COUNCIL OF LYON

 

Here he convened a General Council, at Lyons, in 1245, at which he summoned Frederic to appear, and answer for his conduct. The emperor could not do otherwise than recognise the jurisdiction of this council, having more than once appealed to such an assembly for the settlement of the dispute; and he therefore sent the archbishop of Palermo, and others, to appear on his behalf. Before this large and imposing assembly, consisting of one hundred and forty-five prelates (chiefly French, Spanish, and Italian), the Latin’ emperor of Constantinople, with other princes and ambassadors, Innocent accused the emperor of heresy, perjury, and the plunder of the Church (sacrilege). These charges were boldly denied by the imperial advocate, who also made large promises on behalf of Frederic, that he would render efficient aid against the Moguls, who had now filled Europe with alarm, and would lead in person a crusade against the Turks. Many of the bishops, especially the English, pressed the pope to accept these offers; but Innocent knew his enemy better than they did, and he asked them who could assure him that Frederic would fulfil his promise? When the ambassadors of the kings of England and France undertook, in the name of their royal masters, to be guarantees of the fulfilment, the pope told them that he thanked them for their offers, but he knew that, as the emperor would not fulfil his pledge, he should be obliged to have recourse to his sureties, and in this case he should have three enemies instead of one, which he begged leave to decline. After a short delay, during which Innocent found means to produce upon the assembly an impression in his favour, he proceeded without hesitation to pronounce sentence of deposition against the emperor, in a long and remarkable speech. “I,” said he, “am the vicar of Christ upon earth, and what I bind must be bound in heaven. Therefore, I declare that Frederic is rejected by God, I release all his former subjects from their oath of allegiance to him, command the princes and nobles of Germany to elect a new king, and reserve to myself the right of making arrangements for the kingdom of Sicily according to my pleasure.” Frederic received the intelligence of these proceedings with expressions of great indignation ; and he afterwards addressed a letter to the kings of England and France, full of home truths against the pope and the clergy,—truths, however, which were more than the age could well endure to hear.

 In 1246, the emperor sought to make peace with the pope by the mediation of Louis IX, king of France, promising to engage in a crusade; but again his offers were rejected, and hostilities commenced both in Germany and Italy. The pope set up a rival emperor, and preached a crusade against Frederic; he also excited serious disturbances in the kingdom of Sicily against him; and it is said that he even took means to procure his assassination.

As to the alleged crime of heresy, the emperor caused himself to be examined by the archbishop of Palermo, the bishop of Pavia, and others, who professed themselves satisfied concerning his orthodoxy ; but, when they went to the pope at Lyons to make their report in his favour, Innocent threatened them with deposition for having undertaken such an examination without a commission from himself.

In 1248, Frederic experienced great reverses in Lombardy, and again sought to make peace with the pope, by the mediation of the king of France, but in vain. In 1250, Frederic died; and in the following year Innocent returned from Lyons to Rome, after having received a visit from his German king William, with assurances of extreme devotedness. In the same year, he excommunicated Conrad, son of Frederic, now the emperor, and proclaimed a crusade against him, which was preached by the mendicant friars. Conrad, however, was determined to maintain his ground against the pope. In 1252 he entered Apulia, where he reduced to subjection some towns which had revolted. While he was making this progress in Italy, the pope made attempts to keep him out of possession of his Sicilian dominions, by offering the crown of Sicily, first to Richard duke of Cornwall, afterwards to Edward, duke of Lancaster, and lastly, to the brother of the king of France, Charles of Anjou; but all these offers were declined, and Conrad established himself firmly in Sicily. He died, however, in 1254, and thus a prospect of success was again opened to the pope; but this was only of short duration, for he himself met his death, in the course of the same year, during an expedition against Manfred of Tarento, who had refused to do him homage.

Raynald, cardinal bishop of Ostia, a relative of Innocent III and Gregory IX, succeeded as Alexander IV. Convinced that the extent of power to which his predecessors had aspired could not be obtained, he took his measures accordingly, and thus secured to his successors that which was really of chief importance to the papal see.

His extortionate demands in England, although resisted by the bishops, were yet to a certain extent complied with by the weak king Henry III, under fear of excommunication and interdict. But the pontiff failed in his attempts to excite the king of England against Manfred, in order to obtain Sicily for his son Edmund. Manfred not only continued to set him at defiance, notwithstanding the excommunication which he had pronounced against him, but even succeeded in exciting disturbances at Rome, which compelled Alexander to flee to Viterbo, where he died, May 25, 1261.

His successor, Urban IV, was unsuccessful in his attempts to deprive Manfred of the crown of Sicily, who now married his daughter Constantia to the eldest son of James, king of Arragon,—the pope being unable to dissuade the latter sovereign from an alliance which gave him a prospect of the throne of Sicily for his descendants. Urban now offered the crown of Sicily to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX, king of France; and this prince was negotiating conditions under which he should obtain that crown, when the pope died. He was succeeded by Guido, cardinal bishop of Sabina, as Clement IV. Immediately upon his accession, the new pope invited Charles into Italy, and pressed for support from his brother, the king of France. Charles arrived at Rome in May, 1265, when the conditions were settled upon which he should possess the throne of Sicily, and a crusade was preached against Manfred, who was soon after slain in an engagement with Charles, leaving him master of the kingdom.

Clement died in 1268, and nearly three years elapsed before the cardinals, assembled at Viterbo, and filled the vacant chair. They then elected Theobald, archdeacon of Liege, who took the title of Gregory X. The emperor Richard died about this time, and his rival, Alphonso, applied in vain to the pope for confirmation. Gregory wrote to the electors, requiring them to unite in the election of a king within a given time; and declaring that otherwise himself and the cardinals would appoint one. The choice fell upon Rodolph, count of Hapsburg, October 30, 1273; and then, by the persuasion and influence of the pope, Alphonso abandoned his pretensions. The oath taken by Rodolpf’s ambassadors on his behalf, before the pope at Lyons, contains,—besides that which Innocent III had exacted from Otho IV and Frederic II,—a formal renunciation of all imperial rights over the city of Rome, and a provision for the final separation of the kingdom of Sicily from the empire.

The second (General) Council of Lyons, convened by this pontiff, is remarkable for the establishment of the conclave of cardinals on occasion of papal elections. According to this regulation, which forms the foundation of the present system, the cardinals were bound to assemble ten days after the death of a pope for the election of his successor, and to remain shut up in the place of election until the new pope should be regularly elected by a majority of votes. Perhaps the rapid succession of popes which followed this enactment may be partially traced to its operation; the cardinals, hastening to recover their liberty, appear to have chosen, from time to time, a pope who would be likely soon to vacate the chair, and give occasion for another election.

Gregory died at Arezzo, January 10, 1276, and was rapidly succeeded by Innocent V, Adrian V, and John XXI (or rather XX). During these short pontificates, the Roman people became accustomed to regard the pope merely as their titular sovereign, and to attach themselves to their self-chosen neighbouring protectors, who thus gained an accession of power highly disadvantageous to the papal see. It therefore became needful to devise some means of restoring the papal influence where it had been thus impaired; and a favourable opportunity of effecting this object presented itself to the next pontiff, Nicholas III, of which he did not fail to make good use.

The French pope, Clement IV, during the vacancy of the imperial throne, had granted the office of vicar of the empire (Paciarius, Pacis Servator) in Italy to the new king of Sicily, and had thus bestowed upon him an increased measure of influence. After the accession of the emperor, Charles desired to retain his new office, and declared that he could surrender it only into the hands of the pope, from whom he had received it. Rodolph accordingly pressed the pope to discard the new vicar, and Nicholas resolved so to conduct the matter as that he might obtain something from both parties, although he had determined to favour only one. He alarmed Charles with a prospect of his entering into a close alliance with the emperor prejudicial to his interests as king of Sicily, and thus induced him, not only to resign his vicariate, but also his dignity as Roman senator; while from the emperor, on the other hand, the pope obtained a formal recognition of the rights of the Roman Church to all its possessions, including even an acknowledgment of some claims which had not been hitherto established.

 All the advantages which had thus been gained by were lost  again after his death; for Charles found means, by his influence in the college of cardinals, to procure the election of another French pope, Martin IV, entirely devoted to his interests, who immediately took care that he should recover his dignity of Roman senator, engaged most zealously in his support, and even so far implicated himself in his foreign affairs as to excommunicate the Greek emperor who had promised to aid the Sicilians in a rebellion against their sovereign, while he threatened the same proceedings against Peter, king of Arragon, who had incurred suspicion of having favoured the same rebellion.

The Sicilians, reduced to despair by their foreign master, at length resolved to take the matter into their own hands; and in April, 1282, they perpetrated that bloody massacre of the French which is too well known in history under the name of the Sicilian Vespers. The pope then laid the kingdom under an interdict; but Peter of Arragon having come to their assistance with a fleet, the Sicilians sent word to the pontiff that they would attach themselves to him rather than to the Peter at Rome. The anger of Martin was now turned against the king of Arragon, and led him to undertake new measures, which, however, were ineffectual. He caused a crusade to be preached against Peter throughout Christendom; raised money in every country of Europe for the purpose of aiding the French in the recovery of Sicily; and circulated an epistle calling upon every one to employ all means in his power for the extinction of the king of Arragon and his ally the Greek emperor; while to the French he granted especial permission to conquer and take possession of Arragon. All, however, was in vain. Peter remained master of Sicily, and set the pope at defiance. The former king, Charles, died in 1285, after two futile attempts to recover his throne; and the death of Martin followed in the same year.

During the pontificates of the three succeeding popes, Honorius IV, Nicholas IV, and Celestin V, war was still carried on in Sicily between the sons of Peter and the sons of Charles. The young Charles was made prisoner, and was glad to purchase his liberty by a treaty, in which, in return for his abdication of the crown of Sicily in favour of the princes of Arragon, he was secured in the possession of Naples. For the credit of the papal see, the popes found themselves obliged to protest against that contract, having so long opposed the occupation of Sicily by the house of Arragon. At length, however, this opposition ceased; and thus, without their efforts, and even to a certain extent against their will, the affairs of Lower Italy,—which, during the last two centuries, had caused so much anxiety to the papal see, and had so perplexed its politics,—were established on a basis probably more advantageous to the real interests of Rome than would have been even the possession of the country itself. The new masters of Sicily recognised the pope as their liege lord; the power which, by its nearness, would have been so formidable to them was now divided; and the danger of its falling into the hands of Germany was apparently averted for centuries.

