BOOK VII.

FROM THE ELECTION OF INNOCENT III TO THE DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII, A.D. 1198-1303.

 

CHAPTER VIII. 

SUPPLEMENTARY.

 

The Hierarchy.

 

(1). Innocent III declared that to St. Peter had been committed the government, not only of the whole church, but of the whole world. He set forth more strongly Gregory VII’s comparison of the spiritual and the secular powers to the sun and moon respectively. As the moon, he said, borrows from the sun a light which is inferior both in amount and in quality, in position and in effect, so does the regal power borrow from the pontifical; as the light which rules over the day—i.e. over spiritual things—is the greater, and as that which rules over the night—i.e. over carnal things— is the lesser, so is the difference between pontiffs and kings like that between the sun and the moon. Throughout the century which began with Innocent’s pontificate, the great pope’s principles were triumphant. As the imperial dignity, according to him, had been transferred from the Greeks to the west by papal authority, and for the benefit of the papal see, so the popes claimed the right to dispose of kingdoms and of the empire, and enforced the claim, although not with unvarying success; whenever, indeed, they saw a likelihood of vigorous resistance, they were careful to put such an interpretation on their pretensions as might enable them to recede without loss of dignity. They steadily pursued the policy of exacting large concessions for the church, and especially for their own see, from those whom they supported as candidates for the empire, from Otho IV to Albert of Austria. And thus Rudolf of Hapsburg, in addition to the substantial concessions which have been mentioned elsewhere, admitted the comparison of the greater and lesser lights, and also that use of the word beneficia, which had excited the indignation of Frederick Barbarossa. The papal inferences from Constantine’s pretended donation became more extravagant than before. Thus, Gregory IX laid it down that the first Christian emperor had made over to the popes, not only Rome and the ensigns of imperial dignity, but the empire itself; and that the empire of the Germans in later times was held only by delegation from the Roman see. And Innocent IV, in pronouncing the deposition of Frederick II, went still further by declaring that Christ bestowed on St. Peter and his successors not only pontifical but regal power, earthly as well as heavenly and spiritual government; and therefore that Constantine did nothing more than give up to the church a part of that which had before rightfully belonged to it. With a view to controversy with the Greek church, spurious sentences were brought forward as citations from Greek fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, in order to claim their authority for the late developments of the papal pretensions. The feudal principles were so applied as to constitute the pope a lord paramount, not only over the hierarchy, but over states and kingdoms; and this pretension was embodied in the display which Boniface VIII is said to have made at the Roman jubilee. From having styled themselves vicars of St. Peter, the popes now styled themselves vicars of Christ or of God, and their persons were surrounded with a pomp before unknown.

The popes now not only claimed the right of summon­ing general councils, but aimed at superseding the voice of councils by their own authority—allowing even to councils which were styled general a power of advising only, and not of deciding by vote. Thus it was in the Lateran council of 1215, and in great measure in the first council of Lyons, in 1245. And now the papal pretension to infallibility was for the first time plainly asserted by the great Dominican doctor, Thomas Aquinas.

But on the other hand the increased pretensions of the papacy began to awaken inquiry into the sources of the papal power. Even where the genuineness of Constantine’s donation was unquestioned, it was denied by jurists that the emperor was competent to grant such a donation; and the papal inferences were met by a story that, when the gift had been made to pope Sylvester, a voice was heard in the air, exclaiming, “This day is poison poured forth into the church.”  And such practical facts as the Pragmatic Sanction of St. Lewis, the ecclesiastical policy of Edward I of England, and the conflict between Boniface and Philip the Fair, were serious warnings to the papacy that its pretensions were not to pass undisputed.

In their great contest with the empire, the popes asserted the principle of free election to bishoprics and abbacies; but, when they had succeeded in excluding the secular power, they endeavoured to usurp the patronage of such appointments for themselves. Thus we find that, in five out of seven vacancies which took place in the see of Canterbury during the century, the popes, under one pretext or another, set aside the claimants who had been elected, and, either by their assumed “plenitude of power” or otherwise, filled the English primacy with their own nominees. Yet this attempt was not as yet successful except in particular cases—as when it was said that the electors had forfeited their privilege by choosing badly, and that therefore the appointment fell to the pope “by right of devolution”, or when the vacancy was caused by the death of a prelate on a visit to the papal court,—a case which occurred the more frequently, on account of the dangerous climate of Rome.

The same policy of grasping at patronage was prac­tised as to other classes of preferment. Boniface VIII extended to benefices of all kinds the claims arising from the death of an incumbent at the Roman court. The system of precistae, was carried further than before, and the prayers were changed into commands. Innocent III was not content to send foreign ecclesiastics into England, with requests that the bishops would provide for them, but took it on himself to make out instruments of collation, without giving any other notice to the bishops whose patronage he thus usurped. Honorius addressed letters to the clergy of France and England, stating that the exactions of the Roman court, which were a common subject of complaint, were caused by the scantiness of its income from other sources; and proposing by way of remedy that the income of certain prebends in every cathedral and collegiate or monastic church should be set apart for the expenses of the curia. But in both countries the proposal was received with such an outburst of indignant derision that the legates who were charged with it refrained from pressing the matter. Innocent IV at the first council of Lyons renewed the attempt to get possession of English prebends; but the representatives of the English church were firm in their refusal. The system of precistae, however, went on. Thus Gregory IX, in 1240, desired archbishop Edmund and two other English bishops to provide for three hundred Italians; and although the intrusion of foreign incumbents into the English church was among the chief causes of the “Barons’ War,” the legate, Guy Fulcodi, who was sent to England in the heat of that great contest, was authorized by Urban IV to bestow canonries and other benefices by way of provision. The documents by which patronage was thus usurped were from the time of Innocent IV rendered more peremptory by the introduction of the phrases “de plenitudine potestatis” and “non obstantibus” by which it was signified that the pope had absolute power in such matters, and that his will was paramount to all difficulties or objections.

The papal legates continued to excite the indignation of those to whom they were sent by their extortions and assumptions. Clement IV describes them as having a power like that of proconsuls over the provinces com­mitted to them, and they exercised jurisdiction and invaded patronage with all the authority which the popes themselves assumed. In some cases, sovereigns refused to admit such visitors into their dominions, and popes were reduced to the evasion of sending envoys without the title of legate, although with all or more than all the legatine power. But it was part of the oath exacted from Otho IV and his successors, that they would not throw any hindrance in the way of legates; and, if a pope agreed to refrain from sending legates into any country, it was held by the Roman party that his successors were not bound by his act. Alexander IV, in consequence of the innumerable complaints which were made as to the misbehaviour of legates, endeavoured to put them under some restraint; but almost immediately after this, we find the same complaints as before.

The resistance of the English to the spoliation of their church by foreigners who performed none of the duties of pastors, and to the merciless exactions by which it was drained for the benefit of Rome, has been already mentioned. In France, where similar oppressions were attempted, they were met in a like spirit. And in that country the strength which the crown had acquired under St. Lewis, with the influence of his personal character, and the authority which his legal counsellors could advance from their study of ancient law, enabled him effectually to check the papal spirit of aggression on the national rights by the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction.

A great forgery of bulls and other documents professing to emanate from the papal chancery was now carried on; and privileges of questionable character were often produced by persons whose interest they favoured, as the fruits of a visit to Rome. Richard, the successor of Becket in the see of Canterbury, after denouncing persons who attempted to pass themselves off as bishops by counterfeiting “the barbarism of Irish or Scottish speech,” goes on to complain of spurious bulls, and orders that the makers and users of such documents shall be periodically excommunicated. Innocent III makes frequent mention of these forgeries, of which a manufactory was in his time discovered at Rome; and he exposes some of the tricks which were practised—such as that of affixing to a forgery a genuine papal seal taken from a genuine deed, the erasure of some words and the substitution of others. But the canons of later councils prove that the system of forgery survived these exposures and denunciations.

The canon law during this time received important additions. Gratian’s ‘Decretum’, notwithstanding his endeavour to harmonize the materials of which it was composed, gave rise to frequent questions, which drew forth papal decretals and rescripts in order to their resolution; and these all became part of the law of the church. This body of law had also been increased by the canons of important councils—some of which councils even claimed the title of general. From the growth of such additions, from the contradictions, the repetitions, and other defects of the existing canons, there was no small danger lest ecclesiastical law should fall into utter confusion. Many attempts had already been made to form a digest of the matter thus accumulated, when in 1230 Gregory IX, himself a man of great learning in canon law, intrusted the formation of an authoritative work to Raymond of Peñaforte, a Spanish Dominican, who, after three years of labour, with the help of other learned canonists, produced five books of Decretals; and to these a sixth, made up of five smaller books, was added by Boniface VIII in 1298. Thus it happens that the standard law-books of the Roman church date from the time when the power of the papacy was at its greatest height. By Gregory’s order, the Decretals compiled by Raymond were published at Paris in 1234, and at Bologna in the following year. In these collec­tions the conflict between earlier and later authorities, which had perplexed the students of Gratian, no longer appeared. All obsolete matter was excluded, and the materials for decision of questions were ready at hand; and in consequence of the greater convenience of such books for use, Gratian’s work came to be practically superseded by them.

When the election of bishops had passed into the hands of the cathedral chapters, members of these chapters pursued towards the bishops the same policy by which the ecclesiastical and other electors diminished the rights of the German crown—exacting concessions from every new bishop at the time of his election; and, although such “capitulations” were declared by Innocent III and other popes to be null, the practice continued. The pretensions of the chapters to privileges and independence rose higher. In some cases they became “close” (capitula clausa)—refusing to admit any members but such as could satisfy a certain standard of noble descent ;k but this exclusive system did not find favour with popes, when questions arising out of it were carried to them for decision.

