the custody of the pope’s servants, was made over to the bishop of Constance, and by him was kept in chains at the neighbouring castle of Gottheben. The Parisian reforming party, as has been already said, was resolved to assert its own orthodoxy by disavowing all sympathy with one whose ideas it regarded as crude, unsound, and revolutionary; and when a new commission was ap­pointed for the examination of his case—the flight of pope John having vitiated the authority of the earlier commissioners—d’Ailly, as a member of it, took a strong part against him. Reports of James of Misa’s practice as to administration of the Eucharist in both kinds were received from Prague, and were circulated in exaggerated forms. It was said that Hus’s principles as to endowments had been carried out by the spoliation of many Bohemian churches.The bishop of Leitomysl, one of Hus’s bitterest and most persevering enemies, represented that in Bohemia the sacramental wine was carried about in unconsecrated bottles, and that the laity handed it to each other; that laymen of good character were considered to be better authorized to administer the sacraments than vicious priests; that cobblers presumed to hear confessions and to give absolution.

The Bohemian and Moravian nobles protested strongly and repeatedly both against the treatment of Hus and against the imputations which were thrown on the faith of their nation. They urged that Hus might be allowed a free hearing, while he himself made requests to the same purpose, and declared that he was willing to be burnt rather than to be secluded; and as the proposal of a hearing was supported by Sigismund, the reformer was transferred from Gottlieben to the Franciscan convent at Constance, and on the 5th of June was brought before the council. Worn by long imprisonment, by the severities by which it had been aggravated, and by serious illness of various kinds, he was called on to answer the questioning of all who might oppose him, while, as being suspected of heresy, he was denied the assistance of an advocate. An attempt had been made, before his admission, to get him condemned on account of certain passages which his enemies had extracted from his writings; but this had been defeated by the exertions of John of Chlum and Wenceslaus of Dubna, who re­quested the emperor to intervene.

On the first day of Hus’s appearance, the uproar was so great that he could not find a hearing; on the second day, Sigismund himself attended, to preserve order—a task which was by no means easy. Of the charges brought against him, Hus altogether denied some, while he explained others, and showed that his words had been wrongly construed. In the doctrine of the eucharistic presence, he agreed with the current teaching of the church, and differed from that of Wyclif, with whom it was sought to connect him. D’Ailly, a zealous nominalist, endeavoured to en­trap him by a scholastic subtlety as to the ceasing of the universal substance of bread after the consecration; to which Hus replied that, although the substance ceases to be in the individual piece of bread, it remains as subject in other individual pieces. An English doctor suggested that the accused was equivocating like Berengar and Wyclif; but Hus declared that he spoke plainly and sincerely. Another Englishman protested against the introduction of irrelevant philosophical matters, inasmuch as Hus had cleared his orthodoxy with regard to the sacrament of the altar.

Much was said as to the connexion of Hus’s doctrines with those of Wyclif, which the council had lately con­demned under forty-five heads; indeed an English Carmelite, named Stokes, with whom Hus had formerly been engaged in controversy, sarcastically told him that he need not pride himself on his opinions as if they were his own, since he was merely a follower of Wyclif. Hus explained that he had found himself unable to join in the late condemnation on all points; thus, he would not say that Wyclif erred in censuring the donation of Con­stantine, or in regarding tithes as alms and not as an obligatory payment. On being pressed as to having expressed a wish that his own soul might be with that of Wyclif, he explained that he had said so in consequence of the reports which had reached him as to Wyclif’s good life, and before his writings were known in Bohemia; nor had he intended to imply a certainty of Wyclif’s salvation. As to the opinion that a priest in mortal sin could not consecrate, he stated that he had limited it by saying that one in such a state would consecrate and baptize unworthily. But when he was charged with holding that a king, a pope, or a bishop, if in mortal sin, was no king, pope, or bishop, his answers were such as to provoke from Sigismund an exclamation that there had never been a more mischievous heretic, as no man is without sin. Much was said on predestination and the subjects connected with it; as to which Hus seems to have drawn his opinions from Wyclif.

The question of the papal supremacy brought out the uncritical nature of Hus’s views. He traced the pope’s pre-eminence to the supposed donation of Constantine ; and, although D’Ailly told him that he would do better to refer it to the sixth canon of Nicaea (as that canon was then commonly understood), he still adhered to his belief in the donation. In answer to a charge of having urged his followers to resist their opponents by force of arms, Hus denied that he had recommended the material sword; and it would seem that some words of his as to the spiritual armour of the Christian had been misinterpreted.

The affair as to the expulsion of the Germans from Prague was brought forward, and was urged by Palecz and by another Bohemian doctor; but as to this it appears that Hus was able to satisfy his judges. He was also questioned, among other things, as to having said that, unless he had voluntarily come to Constance, he could not have been compelled to do so by all the authority of the council and of the emperor. In expla­nation of these words he said that he might have been safely concealed among the many castles of the nobles who were friendly to him; and this was eagerly con­firmed by John of Chlum, while cardinal d’Ailly angrily cried out against Hus’s audacity.D’Ailly told him that he had done wrong in preaching to the people against cardinals and other dignitaries, when there were no such persons to hear him; to which Hus could only reply that his words had been meant for the priests and learned men who were present.

At the end of a trial which lasted three days, Palecz and Michael de Causis solemnly protested that they had acted solely from a sense of duty, and without any malice towards the accused; and d’Ailly then again repeated an opinion which he had often expressed in the course of the proceedings—that Hus had been treated with much consideration, and that his opinions were less offen­sively represented in the charges than they appeared in his own writings. Exhausted by illness and fatigue, Hus was led back to prison, receiving as he passed a pressure of the hand and some words of comfort from John of Chlum. The emperor, who had in vain urged the prisoner to retract, then declared that any one of the errors which had been brought home to him would have been enough for his condemnation; that, if he should persist in them, he ought to be burnt; that his followers ought to be coerced, and especially that his disciple who was then in custody—Jerome of Prague— should be speedily dealt with.

After his third appearance before the council, Hus was in prison for nearly a month. During this time attempts were made by many per­sons—among them by cardinal Zabarella—to persuade him to abjure the errors which were imputed to him. It was urged on him that by so doing he would not admit that he had ever held the errors in question; that in England excellent men who were wrongly sus­pected of Wyclifism had made no scruple as to abjuring it. But Hus regarded the matter in a more solemn light, and thought that to abjure errors which were falsely laid to his charge would be nothing less than perjury. He regarded his fate as sealed, although he still professed himself willing to renounce his opinions if any others could be proved to be truer; and he wrote pathetic letters of farewell to some of his Bohemian friends. On the 30th of June he was visited by Palecz, to whom, as having been his chief opponent, he expressed a wish to confess; but another confessor, a monk and doctor, was sent, who behaved with great tenderness to him, and gave him absolution without requiring any recantation of his opinions. At a later interview, Palecz wept profusely, and Hus entreated his forgiveness for any words of re­proach which he might have used against him.

On the 6th of July, at the fifteenth session of the council, Hus was again brought forward—having been detained outside the church until the mass was over, lest his presence should profane the holy action. The bishop of Lodi, James Arigoni, a Dominican, preached on the text, “Our old man is crucified with Him that the body of sin might be destroyed” (Rom. VI. 6), applying the words to the duty of extirpating heresy and simony. The acts of the process against Hus were then read, ending with an exhortation to Sigismund to perform the sacred work of destroying the obstinate heretic by whose malignant influence the plague of error has been so widely spread. To the charges was now added a new article—that he had supposed himself to be a fourth person in the Godhead; but this he disavowed with horror as an idea that had never entered his mind. He declared that he had come to Constance freely, in order to give an account of his faith, and under the protection of the imperial safe-conduct; and as he said these words, he turned his eyes on Sigismund, who blushed deeply. He frequently interrupted the reading of the charges against him, in order to protest his innocence; but the cardinals d’Ailly and Zabarella reduced him to silence. He appealed to the Saviour, and it was stigmatized as an attempt to overleap all the order of ecclesiastical jurisdic­tion. But Hus continued to protest and to appeal, and he added a prayer for the forgiveness of his enemies, which called forth derision from some members of the council.

The ceremony of degradation from the priesthood followed. Hus was arrayed in the vestments of the altar, and the various articles symbolical of the priestly authority and of the inferior orders of the ministry were severally taken from him by bishops, while at every stage he made some remark by way of protest. As to the tonsure, a question arose whether it should be obliterated by shaving, or by clipping the surrounding hair. “Lo”, said Hus, addressing the emperor, “these bishops cannot agree even as to the way of mocking me!” When the degradation was completed, a tall paper cap, painted with hideous figures of devils, was placed on his head, and a bishop said to him, “We commit thy body to the secular arm, and thy soul to the devil.” “And I”, said Hus, “commit it to my most merciful Lord, Jesus Christ”. As he was led away to death, he passed a spot where a heap of his books, which had been condemned by the council, was burning amidst the merriment of the crowd. At this sight he smiled, and repeated a remark which he had before made as to the condemnation of his Bohe­mian writings by persons who could not read them. In answer to a question, he professed a wish to confess; but, as the confessor insisted that he should begin by acknowledging and renouncing his errors, Hus said that confession was not necessary, as he was not in mortal sin.

On reaching the place of execution, he entreated that the bystanders would not believe him guilty of the errors which were imputed to him. After he had been bound to the stake, he was once more asked by duke Lewis of Bavaria whether he would recant; but he remained firm and suffered with unshaken constancy, uttering to the last cries for mercy, professions of faith in the Saviour, and prayers for the forgiveness of his enemies. His ashes and the scorched remnants of his clothes were thrown into the Rhine, lest they should be venerated as relics by his adherents.

The death of Hus has usually been regarded as a deep stain on the reputation of the council which decreed it, and of the emperor who, notwithstanding the assurance of protection which he had given to the reformer, con­sented to his doom. But attempts at exculpation have often been made in the interest of the Roman church; and even very lately it has been argued, by a writer whose moderation and candour are usually no less to be admired than his ability and learning, that there was no breach of faith in prosecuting Hus to the death, notwithstanding the safe-conduct which he had received. The name of safe-conduct, indeed, appears to have been used in two senses—sometimes signifying the escort which accom­panied Hus from Bohemia, and sometimes the passport which, although promised, did not reach him until after his arrival at Constance; and this double meaning will explain some difficulties which have been raised as to the emperor’s proceedings. It is pointed out that the passport did not profess more than to secure for Hus an unmolested journey to and from Constance; that Sigismund did not undertake, and could not have undertaken, to assure him against the consequences of an accusation of heresy; that the violation of the safe-conduct amounted to nothing more than the arrest of Hus before trial or conviction; that the Bohemians do not charge the em­peror with breach of a written engagement, but only with having taken part against Hus, whereas they had reckoned on him as a friend. Yet even according to this view, the arrest of Hus, which is admitted to have been a breach of the safe-conduct, instead of being followed by his liberation, in compliance with the protests of his friends and with Sigismund’s own declarations, led to his being immured in one loathsome dungeon after another, to his being loaded with chains, ill fed, and barbarously treated; and, when reduced to sickness and debility by such usage, and deprived of all literary means of defence, he was required to answer to the capital charge of heresy. Even on this supposition, therefore, the wrong by which the safe-conduct was violated was one which, in its con­sequences, subjected the accused to cruel sufferings, and destroyed the fairness of his trial.

But in truth it seems clear that the safe-conduct was supposed to imply much more than is here allowed. The excitement which arose on Hus’s arrest is not to be accounted for by the mere informality of that act, nor is it easy to reduce the complaints of his Bohemian parti­sans within the limits which the apologists of the council mark out. Hus himself plainly declares his under­standing of the matter to have been, that, if he should decline to abide by the sentence of the council, the emperor would remit him in safety to Bohemia, there to be judged by the king and the ecclesiastical authorities; he complains that the safe-conduct had been violated, and mentions warnings which he had received against trusting to it—warnings which were suggested, not by any idea that the instrument itself might be defective, but by the apprehension that it might be treacherously set aside.

That this must be explained away by speaking of Hus as inconsistent, is, like the denial of Sigismund’s having blushed on being reminded of the safe-conduct, a neces­sity of the cause which is to be defended. And how, unless there was some deception in the case, should the king of Aragon and the council have asserted principles which would justify the blackest perfidy towards one who was accused of heterodoxy? Why should it have been necessary to urge that a safe-conduct could not protect a heretic, unless Sigismund, as well as Hus, had supposed that the document in question would avail? Why should the council have attempted to get over it by the false and unsuccessful assertion that Hus had not received it until a fortnight after his arrest? Why, if the safe-conduct was not supposed to assure the safety of Hus at Constance, as well as on the way, were such efforts made to extort the recal of it from the emperor?

But, although the means by which his condemnation was brought about were iniquitous, and although there was much to blame in the circumstances of his trial, we can hardly wonder at the condemnation itself, according to the principles of his age. Hus set out from Bohemia with a confident expectation of being able to maintain his soundness in the faith; yet it is not easy to suppose such a result possible, if the nature of the tribunal be considered. The attestations of orthodoxy which he carried with him were probably in part influenced by the desire of the authors to clear their country from the imputations which had been cast on it, and were therefore not likely to tell strongly in his favour. In every point, except that of the eucharistic doctrine, Hus was but an echo of Wyclif, whose opinions had long been proscribed—whose English followers had been condemned to the stake by the church and the state alike. He did not, seemingly, understand how greatly his principles were opposed, not only to the system of the Roman court, but to the very being of the hierarchy. Much of his language sounded very dangerous : and if the sense, when explained by him, was more harmless than it seemed, it might reasonably be asked what likelihood there was that this sense would be under­stood by the simple hearers to whom the words had been addressed. It would seem that his demeanour had in it something which suggested the suspicion of obstinacy or evasion; and his continual professions of willingness to renounce his opinions, if he could be convinced that they were wrong, must have appeared to his judges as merely nugatory; for no one surely would avow that he deliberately prefers error to truth.

 

JEROME OF PRAGUE

 

At the time when Hus set out from Prague, his old associate Jerome was absent on one of those expeditions in which his religious zeal and his love of adventure alike found a frequent exercise. On learning, at his return, the fact of his friend’s imprisonment, Jerome resolved to join him at Constance, where he arrived on the 4th of April 1415. Finding that Hus had as yet been unable to obtain a hearing, he withdrew to a little town in the neighbourhood, and publicly announced by a placard his readiness to defend his faith, if the council would grant him a safe-conduct for going and returning; and he added that, if he should be convicted of heresy, he was willing to bear the punishment. But as his petition was refused, he complied with the solicita­tions of his friends, and set out towards Bohemia, carrying with him letters testimonial from his countrymen who were at Constance. The council, however, at its sixth session, cited him to answer for himself; he was arrested, and was carried back in chains              to Constance, where at length the council granted him a safe-conduct, but with the significant reservation, “as much as is in us, and as the orthodox faith shall require, yet saving justice”. On the 23rd of May, Jerome, immediately after his arrival, and laden as he was with heavy chains, was examined before a general congregation of the council. Men who had been acquainted with his old adventures at Vienna and Heidelberg, at Paris and Cologne, gave evidence against him; among them was Gerson, who told him that at Paris his conceit of his eloquence had led him to disturb the university by many scandalous propositions as to universals and ideas. At the end of the day he was committed to the care of the archbishop of Riga, and was imprisoned in a tower, where he was chained more cruelly than before, and for two days was kept on a diet of bread and water. At the end of that time, however, Peter Mladenovicz discovered the place of his confinement, and was allowed to supply him with better nourishment.