RELATIONS BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

The power of the Church in relation to the State had now reached its meridian, and had already begun to decline. A new theory had been completed, according to which the Church was to be not only independent of the State but the State was to be dependent on the Church. This theory had been formally recognised, and was in some cases brought into actual operation; but, before the projected theocracy could firmly establish itself, a new constitution imperceptibly arose in most of the European States, which assisted the temporal power in many instances to obtain a decisive superiority over the spiritual, introducing an order of things in which the Church became actually in many respects dependent on the State. This, however, did not take place universally at the same time, in the same manner, or in equal degrees; although the principal circumstances which led to this result were everywhere substantially alike.

The most important of the relations between Church and State always arose out of the part which the State acted with regard to the disposal of bishoprics and other high ecclesiastical offices; and it was precisely in this respect that the chief revolution was systematically effected during this period. It was openly avowed as at least one part of the design of the dispute concerning investitures, begun by Gregory VII, and carried on through nearly half a century, to abolish, or at least very greatly to reduce, the interference of the supreme civil power, and of lay interference generally, in the disposal of Church preferment. But this end was not thoroughly attained ; and, as it was found impossible to secure it by direct and open efforts, a more circuitous method was adopted, until, at the end of the thirteenth century, the Church had almost succeeded in carrying the point. Still, the State at all times reserved to itself some remnant of power in this matter; and it is well to consider both what it lost, and what it retained, together with the importance both of its losses and of its possessions.

Gregory VII himself obtained little or nothing as the result of his dispute concerning investitures. His decree was not obeyed: investitures continued to be granted as formerly in Germany, France, and England, by the sovereigns of those countries, at their discretion; and it was only against the emperor that Gregory proceeded to take notice of this contempt of his assumed authority. It required time for the establishment of a principle so contrary to the spirit and practice of all existing constitutions, and to the views even of many ecclesiastics, who felt themselves bound to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” In course of years, however, many bishops began to perceive that such a regulation as that demanded by Gregory would tend to the aggrandisement of the whole ecclesiastical order. Urban II, Gregory’s second successor, announced the design of delivering the Church from all traces of vassalage to temporal sovereigns, and forbade all ecclesiastical persons to swear allegiance to a civil ruler. In England and France the spark soon began to kindle into a flame. In England, Anselm of Canterbury was the first who raised the standard of independence against his sovereign; and in France, Rodolph, archbishop of Rheims, was the first to refuse the oath of fealty. But the steady and well-advised resistance with which this attempt was met, not only rendered it abortive, but Henry I of England cautiously avoided referring the dispute between himself and Anselm to the deci­sion of the pope. The ambassadors whom he sent with Anselms deputies to Rome were expressly instructed to declare to the pope, not only in the name of the king, but also on behalf of all the nobles of the land, that the archbishop, in case of his longer refusal to receive investiture at the hands of the king, would be expelled the kingdom; that the whole nation would then renounce obedience to the Roman see; and that the annual tribute hitherto paid by England to Rome would be stopped. Paschal II, alarmed by this message, sought only to gain time; and by various artifices he succeeded in creating so much delay that the king proposed further negotiations, and permitted the archbishop to repair to Rome in 1103 with a view to arrange a settlement of the affair. Paschal, however, now assumed a higher tone; until Henry told him that he would rather lose his crown than resign his rights over the temporalities of the English sees, and announced to Anselm that he must not presume to set foot in his kingdom again if he were resolved to persist in his refusal. Matters remained in this state for some time; and Anselm lived in exile at Lyons, until the king’s sister, a great patron of the archbishop, obtained for him permission to return to England, and to resume possession of his see. The question concerning his own investiture was thus left open, the archbishop being only required not to regard as excommunicated those bishops and prelates who had lately received investiture at the hand of the king. Anselm, however, pretended that he must first take advice of the pope, who had pronounced sentence of excommunication against those parties; whereupon Henry again consented that the matter should be referred to Rome,—but at the same time took care to send an agent of his own, who was so well instructed that, by the use of various means, he succeeded in effecting a wonderful change in the pope’s decision. In March, 1106, the pope wrote to Anselm, requiring him for the future to act with moderation towards the king and the nobility, “because,” said he, “we must always stoop and condescend where we have to raise the fallen.” He accordingly not only empowered but required him to absolve, after a slight penance, all bishops and abbots who had received investiture from the king, and to consecrate them for their offices; enjoining him for the future not to hesitate to consecrate those who had taken the oath of allegiance, pro­vided they did not receive investiture by crosier and ring. After this, the controversy was speedily brought to an issue. The king formally declared that he would not continue to invest bishops and abbots with crosier and ring, but that he would require the oath of allegiance; and the bishops acknowledged themselves bound by this oath. This practice was thus established as the law of the land; the king resigned an empty ceremony, but retained his substantial right of sovereignty over all persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil.

In the same manner, but after a shorter and slighter struggle, the controversy was settled in France. In a council at Rouen, the bishops of Normandy formally assented to the decree of Clermont; and Rodolph, elected archbishop of Rheims in 1106, proceeded to contest the matter with the king, Philip I. The pope, Paschal II, who came to France while the controversy was raging, laid an interdict upon the city of Rheims, which took part with the king against the archbishop, and himself consecrated Rodolph at a council which he held at Troyes. Philip died in 1107; and the young king, Louis VI, seeming to ignore even the existence of an archbishop of Rheims (by whom the kings of France had been formerly crowned), caused himself to be anointed and crowned by the archbishop of Sens. Rodolph understood from this how firm an attitude the king had determined to maintain against him, and how resolved he was to employ the means at his disposal for keeping him out of the possession of the see. He, therefore, cheerfully listened to proposals of accommodation, which were soon after conveyed to him from the king by Ivo, bishop of Chartres. Louis gave him to understand that he would recognise his election, and would give no support to a rival who had been set up against him, and who had been favoured by Philip, provided that he would consent to take the oath of allegiance. Rodolph consented to these terms; and, the substantial rights of the civil power being sufficiently vindicated, the affair was at an end. These rights were again emphatically asserted, during the same reign, in a council at Rheims, in 1119. While the pope (Calixtus II) and the cardinals insisted upon a renewal of the decrees against lay investitures, in very stringent terms, Louis also insisted, and that effectually, upon a reservation of the rights which the king of France had hitherto exercised with respect to bishops and their sees. Investitures with crosier and ring had been for some time past partially discontinued in France; and the king made no opposition to its final prohibition. In 1137, indeed, Louis VII released the bishops of Aquitaine from their oath of allegiance to him as duke of Aquitaine, and to all succeeding dukes; but they were still bound to take the oath to the king of France: as in all other provinces, they were now immediate vassals of the king, instead of being also subjects of the duke.

On the other hand, Louis VI and the succeeding kings of France distinctly recognised the freedom of episcopal elections. The expression “canonical freedom of the election of bishops” now came into use, implying a renunciation of that right of nomination to bishoprics which had been formerly exercised by the French sovereign. But, to the end of the twelfth century, the custom remained unchanged that, on occasion of the vacancy of a see, permission to proceed to a new election was first sought from the king; and it is evident that this regulation alone gave an opportunity of royal interference and influence.

Still more striking appeared to be the failure of the attempts against the right of investiture in Germany, considered as designed to overthrow the existing relations of bishops to the State. By the terms of the Concordat of Worms this connection was rather strengthened than impaired. The influence of the temporal sovereign in the disposal of bishoprics had been gradually counteracted by the assumed ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome, until at last the popes came to possess unlimited power in this respect. It was established as a rule that the pope should decide in all cases of disputed elections, and that the temporal sovereign, no less than the rival candidate, should be bound to await and to respect his decision; so that it was requisite only to set up a rival candidate in order to place the decision at once in the hands of the pope. This rule was not established, indeed, without an occasional protest on the part of the sovereign. Such was the protest of the emperor Frederic I in 1183, concerning the election of an archbishop of Treves. Hence also the dispute between Louis VII of France and Innocent II, in 1140, concerning the consecration of a new archbishop of Bourges before receipt of the royal confirmation of his election, which Innocent did not hesitate to perform notwithstanding the opposition of Louis; and when the king caused the gates of Bourges to be closed against the new bishop, who had been thus irregularly consecrated, Innocent laid the kingdom under an interdict. The king, enraged at this proceeding, vented his indignation in the spoliation of churches, and in hostilities against Theobald, count of Champagne, who had espoused the cause of the archbishop;—hostilities attended with an act of barbarous cruelty in the burning of a church, containing one thousand three hundred defenceless people who had fled to it for protection. But at length, conscience-smitten, the king consented to grant investiture to the archbishop, and to leave him in the undisturbed possession of his church, vowing moreover a crusade to the Holy Land by way of penance for his offences. In like manner, by the use of excommunication and interdict, Alexander III and Lucius III afterwards compelled William, king of Scotland, to something very like compliance with their will in the matter of a dispute concerning the nomination of a bishop of St. Andrews. Towards the end of the twelfth century, cases were greatly multiplied in which sovereigns tacitly recognised the pope’s exclusive power of deciding in disputed elections; and it became an ordinary event that an election to a bishopric was contested, and the choice thus finally referred to the pope. In these cases the pope ordinarily granted consecration previous to investiture, and thus made it appear that temporal princes had no more to do in the matter of these elections than to confirm the decision of the pope by the grant of investiture. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, this new theory was not only recognised in fact, but formally and expressly acknowledged as law, by the emperor Otho IV and his successor Frederic II; thus furnishing a striking example of that policy of the court of Rome which consists in first making some practical aggressions, and then maintaining the principle of those aggressions in the way of theory and law. In the course of this thirteenth century arose the new practice of popes arbitrarily nominating bishops, and filling up vacant sees at their pleasure. What they had formerly done only in particular cases, and under special circumstances,—what even Innocent III had rarely ventured to do,—became now the order of the day. The principle, however, of annihilating even the indirect influence of temporal princes in the disposal of sees, had already been sanctioned by Innocent III. On occasion of the celebrated election of Stephen Langton to the archbishopric of Canterbury, which gave rise to the quarrel of Innocent with king John of England, this pontiff formally announced the maxim that the consent of the sovereign should not be requisite in the case of an election in which the pope had been called to interfere; and this clearly included the further principle that still less would such consent be requisite when the pope should himself appoint a bishop.

