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BOOK I.
THE GREAT SCHISM.
1378-1414
CHAPTER II.
CLEMENT VII. BONIFACE IX.
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN OXFORD AND PARIS.
1389—1394
In following the wild career of Urban VI we have seen
but little of his rival Clement VII. It would seem as if their elevation to the
Papacy had transformed the characters of the two men. The high-born Robert of
Geneva laid aside the reckless blood-thirstiness which marked him as a
condottiere general, and adopted the stately decorum of the Papal office. The
lowly Neapolitan bishop, Bartolommeo Prignano, disregarded the traditions of
the Curia in which he had been trained, and plunged furiously into a career of
military enterprise. In the peaceful retirement of Avignon, Clement VII was
free from the complications of Italian politics, and had none of the
temptations to adventurous exploits which led Urban VI astray. He could listen
unmoved to the fulminations of his rival, and was concerned only with the
ceremonial side of the Neapolitan contest — the investiture and coronation of
the Angevin pretenders. Instead of struggling to win a kingdom for himself, he
pursued the less adventurous task of gaining over to his obedience the kingdoms
of the Spanish peninsula. At first they had stood aloof from the strife of
rival Pontiffs; but in 1380 the necessities of a close alliance with France
urged John I of Castile, who had come to the throne in 1379, to recognize
Clement VII.
John I was the son of Henry of Trastamara, who, in
spite of the arms of the Black Prince, had ousted Peter the Cruel from the
Castilian throne. But Peter’s daughter Constance had been married to John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who, in right of his wife, claimed Castile for
himself. This struggle was necessarily part of the great struggle between
France and England which occupies so much of the history of the fourteenth
century. While English troops were ready to fight against John’s throne, it was
the interest of France to help him, and he was bound to draw near to France in
all political matters. Yet the recognition of Clement was done with all due
decorum, so as to be impressive to the rest of Europe.
In November, 1380, John ordered a council to be held
at Medina del Campo, in the diocese of Salamanca, for the purpose of enquiring
into the claims of the two Popes. Urban’s cause was pleaded by the Bishops of
Faenza and Pavia; Clement’s by a Spanish Cardinal, Peter de Luna, a keen and
shrewd man of the world, whose Spanish birth gave him many advantages in the
discussion. Many were the sittings of the Council, lengthy the speeches of the
advocates, bulky the statements sent by the two Popes, and enormous the mass of
depositions by which they each substantiated their claims. The Council sat from
November, 1380, till March, 1381, and then declared for Clement, who by this
adhesion of Castile won a decided triumph over his rival. Urban had submitted
his claims to a tribunal which professed to weigh the matter carefully, and
then gave judgment against him. So far as conciliar action had gone, it had
been in favor of Clement. Of course Urban declared John of Castile deposed, and
handed over his kingdom to the Duke of Lancaster, who more than once led an
English army into Castile; but, though helped by Portugal, he found the strife
hopeless, and in 1390 made peace with John, and gave his daughter Katharine in
marriage to the heir to the Castilian throne.
In Aragon the ambitious and grasping Peter IV was
willing to recognize Urban, if the Pope would invest him with Sicily, where he
was trying to assert his claims to the throne, and would gratify his cupidity
by further concessions. It is to Urban’s credit that he refused the terms
offered: indeed, Urban’s haughtiness and self-confidence were too great to
purchase recognition by unworthy means. Peter accordingly acknowledged neither
Pope; but his successor, John I, listened to the persuasions of Peter de Luna,
followed the example of Castile, and immediately on his accession in 1387
acknowledged Clement. Three years later, in 1390, Charles III of Navarre, again
at the instigation of the indefatigable Peter de Luna, joined the Kings of
Castile and Aragon in their recognition of Clement. Following on the stormy and
disastrous reign of Charles the Bad, he pursued a peaceful policy of alliance
with his neighbors, and so wished to avoid the difficulties of ecclesiastical
differences.
In the peace of Avignon, however, Clement VII had to
face a theological power, from whose influence his rival was free. One of the
results of the Papal residence at Avignon had been an increase of the
reputation of the University of Paris as the fountain of theological learning.
The University, by becoming the seat of philosophical teaching, had in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries given organized expression to the beliefs and
opinions on which the Papal power was based, and in close alliance with the
Papacy had grown in importance. Many of its sons became Popes, and showed due
gratitude to their nursing mother by increasing her privileges and extolling
her glory. Alexander IV spoke of the University of Paris as the “tree of life
in Paradise, the lamp of the house of God, a well of wisdom ever flowing for
souls that thirsted after righteousness”. With such a reputation, and supported
by the national pride of the French people, it was but natural that this
powerful corporation of learned theologians should be reckoned as superior in
theological matters to the Popes at Avignon, who were content to register
rather than mold its decrees. When John XXII held a different opinion from the
University about the condition of departed souls after death, he narrowly
escaped being branded as a heretic. On the outbreak of the Schism, motives of
political interest had outweighed the scruples of the canonists, and the
French King had acknowledged Clement VII without heeding the hesitation of the
University. Yet a slight experience of the evils of the Schism revived the
power of the University, and gave practical emphasis to its warnings. Clement
had to procure revenues for himself and his Cardinals chiefly at the expense of
the French Church. Thirty-six proctors of the Cardinals ranged like harpies
through the land, enquiring into the value of abbeys and benefices, and ready
on a vacancy to pounce upon them for their masters. Every post of any value was
reserved for the Papal officials, and the goods of prelates were seized at
their death for the Pope’s use. The native clergy saw that they would soon be
reduced to hard straits; the University dreaded the loss of its share of
ecclesiastical patronage; and thoughtful men saw with sorrow the neglect of all
spiritual functions which such a state of affairs must necessarily produce in
the Church. Already, on the death of Charles V, in September, 1380, there were
hopes that under the new rule something might be done to heal the schism, and
the University laid before the Regent, Louis of Anjou, a proposal for summoning
a General Council. But Louis was bound to Clement VII by the exigencies of his
Neapolitan policy, and answered the petition of the University by throwing its
representatives into prison, whence they were not released till they had
promised to lay aside their proposal of a Council. Still the University did not
give up its project, though political necessities hindered it for a time.
In the course of a few years a conflict arose within
the University itself which led it to submit to the Pope’s decision a disputed
question of doctrine. Its orthodoxy received a shock in 1387 by the opinions of
a Dominican, Jean de Montson, who asserted the view held by his Order that the
Virgin Mary was conceived in original sin. The reverence paid to Mary had led
to attempts to define and determine the exact limits of her holiness. S.
Bernard had declared that she had been free from sin during her lifetime; but
popular devotion demanded more than this, and S. Thomas Aquinas had found it
necessary to argue against the notion of an immaculate conception. The
Dominican Order had followed their great teacher; but the opinion of Duns
Scotus, which was followed by the Franciscans, was more popular, and asserted
the fitness and possibility of the belief that the Virgin had not been conceived
in sin. The question had gradually developed into importance, and the two
parties were in decided opposition to one another. The University as a body
sided with the Franciscan view, and Montson’s teaching was regarded as a
challenge. A commission was appointed to look into his opinions, which were
unanimously condemned. Montson appealed to Clement, and a deputation headed by
Peter of Ailly, who was accompanied by his pupil Jean Gerson, was sent to plead
the views of the University at Avignon. Clement’s position towards this
question was uncomfortable; on the side of Montson was the authority of
Aquinas, who had been recognized by Pope Urban V as an authoritative teacher of
Christian truth. Clement must either set aside the declaration of a previous
Pope, and so give his rival the opportunity of impeaching his own orthodoxy, or
he must oppose the favorite doctrine of the University, and run counter to the
popular opinion of France. Clement did not immediately pronounce on the matter;
but Montson’s flight into Aragon and adhesion to Urban decided Clement against
him, and in January, 1389, he condemned Montson’s opinions, to the delight of
the University and the people of France. Clement VII thus took an important
step in the formation of the opinion of the Church, though it was not till 1854
that the views of Ailly and of the University of Paris were raised to the
dignity of a necessary dogma. Still the quarrel lasted within the University.