After having been subjected to several examinations, Jerome, worn out by the hardships of his imprisonment, was brought on the 11th of September to condemn the errors imputed to Wyclif and Hus—with the reservation that, although mistaken and offensive, they were not heretical—that he did not commit himself to the truth of the imputations, and that he intended no disrespect to the characters of the teachers, or to the truths which they had delivered. This qualified submission, how­ever, was not enough for the council; and at the nine­teenth general session, on the 23rd of September, a fresh declaration was extorted from him, in which he more explicitly abjured the tenets of Wyclif and Hus, and even included in the abjuration an opinion as to the reality of universals. At this same session it was decreed, with an exact reference to the circumstances of Hus’s case, that no safe-conduct granted by any secular prince, by whatsoever sanction it might have been confirmed, should prejudice the catholic faith or the church’s jurisdiction, so as so hinder the competent spiritual tribunal from inquiring into and duly punishing the errors of heretics or persons charged with heresy, even although such persons might have been induced to present themselves at the place of judgment by reliance on the safe-conduct, and otherwise would not have appeared; and that the granter of such a document, if he had done his part in other respects, was in no way further bound. By another document (which, however, may perhaps have been nothing more than a draft) it is declared that in the matter of Hus the king of the Romans had done his duty, and that no one should speak against him under pain of being held guilty of favouring heresy and of treason. Jerome, by abjuring the opinions which had been imputed to him, had entitled himself to liberty; but, although cardinal d’Ailly and others insisted on this, suspicions as to the sincerity of the prisoner’s recanta­tion arose, and were strengthened by a tract which Gerson put forth on the subject of “Protestation and Revocation in Matters of Faith”. Fresh charges, derived from Bohemia, were urged against him by Palecz and Michael de Causis; and when d’Ailly, Zabarella, and others, indignantly resigned their office as judges, a new commission was appointed, before which Jerome was again April—May, examined. He was accused of various outrages against monks and friars; of having denied transubstantiation; of having caused the canon of the mass to be translated or paraphrased into Bohemian verse, so that mechanics supposed themselves able to consecrate by chanting it; of having in the course of his travels allied himself with the Russian schismatics in opposition to the Latins; of having lived luxuriously and riotously while in prison. Some of these charges Jerome denied; and in his answers he showed much dexterity and readi­ness, not unmixed with asperity and contempt towards his opponents. At his final examination, being allowed to defend himself, he delivered an eloquent speech. The display of authorities which he produced for his opinions excited admiration in those who considered that for 340 days he had been immured in a gloomy dungeon.He related the course of his life and studies. He explained the case of the university of Prague, and the unfair influence which the Germans had exercised in it.He declared that no act of his life had caused him such remorse as his abjuration of Hus and Wyclif, with whom he now desired to make common cause in all things, except Wyclif’s doctrine of the Eucharist. He professed himself ready to share the fate of Hus, whose offence he represented as having consisted, not in any deviation from the faith of the church, but in his having attacked the abuses and cor­ruptions of the hierarchy. He replied with courage and readiness to the many interruptions with which he was assailed; and the speech concluded with a commemora­tion of worthies, both heathen and scriptural, who had laid down their lives for the truth.

Urgent attempts were still made to persuade Jerome to fall back on the recantation which he had formerly made; Zabarella especially showed a friendly interest in him, and visited him in prison for the purpose of en­treating him to save himself. But all such efforts were fruitless, and Jerome suffered at the stake on the 30th of May 1416, enduring his agony with a firmness which extorted the admiration of men so remote from any sym­pathy with his character as the scholar Poggio Bracciolini (who was himself a witness of the scene) and the eccle­siastical politician Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini.

On the 4th of July 1415, two days before the death of Hus, Gregory XII, the most sincere of the rival popes in desiring the reunion of the church, resigned his dignity. For this purpose he had given a commission to Charles Malatesta, lord of Rimini, whose labours at Pisa and elsewhere for the healing of the schism have already been mentioned; and, in order to avoid an acknowledgment of the council as having been called by John XXIII, he affected to regard it as assembled by the emperor alone, and to add his own citation as pope, that it might entertain the proposed business. Malatesta accordingly appeared at the fourteenth session, and formally executed the act of resignation whereupon the council decreed that no one should proceed to choose a pope without its sanction, and that it should not be dissolved until after an election should have been made. The ex-pope became cardinal-bishop of Porto, and legate for life in the Mark of Ancona, with precedence over all the other members of the college. His cardinals were allowed to retain their dignities; and two years later, while the council was yet sitting, Angelo Corario died at the age of ninety.

Benedict XIII was still to be dealt with. Aragon and Scotland continued to adhere to him, and his pre­tensions were unabated. He had proposed a meeting with Sigismund at Nice, and John XXIII had endeavoured to avert this by offering to confer in person with his rival; but the council, remembering the failure of the conference of Savona, had refused its consent. It was now resolved that the emperor, as representative of the council, should treat with Benedict. On the 15th of July, Sigismund, kneeling before the high altar of the cathedral, received the solemn benediction of the assem­bly; and three days later he set out with four cardinals for Perpignan, where he had invited Benedict to meet him. At Narbonne he was joined by Ferdinand of Aragon, whose ambassadors had been in treaty with the council. But at Perpignan he found himself disappointed. Benedict had taken offence at being addressed as car­dinal, whereas he held himself to be the sole legitimate pope; nay, even as a cardinal, he asserted that, being the only one who had been promoted to the sacred college before the schism, he was entitled to nominate a pope by his own voice alone. In accordance with the letter of an agreement, he remained at Perpignan through­out the month of June; but when the last day of that month came to an end at midnight, he immediately left the place, and pronounced Sigismund contumacious for having failed to appear.On the 19th of August he was at Narbonne, where he condescended to state his terms to the emperor’s representatives. But these and other proposals on the part of Benedict were so ex­travagant that it was impossible to accept them; and Benedict, after some movements, shut himself up within the rocky fortress of Peñiscola, in Valencia, where the archbishop of Tours and others sought an interview with him, but were unable to persuade him to resign.Sigismund succeeded in detaching from him the king of Aragon, with other princes who had thus far supported him; and these, in person or by their representatives, formally renounced him at Narbonne on the 13th of December 1415. The act was publicly declared at Perpignan on the Epiphany following by the great Dominican preacher St. Vincent Ferrer, in whose reputa­tion for sanctity the cause of the Spanish pope had found one of its strongest supports, but who now, in disgust at Benedict’s obstinacy, turned against him, and zealously exerted himself to promote the reunion of the church.

Sigismund then proceeded to visit the courts of France and of England, endeavouring to reconcile the enmity which had lately arrayed the nations against each other on the field of Agincourt (Oct. 25, 1415), and to unite west­ern Christendom in a league against the Turks; and on the 27th of January in the following year he reappeared at Constance, where he was received by the council with great demonstrations of honour.In the meantime the representatives of the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms had been admitted, into the council as a fifth nation the agreement of Narbonne was confirmed, and measures were urged forward against Benedict Articles were drawn up, in which the charge against him was grounded chiefly on his breach of his engagements as to resignation, and he was cited to appear within a certain time. The envoys who were intrusted with the delivery of the citation at Peniscola found him angry and obstinate, and brought back nothing but evasions and pretexts for delay.After having been repeatedly cited in due form at the door of the cathedral, he was pronounced contumacious on the first of April.Further articles were drawn up, and, after long formal proceedings, sentence of deposition was pronounced against him, as having been guilty of perjury, of scandal to the whole church, of favouring and nourishing schism, and of heresy, inasmuch as he had violated that article of the faith which speaks of “one holy catholic church.” The delivery of this judgment was followed by a jubilant chant of Te Deum; the bells of the churches were rung, and the emperor ordered that the sentence should be proclaimed with the sound of trumpets throughout the streets of Constance.

Thus the papacy was considered to be entirely vacant, as the three who had pretended to it had all been set aside. But the question now arose, whether the council should next proceed to the election of a new pope, or to discuss the reformation of the church, which had been much agitated during the time of the emperor’s absence. On the one hand it was urged that, as the church had long been suffering from the want of an acknowledged head, the papacy should be filled without delay. On the other hand it was represented that the reforming designs of the council of Pisa had been ineffectual because reform had been postponed to the election of a pope; that, since a reformation of the church ought to include the head as well as the members, a pope, by exerting his influence on those who naturally desired to stand well with him, might be able to put a stop to any movement for reform; that the chair of St. Peter, after the pollutions which it had lately undergone, ought to be cleansed, before any man, even the holiest, could sit in it without fear of contamination. The emperor, supported by the German and English nations, urged that the council should enter on the question of reform. The cardinals, with the Italians in general, pressed for the election of a pope, and drew to their side the Spaniards, who were new to the affairs of the council, and the French, whose eager­ness for reform was now overpowered by their enmity against the English. The contest was keenly carried on, both with tongue and with pen. Prayers were put up for the good success of the council in its designs, sermons were preached in exposition of the various views, and from each side a formal protest was made against the course which was proposed by the other; while invidious imputations were freely cast on the emperor and his adherents, as if, by maintaining that the church could be reformed without a head, they made themselves partakers in the heresy of Hus.

Still Sigismund stood firm, notwithstanding the taunts and insults which were directed against him, until at length he found his supporters failing him. Such of the French and Italians as had been with him fell away. By the death of Hallam, bishop of Salisbury, on the 4th of September, he lost his most esteemed auxiliary, while the English were deprived of a leader whose wisdom and moderation had guided them in the difficulties of their circumstances; and—partly, it would seem, in obedience to an order from their sovereign—they joined the growing majority. Two of the most important German prelates were bribed into a like course;—the archbishop of Riga, who, having been hopelessly embroiled with the Teutonic knights, was to be translated by the council to Liege; and the bishop of Chur, to whom the see of Riga offered at once an increase of dignity and an escape from his quarrels with Frederick of Austria. Finding that any further resistance would be useless, Sigismund yielded that the choice of a pope should precede the discussion of reform; but it was stipulated by him and the German nation that the future pope should, in con­junction with the council, make it his first duty to enter on a reform of the church, and that until this should have been effected the council should not be dissolved.

At the thirty-ninth session, October 9, 1417, it was decreed that a general council should be held within the next five years, and another within the following seven years ; that within every period of ten years for the time to come there should be a general council; that the pope might shorten the interval, but might not prolong it; and that for a sufficient cause (such as the occurrence of a schism) a council might be convoked at any time.But when the Germans desired that the future pope should be pledged to the observance of these rules, they were told by the cardinals that a pope could not be so bound.

Dissensions still continued to vex the council. The Aragonese, on joining it, had objected to the acknowledg­ment of the English as a nation—maintaining that they ought to be included with the Germans; and in this they were aided by cardinal d’Ailly, whose patriotism showed itself on all occasions in a vehement opposition to the English; while these stoutly asserted the import­ance of their nation and church by somewhat daring argu­ments, and put forward the venerable name of Joseph of Arimathea in opposition to that of Dionysius the Areopagite. The Castilians had contests of their own with the Aragonese; and they had even left Constance, in the belief that the council was hope­lessly entangled, when they were brought back by the emperor’s command. The cardinals asked for leave to withdraw, and met with a refusal; Sigismund is said to have intended to arrest some of the most trouble­some among them; and the members of the college displayed themselves in their scarlet hats, as a token of their readiness to become martyrs in the church’s cause. In the midst of these difficulties it was announced that Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, and uncle to the king of England, was at Ulm, on his way to the Holy Land; and the English representatives suggested that by his reputation and authority, by his known influence with the emperor, and by his zeal for the peace of the church, he might be able to appease the differences which had arisen. The emperor with his own hand wrote to invite the bishop to Constance, where he was received with great honour; and by his mediation and advice he succeeded in effecting a recon­ciliation between the parties.

Beaufort had recommended that the election of a pope should at once be taken in hand; and new questions arose as to the right of sharing in it. Some wished to exclude the cardinals altogether, as having abused their privilege in time past; while the cardinals asserted that the right of voting belonged to them exclusively, but were willing to concede that, on this occasion only, representatives of the nations should be associated with them, and that the choice should be subject to the final approbation of the council. In the meantime there were discussions as to the points in which a reform was desired. Among them were the duties of the pope, and the limits of his authority; the prevention of double elections to the papacy; the composition of the college of cardinals, in which it seemed desirable that the Italians should not be too strong reservations, annates, expectancies, commendams, simony, dispensations, non-­residence ; the qualifications and duties of bishops; the abuses of the monastic and capitular systems ; the nature of the causes that should be treated in the Roman court; the question of appeals; the offices of the papal chancery and penitentiary; indulgences; the alienation of church property; the cause, for which a pope might be cor­rected or deposed, and the manner of procedure in such cases.

Of these subjects, that of annates caused the greatest difference of opinion. The cardinals were in favour of the exaction, while the French nation denounced it as a novelty which dated only from the pontificate of John XXII. On this question, cardinal d’Ailly, who had formerly been opposed to the tax, now took part with his brethren of the college. With regard to the question of papal collation to benefices, it was remarked that, while many bishops, who were usually supporters of the papal interest, opposed it in this case from a wish to recover patronage for their own order, the representatives of universities sided with the pope, as being more likely than the bishops to favour the claims of learning in the bestowal of preferment. In the course of these discus­sions much heat was occasionally displayed. At one meeting, the wish to delay the election of a pope was denounced as a Hussite heresy, and the emperor, in disgust at the pertinacity of the opposition, arose and left the hall. As the patriarch of Antioch and others of his adherents followed, a cry arose, “Let the heretics go!”, and Sigismund, on being informed of the insult, knew that it was intended against himself.

At length, on the 30th of October, the preliminaries of the election were settled : that six representatives of each nation should be associated with the cardinals as electors; and that a majority of two-thirds among the cardinals, and in each nation should be necessary to the choice of a pope. The day was fixed for the 8th of November, when high mass was celebrated, and the bishop of Lodi (whose eloquence had been less creditably displayed in the cases of Hus and Jerome) preached from the text, “Eligite meliorem”—descanting on the qualities requisite for the papacy, and exhorting the electors to make choice of a pope different from those of the last forty years—one worthy of the office and bent on the reform of the church. The electors—twenty-three car­dinals and thirty deputies of the nations—swore to the emperor that they would perform their duty faithfully, and were then shut up in conclave within the Exchange of Constance, under the guardianship of the master of the knights of Rhodes. Their deliberations lasted three days, during which companies of people—Sigismund himself, and the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries, among them—frequently gathered round the building, imploring with prayers, and with hymns chanted in low tones, the blessing of God on the election. At first, each nation was disposed to set up a candidate of its own; but gradually this was abandoned, and on St. Martin’s day an overwhelming majority, if not the whole body of electors, agreed in a choice, which was forthwith announced through an aperture made in the wall of the Exchange—“We have a pope—Lord Otho of Colonna!”. The news spread at once throughout the city, and produced an enthusiasm of joy; at last the schism which had so long distracted Christendom was ended. All the bells of Constance sent forth peals of rejoicing. A multitude, which is reckoned at 80,000, flocked from all quarters to the scene of the election. The emperor himself, disregarding the restraints of state, hurried into the room where the electors were assembled, and fell down before the pope, who raised him up, em­braced him, and acknowledged that to him the peaceful result was chiefly due. For hours together crowds of all classes thronged to the cathedral, where the new pope was placed on the altar and gave his benediction.In honour of the day on which he was elected, he took the name of Martin V; and, after having been ordained deacon, priest, and bishop on three successive days, he was anointed and crowned as pope on the 21st of November.

Martin was now about fifty years of age. He be­longed to the highest nobility of Rome,had been trained in the study of canon law, and had been created cardinal of St. George by Innocent VII. He had held to Gre­gory XII until the council of Pisa declared against that pope, and he had been one of the last to forsake John XXIII. His morals were irreproachable, and the prudence and moderation of his character were much respected. It is, however, said of him by Leonard of Arezzo, that whereas before his elevation he had been noted rather for his amiability than for his talents, he showed, when pope, extreme sagacity, but no excess of benignity.

Very soon Martin began to give indications that those who had chosen him in the hope of reform were to be disappointed. Almost immediately after his coronation he set forth, as was usual, the rules for the administra­tion of his chancery; and it was seen with dismay that they differed hardly at all in substance from those of John XXIII; that they sanctioned all the corruptions which the council had denounced—such as annates, expectan­cies, and reservations ; nay, that this last evil was even aggravated in the new code. And now that western Christendom had one undoubted head, a man in whom high personal character was added to the dignity of his great office, the authority of the council waned before that of the pope. The emperor himself was superseded in the presidency of the assembly, and Martin’s power over it increased, while his address was exerted to prevent all dangerous reforms. He set forth a list of matters as to which a reform might be desirable; he constituted a reformatory college, made up of six cardi­nals, with representatives of the various nations, and at the forty-third session of the council some decrees were passed as to exemptions, simony, tithes, the life of the clergy, and other such subjects. But it was found that the several nations were not agreed as to the changes which were to be desired; and Martin skilfully contrived to take advantage of their jealousies so as to break up their alliance by treating separately with each for a special concordat. When the French urged Sigismund to press for reformation, he reminded them that they had insisted on giving the election of a pope precedence over the question of reform, and told them that they must now apply to the pope, since his own authority in such matters had ended when the election was made.

The Germans had presented two petitions for reform; among other points they urged that the cardinals should be fairly chosen from the various nations, and that their number should be limited to eighteen, or at the utmost should not exceed twenty-four. They also desired that means should be provided for the correction of a pope, so that popes might be punished and deposed by a general council, not only for heresy, but for simony, or any other grave and notorious offence. On this it would seem that no new enactment was considered to be neces­sary. Martin, however, put forth some proposals for a reform of the curia, in which, while he eluded some of the chief points in the German scheme, he agreed that the number of cardinals should be reduced, so as not to exceed twenty-four, that a regard should be paid to their qualifications, and that the dignity should be distributed in fair proportions among the various nations. He promised also an improved disposal of his patronage, and a redress of various crying grievances. To the Germans the promise as to the cardinalate appeared to hold out an important boon; for the instances in which Germans had been admitted to that dignity were exceedingly rare; but the hopes excited by Martin’s concession were very imperfectly realized, as the number of German cardinals has never been great.

The Spaniards, in ridicule of the faintness with which reform was taken in hand, put forth a satirical ‘Mass for Simony’. The piece was com­posed in the usual form of such services, and included prayers for the removal of the evil, with a lesson from the Apocalypse, descriptive of the woman sitting on the scarlet-coloured beast.