It is a fact which ought not to escape our observa­tion that the bishops “freely elected,” even without the nomination of the sovereign, in the second half of the twelfth century, were by no means more pious, more learned, or in any way better qualified for their office, than those who had formerly been nominated by temporal princes,—but rather the reverse. In the chapters, ambition and avarice, envy and jealousy gave, occasion to corruption, intrigue, disputes, and manifold abuses. When a see was purchased from princes and courtiers, the purchase was made simply with ready money; nor was it always that the appointment was thus venal, but the choice of the sovereign was sometimes conscientiously made on the score of piety or learning ; and even when a see was sold, it was often not sold to a notoriously bad or unfit person, although by the sale some men more fit were passed over. But there were many disreputable means by which such appointments could be procured from chapters, when each individual elector could fix his own price, and dictate his own terms. Hence the probability was increased that the appointment would be given to an unworthy candidate; and that in some cases the chapter would exclude the best and most fit candidate, simply because he was the most fit,—that is to say, because the principal ecclesiastics of the diocese did not wish to come under his good government and discipline. So that, under these circumstances, it appeared to be for the benefit of the Church that the popes should take the appointments into their own hands,—not immediately out of the hands of the sovereigns, but out of the hands of the chapters, after they had received it from the sovereigns by way of free election. Let the civil ruler cease to appoint our Anglican bishops, and then who will? Very soon, the pope.—The expenses of appeals to Rome were enormous, and formed a great source of revenue to the papal treasury.

During this period the king of Germany lost the right of regalia; which, however, the popes did not even attempt to wrest from the kings of France and England. In England there were various protests against the abuses of this right, but the right itself was not contested. The exercise of this right in Germany consisted in this, that on the vacancy of a bishopric the emperor sequestered all the property belonging to the see, and retained it until the vacancy was filled up. In France and England the sovereigns exercised not only the same right, but also, during the vacancy of a see, they disposed of all preferments and made all appointments which would have been at the disposal of the bishop if the see had been occupied. It is uncertain when this right was first assumed; but it appears to have been an offshoot of the feudal system. Examples of the appropriation of the revenues of ancient sees by kings, dukes, and other powerful neighbours, occur as early as the seventh and eighth centuries. Doubtless this gradually grew into a custom, and then became law. Perhaps the right was first assumed in France about the middle of the twelfth century; in Germany, probably, it did not extensively prevail before the same century; in England it arose under William I or William II.

Another right was the Jus exuviarum, by which the sovereign was entitled to all the personal property of a deceased bishop. In earlier times such property was regarded as belonging to the Church, and was seized by the clergy of the chapter, or others immediately about the person of the bishop; afterwards it became a prey to powerful barons, dukes, or others; and then it went, with the regalia, to the king. At the end of the eleventh century this right was not recognised; for we find various canons of councils of that date enacting that the property of a deceased bishop should pass to his successor. In the twelfth century the right was recognised as belonging to the sovereign. In 1186, Urban III reproached the emperor Frederic with hasty and extreme exercise of this right; but the right itself was fully recognised. And in 1197, Otho IV voluntarily promised, upon his election, to forego this right, although retaining that of regalia. In 1209 Innocent III made the formal resignation of this right an article of capitulation, signed by the same Otho IV and this surrender was finally confirmed by Rodolph of Hapsburg when he came to the crown.

Kings, therefore, could no longer make bishops; but bishops, when made, were their subjects, bound to acknowledge allegiance to the crown. Often they could not prevent the appointment of a bishop against their will, but they could compel him to submission when once appointed. The bishops, in short, held their property as a fief from the sovereign, and they were bound to swear obedience and fealty. During this period, indeed, the sovereigns acquired greater means of keeping the bishops in a state of dependence; and many occasions arose on which bishops stood in need of their protection. This followed from the increase and consolidation of regal power which now was taking place. Many of the estates of former vassals, powerful dukes and counts, were now absorbed into the royal possessions and domains, so that the king was no longer one feudal lord among many, but his power was formidable alike to all parties in his dominions. By this means the bishops were greatly relieved from the oppression of powerful barons, but, at the same time, they themselves became more completely under the power of the sovereign. In France the bishops lost almost all their political influence. In England the barons usually took part with the king in his struggles with the archbishops of Canterbury; and hence, also, the bishops usually sided with the king in his quarrels with the barons. This identification of episcopal interests with those of the crown, together with the consequent dependence of the bishops upon the sovereigns, worked itself completely into the English constitution, and continues to this day.

The regal power now obtained a preponderance over every other in Sicily, and in the northern states —Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—as well as in France; while in other parts,—as in Poland and Hungary,—the increasing power of the nobles kept pace with that of the sovereigns. Almost everywhere the bishops stood next to the king, as forming the first estate of the realm; and everywhere they were more immediately subject to his influence and power than the temporal nobles. It was only in Germany that the bishops appeared to retain the same relation to the State as in the time of the Othos. In this kingdom many local circumstances prevented that change of constitution which took place in others, especially the custom of electing the emperor by the great estates. From the accession of the house of Hapsburg, the bishops adhered steadily to the interests of the imperial court.

An epoch was now formed in the history of civil society by the growth of large towns, and the organisa­tion of these new communities. The great bodies of free and chartered citizens, with their municipal corporations, formed a new estate of the realm, which, with its influence, rights, and property, occasioned a corresponding deduction from the possessions of those of more ancient date. Their rise could not, therefore, but affect the relation of the bishops to the State; but it may be considered uncertain whether in this way the bishops were, on the whole, losers or gainers: they lost some political power over these masses of people, but they gained a new estate highly serviceable as an ally against the nobility when occasion might require.

In these centuries we find the beginning of a struggle on the part of the Church against the State concerning its immunities and property. The Church, doubtless, had good reasons for commencing this struggle; but, in the course of it, she suffered herself to seek after more than she ought to have desired, and consequently, in some instances, she received less than might otherwise have been conceded to her.

According to the existing constitution of all the states of Europe, not even a thought could be entertained of the exemption of all Church property from civil burdens. It was the practice of those times for the free owners of property to furnish a number of troops in proportion to the extent of their possessions, on demand of the king; and there was no reason for exempting from this service the possessors of Church property more than any others. It is uncertain whether the exemptions granted to a single mansus belonging to each church, by Charlemagne or Louis I, extended thus far, but, even if it did, still the bishops themselves did not think it possible that such exemptions could be extended to the whole of their estates. Many churches, however, soon became possessed of various single estates and pieces of property, which enjoyed exemptions from tribute by special grant or compact; and it was, doubtless, a part of the great plan of Gregory VII. to deliver all Church property, as well as ecclesiastical persons, from feudal service. This was announced in the celebrated decree of Urban II at the Council of Clermont, and even in a still earlier decree at the Council of Melfi, in Apulia (a. d. 1089 or 1090). This design, however, the popes were eventually unable to accomplish. Paschal II conceded to the king of England, Calixtus to the king of France and the emperor of Germany, that the bishops should do homage to them as their vassals ; and afterwards this point was never again contested. It was also a recognised principle that, in case of failure of feudal duty or service, the king could proceed against bishops by the same means of compulsion as against laymen. The attempts at a complete emancipation of Church property from feudal service and burdens thus ended in failure.

The sovereigns of Europe, especially the kings of England from William the Conqueror, often oppressed the Church by extortions and illegal demands of subsidy; and against these acts of violence and rapine the Church, from time to time, loudly protested.

After the growth of independent cities, and the formation of municipal corporations, the civic magis­trates found it needful to tax the citizens for necessary expenses of defence, and other works undertaken for the common welfare; and it was reasonable that the property of the Church, which shared in the common benefit, should pay its portion of the imposts. Afterwards, however, especially when many—e. g. of the Italian cities—engaged in expensive wars, with which the clergy had less sympathy than any other classes of citizens, taxation for the support of these proceed­ings was felt by the Church to be a grievance, especially as more than a due proportion was often exacted from the Church under an idea that it was rich and could well afford to pay. Hence, before the end of the twelfth century, we find traces of precautions on the part of the Church against this evil. But about this time it was overtaken with another. Contributions from Church property to the crusades were first suggested by popes, and readily made by the bishops; but these were afterwards exacted by the sovereign, in a measure and to an extent which became burdensome and vexatious. In attempting to put a stop to this grievance, the Church proceeded at first with great moderation. Pope Alexander III, by a celebrated decree of the Council of Lateran, a.d 1179, affirmed that no power in the world was competent arbitrarily to impose taxes upon ecclesiastical persons, and declared that any civil magistrate who should hereafter attempt to do so would be liable to excom­munication; a decree which appears to have been directed especially against exactions made by some of the cities of Italy, especially in Lombardy, and also perhaps in Germany. The meaning of this was, that ecclesiastics should not be compelled to furnish a subsidy to any state or city, unless they themselves considered the demand to be equitable or necessary, according to the pressure of existing circumstances. But it did not involve any attempt to rescue the Church from all civil burdens whatever. In 1215, Innocent III, in a council at Rome, known as the Fourth Lateran, renewed this decree of Alexander; adding that the laity should thankfully receive every contribution made by the Church towards the neces­sities of the commonwealth as a voluntary offering, but also maintaining that the Church would not hesitate to grant such contributions when convinced that they were needed, or called for by regard to the general interests. And he suggested that in all such cases, when demands were made upon the Church on these grounds, the bishops could not do better than take the advice of the pope, and abide by his decision. Against this regulation none of the sovereigns of Europe protested; and it is probable that they foresaw (what was really the fact) that they would be able to settle these matters with the pope better than with their own bishops; for, while the bishops were the parties concerned in resisting the demand, to the pope it was often a matter of far greater importance to gain the favour of a prince by granting a subsidy, than to protect a comparatively small portion of in­come arising from Church property. Subsidies, in fact, were readily granted at Rome; and it soon became the practice for princes or magistrates, when seeking a grant, to apply directly to the pope instead of the bishops in the first instance, and for the pope to grant the subsidy without consulting the bishops, even empowering the sovereign to enforce his demands in case of refusal or hesitation. This new regulation was, therefore, disadvantageous to the Church, but in favour of papal power.