As there was nothing in general to limit the number of canons, except the want of sufficient endowments for their support, a new system was introduced of appointing canons in reversion. These, who were styled domicellares, differed from the junior canons of Chrodegang’s rule, inasmuch as the juniors had small estates, while the domicellares, during their time of expectancy, had none; while on the other hand the domicellares, unlike the juniors, were entitled to vote in the chapter. But this unlimited multiplication of canonries, and the disposal of such dignities before they were vacant, were discouraged by popes and by several councils.

By way of some compensation for their former share in the appointment of bishops, sovereigns now acquired the “right of first prayers”—jus primarum precum—by which they were entitled to claim one piece of patronage from every new bishop or abbot. This privilege appears to have originated in an imitation of the similar interference with patronage which had lately been introduced by the popes, and the first recorded instance of it is said to be no older than the year 1242, when it was exercised by Conrad, son of Frederick II, as king of the Romans. But within a few years after that time, Richard of Cornwall and Rudolf of Hapsburg are found professing to have derived it from the ancient custom of their predecessors.

The evils which arose from long vacancies of sees had been much felt, and especially in England. During such times, which were protracted for the advantage of sovereigns, the tenants and the property of sees suffered greatly, while the diocese or the province was left without pastoral superintendence; and the decree of the fourth council of Lateran—that every see should be filled up within three months—was far from remedying the evil. But, although much is said of these things, it is only the abuse that is complained of by writers of the time, and the king’s right to the income during vacancy is admitted.  Philip the Fair asserts very strongly his claim in this respect, arguing that as, on the vacancy of a fief, the liege-lord stepped in, so the sovereign was entitled to the temporal jurisdiction and property belonging to a vacant see, prebend, or other dignity.

From the time when the questions of investiture and homage were settled, it was understood that bishops were subject to the performance of all feudal duties in consideration of their temporalities. Thus, in the reign of Philip Augustus, when the bishops of Orleans and Auxerre had withdrawn their troops from the national army, under the pretext that they were not bound to furnish them unless when the king commanded in person, Innocent III admitted the king’s right to the troops, provided that he had not invaded the especial property of the sees, although the question whether the bishops themselves were bound to serve was left for further consideration. At the Lateran council, Innocent, in forbidding secular potentates to exact oaths of fealty from such clergy as held no temporalities under them, admits the feudal right which arose out of temporalities; and the decisions of some later popes were in accordance with this view. Boniface VIII, however, in a bull addressed to William of Gainsborough, bishop of Worcester, affected to give him possession of the temporalities of his see, as well as of the spiritual jurisdiction. But Edward I obliged the bishop to renounce that clause in the bull which related to the temporalities, and fined him a thousand marks for having received a document so derogatory to the English crown.

The clergy now insisted on a right to immunity from lay taxation—a pretension which, according to the principles of the age, was fair, if it were understood to mean that the amount of their contributions to public purposes was to be assessed by members of their own order. But the clergy were very commonly disposed to extend it to a claim of entire exemption, whether from national taxes, from local rates, or from tolls on the conveyance of their property and of the produce of their estates. Against this unreasonable pretension the free cities of Lombardy took the lead in defending themselves by the infliction of civil disabilities on the clergy; and both there and elsewhere the opposite principle was eventually established. We have seen how much this question entered into the great quarrel between Boniface and Philip the Fair.

The question as to the immunity of the clergy from secular justice, which had been the chief occasion of Becket’s struggle with Henry II, had not been clearly decided. In England, although that constitution of Clarendon which had especially excited the archbishop’s indignation was not formally abrogated, even after his death, the full acknowledgment of the “rights and liberties of the English church” in the first article of Magna Charta, may seem to imply a virtual repeal of it. At a later time, Grossetete is found complaining that lay courts interfered with the rights of the clergy, although he was willing to allow that the secular officers should arrest a clerk detected in grievous crime, and should keep him until claimed by his ordinary. A council held by archbishop Boniface at Lambeth in 1261 complained that clerks were sometimes imprisoned on mere suspicion by laymen, who refused to give them up to the ordinary. The council enacted that laymen so offending should be punished by excommunication and interdict; that every bishop should provide one or more prisons for criminous clerks, and that clerks convicted of any crime which in a layman would, be capital, should be confined for life. In 1275 was enacted by the first statute of Westminster, that, if a clerk accused of any felony were demanded by his ordinary, his person should be given up, but the charge should be investigated by the secular judge, and, if the clerk were found guilty, his lands and other property should be seized into the hands of the king. If, however, he were able to purge himself in the spiritual court, it was ordered both by the council of Lambeth and in the Westminster statute that the confiscated property should be restored.

In other countries also the clergy endeavoured to secure exemption from all secular jurisdiction. Frederick II, both at his coronation as emperor in 1220, and at his reconciliation with Gregory IX ten years later, acknowledged such exemption in broad terms, with the single exception on the latter occasion, of cases relating to feudal matters.

Yet although the clergy were able to obtain such acknowledgments, the evident justice of the objections raised by Henry II of England and others to the actual working of the system had the effect of bringing about a stricter execution of the ecclesiastical laws against offending clerks. Thus Innocent III, while forbidding the laity to draw clergymen before secular courts, was careful to order that the ecclesiastical courts should render full justice to the laity, and that bishops should deal strictly in the punishment of clergymen who were convicted of crime. And, while the officers of secular justice were entitled to arrest a clerk and to detain him until claimed by his ecclesiastical superior, the ecclesiastical authorities were forbidden, after a clerk had been degraded from his orders for his crimes, to provide for his escape from the secular authorities.

The church claimed an oversight of the administration of justice, on the theory that the secular powers derived from it their commission to execute justice, and that the church was still entitled to exercise its right through priests. And on the ground that crimes are also sins, or on some other ground, the clergy contrived to bring within the scope of their canons and jurisdiction a multitude of affairs which seemed rather to belong to the secular province. Hence arose frequent complaints of encroachment on both sides. Matthew Paris relates that in 1247 an association of French nobles drew up an agreement for the purpose of restoring the former state of things, in which the ecclesiastical courts had limited their cognizance to matters of heresy, marriage, and usury, and that St. Lewis affixed his seal to this document. It has indeed been remarked as a singular circumstance, that for this important movement of the French nobles no other authority than that of the English chronicler is known but although it is not recorded by the French annalists of the time, it would seem that the story is confirmed by evidence of other kinds.

The too frequent use of ecclesiastical censures, such as  excommunication and interdict, the slightness of the occasions on which they were pronounced, and the evident injustice of the sentences themselves in many cases, tended to lessen their effect on the minds of men;  and, with a view of restoring this, the clergy endeavoured to get the spiritual sentences enforced by temporal penalties. Thus Philip of Swabia was persuaded to annex outlawry to the anathema of the church; Frederick II in 1220 made a somewhat similar promise; and the addition of the secular to the ecclesiastical sentence is embodied in the book of laws known by the title of ‘Schwabenspiegel’, which was drawn up between 1270 and 1285. But these laws do not appear to have been put in practice; and we have seen that St. Lewis refused to grant the petition of his bishops when they desired that the sentences of the church might be carried out by secular penalties in France.

Another new engine of discipline was the excommuni­cation lata sententiae; by which it was meant that persons guilty of certain gross crimes should be considered as having already had a sentence of excommunication passed on them, and as being subject to its penalties without any further formality.

We have already seen that, on account of the mis­conduct of archdeacons, bishops endeavoured to relieve themselves in some degree by the appointment of officials or penitentiaries, on whom the business of the archdeacons was devolved as much as possible; and this practice continued throughout the thirteenth century. Another new class of ecclesiastical dignitaries arose in consequence of the loss of the Latin possessions in the Holy Land, by which a great number of bishops were deprived of their occupation and income. Some of these were found useful by the prelates of the West as assistants in the performance of their functions; and, as it was thought well to keep up this titular episcopate, in the hope that the East might yet be recovered, employment was found for many “bishops in the parts of the infidels” by regular engagements as suffragans in the dioceses of other bishops, who seem to have very commonly devolved on them the performance of the more ordinary episcopal functions.

The property of the church and of the monastic bodies was still increasing. In the south of France, the prevalence of heresy afforded a colour for requiring that no person should make his will without the presence of a priest, and that any one who should neglect this should be excluded from Christian burial until the church were satisfied. But such a provision was as likely to serve the church by securing the bounty as the orthodoxy of the dying man, and it was repeated in other canons without any reference to heresy, but with a direct view to the encouragement of bequests to the church. In some quarters, however, measures began to be now taken for restraining the growth of ecclesiastical and monastic property. Thus a parliament at Westminster, in 1279, enacted, under pain of forfeiture, that no bequests should be made to spiritual corporations, or to the “dead hand,” except with the king’s special consent. The clergy were greatly annoyed by this statute; but king Edward told them to refrain from any resolution to the disadvantage of the crown and the state, if they set any value on the baronies which they held under the sovereign; and other statutes of mortmain, with enactments of similar tendency, followed in the course of the same reign. When the bishops represented that such acts were an infringement of the liberties promised to the church by Henry III in his confirmation of the Great Charter, and desired that they might be mitigated, Edward replied that nothing must be done without the royal license, but that he would grant this according as might be expedients In Germany the bishops endeavoured by the enactment of canons to set aside the principle which required that, in order to the validity of a will, the testator should afterwards have been able to go abroad without support; and, finding their canons ineffectual, they tried to secure the validity of wills by inserting in them curses against any who should question it.

The advocates, who had for centuries been felt by churches and monasteries as an oppressive weight, were now somewhat restrained in their tyranny. Honorius III, after strongly denouncing their evil practices, orders that, whenever the office of advocate should be vacant, churches shall not grant it away, and especially that no church shall have more than one advocate. Philip of Swabia forbade the advocates to exact enforced labour; Frederick II ordered that they should not build castles, and in other ways circumscribed their powers of doing mischief; and in the end of the century Adolphus of Germany forbade them to interfere with the endowments of the church or clergy.