The concordats into which Martin had entered did not find much acceptance with the nations for which they were intended. That with England appears to have passed without notice. In France, although the king­dom was then in the depth of the weakness caused by internal discords and by the English invasion, the spirit of ecclesiastical independence, hallowed by the saintly renown of Lewis IX, and strengthened by the policy of Philip the Fair, and by the ascendency of later French sovereigns over the court of Avignon, was strongly mani­fested. The king was made to declare himself desirous to obey the council, but with the limitation “so far as God and reason would allow”. The concordat was re­jected by the parliament of Paris; the principles of the pragmatic sanction were maintained; and the dauphin, who governed in his father’s name, refused to acknow­ledge Martin, whose election he supposed to have been carried by the hostile influences of Germany and Eng­land, until after the pope’s title had been examined and approved by the university of Paris.

Among the subjects which engaged the attention of the council, was a book in which John Petit, a Francis­can, had some years before asserted the right of tyranni­cide in justification of the treacherous murder of the duke of Orleans by John “the Fearless”, duke of Bur­gundy.Petit himself had died in 1410, and is said to have professed on his death-bed regret for the doc­trines which he had published; but his book had been examined, and eight propositions extracted from it had been condemned by an assembly of theologians, canonists, and jurists, under the presidency of the bishop of Paris, in 1414.

The matter was brought before the council of Con­stance in June 1415 by Gerson, who had taken an active part in the earlier stages;  and it occupied much time, during which he and cardinal d’Ailly exerted all their powers to obtain a condemnation of the atrocious opinions which Petit had enounced. The contest was obstinately and hotly waged, with the pen as well as with the tongue; Petit’s defenders were stigmatized as Cainites and heretics, while they retaliated by comparing Gerson to Judas, Herod, and Cerberus, and by taunting him with favours which he had formerly received from the Burgundian family.The influence in favour of Petit was so powerful, that his book escaped with the condemnation of only one especially outrageous proposition, while his name was unmentioned in the censure; and even this sentence was afterwards set aside on the ground of informality. It is noted that among the defenders of Petit’s book was Peter Caucher, vidame of Reims, who afterwards, as bishop of Beauvais, gained an infamous celebrity by his part in the condemnation of the Maid of Orleans.

Another book, the work of a Dominican, John of Falkenberg, was brought before the council, on the ground that the author, who wrote in the interest of the Teutonic knights, had grossly attacked the king of Poland, and had declared it to be not only lawful, but highly meritorious, to kill him and all his people.Before the election of Martin, this book had been condemned to the flames by the committee on matters of faith; but the sentence had not been confirmed in a general session, and the Poles found that Martin, although he had himself subscribed the earlier condemnation, was resolved as pope to do away with its effect. Being thus denied redress, they appealed to a general council, but Martin declared that no such appeal from a pope could be allowed. On this Gerson put forth a tract in which the new pope’s declara­tion was shown to be opposed to the principles on which the council had acted. But Martin, whether acquainted with Gerson’s tract or not, proceeded in direct opposition to his views. In answer to the allegations of the Poles, that the book contained “most cruel heresies” and there­fore ought to fall under the censure of an assembly which had for one of its chief objects the extirpation of heresy, he declared that he approved of all that the council had done as to matters of faith. He enjoined silence on the complainants, under a threat of excommunication, and, although they still persisted, even to the last session of the council—styling Falkenberg’s opinions a “doctrine of devils”—their struggles to obtain a condemnation were fruitless.

At the forty-fourth session, Pavia was named as the place where the next general council should be held. The French representatives, who disliked this proposal, absented themselves from the meeting at which it was to be brought forward.

The forty-fifth and last session was held on the 22nd of April 1418, when the pope bestowed his absolution on all the fathers of the council, with their followers, and on all other persons who had been present on account of business connected with it. The emperor had been rewarded for his labours by a grant of a year’s eccle­siastical tithe from his dominions; and, although some German churches engaged a Florentine lawyer, Dominic de Germiniano, to oppose this grant as informal, illegal, and oppressive, such was the ascendency of the pope over the council that the advocate, instead of carrying out his commission, was fain to conclude his pleading with a proposal that the impost should be collected in a way less burdensome than that which had been originally intended.

Although Sigismund had endeavoured to prolong the pope’s stay in Germany, and the French had urged him to settle at Avignon, his answer to such solicitations had been that Rome and the patrimony of St. Peter required his presence. On the 16th of May, he left Constance with a magnificent display of pomp. Arrayed in his most splendid robes of office, he rode under a canopy which was supported by four counts, while the emperor and the elector of Brandenburg walked beside him, and held his bridle on either side. Frederick of Austria, with other secular princes and nobles, twelve cardinals, and a vast train of ecclesiastics of all grades, followed; and it is said that the whole cavalcade amounted to 4o,ooo. The scene might be regarded as symbolical of the vic­tory which the papacy had gained. The council which had deposed popes had been mastered by the pope of its own choosing; the old system of Rome, so long the sub­ject of vehement complaint, had escaped untouched; and no mention had been made of any reform in doctrine.

While the pope was thus triumphant, Gerson, the great theologian of the council, withdrew from it to obscurity and exile. Paris was in the hands of the English, and of the ferocious duke of Burgundy, to whom he had made himself obnoxious. The university of which he had been the glory, and which had sent him forth at the head of its representatives, could no longer receive him; and he was glad to accept an asylum from the duke of Bavaria. The offer of a professorship at Vienna drew from him a poem of thanks to Frederick of Austria; but he remained in his seclusion until, after the assassination of the duke of Burgundy on the bridge of Montereau, in September 1419, he removed to Lyons, where he spent the last ten years of his life in devotion, study, and literary labour. The latest of his works was a commentary on the Canticles; and three days after having completed it he died, at the age of sixty-six, on the 12th of July, 1429.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

THE GREEK CHURCH—CHRISTIANITY IN ASIA— CONVERSIONS.

 

 

During the last period of the Byzantine empire, the relations of the Greek church with the papacy were mainly governed by political circumstances. The em­perors, in their need of assistance against the Mussul­mans, who pressed continually more and more on them, made frequent solicitations to the Christians of the west, and, in order to recommend their cause, they professed a zeal for the reconciliation of the churches. But in this they were supported only by a small courtly party, while the mass of the Greeks held the Latins in abomination; and, as the material aid, for the sake of which the desire of unity had been professed, was not forthcoming, such concessions as were made by the emperors or their representatives were usually disavowed with abhorrence by their people. Such, as we have seen, had been the result of the reconciliation which had been formerly concluded at the council of Lyons in 1274; and, in their resentment on account of the subsequent breach, Benedict XI and Clement V encouraged Charles of Valois to assert by arms a claim to the throne of Constantinople, in right of his wife. Clement gave to the enterprise the character of a crusade, bestowed the privileges of crusaders on all who should take part in it, and assigned to Charles a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of France in order to furnish him with means. But nothing came of this project.

At a later time, Andronicus II and his grandson of the same name (who, after having been his colleague, assumed the whole government in 1328) were driven by fear of the Ottoman Turks to make overtures to the popes and to the western princes.In 1333 the younger Andronicus sent a message to John XXII by two Dominicans who were returning from the east; and in consequence of this two bishops were sent from Avignon to the court of Constantinople. But the Greeks, in distrust of the sophistical skill which they attributed to the western theologians, refused to have anything to do with what they styled the Latin novelties; and the mission had no effect.In 1337 Benedict XII, wrote to Andronicus for the purpose of confirming him in his desire of ecclesiastical unity; and two years later, Barlaam, a Basilian monk of Calabria, who had ac­quired great favour in the Byzantine court, appeared at Avignon with a knight named Stephen Dandolo, bearing recommendations from the kings of France and Sicily. The instructions of these envoys charged them to labour for the reunion of the churches, while the need of assist­ance against the Turks was mentioned as a secondary and comparatively trifling matter. But it was requested that the aid might be sent at once, because the emperor would be unable, so long as the war should last, to assemble the eastern patriarchs for the general council which was proposed as a tribunal for the decision of the questions by which east and west were divided. Even the Jews, said Barlaam, although the most ungrateful of mankind, after having been miraculously fed by the Saviour, wished to make Him a king; and, in like manner, assistance of this kind would prepare the minds of the Greeks to welcome the proposals of religious union. The pope, however, declined the project of a general council, on the ground that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s procession had already been settled by some of the greatest councils—even including (he said) the general council of Ephesus—and that he could not allow it to be again brought into question. The pro­posal of a compromise, by which each party should for the present be allowed to hold its own opinions, was rejected, on the ground that the faith of the catholic church could be but one. Other expedients suggested by Barlaam found no great favour; nor was any hope of aid held out, except on condition that the Greeks should first renounce their errors, and should send some of their number to be instructed in the west.

Barlaam, on returning to the east after this fruitless mission, became involved in a strange controversy with some monks of Mount Athos and their supporters. These monks, who were styled hesychasts (or quietists), imagined that by cultivating an ascetic repose they might attain to behold the light of the Godhead. They are described as fixing their gaze on the central part of their own persons, in the hope that through the con­templation both their spiritual and their bodily eyes would be enlightened by the divine radiance. Barlaam, it is said, designedly chose out one of the more simple monks, whom the imperial chronicler John Cantacuzene describes as little superior to an irrational animal, and, by affecting the character of a disciple, drew from him answers which showed a very gross apprehension of spiritual things; whereupon he denounced the whole community, as if the views in question were shared by all its members.At Thessalonica, where he first broached the subject, he was confronted by Gregory Palamas, a monk of Mount Athos, who enjoyed an extraordinary reputation for ascetic sanctity; and, having fled in fearof the rabid monks to Constantinople, where he persuaded the patriarch John to assemble a synod for the consideration of the matter, he there again found Palamas his opponent. The question of the light which the mystics of Mount Athos supposed themselves to see brought on a discussion as to the light which shone around the Saviour at His transfiguration. This light Palamas maintained to be uncreated; while Barlaam argued that, if so, it must be God, forasmuch as God alone is uncreated. But, he continued, since no man hath seen God at any time, the hesychasts must hold the existence of two Gods—one, the invisible maker of all things; the other, the visible and uncreated light. The decision of the council was adverse to Barlaam, who, ac­cording to John Cantacuzene, when he saw that the case was going against him, consulted the grand domestic (Can­tacuzene himself), acknowledged himself to have been in error, and was joyfully embraced by Palamas. But if this account be true, his submission must have been insincere; for he soon after removed to Italy, where he joined the Latin church, and wrote some letters in its behalf, which contrast strongly with his arguments of an earlier time as a champion of the Greeks. Through the interest of Petrarch, whom he had assisted in the study of Plato,he was promoted to the bishopric of Gerace in 1342; and his equivocal reputation as a divine is combined with a more creditable fame as one among the chief revivers of Greek letters in the west.

The controversy begun by Barlaam was kept up by his pupil Gregory Acindynus; but repeated judgments were pronounced against their opinions, and at a great synod, held at Constantinople in 1350, it was declared, with a show of patristic authority, that the light of Mount Tabor was uncreated, although not of the substance of God, while Barlaam and Acindynus were cut off from the body of the church, and were declared to be incapable of forgiveness after death.

The death of Andronicus III, in 1341, left the empire to his son John Palaeologus, a boy nine years old, who was under the guardianship of the grand domestic, John Cantacuzene. After a time Cantacuzene, alarmed by the intrigues of a party which included the empress-mother and patriarch John of Apri, endeavoured to seize the empire, as the only means of securing his own safety; but he was driven into exile, from which he delivered himself by the fatal measure of calling the Turks into Europe as his allies—giving his daughter in marriage to their leader Orkan, on condition that she should be allowed to preserve her religion. The empire was now shared by John Palaeologus, his mother, Anne of Savoy, and Cantacuzene, who became the father-in-law of the young prince and held the chief power in his own hands. While Cantacuzene was in exile, the empress-mother had addressed a letter to Clement VI, expressing a strong desire to unite her subjects with the church in which she had herself been brought up, and entreating the pope to send her assistance in the mean­time. Cantacuzene now sent ambassadors to the court of Avignon; and the reception which they met with from Clement led him to believe that a reconciliation was certain, and that a crusade was to be undertaken in his behalf. But, although he repeatedly protested to the envoys whom Clement sent to Constantinople that he would gladly give his life for the re-union of the churches, he declared that the guilt of the separation lay on the Latins, who had caused it by their innovations and assumptions; and that he would not submit his conscience to any less authority than that of a council fairly gathered from the whole church.The pope is said by Cantacuzene to have expressed his willingness to try this course; but the negotiation was broken off by the death of Clement, and by the forced abdication of the emperor, who spent his last years as a monk on Mount Athos, where he employed himself in composing an uncandid history of his own time.

But John Palaeologus, when thus rid of his guardian, was of all Greek emperors the most inclined to make concessions to Rome. As the son of a western princess, whose influence over him still continued, he felt nothing of the bigoted prejudice with which the Greeks in general regarded the Latins; and his dangers both from the Turks and from Cantacuzene’s son made him ready to seek for assistance from the west on any terms. In 1355 he made overtures to Innocent VI, offering to send his son Manuel to the pope, to have him instructed in Latin under the superintendence of a legate, and to establish schools for teaching Latin to young Greek nobles; and promising, if he should fail as to any of these proposals, to abdicate in favour of his son, who should then be wholly under the control of the pope. A Carmelite, Peter Thomasius, was thereupon sent to the Byzantine court, and made an easy convert of the emperor. In 1366 John subscribed in Hungary a form of faith agree­able to that of the Latin church, and professed homage to the pope; he renewed his assurances to Urban V; and in 1369, while Constantinople was under siege by Amurath, the pope’s return from Avignon was adorned by the presence of the eastern emperor as well as by that of the emperor of the west at Rome. John acknowledged the Roman supremacy, and the double procession of the Holy Spirit; he did homage to the pope in St. Peter’s by bending the knee, and by kissing his feet, hands, and mouth; he assisted at a mass celebrated by Urban; and he performed that “office of a groom” which the Christians of the west had been persuaded to connect with the memory of Constantine the Great. But all these compliances were ineffectual as to the object for which they were made. The pope’s exhortations to the knights of Rhodes, to the king of Cyprus, to the Venetians and the Genoese, that they should help the emperor against the enemies of Christendom, were unheeded. It was in vain that John endeavoured to enlist the great condottiere Hawkwood in his service. He himself, on his way homewards, was arrested for debt at Venice; and he found himself at last obliged to conclude a humiliating treaty with the Turks.

The advance of these assailants continued without check. In 1395 Bajazet, who from the brilliant rapidity of his movements acquired the name of Ilderim (lightning), penetrated into Hungary, and boasted an intention of sub­duing Germany and Italy, and of feeding his horses with oats at the high altar of St. Peter’s at Rome. The princes and nobles of France were roused by an embassy from king Sigismund of Hungary to hasten to his aid against the infidel invaders; and a brilliant array of 100,000 men set out, vaunting that, if the sky should fall, they would support it on the points of their lances, and indulging in visions of carrying their victorious arms even to the deliverance of Jerusalem. But the foolhardy confidence of these crusaders—their luxury, licentiousness, and want of discipline—proved fatal to the enterprise. Disdaining the advice of Sigis­mund, which was founded on his knowledge of the Turkish mode of warfare, they were utterly defeated at the battle of Nicopolis. Some of their leaders were slain; others, among whom was the count of Nevers (afterwards noted as John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy), were made prisoners, and were detained for ransom, before the arrival of which not a few of them had perished under the cruel usage of their captors.The failure of this expedition roused much indignation against the rival popes, whose pre­tensions distracted western Christendom, and made any combined action of its nations impossible.

In 1391 John Palaeologus was succeeded by his son Manuel, who was able to obtain the services of John le Maingre, one of the most distinguished soldiers in the late unfortunate crusade, and afterwards famous under the name of Boucicaut. By his advice Manuel, who had already applied by letter both to Boniface IX.and to the French king, undertook in 1400 a journey into western Europe for the purpose of begging assistance. Both in France and in England he was received with great honours; but although Charles VI, in addition to bestowing a pension on him until his fortunes should improve, promised him 1200 fighting men for a year, and although Henry IV vowed a crusade, and taxed his people as if for the relief of the Greek empire,no effec­tive aid was to be gained. Manuel, by adhering to his own religion, by refraining from all interference in the controversy between the popes, and by passing through Italy in the year of jubilee without visiting Rome, offended Boniface IX, who charged him with irreve­rence towards an image, and discouraged the idea of assisting him. He had been forced to submit to terms dictated by Bajazet; and but for the overthrow of that conqueror by Timur, at the battle of Angora, while Manuel was yet in the west, the fall of the Byzantine empire would probably have been no longer delayed.