Such applications to Rome, however, were capable of being easily construed as involving an admission on the part of the civil magistrate that he had of himself no power to impose such burdens on the Church, and as recognising the right of giving or withholding assent as inherent in the ecclesiastical body. And this was an admission of no small value. From the middle of the thirteenth century we find the principle of this right of consent on the part of the Church embodied in practice, no less than existing in theory. We now find compacts between civil magistrates and the clergy in chapters, as to the amount to be paid by the Church towards the expenses of the town, and the most convenient way of paying it; and we find also arrangements for compounding the payment. At the same time, by these reasonable concessions, the Church was encouraged to make unfair demands. Hence, in some places, a remedy was devised in the shape of laws of mortmain. In 1218, only two years after the Lateran Council of Innocent III, the Florentines made a law prohibiting any piece of land from falling into the hands of the clergy, and even from coming into the hands of an individual ecclesiastic by way of paternal inheritance. In 1273, Alphonso III, of Portugal, published an edict forbidding the Church and clergy of his kingdom from inheriting any landed property in future. In 1279, the statute of mortmain was enacted in England. In 1293, Guido, count of Flanders, enacted a similar law, disqualifying all monasteries and religious communities from acquiring landed property under any title whatever.

 

ECCLESIASTICAL IMMUNITIES

 

The Church now made some bold attempts to extend its legal jurisdiction in criminal matters, and especially to protect all ecclesiastics from suffering punishment by the sentence of a civil court. But these attempts were unsuccessful.

The ancient privilegium fori was attended with many limitations and restrictions, which had been increased by the introduction of the feudal system, both in civil and in criminal causes. But at the same time the feudal system contributed to strengthen the idea on the principle of which clerical exemptions were founded. The practice having become prevalent by which almost every individual, as a vassal, was amenable to the court of his own particular liege lord, it seemed natural that the clergy, in like manner, should be amenable to the courts of the bishops; for the age attached the idea of feudal relationship to the connection between bishop and clergy. One part of the effort now made for the independence of the Church, according to the great scheme of Gregory VII, consisted, therefore, in an attempt to obtain complete exemption from criminal jurisdiction exercised by the state or civil magistrate; as in the case of Becket, whose quarrel with Henry II arose out of a refusal to surrender to the civil tribunal a priest who had committed murder. This may have been well designed, not as a matter of ambition, but for sake of justice and good discipline ; still, however, it manifestly involved great inconvenience to the State and to society at large, and it could not be permitted to take effect. How far soever the principle of the exemption of clergy from the jurisdiction of temporal courts in criminal cases may have been established in theory, it never was effectually set up in practice.

Greater success attended the efforts of the Church to extend its jurisdiction in civil matters. From the beginning of the eleventh century this jurisdiction existed to an astonishing extent. There was scarcely any cause of this kind which the ecclesiastical tribunals were not considered competent to decide, and hardly any of which they did not claim the right of cognisance. Indeed, so far did they claim an exclusive right of cognisance in these matters, that but little business remained in the hands of the civil courts. This arose from the superior reputation of the bishops’ courts, as giving a more impartial and equitable judgment, and that, too, at less expense than in the temporal courts. In the twelfth century, it may be said that the temporal courts were occupied almost exclusively with criminal cases, all others being referred to the ecclesiastical tribunals. It cannot be surprising that the Church manifested a desire to retain this civil jurisdiction in its full extent; even so far as to require oath from litigant parties, at the outset of a suit, to the effect that they would not carry the cause before any other tribunal. Besides this, many civil causes were transformed into ecclesiastical, over which the Church claimed exclusive jurisdiction; in addition to its control over testamentary affairs, and questions of matrimony and divorce. Thus, the Church favoured the custom of confirming contracts by oath; and then the breach of a contract became an ecclesiastical offence under the designation of perjury. Suits for debt fell under ecclesiastical cognisance, as being more or less inseparably connected with questions of usury. In France, the Church claimed the right of deciding all cases connected with the buying and selling of corn; because, a law having been passed prohibiting the sale of this article on Sundays, it became necessary to determine in the first instance on what day the sale had been made,—and this was a question for the Church. The exercise of this ecclesiastical power was, in many respects, highly beneficial; the views of the age respecting the administration of justice were in this way greatly improved,—the old practice of trial by combat and ordeals gradually disappeared under the influence of a more rational mode of procedure,—and the administration of justice was thus reduced to a system on principles of reason and humanity. But, before the complete expiration of this period, we find the State endeavouring to relieve the Church of some portion of this burden which it had so willingly undertaken, and to confine its jurisdiction within more ancient limits. It began to be generally discovered that the Church had assumed, in these matters, more than belonged to it, not without loss to the State.

 

EXCOMMUNICATION AND INTERDICT

 

During this period, the spiritual weapons of the Church,—excommunication and interdict,—began to lose their force. They had been too frequently employed, and were found to be oppressive and injurious to the interests of society. Excommunications, and citations under penalty of excommunication, had become exceedingly common, especially in connection with the administration of justice in the bishops’ courts; and this very circumstance had greatly contributed to diminish their weight Innumerable cases continually occurred in which it was impossible that the sentence of excommunication, when pronounced, should be followed by its professed consequences; and this familiarity, and mere formality, induced contempt. In fact, the execution of the sentence was in many cases altogether impossible. Various attempts were made on the part of the Church to remedy this evil; but those attempts either simply failed, or even rendered the system of excommunication more odious and more inefficient than ever. Interdicts also, in like manner, began to lose their power. During the twelfth century, the mere threat of an interdict compelled Philip I of France to dismiss the countess Bertrade, whom he had married; and this weapon extorted from Henry II of England all those sacrifices by which he purchased first his reconciliation with Becket, and afterwards his absolution. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, it forced the bolder Philip II of France to take back a queen whom he had put away; and from John of England it extorted even his kingdom and his crown. But interdicts were imprudently multiplied during the thirteenth century, especially on a small scale, in provinces; until at length the inconveniences arising from these sentences aroused the attention of governments, and measures for a remedy of the evil began to be devised. The civil authority now claimed a right to decide upon the propriety of an interdict before it could be put in force, and to annul it upon proof of any irregularity. Thus, in 1235, Louis IX cancelled an interdict pronounced by the archbishop of Rheims; and, in 1263, he annulled another by the archbishop of Poitiers. And afterwards, from the reign of Philip IV (le Bel), it became an established maxim of jurisprudence in France, that all censures and interdicts pronounced by the spiritual courts should be subject to an appeal to the parliament. It is obvious that while such measures tended to make interdicts harmless to the State, they rendered them also equally powerless in favour of the Church. Hence, therefore, it now became an object of papal policy to restrain the bishops in their issuing of interdicts; and we find that a pope frequently took off the interdict which a bishop had imposed, while various decrees were issued to moderate the sentences which eccle­siastical threats professedly involved. But all attempts to restore their former power failed; and an interdict soon came to be regarded as a mere formality in ecclesiastical suits, which no one regarded with dread.

The morals of the clergy were now thoroughly depraved. Never had ecclesiastics sunk so low in vice and impiety, and that so universally,—never had they been so insensible to decency and order, so refractory against discipline, and so utterly shameless in their crimes,—as were the majority of the clergy during the twelfth century. A hundred murders had been committed by clergymen in England during twelve years of the reign of Henry II, in the interval between the accession of that sovereign and the murder which gave rise to his dispute with Becket.

This corruption may be ascribed partly to that undue depression of the episcopal dignity, and consequent loss of the bishop’s influence over his clergy, which may for the most part be traced to the depraved character of the bishops themselves, and also in some measure to the admitted theory of an universal episcopate of the pope. Many monasteries and individuals were formally exempted from episcopal jurisdiction, and placed immediately under the pope. Not a few of the clergy, having been ordained without a title, as chaplains of noblemen, or in other ways, were professedly independent of the bishops; while at the same time episcopal authority had been weakened by the extensive exercise of lay patronage in the disposal of Church preferment. All these causes contributed to laxity of ecclesiastical discipline. To these may be added also the prevailing system of bestowing benefices upon those who were unable to discharge the duties attached to them. Church preferment was often conferred upon minors and infants, so that even twenty or thirty benefices could be held by the same individual, who therefore also, as a matter of course, altogether failed in the due discharge of religious services. Complaints were rife concerning this relaxation of morals and discipline; and attempts were even made from time to time to correct the evil, but to no purpose.

The constrained celibacy of the clergy, together with the laws enacted in connection with this institute, and the customs to which they gave rise, such as the payment of an annual tax to the bishop or his official for connivance at ecclesiastical concubinage, contributed to aggravate this evil.

Laws against special abuses, such as premature ordinations, pluralities, were frequently made, but only to be broken or evaded. The evil was not attacked at its root. Instead of a law against vague or premature ordinations (sine titulo), bishops ought to have been prevented from receiving (however indirectly) ordination-fees, or profits in any way connected with ordination. The recovery of money for ordination was denounced, indeed, as simony ; and the old laws against absolute ordination were reenacted; but then the bishops were not actually finished for this simony, and absolute ordinations were connived at, or declared to be fit matter for a dispensation under certain circumstances. A wholesome regulation was made by pope Alexander III  to the effect that every bishop ordaining without a title should be bound to support the ecclesiastic so ordained until provided with a sufficient maintenance by his position in the Church. If this enactment had taken full effect, it would have served as a considerable check upon the abuse; but an evasion was soon invented, in the shape of what was called “Titulus patrimonii,”, the principle that any one who possessed private property or means for his own sustenance might still be ordained without a title, it being evidently the design of the old rule “ Ne quis sine titulo ordinetur,” and also of the new regulations, simply to take care that there should be no paupers among the clergy. Personal property, in fact, was thus regarded as a title. The candidate was asked if he possessed sufficient property to qualify him for ordination; and his answer in the affirmative was often too easily accepted. So that the evil soon returned in all its former magnitude; and penniless priests are said to have swarmed like locusts.