No one was admitted to a degree who did not assent to the condemnation of
Montson’s propositions; the Dominicans were for a time forbidden to lecture,
and it was not till 1403 that a reconciliation was brought about and the
Dominicans reluctantly submitted.
Urban VI died on October 15, 1389. On October 30, in
the Court of Avignon, Clement VII, with great Election pomp, crowned Louis II
of Anjou as King of Naples. The French King lent his presence to the ceremony,
which was thus a declaration of the political strength of the Pope at Avignon.
There were hopes that with the death of Urban VI the Schism might be ended by
the universal recognition of Clement VII. Such, however, was not the idea of
the fourteen Cardinals of Urban VI who were at Rome. They lost no time in going
into Conclave, and elected a Neapolitan Cardinal, Piero Tomacelli, who was
enthroned on November 2, 1389, and took the title of Boniface IX.
Tomacelli was tall and of commanding appearance, in
the prime of life, being only thirty-three years old. He was not a scholar, nor
a student, nor was he even versed in the ordinary routine of the business of
the Curia. His secretary, Dietrich of Niem, sighs over his ignorance and
heedlessness of the formalities in which the official mind especially delights.
The College of Cardinals was not strong, and it was clear that he who was
elected Pope would have no easy task before him. Tomacelli’s vigor and prudence
were well known, and his life was free from reproach; contemporaries tell us,
with wonder, that no suspicion of unchastity ever attached to him. The
Cardinals, smarting under the indignities of the rule of Urban VI, chose a
successor of whose affability they were sure, and whom they believed to possess
the force of character necessary to rescue the Papacy from the disastrous
results of Urban’s wrongheadedness. On his return from his enthronization,
Boniface IX’s answer to those who congratulated him was, “My joy is your
joy”.
Boniface lost no time in showing that his spirit was
different from that of Urban. He restored to his position as Cardinal the
luckless Englishman Adam Easton, the sole surviving victim of Urban’s tyranny.
This conciliatory act bore its fruit in the return of the runaway Pileo of
Ravenna, who after being first a Cardinal of Urban VI and then of Clement VII,
was again received by Boniface IX. The Italians made merry over the turncoat,
and gave him the nickname of the Cardinal di Tricapelli — the “Cardinal of
three hats”. A pious adherent of Clement expresses a devout hope that his
ambition and wantonness might be rewarded hereafter by a fourth hat of red-hot
iron.
If Boniface IX thus wished to show his freedom from
the personal quarrels of his predecessor, he was equally anxious to reverse his
political measures. He saw the hopelessness of Urban’s opposition to Ladislas
of Naples; he saw that a powerful vassal king in Naples was the necessary
support of the Papacy at Rome. Accordingly he made haste to recognize Ladislas,
who, in May, 1390, was solemnly crowned King of Naples by the Florentine
bishop, Angelo Acciaiuoli, who was sent as Papal Legate for the purpose.
Boniface had the political wisdom to perceive at once that the first object of
Papal policy must be to secure a firm territorial basis in Italy itself. He
exchanged the wild schemes of Urban for a statesmanlike plan of establishing
the Pope’s power in Rome, and of gathering together again the scattered States
of the Church.
But this was no easy task, and it required above all
things money for its accomplishment. The whole nature of Boniface seems to have
been devoted to attempts to gather money, and to this he turned all the power
and privileges of his ecclesiastical position. Urban VI had grievous faults,
but he was not extortionate: his determination to root out the abuses of the
Curia was the chief cause which provoked against him the hatred of the seceding
Cardinals. Yet Urban had felt the pressing need of money, and had proclaimed
the Jubilee for 1390; and it was the luck of Boniface to enter at once into the
enjoyment of the revenues which this source of income provided. Pilgrims
flocked from Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and England, and the Papal
treasury was enriched by their pious offerings. So satisfied was Boniface with
the results, that he was unwilling to deprive any one of the indulgences which
were so precious both to himself and them. He extended the privileges of the
jubilee to those who visited the churches of many cities in Germany, provided
they extended helping hands to the Papal needs. Koln, Magdeburg, Meissen,
Prague, and Paderborn, were in turns the objects of the Papal generosity, and
to each of them Papal collectors were sent who received the tribute of the
faithful. So lucrative was this proceeding found, that unaccredited agents of
the Pope took on themselves to sell indulgences, and the scandal was so great
that the Pope was obliged to appoint commissioners to restrain these impostors.
The money which Boniface raised by the Jubilee was
needed for the help of Ladislas in Naples, where Louis of Anjou landed in
August, 1390. The party of Ladislas was feeble, and all the Pope’s aid was
necessary to supply him with resources sufficient to enable him to make head
against his more wealthy rival. Boniface did not scruple to alienate or
mortgage Church lands to raise supplies. He took also an important step by
selling to the nobles who had risen to power in various cities of the Patrimony
the title of Vicar of the Roman Church. In this Boniface showed his wisdom. He
recognized the existing state of things, which he had no power of preventing;
and he was paid for his recognition. Moreover, his recognition was in the
nature of a limitation. The authority which had been gained by the nobles was
irregular and indefinite; it had grown up of its own accord, and might have
developed unchecked. The Pope conferred upon them a title and an authority for
a limited period, from ten to twelve years, and received in return a sum of
money paid down, and a small yearly tribute. When the authority of these Papal
Vicars had once been defined, it could be altered or suspended according as the
Pope was powerful. It was a wise act on the part of Boniface, in the midst of
all the difficulties and necessities of his position, to adopt a scheme which
filled his coffers, diminished the number of his foes, and gave him a standing
ground from which to proceed against them when opportunity offered. Yet the
tendency towards dismemberment of the Papal States was strong; and the
dynasties whose rights were now recognized remained for more than a century to
disturb the Popes. Antonio of Montefeltro was made Vicar, of Urbino and Cagli,
and Astorgio Manfredi of Faenza. The Alidosi ruled at Imola; the Ordelaffi at
Forli; the Malatesta at Rimini, Fano, and Fossombrone; Albert of Este at
Ferrara. Bologna, Fermo, and Ascoli bought similar privileges for their
municipal bodies. Not since the days of Albornoz had the Papal lordship been so
widely acknowledged in the States of the Church.
Boniface could raise money in Germany and Italy, but
he found it more difficult to do so in England, where neither religious nor
political feeling was strong on the side of the Pope. The old resistance to
Papal exactions had gained additional weight when the Pope at Avignon was
clearly on the side of the national foes. At the outbreak of the Schism,
England had set herself on the side opposite to France, but had no interest in
specially maintaining the cause of the Pope of Rome. The policy of national
opposition to the extortions of the Papacy gathered still greater strength
after the enactment of the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire : and this
national spirit soon found an exponent who raised the question of resistance to
Rome above the level of a mere struggle against extortion. The destruction of
the ecclesiastical system by the Popes, and the disastrous results of the
Schism, gave rise to a movement within the University of Oxford, which went
deeper than the corresponding movement in the University of Paris. While the
theologians of Paris, accepting the Papal system, set themselves to find a
practical method of healing its breaches and restoring its unity, there arose
in Oxford a follower of William of Occam, who advanced to a criticism of the
foundations of the ecclesiastical system itself.
From a little village near Richmond, in Yorkshire,
John Wycliffe went as a student to Oxford, where his learning and ability met
with their reward in a Fellowship at Merton, the Mastership of Balliol, and the
Wardenship of Archbishop Islip's new foundation of Canterbury Hall in 1365. In
this last position, Wycliffe was engaged in the struggle that continually was
waged between the monks and the secular clergy; each party strove to possess
themselves of the endowments of the Hall, and the monks, aided by Archbishop
Langham, Islip’s successor, and by the Pope, succeeded in dispossessing
Wycliffe and the secular clergy.