Celibacy was enforced by canons as before, and was now established as the rule in Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and in the Scandinavian kingdoms, which had formerly held out against it; but it is evident, both from the satirical vernacular poetry which was now largely produced in various countries, and also from more serious testimony, that the clergy in general had fallen into disrespect, which was increased by the startling contrast between their lives and the growingly mysterious sanctity of their professions; between the severity with which offences against orthodoxy were treated and the lenient toleration of immorality. And while celibacy was rigidly enjoined on the clergy, all the chief schoolmen of the age—Albert the Great, Thomas of Aquino, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and others—agree in representing it as merely a matter of ecclesiastical discipline, as to which some of them would not unwillingly have seen an alteration.

 

MONASTICISM

 

The variety of religious orders, which in the preceding century had been a subject of perplexity and complaint, was restrained in its further increase by a canon of the fourth Lateran council, which enacted that any person who might wish to adopt a monastic life should take up one of the rules which had already been approved, instead of attempting to invent a new one. The only very considerable additions which were made to the number of orders within this century were the two great fraternities of Dominic and Francis. But as these, by proclaiming mendicancy as their principle, excited many imitators, Gregory X, at the second council of Lyons, reduced the unbridled multitudes of friars to four orders, joining with the Dominicans and Franciscans the Carmelites (who had adopted the mendicant system) and the Augustinian eremites.

The two great mendicant orders surpassed all other monastic bodies in vigour and in popularity. They were to the elder orders much as these had been to the secular clergy—outshining them in the display of the qualities which were most admired, and endeavouring to surpass and supersede them in every way. Matthew Paris tells us that they disparaged the Cistercians as rude and simple; the Benedictines, as proud and epicurean. The mendicants increased the more readily because they were able to dispense with costly buildings. Their numbers were recruited, not only by young men who flocked into the mendicant cloisters, often against the will of their parents, but by many members of the older orders; and, while the friars were allowed by popes to receive accessions from other orders, it was forbidden that any other order should receive members from the friars. By the institution of tertiaries they were so widely connected with the laity, that a writer of the age speaks of almost every one as being enrolled on the lists of one or other of the new fraternities. And while the mendicants penetrated, as none had before done, to the very poorest classes of men, they knew too how to recommend themselves to the rich and great. They were favoured by popes, who employed them in business both ecclesiastical and secular; they were familiar with the courts of princes, and were trusted by them with offices, and with the conduct of negotiations, which might have seemed strangely incongruous with their rigid and unworldly professions. Bishops of the more zealous kind, such as Grossetete, of Lincoln, employed them in their dioceses, to make up for the deficient zeal or ability of the secular clergy; and they soon assumed for themselves authority to act independently of episcopal sanction, and were so far countenanced by the privileges they acquired from popes that they had little to fear from the opposition of bishops. They invaded parishes and derided the ministrations of the secular clergy, while they endeavoured to draw everything to themselves; their services were shorter, livelier, and more attractive; they preached, administered the sacraments, and directed consciences; they persuaded the dying that bounty to their order, death in its habit, and burial in their cloisters, were the surest means to salvation. By hearing confessions, they annulled the penitential discipline; for while one formal confession a year to the parish priest was considered to satisfy the decree of the Lateran council, the intention of that canon was frustrated by the system of confession to strangers and interlopers.

Although Francis had expressly discouraged study, his order, as well as that of Dominic, was soon able to boast of men of the highest intellect and learning. In like manner, although both he and Dominic had intended that their followers should avoid ecclesiastical dignities, we find before the end of the century many Franciscan and Dominican bishops, and even a Franciscan pope. So too the extreme plainness which was at first affected in their houses and churches, was soon superseded by an almost royal splendour of architecture and decoration; and, while the rough exterior of dress was still in general kept up, there were some mendicants who took advantage of the commissions on which they were employed to exhibit themselves on fine horses, with gilt saddles, arrayed in splendid robes, and with boots of a fashion peculiar to knights or warriors. It was said that a friar had been informed by revelation that the devils, who yearly held a council against the order, had devised three especial means for its ruin—“familiarity with women, reception of unprofitable members, and handling of money”; and, although we may doubt the truth of the story, we cannot fail to understand its significance. Matthew Paris, who, as a Benedictine of the great monastery of St. Alban’s, delights in denouncing the faults of the new orders, tells us that the mendicants, within a quarter of a century from their first settlement in England, had degenerated more than any of the older monastic orders had done in three or four centuries; and a letter written in the name of the secular clergy to Henry III of England contrasts their profession with their practice by saying that “although having nothing, they possess all things; and, although without riches, they grow richer than all the rich.”

Among other labours, the friars undertook that of religious teaching; and it is said that the freshness of their lectures enabled them to triumph over the somewhat faded and spiritless performances of the other teachers. Paris was then the intellectual centre ot Europe. The university had been continually advancing in reputation and influence, until in 1229 it was broken up, in consequence of a serious conflict with the muni­cipal authorities. After having applied in vain to the queen-mother and the bishop for redress of their alleged wrongs, the professors dispersed, with their respective trains of students, into provincial towns, to which their residence gave for a time an unwonted celebrity. At this time, while the regular theological teaching of the university was in abeyance at Paris, the Dominicans, with the bishop’s permission, established a professorship of theology, which they filled with a succession of their most eminent doctors; and, when the university was able to resume its place in Paris, it was found necessary to guard against the aggressive spirit of the friars. No open outbreak, however, took place until 1251, when the secular clergy complained that, of the twelve theological professorships, three were occupied by the canons of Paris, and two by Dominicans; so that, if the five other monastic communi­ties of the city were each to get a professorship, only two out of the whole number would be left for the seculars, for whom the whole had originally been intended. A fresh decree was therefore passed, that no religious order should be allowed to hold more than one of the theological chairs. Against this decision the Dominicans appealed to Innocent IV, who, possibly thinking that the papacy had no further need of the special services of the mendicants, decided against them. But within a few days after having issued his judgment, Innocent died, and the friends of the Dominicans did not scruple to attribute his death to the effect of their prayers. Alexander IV, perhaps alarmed by his predecessor’s end, rescinded the bull of Innocent, and decreed that the chancellor of Paris might appoint professors either from the religious orders or from the secular clergy. The university, in order to avoid the operation of the decree, professed to dissolve itself; and in consequence of this step it was placed under excommunication by the pope’s representatives, the bishops of Orleans and Auxerre. In 1256 four archbishops, who had been chosen as arbiters, awarded two professorships to the Dominicans, but under the condition that they should not be admitted into the academic society without the consent of the seculars. But the pope rejected this compromise, and, with the permission of king Lewis (who, as a tertiary of St. Francis, was favourable to the mendicants), he issued bull after bull, until in 1257 the university was compelled to succumb to the friars, and to admit at once as teachers the great Dominican Thomas of Aquino, and the great Franciscan Bonaventura.

But, although the preachers and the minorites were in some respects united by a common interest, their orders were also rivals of each other, so that jealousies and collisions might readily arise between them. While the Franciscans carried reverence for their “seraphic father” to the degree of idolatry, the great miracle of the stigmata was denied and ridiculed by the Dominicans. In their philosophical principles, the Dominicans were nominalists and the Franciscans realists; and as to some important points of religious doctrine they might be regarded as opposite schools. Thus, as to the question of grace and free-will, while the Dominicans, under the guidance of Aquinas, held the Augustinian system, the Franciscans, under Scotus, were semipelagian. And as to the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, while the Franciscans advocated the opinion which in our own time has become an article of the Roman faith, the Dominicans strenuously opposed it.

But the Franciscans were also divided among them­selves by differences both broad and deep. Even during the lifetime of St. Francis, Elias, who afterwards became master of the order, had taken advantage of his absence in Egypt to introduce some mitigations of the rule, on the ground that the grace which had been given to the founder was not to be expected of his successors; and after the death of Francis he had more freely developed his views in departing from the original idea of the order. When Francis had been canonized, and a church was to be built in his honour at Assisi, Elias, in defiance of the saint’s own precepts, resolved that it should have all the splendour that could be given to it by beauty of design and by richness of materials and ornament. Many members of the order began to murmur against the strict rule of poverty; and Gregory IX relaxed it in 1230, declaring that the founder’s testament, on which the opposition to the change was rested, had no power to bind his successors. But a strong and earnest party, who were known by the names of Zelatores or Spirituals, refused to accept this relaxation, and, while the church of Assisi was rising in all the glory of variegated marbles and gilding, of decorative painting and sculpture, these rigid professors of poverty buried themselves among the rocks and forests of the Apennines. Elias dealt severely with the members of this party, and Gregory, on receiving a protest against his mitigation of the rule, punished the authors of the movement. But Elias, after having been already deposed from the headship of the order and restored to it, was finally deprived in 1239, and spent the remainder of his days under papal excommunication at the court of the emperor Frederick, whose hatred of the papacy and the mendicant orders he probably helped to exasperate.

In 1245 Innocent IV issued a fresh relaxation of the rule—declaring that the property of the order belonged to the apostolic see, but that the members were entitled to appoint prudent men to manage it for their use. Two years later, John of Parma, formerly a professor at Paris, became head of the order, and under him the rigid party gained the ascendency. The spirituals declared that in John their founder had come to life again; but with his ideas of monastic rigour John combined some apocalyptic fancies, derived from abbot Joachim of Fiore, which were widely prevalent in the order, and could hardly be regarded as consistent with dutiful obedience to the Roman see. In consequence of the excitement which had arisen as to these opinions (though nominally on the ground that the spirit of laxity was too strong for him), John, at the suggestion of Alexander IV, resigned his mastership in 1256. By his recommendation Bonaventura was chosen as his successor; and under the new master’s conciliatory rule, the order in 1260 asked and received leave from Alexander IV to abolish the interpretations of Innocent IV, except in so far as they agreed with those of Gregory IX.