No new means of amassing ecclesiastical wealth were now discovered; the mine had already been fully explored, and every source of profit had been turned to account. Indeed, some of these sources seemed now to be nearly or quite exhausted. Large donations and testamentary bequests became much more rare than formerly; for, although it was still customary for the dying to remember the Church in their wills, and still the practice to make pecuniary sacrifices for the quieting of conscience, yet it had been discovered that much smaller sums than had formerly been supposed were sufficient for these purposes. The grand­son of a pious knight who had presented silver candle­sticks and lamps for an altar, now contented himself with providing tapers for the candlesticks and oil for the lamps; and many a noble lady whose grand­mother had presented an altar-cloth richly adorned with gold now thought it sufficient to provide the old ornament with a new covering. This arose partly from a conviction that the Church was rich enough, if not too rich, already ; and that every donation was only like a drop cast into the ocean. Besides this, princes and nobles had learnt to attach a higher value to their land; the worth of this possession having become more apparent in proportion to the progress of civilization and social order. At the same time, the people in general were disgusted at the extravagant expenditure and luxurious habits of the clergy; and there was a prevalent impression that the corruption of the clerical body was to be traced in a great measure to its wealth,—a fact to which attention was especially directed by Arnold of Brescia in the middle of the twelfth century. The same language was held by all the succeeding sects of Cathari and Stedingians, Petrobrussians and Henricians, Waldenses and Albigenses, Beghards and Beguins, brothers of the Free Spirit and of the Free Mind, who, with equal zeal, although not all alike in spirit, called aloud for the reformation of the Church.

The Church, however, now derived great pecuniary advantage from the necessities of noblemen and others who, on joining the crusades, were often obliged to sell or pledge their estates for ready money in order to meet their expenses. In these cases the Church often became the purchaser, or lender, on the most profitable terms. “He that hath no sword, let him buy one,” was applied by St. Bernard to this exigency. On all sides lands were offered for sale, and commonly offered in the first instance to the nearest bishop or abbot; and, how little soever the Church might offer, it was tolerably certain that there would be no higher bidder. Under these circumstances the advantageous purchases of the Church were very large; many mortgaged estates also fell into its hands after the death of the crusaders in a foreign land, whose heirs were unable to redeem the property; and thus the accession of land to the Church during the mania of the crusades was enormous.

At the same time some successful attempts were made to improve the produce of tithes. The oppo­sition of the laity to this payment had now been almost universally overcome by obstinate perseverance in the demand. The Church had also become more skilful in the detection and prevention of fraud in this particular, and hence even the attempts at prac­tising such fraud had become more rare. During the thirteenth century there was greater facility than formerly in raising tithes from the produce of trade and industry, as well as from landed property,—a facility which was promoted by the circulation of the false Decretals; and in some places, but not very extensively, the laity were induced to pay first-fruits as well as tithes.

Some deductions, however, must be made on ac­count of difficulty and loss incurred by the Church in the administration of her property, notwithstanding her financial dexterity and skill, and in spite also of various decrees of popes and councils directed against sacrilegious spoliation and plunder.

And it must not be forgotten that the great wealth of the Church was not entirely misapplied or wasted.

By charitable and literary foundations, as well as by the encouragement of trade and manufactures, and the impulse thus given to mechanical skill and the practice of the fine arts, it must be confessed that during several centuries the application of Church property conferred a great and valuable boon upon mankind.

We have already seen that, before the middle of the tenth century, it had become customary to permit the laity to exchange the performance of a prescribed penance for the payment of a sum of money; in other words, to purchase an indulgence or remission of penance. Still worse, they were permitted to exchange the act of penance, not for money, but for some other act; e.g., the being present at a certain church on a given day, or the repeating of the paternoster before a certain altar. Usually, however, such indulgences were granted only with reference to special and single sins, so that for every new offence a fresh indulgence was to be procured; and this process often became expensive or burdensome. During the present period, however, much was accomplished by the introduction of plenary indulgences. Pope Urban II, at the Council of Clermont, in 1095, declared that, to every one who should join the crusades for driving the Saracens out of Palestine, this act should be reckoned as a full discharge from all penances which he might have incurred, and he should also acquire the remission of all punishment to which he might have become subject by the sins of his whole life. And the bishops were en­joined to publish this decree as extensively as possible in their respective dioceses. To a great extent this offer was accepted, not in the sense in which it was made, as relating to a remission of ecclesiastical penances, but as supposed to secure the Divine forgiveness for all sins committed. It was also expressly declared that the benefit of the indulgences could extend only to true penitents. But it surely must have been understood, that, while men paid a high price, even the price of their estates and lives, for this indulgence, they regarded the grant as one of extraordinary promise; that, in fact, they expected to die as martyrs, with all their sins forgiven; their idea being that their souls, yielded up in the promised land, would without any doubt or difficulty go direct to heaven. This error was doubtless connived at, if not encouraged, by the apostles of the crusades, and the preachers of the indulgence. Certain it is that the enormities perpetrated under the supposed shelter of this indulgence were excessive, including the massacre of the Jews before the crusaders started, and the most wanton debauchery. The sacred camp was a scene of the vilest profligacy and the worst abominations, intermingled with solemn litanies and processions. Such was the effect of an idea in the public mind, however mistaken, of having obtained a complete dispensation for sins.

When the fervour of the crusades had abated, the system of plenary indulgences was not suffered to decay. It was applied to other cases, and was favourably entertained. When a bishop wanted to repair a church, to build an episcopal palace, to throw a bridge over a stream running through his domains, or the like, it was sufficient to proclaim a corresponding indulgence, and hands were soon forthcoming for the work. Even more trifling services soon began to be purchased with indulgences, and in this way the relaxation of the ancient discipline and system of penance, already begun, was completed; while the false and pernicious principles on which that system had been created, instead of being done away, were only extended and confirmed.

We must not suppose that the popes of this age were insensible to the abuses connected with this sys­tem of penance, although they were unable or unwilling to explode the system itself. Gregory VII and Urban Il announced the distinction between true and false penitence as one which needed to be carefully observed. Innocent III, by a special decree, endeavoured to restrain the bishops from the indiscreet granting of indulgences; and it was this pontiff who recognised and formally established the law of compulsory yearly confession by every layman to his own priest, at Easter.  He also enjoined the priest, not merely to hear the confessions of the people as they were disposed to make them, and to impose the proper penance, but also to institute inquiries and make an examination by which he might become better acquainted with the state of the penitent’s mind and the circumstances of his sins, so as to be able to give him good advice, and to apply an appropriate and effectual remedy. It might have been foreseen that even this regulation would become a source of abuse, and would lead to an inquisitorial system of the worst description. But perhaps it was the best remedy which Innocent, with his views of religious truth and duty, could de­vise. We may well be thankful if we have ourselves arrived at a more correct appreciation of the liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free, while yet he effectually teaches them to deplore and renounce their sins.

In the course of the eleventh century, prohibitions of matrimony were greatly extended, reaching to many degrees of consanguinity beyond those which had formerly been prescribed as the limit, and were sanctioned by Alexander II. The burden of this new regulation was found, however, to be intolerable. It was relieved by pope Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council, ad 1215, limiting again the prohibitions to the fourth degree. At the same time, several kinds of affinity which had been reckoned as impediments were now discharged from the list, and it was declared that none but the first degree of affinity should be interpreted as a bar to matrimony. Impediments arising from the relation of sponsors were, however, suffered to remain. In 1235, Gregory IX extended this impediment of spiritual relationship so far that the children of priests should never marry any parties who had been baptised by their fathers in the exercise of their office ; and this continued to form part of the canon law until the Council of Trent.

The publication of banns,—being a more formal revival of the ancient practice of declaring before the Church the intention of parties to marry, which had fallen into disuse,—was made legal and binding by Innocent III. It was a somewhat later regulation that this publication of banns should take place on  three successive Sundays, or festivals, during Divine service.

Most remarkable, during this period, was the multiplication of laws against heretics. Until the middle of the eleventh century, zeal against heresy, in the strict and proper sense of the term, appears to have been unknown in the new Christian states of the West In these quarters, heresy itself could not obtain a footing for several centuries after the irruption of the barbarians; for the most part, the men of those days did not possess that degree of intellectual culture and activity which would lead to religious inquiry, and they were almost universally content to believe implicitly what the Church thought proper to receive and teach. In the middle of the ninth century, the monk Gottschalk was declared a heretic by one council at Mayence, and by another at Chiersy; but the worst punishment inflicted was that, by the latter council, he was obliged to recant, and then confined in a monastery in order that he might not withdraw his recantation; while even these proceedings drew down upon Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, who had taken a lead in them, the bitterest reproaches of severity and cruelty from the majority of his fellow-bishops. The medieval Church had not yet learned to chastise heresy with whips and scorpions; she was now only beginning to feel her way in this matter. This appeared still more strikingly in the case of the celebrated Berengar, who opposed the popular idea of transubstantiation. On this subject the whole age was against him; he was the object of popular horror as a heretic; and as such he was formally condemned by Leo IX. Still, however, and after this condemnation had been repeated by four Gallican councils, he continued to maintain his position that the bread in the Lord’s supper is not changed into the body of Christ. And what followed ? Berengar was cited to Rome by Nicholas II, and there made to subscribe a formula in which he professed to receive the universal faith of the Church on the subject of the Eucharist The same process, but no more, was twice repeated during the pontificate of Gregory VII; and this pontiff was not willing that any further molestation should be offered to a man who continued to maintain and teach a doctrine at variance with the tenets of the Church.

Even during the more frequent occasions which arose in the course of the twelfth century, the Church was but slow in learning the practice of subduing heresy by force. At the beginning of this century appeared the Cathari, especially in Italy,—probably an offshoot from the more ancient oriental Manichees,—who contributed to awaken, even in the minds of those who did not concur in their particular errors, a spirit of opposition to received dogmas. Peter of Bruys and his pupil Henry, Arnold of Brescia and Peter Waldo, were animated by a spirit altogether different from that of the Cathari; they had a more correct perception of Gospel truth, and directed their efforts towards the propagation of real Christian knowledge among the people; but it is probable that the impulse and excitement occasioned by the Cathari gave them more ready access to the popular mind than they would otherwise have possessed, with an opportunity of disseminating their sounder doctrines. At first, this movement was regarded patiently, or with indifference and apathy, by the bishops and clergy; and afterwards, when the number of the sectarians had become too great to be ignored, still the proceedings taken against them, on the part of the Church, were by no means violent The greater number of the sectarians, both of the worse and the better description, were found in the south of France; and by a Council of Toulouse, in 1119, at which Calixtus was personally present, it was merely decreed that all heretics and deceivers of the people should be thrust out of the Church, while the civil magistrate was charged to restrain them.