In 1366 Wycliffe first was brought into relation with
public affairs. Pope Urban V was unwise enough to add another to the causes of
England’s discontent by demanding payment of the 1000 marks which John had
agreed to pay yearly as tribute to the Pope. Since the accession of Edward I,
this tribute had not been paid; and when Urban V demanded arrears for the past
thirty-three years, Edward III referred the matter to Parliament. Lords,
prelates, and Commons unanimously answered that John had not the power to bind
the people without their consent, and that his compact with the Pope had been a
breach of his coronation oath; they placed at the King’s disposal all the power
and resources of the nation to protect his throne and the national honor against
such a demand. Urban V withdrew his claim in silence, and no mention was ever
made again by the Papacy of suzerainty over England. On this occasion Wycliffe
first used his pen, by recording in a pamphlet the arguments used in Parliament
by seven lords, who, on the grounds of national interest, positive law, feudal
obligation, and the nullity of the compact made by John, combated the Papal
claims.
In the later years of Edward III, England was
impoverished by the long war with France, and discontented at the management of
affairs. In 1371 laymen were substituted for ecclesiastics in the high offices
of state; and hope was strong that the lay ministry, headed by John of Gaunt,
besides bringing the French war to a speedy end, would protect the nation against
the extortions of the Roman Curia.
But the Ministry soon showed its feebleness by its
dealings with Arnold Garnier, who, in February, 1372, presented himself in
England as the accredited agent of Gregory XI. The Council did not venture to
forbid his presence, but contented themselves with administering to him an oath
that he would do nothing injurious to the King, the realm, or the laws. We do
not find that Garnier, in consequence of his oath, behaved in any way
differently from other Papal collectors, and Wycliffe afterwards pointed out
that he must necessarily commit perjury, as no diminution of the country’s
wealth could fail to be pernicious to the kingdom. But Wycliffe soon had an
opportunity of seeing close at hand the management of affairs by the Curia. In
1374 he was appointed one of seven commissioners, who were to confer with Papal
nuncios about the redress of England’s grievances at Bruges, where a conference
was being held to arrange terms of peace with France. The commission arrived at
no results, except that the Chief Commissioner, the Bishop of Bangor, soon
after his return home, was translated by Papal provision to the more lucrative
see of Hereford, as a recompense for his readiness to do nothing. Gregory XI
issued, it is true, six lengthy Bulls which dealt only with existing
circumstances, and laid down no principles for the future. The rule of John of
Gaunt did nothing for England, and the “Good Parliament” of 1376 set aside his
power, and again committed the government to William of Wykeham, Bishop of
Winchester, an experienced official.
The antagonism of political parties waxed high in
these last years of Edward III, when his glory and his power alike had passed
away. John of Gaunt was unscrupulous in his desire for power, and was opposed to
the prelates whose political influence stood in his way. He sought allies
against them on all sides, alike in the Roman Curia and in the energetic party
which gathered round Wycliffe’s aspirations for a reformed Church. The prelates
were not slow to retaliate, and aimed a blow at John of Gaunt by
striking Wycliffe, who in February, 1377, was summoned to appear before
Convocation, in the Lady Chapel of S. Paul’s, and answer for his opinions. He
came, but the Duke of Lancaster stood by his side, and the assembly ended in a
faction fight between the Londoners and the adherents of John of Gaunt. But the
prelates were prepared to move against Wycliffe under cover of the Papal
authority, if their own power was thus defied. In May, 7, Pope Gregory XI
issued five Bulls against the errors of Wycliffe, who was accused of following
in the steps of Marsiglio of Padua and John of Jandun, whose writings had
already been condemned. Wycliffe was already famous as a philosopher and a
theologian. Nineteen propositions taken from his writings were condemned by the
Pope as erroneous, and two prelates were appointed to examine if the condemned
propositions were rightly assigned to Wycliffe.
The propositions in question were concerned with
theories of civil and ecclesiastical polity. They asserted that the rights of
property and of inheritance were not unconditionally valid, but depended on
obedience to the will of God; that the property of the Church might be
secularized if the Church fell into error, or the clergy misused their
possessions, on which points temporal princes might judge; that the Pope’s
power to bind and loose was only valid when used in accordance with the Gospel.
Wycliffe’s teaching on the relations between Church and State lacked the
precision as well as the political knowledge which characterized Marsiglio of
Padua. Marsiglio was a political philosopher who started from Aristotle and
from the experience of a self-governing civic community. Wycliffe was a
schoolman who limited his analysis to the particular discussion of the
foundation of dominium, or lordship, and his political and religious
conceptions were obscured by being expressed in the language of feudalism. He
regarded God as the lord of the world who apportioned to all in authority their
power, which was held under Him; dominion in things temporal and spiritual
alike was held of God, and popes and kings were bound to recognize that their
sovereignty depended upon its exercise in accordance with the law of God.
Mortal sin was a breach of the tie of allegiance, and in itself destroyed the
basis of power: in Wycliffe’s phraseology, “dominion was founded on grace”.
This theory was no doubt an ideal theory, intended to set forth the spiritual
independence of the righteous man, who was lord over the world, in spite of
appearances to the contrary. Wycliffe did not wish to apply this doctrine to
the subversion of social order; and to remedy its abstractness, he enunciated
in a paradoxical form the duty of obedience to existing authority; “God”, he
said, “ought to obey the devil”. God has permitted evil in the world; a
Christian ought to obey the commands of a wicked ruler, in the same sense as
Christ obeyed the devil, by submitting to his temptations. In these statements
Wycliffe was neither clear in his analogies nor happy in his phraseology, and
we can scarcely wonder that he was misunderstood and misrepresented. His
political teaching easily lent itself to anarchical movements, and his
followers in later times labored under the disadvantage of having no clear basis
on which to bring their ideas into relation with the actual facts of political
life.
Before the arrival of the Pope’s Bulls ordering
Wycliffe’s trial, Edward III died, and the first parliament of Richard II was
strongly opposed to Papal exactions. It raised the question whether in time of
need the king might prohibit the exportation of money in spite of the Pope’s
admonitions. Wycliffe’s opinion was asked, and on the three grounds of the law
of nature, the law of scripture, and the law of conscience, he replied in the
affirmative. The prelates could not take action on the Pope’s Bull before the
end of 1377, and when Wycliffe was summoned before Archbishop Sudbury and
Courtenay, Bishop of London, the Council did not think it wise that the trial
should proceed. A message was sent by the Princess of Wales, mother of the
young King Richard II, ordering the trial to be broken off; and the cries of
the people round the Court admonished the prelates to obey the command. The
proceedings against Wycliffe were suspended, but for form’s sake he was
forbidden to promote or teach any of the doctrines condemned by the Pope. The
death of Gregory XI and the Schism that ensued put aside the question of
Wycliffe’s further trial.
But the Papal prosecution and the events of the Schism
had an important influence on the mind of Wycliffe. At first he had been
chiefly an Oxford student, of keen critical intellect, ready to give expression
with remorseless logic to the national dislike of Papal extortion. But his
political experience at Bruges, his riper study and reflection, his deeper
knowledge as vicar of Lutterworth of the spiritual needs of simple folk — all
these combined to lead him on to investigate the inner working, as well as the
political aspect, of the ecclesiastical system, the mechanism and doctrines of
the Church as well as the relations between Church and State. To this temper
the outbreak of the Schism gave an additional impulse. The spiritual
earnestness of Wycliffe was shocked at the sight of two men each claiming to be
head of the Church, and each devoting his entire energies to the destruction of
his rival, seeking only his own triumph, and doing nothing for the flock which
he professed to guard. Moreover, the Schism dealt a heavy blow at the influence
exercised on the imagination of the Middle Ages by the unity of the Church.
Instead of unity Wycliffe saw division — saw the Pope whom England
professed to follow sinking to the level of a robber chieftain. Gradually his
mind became dissatisfied with the doctrine of the Papal primacy. At a time when
two Popes were fulminating excommunications against each other, and each called
the other “Antichrist”, it was not such a very long step for Wycliffe to take
when he asserted that the institution of the Papacy itself was the poison of
the Church; that it was not Urban or Clement who was antichrist, but the Pope,
be he who he might, who claimed to rule the universal Church. As Wycliffe’s
opinion led him more and more, oppose the Papal system his zeal increased.