Among the most prominent champions of the university of Paris in its contest with the mendicants, was a doctor of the Sorbonne, named William, a native of St. Amour, in Franche Comté, who, not content with acting on the defensive, vigorously assailed the whole system of mendicancy. He preached against the friars with an eloquence which their most famous orators could hardly rival, while eager audiences listened to him with such prepossessions as had been naturally produced in them by the late assumptions of the mendicants; and he sent forth a treatise ‘Of the Perils of the Last Times’, in which he unsparingly chastised the principles and the practice of the friars, and applied to them the description of the false teachers of whom St. Paul spoke as about to arise in the perilous times which were to come. The book was censured by an assembly of bishops at Paris; but the Dominicans, not content with this, prevailed on king Lewis to send it to the pope, who committed it for examination to four cardinals—one of them being the Dominican Hugh of St. Cher. William of St. Amour, too, was sent to the pope, with others, on the part of the university; but on caching Anagni, where Alexander then was, he found that his book had been already condemned; that it had been burnt in front of the cathedral, under the pope’s own eyes; and that strict orders were given for the immediate destruction of all copies of it, although it had not been found to contain any heresy, but was blamed only as tending to stir up enmity against the mendicants. William was forbidden to teach, was deprived of all preferments “had or to be had,” and, in consequence of the pope’s having demanded his banishment, with that of three others who had opposed the friars in the university, he withdrew to his native province, where he remained until after the death of Alexander; but his treatise, notwithstanding the repeated sentences against it, was translated into French, and even versified in that language. In 1263 William took advantage of a bull of Urban IV to return to Paris, and three years later he produced an improved edition of his book, which he defended with spirit and success against the greatest champions of the mendicant orders, such as Albert the Great, Bonaventura, and Thomas of Aquino. There is a letter from Clement IV to William, in which the pope professes to have read only a part of the revised work, and cautions the writer as to the display of his old animosity, but it does not appear that the pope ever proceeded further in his censure.

William of St. Amour died in 1270. We are told by a contemporary Franciscan writer that he drew away many members from the mendicant orders; and the popular poetry of the time gives evidence of the strong impression which his attacks on them had made on the general mind.

Among the charges brought against the mendicants by William was that of believing the “everlasting gospel”; under which name it would seem that we are not to understand any single book, but the substance of abbot Joachim’s apocalyptic interpretations and of his doctrine as to successive states of the church. In 1254 appeared a book entitled an ‘Introduction to the everlasting gospel’, in which, among other objectionable propositions, it was asserted that the gospel had brought no one to perfection, and was to be superseded by a new dispensation in the year 1260. This book was long supposed to have been the work of John of Parma, but is now known to have been written by another Franciscan—Gerard or Gerardino of Borgo San Donnino—who, on account of the reproach which his opinions brought on the order, was imprisoned for eighteen years by his superiors, and at last was buried in unhallowed earth. In the year after the publication of the ‘Introduction’, the university of Paris gained something of a triumph over the mendicants by obtaining from Alexander IV a condemnation of the book, with its “schedules”, in which a great part of the mischievous matter was con­tained; and the ‘Introduction’ was burnt at Paris, although, out of consideration for the mendicants, the burning, instead of being public, took place within the  Dominican convent. But the opinions of Joachim’s school spread widely among the Franciscans, more especially as the relaxations of the rule by papal authority tended to alienate the “spiritual” party more and more from the papacy, and to convince them that Rome was, as Joachim’s followers taught, the Babylon and the great harlot of the Apocalypse. The extreme section of this party came to be known by the name of fraticelli—a name which, like that of beghards, was used in many ways, but, as applied to the minorites, denoted those who wished to carry the principle of beggary even further than Francis himself—insisting on the duty of living on alms from day to day.

In 1279 Nicolas III issued a bull which is known by the title of Exiit, mitigating the rule of St. Francis in some respects, and declaring that, although the right of property was in the apostolic see, the friars were entitled to the use of such things as were necessary. By this the fraticelli were exasperated, and a new prophet of their party arose in Peter John of Olivi. Olivi was born in 1247 at Serignan, near Narbonne; he was dedicated to the Franciscan order at the age of twelve, studied at Paris, and about 1278 made himself conspicuous by the extravagance of his language as to the blessed Virgin, which the annalist of the order pronounces to be “not praises, but fooleries,” such as the object of them would herself be unwilling to accept. The scandal excited by Olivi’s writings on this subject was so great that the general of the order, Jerome of Ascoli (afterwards Nicolas IV), condemned him to burn them with his own hand. Olivi also plunged deeply into the quarrels between the opposite parties of the Franciscans, and distinguished himself by his severity against all laxity in the order. His views on prophecy were set forth in various books, of which his ‘Postills on the Apocalypse’ were the most notorious. He taught that there were three states of the church; that in the first, God had revealed Himself as Fear; in the second, as Wisdom; and in the third, He was to be revealed as Love. As Christianity had superseded Judaism, so a new state, under the Holy Ghost, was to supersede Christianity; St Peter was to give way to St. John. The history of the church was divided into seven ages, of which the sixth (opened by St. Francis, the angel of the sixth seal) was now running out, and the seventh was to coincide with the third state. The renewal of the church was to be effected through the tertiaries of the Franciscan order; and as the preachers of the gospel in the apostolic age found more acceptance among heathens than among Jews, so the new spiritual mission would have greater success with Jews, Saracens, and Tartars, than with the fleshly church of the Latins. The Holy Ghost was to receive from the church as Christ had received from the Holy Ghost.h Of Rome and its hierarchy Olivi spoke in terms of the strongest denunciation; and he supposed that the Roman church was to be destroyed by Frederick of Sicily before the coming of Antichrist.

In 1282 Olivi’s doctrines were investigated by the authorities of the order, who condemned him in a docu­ment which, from having been sealed by seven inquisitors, is known as the ‘Book of the Seven Seals’; but he ap­peared uninvited before them, preached in such a manner as to satisfy them of his orthodoxy, and subscribed the condemnation of the errors which were imputed to him. In 1290, however, Nicolas IV addressed a letter to the general of the Franciscans, desiring him to proceed against the “brethren of Narbonne”, the followers of Olivi. In consequence of this, many of the party were imprisoned, or subjected to other severities. Olivi himself retracted in 1292, and is said to have emitted two orthodox confessions on his death-bed, in 1297. Yet although he had died in peace with the church, his me­mory was not allowed to rest. The council of Vienne, in 1311, condemned some opinions which were imputed to him, and in 1325 pope John XXII, after an inquiry by eight doctors, condemned his Postills on account of the errors which they contained. The reading of his books had already been forbidden in the order of which he had been a member; the inquisition of Toulouse denounced him as a false prophet; and it is said (although on doubtful authority) that after the sentence of John XXII his bones were taken from the grave and burnt. Yet there were many stories of miracles done by his remains, and his writings were widely circulated in translations. The adherents of his opinions denied that either pope or general council was entitled to condemn them; they reverenced him as a saint and a martyr, nay, as the “mighty angel”, who “had in his hand a little book open”, and they kept a festival in his honour. The condemnation of his writings was rescinded by Sixtus IV, himself a Franciscan, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, when they were supposed to be no longer dangerous. In the meantime, the discords within the Franciscan order continued. The stricter and the laxer parties by turns got the ascendency, and each in the day of its triumph banished the members of the opposite faction. The fraticelli became more and more extravagant in their opinions and practices. They pretended to visions and revelations; they maintained that no pope was entitled to alter the rule of St. Francis—that since the time of Nicolas III there had been no real pope or prelate except among themselves. In 1294, Celestine V combined them with his own especial followers in the order of Celestine eremites. But Boniface VIII, who had no love for the mendicants, rescinded this privilege, and banished them to one of the Greek islands, where they were not allowed to remain. One of Olivi’s disciples, a Provençal, is said to have been elected pope in St. Peter’s by five men and thirteen women of the party; and by these and others their doctrines were spread into Sicily, Greece, and other countries, becoming everywhere a leaven of opposition and discontent, actively though secretly working against the papacy.

 

Rites and Usages.

 

Although the canon by which the fourth Lateran council enforced the belief of transubstantiation was generally construed as prescribing that doctrine in its grossest form, there was yet in many minds a strong repugnance to such a manner of understanding the Eucharistic presence. Many, while they held the belief that the Saviour was present in the sacrament, shrank from defining the mode of His presence; and the university of Paris, the most distinguished school of theology in Christendom, was especially suspected of lagging behind the development of orthodoxy on this point. In 1264, it was reported that an archbishop of Narbonne, when at Rome, had expressed the opinion that the body of Christ was not on the altar in reality, “but as a thing signified under its sign,” and had declared this to be the general opinion of the Parisian teachers; and, although he disavowed the words which were imputed to him, the charge can hardly have been without some foundation. At a later time, John of Paris, or de Soardis, a famous Dominican, although he professed his own belief in transubstantiation, maintained that it was enough for the satisfaction of the ecclesiastical definitions as to faith to believe the presence without determining the manner of it; that instead of holding a change of substance, men were at liberty to suppose an assumption of the quality of bread into union with the Saviour’s human nature. For this opinion John was called in question by some French prelates and divines, who after an examination of his doctrines forbade him to teach at Paris; and, while engaged in prosecuting an appeal to the pope, he died, so that the question was left undetermined.