After this, indeed, great progress was made in the art of defensive warfare against heresy, and zeal against heretics became more and more inflamed. Civil magistrates were found not to be active in repressing heresy; and heretics themselves cared little for excommunication, while, in some cases, they were even protected by. the magistrate, or by some powerful neighbour. What, then, was to be done? In the first place, measures were taken to arouse the popular mind against the enemy, St. Bernard rendering good service in this matter; and then the Church called upon the higher magistrates, kings, and princes, to undertake the cause of the Church for their own sakes. Bernard succeeded in kindling the spirit of the people by preaching this crusade against heretics; nor was it difficult to persuade sovereign princes to visit the offence of heresy with capital punishment. In the course of the twelfth century, several heretics were burnt in France, and during the following century the practice became general. In England, a.d. 1159, thirty men and women who had come from Germany to this country, having been denounced as heretics by a council at Oxford, the king caused them to be branded, flogged out of the town, and turned naked into the fields, where they perished from cold and hunger,—all persons being forbidden to render them any assistance.

In 1209, Innocent III formally proclaimed a crusade against the Albigenses in the south of France; a proclamation which had the effect of stirring up the minds of the people against them to the height of a blind and infuriated frenzy. Already, in 1207, he had written an epistle, calling upon Philip Augustus and the barons to undertake ail expedition against them; and in 1208 he repeated the same call still more urgently, after his legate, the infamous Peter of Castlenau, had been killed by the heretics at Tou­louse. In the fourth Lateran (General) Council, ad 1215, Innocent made provision for the most certain and effectual discovery and punishment of all heresy, or every opinion at variance with the doctrines of the Church in its rise and its development, by ordaining that proceedings should be taken against parties on suspicion of heresy, who were required to clear themselves to the satisfaction of the Church. Bishops were required to visit,—either personally, or by their archdeacons, or other commissioners,—all parts of their diocese suspected of heresy, and to take an oath from the inhabitants that they would not harbour a heretic; while hesitation to take this oath was, of itself, to be regarded as a proof of heresy. It was provided that any temporal sovereign who, upon denunciation and requisition of the Church, might fail to purge his dominions of heresy, should himself be subject to excommunication by the metropolitan and bishops of his province; and if the Church did not receive satisfaction within a year, notice was to be given of this fact to the holy see, and a crusade, or general war against the delinquent protector of heresy, was then to be commenced,—all his vassals and subjects being, in the first place, absolved from their allegiance, and his goods declared to be the property of the first orthodox churchman who might obtain possession of them. Inferior magistrates, in such cases, were simply pronounced infamous and incapable of holding office, or of giving testimony in a court of law ; and it may be observed that, after the example which had been given in the case of the Count of Toulouse, such denunciations could not but produce a considerable effect At length, by a Council of Toulouse, in 1229, the formidable system of the Inquisition was established, and its fearful task distinctly assigned to it. The following is an abstract of the decrees of this council:—

Archbishops and bishops were ordered to appoint in every parish a priest, and two or three approved laymen, to make inquisition after heretics, who should be bound by oath to discover such persons, and to present them to the bishops, to the lords, or to their subordinate officers.

Abbots were enjoined, where they had jurisdiction, to perform the same duties.

Lords were required to search after heretics, and to destroy their places of resort.

The penalty of loss of their estates was decreed against those who knowingly suffered the presence of heretics in their territories. The houses where heretics were found not to be spared.

Punishments were to be inflicted upon every one who should neglect to fulfil the requirements of the preceding canons.

Heretics were to be destroyed, and their lands confiscated.

Officers who should be careless and negligent in searching after heretics were condemned to lose their offices and estates.

None were to be condemned for heresy, unless declared guilty by the bishop of the place.

One lord was authorised to enter the territory of any other, by himself, or with his officers, to apprehend heretics.

Heretics who should voluntarily recant, were not to continue to reside in the neighbourhood in which they dwelt before they recanted, but to be placed among strangers free from suspicion of heresy; to wear two crosses on their clothes, to possess certificates from their bishops, to be disqualified from filling public offices, and so to continue till reinstated by the pope or his legate.

Heretics converted by the fear of death were to be shut up in a walled place, lest they should relapse and corrupt others.

All men above fourteen years of age, and girls above twelve, were commanded to abjure heresy of every kind, to make a profession of faith to the Roman Church, and to engage to prosecute heretics.

All persons of sound mind omitting to confess their sins twice a year to their priest, and to partake of the Eucharist at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, were declared to be under suspicion of heresy.

   Laymen were forbidden to possess any books of the Bible, except a psalter or breviary, with a rosary.

Persons suspected of. heresy were forbidden to practise physic, or to approach the sick after the administration of the viaticum.

None but curates were authorised to receive last wills and testaments.

Prelates and barons were forbidden to employ heretics, or suspected persons, as domestics, or otherwise.

All those against whose character persons of credit should give evidence were declared to be under suspicion of heresy.

These canons were, indeed, of a local character, being designed to take effect in the dominions of the Count of Toulouse, and in other parts of the south of France, then known as the resort of heretics; and therefore they do not possess the power of laws universally binding. Hence they were repeated in a Council of Beziers, or rather, were there for the first time accepted by the bishops then assembled on behalf of their several dioceses. In the same year, they were made, for the most part, binding upon the whole Church. Pope Gregory IX adopted the greater part of the decrees of Toulouse into a new Constitution, containing an universal regulation for conduct to be observed towards heretics, as part of universal ecclesiastical law. By another decree, probably of the year 1237, the same pontiff transferred the task which, according to the decree of Innocent III and the Council of Toulouse, the bishop of every diocese was charged to commit to an episcopal delegate, to  certain commissioners appointed by his own authority, namely, the monks of the new institute of St. Dominic, who were thus constituted a standing Inquisition ; and the decree was addressed not to the bishops, but directly to the superiors of the order,—a manifest and important invasion upon the prerogatives of bishops. Succeeding popes sometimes nominated Franciscan monks, or Minorites, as inquisitors.

The two most powerful sovereigns of the time, the emperor Frederic II and Louis IX of France, did not hesitate to give to the new law the sanction of their authority; thus establishing the principle that it belonged exclusively to the Church to take cognisance of the crime of heresy, and to adopt measures for its extirpation,—the State having nothing more or less to do than to execute the ecclesiastical sentence.

This system was worked, at first, only in those countries and places which were the chief seats of heresy, namely, the south of France, and certain provinces of Germany and Italy. Perhaps, even the bishops at Toulouse and Gregory IX himself hardly regarded the instituted Inquisition as of an universal and permanent character; but subsequently it began to be more extensively introduced. Princes and people, however, soon became wise enough to raise up a barrier against this threatened encroachment of the spiritual power; and hence the Inquisition, with all its severities, was never universally established. Still, the regulations relating to this office continued to form part of the canon law, and were occasionally and partially carried out, so as to be a means of terror to the laity.

It was impossible for force to prevail finally and completely against opinion,—impossible, we may say still more strongly, for the craft or passions of men to suppress the truth of God, and put a stop to the progress of the Gospel; and therefore the end proposed by these severe laws was but partially obtained. Coercion, indeed, in many cases only provoked and aggravated resistance ; while the spectacle of a burn­ing heretic excited ill-will against the Church in the minds of many who had hitherto been free from all tendency to favour (so called) heretical opinions.

Monastic institutions had now become completely incorporated with the Church, with which formerly they had been merely in contact, and sometimes even in collision. The number of monks increased with incredible rapidity. After the end of the eleventh century, scarcely any ten years elapsed without witnessing the formation of a new order of monks or some fresh monastic institution. And this progress would have continued throughout the thirteenth century, had not Innocent III restrained it by the prohibition of new orders.

Since the period of monastic reformation, the disci­pline and morals of the monks had again been very generally relaxed, except among the monks of Clugny, who still adhered to the rules of Benedict as closely as possible, considering the vast increase of their numbers and their great wealth, and were noted for propriety of conduct. But even the strictness of their discipline was not sufficient to satisfy the minds of some men; and hence the foundation of the monks of Grammont, by St. Stephen of Tierno in 1076,—of the Carthusians, near Grenoble, in 1086, by Bruno,—and of the Cistercians, in the diocese of Chalons, in 1098, by a certain Robert. These orders were founded on the rule of Benedict, with additions, in order to secure still greater strictness and austerity; and, in the course of thirty years, the Cistercian order, which reckoned St. Bernard among its members, rose to such a pitch of credit, influence, and wealth, that it. stood almost on a par with the great Benedictine order of Clugny. Robert of Arbrissel founded a republic of nuns and monks at Fontevraud. In 1120, St. Norbert established the order of the Praemonstratensians; and, Norbert having become archbishop of Magdeburg in 1126, the order afterwards became exceedingly flourishing and extensive.

Now also sprang up two entirely new kinds of societies,—the Spiritual Knights in the twelfth century, and the Mendicant orders in the thirteenth ; and these were of great moment to the Church.