Disciples gathered round him, and, like another S. Dominic, Wycliffe sent forth
preachers into the evil world; but, unlike the reformers of the thirteenth
century who went forth as missionaries of the Papal power, those of the
fourteenth denounced a corrupt hierarchy and the enslavement of the Church by
an antichristian Pope. Moreover, to supply all men the means of judging for
themselves, Wycliffe, and his chief disciples, with dauntless energy, undertook
the noble work of translating the Bible into English, a work which was finished
in the year 1382.
Wycliffe was at all times of his career a fertile
writer, and may in this respect be compared with Luther. It was natural for him
to cast into a literary form the thoughts that passed through his mind, and his
works are alternately those of a scholastic disputant, a patriotic Churchman,
and a mission priest. In all things he was equally earnest, whether it was to
maintain the constitutional rights of the English Church and the English Ruler
against the extortions of Rome, to expose the assumptions of the Papal
monarchy, to show the corruptions of the ecclesiastical system, or to kindle
the spiritual life of simple folk. His treatises are numerous, and many of them
exist only in manuscript. It is difficult to reduce into a system the
multitudinous utterances of one who was at once a profound theologian, a
publicist, and a popular preacher. In matters of ecclesiastical polity, as in
political speculations, Wycliffe laid down a basis which was too abstract and
too ideal to admit of application to actual affairs. He defined the Church as
the corporate body of the chosen, consisting of three parts; one triumphant in
heaven, another sleeping in purgatory, and a third militant on earth. This
view, which in itself accords with the Augustinian doctrine of predestination,
Wycliffe applied to determine the basis of ecclesiastical polity. Against the
corrupt Church which he saw around him, he set up the mystical body of the
predestinated; against a degenerate hierarchy, he asserted the priesthood of
all faithful Christians, and did not clearly determine the relations between
the visible Church on earth and the great company of the saved.
From the basis of this ideal conception of the Church
Wycliffe attacks the Papal primacy. There ought, he says, to be unity in the
Church militant, if it is to be at unity with the Church triumphant; but unity
is disturbed by new sects of monks, friars, and clergy, who have set over the
Church another head than Christ. The primacy of S. Peter, on which they rest
their theory of the Papacy, is set forth in Scripture only as depending on his
superior humility; he exercised no authority over the other Apostles, but was
only endowed with special grace. Whatever power Peter had, there is no ground
for assuming that it passed to the Bishop of Rome, whose authority was derived
from Caesar, and is not mentioned in the Scriptures, save in irony, where it is
written, “The Kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, but ye
shall not be so”.
It must have been at the instigation of a malignant
spirit that the popes chose as the seat of the Curia the profane city of Rome,
steeped in the blood of martyrs; by continuing in their secular life, and in
the pride of Lucifer, they wrong Christ and continue in error. They claim to
grant indulgences and privileges beyond what was done by Christ or the
Apostles, and their pretensions can only be explained as the work of the devil,
the power of antichrist. A pope is only to be followed so far as he follows
Christ; if he ceases to be a good shepherd, he becomes antichrist; and
reverence paid to antichrist as though he were Christ is a manifest snare of
the devil to beguile unwary souls : and the belief in Papal infallibility is
contrary to Scripture, and is a blasphemy suggested by the devil. If we take
Scripture as our guide, and compare the Pope with Christ, we shall see many
differences. Christ is truth, the Popes is the origin of falsehood. Christ
lived in poverty, the Pope labors for worldly wealth. Christ was humble and
gentle, the Pope is proud and cruel; Christ forbade that anything be added to
His law, the Pope makes many laws which distract men from the knowledge of
Christ; Christ bade His disciples go into all the world and preach the Gospel,
the Pope lives in his palace and pays no heed to such command; Christ refused
temporary dominion, the Pope seeks it; Christ obeyed the temporal power, the
Pope strives to weaken it; Christ chose for His apostles twelve simple men, the
Pope chooses as cardinals many more than twelve, worldly and crafty; Christ
forbade to smite with the sword and preferred Himself to suffer, the Pope
seizes the goods of the poor to hire soldiers; Christ limited His mission to
Judea, the Pope extends his jurisdiction everywhere for the sake of gain; Christ
was lowly; the Pope is magnificent and demands outward honor; Christ
refused money, the Pope is entirely given up to pride and simony. Whoso
considers these things will see that he must imitate Christ and flee from the
example of antichrist.
These are the words of a man who has been driven by
the actual facts around him to take refuge in the plain words of Scripture, and
flee from the corruption of the ecclesiastical system to the purity and
simplicity of the Divine Head of the Church. But Wycliffe was not content only
with this endeavor to bring back the organization of the Church to its original
purity; his keen critical intellect pressed on into the region of doctrine, and
attacked the central position of the sacerdotal system. He busied himself with
an examination of the sacraments, and convinced himself in 1380 that the
doctrine of Transubstantiation, or the change in substance of the elements of
the Eucharist after consecration, was not according to Scripture. He lost no
time in publishing his convictions. In the summer of 1381 he put forth twelve
propositions about the Eucharist, which he offered to defend in disputation
against gainsayers. The upshot of these propositions was the assertion that
bread and wine remained after consecration bread and wine as they were before,
yet by virtue of the words of consecration contained the true body and blood of
Christ, which were really present at every point of the host.
Wycliffe did not deny the real presence of Christ in
the elements; he denied only the change of substance in the elements after
consecration. Christ’s body was still miraculously present, but the miracle was
wrought by Christ Himself, not by the words of the priest. “Thou that art an
earthly man”, he exclaims to the priest, “by what reason mayest thou
say that thou makest thy Maker?”. “Antichrist by this heresy destroys
grammar, logic, and natural science; but, what is more to be regretted, does
away with the sense of the Gospel”. “The truth and the faith of the Church
is that, as Christ is at once God and man, so the Sacrament is at once the body
of Christ and bread — bread naturally and the body sacramentally”. He rebelled
against the idolatry of the mass, against the popular materialism, against the
miraculous powers claimed by the priesthood; and his propositions were aimed
against the root of these abuses, not against the conception of the Sacrament
of the Altar in itself. He attacked the prevalent materialism without pursuing
the other aspects of the question.
The propositions of Wycliffe about the Sacrament of
the Altar at once attracted much attention, and gave a shock to many who had
hitherto sympathized with him in his opposition to Papal aggression and
clerical corruption. He had advanced beyond the discussion of ecclesiastical
polity to the more dangerous ground of doctrine; and the professed theologians,
especially those of the mendicant orders, who had hitherto looked on Wycliffe
with approval, felt themselves bound to oppose him. The Chancellor of the
University of Oxford summoned a council of doctors, who concurred in declaring
the doctrines contained in these theses to be unorthodox, and a decree was
published forbidding them to be taught within the University. This was entirely
unexpected by Wycliffe, who was sitting in his doctor’s chair in the school of
the Augustinians lecturing on the very subjects when an official entered and
read the decree. Wycliffe at once protested against its justice, and appealed
from the Chancellor to the King. John of Gaunt interfered to impose silence on Wycliffe,
and events themselves declared against him. The peasants’ rising
under Watt Tyler, the murder of Archbishop Sudbury, and the hatred
against wealth displayed by the insurgents, filled the well-to-do classes with
terror and provoked a reaction. Though Wycliffe’s teaching had no necessary
connection with the revolt, it was natural that all novelties should be
suspected, and that men shrank before the discussion of dangerous questions. It
was not difficult for Wycliffe’s opponents to raise a feeling against him,
connect the Wycliffite teachers with antisocial movements, and find the root of
all political dangers in the new doctrines which Wycliffe taught.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courtenay, held
in London, in May, 1382, a Council which condemned as heretical the
propositions drawn from Wycliffe’s writings which dealt with the doctrine of
the Sacraments, and condemned as erroneous fourteen others which dealt with
points of ecclesiastical polity. Only the opinions were condemned, and no mention
was made of their author by name. This Council was called by Wycliffe the
“Earthquake Council”, because a slight shock of an earthquake was felt while it
was sitting. Both sides explained the portent in their own favor. Wycliffe
asserted that God spoke in behalf of His saints because men were silent; the
orthodox party answered that the earth expelled its noisome vapors in sympathy
with the Church which drove out pestilent heresy.
