BOOK VIII.
FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE
END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,
A.D. 1303-1418.
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, 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 Mainz, 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
holydays, 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.