During this time there was frequent correspond­ence between the popes and the Armenian church, and projects of union were entertained with a view to an alliance against the Mussulman power. But the Ar­menians failed to satisfy the popes entirely as to their orthodoxy; and the help which they obtained from the west was insufficient to protect them against their as­sailants. In 1367 Armenia fell under the yoke of the Mamelukes; and the Christians were soon after exposed to persecution at the hands of the conquerors.

In other quarters also, where the Mahometans ex­tended their conquests, the Christians suffered severely, and many were put to death for their religion, while others apostatized.

The period which we are surveying was disastrous for the Christianity of the further east. Although the popes continually flattered themselves with the hope of gaining the Mongols, who were now pushing their con­quests far and wide, these for the most part embraced the religion of Islam; and the hopes of conversion which from time to time were held out by the envoys of Asiatic princes, on condition of an alliance against their Mussulman or other enemies, invariably proved to be delusive.

In China, where, as we have already seen, the Fran­ciscan John of Monte Corvino laboured until about the year 1330, the propagation of the gospel was carried on with much success, chiefly by other members of the same order. But in 1369 the Chinese drove out the Mongols, and established a system of jealous exclusion of all foreigners; in consequence of which the Chris­tianity of China soon became extinct.

The great Asiatic conqueror Timur (or Tamerlane) appears to have observed an equivocal policy in matters of religion, and is described by some as friendly to Christians; but, whatever his own belief may have been, he outwardly, and as a matter of policy, at least, conformed to Islam. At the end of the period, a few scattered communities, chiefly Nestorian, were all that remained to represent the Christianity of Asia.

In Europe the end of the fourteenth century witnessed the conversion of the last considerable people which had until then professed heathenism. Lithuania, under its great-prince Jagello, had by conquests from Russia become a kingdom in all but name. In 1382 Jagello, whose mother had been a Christian, made pro­posals of marriage to Hedwig, who by the death of her father, Lewis, king of Hungary and Poland, had become heiress of the latter kingdom. He offered that he and all his people should be baptized, and that his territories should be united with Poland. The advantages of this arrangement outweighed both the contract into which she had already entered with an Austrian prince, and her personal dislike of Jagello. Jagello was baptized by the name of Ladislaus. Bishoprics were established at Wilna and in seven other towns; and the king set vigorously about the fulfilment of his promise as to the conversion of his people. These were at first unwilling to change their religion; but when they saw temples and altars overthrown, the sacred groves cut down, and the serpents which had been objects of worship killed, their faith in their old gods was shaken, and they rushed to baptism in such multitudes that it was found neces­sary to lead them in companies to the bank of the river, where a whole band was sprinkled at once, and all the members of it received the same baptismal name. Ladislaus himself travelled about the country, teaching the Lord’s prayer and the decalogue; and the work of conversion was forwarded by the white woollen dresses, of Polish manufacture, which were bestowed on the neophytes.Although, however, the profession of Chris­tianity thus became general in Lithuania, Aeneas Sylvius cites a Camaldolese monk, named Jerome of Prague, who visited the country in the beginning of the fifteenth century, as testifying that the worship of fire and of serpents was still widely kept up in it.

The conversion of the Finns and of the Laplanders is also referred to this period; but it would seem to have hardly reached more deeply than to the reception of baptism, and of the priestly benediction in marriage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER X.

SECTARIES—MYSTICS.

 

 

While the church was agitated by thereforming movements of Wyclif and Hus, some of the older parties which had incurred its condemnation continued to exist, and to draw on themselves fresh censures and penalties.

The Cathari, although almost extinguished in southern France by the wars of the thirteenth century, and by the relentless vigilance of the inquisition, were very nume­rous in Bosnia and the neighbouring regions; and the popes found little inclination on the part of successive kings of Hungary to exert themselves for the suppression of the sect.

The Waldenses also, as appears from the records of the inquisition of Toulouse, were among the victims of that tribunal. They are found in other parts of France, as also in Germany, where many of them suffered death as heretics; and it appears to have been in the be­ginning of this time that they made their way in con­siderable numbers into the valleys of Piedmont,where fanciful history and impossible etymology represent them as having lived even from the time of the apostles. In the years 1402-3, the famous Spanish Dominican Vincent Ferrer was employed in that region for the conversion of the sectaries, among whom he says that there were Cathari as well as Waldenses; but, although his eloquence is said to have been accompanied by miraculous circumstances—that the most distant persons in his audience heard him as distinctly as the nearest, and that his preaching was understood by all, although they might be ignorant of the language in which he spoke— its force was not sufficient to root out the opinion against which it was directed. There were much persecution of the Waldenses in Northern Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in consequence of this many fled to Apulia and Calabria, where their settlements continued to exist, until in 1560 they were exterminated by a massacre which is one of the blackest crimes connected with the suppression of the reforma­tion in Italy.

 

BEGHARDS

 

Other parties of separatists from the church were spoken of under the general name of beghards, which in Italy, Spain, and southern France, commonly designated fraticelli, but in Germany and Flanders the sectaries of the “Free Spirit”. Of these Cologne was the chief seat, and many of them suffered there and in other towns of the Rhine country. The secret progress of their pantheistic and immoral doctrines was favoured by the difficulty of distinguishing between such beghards and the harmless devotees who were confounded with them under a common name; while the more dangerous class studied to conceal their peculiarities by affecting a likeness in dress and manners to those beghards and beguines whom the popes by repeated declarations endeavoured to preserve from molestation. It is, in­deed, probable that societies of beghards which were originally orthodox became gradually corrupted by the secret introduction of unsound opinions. The name of Lollards, which eventually marked the followers of Wyclif, is found as early as 1309, when it seems to be applied to the sect of the Free Spirit in Holland and Brabant, and was used indifferently with that of beghard. Another name given to sectaries of the same kind was that of turlupins; those who were so styled in the Isle of France, about the year 1372, are described as having held that nothing which is natural is matter for shame; and a woman of the sect, Mary of Valenci­ennes, is spoken of by Gerson as having written a book “with almost infinite subtlety” on the text, “Have charity, and do what thou wilt.”

The popes laboured to secure the co-operation of the secular power for the suppression of heresy. We have seen how, in a former age, the emperor Frederick II attempted to rescue his own reputation for orthodoxy by the severity of his laws and proceedings against sectaries; and in other cases the opposite motive of a desire to stand well with the papacy led to a course which was practically the same. Thus the emperor Charles IV, in the code which has from him the name of Carolina, ordered that obstinate heretics should be made over by the secular to the ecclesiastical authorities, in order to be burnt, and that receivers of heretics should forfeit their property; but the opposition of the Bohe­mians was so decided that these severe laws could not be put into execution.

The inquisition was now extended in Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and other countries. Boniface VIII had endeavoured to regulate its proceedings, and Cle­ment V, at the council of Vienne, found himself obliged to admit that in many cases the inquisitors had given just cause of complaint. He therefore decreed that the bishops should be associated with these, who had until then been independent of the episcopal power; and while each of the orders was authorized to proceed in some respects without reference to the other, the co­operation of both bishops and inquisitors was in some cases required. In some countries, such as England, however, the inquisition was never able to establish itself; and elsewhere, as in the south of France, it found itself hampered by the unwillingness of the secu­lar authorities to assist, by their interference with its sentences, or even by their direct opposition. To the questions of heresy which had engaged the labours of the inquisitors was added in Germany the duty of in­quiring into the practice of witchcraft. The belief and the fear of this unhallowed art became rife, and secular authorities, as well as those of the church, concerned themselves with discovering and punishing those who were supposed to be guilty of it. Multitudes of wretches suffered in consequence—many of them after having confessed the commission of monstrous and impossible crimes.One writer reckons the number of sorcerers who were burnt within a century and a half at 30,000, or more, and believes that but for this wholesome severity the entire world would have been ruined by magical practices.

The practice of associating for penitential flagella­tion, which had been suppressed in the thirteenth cen­tury on account of the fanatical excesses connected with it,was still revived from time to time. In seasons of public calamity, when trust in the ordinary resources of the church was shaken, this exercise was again and again taken up by multitudes as a more powerful means of propitiating the wrath of heaven. The appearance of a flagellant party after the ravages of the Black Death, and the condemnation of flagellancy by Clement VI, have been already related. One Conrad Schmidt, a Thuringian, on finding the principle of flagellation thus discountenanced by the church, developed it into a system hostile both to the clergy and to their doctrines. He taught that flagellation was a baptism of blood; that it superseded the sacraments and other rites of the church, which were said to be ineffectual on account of the vices of the clergy; that salvation was possible for such persons only as should flog themselves at least on every Friday at the hour of the Saviour’s passion; that this was the new faith which saved all, whereas the old faith of the gospel condemned all; that the Saviour, toy changing water into wine, had signified that in the last days the baptism of water was to be superseded by the baptism of blood. The party claimed to represent the flagellants of sixty years before, from which time it was that they supposed the ministry and sacraments of the church to have lost their power. They had wild prophetical fancies—that Conrad Schmidt himself and one of his associates, who was burnt as a heretic, were Enoch and Elijah—the souls of those ancient saints having been infused into them at their birth; and that at the last day, which was fixed for the year 1364, Schmidt was to be the judge of the quick and the dead. With these and other strange opinions were combined the principles of dissimulation and evasion which are imputed to many kinds of sectaries; the flagellants were confounded with other parties under the general name of beghards; and their rule required them to conform outwardly to the church, and to punish themselves by stripes in secret for this compliance.¹! In 1372 Gregory XI. instructed an inquisitor in Germany that these people should be treated as heretics on account of their denial of the sacraments;and this order was carried out at various times by burning many of them. Perhaps the most remarkable persecution was that of 1414, when about ninety of Schmidt’s adherents were burnt at Sangershausen in Thuringia, and many others in other German towns.

In Italy also the same fanaticism appeared from time to time. And in 1399 a great movement—excited by two priests who are variously described as having come from Spain, from Provence, and from Scotland—began in Lombardy, whence it proceeded southwards to Flo­rence, Rome, and Naples. The penitents professed to have received a revelation from the blessed Virgin that her Divine Son’s wrath was provoked by the sins of mankind. They were dressed in white, and the numbers of their various companies, in which persons of all ranks were mixed, are reckoned at from 10,000 to 40,000. They chanted the Stabat Mater with vehement suppli­cations for mercy; they declined all sustenance except bread and water, fasted much, and refused to make use of beds during the time of their pilgrimage. When one company had finished its devotions at Rome, it was succeeded by another. Multitudes were drawn to join the penitents; there was a profuse show of contrition in confessing of sins, enemies were reconciled, and in other ways there was much amendment of life. But Boniface IX condemned the movement as being opposed to the discipline of the church; and its good effects soon passed away. About the same time there was a fresh outbreak of flagellation in Flanders, and Henry IV of England issued a proclamation by which it was ordered that, if any of the party should arrive in an English port, they should not be suffered to land.

A few years later, St. Vincent Ferrer appeared as the leader of a party of flagellants; and from the fact of his countenancing such a movement we may infer that it was free from the fanatical excesses, and from the enmity to the clergy, which had marked the flagellants of earlier days. He seems, however, to have been convinced by the arguments of Gerson, and he wrote to the council of Constance that he submitted to the authority of that assembly in all things, and abandoned the manner of devotion which had been called in question.

Very different in character from these wilder move­ments was the mysticism which now appeared as pre­vailing widely in Germany. The origin and growth of this may be in no small degree referred to the peculiar troubles of the time. The clergy sank in estimation, and hence many persons of a religious disposition, as well as others, became inclined to disparage the outward forms of religion. The abuse of the sentence of interdict, which was now often pronounced for reasons merely political—a sentence which involved multitudes of innocent persons in suffering for the alleged guilt of their superiors, and which, by denying the ordinary means of grace, drove the awakened cravings of the soul to seek for sustenance elsewhere—contributed greatly to foster the mystic ten­dency. And the expectation that the end of all things would speedily come, the eager study of such prophecies as those of St. Hildegard and abbot Joachim, the readi­ness to believe in visions and new revelations, affected the mind in a similar way.

Some of these mystics styled themselves “Friends of God”—a name derived from the Saviour’s words “Hence­forth I call you not servants; but I have called you friends.” They abounded chiefly on the upper Rhine, especially at Basel and Strasburg; but they had also correspondence with brethren in Switzerland, Italy, and Hungary, at Cologne, and in the Low Countries. It has been disputed whether the name designated an organised society, connected with the Waldenses or other sectaries who were avowedly separated from the church; but this idea seems to be now abandoned. The “friends of God ” were not a sect, although liable to be mistaken for sectaries, and involved by the vulgar in the general odium of beghardism. The visions and revelations on which they relied are foreign to the character of the Waldensian system.While judging the clergy freely, they did not venture to question the doctrine of the church. They were devoted to the blessed Virgin, they reverenced saints and relics, they held the current belief in purgatory. Their love of symbolism enabled them to reconcile the ordinary faith and worship with the peculiarities of their own system, which they regarded as additional, but not contradictory, to that of the church.

In this society were included monks and clergy, nobles, merchants, men and women of all classes, even down to tillers of the soil. They had priests to administer the Eucharist, but in other respects they did not attach importance to ordination. Thus Nicolas of Basel, a layman, who had founded the party, was regarded as its chief, and as its most enlightened member; and one of its characteristics was the principle of submission to cer­tain men whose superior sanctity had raised them to the highest class, and invested them with oracular authority, “as in God’s stead”. The “friends,” while professing to be purely scriptural, interpreted the Scriptures allegori­cally and mystically, and some parts of their system were concealed from the lower grades of believers by being disguised in a symbolical form. They denounced the subtleties and the dryness of scholasticism, and regarded the mixture of philosophy with religion as pharisaical. Their preachers were distinguished by the warmth, the earnestness, and the practical nature of their discourses; instead of contenting themselves, as was then common, with warning against the grossest sins by the fear of hell, they rather dwelt on the blessedness of heaven, and ex­horted to the perfection of the Christian life, and to union with God. They taught that these objects were to be sought by entire resignation to the Divine will; if such resignation were attained, men would pray neither for heaven nor for deliverance from hell, but for God Himself alone. Hence they did not, like the monks, break away from their earthly ties, but regarded these as the providen­tial conditions under which their work was to be carried on; and although some of them gave themselves to contemplation, the principle of resignation to God’s will became an incentive to action for others, whom it taught to regard themselves as instruments for the fulfilment of that will. It was held that the highest reach of love was to prefer the salvation of another to our own.

On the same principle of resignation, it was taught that all temptations ought to be welcomed; even sensual temptations were to be regarded as a check on spiritual pride, and to be without temptation was a token of being forsaken by God. All bodily discipline was repre­sented as designed for spiritual purposes, and as marking a stage after passing through which such things would not be necessary for the believer. But sufferings of God’s sending were always to be gladly accepted.

 

NICOLAS OF BASEL

 

The history of Nicolas, the founder of this remarkable society, is for the most part very obscure. His very name is discoverable by inference only, and in his accounts of himself there is so large a mixture of visionary, marvel­lous, and allegorical matter, that it is impossible to de­termine how much is intended to be accepted as literal truth. He was born about 1308, the son of a merchant, to whose business he succeeded; but the companionship of a young knight induced him to withdraw from trade, and for a time to engage in the amusements of the world. On the eve of the day appointed for his marriage, he prayed for direction before a crucifix; when it seemed to him that the figure inclined towards him, and, in obedience to this sign, he resolved to give up the world and to follow the Saviour. He did not, however, renounce his wealth, but keeping it in his own hands he devoted it to religious purposes. He appears to have had at first four associ­ates, and eventually the number of those admitted to the highest grade was thirteen. From Basel the headquar­ters of the party were removed in 1374-5 to a mountain within the Austrian-Swiss territory, where he built a house on a site which is said to have been miraculously indicated by a vision, and by the leading of a dog; and thence Nicolas kept up, by means of correspondence and of secret intelligencers, a watchful superintendence over his widely-spread connection. “The great friend of God in the Hill-country,” as he was styled, threw around himself an air of mystery; and when he went forth to work on persons who had been marked out as fit subjects for his influence, he was able, by means of his private information, to astonish and awe them by a knowledge of their concerns which they readily believed to be super­natural. In 1377, when the return of Gregory XI from Avignon appeared to open prospects of reform, Nicolas and one of his brethren repaired to Rome, and sought an interview with the pope, whom they urged to heal the evils of the church. On Gregory’s professing himself unequal to such a work, Nicolas threatened him with death within a year, and foretold the coming schism; and his predictions were, of course, fulfilled. At length Nicolas, after many years of labour, was burnt as a beghard at Vienna, probably in the year 1393.