Armed with a condemnation of the dangerous opinions,
the Archbishop at once proceeded against the teachers. He appointed a
Carmelite, Peter Stokys, well known for his zeal against Wycliffe, as his
Commissary in Oxford, and bade him publish the decrees of the Council, and
prohibit the teaching within the University of the condemned conclusions. He
also wrote to the Chancellor bidding him assist the Commissary in this matter.
For a while the Chancellor and a strong academical party resisted this interference
with the privileges of the University. Wycliffe might be a heretic or not, but
the intervention of Stokys by the Archbishop’s authority was a slight on the
officials, and the dictation of the Archbishop even on points of heresy was
unlawful. But theological feeling was stronger than academic patriotism, and
the opponents of Wycliffe’s views were ready to use any means to suppress them;
nor was it possible for those who wished to fight only for the rights of the
University to disentangle that issue from a supposed sympathy with Wycliffe’s
opinions. Party feeling ran high, and the Archbishop used the opportunity so
afforded him of striking a blow at the independent position of the University.
When the Chancellor did not at once obey the Archbishop’s mandate, the
authority of the Crown was invoked on the Archbishop’s side, and the Chancellor
was forced to submit and to apologies. Within five months the rebellious
teachers recanted or were reduced to silence, and the University of Oxford was
brought back to an outward appearance of orthodoxy. The triumph of the
Archbishop marks a decisive period in the history of the University of Oxford.
Hitherto it had been a center of independent opinion; henceforth its freedom
was gone. While the undisputed orthodoxy of the University of Paris set it
above bishops and synods, and gave it influence enough even to organize a
general council, the prestige of Oxford was lost through its support of
Wycliffe, and it became the handmaid of the episcopacy.
With his success in silencing the University the
Archbishop’s triumph ceased. When Parliament met in November, 1382, Wycliffe
presented to it a memorial defending some of his opinions. The Commons so far
sided with Wycliffe that they demanded and obtained the withdrawal from the
statute book of a bill, which had been passed by the Lords only, in the last session,
ordering the sheriffs to arrest Wycliffite teachers. Wycliffe himself was
summoned before a provincial synod at Oxford; but it would seem that the
Archbishop judged it wise to rest content with some slight explanations on
Wycliffe’s part, and allowed him to retire in peace to his living of
Lutterworth.
Next year, 1383, England had brought home to her the
meaning of the Schism in the Papacy. Henry le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, had
displayed the spirit of a determined and remorseless soldier in putting down
the villeins’ rising. Thirsting for a new field for military glory, he obtained
from Urban VI a Bull appointing him leader of a crusade against Clement VII;
all who went on this crusade, or aided with their money, were to receive the
spiritual benefits of a crusade in the Holy Land. The Bishop of Norwich made
every use he could of the sale of Papal indulgences as a means of raising
money. The other bishops aided him with all their might; and the patriotic
feelings of the English were awakened in behalf of an expedition which was to
be directed against their national foe, the French. Again Wycliffe’s warning
voice was heard; he pointed out that the Schism was a natural consequence of
the moral decay of the Church, which was to be cured, not by crusades against
Christian brethren, but by bringing back the Church to apostolic poverty and
simplicity. The rival Popes, he added, are two dogs snarling over a bone; take
away the bone of contention, and the strife will cease. Despenser’s expedition,
though at first successful in Flanders, ended in disaster; in six months he
returned to England empty-handed, without having accomplished anything. So
great was the anger against him that he was called to account by Parliament,
and his temporalities were sequestrated for two years to the Crown.
Wycliffe’s days were drawing to a close, but one of
his last utterances was a keenly ironical statement of his attitude towards the
Papacy, thrown into the literary form of a confession of faith made to the
Pope. “I infer”, he says, “from the heart of God’s law that Christ in the state
of His earthly pilgrimage was a very poor man, and rejected all earthly
dominion”. The Pope, if he is Christ’s vicar, is bound above all others to
follow his Master’s example; let him lay aside his temporal dominion, and then
he would become a pattern to Christian men, for he would be following in the
steps of the Apostles. Not long after writing these words, Wycliffe was
stricken by paralysis in his own church of Lutterworth, and died on the
last day of 1384.
The teaching of Wycliffe marks an important crisis in
the history of the Christian Church. He expressed the animating motives of
previous endeavors for the teaching, amendment of the Church, and gave them a
new direction and significance. He began as a follower of William of Occam, and
labored to set forward an ideal of Christian society, dependent immediately
upon God as its lord. To this he added the earnest longing after simplicity and
spirituality of life and practice which had animated such men as S. Bernard and
S. Francis of Assisi, and had made them look with regret upon the riches and
temporal importance of the Church. It would seem that in Wycliffe a deeply
religious feeling of the moral evils of the existing Church-system, united with
the keen intellect of the dialectician and the publicist, led him to a
criticism of the doctrines on which the existing system of the Church was
founded. As the basis for this criticism he set up the authority of Scripture
as higher than the authority of Pope or Church. He laid his finger upon the
central doctrine of the existing ecclesiastic system, and maintained that the
material belief in Transubstantiation was contrary alike to reason and
Scripture. The question which he thus raised remained the prominent one in
the controversies of the Reformation movement, and it was more and more clearly
seen that the only way to overthrow sacerdotal domination was to purify the
doctrine of the Sacrament of the Altar from the superstition by which it had
been converted into a miraculous act depending on human intervention. It was a
question which the Lollards handed on to the Hussites and the Hussites to
Luther. Wycliffe challenged the belief in a miraculous change in the nature of
the elements; the Hussites attacked the denial of the cup to the laity; and
Luther warred against the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. But Wycliffe
did more than simply enunciate opinions, he expressed in his own life a
conviction that the existing state of the Church was radically wrong, and
needed entire revision. His own method was defective, and his ideas were
frequently put forward in ambiguous or misleading phraseology; but they served
as a basis to earnest minds in later times, and their echo never entirely died
away.
Wycliffe’s opinions, though persecuted by the English
prelates, were spread among the people by the “poor priests” whom Wycliffe had
instituted, and found and many followers. They strengthened the spirit of
resistance to Papal aggression, which we find Parliament ever ready to profess.
The old question of Provisors was fruitful of disputes and disturbances. The
statute was often passed and often broken, because it was as much the interest
of the King as of the Pope to set aside the rights of other patrons and nominate
to vacant benefices. Thus, in 1379, Urban VI conferred on the King the right to
appoint to the two next vacant prebends in every cathedral church, setting
aside the rights of bishops and chapters. It was not natural that the King
should be very anxious to enforce the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire,
when he might use them to his own advantage. Yet Parliament returned again and
again to this grievance, and tried to make the statutes more and more
peremptory. In 1390 a more vigorous Statute of Provisors was passed, and
Boniface IX saw with disgust the obstacles which the English Parliament placed
in the way of his rapacity. Yet he was determined not to give way without a
struggle, and in February, 1391, he issued a Bull in which, after expressing
his pain and grief that so good and pious a King as Richard II should allow
such statutes to be passed, he boldly declared them to be null and void,
ordered all records of them to be destroyed, forbade any one to revive them,
and commanded all who held benefices in virtue of such statutes, to vacate
their benefices within two months. He at once began to grant provisions in
England, and, amongst others, conferred on Cardinal Brancacio a prebend at
Wells. A suit arose in the King’s court between the King’s nominee and the
Cardinal, in which the court held to the statutes. But there was some fear of
the possible effects of a Papal excommunication; and in the next Parliament the
Commons petitioned the King to enquire of the Estates what course they would
adopt if the Pope were to excommunicate a bishop for instituting the King’s
nominee. To this question the Lords and Commons answered that they would regard
such proceedings as against the law of the land, and would resist them to the
death, if need were; the clergy answered that, though they recognized the
Pope’s power of excommunication, yet in the case proposed the rights of the
Crown would be attacked, and it would be their duty to uphold them. After this
display of determination on the part of all the Estates, the final Statutes of
Provisors and Praemunire were passed, which put out of the protection of the
law and forfeited to the King the goods of any man who obtained provisions or
introduced bulls into the kingdom contrary to the royal rights. These statutes
were not enforced much more than the previous ones; but the result of the
struggle was an increase of power to the Crown. The Papacy saw that it was
useless to claim the right of provisions in England; the right could only be
used with the royal consent and sanction. The clergy did not regain the rights
of which the Pope had deprived them, but the gain went to the Crown. Here, as
in many other matters, the Papal despotism had overthrown the rights of the
clergy, who had to turn for support to the Crown; what the Crown recovered from
the Pope it appropriated to itself. Hence it was that, when the Papal yoke was
at length thrown off, the Crown was found to be guardian of the Church in so
many matters that the step to the recognition of its supremacy was but small.