But, whatever latitude of opinion as to the manner of the Eucharistic presence may have been assumed by some persons, or may have been really within the intention of the Lateran decree, the ordinary view of the matter appears beyond all doubt from the stories of miracles, in which the consecrated wafer took the form of a beautiful child, of a bleeding piece of flesh, or the like. Such stories had a great effect on the popular mind; but that they were not universally accepted appears from a passage of Alexander of Hales, who, while strongly maintaining the established doctrine, speaks of some miracles in its favour as being the effect of human, or possibly of diabolical, contrivance.

Strange questions were proposed and discussed by the theologians of the time in connexion with the doctrine of transubstantiation. Thus, in the Greek church, where that doctrine had been established as well as in the West, there was a controversy whether the Saviour’s body, after having been received in the Eucharist, was incorruptible, as after His passion and resurrection, or corruptible as before. Alexander of Hales inquires whether, if the Eucharistic body appear in such forms as the miraculous stories represented, it ought to be eaten, and he replies in the negative. It was asked whether, if a mouse or a dog should eat the consecrated host, it would eat the Lord’s body? Peter Lombard, in the preceding century, Pope Innocent III, and Bonaventura answered in the negative. But this hesitation as to the consequences of the doctrine soon passed away. Thomas of Aquino boldly maintained the affirmative, adding that this no more derogated from the Saviour’s dignity than did His submission to be crucified by sinners; and Peter Lombard’s adverse opinion came to be noted as one of those points in which the authority of the “Master of the Sentences” was not generally held good.

We have already seen that the heightened ideas as to the sacredness of the Eucharistic symbols gave occasion for scruples as to the administration of the chalice, and during the century which witnessed the formal decree of transubstantiation, the withdrawal of this part of the sacrament from the laity became general, although the older practice still continued in many places, and especially in monasteries. This withdrawal of the cup was defended by all the great theologians of the time, but in some cases with curious qualifications and exceptions. The authority of Gelasius I, in the fifth century, against administration in one kind only, was set aside, not by the pretext of later Roman controversialists, that his words were meant against the Manicheans only, but by the assertion that he spoke of the priest alone. And, as in the preceding century, divines who, on the ground of the doctrine of concomitancy, maintain the new practice as to the administration of the sacrament, are found at the same time declaring their belief that the administration under both kinds is of higher perfection or conveys a fuller grace.

In order to reconcile the laity to the withdrawal of the consecrated chalice, it now became usual to give them unconsecrated wine, which was said to be intended as a help to them in swallowing the host; and in some places a compromise was attempted by leaving in the chalice a small portion of the consecrated wine, and pouring on it other wine, which was then distributed to the people.

The ceremony of elevating the host had been used in the Greek church from the seventh (perhaps as early as the sixth) century, but without any meaning beyond that of typifying the Saviour’s exaltation; nor, when it was adopted by the western church, in the eleventh century, did Hildebert, Ivo of Chartres, Rupert of Deutz, and their contemporaries, give any other reason for the observance of it. But when the Lateran canon had prescribed the doctrine of transubstantiation, it was ordered that both at the elevation of the host in the mass, and when it was carried through the streets to a sick person, all who were present should fall on their knees in reverence to it. Hence arose a festival of Adoration of the Host, which eventually became the festival of Corpus Christi. The common story refers the origin of this to a nun of Liege named Juliana, who from the year 1230 had frequent raptures, in which she saw a full moon, with a small part of it in darkness; and it was revealed to her that the full moon was the glory of the church, and that the dark part signified the want of a festival in especial honour of the Lord’s body. For twenty years Juliana kept this revelation to herself, praying that some worthier organ might be chosen for the publication of it. At length, however, she disclosed it to a canon of Liege, by whom it was told to the archdeacon James—afterwards pope Urban IV. Urban, who, after attaining the papacy, had his attention further drawn to the subject by the miracle of Bolsena, decreed in 1264 an annual festival in honour of the Eucharistic body; and, as the day of the original institution of the sacrament—Thursday before Easter—was already much taken up with other ceremonies, Thursday after the octave of Pentecost was fixed on for the celebration of the Corpus Christi. The death of Urban followed within two months after the issuing of this decree, and his order did not meet with general obedience; but at the council of Vienne, in 1311, the festival was established for the whole church by a bull of Clement V.

The increased mystery and awfulness with which the sacrament of the Lord’s supper was invested by the new doctrine had not the effect of rendering the general reception of it more frequent. Although some councils endeavoured to enforce the older number of three com­munions yearly, it was found that the canon of the Lateran council, which allowed of one yearly reception as enough for Christian communion, became the rule. Instead of personally communicating, people were taught to rely on the efficacy of masses, which were performed by the priests for money; and from this great corruptions naturally followed.

The number of seven sacraments was in this age firmly established. Among them a pre-eminence was indeed given to baptism and the Lord’s supper, as having been instituted by the Saviour during his earthly life; but it was held that he had, in truth, instituted the other sacraments also, although “not by exhibiting but by promising them”.

The doctrine of opus operatum was now introduced, and was first distinctly laid down by Duns Scotus, whose words will suffice to convey the interpretation of it, as understood in the middle ages :—“A sacrament confers grace through the virtue of the work which is wrought, so that there is not required any inward good motion such as to deserve grace; but it is enough that the receiver place no bar” in the way of its operations.

 

INDULGENCES

During the thirteenth century, the system of indul­gences was carried further, both by the development of its theory and by new practical applications. From the idea of the union and communion of all the faithful in one spiritual body was deduced the idea of benefits which might be derived by one member of the body from another. It was supposed that the saints, by their works of penitence, and by their unmerited sufferings in this world, had done more than was necessary for their own salvation, and that their superabundant merits, with those of the Saviour, formed a treasury, of which the church possessed the keys, and which it could apply for the relief of its members, both in this life and in purgatory. It was, indeed, said that the Saviour himself was the source of all merit; but the merits of his saints were more and more put forward in the popular teaching of the age. The supposed treasury of merits came to be applied in a wholesale way, as in the plenary indulgence which had been set forth as an inducement to join the crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land, and which was now extended to religious wars in Europe, or to wars undertaken by the popes against Christian sovereigns with whom they had quarrelled. And of this wholesale offer of indulgences, another remarkable instance was the jubilee instituted by Boniface VIII.

Each of the two great mendicant orders held forth its special indulgence as a means of attracting popular devotion. The Franciscans offered the indulgence of the Portiuncula—the church so called at Assisi—granted, according to their story, by the Saviour himself in answer to the prayer of St. Francis, and confirmed on earth by pope Honorius III. By this indulgence a full pardon of all sins was offered to every one who, on the festival of St. Peter’s chains (Aug. 1) should visit the Portiuncula and make his confession; and it is said that as many as 100,000 persons were sometimes drawn together by the hope of partaking in this privilege.

The Dominican indulgence was connected with the Rosary—an instrument of devotion which had been known in earlier times, but which now became the especial property of this order. The manner of performing the devotion of the rosary was by reciting the angelic salutation, with a prayer for the blessed Virgin’s intercession in the hour of death. A rosary of 150 beads represented a like number of aves, which were divided into fifteen portions, and between these portions a recitation of the Lord’s prayer was interposed. Some mystery of the Christian faith was proposed for meditation during the performance of this exercise, and the whole was con­cluded by a repetition of the creed.

Bishops had formerly been accustomed to grant indulgences, and it was still considered that they were entitled to do so within their own dioceses, unless specially pro­hibited by higher authority. But the fourth council of Lateran, in consequence of the indiscreet profusion with which indulgences had been given by bishops, limited the amount which could be granted at the consecration of a church to one year, and that which could be granted at the anniversary of the consecration to forty days. So Honorius III in 1255 abolished the indulgence of Sarracinesco, among the Sabine hills, because the clergy misled the people by telling them that they were cleared of their sins as a stick is peeled of its bark. But, while they thus limited the abuses practised by inferior persons, the popes in their own exercise of the power of indulging and absolving went further than ever. The commuta­tion of penances and obligations for money was more shamelessly carried out. In like manner, the power of dispensing for breach of a law, which had formerly been limited to offences already committed, and had been exercised by bishops in general, became now the privilege of the pope alone, and was exercised also with regard to future or intended violations of the law. And it was held that the pope’s authority extended to dispensing with everything except the law of nature and the articles of the faith ;n nay, according to some writers, he might dispense with the law of nature itself, provided that he did not contradict the gospel or the articles of faith.

How much the indulgences of the church imported, was a matter of dispute. Some divines held that in order to their efficacy the ordinary conditions of penitence and devotion were necessary on the part of the receivers. But others asked, If this were so, what was there in the indulgences? and the popular opinion understood them in the plainest sense, without any idea of conditions or limitations. Some writers, while admitting this, said that the people were deceived, but held that the deceit was lawful on account of the good effects which were supposed to result from it. “The church deceives the faithful”, says William of Auxerre, “yet doth she not lie.” In like manner Thomas of Aquino says that, if the offers of indulgence may not be literally understood, the preach­ing of the church cannot be excused from the charge of falsehood; that, if inordinate indulgences are given, “so that men are called back almost for nothing from the works of penitence, he who gives such indulgences sins, yet nevertheless the receiver obtains full indulgence.”

The enactment of the Lateran council, that every faithful person should confess once a year, was intended to remedy the evils which had arisen out of the promiscuous use of indulgences by securing a periodical inquiry into the spiritual condition of each person; and the power which it conferred on those who were thus intrusted with the scrutiny and direction of all consciences was enormous, while, as we have already seen, it was in a great degree diverted from the parish priests to the mendicant friars, and so the benefit of the spiritual discipline intended by the Lateran canon was lost. Bonaventura holds that until the passing of this canon it had not been heretical to deny the necessity of confession for all, although from that time such a denial could not be maintained without heresy. But, although in this he is supported by Aquinas, Duns Scotus considers it “more reasonable to hold that confession falls under a positive Divine command.” Many other questions, of greater or less practical importance, arose out of the law of confession. Was it necessary in the case of mortal sin only, or of venial sins also? Again, was confession to a layman valid? Peter Lombard, relying in part on a treatise wrongly attributed to St. Augustine, had answered that it was. Albert the Great considers such confession as sacramental. Aquinas more cautiously says that, if the penitent perform his part of the work by contrition and confession, then, although the lay confessor cannot give priestly absolution, the Great High-priest will in case of need make up the defect; and thus confession to a layman, when a priest cannot be had, is “in a manner, although not fully, sacramental.” But Scotus holds a contrary opinion, and considers that it would be better for a man to put himself to shame for his sins, if he could do so with equal intensity of shame, than to confess to one who has no commission to judge.