The Spiritual Knights owed their origin to the Crusades. The three principal of these orders were formed in Palestine; and the professed object of all alike was to carry on hostilities against the enemies of the faith. In 1113, a society of knights was formed at Jerusalem, under the name of the Hospitalers of St. John (afterwards called Johannites), charging itself with the care of the sick and wounded in the hospital of St John at Jerusalem, with which was speedily combined the duty of perpetual war against the Mahomedans. In 1118 a second society was formed, for the same purpose, at Jerusalem, under the name of Templars. In 1190 arose the order of German Knights, under the same rule as the Templars, and differing from them only in admitting into their society none but Germans, while the Templars consisted of knights of all nations. These were all monkish knights, or knightly monks. They were actuated by a belief that it was a pious work, acceptable to God, to put infidels to death,—a belief common to them with all crusaders, and agreeing with the popular opinion of Europe; the difference being that, what the majority took up as an occasional or temporary task, these knights professed as the work of their whole lives. No doubt, besides this fanatical spirit, the prospect of wealth and honour to be obtained by such combinations was a motive with many of these knights; as may appear from the nature of the privileges which they obtained from the pope, and from the actual results of their efforts. In the course of half a century from the date of their formation, each of these three orders possessed property in Europe and Asia, sufficient, altogether, to form the revenue of a kingdom, and had also attained a degree of power beyond that of any European monarch. To say the least, this proves that the fanaticism of these knights was such as entirely consisted with a ready perception of their own interests.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, two men, in different places, about the same time, conceived the idea of founding a new society, differing from all others, inasmuch as its members should always, in appearance at least, be destitute of wealth, and should subsist entirely upon alms. With a view to establish this kind of communism, Francis, of Assisi, collected a number of enthusiasts in Italy; and afterwards Dominic, a native of Castile, organised another fraternity of the same kind in the south of France, who bound themselves not to possess any property even in common, but to procure all things necessary for their subsistence by begging, in the strictest sense of the expression, and never to acquire even in this way more than enough for the supply of a single day. The new movement did not at first win favour at the papal court; but in 1203 Innocent III found himself obliged to sanction the society and rule of Francis, who was now no less than a saint in the popular opinion of Italy; and in 1216 his successor, Honorius III, confirmed the similar institute of Dominic. These societies were peculiarly adapted for wide dissemination. They could exist anywhere and everywhere, having no occasion to wait for the foundation and endowment of costly monasteries, while enough for their purposes was at hand wherever they could find any kind of shelter. The members of these orders had also at the same time greater access to persons in every condition in life, and especially to the working classes. The Franciscan entered every cottage, and knocked at those doors which would have been too low and too narrow for a fat Cistercian monk. He had the manners, habit, and appearance, of a poor man,—conversed in the poor man’s dialect,—and was in every way adapted to gain the confidence of the lower orders of society. Besides this, the mendicants established an intimate connection with the laity everywhere by a system of affiliation, admitting those who were not desirous or capable of entering their orders into a kind of association with themselves, under the name of Tertiaries (Tertiaries of St. Francis, Tertiaries of St. Dominic). These Tertiaries were bound by no monastic vow, but simply placed under obligation of promoting the interests of the society to which they were attached, while they were themselves living in the world, and were engaged in their ordinary occupations; in return for which services they were to be regarded as belonging to the family, and partakers of all its blessings. They were also to consider themselves subject to the superior of the order, and pledged to implicit obedience to his commands. In the middle of the thirteenth century there was hardly any place, certainly no province, in which the Franciscans and Dominicans had not their Tertiaries; and hence it is not strange that at this time the influence of these two orders exceeded that of all others.

In the foregoing period, the monastery of Clugny had become the centre of a large number of associated monasteries, which gradually spread all over Europe, and formed the first instance of a monastic republic or confederation. This was a new feature in monastic history; and during the period now under review, this pattern was extensively followed. No one now thought of founding a monastery, but of instituting an order. The Benedictine order was monarchical,—the abbot of Clugny being the absolute master of all its monasteries. The Cistercian order was more of a republican, or rather aristocratical, character,—the abbot of Citeaux giving the abbots of subordinate monasteries some share in the government of the whole body, and also conceding to them more legislative power than was accorded to the Benedictines. These abbots had also the chief part in the election of the abbot of Citeaux. At certain times the abbots of the several monasteries assembled, as deputies of the order, in a general chapter, at which all business relating to the whole body was transacted, and all laws propounded and enacted by which the society was to be bound. By this arrangement all jealousy towards the parent monastery was avoided, and many other advantages secured, especially that of obtaining for each abbot a high degree of respect and influence in his own monastery, while he was regarded not as an isolated governor, but as a member of the whole ruling body of the order. The essential features of this Cistercian institution were adopted by the new order of spiritual knights. The grand master corresponded to the abbot of Citeaux, and the commanders of provinces to the several abbots of inferior monasteries ; all together forming the chapter or standing council of the grand master. The institution of a general chapter was adopted by the Carthusians, Praemonstratensians, and other later orders. In 1215 Innocent III, in his Lateran Council, made it a law that each of those orders should hold a chapter once in every three years, “ like the Cistercians.”

The institution of the Mendicants, on the other hand, was more of the monarchical kind, modified by some admixture of democratical elements. At the head of the whole body was the general of the order, who had nothing to do with any particular monastery. All stood under the general as a common superior; and the subordinate heads of particular monasteries were not abbots, but provincials or priors. All members of the order had a common share in the election of the general; and set periods were appointed for a general chapter, which was composed not only of provincials or rulers of provinces, or the priors, but also of deputies elected by each monastery. The general, with a senate of assistants, resided in Rome; and by this means the order had the advantage of immediate communication with the papal see.

 

CONSTITUTIONS OF MONASTIC ORDERS.

 

It was arranged by these different congregations that no one should receive into its body voluntary deserters from another. And it was also understood that there should be a certain distance between the religious houses of the different orders. This was to avoid interference, and for the sake of peace; but animosities were not wanting.

These orders of monks were supported at first, to a great extent, by voluntary contributions; but they soon got into their hands large portions of Church property.

The abbots, especially the great abbots of Clugny and Citeaux, and the generals of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, soon became formidable to the bishops, whom, in fact, they greatly exceeded in power; and they stood in close connection with the pope, who often employed them as his legates in matters of importance. The monastic orders were, indeed, the natural allies of the papacy, and were always ready to assist it in carrying out any of its pretensions which did not interfere with their own interests. The popes gave the monks protection against all opponents or rivals; and they received in return not only a portion of revenue from the monasteries, but, what was of far greater importance, zealous friends to advocate the cause and uphold the interests of the papacy all over Europe. Great privileges were, therefore, accorded to the monks. Sometimes their property was declared exempt from the payment of tithes; sometimes their churches declared to be beyond the reach of an interdict which might be imposed upon the whole province in which they were situate; and they were generally made independent of episcopal jurisdiction. By degrees, however, the popes became disposed to be more sparing in the grants of such privileges and exemptions; and hence arose a practice of forging documents professing to contain such grants from earlier pontiffs. The monastery of St. Medard, at Soissons, became famous as a source from whence such forged documents were liberally supplied; and this practice had become so notorious by the beginning of the thirteenth century, that from that time there was comparatively little opportunity of making use of it. The connection with Rome was, however, now sufficiently established to insure the essential independence of the monasteries from undue or oppressive inter­ference on the part of the bishops, while the bishops were also secured in the exercise of their rights as ordinaries.

The power of the bishops in the government and administration of their dioceses had become greatly limited, partly by the power acquired by the chapters, and partly by the increase of ecclesiastical patronage in other hands. At the same time, as we have seen, the archdeacons also gradually lost their power, and no longer possessed that large share which they once had in the administration of diocesan affairs. But this suppression of their power was not completely effected until the middle of the thirteenth century; f for the archdeacons had often an influential party in the diocese, and their hands were strengthened sometimes by the co-operation of the chapters, sometimes by their connection with powerful families, and sometimes by their connection with Rome. In order to undermine their power, the bishops had appointed their own vicars and officials, who acted as their delegates and commissioners; thus taking into their own hands (by deputy) the business which the archdeacons had assumed a right to discharge. But this was accomplished only by degrees. The bishops were now also often assisted by titular bishops as coadjutors; often in the persons of those who had been consecrated to dioceses in the East, and afterwards expelled by the victorious enemies of the Christian name.

We have already seen that, before the conclusion of the former period, the popes had actually attained to that position in reference to the whole Church which had been assigned to them by the forged Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore. During the first twenty-five years of the present period,—the space which intervened from the accession of Leo IX to that of Gregory VII,—this position was formally and universally recognised. Amidst those efforts at ecclesiastical reformation to which they were excited by the emperor Henry III, the bishops of Rome came to be expressly acknowledged as possessing supreme power in the whole Church. Even under Leo IX the French bishops distinctly recognised the pope as summus rector ecclesiae. Gregory accordingly found the papacy already established on the Pseudo-Isidorian basis; and it was the task of himself and his successors to introduce a new state of things, in which the popes were to be something more than the Pseudo-Isidore had made them. According to the Isidorian system, to the pope was assigned the chief or supreme power in the Church; but, according to the plan of Gregory and his successors, all power in the Church was to be vested in his hands, so that the pope was to be not merely the supreme, but the sole, ruler of the ecclesiastical body; he was to be no less than episcopus ecclesiae universalis, and all other arch­bishops and bishops were to be regarded merely as his deputies or vicars in their several districts.

The steps by which this change was accomplished were the following:—

In 1079, Gregory VII exacted a new and unprecedented oath of allegiance from the new patriarch of Aquileia, before he should receive the pall; and by a Council of Rome, in the same year, it was enacted that in future all bishops should take this oath previously to their consecration at Rome. The oath was framed according to the feudal pattern, and to it was appended also a promise on the part of the bishops to defend the supremacy of the Roman Church and the regalia of St. Peter against all the world, “contra omnes homines,”—to attend without hesitation all councils to which the pope might summon them either by brief or by legate,—to receive respectfully (honorifice) all legates sent to them by the holy see,—and to renounce intercourse with all persons who should fall under the papal ban. This oath was to be exacted, it will be observed, only from those bishops who were immediately subject to the see of Rome, and from metropolitans who should thence receive the pall. No protest was made against this enactment during the pontificate of Gregory. Opposition arose, however, under some of his successors; not from the archbishops themselves, but from the sovereign princes of the states to which they belonged. In 1100, the king of Poland expressed to Paschal II his astonishment at the oath which he had proposed to his archbishop of Cracow, saying that he would never suffer him to take it; and the same resistance was made in Hungary, in 1110. But, as the metropolitans themselves were not disposed to resist, the obstacles raised by the temporal power were but of little avail. Metropolitans often went to Rome to fetch their pall, and there took the oath without hesitation; and at the beginning of the thirteenth century all the metropolitans of the Western Church had taken this oath, and were thus in fetters to the pope. By degrees, also, the custom gained ground of consecrating foreign bishops at Rome, by whom also the Gregorian oath was taken. In process of time the form of this oath was somewhat altered, and it received the addition of two new articles tending to make the bishops still more completely subject to the Roman see.

Hitherto it had been the right of metropolitans to confirm the election of their diocesan bishops; a right which had been left in their hands by the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, and was practised uninterruptedly until the end of the eleventh century. But from the time of Gregory VII this right was claimed, and eventually exercised, by the Roman see, evidently in accordance with the design of making Rome the centre and source of all ecclesias­tical power and authority. Not that this power of confirmation was taken completely out of the hands of the archbishops during this period; but it was now being gradually attracted to Rome.