England escaped by its firmness the insatiable
rapacity of Boniface IX, which fell with relentless violence on the other
countries that owned his obedience. Throughout his pontificate the cries
against extortion and simony rise louder and louder. At first Boniface stood in
awe of some of the Cardinals, and at least preserved a decent appearance of
secrecy in his scandalous sales of Church preferment. As the old Cardinals
died, he became more open in his mercantile transactions. It was soon
understood that it was useless for a poor man to prefer a request to the Papal
court. Favors were granted only on payment, and if a better offer were made
afterwards, the Pope did not scruple to make a second grant dated previously to
the first. In time a shameless system of repeated sales of presentations was
recognized. The next presentation to a benefice was sold two or three times
over; then a new class of grant was constituted marked “Preference”; in time
yet another class was created marked “Pre-preference”, which gave the happy
possessor a higher claim than his rivals; though even then, when the vacancy
actually occurred, the Pope would often sell it again, despite all previous
grants of reservation. If any disappointed candidate instituted a suit on
the ground of a previous grant, the Pope inhibited his courts from trying it,
so that there was no possibility of redress. Boniface, with grim humor,
maintained that this procedure was only just, for those who had offered little
had wished to deceive him. Every possible right and privilege was sold, even
exemptions from canonical restrictions, and permissions to hold pluralities to
the number of ten or twelve at once. Monks bought the right to change from one
order to another; for a hundred florins a mendicant might transfer himself to a
non-mendicant order. “It was a wonder”, says the Pope’s secretary, Gobelin,
“how the Pope could expect a man to pay so much who possessed nothing, or at
least ought to have possessed nothing”. Friars bought the right of hearing
confessions and preaching in parish churches, even against the will of the
rector. Ecclesiastical agents scoured the whole of Italy to watch the state of
health of the owners of rich benefices, and to give speedy intelligence to
anxious expectants at Rome, who might judge thereby how much it was wise to
offer. Many were too poor to pay in money, but the Pope was not above receiving
even swine, horses, corn, and other payments in kind. So great was the demand
for money in Rome that usury, which was regarded as an impious trade,
flourished to an extraordinary degree, and the money-lenders were regarded as a
natural and necessary addition to the Curia. No one was safe from the Pope’s
rapacity; like a crow hovering round a dying animal, he would send to gather
the books, apparel, plate, and money of bishops or members of the Curia as they
lay dying. The members of the Curia had a ready defence for these practices:
they affirmed that they must all be lawful, as in such matters the Pope could
not err.
Boniface IX had enough to do with his money, however
it was obtained. First he had to maintain the cause of Ladislas in Naples,
where the party of Louis II was gaining ground. In October, 1390, Boniface sent
600 horse and took into his pay Alberigo da Barbiano. But in spite of these
reinforcements, Ladislas lost one place after another, till in March, 1391, the
Castel Nuovo, the only part of the city of Naples which had remained faithful
to him, was driven by famine to capitulate to the troops of Louis. In June,
however, Pozzuoli rebelled against Louis and returned to its allegiance to
Ladislas. Matters were now pretty evenly balanced between the two competitors,
and the Neapolitan barons began to hold aloof from the strife and prepare
themselves to join decorously the side of the victor. Next year, 1392, a blow
was aimed by the party of Ladislas against the powerful house of the
Sanseverini, who held great possessions in Calabria. Troops were collected for
a sudden expedition against them; but news reached the Sanseverini, who determined
to turn their own tactics against their assailants. Gathering 550 horse and
2000 foot, they made a forced march of seventy miles in a day and a night, and
fell at early dawn upon the unsuspecting army of Ladislas. Its rout was
complete; the chiefs, amongst whom was Alberigo da Barbiano, were taken
prisoners in their tents. The Sanseverini enriched themselves by the ransoms
which they exacted, and Alberigo, besides paying his ransom, promised not to
serve against them for ten years. A crushing blow had been inflicted upon the
fortunes of Ladislas, who more than ever felt the need of the Pope’s
protection. He had no resources of his own, and a plan for gaining help from
Sicily, which at first seemed successful, ended in nothing.
The fortunes of Sicily were indeed a matter of some
concern to the Papacy. The death of King Frederick II in 1377 had left the
crown of Sicily to an infant daughter, Mary, with the usual results of a
regency among a body of turbulent nobles. There was an Aragonese party and a native
party, headed by the powerful baron, Manfredo di Chiaramonte. The Aragonese
succeeded in getting possession of the young queen Mary, who was sent to Aragon
and married to Martin, the King’s grandson. The Sicilian nobles, threatened at
once by the Aragonese and the Saracens, who took advantage of the disturbed
state of the island to make plundering raids on the coast, submitted themselves
in 1388 to Urban VI, who regarded Sicily as a fief of the Holy See. An alliance
with Sicily was an important means of gaining supplies for the shattered
fortunes of the house of Durazzo in Naples; in 1389 the young Ladislas was
married to Costanza, daughter of Manfredo di Chiaramonte, and her rich dowry
served for a while to support his cause. But Manfredo died, and Martin of
Aragon prepared to make good by force of arms his claim and that of his wife
Mary to the Sicilian crown. The cause of Boniface IX was one with that of the
Sicilian nobles, for Aragon had joined the side of Clement VII, and Boniface
saw himself doubly threatened in Naples and Sicily. He accordingly declared
Mary’s marriage with Martin, which was within the prohibited degrees, and had
been contracted in accordance with a dispensation from Clement VII, to be null
and void: so long as Mary remained a schismatic her title was to continue in
abeyance.
Boniface, as suzerain of Sicily, divided it into
tetrarchies, and appointed four of the Sicilian nobles as governors. As soon,
however, as the Aragonese forces landed in 1392, the union of the Sicilian
nobles began to break up. Palermo fell before Martin, and the fortunes of the
Chiaramonte family were at an end. Boniface sent legates to acknowledge the
title of Mary, provided that she would recognize him as Pope. Every one
wished to save himself from the dangers 135 which the Aragonese occupation of
Sicily threatened. Ladislas had spent his wife's dowry, and had nothing more to
hope from the marriage now that her family was ruined. It was rumored that
Martin, father of the young King of Sicily, had made Manfredo’s widow his
mistress. Ladislas was bidden by his mother to profess the greatest horror at
this stain cast upon his wife by her mother’s unlawful connection with an
Aragonese schismatic. He hastened to Rome, where he was received with due
honors by Boniface, who gave him a Bull of divorce. The luckless Constanza was
sacrificed without a feeling of pity or a plea of justice to the political
necessities of her husband. It was, perhaps, hardly to be expected that
Boniface, who had no scruples in selling the rights of the Church to raise
money for Naples, should allow any compassion for a wretched woman to stand in
the way of getting more money for Ladislas. Another lucrative marriage might be
made if Constanza were only set aside. Ladislas returned to Gaeta, were Constanza
was publicly divorced. Ignorant of her fate, she went to hear mass with her
husband; the Bishop of Gaeta read the Pope’s Bull, and then, advancing to Constanza,
took from her finger the wedding-ring, which he returned to Ladislas. From the
cathedral Constanza was taken to a small house, where, with only three
attendants, she continued to live on the alms of the court, till she was given
in marriage to a Sicilian baron. But her high spirit was not subdued: as she
left the church with her new husband, she proudly said that he was lucky in
being allowed to commit adultery with a queen.