 

ECKART

 

It was from the Dominican brotherhood that most of the great teachers of mysticism came forth. The first of them, Henry Eckart, became provincial of the order for Saxony in 1304, and lived at Cologne. With Eckart, the great object of endeavour is represented to be the union and identification of the soul with God, whom he speaks of as the only being. By contemplation, he says, the divine part of the soul may become one with God, and son to Him; the soul is transformed into God even as the eucharistic bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of the Saviour. The word which Eckart used to denote the desire of this union was poverty, by which was expressed the fact that man has nothing of his own in order to attain to the pure knowledge of God, all joy and fear, all confidence and hope, must be laid aside; for all these are of the creature, and are hindrances to union. Eckart’s mysticism was largely indebted to the works of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite, and had much in common with Neoplatonism. His language often runs into manifest pantheism; but, although in this respect he bears a likeness to the sectaries of the Free Spirit, he was in no way con­nected with them, but differed essentially from them in his ardent desire for the salvation of the soul, and in his freedom from the impurity which stained their teaching. There was, however enough to draw on him the sus­picion of heterodoxy; and, after a previous examination by the authorities of his order in 1324, the matter was taken up by the archbishop of Cologne, who in 1327 censured twenty-eight propositions extracted from his writings. These Eckart retracted in so far as they might be contrary to the doctrine of the church; but a more special retractation was required, and against this demand he appealed to the pope. By this step he appears to have secured himself from further trouble, until his death in 1329; but in that same year he was condemned by John XXII, as having held twenty-eight erroneous propositions. It would seem, however, that the Dominicans exerted themselves in favour of his memory; for although the pope, in the following year, by the bull ‘In agro Dominico’, renewed his censure of the propositions, it may be supposed that by omitting to connect the name of Eckart with them, he intended (in so far as retractation was possible for a pope) to with­draw the charge against him.

 

TAULER

 

Notwithstanding the suspicions which had been cast on Eckart’s orthodoxy, his writings continued to be the chief study of the later mystics, among whom John Tauler was the most famous. Tauler was born at Strasburg in 1294, and at the age of eighteen entered the Dominican order. He studied for some time at Paris, although it is not known whether it was to that univer­sity that he owed his degree of doctor in theology; and in the course of his studies he showed a preference for the mystical and spiritual writers—the pseudo-Dionysius, the school of St. Bernard, and, above all, St. Augus­tine—over the scholastic authors who were then of greatest authority. On returning to his native city he fell under the influence of Eckart and other mystics, which was then powerful at Strasburg; yet, unlike Eckart, he was inclined rather to practical work than to speculation, and he often denounces the mistaken contemplativeness and the passive quietism which he regarded as perversions of the true mysticism; for in this he held that love for man ought to go hand-in-hand with the aspiration after union with God.

Strasburg was then agitated by the differences between the pope and the emperor Lewis, so that, while the bishop adhered to the pope, the citizens, by siding with the emperor, incurred the sentence of interdict. In consequence of this, the clergy were divided: while some shut up their churches, others, in defiance of the interdict, deemed it their duty to continue their pastoral labours. In such circumstances it was natural that per­sons of all classes should be drawn together by the desire of finding some satisfaction for their spiritual needs, to which the church appeared to deny the means of sup­port; and thus the association of the “friends of God” became greatly increased in numbers. Among the clergy who remained at their posts was Tauler, although the brethren of his order in general left the town. The circumstances of the time gave him prominence; he became famous as a preacher, and in that character he extended his labours on the one side to Basel (where, as at Strasburg, the imperialist citizens had been laid under an interdict by the bishop), and on the other side to Cologne; the fame of his eloquence even made its way across the Alps into Italy.

In 1346 he was visited by a layman, who had listened to several of his sermons and expressed a wish to confess to him. Tauler heard the confession, and administered the sacrament of the altar to the stranger, who afterwards visited him again, and requested him to preach on the manner of attaining the highest perfection which is pos­sible in this life. Tauler complied, although reluctantly, and addressed to a crowded audience an earnest exhor­tation to renunciation of self and of self-will. Once more the layman, who had taken notes of the sermon, appeared, and told Tauler that he had come a distance of thirty miles, not so much to hear him as to give him advice; that he, the famous preacher, who had already reached his fiftieth year, was still but a man of books, a mere Pharisee. Tauler, although startled and shocked by such words, warmly thanked his monitor for having been the first to tell him of his faults, and entreated his further counsel. The stranger prescribed some ascetic exercises; he himself, he said, had gone through such things, but had now outgrown them, so as to need them no longer; and he further charged Tauler to abstain for two years from preaching, from hearing confessions, and from study, shutting himself up in the seclusion of his cell. Submission to the dictates of those who were supposed to possess spiritual experience was, as we have seen, a characteristic of the “friends of God”, and Tauler obeyed. The monitor was no other than Nicolas of Basel, who, in his watchful observation of all who might be supposed likely to sympathize with him, had marked Tauler during a visit which the preacher had lately made to Basel, and had undertaken the journey to Strasburg for the purpose of gaining him. Tauler struggled through the prescribed exercises, being upheld by the counsels of Nicolas, and even assisted by his money, while his former friends mocked at him for the change which had taken place; but when, at the end of the two years, he attempted to resume his preaching, and his fame had drawn together a great audience, his utterance was choked by his feelings; he burst into tears, and found himself unable to proceed. It was supposed that he had lost his senses, and his superiors forbade him the pulpit. Nicolas of Basel, on being consulted, told him that perhaps he had not yet overcome his love of self, and advised him to remain silent for some time longer; after which, by the direction of Nicolas, Tauler asked and obtained leave to preach in Latin before the brethren of his order. In this he acquitted himself so as to raise general admiration, and the late prohibition was taken off. He resumed his public preaching, which was now marked by a warmth and a depth unknown in his earlier time : such was the effect of his first sermon that twelve persons were struck down as if dead. He strenuously urged reformation, nor did he spare the faults of the clergy, so that with them he became unpopular, and he and his associates were stigmatized as beghards. In addition to labouring as a preacher, Tauler wrote some German tracts, of which the most celebrated is one on ‘The Imitation of the Saviour’s Life of Poverty’; and he acted as the spiritual director of many persons—among whom Rulman Merswin, a wealthy retired merchant, and author of a book entitled ‘The Nine Rocks’ is especially mentioned.

The great pestilence of 1348 raged with such violence at Strasburg that 16,000 persons died in the city alone. The interdict was still in force, and the clergy in general, professedly out of obedience to it, refrained from the exer­cise of their ministry. In these circumstances, Tauler and a few others, among whom was Ludolf of Saxony, prior of the Carthusian convent, stepped forward, argu­ing that it was contrary to Scripture and to reason that, for the political offence of one man, multitudes of inno­cent persons should be excluded from the means of grace and from the benefit of the Redeemer’s sufferings. They tended the sick, aided them with spiritual counsel, administered the last consolations of religion, and buried the dead with the offices of the church. But by these and other things the bishop of Strasburg was offended, so that when Charles IV visited the city, and recon­ciliation with the church was offered to the inhabitants, Tauler was required, as a suspected beghard, to give an account of his faith before the emperor. The result is not recorded; but it was probably in consequence of this that he withdrew to Cologne, where he laboured zealously to correct the prevailing habits of luxury, and to counteract the teaching of the professors of the Free Spirit. The time of his return to Strasburg is unknown; but he was there in 1361, when, feeling the approach of death, he invited Nicolas of Basel to visit him. In compliance with this request, Nicolas repaired to Strasburg, and during an illness of many weeks Tauler was sustained by the comfort of intercourse with the man whose influence had determined the course of his maturer spiritual life, and whom he now desired to draw up a narrative of their early intercourse, from notes which Tauler had made long before. Tauler died on the 16th of June 1361, in a garden-house of the convent in which his sister was a nun, and he has been blamed by a severe mystic for the weakness of indulging his human affections by allowing himself her society.

Tauler was styled by his admirers the Illuminated (or Enlightened) Doctor. His sermons, which are the most important part of his remaining works, are characterized by deep earnestness and by an evangelical tone which, as Luther mentions, was symbolized by his monument, on which he was represented as pointing to the Lamb of God. He taught that outward austerities were to be regarded not for their own sake, but as a discipline for beginners, and would fall away of themselves from the believer in proportion as his faith became matured; that without a right heart, penance, confession, absolution, with all the intercessions of the blessed Virgin and the saints, are of no avail. While he would have all the laws of the church observed, he attaches no importance to the outward works, and even says that the believer must sometimes appear to break the laws—a principle which was, of course, liable to be perverted, as it was by the sectaries of the Free Spirit. And, while he regards the holy Eucharist as the chief means of union between the believer and his Lord, he teaches that in this also the inward feeling must be regarded rather than the outward form. Although fond of recondite meanings, he is free from all parade of learning; in one sermon, he an­nounces his intention of giving up the practice of using Latin quotations, except in discourses addressed to learned hearers. The writings of Tauler had much influence on the mind of Luther, who warmly expressed his obligations to them. It has been said by Herder, that to read two of Tauler’s sermons is to read them all;yet, as has been well observed, even the monotony which unquestionably runs throughout them may have tended in practice to deepen the impression of his teaching.

 

SUSO

 

Another famous mystic, Henry von Berg, who is more generally known by the name of Suso, was a Dominican of Constance, and died in 1365, in his seventieth year. In an autobiography, which is probably in part imaginary, he tells us that from the age of eighteen to that of forty he disciplined himself by strict observances of devotion, by severe ascetic exercises, and even by tortures, such as that of wearing under his dress a wooden cross studded with thirty nails, of which the points were turned towards his flesh. At length, when he had reduced himself by this treatment to such a degree that a continuance of it must have been fatal, he was told by an angel that he had studied long enough in the lower school, and was to be transferred to the higher, in which his sufferings would not be of his own infliction, but would come on him plentifully from men and devils. The object of all he represents as being an entire abandonment and resignation of self to the Divine will, in imitation of the Saviour’s example. On expressing a wish to set to work, he is told that the less one does, the more hath he really done—that men ought not to act for themselves, but to cast themselves wholly on God’s promises. There are stories not only of visions, but of miracles. The book was drawn up by Suso for the instruction of a “spiritual daughter”, whom he warns that she is soon to die; and he relates that, after her death, he had a vision of her as “passing gloriously into the pure Divinity.” The principle of self-abandonment is again in­culcated in Suso’s book ‘Of the Eternal Wisdom’, where the Saviour is introduced as conversing with His servant, and recounting the bodily and spiritual sufferings of His passion. Suso is without the manly strength of Tauler, and is distinguished chiefly by the poetical and figurative tone of his writings.

 

RUYSBROEK

 

The mystically speculative tendency of Eckart revived in the anonymous author of the ‘German Theology’, which is supposed to be a work of this time, and in John Ruysbroek, who was distinguished by the title of Ecstatic Doctor. Ruysbroek, who is characterizedby John of Trittenheim as “a man reputed to be devout, but of little learning’, had been a secular priest at Brussels until the age of sixty, when he withdrew to the monastery of Grontal, of which he became prior. He professed that he never wrote a word except by inspiration of the Holy Spirit and in the especial presence of the Divine Trinity; and it is related that, when he found the in­fluence of divine grace strong on him, he used to retire to write in the depths of a wood—where his canons, uneasy at his long absence, once found him surrounded by a supernatural light, imperfectly conscious, but “inebri­ated by the glow of the divine sweetness.”  Ruysbroek died in 1381, at the age of eighty-eight. His works were written in Flemish, but were translated into Latin. Gerson, who, as a nominalist, was alarmed by their mystic realism, denounced them as pantheistic, and on this account became involved in a controversy with John of Schonhofen, a canon of Grontal, who, among other things, charged him with having too much relied on the Latin translation.

Gerson himself endeavoured to unite mysticism with scholasticism, so as to exclude the dangers of unre­strained imagination and fanaticism; and to him has been attributed by some writers the authorship of the most celebrated devotional book of the middle ages— the treatise  ‘Of the Imitation of Christ’. But this supposition appears rather to have been suggested by the patriotic desire of French writers to claim for one of their own countrymen a work so justly admired than to rest on any solid basis of facts. And the slightly different name of John Gerson, which has been put forward by other writers on the ground of inscriptions in some manuscript copies of the book, would seem to be really nothing more than a mistake for that of the famous chancellor of Paris. The popular opinion, which ascribes the ‘Imitation’ to Thomas Hamerken of Kempten, a canon regular of Zwoll, who died in 1471, appears, therefore, to be the most probable. The tone of the ‘Imitation’ is strongly mystical, yet no less practical—setting forth religious practice as the way to insight into divine things. Thoroughly monastic in spirit, it has the characteristic excellences and defects of monastic piety; while it is full of wise guidance for the soul in the ways of humility, purity, and self-renunciation, the religion which it inculcates is too exclusively directed towards the perfecting of the individual in himself, too little solicitous for his relations with the brotherhood of mankind. Its conception of the way of life is too limited, and does not enough regard the endless variety of circumstances in which men are placed, with the task before them of working out their salvation under the conditions assigned to them by the divine providence. Yet the vast and unequalled popularity of the book has not been confined to those who would sympathize with its monastic peculiarities, but has extended to multitudes of persons remote in feeling and in belief from all that is specially distinctive of medieval religion.

The teaching of the mystics, by leading men from a reliance on outward observances to an inward spiritual life, prepared the way for the Reformation, and Luther speaks with warm admiration of Tauler and of the German Theology. But between the two systems there was the important difference, that whereas the mystics sought after immediate union with the Saviour through conformity to him in humility and spiritual poverty, the characteristic doctrine of Luther was that of free justifi­cation by faith, while his system insisted on the necessity of those sacramental means which the mystics regarded as comparatively unimportant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI

SUPPLEMENTARY.

 

The Hierarchy.

 

In the earlier part of the time which we are now surveying, the pretensions of the papacy, although they could not in substance be carried higher than before (inasmuch as they already included supremacy both in spiritual and in temporal things), were more extravagantly developed in detail. For this questionable service the popes were indebted to the flattery of curialist writers, and of friars specially devoted to their interest, such as Augustine Trionfi and Alvar Pelayo,—who maintained, for example, that the pope could not sin by corruption or simony in the bestowal of preferment, forasmuch as he is above law, so that actions which are sinful in others are not so in him.

In their relations with secular powers the popes were often gainers. The claim advanced by John XXII in the case of Lewis of Bavaria—that an elected emperor should not have authority to govern until after having been examined and approved by the pope—was some­thing even beyond the pretensions of Boniface VIII; but in the contest with Lewis the popes had the advan­tage, and their candidate, Charles IV, succeeded peace­fully on his rival’s death. The right to bestow kingdoms had been already asserted as to Hungary on the extinction of the Arpad dynasty, although the Hungarians would not allow that the pope was en­titled to do more than to confirm the national choice; and in other cases, princes who were desirous to secure themselves in the possession of a doubtful crown requested the papal sanction, as was done by the great Robert of Scotland shortly before his death.

But on the whole the popes lost more than they gained. Their claims to domination, after having been carried beyond endurance by Boniface VIII, began immediately afterwards to recede by the withdrawal of the bulls which had offended Philip the Fair; and that line of investiga­tion into the sources of the papal rights which was begun in the imperial interest by such writers as Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham, was afterwards forced by the great schism on churchmen whose natural feeling would have been averse to it. Even such men were compelled, by the inextricable confusion which arose out of the pretensions of rival popes, to ask whether there might not be some means of arbitrating between them. In these circumstances the universities—especially that of Paris—gained an authority which was very dangerous to the papacy; and in various quarters new and startling opinions were propounded. By some, it was maintained that the pope was not essentially necessary to the church; others denied him the possession of the “two swords”, referring to the benefits which the church had derived from the intervention of Theodoric the Goth and of Otho I, and tracing the schism, with all the other evils of the time, to the secularity of the popes. And whereas the popes had endeavoured to absorb the rights of the whole episcopate, the episcopate was now set up as an aristo­cracy, in opposition to the monarchy of the pope. There was a tendency to limit the papal power; and the circum­stances of the time appeared to force on the other mem­bers of the church the task of judging those who claimed to be its head. The notions that popes could not be de­posed except for heresy—that the occupant of the chief see was exempt from earthly judgment—were denied and refuted. If, argues the writer of a treatise which has been commonly ascribed to Gerson, an hereditary king may be deposed—(for this he assumes as a thing beyond question)—much more may a pope, who is chosen by car­dinals—one whose father and grandfather were perhaps unable to find beans to fill their bellies. When, he adds, the case of a pope is in question, it is not for him, but for cardinals, bishops, and secular princes to assemble a general council; and such a council is superior to the pope and may control him, while he has no power to dispense with its canons. The church, according to Gerson and others of the same school, may compel a pope to resign. These principles were, as we have seen, carried into effect at the council of Constance.

On the other hand, the power of the empire had never recovered itself since the time of Frederick II. Dante, at the beginning of the period, speaks of one of the two suns by which Rome had formerly been enlightened as having been extinguished by the other. The endeavours of Henry VII to restore the ancient rights of his crown were cut short by an untimely death; and all that he had achieved was forfeited by the faults or the misfortunes of his successors. The transfers of the empire from one family to another, while they added strength and importance to the electoral princes of Germany, weakened the imperial authority; the emperor or king of the Romans, who had paid dearly for his office and had no assurance as to the succession, was under the strongest temptation to regard his own im­mediate interest alone, and to sacrifice the permanent interests of his crown. At Constance, indeed, Sigismund was able to exercise influence as advocate of the church; but the decline of the imperial authority from its former greatness was shown by the fact that he found it neces­sary to call in the aid of John XXIII for the assembling of the council, as the European kingdoms had ceased to acknowledge the supremacy of the empire.