Another question related to the extent of the efficacy of the sacerdotal absolution. In this century the absolution was changed from the precatory form which had until then been used into the declaratory “I absolve thee.” William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, who died in 1249, writes that the confessor does not, like a secular judge, say “We absolve thee,” but that he prays over the penitent for God’s forgiveness and grace; and another writer of the age, in objecting to the new form, says that scarcely thirty years had passed since the time when the precatory form was used by all. But Thomas of Aquino replied to this writer in defence of the declaratory absolution, and by his authority, chiefly, it came to be established in the church. Aquinas, while he holds that the power of forgiving sins is with God only, says that He may exercise it through his priest as an instrument, and that the absolution is from guilt as well as from punishment.

The abuses as to the matter of indulgences were in no small degree connected with the superstitious veneration of relics. Popes and councils attempted from time to time to check the practices of itinerant “quaestuaries,” who in England were known as “pardoners” and in Germany as “penny-preachers.” They denounce the ignorance of these men, their hypocritical pretensions to sanctity, their vicious and disreputable lives, the impudence with which they vended indulgences on the strength of the relics which they paraded, the danger that they might disseminate old heresies and errors; and they endeavour to remedy the evil by forbidding the pardoners to preach, by confining them to the display of their relics, by providing that these, if they could not be warranted as genuine, should at least be sanctioned by the pope, or by competent ecclesiastical authority, and by ordering that the profits of such exhibitions should not be appropriated by the showmen. But in the following centuries we find frequent notices which prove that the pardoners continued to carry on their trade with unabated impudence and with undiminished success.

The prevailing veneration for saints called forth in this time some legendary writers who attained great fame and popularity—especially Symeon Metaphrastes in the Greek church, and James de Voragine (so called from his birth at Vorago—Viraggio or Varese, on the Gulf of Genoa) in the Latin. James, who was born about 1230, became a Dominican, was highly respected for his personal character, and in 1292 was raised to the archbishopric of Genoa by Nicolas IV. But his ‘Lombard History’ more commonly known by the title of ‘Golden Legend’, carries legendary extravagance to a degree which has been seldom, if ever, equalled. Yet notwithstanding this extravagance—or rather, perhaps, in consequence of it—the ‘Golden Legend’ became popular beyond all similar collections; it was translated into several languages; and even so late as the sixteenth century a divine who had spoken disrespectfully of it in a sermon was compelled by the theological faculty of Paris to retract his words.

About the same time with James of Viraggio wrote William Durantis or Durandus, who was born in the diocese of Beziers in 1237, became bishop of Mende in 1286, and died at Rome in 1296. Durantis was greatly honoured by popes, and was employed by them in important political business. He had in earlier life been a professor at Bologna, and his knowledge of both canon and civil law was displayed in a book entitled ‘Speculum Juris’, from which he got the name of Speculator. But his wider and more equivocal fame is derived from his ‘Rationale of Divine Offices’, in which the system of allegorical interpretation, which we have noticed in an earlier period, is carried to a very extravagant length. Yet, foolish and absurdly trifling as much of this book is, Durandus was not so foolish in other respects as the peculiar admiration which he has received in our own time and country might lead us to suppose; nor must we forget that many things which cannot among ourselves be repeated without manifest and ridiculous affectation, might in the thirteenth century have been said simply and naturally. In some important points, indeed, Durandus deserves the credit of having endeavoured rather to check than to forward the development of popular superstition. Perhaps a sufficient evidence of the popularity which the ‘Rationale’ attained may be found in the facts that it was one of the earliest works which issued from the press of Fust, and that forty editions of it, at least, were published before the end of the fifteenth century.

The veneration for the blessed Virgin increased so as more and more to encroach on the honour due to her Divine Son. The beginning of the movement for the doctrine and the celebration of her immaculate concep­tion has been already noticed. The original celebration of the blessed Virgin’s conception did not relate to her having been conceived in her mother’s womb, but to her having conceived the Saviour of mankind. The earlier celebrations of her own conception did not attach to it the idea of her having been conceived without sin; nor, although the doctrine of the immaculate conception had been broached in the preceding century (when it was opposed by the powerful authority of St. Bernard), did it for a long time gain the support of any considerable theologian. Even the Franciscans, as Alexander of Hales, Antony of Padua, and Bonaventura, maintained that the Virgin was conceived in sin, until Duns Scotus asserted (although not with absolute certainty) the opposite opinion, which from the fourteenth century became the creed of the order. The Dominican Aquinas (who says that, although the Roman church does not celebrate her conception, it bears with certain churches in their celebration of it), argues that she was conceived in sin, but was sanctified in the womb, not by the removal of the fomes peccati, but by its being placed under restraint; that she never committed actual sin, because that would have been a disparagement of her Son; but that the “fomes” was not removed until she had conceived Him. Yet theologians who rejected the doctrine of the immaculate conception contributed to forward it by the extravagant language which they applied to St. Mary. A distinction had been drawn between the reverence which was due to the Saviour as God and as man : while his Divinity was to be worshipped with latria, his humanity was to be reverenced with hyperdulia, which was so styled as being greater than the dulia paid to saints. But now the human nature of the Saviour, as well as his Divinity, was to be worshipped with latria, while hyperdulia, which Aquinas defines as midway between dulia and latria, was to be rendered to the Virgin Mother. To her were ap­plied a multitude of Scriptural expressions, which in truth had no reference to her. Thus, she was said to be the rock on which Christ was to build his church, because she alone remained firm in faith during the interval between his death and his resurrection. She was said to be typified by the tree of life, by the ark of Noah, by Jacob’s ladder which reached to heaven, by the burning bush which was not consumed, by Aaron’s rod that budded, and by many other scriptural figures, down to the apocalyptic “woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet.” And her sinlessness was supposed to be foreshown in the words of the Canticles—“Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” The greater and lesser ‘Psalters of the blessed Virgin’ in which the Psalms of David are parodied with unintentional profanity, although not the work of Bonaventura, to whom they have been ascribed, belong to the thirteenth century. And Bonaventura himself went great lengths in several works which were expressly devoted to her honour. In accordance with these developments of reverence for St. Mary, we find in the chronicles of the time notices of the introduction of devotions addressed to her, and of festivals and offices in celebration of her. And a fast of forty days before the festival of the assumption was kept by many persons, and was recommended, although not enforced, by Peckham, the Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury.

It was in this time that the house which had been inhabited by the holy family at Nazareth is said to have been carried by angels, first into Dalmatia, and then into the neighbourhood of Loreto, where, after having thrice changed its place, it finally settled, to draw to it the devotion and the offerings of innumerable pilgrims. To argue against such a story would be either superfluous or hopeless; but it may be well to state, as some of the most obvious objections to it, that the pilgrims to Palestine, although they mention churches on the site of the house where the blessed Virgin was visited by the angel, and on that of the house where the Saviour was brought up, give no hint that any remains of the houses themselves existed; that Urban IV in 1263, in reporting to St. Lewis the destruction of the church at Nazareth, says nothing of the “aedicula,” which later ingenuity has supposed to have been contained in it and miraculously preserved; and that, although the removal to Loreto is placed in the year 1294, no notice of it is to be found before the latter half of the fifteenth century.

The excess of reverence for the blessed Virgin found expression in a multitude of hymns; but in the time which we are now surveying, compositions of this kind were also produced which may be regarded as precious contributions to the stock of truly Christian devotional poetry. Among these may be mentioned, as perhaps the best known, the Dies Ira—probably (although not certainly) the work of Thomas of Celano, a Minorite, and one of the biographers of St. Francis; the Stabat Mater, which is generally ascribed to another Franciscan, Jacopone of Todi; and the German Easter hymn, Christus ist erstanden, which, like the Dies Irae, is introduced with wonderful effect in the most famous poem of recent times.

The drama was now pressed into the service of religion. The imitation of Plautus and Terence, which had marked the attempts of Roswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, in the tenth century, had given way to a vernacular drama, of which the subjects were not only Christian, but commonly founded on Scripture, as distinguished from legend; and such plays, which were usually acted by the members of confraternities, became important means of conveying some sort of knowledge of sacred history to the people. We have seen that the drama was even employed, although with indifferent success, as an instrument of conversion among the heathens of Livonia.

The number of canons directed in this century against the “festivals of fools” and other burlesque celebrations which grew out of religion; against profanations of churches and churchyards by dancing and revelry, by holding of markets and of civil courts, by secular plays, wakes, and the like; against the introduction of players, jugglers, and yet more disreputable persons into monasteries,—shows how strongly these abuses had become rooted. Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1279, endeavoured to check the disorders which had thus crept in, and the church was in some degree forced to give way, compromising the matter by allowing the children of the choir to celebrate their mummeries, while it for­bade such celebrations by the clergy, and limiting the festival of the boy-bishop strictly to the Holy Innocents’ day, so that it should not begin until after vespers on St. John’s day.