Help in the way of a divorce was not all that Boniface
IX gave to Ladislas. In 1393 he sent fresh reinforcements under the command of
his brother, Giovanni Tomacelli. Ladislas was but a youth, scarce eighteen
years of age; but his mother Margaret saw that a decided effort must be made.
She sent forth her son into the field like a Spartan mother. Coming before the
barons, “Know” she said, “that I give into your hands my soul, the breath of my
life, my only treasure: here it is”; — and she flung her arms round her son’s
neck — “I commend him to you”. The shouts of the soldiers greeted her appeal.
The army marched against the important town of Aquila, in the Abruzzi, and took
it. This was the beginning of the military exploits of Ladislas, whose energy
never flagged, and whose cause from this time forward prospered. He had all his
father’s activity and force, and these qualities contrasted strongly with the
feebleness and indolence of his rival Louis. Martin of Sicily was kept busy in
his own land, for the Sicilian towns were true to their allegiance to Boniface,
and rebelled against the rule of a schismatic. It required all his forces for
the next two years to reduce the rebels to submission. Henceforth Boniface was
free from threatening dangers in the south of Italy, and could devote his
energies to the task of securing his power in the Papal states.
Rome had been submissive to the Pope so long as there
was hope of gain from the pilgrims who flocked to the Jubilee; but when this
harvest was over, difficulties soon arose, and the Papal court was at variance
with the magistracy. On September 11, 1391, an agreement was made between the
Pope and the Republic of Rome, which promised to respect the immunities of the
clergy, to free the members of the Curia from tolls, to keep in repair walls
and bridges, to help in the recovery of the Papal possessions in Tuscany, and
to urge the barons to ally with the Pope and the city. On March 5, 1392, a
further agreement was made to raise forces to put down the nobles who had
seized the towns in the Patrimony, and whose plundering raids made them as much
the enemies of the city as of the Pope. It was agreed that all places wrested
from them should belong to the Roman people, with the exceptions of Viterbo,
Civita Vecchia, and Orchio. The fact that these formal agreements were
necessary is sufficient in itself to show that things did not go smoothly.
In the war against Giovanni Sciarra da Vico, who held
Viterbo, the Romans found that they were contributing the lion’s share. The
Pope, in straits for money, had pledged all the lands of the Roman Churches;
but the people did not get the money quickly enough. One day they rose in arms,
and, headed by the Banderisi, rushed to the palace and dragged from the Papal
presence the canons of S. Peter’s who refused to part with the possessions of
their church for the purposes of war. No wonder that the Pope did not feel
himself secure in Rome, and gladly embraced an opportunity of quitting it.
Perugia had long been a prey to civil discords. The
Tuscan league against the Pope in 1377 had awakened the activity of the old
Ghibellin party within the city, and the nobles were glad to rise against the
traders who had possessed themselves of the government. The war that arose in
1390 between Florence and Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, drew all
contending parties into its sphere. The restless ambition of the crafty Duke of
Milan threatened the liberties of the free cities of North Italy, and Florence
had boldly stepped forward to meet the danger before it came too near. The
Ghibellin nobles of Perugia, headed by Pandolfo de' Baglioni, placed their city
under the protection of Giovanni Galeazzo, and expelled the opposing Guelfs,
who took refuge in Florence. Both sides suffered severely in the war without
gaining any decisive results, and were at last willing to listen to
Boniface IX. The Pope strove to make peace: and with a view of freeing himself
from the troubles of a residence at Rome, at the end of September, 1392, set
out to Perugia, where the guardianship of the citadel and of the city was
entrusted to the Papal legate, Pileo, Archbishop of Ravenna. Perugia put itself
in the hands of the Pope, and owned his suzerainty. Bologna, Imola, and Massa
Lombarda, which had suffered severely in the war, submitted themselves in like
manner. In Perugia Boniface abode for a year, recalled the Guelfic exiles, and
tried to maintain peace within the city.
During his residence at Perugia he met with many
successes. The Romans were successful in their war against Giovanni Sciarra da
Vico; he renounced Clement VII and submitted to Boniface, who, with the consent
of the Romans, took to himself the office of prefect of Viterbo. Similarly, in
La Marca the cities of Ancona, Camerino, Fabriano, Jesi, and Matelica submitted
to him. But the peace which the Pope had made at Perugia was not of long
duration; the feud which he had striven to pacify was too deep-seated for the
rival parties to live in unity within the same city walls. In July, 1393, one
of the returned exiles was murdered in the street; when the Podestà was about
to pass sentence on the assassins, the chief of the nobles, Pandolfo de'
Baglioni, interfered on their behalf. The other party vowed vengeance; Pandolfo
was assassinated, and all his family, whom the eager crowd could reach, were
put to death. Butchery reigned in the city, and the Pope with a few followers
fled by night from the scene of carnage and took refuge in Assisi. The
Ghibellin party were exiled from Perugia in their turn, and the city had now to
unite itself closely to Florence. A Perugian general of condottieri, Biordo de'
Michelotti, made himself chief of the people, and the city was lost to the
Pope.
In Assisi Boniface IX abode in quietness; but the
Romans grew alarmed at the absence of the Pope, and feared that he intended to
fix his seat in Umbria. Then, as always, the Papacy cast a blight over the
municipal institutions of Rome, and prevented them from developing into
strength. The Romans could neither obey nor resist the Pope according to any
persistent plan; his presence and his absence were alike intolerable to them.
They could not make up their minds either to forego the advantage which their
city reaped as capital of the Papacy, nor to endure the inconvenience of the
Papal residence among them. They sent ambassadors to Boniface at Assisi
beseeching him to return to Rome. Boniface assented on his own conditions. The
Romans were to send 1000 knights to escort him on his way, and were to lend him
10,000 florins of gold for the expenses of the journey. They were, moreover, to
agree that the Pope should, if he chose, appoint a senator of Rome; if he did
not do so, the Conservators who exercised the senatorial authority were to take
an oath of fidelity to him; his senators were not to be interfered with by the
Banderisi or other magistrates of the city. The Romans were to keep the roads
to Narni and Rieti free and open, and were to maintain a galley to guard the
approach by sea. The clergy and members of the Curia were to be amenable only
to the Papal courts, and were to be free from tolls and taxes. The goods of the
churches and hospitals were to be similarly free from taxes. The markets of the
city were to be under the charge of two officers, one appointed by the Pope,
the other by the people. These conditions were accepted by the Romans on August
8, 1393, and Boniface again took up his residence in Rome in the beginning of
December. This agreement bears a strong testimony to the political shrewdness
of Boniface. He knew the advantage of striking a blow at the right time; he
knew the importance of privileges once granted. The conditions to which the
Romans so lightly agreed under the impulse of a passing panic, laid the
foundations of the Papal sovereignty over the city of Rome; Boniface IX himself
lived to broaden and extend them, and his successors inherited his claims as
their lawful prerogatives. But Boniface was not to reap immediately the fruits
of his policy and of the short-sightedness of the Roman people. The rule of the
Pope was soon found to be galling, and the Romans regretted that they had sold
their liberties for such a doubtful boon as the presence of the Pope.
Disagreements soon arose between the Pope and the Banderisi; the Roman people
rose in arms in May, 1394, and the position of Boniface in Rome became
precarious— even his life was threatened. But his alliance with Naples had not
been made in vain, and Ladislas was ready to help his protector. In October,
1394, the young King of Naples came to the rescue of the Pope, and repressed
the rebellion of the people; after a few days’ stay in Rome he returned to
Gaeta laden with substantial tokens of the Pope’s gratitude.