In France the opposition between the papacy and the crown was removed by the settlement of the popes at Avignon, which rendered them subservient tools of the sovereign. But this subserviency, in addition to the degradation of the papacy, had the effect of exciting the jealousy of the English, which was shown in many forms of resistance, while the popes found themselves obliged to meet it by compromise, lest the nation should be provoked to throw off their authority.

To this time belongs the completion of the Canon Law. Clement V ordered the determinations of the council of Vienne, with other decrees which he had issued, to be collected into five books, which from him derive the name of Clementines. Among these it is noted that under the head of Oaths he takes the oppor­tunity of declaring the oath sworn to the holy see by Henry VII to be a real oath of fealty; and that under the head of the Liberty of the Church he withdraws the bull Clericis Laicos.  After having published these books in a consistory of cardinals, Clement sent them in 1313 to the university of Orleans, which he had founded; but, although he lived a year and a half longer, he did not communicate them in the usual manner to the other universities, and it is said by a writer who lived two centuries later, that, from a feeling of their contrariety in many respects to Christian simplicity and to the freedom of religion, he gave orders on his death-bed that they should be abolished. If it be true that Clement had such scruples, they were not shared by his successor, John XXII; for this pope sent the Clementines to Paris and Bologna in 1317, that they might serve as a text for lectures.

The Clementines were the last addition to the body of ecclesiastical law which was put forth with the fulness of papal sanction. At an earlier time such decretals as did not appear in Gratian’s compilation had been styled Extravagants. After the publication of Gregory IXth’s five books, the same name was used to designate such more recent decretals as had not yet been included in any authorized collection; and it has since become the general title of the decretals issued by John XXII and his successors, as these were never collected or com­municated to the universities by papal authority. The selection of the documents which are classed under this head is attributed to Chapuis, who edited the Canon Law in 1500.

The new legislation was in the same spirit with that which had gone before it. Although strong assaults were sometimes made on portions of the false decretals, no one ventured to attack them as a whole; and so long as these retained their authority, any attempts of coun­cils to limit the power of the pope were likely to be nugatory.

 

ANNATES

 

The popes of this time not only maintained their older claims as to money, patronage, and the like, but endeavoured to enlarge on them. Thus John XXII imposed the tax of annates 0r  first-fruits—a payment for which there had been some shadow of precedent in the demands made by bishops (sometimes with papal sanc­tion), from those who were presented to benefices by them; although in earlier times such exactions had been condemned by the church and its most eminent teachers, such as Chrysostom in the east and Gregory the Great in the west. John in 1319 extended it to ill benefices, both elective and non-elective, fixing the amount at half the income of the first year, and profess­ing that the law was to be for three years only; but it appears to have been renewed, and the exaction was yet further enforced by Boniface IX.The popes also claimed the income of bishoprics, etc., during vacancy (fructus medii temporis), and, although Alexander V and Martin V professed to give up this claim, they still retained the first-fruits. The “right of spoils”, which had been denounced by popes when claimed by tem­poral sovereigns, was now asserted for the papacy, and with a view to this and other purposes their collectors and spies were sent into various countries. Fees of all sorts were raised in amount, and new occasions for ex­acting them were invented. A writer of the time speaks of the papal court as drawing gold even out of flint; and an English chronicler describes the charges on appointments as so heavy that in many cases the payers never recovered from them. The luxury of the court of Avignon required an increase of means, while the popes were unable to collect the revenues of their Italian states; and when, in consequence of the schism, western Christendom was burdened with the cost of two papal establishments, the exactions became more exorbitant than ever. All the old means of raising money were strained to the uttermost; new devices were invented for the same purpose, and each of the rival courts was glad to borrow the ideas of the other in this respect. Every pope at the beginning of his pontificate set forth a code of chancery-rules, in which, adopting the devices of his predecessors for extracting money from the bene­fices of the church, he usually added such further orders of the same tendency as his own ingenuity or that of his advisers could suggests The censures of the church were prostituted as means to compel the payment of money. While there was an affectation of checking pluralities in general, an exception was made in favour of the cardinals, so that a cardinal might enjoy the monstrous number of four or five hundred benefices.

Such things were not allowed to pass without remonstrance. In England, where the patience of the nation was most severely tried by them, there were frequent and indignant manifestations of discontent, and statutes were enacted with a view of checking the practices of the papal court. The laity cried out loudly, in parliamem and elsewhere, charging the depopulation and impover­ishment of the country on the Roman exactions, and on the draining of the wealth of English benefices by foreigners. It was complained that such persons were in many cases enemies of the English crown, that they betrayed the secrets of the realm; and on such grounds the foreign holders of English benefices were frequently deprived, and if they were found in the country (which they rarely honoured with their presence) were obliged to quit it. Laws were passed to prevent the holding of English preferment by aliens. Complaints were made by parliament that the money drawn from England under the name of annates and other papal dues was employed in the interest of the national enemies; and in 1404 an act was passed by which bishops were forbidden to sub­mit to the increased rate of payments which the Roman court had begun to exact. Papal collectors were re­quired, on landing in England, to swear that they would do nothing to the prejudice of the crown or of the king­dom; and sometimes, when returning with the spoil of England, they were compelled to disgorge it before em­barking.There were frequent orders against the introduction of papal documents injurious to the dignity of the crown, especially of such as assumed the disposal of patronage;  and the statutes of provisors and praemunire were enacted in order to check the Roman aggressions in this kind. The first act of provisors, passed in 1350-1, after setting forth the manner in which the popes had usurped patronage, and the ill results which had followed, decrees that elections to bishoprics and other elective dignities shall be free, agreeably to the grants of the founders; that no reservation, collation, or provision of the court of Rome to the contrary shall take effect, but that in such cases the king shall present, as his progeni­tors did before free election was granted; forasmuch as such election was granted on condition that it should be preceded by the royal licence and followed by the royal assent, and, if these conditions fail, the right of presentation reverts to the original state. By the statute of praemunire, in 1353, it was enacted that any one who should carry to a foreign tribunal matter which was cognizable in the king’s court, or who should try to impeach in any foreign court a judgment which had been pronounced by the king’s court, should be cited to an­swer before the king or his representatives, and in case of non-appearance should be outlawed, should forfeit his property, and be committed to prison. The provisions of these two acts were repeatedly enforced by later legis­lation; and the headship of religious houses was placed on the same footing as other dignities with regard to the king’s right of presentation. The popes affected to set such laws at nought, and to maintain their claims to patronage; Boniface IX went so far as to order that the antipapal acts should be erased from the English statute-book, and there were continual attempts to evade the force of the prohibitions. But the parliament, the clergy, and the whole nation, stood firm in their union against the papal encroachments; and at last the utmost that the popes could do, by way of saving appearances, was to accept the English king’s nomination of the persons in whose behalf the pretended rights of the papacy were to be exercised. The resistance of the English to the papal pretension to confer the temporalities of sees has already been mentioned. But in the weaker kingdom of Scotland this pretension seems to have been unopposed. Thus John XXII in 1323 presented John of Lindsay, a canon of Glasgow, to the bishopric of that see, professing to give him the temporalities as well as the spiritual charge; and he nominated an Italian to the prebend which had been formerly held by the new bishop. But Lindsay, on returning from the papal court to Scotland, was required to admit a nominee of the king to this prebend; and he submitted, both he and the nomi­nee protesting that the admission should not interfere with the papal rights. Yet while in this lesser matter the crown prevailed, it is remarkable that no objection was raised against the pope’s claim to bestow the tem­poralities of the bishopric.

In other countries also sovereigns sometimes imitated the English example of resistance to the papacy. Thus Philip of Valois seized the revenues of eccle­siastical absentees, although at the entreaty of his queen he afterwards restored so much of them as be­longed to cardinals. Alfonso XI of Castille endeavoured to withstand the papal claim of provisions; and Sigismund (afterwards emperor), provoked by Boniface IX’s acknow­ledgment of his rival, Ladislaus, as king of Hungary, forbade all exercise of patronage by the popes in that kingdom.

The exaggerated pretensions which the clergy had set up as to rights of jurisdiction, and of exemption from secular authority, tended to react to their own disadvan­tage. In Germany, where the ecclesiastical class feeling of the prelates was modified by their position as great secular lords, it was established that in temporal matters the appeal should be to the emperor alone : and this was declared, not only by Lewis of Bavaria, but by Charles IV in his golden bull.

In France, where the liberties of the national church had been affirmed and secured by the pragmatic sanction and by the “establishments” of St. Lewis, and where the popes were controlled in some degree by the fact of their residence at Avignon, the crown was able to hold its ground against the ambition of the papacy. The sove­reigns were in general disposed to favour the hierarchy as far as possible, in order to secure the influence of the bishops; but the nobles were always at strife with the clergy, and on both sides there were continual complaints of ag­gression and encroachment. Thus, at a session of the parliament of Paris, held under Philip of Valois in 1329, Peter of Cugnieres, a knight and one of the king’s coun­sellors, after discoursing on the text, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”, brought forward sixty-six articles as to which he asserted that the clergy had encroached on the rights of the laity. These articles related to such things only as could show no warrant of law or privilege; for example, there was no complaint as to the exemption of the clergy from secular judgment, but it was complained that the tonsure was so bestowed as to confer this exemption on unfit persons—on boys and on married men, on some who were illiterate, and on others who were disqualified by character. At a second session of the same body, Peter Roger, archbishop elect of Sens (afterwards pope Clement VI), stood forward as the champion of the clergy, and replied to the articles in order, declaring that, although there are two swords—the spiritual and the temporal— both might be in the hands of one and the same person. Thus, he said, it was in ancient Israel; thus it was in the case of Melchizedek, and in Him who is a priest afterthe order of Melchizedek; and so, too, it was in St. Peter, as appeared from the punishment of Ananias. Our Lord would have both swords in the possession of the church; He did not charge the apostle to cast away his sword, but to sheathe it; by which was meant that the church, although having all jurisdiction, should refrain from the exercise of it in cases of blood. The king, hampered by his fear of the danger which threatened him from England, was unable to carry out with firmness the policy which his wishes suggested. At a later session it was declared in his name, and by the mouth of Peter of Cugnieres himself, that Philip was resolved to maintain the rights of the church unimpaired. The king was content with the promise of the bishops that they would redress the grievances which were alleged; but when the bishop of Autun, Peter Bertrandi (who had answered Cugnieres’s articles at great length), insisted on the griev­ances of the clergy, and asked for a clearer declaration in their favour, he was told that the clergy had a certain time allowed them for reform, and that, if they neglected this opportunity, the king would apply such remedies as should please God and the peopled

The parliament of Paris strongly opposed the hierar­chical claims, not only restraining the bounds of the ecclesiastical judgments, but asserting a sort of oversight of them, and assuming to itself the right of judging in some kinds of cases which had hitherto been regarded as belonging to ecclesiastical cognizance;and the clergy continued to complain that laymen inflicted grievances on them, especially by interfering with their supposed rights of jurisdiction.

In England there were frequent collisions as to the rival claims of the ecclesiastical and the secular courts. When the clergy complained to Edward II, in 1309, that clerks arrested on suspicion of crime were not imme­diately made over to their ordinaries, “as of right ought to be done”, but were kept in the secular prison, the king replied that such clerks should be given up to their eccle­siastical superiors on demand, but with the condition that they should be brought before the king’s judges for trial “as heretofore hath been customary”. So, in answering the petition known as Articuli cleri Edward says that, when a matter should come before both the spiritual and the temporal courts—as in the case of violently laying hands on a clerk—the king’s court shall treat it “as to that court itself shall seem expedient, the ecclesiastical judgment notwithstanding”. Even that weak prince found it necessary to remonstrate again and again with the popes on account of encroachments in this and in other respects;  and, under his successors, such remonstrances were both frequent and forcible.

In 1344, Edward III, in consideration of a large subsidy from the clergy, granted that no archbishop or bishop should be impeached before the king’s justices for any crime, unless by special order from the crown— a concession which, while relaxing the exercise of the royal authority for the time, implies an assertion of its right. In the end of the century, Richard II condemned archbishop Arundel to perpetual banishment and to for­feiture of his property, and Henry IV, although desirous to keep well with the clergy on account of the defect in his title to the crown, proceeded without hesitation against such of the order as opposed him. He put to death, by secular judgment, some Franciscans and other priests who had plotted in behalf of a pretender to the name of the dethroned Richard. Merks, bishop of Carlisle, was deprived of his see, and had difficulty in escaping with life. The king brought Scrope, arch­bishop of York, to trial for high treason, and when the chief justice, Sir William Gascoigne, refused to act as judge, saying that the king himself had no right to condemn a bishop to death, a less scrupulous person, Sir William Fulthorpe, was found for the work, and the archbishop, having been found guilty, was beheaded. Archbishop Arundel, who had been restored to Canterbury on the change of dynasty, had contented himself with urging that his brother primate should be reserved for the pope’s judgment; and al­though Innocent VI anathematized those who had been concerned in the archbishop’s death, the sentence was ineffectual, so that Gregory XII found it expedient to release them on condition of their expressing sorrow for their offence.

In 1354, archbishop Islip complained in parliament that the secular judges frequently exceeded their au­thority by trying and condemning to death “the Lord’s anointed”—clergymen, and monks in holy orders. To this the king himself and others replied that the privileges claimed by the clergy were an encouragement to crime; that when criminal clerks were made over to their bishops, their prison life, instead of being a punishment, became a time of relaxation and good living, with all the tempta­tions which arise out of idleness; and that the sight of such things incited others to crime. The primate seems to have found these statements irresistible, and gives orders that the treatment of clerical delinquents in prison shall be more severe, especially as to diet, which, even on Sundays, is never to be more luxurious than bread, vegetables, and small beer. But the clergy still found that their claims were not respected. The convocation of Canterbury, in 1399, while it admitted that the privi­lege of the clergy ought not to avail them in cases of treason, complained that for offences of other sorts they were sometimes hanged like laymen, and petitioned that the king would order them, if convicted in secular courts, to be made over to the custody of the bishops, accord­ing to their rights.

In other countries also the assumed immunities of the clergy were controlled by the secular power. Thus in France, when Guichard, bishop of Troyes, was charged with having poisoned or enchanted the king of Navarre’s mother, he was long imprisoned in the Louvre, without any regard to the privileges of his order. Even as to the monastic bodies, the French kings firmly asserted their rights of jurisdiction. Thus in 1350, king John, having received complaints of cruelties exercised on delinquent monks by their superiors, ordered that redress should be made; and when the Dominicans and Franciscans objected to this, as an invasion of the pope’s authority, they were told that they must either submit or leave the kingdom. Again, in 1412 a royal commission was appointed to inquire into the affairs of the black monks of Languedoc ; and when the archbishops of Narbonne and Toulouse, with a council, charged the commissioners to desist under pain of excommunication, the king’s council re­fused to hear the representatives of the two archbishops, because they had assembled their council without the royal license.

The papal judicature was so extended as in great measure to supersede all other tribunals of the church. The Roman curia now entertained all sorts of cases in the first instance, often where one only of contending parties wished to resort to it, and in disregard of the protests of the other party; and it frequently happened that cases, while pending, were transferred to the papal judgment from the episcopal courts in which they had been commenced. By this the authority and estimation of the bishops was much diminished; and other things, such as the enormous extension of the system of dispen­sations and exemptions, tended to the same effect. By arrogating to themselves the functions of the bishops, the popes reduced these to what a writer of the time describes as the condition of mere painted images; and many of them, finding themselves without the honour and the in­fluence which had formerly belonged to their order, were tempted to neglect of duty and to selfish enjoyment, while they endeavoured to indemnify themselves for their degradation by behaving tyrannically to their clergy.

In France the independence of the bishops appeared to have been secured by the pragmatic sanction of St. Lewis; but it was again sacrificed by the concordat of Constance, and the authority which they had seemed likely to acquire, by means of the councils in which they sat in judgment on popes, was frustrated by the policy of the popes, who contrived to entangle them in differ­ences with their sovereigns.

The popes, too, had in their hands the power of reconciling the bishops to much loss of dignity by means of the system of commendams.The practice of “com­mending” vacant preferments—such as the headship of a monastery—instead of filling them up with proper in­cumbents, was as old as the eighth or ninth century, but had then been forcibly exercised by secular princes in favour of laymen or others, and had been reprobated by the ecclesiastical authorities. At a later time, however, it came to be largely used by popes, who found in it a means of attaching to their interest persons who might otherwise have been inclined to insubordination. At first, vacant preferments, if there were some hindrance to filling them up immediately, were commended to the care of some competent person, and the abuse of the system was guarded against by limitations of the time for which such commendations might be granted. But afterwards such restrictions were set aside, so that the commendation might be for the whole lifetime of the receiver; nor were the popes bound by any limits as to the number of the preferments which might thus be accumulated on a single person. If an archbishop complained of the cost of his pall, or a bishop of the amount of his first-fruits, they might be indemnified at the expense of the church by receiving the commendation of wealthy sees or abbacies. In the case of some of the more important prelates, this system was carried to a great excess. Thus Baldwin of Treves held at different times the sees of Spires and Worms in commendam with his archbishopric, and for nine years (during a part of which he was also adminis­trator of Worms) even the archbishopric of Mayence, the seat of the German primacy, was commended to him. The cardinals held much preferment in this way, and in some cases even women received the commendation of benefices.