 

 INTERDICTS

 

The abuse of interdicts, and the indifference to them which arose out of that abuse, have been already mentioned. It was found that those who suffered from such sentences, now turned their indignation, not against the princes or others whose offences had provoked them, but against the ecclesiastics who had pronounced them. As they were uttered by bishops on all manner of slight occasions, popes often took the prudent line of super­seding the diocesan authority, sometimes by annulling the sentence, sometimes by mitigating it. Recourse was occasionally had to temporal sovereigns by way of appeal against such sentences. Even St. Lewis annulled an interdict pronounced by the archbishop of Rouen in 1235, and one of the bishop of Poitiers in 1243; and in France it came to be regarded as a settled thing that the secular power was entitled to receive appeals in such cases. A council at Aschaffenburg, in 1292, speaks of the laity in some places as caring so little for interdicts that they took it on themselves to perform some of the offices, such as that of burial, which the clergy were charged to refuse to them. The monks often contributed to weaken the force of interdicts by making holes in the doors of their churches or by opening the windows, and so enabling the people, while standing outside, to hear the divine offices. This and other practices of a like tendency were forbid­den by special canons.

 

Arts and Learning.

 

Between the middle of the eleventh century and the end of the thirteenth, the development of ecclesiastical architecture had been rapid and signal. In France before the year 1150, and in other countries north of the Alps a little later, the massive round-arched architecture which marked the beginning of this period was succeeded by a lighter and more graceful style, which had for its chief feature the pointed arch. This form of arch had been long known—in Provence, it is said, even from the time of Charlemagne—before it came into favour as the characteristic of a style; and the first church in which it becomes thus predominant is said to be that of St. Denys, rebuilt by abbot Suger about 1144. The transition from the Norman to the Gothic is exemplified in many great French churches, where the victory of the pointed arch and of the lighter forms is as yet incomplete; and the perfection of Gothic in that stage where it has shaken off the influence of the older style, but is still capable of further development, is seen in the “holy chapel” of Paris, built by St. Lewis exactly a century after the date of Suger’s work at St. Denys.

In England, the pointed arch was introduced from France in the latter part of the twelfth century. The specimens of the transitional style are few—the best known being the choir of Canterbury, (begun under, a French architect,) and the round part of the Temple church in London (A.D. 1175-1184). But the pointed architecture of England soon began to display features unborrowed from any foreign example—such as the combination of a number of narrow lancet-headed windows in one large design; and here the most perfect example of the pure early Gothic style is the cathedral of Salisbury (A.D. 1220-1258). Henry III, the contemporary of St. Lewis, was, like him, a munificent patron of the arts connected with religion, and has left his best monument in that part of Westminster abbey which was erected by him.

Into Spain, too, the Gothic style made its way from France; and there it appears in remarkable contrast with another style, which has in common with it the pointed arch, and from which it was on that account formerly supposed to have taken its origin—the Moorish or Saracenic architecture derived from the East. In Sicily, on the other hand, the pointed styles of the North and of the East appear to mingle harmoniously together, and even to admit, without any striking incongruity, elements which belong to the architecture of Greece and Rome.

In Germany, where a peculiar variety of the round-arched style had been developed, chiefly in the provinces along the Rhine, the pointed arch did not make its appearance until the beginning of the thirteenth century; but before the middle of that century, had been laid the foundation of the vast and still unfinished cathedral of Cologne. Another remarkable German Gothic church of this time is that erected at Marburg in honour of St. Elizabeth.

In Italy, where the native art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries produced, among other works, the cathedral and the leaning tower of Pisa, the new style never took root in its purity. In the buildings which are classed as belonging to it (except in a few, which were erected under foreign influence) the round arch is combined with the pointed, and the development of Gothic is controlled by the remembrance of the old classical forms. The earliest example of a pointed church is that of St. Andrew at Vercelli, begun by Cardinal Gualo after his legation in England, under the superintendence of an English architect (A.D. 1219) and next to this followed the church built in honour of St. Francis at Assisi (1228-1253) where the political connection of Elias, then general of the Franciscans, induced him to employ a German of the emperor’s train, named James Arnulf, the original architect of the cathedral at Florence, which was begun in 1294 or 1298, has been described as the son of this James, but was more probably only his pupil; but at Florence the character of northern Gothic is modified by the Italian taste, both in Arnulf s work and in Giotto’s bell-tower, which belongs to the following century. In Rome itself Gothic architecture never established a footing, although we are reminded of it by the pointed arches of a single church, by some portions of other churches, and by such works as sepulchral monuments and the canopies of altars.

At the same time with architecture, the arts of painting and sculpture, which as yet were chiefly employed as accessory to it, made rapid progress. In painting, the first who deviated from the traditional Byzantine style was Cimabue, who died in 1302. In sculpture, the genius of Nicolas of Pisa led the Italian revival; but much of the sculpture of this age in Italy, as at the cathedral of Orvieto, was the work of Germans. The staining of glass had been early brought to a perfection of richness in colour which was lost in the more ambitious and more correct productions of a later style; and the skill of illuminators, workers in mosaic, workers in metal, embroiderers, and other decorative artists, worthily contributed in their degrees to the splendour of the age which, in addition to the churches already named, produced, entirely or in their finest parts, such buildings as the cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Reims, Bourges, Rouen, and Amiens, of Orvieto and Siena, of Toledo, of Lincoln, Glasgow, and Elgin.

During this time literature was much encouraged. Among the princes who patronized it, the emperor Frederick, and Alfonso X (the Wise), of Castile, are especially distinguished. Frederick in 1224 founded the university of Naples, with the intention of saving his Italian subjects from the necessity of seeking knowledge beyond his own dominions, nor would he allow them to study elsewhere; and, as it had suffered from the political troubles of the time, he founded it afresh in 1234. With a like view, and in order to punish Bologna for the part which it had taken in his quarrels with the popes, the emperor established the universities of Padua and Vienne. To this century is also ascribed the origin of some other universities—such as Toulouse (founded in order to counteract the teaching of the Albigenses), Ferrara, Piacenza, and Lisbon (which in 1308 was transferred to Coimbra). At Rome, Charles of Anjou, in the character of senator, professed to found a place of “general study” for law and arts in 1265; but this attempt seems to have been abortive, and the university of Rome really owes its beginning to a bull issued by Boniface VIII a few months before his fall. The Germans, having as yet no university of their own, continued to resort chiefly to Paris and Bologna. The pre-eminent fame of Paris for the successful cultivation of all branches of learning was still maintained. Honorius III in 1218 endeavoured to limit its range of subjects by forbidding lectures on law; but this exclusion of the popular science did not last long, as we find about the middle of the century that Paris had the three “faculties” of theology, law, and medicine, in addition to the older division into four “nations” which made up the body of “artists’’ or students in arts. In 1250 the famous school of the Sorbonne was founded in connection with the university, by Robert, a native of Sorbonne in Champagne, canon of Paris, and chaplain to St. Lewis; and, although it is a mistake to speak of this as the theological faculty of the university, the two were in so far the same that the members of one were very commonly members also of the other.

It was in this age that the scholastic philosophy received its full development under the influence of an increased study of Aristotle. Hitherto the acquaintance of western readers with this philosopher’s writings had been confined to one or two books which were accessible in the old translations of Victorinus and Boethius; but he now became more fully known, partly through translations from the Arabic versions current in Spain, and partly through direct translations from the originals, of which copies had been brought into the West in consequence of the Latin conquest of Constantinople. By the opening of these sources a great eagerness for the study of dialectics and metaphysics was excited. But in the case of Aristotle there were grave prejudices of long standing to be overcome. In earlier times, he had been in favour with some heretical sects, and on that account (if on no other) had been denounced by many writers of orthodox reputation and of high authority, down to St. Bernard, in whose day he had fallen under fresh suspicion on account of Abelard’s fondness for him. His works, in passing through the hands of Mussulman and other translators, had been mixed up with foreign matter which brought on him additional disrepute. And in the be­ginning of the century, his name incurred still further obloquy from the circumstance that Amalric of Bène and David of Dinant professed to ground their pantheistic speculations on his method. He was therefore involved in the condemnation of those speculations by the council of Paris in 1209, although it would seem that the writings which were condemned under his name were really the work of his Arabic followers; the legate Robert Curzon, in 1215, while allowing the study of his dialectics, forbade that of his books on metaphysics and natural philosophy; and in 1231, Gregory IX issued a bull by which they were again forbidden “until they should have been examined, and purged from all suspicion of errors”. Yet, as Aristotle became more known through the new translations from the Greek, which showed him without the additions of his Mahometan expositors, he found students, admirers, and commentators among men of the greatest eminence as teachers and of unquestioned orthodoxy, such as Albert the Great and Thomas of Aquino; and thus, from having been suspected and condemned, he came to be very widely regarded even as an infallible oracle. While his system was employed to give form and method to Christian ideas, he was considered as a guide to secular knowledge, on which theology was said to repose, while rising above it; and some divines, finding themselves perplexed between the authority of the Stagyrite and that of the Scriptures, attempted to reconcile the two by a theory that philosophical and religious belief might be different from each other and independent of each other—that a proposition might at once be philosophically true and theologically false. It was not unnatural that such notions should excite suspicion; and thus we find Gregory IX, in a letter written in 1228 to the professors of Paris, reproving them for the unprofitable nature of their studies—for relying too much on the knowledge of natural things, and making theology, the queen, subordinate to her handmaid, philosophy.

The leader of the Schoolmen was an Englishman, Alexander of Hales (Alensis), who taught philosophy and theology at Paris, entered the Franciscan order about 1222, and died in 1245. With him began that method of discussing a subject by arraying the arguments on each side in a syllogistic form, which became characteristic of the schoolmen in general. The authority which Alexander acquired appears from the lofty titles bestowed on him—“Doctor of Doctors” and “Irrefragable Doctor.” William of Auvergne, who held the see of Paris from 1228 to 1249, deserves mention as a famous schoolman, although his works are on a less colossal scale than those of his eminent contemporaries.