At the same time that Boniface was freed from this
danger he also was relieved from another foe: on September 16 died the
anti-Pope Clement VII. His end was probably hastened by the humiliations to
which he was subjected by the remonstrances of the University of Paris. It is
the great glory of that learned body that it did not cease to labor to restore
the shattered unity of the Church. It was, indeed, necessary that this question
should be discussed by a learned body of professed theologians; for the
principles of Papal jurisprudence had been so successfully applied to the
system of ecclesiastical government that they had destroyed all traces of
a more primitive organization. The Pope was recognized as God’s Vicar, as
superior to General Councils, and there was no jurisdiction which could claim
to call him to account. Yet now the organization of the Papacy, which owed its
power to the fact that it was a symbol of the unity of the Church, had brought
about the destruction of that unity, and was an insuperable obstacle in the way
of its restoration. Christendom groaned under the expense of two Papal
establishments, but was helpless to find any lawful method of redressing its
grievances and setting at one the distracted Church. It was the work of the
University of Paris to revive the more ancient polity of the Church before the
days of the establishment of the Papal monarchy, and by a ceaseless literary
agitation familiarize Christendom with ideas which at first seemed little
better than heretical.
So great were the difficulties which beset any endeavor
to escape from the legal principles of the canon law, that the conciliar theory
was advanced with great caution, and only on the ground of absolute necessity.
In 1381 a German doctor at Paris, Henry Langestein of Hesse, wrote his
“Concilium Pacis”, in which he argued in favor of the summons of a General
Council. Necessity, he urged, makes things lawful which are otherwise unlawful;
where human law fails recourse must be had to natural or divine law: the spirit
of ecclesiastical rules must take precedence of the letter; equity, as
Aristotle says, must be called in to redress the wrongs of strict justice; in
time of necessity the Church must have recourse to the authority of Christ, the
infallible Head of the Church, whose authority is resident in the whole body.
To decide the question whether the election made by the Cardinals, as
commissaries of the Church, was lawful or not, recourse must be had to the
assemblage of bishops which represents the Church. This theory of Langestein
had much to commend it, but no one could ignore the difficulties in the way of
assembling or constituting a General Council.
The threat of a Council was an effective weapon in
reserve for the case of extreme need; but, instead of summoning a Council to
decide between two claimants, was it not possible to induce the rival claimants
to resign their positions? This idea of voluntary abdication of the two Popes
found favor in Paris; but it was open to the obvious objection that it was
difficult to induce men to resign lucrative and important posts. It might,
however, be possible to compel them to do so by a withdrawal of the allegiance
of the faithful. This proposed withdrawal the theologians of the University set
to work to justify; schism was as bad as heresy; and if a Pope condemned for
heresy ceased to be Pope, the case of Popes openly and notoriously persisting
in schism fell under the same law. By this theory the principles of feudalism
were carried into the Church. The Pope held his power of Christ; if he used it
to the separation of his Lord’s kingdom, the inferior vassals might defy him.
It was an attempt to legitimatize rebellion as the ultimate appeal in case
of difficulty.
As opinion was slowly formed within the University, it
was from time to time laid before the French King; but the madness which fell
upon him in 1392, and disturbed the state of France through the struggle for
power between the King’s uncles and his brother, made any practical measures
hopeless. Yet in the King’s lucid moments the entreaties of the University were
renewed; and, strangely enough, they were seconded by Boniface IX, who at the
end of 1392 sent two Carthusian monks with a letter to the King reminding him
of his duties to Christendom, and offering his co-operation in any steps which
might be thought necessary to heal the Schism. Boniface IX hoped by a show of
humility to detach France from his rival; but the royal councilors wrote back
an answer carefully framed to contain no word of recognition of Boniface, while
conveying a general assurance of the King’s zeal. At the end of 1393 the
University met with a favorable answer from the King’s brother, the Duke of
Berri; it showed its gratitude by a solemn procession to S. Martin des Champs,
and at once appointed a commission to consider means for attaining its end. A
chest was placed in the Convent of the Maturins, into which each member of the
University cast his written opinion: and after duly inspecting the votes, the
commissioners reported that three possible courses had been submitted — an
abdication by both Popes; an arbitration by an equal number of judges appointed
by both sides; or a General Council. Clement VII was alarmed at these
revolutionary proposals; he summoned the chiefs of the University to Avignon,
but they refused to go. He then tried the more effectual means of sending a
legate with rich presents to the King’s counselors; and the crafty Cardinal,
Peter de Luna, who was then resident in Paris, helped with his ready intrigues.
Hence when the University first brought its report to the King, the Duke of
Berri refused an audience, and threatened its chief men with imprisonment; it
was only after some delay, by the influence of the Duke of Burgundy, that the
representatives of the University came, on June 29, 1394, before the King. They
laid before him in an address the three methods proposed for ending the Schism;
they stated the arguments in favor of each, and combated the objections which
might be raised. “Why should not the Pope”, they pleaded, “submit himself to
the authority of others? Is he greater than Christ, who in the Gospel was
subject to His mother and Joseph? Surely the Pope is subject to his mother, the
Church, who is the mother of all faithful people”. Charles VI listened
with interest, and ordered the address of the University to be translated into
French, that it might serve as the declaration of a new policy. Great hopes
were entertained that he would act decisively; but again the intrigues of Peter
de Luna prevailed with the Duke of Berri, and the University was forbidden to
approach the King or meddle with the matter of the Schism. The University knew
of Clement’s machinations, and was prepared for the check; for its deputies at
once replied that all lectures, sermons, and other academic acts would cease
until it obtained its just demands.
The King, however, had ordered a copy of the address
of the University to be forwarded to Clement, and the University itself sent
him a representation against the conduct of Peter de Luna, and an exhortation
to unity. Clement was both wounded and alarmed at their plain speaking, and
angrily denounced the letter of the University as “wicked and venomous”;
but his Cardinals gave it as their opinion that one of the ways recommended by
the University would have to be followed to restore peace to the Church. In the
state of depression which these humiliations caused to the haughty spirit of
Clement VII he was stricken suddenly by apoplexy, and died on September 16,
1394.
Robert of Geneva, like many others, found that a lofty
position stifled rather than kindled his energies. In his earlier days he had
enjoyed the work of a soldier, and felt keen pleasure at being at the head of
the strongest party among the Cardinals. His aristocratic sentiments made him
delight in being in a position of command, and he did not discover, till after
his elevation to the dangerous dignity of an anti-pope, how much sweeter is
power when it is exercised without the oppressive load of responsibility.
Robert of Geneva was not the man for an equivocal position, for his nature was
too sensitive to grapple with the difficulties which beset him. By feeling, as
well as by birth, he belonged to the class of feudal nobles, not of
adventurers; and the daring which he showed when his course was clear deserted
him when he felt that his position was doubtful. He soon discovered that the
greater part of Christendom repudiated him, and that he was maintained as Pope
solely by the French King — a fact which the French courtiers did not scruple
to throw in his teeth. His adherents in other lands were ousted from their
offices, and fled in poverty to Avignon, clamoring for help, which Clement had
no means of giving; he could not afford to maintain a crowd of needy
dependents, and his natural taste for grandeur suffered from the sight of
misery which fidelity to his cause had brought upon others. His sensitiveness
was also wounded by the calls which constantly reached his ears that he should
restore peace to the distracted Church. His pride prevented him alike from
abandoning and from enjoying his position. He could not find satisfaction in
the petty intrigues and the small victories which would have satisfied a
coarser nature. Tall, handsome, and of commanding aspect, he always cherished
those gifts which had won him popularity; he was always genial, affable, and
decorous. But he shrank from everything that reminded him of his powerlessness;
and such power as he had he was determined to exercise by himself. He was
morose to his Cardinals, and rarely asked their advice or held consistories;
when he did so, they were summoned at a late hour, and were rapidly dismissed.
Such business as he had he dallied with, and it was hard to get him to take a
decided step. When at last he saw that the representations of the University of
Paris had begun to prevail even with the French King, Clement’s humiliation was
complete. He was not great enough to submit for the good of Christendom, nor
was he small enough to fight solely for himself. Overcome by the dilemma, he
died.
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