Clement V, who had used this system largely, was touched with compunction in a dangerous illness, and on his recovery put forth a bull revoking and annulling all such grants; but it would seem, from the complaints of the younger Durandus and of another bishop, at the time of the council of Vienne, that little practical amendment followed John XXII endeavoured, by his bull Execrabilis (a.C. 1318), to check the practice of commendation and other abuses of pluralities; but later popes again had recourse to it, and it furnished the means of evading various laws of the church. Thus a benefice with cure of souls might be bestowed in commendam on a person who would have been incapable of holding it as incumbent—a boy, for example, or one who had not been ordained to the priesthood. Or by the union of benefices the laws against pluralities might be defeated—the holder being presented to one as the “principal benefice”, and the others being “commended” to him with it. Or a cure of souls was united with a sinecure, and, when the sinecure was bestowed on a person unqualified for a charge of souls, the cure followed it by virtue of the union.

In consequence of such practices, chiefly, the inequality between different grades of the clergy now became espe­cially glaring. Theodoric of Niem tells us that, while some of them were greater than secular princes, others were in a condition more abject than that of the common people. And Nicolas of Clemanges renews the old com­plaint of Agobard, that members of the priesthood are employed in low offices under secular masters—as cooks, butlers, stewards, as waiters at table or as ladies’ footmen, “not to say worse.”

There was a general disposition to put some re­straint on the increase of ecclesiastical wealth. In Eng­land the statutes of mortmain were directed to this pur­pose, as we have seen in an earlier period. In Germany there were various local enactments—as that clergymen should not acquire real property, or should hold it only for a limited time; and that they should not be employed to draw up wills, as it was supposed that they might un­duly influence the minds of the testators. At Paderborn it was decreed in 1379 that any citizen who at a funeral should offer more than the price of one mass should be fined—an order which seems to imply not only a wish to limit the receipts of the clergy, but a doubt of the efficacy of such services for the benefit of departed souls.

But the attacks on the wealth of the clergy were not limited to such measures as these. Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham, whose rigour of principle was exasperated by their feeling that, as imperialists, they had the great force of the clergy against them, proposed to take away all endowments; and the principle of such en­dowments was afterwards denounced by Wyclif and Hus. The wealth of the English hierarchy, contrasting strongly with Wyclif’s ideal, became a mark for frequent attacks. When Henry IV, in 1404, was urgently in want of money, the house of commons represented to him that the clergy held a third part of the English soil, and yet lived in idle­ness while the laity shed their blood for their country. On this, archbishop Arundel threw himself at the king’s feet, and reminded him that the clergy had given a tenth for the national service oftener than the laity had given a fifteenth that they contributed the services of their retainers to the royal forces, and that, instead of being idle, they also con­tributed their prayers. By this speech the attack was de­feated; and the king assured the clergy that he intended to leave the church in as good a condition as he had found it, or better. Two years later, a scheme of church-reform was drawn up, setting forth on one hand the amount of land and revenues held by the clergy, and on the other hand the number of earls, knights, esquires, and hospitals that might be maintained out of these resources, with a pro­posal for reducing the clergy to such a number as might be necessary for the performance of their functions. But again the king took part with the clergy, and the attack was unsuccessful.

The nobles had in earlier times endeavoured to get exclusive possession of the preferment in some chap­ters, and such attempts were continually carried further. Thus, at Strasburg, no one was admissible to a canonry unless he could show sixteen quarterings of nobility; and, although Gregory IX had reprobated this system, other popes allowed it, and may have found their account in thus securing the support of the nobles who benefited by it. The claim of high birth, indeed, was commonly admitted, even by reforming churchmen, as a ground for preferment; and an English satirist, while complaining that persons of low origin are advanced to ecclesiastical dignities which lift them above the secular nobles, adds that these ought rather to secure such preferments for their own kindred or for gentlemen. The canonries being regarded merely as sources of income, were very commonly held by persons who declined to proceed beyond the minor orders of the ministry, and who were utterly unlearned. In order to guard against such evils, Clement V decreed that no one below the order of subdeacon should have a voice in a chapter, and that those who were promoted to canonries should enter into the “holy” orders within a year, under certain penalties. And a council at Lucerne, in 1351, ordered that no one ignorant of grammar should be appointed to such prefer­ments. The reforming committee of the council of Constance described the canons who owed their position to their birth as being rather like soldiers than ecclesiastics, and ordered that academic doctors should be mixed with them in certain proportions and it did away with another abuse by ordering that no one under eighteen years of age should be capable of such preferments.

Throughout this time there are continual outcries as to the faults of the clergy, partly continued from former ages, and partly provoked by the development of new evils. In all grades there are complaints of rapacity, luxury, and neglect of duty, while it is said that many of the clergy devote themselves to secular affairs, and become altogether laic in their habits. The cardinals are taxed with extravagant pride, which regards not only bishops (whom they commonly styled episcopelli), but primates and patriarchs, with contempt; their life and that of their households is described as unedifying, and they are accused of utterly neglecting the monasteries and other preferments which they hold in plurality—sometimes even to the number of 400 or 500. The bishops are charged with want of learning and of other qualifications for their office, with non-residence, secularity, simony; it is said that for the sake of money they bestow orders on a multitude of men who are utterly illiterate, lax in their habits, and unfit for the sacred ministry; and if the text “Freely ye have received, freely give”, be quoted to them, their reply is that they had not received freely. It is said that those of Germany devolved their work on titular bishops, who paid for their appointments and “gnawed” the clergy and people by their exactions. Similar complaints are made of the archdeacons; and the canons are described as worthy of their bishops—as sunk in voluptuousness and vice. There are, as before, decrees of councils against the fighting and hunting propensities of the clergy, against indecencies in the celebration of the Divine offices; prohibitions of secular occupations¹ and diversions; with unsavoury evidence as to the results of enforcing celibacy, and continued re-enactments of the canons which had been found so ineffectual for good. Some of the more enlightened divines, such as Zabarella, began to suggest the expediency of removing the restrictions on marriage; but even Gerson was strongly against this, and the old laws, with the evils which resulted from them, continued.

Notwithstanding the impulse given to learning by the universities, the great mass of the clergy was still grossly ignorant, and this is a frequent subject of complaint. Cardinal d’Ailly suggested at the council of Constance that, in order to remedy in some degree the ignorance which was common among the priesthood, some plain instructions as to faith and morals, the sacraments, and the mode of confession, should be drawn up both in Latin and in the vernacular languages.

In all varieties of shapes a desire for reform was ex­pressed—in the treatises of such theologians as Gerson, d’Ailly, and Nicolas of Clemanges; in the writings of those Franciscans, such as William of Ockham, who were driven into the imperial interest by the contrast between their ideas of apostolical simplicity and the corruptions of the court of Avignon; in the solemn verse of Dante, and in the indignant letters of Petrarch; in popular poems, stories, and satires, such as the ‘Songe du Vergier’, in France, the free tales of Boccaccio,the downright invectives of Piers the Ploughman, and the living pictures of Chaucer; in the critical spirit which grew up within the universities; in the teaching of Wyclif, Hus, and their followers; in the utterances of men and women whose sanctity was believed to be accompanied by the gift of prophecy. The cry for a general council, which in former times had been raised only in the way of appeal from the papacy by its opponents, was now taken up by the truest members of the church, not only with a view to ending the schism which had long distracted western Christendom, but in order to that reformation of which the necessity was felt by all but those whose interest was bound up with the corruptions of the existing system. Yet even among the many who sincerely wished for reform, there were some who be­lieved that it would come better from the pope than from a council; and the hopes which had been fixed on the council of Constance met with scanty fulfilment in its decrees, and with still less in the execution of them.

 

Monasticism.

 

Although during this time a feeling was often expressed that the number of persons professing the monastic life was already too great, and although restric­tions had been placed on the indefinite multiplication of orders, some new communities were now formed, such as the Jesuates, the congregation of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Olivet, the Alexians or Cellites, the order of St. Bridget of Sweden, the brotherhood of Canons-regular of the Common Life (founded at Deventer by Gerard Groot, which was distinguished by the care which it bestowed on the education of students intended for the priesthood), and no less than four orders which took their name from St. Jerome. But no one of these societies was so remarkable either for its constitution or for the extent of its success as to require a more particular detail.

The older orders, which possessed endowments, and had already shown themselves affected by the temptations of wealth, continued to decline more and more from the rigour of their original profession. Thus the Benedictines gave themselves up to enjoyment—resting on their historical fame, and careless to add to the long list of popes and bishops and learned men who had already adorned their brotherhood. They con­tributed nothing to the intellectual movements of the time; the few writers whom the society now produced, instead of attempting to distinguish themselves in scho­lastic philosophy, were content to employ their labour on subjects of morality or practical religion. Even in the mother-monastery of the order, the great and venerable abbey of Monte Cassino, Boccaccio is said to have found the library without a door, herbage growing through the windows, the books thickly covered with dust, and the volumes cruelly mutilated by the monks, who, for the sake of some trifling gain, erased the writing from the leaves, and turned them into little books of devotion, or pared away the ample margins and made them into charms for sale to women.And when Urban V, on a vacancy in the headship, attempted to introduce a better system into the house, he found himself obliged to borrow a fit instrument either from the Camaldolites, or from the reformed brotherhood of Mount Olivet. Attempts to revive the Benedictine rule were made by Clement V, and by Benedict XII, who had intended to carry his reforms into other monastic orders; but Clement VI, in the first year of his pontificate, absolved them from the penalties which had been imposed by his predecessor.

In other monastic societies a similar degeneracy was noted. Thus, at the council of Pisa, bishop Hallam, ot Salisbury, complained of the bad state of discipline into which the English Cistercians had fallen; and the abbot of Citeaux, unable to deny the fact, alleged the schism of the church as the cause of it. At the same council, the prior of Canterbury, while speaking well of the Cluniacs of England, described those of some French monasteries which he had visited as ignorant, as neglect­ful of discipline and of the monastic habit, as having no proper vestments even for use in the services of the church, and as being altogether more like mere cultiva­tors of the soil than monks; and from many quarters there is a concurrence of evidence as to a general decay of discipline and learning, with an increased love of selfish and sensual enjoyments. In some cases the monastic rule which forbade individual property was openly violated; the common life of the refectory and of the dormitory fell into disuse; the monks had their separate dwellings, and any abbot who attempted to bring them back to a better observance of their rule was met by violent opposition. So generally did laxity of morals prevail among the monastic communities, that, according to the writer of the tract “On the corrupt State of the Church”, any monk who led a correct life became the laughing-stock of the rest. The same writer describes nunneries as abodes of the grossest profligacy; he adds that, on account of the degeneracy of the monkish societies, the promise, “All these things shall be added unto you,” is no longer fulfilled to them; and we meet with strong dissuasives against that liberality in gifts and bequests on which the monks of earlier days had securely relied. In England, both William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester in the end of the fourteenth century, and William of Wayneflete, who held the same see in the middle of the fifteenth, allege the prevailing degeneracy of the monks as their motive for bestowing their wealth on the foundation of colleges rather than of convents.

The system of commendation was very mischievous in its effects on monastic discipline. The popes, by as­suming the power to bestow abbacies in commendam on their cardinals, deprived many monasteries of a resident head. In such cases the revenues were diverted from their proper objects, the number of monks was reduced to a very few, who, instead of being bound to the obser­vance of their rule, received a small stipend, and were allowed to spend it wherever they pleased; and the poor were deprived of their accustomed alms. In some cases it is complained that a monastery was burdened with an abbot who was disqualified by his previous training—a secular priest, or a member of some other order; and charges of simony are as rife with regard to monastic appointments as to the other promotions of the church.

The exemption of monasteries from episcopal control was continually a matter of complaint, especially on the part of bishops, who represented it as destructive of ecclesiastical discipline. The subject was discussed at the council of Vienne, where it was argued (somewhat unfairly as to the question of monasteries) that the crimes which were then imputed to the templars had arisen out of their exemption from episcopal authority. To this an abbot of the diocese of Senlis replied, that exemptions were necessary for the protection of monks against the tyranny of the bishops; and he commended his cause to the pope by dwelling on the closeness of the connexion between the exempt monasteries and the apostolic see. Clement was not disposed to embroil himself with the monastic orders; and the proposal for the abolition of exemptions, which had been made by Giles Colonna, archbishop of Bourges, was defeated. At the council of Constance a very small measure of reform was conceded by Martin V, in abolishing such exemptions as had been granted since the beginning of the schism.

The mendicant orders did not escape the accusa­tions which were directed against the professors of the monastic life in general. We meet with invectives against them as luxurious and assuming, as indulging in a splen­dour of buildings inconsistent with the spirit of their rules; and the collisions between their privileges and the rights of the parochial clergy were incessant. Council after council, and other authorities in various countries, endeavoured, but seemingly with very imperfect success, to limit the friars in their claims to act as preachers and confessors everywhere, and to bury the dead without restriction in their cemeteries, and thus to deprive the secular clergy of respect, authority, and income. Yet the mendicants continued throughout this time to enjoy more of influence and of reputation than any of the other orders. The great brotherhoods of St. Dominic and St. Francis were stimulated by their rivalry; but yet a division of objects and of labour was in a manner established between them. The Dominicans especially studied scientific theology; their Albert and their Thomas were regarded as next in authority to the ancient doctors of the church. They were preachers and controversialists, were much employed as confessors and confidants of princes, and had the inquisition almost entirely in their hands. The Franciscans, although they too had their theologians, who were unsurpassed by any in subtlety, were on the whole more given to popular teaching and ministrations; and they sought by all means—even by unscrupulous impostures—to gain an influence over the great mass of the people.

The universities of Paris and of Oxford were much disquieted by the mendicants. At Paris, in 1321, John of Poilly, a doctor of the Sorbonne, was required to re­tract certain opinions which he had uttered against the claim of the friars to act as confessors. He held that confession to a friar did not dispense with the necessity of again confessing the same sins to the parish priest; that so long as the canon of the fourth council of Lateran should be in force, the pope could not excuse from the duty of yearly confession to the parish priest; nay, that even God himself could not do so, inasmuch as it would involve a contradiction. Against these opinions a treatise was written by Peter Paludanus, a Dominican, and John of Poilly, after pope John himself had con­descended to argue with him, submitted to retract in the presence of the cardinals.

In 1409, John of Gorel, a Franciscan, had gone so far as to deny that curates had, by virtue of their office, authority to preach, confess, administer extreme unction, to bury, and to receive tithes—maintaining that the work of preaching and of hearing confession belonged more especially to the friars. He was compelled by the Sorbonne to subscribe certain propositions of a directly contrary tenor, and to acknowledge that the duties in question belonged essentially to curates, and to the friars only by accidents

Attempts were repeatedly made to check the pre­tensions of the mendicants. Thus the continuator of William of Nangis relates that in the pontificate of Cle­ment VI the cardinals and other prelates urged that the mendicant orders should be abolished, or that, at least, the friars should be restrained from invading the rights of the parochial clergy; but that the pope defeated the attempt by asking them whether, if the labours of the mendicants should be withdrawn, they themselves would be able to make up for the loss of them. The failure of Fitzralph, bishop of Armagh, in his suit against the mendicants, a few years later, has already been noticed. The bull of the Franciscan pope, Alexander V, in 1409, which appears to have been solicited by his order in consequence of the condemna­tion of Gorel, the opposition of the university of Paris, and the revocation of the bull by John XXIII—have also come before us in the course of the history.

The divisions which arose among the Franciscans out of the extreme ideas of apostolical poverty maintained by those who arrogated to themselves the name of spirituals have already fallen under our noticed In consequence of the condemnation which John XXII had passed on such ideas, the spirituals declared him to be the mystical antichrist, the forerunner of the greater antichrist; that all later popes, as they had not repu­diated his opinions, were heretics, and that those who adhered to them could not be saved. On the other hand, Gerard, the master who was appointed on the de­privation of Michael of Cesena, attempted to procure an abrogation of the founder’s precept that the Franciscans should not receive gifts of money; but to this John sternly refused to consent. In consequence of these dissensions, many members forsook the order, and joined the parties which were known as fraticelli, beghards, and the like. Many of them ran into errors which were con­sidered to be heretical, and suffered death at the stake.             