The titles of “Great” and of “Universal Doctor” were given to Albert, a Swabian of noble family, who taught at Cologne, and, after having held the bishopric of Ratisbon from 1260 to 1263, resigned it, that he might die in his profession as a simple Dominican friar. Albert is described as showing much reading, but (as might be expected in his age) a want of critical skill; great acuteness in argument; a courage which sometimes ventures even to contradict the authority of Aristotle; and an originality which entitles him to be regarded as the real founder of the Dominican system of doctrine. Under Albert, at Cologne, studied Thomas, a member of a great family which held the lordship of Aquino and other possessions in the Apulian kingdom. Thomas of Aquino was born in 1225 or 1227, and after having been educated from the age of five at Monte Cassino, from which he passed to the university of Naples, entered into the Dominican order in 1243, greatly against the will of his nearest relations. At Cologne he was chiefly distinguished for his steady industry, which led his fellow-students to style him in derision the “dumb ox of Sicily”; but Albert was able to discern the promise of greatness in him, and reproved the mockers by telling them that the dumb ox would one day fill the world with his lowing. In 1255, Thomas was nominated as professor of theology at Paris, but the disputes between his order and the university delayed his occupation of the chair until 1257. He also taught at Rome and elsewhere; his eminence was acknowledged by an offer of the archbishopric of Naples, which he declined; and he had been summoned by Gregory X to attend the council of Lyons, in 1274, with a view to controverting the peculiarities of the Greeks who were expected to be present, when he died on his way, at the monastery of Fossa Nuova. It is said that a short time before his death he was seen, while praying before a crucifix, to be raised into the air, and that the Saviour was heard to say to him from the crucifix—“Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what reward wilt thou receive for thy labour?” To which he replied, “Lord, I desire no other than Thyself.”

Among the best known of his voluminous writings are the ‘Summa Theologica’, which stands foremost among works of its class; the ‘Catena Aurea’, a commentary on the four Gospels, compiled with much skill from the fathers; original commentaries on many books of Scripture; an elaborate commentary on the ‘Sentences’ of Peter Lombard, the great text-book of the schools; a treatise ‘Of the truth of the Catholic Faith, against the Gentiles’; some writings against the Greek church; and a book ‘Of the Government of Princes’—of which, however, the latter part is said to be by another author. The writings of Thomas became a standard of orthodoxy in the Dominican order, so that everyone who entered it was bound to uphold the opinions of the “Angelical Doctor” or “Angel of the Church”. His master, Albert, is reported to have said of him that he had “put an end to all labour, even unto the world’s end.” At the council of Trent, nearly three hundred years after his death, the ‘Summa’ was placed on the secretary’s desk, beside the Holy Scriptures, as containing the orthodox solution of all theological questions. Thomas was canonized in 1323 by John XXII  and in 1567, Pius V, himself a Dominican, assigned to him the next place after the four great doctors of the West.

John of Fidanza, a Tuscan, who is better known by his conventual name of Bonaventura, endeavoured to combine the mystical element with the scholastic dialecticism. He was born in 1221 at Bagnorea, in the Roman states, and in consequence of a vow which his mother had made on his being delivered from a dangerous sickness by the prayers of St. Francis, he entered the Franciscan order at the age of twenty-one. He studied under Alexander of Hales, who expressed his feeling of Bonaventura’s purity of character by saying that in him Adam did not appear to have sinned. At the age of thirty-four he was chosen general of his order, and, after having held this dignity two years, he became a professor of theology at Paris, where he had before taught. In 1265, he declined the archbishopric of York, which was offered to him by Clement IV, and on the death of that pope, the Franciscans assert that Bonaventura might, but for his own unwillingness, have become his successors

After having been made cardinal-bishop of Albano by Gregory X, he died at the council of Lyons in 1274. He was canonized by Sixtus IV (a Franciscan pope) in 1482, and in 1587 Sixtus V assigned to the “Seraphic Doctor” the sixth place among the great teachers of the church. Bonaventura’s devotion to the blessed Virgin has been already mentioned. He is said to rely more on Scripture than the great Dominican, but to be inferior to him in knowledge, and to be guided in a greater degree by imagination and feeling. It is said that when Aquinas, on visiting him, asked for a sight of the books from which his learning had been derived, Bonaventura answered by pointing to the crucifix.

Thus far the schoolmen had differed but little in opinion. But among the Franciscans arose a teacher who introduced important novelties—John Duns Scotus, the “Subtle Doctor”, who appears to have been a Northumbrian, although some refer his birth to Dunse in Scotland, or to Ireland. Duns studied at Oxford, where he is said to have displayed a great genius for mathematical science. He became a doctor, and taught at Paris until 1308; but beyond these facts, his life is enveloped in the obscurity which some connect with his name of Scotus, and declare to be characteristic of his style. His death, according to some authorities, took place at the age of thirty-four; according to others, at forty-three or at sixty-three, while, if it were true that he had been a pupil of Alexander of Hales, he must have nearly attained fourscore : and, if the vast extent of his works makes it impossible to believe the first of these accounts, it is difficult to understand how his fame should have begun so late in life as the last of them would require us to suppose. To the Franciscans Scotus became what Aquinas was to the Dominicans; it was decreed in general assemblies of the order that all teachers should inculcate his opinions, both in theology and in philosophy and on some important questions, both theological and philosophical, the followers of these two great oracles were strongly and perseveringly opposed to each other.

Of a different character from the reputations of those who won for themselves such titles as “Seraphic”, “Angelical”, and the like, was that of Roger Bacon, the “Wonderful Doctor,” as he was justly styled. Bacon, born near Ilchester in 1214, was educated at Oxford and at Paris, and at the age of thirty-four became a Franciscan friar. His researches in physical science, while they placed him immensely in advance of his contemporaries, drew on him the popular suspicion of magic, and exposed him to persecution at the hands of his Franciscan superiors. Clement IV, who, when legate in England, had heard of his fame, desired in 1266 that the friar’s books should be sent to Rome; and in consequence of this, Bacon, who explains that his opinions had not before been formally embodied in writing, produced within fifteen months (notwithstanding great difficulties as to the expense of materials and other necessary charges) his ‘Opus Majus,’ his ‘Opus Minus’ and his ‘Opus Tertium’. But, as the pope died soon after, Bacon derived no benefit from his favour; he was again imprisoned by his monastic superiors, was condemned under the generalship of Jerome of Ascoli (afterwards Pope Nicolas IV)rand did not recover his liberty until the year before his death, which took place in 1292.

Bacon strongly denounces the idea that philosophy and theology can be opposed to each other. True philosophy, he says, is not alien from, but is included in, the wisdom of God. All wisdom is contained in Holy Scripture, but it must be explained by means of law and philosophy; and he protests against the injustice of condemning philosophy on account of the abuse made of it by persons who do not couple it with its end, which is the truth of Christ. On the one hand, we must use philosophy in the things of God; on the other hand, in philosophy we must assume many things which are divine. Bacon often speaks with much severity of the defects which prevailed in the studies of his time; that boys were admitted into the religious orders, and pro­ceeded to theological study, without having laid the groundwork of a sound grammatical education; that the original languages of Holy Scripture were neglected; that children got their knowledge of Scripture, not from the Bible itself, but from versified abridgments that the translations of Aristotle were generally wretched, with the exception of those made by Grossetête, an early patron of his studies, whom he everywhere mentions with deep respect; that lectures on the ‘Sentences’ were preferred to lectures on Scripture, and that Scripture was neglected on account of the faults of translators; that the civil law, as being more lucrative than philosophy, drew men away from the study of it; that the preachers of his time were bad, with the exception of Bertold the German, whose performances in this way he considered to be worth nearly as much as those of all the Dominicans and the Franciscans together. He professes that, although he himself had laboured forty years in study, he would undertake by a compendious method to teach all that he knew within six months—a boast which might excite the envy of those instructors who. in our own day undertake to communicate universal knowledge by short and summary processes. He complains bitterly of the difficulties he had met with in his studies, on which he declares that in twenty years he had spent two thousand pounds. The troubles which this extraordinary man endured at the hands of his brotherhood furnish a melancholy illustration of the lot which then awaited any one who, by a perhaps somewhat ostentatious display of originality, might provoke questions, however unfounded, as to his soundness in the established faith.

The object of the schoolmen was to apply the syllogistic method of reasoning to proving the truth of the church’s traditional doctrine, and to the ascertainment of truth or probability in points which the church’s authority had not decided. Their system deserves high praise for the thoroughness with which it discusses the subjects which fall within its range—viewing each subject in all possible lights, dividing and distinguishing with elaborate subtlety, laying down clearly the doctrine which the writer approves, stating objections and disposing of them, balancing probabilities and authorities, and bringing the opinion which is to be maintained safe and triumphant through all the conflict. If cumbrous and inelegant, it makes up for these defects by exhaustiveness and precision; if fettered by the conditions of deference to authority, it derives from these conditions a protection against the wildness of speculation into which intellects trained to the highest degree of refinement might naturally have been disposed to run. On the other hand, there was in such a method much of temptation to sophistry, to frivolous and unsubstantial exercises of acuteness; and the results attained by it were too commonly ill-proportioned to the pomp and toil of investigation by which they had been reached. No one, assuredly, can be justified in speaking with the ignorant contempt which once prevailed of a system which for centuries ruled the minds of mankind, and which, in age after age, engaged in its service the profound and ingenious thought and the prodigious industry of those who were foremost among their contemporaries. Yet among the many subjects which now offer themselves to the attention of educated men, the claims of the scholastic philosophy to engage our time and labour in the study of the massive and multitudinous volumes in which it is embodied can hardly be considered as of very urgent obligation.

 

 

BOOK VIII.

FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,

A.D. 1303-1418.