But besides these more violent differences, the order came to be divided into various classes—one of which was styled zoccolanti, from wearing wooden shoes like the peasantry. At length was established the great division into conventuals—those who lived together in their societies—and observants, who professed especial regard for the integrity of the Franciscan rule. This latter section, although it had undergone some persecu­tion at an earlier date, was acknowledged by the council of Constance; but we find in later times many manifesta­tions of jealousy and enmity between the two parties.

The Franciscans, partly perhaps by way of compensa­tion for their departure from the founder’s rule, carried their reverence for him into greater and greater extrava­gances. Among other things, it was said that St. Francis once a year went down from heaven to purgatory, and released all who had died in the habit of his brother­hood. And it was in this time that the notorious ‘ Book of Conformities ’ was produced, and was approved by the authorities of the order.

The Dominicans, too, while they departed from the mendicant ideal, so that some of their writers maintained their right to hold property, were excited by the rivalry of the Franciscans to set up for their founder pretensions which are clearly blasphemous. Thus in the Life of St. Catharine of Siena, written by her confessor, Raymond of Capua, who was afterwards general of the order, the almighty Father is represented as producing from his head the coeternal Son, and from his breast St. Dominic, declaring that his adopted son Dominic stood on an equality with the only-begotten Son, and carrying out a parallel between the eternal Word and the founder of the order of preaching friars.

 

Rites and Usages.

 

In matters which concerned the worship of the church, the same tendencies which had appeared through­out many former ages were still continued, and it was in vain that the more enlightened teachers protested against the further developments of popular superstition and of exaggerated ceremonials

The festival of Corpus Christi was established by Clement V, and further privileges were connected with the celebration by Urban VI and Boniface IX. The doctrine embodied in this festival was supposed to be confirmed by fresh miracles, although some of these were not unquestioned, or were even admitted to be impostures.

The number of masses was multiplied, partly as a means of securing fees for the clergy. Alvar Pelayo says that St. Francis had especially wished to preserve his order from this temptation, by prescribing that no one should celebrate more than one mass daily, forasmuch as a single mass “filled heaven and earth”, but that the minorites, in disregard of their founder’s wishes, eagerly caught at the opportunity of gain.

The withdrawal of the eucharistic cup from the laity had become general, although a special exception was sometimes made by popes in favour of royal personages; as was the case with the kings of France—who, however, availed themselves of this privilege only at their corona­tion and on their death-bed. In England both the king and the queen at their coronation received the sacrament in both kinds; and it is recorded that Henry V did so when dying. The story of the emperor Henry VII’s death, whether true or false as to the alleged poisoning, implies that the emperors were then accustomed to communicate in the eucharistic cup.

In Bohemia, the older practice remained to a late period. But the collisions between Bohemians and Germans in the university of Prague tended to discoun­tenance it, and when (as we have seen) the usage was revived by Jacobellus of Misa, the question was brought before the council of Constance by the bishop of Leitomysl. Gerson was strongly opposed to the administra­tion of the chalice.A committee drew up conclusions on the question, allowing that according to the Saviour’s institution the chalice ought to be administered, but maintaining that the church had both authority and reason for departing from the original method; and in accordance with this report, the council condemned Jacobellus, and forbade the practiced

The doctrine of indulgences, as it had been stated by Thomas of Aquino, was for the first time sanctioned by papal authority in the bull by which Clement VI proclaimed the jubilee of 1350, and from that time might be regarded as generally established in the church. The use of these privileges, which the popes dispensed at will, was rapidly developed. Small indulgences were to be gained every day, and by the performance of very trivial acts; and the greater indulgences, which had originally been granted for the holy war against the Saracens, were now bestowed on more ordinary con­siderations. The institution of the jubilee had contri­buted greatly to advance the popularity of indulgences; and this effect became still greater when Boniface IX professed to extend the benefits of the jubilee to those who, instead of going to Rome in person, should visit certain churches in their own neighbourhood, and should pay into the papal treasury the sum which a Roman pilgrimage would have cost them. The abuse was carried yet further by allowing the privileges of a jubilee-year at other times, and by sending into all countries “stationers” or “quaestuaries” to offer the benefit of indulgences at every man’s door; and from these practices a general corruption of ideas as to morality naturally resulted.Gerson endeavoured to expose the mistakes of the system; he declared that the Saviour done was entitled to grant some of the privileges which were usually proclaimed by His ministers on earth; but the popular belief was commonly proof against enlightenment on a matter in which the papal doctrine was so well adapted to the desires of coarse and super­stitious minds.

While the church was lavish of its graces, it was no less prodigal of its censures; and from the excessive employment of these arose a general disregard of them. Froissart mentions an incident which is evidence at once of the contempt into which such sentences had fallen through abuse, and of the independent spirit of the English—that when the Flemings had been laid under an interdict of the most terrible kind for siding with Edward III in 1340, the English king told them that they need not be uneasy, “for as soon as he should again cross the sea, he would bring them priests of his own country, who would chant masses to them, whether the pope willed it or not; for he was well privileged to do so”.The monastic orders, although usually leagued with the papacy, did much to nullify the force of inter­dicts, by leaving doors or windows open while the services of the church were performed in their chapels, so that the people standing without might have the benefit of their privileged offices. Clement V, in order to prevent this evasion, charged the members of re­ligious societies to conform to the practice of the principal church in every place.

In former times, popes had sometimes chosen the Thursday before Easter as a day for pronouncing curses against persons who had specially opposed or offended them.Towards the end of the thirteenth century it became usual to repeat on that day such sentences as had been uttered against particular offenders; and hence in the following century grew a custom of denouncing on Maundy Thursday a general anathema against all enemies of the church.

The multiplication of saints and of festivals continued, although not without protests against the evil consequences of the excess to which it had been carried. Archbishop Islip of Canterbury, in 1362, complained of the bad effects which resulted from the observance of too many holy-days, and put forth a list of festivals, which, although reduced from the number before ob­served, amount to about fifty in addition to the Sundays of the year. And the archbishop describes the manner of keeping these days as marked by coarse debauchery and misrule. Cardinal d’Ailly, at a later time, complains that the festivals were turned into occasions of dissipa­tion, whereas the working-days were not sufficient for a labouring man to earn his bread; and he suggests that, except on Sundays, it should be allowed to work after having attended the religious service of the day. In like manner Nicolas of Clemanges speaks of the number of festivals as excessive, and denounces the idleness, drunkenness, and other vices to which they were com­monly perverted. He also criticizes severely the ser­vices which had been drawn up for some of the newer festivals, and complains that the worship of God was neglected for that of the saints—that the reading of legends had superseded that of Scripture in the offices of the church. Cardinal Zabarella, Henry of Hesse, and other divines of the age, bear evidence to the manner in which festivals were abused, and urge that the number of them should be reduced. On the other hand, however, Gerson proposed that a festival should be instituted in honour of St. Joseph, the husband of the Saviour’s mother; and thus to him is due the origin of a celebra­tion which has in later times been raised into greater importance by the overflow of the reverence directed to the blessed Virgin.

To the festivals in honour of St. Mary were added those of the Visitation and the Presentation—the former commemorating her visit to her cousin Elizabeth; the latter, a supposed presentation or dedication by her parents at the age of three months, from which time it was imagined that she was brought up in the Temple until her espousal to Joseph at the age of eleven. Thus the number of festivals consecrated to the blessed Virgin was extended to seven.

The festival of her Conception made way continually. In England it was established in 1328 by archbishop Mepham, who wrongly referred the origin of it to his predecessor St. Anselm; in France, the observance of it was decreed by the French “nation” in the university of Paris in 1380. The doctrine of the immaculate concep­tion became almost universal, except in the Dominican order. The Franciscans had at first been divided as to this doctrine, some of them (as Alvar Pelayo) deny­ing it; but the opposition of the Dominicans decided the course of the rival order, who became enthusiastic advocates of the Immaculate Conception. At Paris, the university was swayed in behalf of this doctrine by the authority of the great Franciscan, Duns Scotus; and when John of Mongon (or de Montesono), a Spanish Dominican, disputed against it at Paris, in 1387, he was condemned as heretical by the university, as well as by the bishop of Paris. On appealing to Clement VII, he found himself opposed at Avignon by a deputation from the university, headed by Peter d’Ailly; and, finding that his cause was going against him, he pretended to submit, but secretly withdrew to his native kingdom of Aragon, where he joined the obedience of the rival pope, and wrote in support of his claims. His excommunica­tion by Clement followed; but while the Franciscans maintain that this was on account of his doctrine, the Dominicans contend that it was wholly caused by his defection from the party of Clement. The university took up the matter strongly; it was decreed that no one should be admitted to a degree except on condition of swearing to the late decision, which, although directed only against the absolute denial of the doctrine, was soon interpreted as positively favourable to it. The academics compelled William of Valence, a Dominican, who was bishop of Evreux and confessor to the king, to give up the defence of John of Moncon, and to subscribe their formula; and the king resolved to have no more Dominican confessors. The Dominicans were shut out of the university for fourteen years; they were persecuted by the bishops and by the secular authorities; and, in consequence of having taken the unpopular side, they were unable even to walk the streets without being molested, while verses in ridicule of them were publicly placarded. Miracles were alleged in behalf of the immaculate conception: as that a Dominican of Cracow was struck dead while preaching against it; and that as Scotus was on his way to main­tain the honour of the blessed Virgin in the schools, an image of her, which he passed, was accustomed every day to bend its head in token of favour. St. Bridget brought to the same cause the support of her revelations; but on this point her authority was confronted by that of the other great prophetess of the age, St. Catharine of Siena, who held that the cleansing of the Virgin’s nature did not take place until the soul was infused into the body.

 

Arts and Learning.

 

The fourteenth century saw the perfection of Gothic architecture and the beginning of its decline, although as yet this decline had not advanced far. But in the meantime the other arts were springing into a new life. Italian painting advanced at one step from the elementary rudeness of Cimabue to the schools of Giotto, Orcagna, and the masters whose combined labours embellished the Campo Santo of Pisa; and while the productions of Italy were carried into other lands, to ex­cite the devotion of believers and to serve as examples for imitation, a native style of art, admirable for religious feeling and for sober richness of colour, began to appear in the Netherlands, under the leadership of the brothers Van Eyck. In sculpture, too, attempts were now suc­cessfully made to shake off the stiffness of Gothic art; perhaps the best known example of the newer style is to be found in the bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence, which were begun by Andrew of Pisa in 1330, and completed by Ghiberti in the following century.

The number of universities was greatly increased during the fourteenth century. Among those then founded were Orleans, Erfurt, Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, Cracow, Pisa, Perugia, Florence, Pavia, and Ferrara. In some of these there were at first the faculties of arts, medicine, and law, to which theology was afterwards added; and in some of the older universities, as at Bologna, a like addition was now made to the original foundation. The university of Rome was dormant throughout the time of the Avignon papacy; and, although revived for a time by Innocent VII, it again fell into decay, until Eugenius IV. restored it in 1431.

In consequence of the erection of universities in Ger­many and other northern countries, the resort of students to Paris was much diminished, so that few foreigners were now to be found among them. But the great French university continued to maintain its reputation as a school, and was led by the circumstances of the schism to exercise such an influence in the affairs of the church as was altogether without example. Oxford had greatly advanced in importance, and there William of Wykeham introduced a new architectural character into collegiate buildings, and furnished an example of a society more clerical and monastic than the colleges which had before existed.

The decree by which Clement V, at the instance of Raymund Lull, prescribed the teaching of Oriental languages in certain places, has already been mentioned. But in whatever degree it may have been carried out, the schools which it contemplated, as they were intended only for missionary purposes, did not promote the interpretation of Scripture. The fourteenth century, however, could boast Nicolas de Lyra, the first man who for many hundreds of years had endeavoured to bring Hebrew learning to bear on this. It has been supposed that Nicolas (whose surname was drawn from his native place, a village in Normandy) was a Jew by descent; but for this there seems to be no foundation except the fact of his acquaintance with Hebrew. He became a Franciscan in 1291, taught theology for many years at Paris, was provincial of his order in Burgundy, and died in 1340. His Postills extend over the whole Bible, and were greatly prized. He held that in Holy Scripture there are four senses—the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical;  that the literal sense is presupposed in the others, and must be the foundation of them; that from it alone proofs should be drawn, and that any mystical interpretation which is incon­sistent with the letter is unbecoming and worthless; and he strongly blames those expositors who had smothered the literal sense under their figurative interpretations. These principles were called in question, about a century later, by Paul, bishop of Burgos, a convert from Judaism and a member of the Dominican order, who blamed Nicolas for preferring his own interpretations and those of the Jewish writers to the authority of the fathers and of the great Dominican St. Thomas; but Nicolas did not lack defenders, and his commentaries continued to be highly esteemed.

The study of Greek was now revived, and became common in the west, where it was promoted by learned Greeks, such as Barlaam, Leontius Pilatus (who taught both Petrarch and Boccaccio at Florence), and at a later time Manuel Chrysoloras, the master of Leonard of Arezzo. The first professorship of Greek in the west was established at Florence about 1360, through the influence of Boccaccio, and Pilatus was appointed to the chair, which in 1396 was held by Chrysoloras. The study of the classical Latin authors was also pursued with a new spirit, and great exertions were made for the recovery of writings which had long been unheeded. In the writing of Latin, attempts were made by Petrarch and others, instead of following the traditional style of the middle ages, to imitate the refinement of the classics; and this study was afterwards carried further by Poggio Bracciolini. Albertin Mussato wrote Latin tragedies on the ancient model—one of them having Eccelino da Romano for its principal character.

The scholastic philosophy is considered to have entered on a new stage with Durandus of St. Pourçain, bishop of Meaux, and William of Ockham, the famous English Franciscan, whose political treatises have been already mentioned.Durandus (who, from his readiness in solving all questions, was styled the Most Resolute Doctor) was a Dominican, and as such was originally a zealous, adherent of Thomas Aquinas, but afterwards strongly opposed his authority, especially with regard to the manner in which Divine grace operates; for while Aquinas holds that this is through the sacraments, Duran­dus maintains that it is by the immediate action of God.

These teachers were noted for their want of reverence for authority; and they revived the philosophical opinion of nominalism, which had been dormant from the time of its unsuccessful originator, Roscellin. Ockham rejected the idea which St. Anselm and others had cherished, of finding a philosophical basis for the doctrines of the church, which he regarded as matters of pure revelation; and this revelation he supposed to be still exerted in behalf of doctrines which had not been known to the primitive church. Thus, in discussing the question of the Eucharist, he states three opinions, of which one is “that the substance of bread and wine remains, and that in the same place, under the same appearance, is the body of Christ”; and he says that this theory “would be very reasonable, unless there were a determination of the church to the contrary, because it salves and escapes all the difficulties which follow from the separation of the accidents from the subject”. Yet he prefers the current opinion, that “the substance of bread and wine ceases to be, while the accidents only remain, and under them the body of Christ beginneth to be”; and he adds, “This is made certain to the church by some revelation, as I suppose, and therefore it hath so determined”. The philosophy of Ockham was condemned and prohibited at Paris in 1339; but this sentence increased its fame, and before the end of the century the nominalism which had at first been so strongly denounced had come to be generally accepted.

The unbelieving philosophy which from the beginning of the thirteenth century had existed in secret, began to appear more openly. Petrarch mentions some votaries of this kind of philosophy whom he had met with at Venice, and describes them as regarding all learning ex­cept their own, whether sacred or profane, with contempt.

The science of casuistry now came into favour as a branch of theological study. The cases of John Petit and of John of Falkenberg, which involved the defence of tyrannicide, afforded much exercise for the subtleties of the casuists; and in the case of Petit it is said that the doctrine of “probability” occurs for the first time— a doctrine which, as it was afterwards developed by the Jesuits, supplied Pascal with matter for some of his most effective assaults on that order. The complaints which had been made in former times as to the unprofitable nature of the studies which were most popular, and of the pursuit of learning for low and unworthy ends, are renewed by Gerson and others in this age. The great work of rendering the Holy Scriptures into the vulgar tongue, with which Wyclif’s name is associated, engaged the labours of many others in the different western countries; so that there were translations, more or less complete, into French, Italian, German, and Flemish. These translations were, indeed, all in so far defective that they were made from the Latin Vulgate; but they tended to prepare for the more satisfactory works which were to result from that revived study of the original languages which had already begun. It is remarkable that Gerson, in censuring “vain curiosity”, recommends that vernacular translations of the Bible should be forbidden, at least with the exception of the moral and historical portions.

The same age which produced these attempts to bring the meaning of the sacred writings within the reach of the less educated classes, was also distinguished by the rise of a brilliant vernacular literature in various countries, especially in Italy and in England. To this day, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Chaucer hold their place among those great authors whose writings need no antiquarian considerations to recommend them to our study, but live by their own enduring vigour and interest. In the four­teenth century, also, John Villani produced the first important historical work which was composed in the modern language of Italy; and Wyclif, by the treatises which he addressed to the unlearned classes of his countrymen, earned a title to be regarded as the earliest master of English prose.