The new character given to papal legates contributed to the same result. They were sent forth not merely on special occasions, or for the discharge of some single act, but as plenipotentiaries, and with power extending over an unlimited period of time; being authorised, at their pleasure, to convene councils, which the metropolitans and bishops were bound to attend,—to preside at these councils,—and to reserve for the decision of the pope every question which these councils did not decide in accordance with their views. The pope thus virtually annihilated the jurisdiction of the bishops and metropolitans, by deciding at his own tribunal cases for which an appeal properly lay to them, or to the provincial council; and he often undertook to decide in the first instance upon causes which belonged properly to episcopal jurisdiction. In this way the pope was acting as the ordinary of the whole Church; exercising, not merely a supreme, but a concurrent and even pre-eminent, jurisdiction everywhere.

This point was in several instances contested during the pontificate of Gregory VII, by bishops of Germany, England, France, and Spain. A more formidable opposition afterwards arose on the part of sovereign princes, who could not but perceive how far such legatine powers were likely to interfere with their own supremacy. In 1090, William, king of England, declared to Urban II that no legate should come into his kingdom without his permission, and extorted from the pope a promise that he would never send one without having first sought such permission. In 1119, Calixtus II renewed this promise to Henry I. In 1188, William, king of Scotland, extorted the same promise from Clement III. The kings of France must have already come to an understanding with the pope on this point; for, in 1168, Alexander III wrote to Louis VII. that he would send a legate by his permission. But this opposition on the part of princes was neither universal nor lasting. The new legates were received without opposition, in Germany, before and after the reign of Frederic I. In Poland and Hungary, in Sweden and Denmark, and even in France and England, the popes often succeeded in forcing the entrance of a legate against the will of a weak prince, or of introducing one, as it were by stealth, by sending a deputy armed with the power of a legate, only without the title. Generally speaking, in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, men learnt to submit to the evil which at first appeared to be intolerable.

Besides this, Paschal II, the first pope of the twelfth century, declared that the legates were entitled to receive support from the provinces to which they were sent; and this they received under the name of procurations, a term formerly applied to the fees paid to the bishops at their visitations. These “ procurations” became a means of great exaction very burdensome to the Church, and a source of wealth to papal favourites who were selected to fill the office of legates. In short, the legates were enormous plunderers.

A fourth means of grasping at the sum total .of ecclesiastical power consisted in attaching the right of dispensations exclusively to the Roman see. Until the time of Gregory VII, this right had belonged solely to the bishops; but Gregory established the principle that in all cases in which a bishop could grant dispensation or absolution, the pope was competent to do the same, so that any party requiring such grant was at liberty to apply either to the one or the other as he pleased. He recognised indeed the right of bishops to make such grants; but he professed to regard it as having been conceded to them merely for the convenience of parties requiring the grant, maintaining that it was the indisputable right of the pope to bind and loose, when, where, whomsoever he pleased. He affected to believe that much of the prevalent relaxation in ecclesiastical discipline was attributable to the abuse of the power of dispensation and absolution on the part of the bishops but he made no further attempt at taking the power entirely out of their hands. It was a far more wary act of aggression to be satisfied with propounding and acting upon this principle of the concurrent power of dispensation,—a principle which, in fact, involved that of regarding the whole Church as his diocese,—than to make an attempt at wresting the power at once out of the hands of the bishops, which at that time would have aroused a resolute resistance. Gregory was content that the papacy should abide its time in this particular, as in others.

The successors of Gregory had only to go forward in the way which he had pointed out. The custom of applying to the pope for dispensations soon became prevalent, and this too for “ dispensationes antecedentes,” “dispensationes ante-factum,” a form in which they had rarely or ever been granted by the bishops; and when these had been repeatedly obtained (although frequently refused) the idea began to gain ground among the people that the power of granting such dispensation belonged to the pope alone, while at the same time the bishops were the less conscious that anything had been abstracted from themselves. Before the end of the twelfth century it had become the common practice, in seeking for a dispensation, to apply to Rome; and so far had this custom prevailed that the first pontiff of the thirteenth century (Innocent III) found himself encouraged, without fear of contradiction, openly to proclaim the principle that the pope alone possessed the power of granting full dispensations, and to reduce the power formerly exercised by bishops to the simple privilege of granting an indulgence for forty days.

Innocent III could venture upon this step the more easily inasmuch as the judicial power of the bishops in their several dioceses had been almost annihilated,—a circumstance which greatly tended to establish the idea of an universal papal episcopate, and is to be regarded as another step towards the realisation of the new idea of papal despotism. In the course of the twelfth century, it was established as a custom that in all cases, without exception, an appeal should lie from the sentence of a bishop to the papal see; a practice quite in accordance with the theory of the supreme power of the pope over the whole Church. Afterwards arose the practice of carrying directly to Rome causes which, according to ancient usage and established right, ought to have been taken in the first instance to the bishop’s court; and it sometimes happened that causes pending in the bishop’s court were suddenly transferred to Rome before any decision had been pronounced. It is obvious that such practices were consistent with no other theory than that of an universal papal episcopate. If the practice was not derived from that theory, it at all events tended to establish it. It is always a good step towards power to establish certain practices which shall silently infuse into the popular mind those notions or prejudices which may afterwards be employed as a fresh starting­point, or foundation, for new claims or acts of usurpation.

That depression of the metropolitan power which had already begun was carried forward during this period; the metropolitans being placed merely in the position of papal delegates, and then retained so far as they were made subservient to papal interests, but no further. The popes, often, at pleasure, interfered with their ancient right of consecrating provincial bishops. As late as the eleventh century, this was regarded as the indefeasible right of metropolitans, which could not be questioned or disturbed. Even Gregory VII, although he consecrated some provincial bishops under peculiar circumstances and as exceptional cases, made no attempt to invade the right of metropolitans in this respect; so that, for example, when Robert entreated him to consecrate a new bishop of Malta, he wrote back word to him, that he must first show him that Malta did not belong to the metropolitan province of Reggio, since in that case he would be unable to comply with his request, inasmuch as by so doing he would be infringing the right of the archbishop, and give inexcusable offence to all his brethren the bishops. Under the successors of Paschal II, however, it became a common practice for bishops elect to run to Rome for consecration from different provinces; and the popes now began to perform the ceremony without even offering an apology to the metropolitan for so doing. The right of metropolitans to consecrate provincial bishops was not denied; but as soon as it was maintained that the right belonged also to the pope “ ex plenitudine potestatis,” it was, to a great extent, taken practically out of their hands.

Some metropolitans sought to indemnify themselves for their loss by exercising an immediate jurisdiction within the dioceses of their provincial bishops; but the bishops found themselves protected from this invasion by Rome; and such attempts at immediate jurisdiction were expressly prohibited by Innocent III.

The popes now appropriated to themselves the exclusive right of convening General Councils; together with the right of convoking provincial councils, and of confirming all synodal acts. (I.) As to General Councils Gregory VII began by gradually converting the annual Lent councils at Rome into General Councils, to which he summoned foreign bishops, perhaps in virtue of the obligation incurred by the Gregorian oath. He did not cite all bishops, but only certain bishops out of the several provinces, who were to act as representatives of their brethren. In this way, it was easy to pack a council consisting of the pope’s creatures and dependents, and thus to rule the Church arbitrarily, but at the same time with the appearance of legal regularity. Gregory, however, did not succeed in this attempt so easily as he perhaps expected. Of the bishops whom he summoned only a few appeared; and from the English bishops he received answer that their sovereign had actually forbidden their obedience to the summons, by declaring that he would not suffer any of his bishops to quit the kingdom. He therefore determined to proceed very leisurely in the matter, and not to press his demands too far. He summoned only a few foreign bishops, and those upon whose obedience he could rely. His immediate successors did the same; only all along assuming the right of the pope to convene General Councils, and taking it for granted that no other power on earth was competent to convene them. Urban II seized a favourable opportunity of issuing a more universal summons, when he knew that it would meet with ready acquiescence, in convening the councils of Placentia and Clermont,— and hence he obtained the desired and important sanction of a precedent. After this, the practice was easily confirmed; especially as, in the independent circumstances of the European states, there was no sovereign who could convene a General or Universal Council. The popes thus obtained the power of convening General Councils; and not only so, but (of course) the power also of postponing them.—(2.) The right had long since been conceded to the pontiff of convening a provincial council wherever he might be in person; and hence the popes had not much difficulty in establishing the principle that their legates could do the same. This practice gained considerable ground before the end of the eleventh century; and it prevailed during the twelfth and thirteenth without opposition.—(3.) Before the middle of the twelfth century, the metropolitans and bishops had become persuaded of the necessity of sending all the acts and decrees of their councils to Rome for confirmation. The introduction of this most important innovation cost the popes but little effort. From the beginning of the twelfth century scarcely a provincial council was held which was not under the presidency of a papal legate; and it was assumed as a principle of ecclesiastical law that all acts of councils derived their validity from the authority of the pope. In the course of the twelfth century provincial councils fell almost entirely into disuse. The few that were held were convened merely at the pleasure of the popes, and to carry out their views.

The popes now claimed the exclusive right of canonisation. This ceremony arose out of a very ancient practice. As early as the third century it was customary for every Church to commemorate the anniversaries of the deaths of those martyrs who had belonged to its communion. When the age of martyrdom ceased, this honour was paid to other members of the Church who were distinguished for their sanctity, or were said to have performed miracles; and, in course of time, these individuals received other honours besides the celebration of their anniversary. Until the twelfth century it was the custom for every bishop to admit into the list of saints, or to canonise, whom he pleased within the limits of his diocese. Towards the end of the tenth century, the chapter of Augsburg, being desirous that their late bishop Ulrich should be honoured as a saint not only in that diocese but throughout the whole Church, requested pope John XV (a.d. 993) to grant letters-patent to this effect, and to enjoin it as the duty of the whole Church to give the new saint due honour. John willingly complied with this request, and in the course of the next century many popes claimed the right of making saints for the whole Church; but none of them yet thought of forbidding canonisation by bishops for their own dioceses. Thus, in 1153, an archbishop of Rouen canonised a monk of his diocese. But, about seven years afterwards, Alexander III. claimed the power of canonisation as an exclusive right of the Roman see. In the Bull (a.d. 1161), in which he canonised Edward of England, he declared that so high and weighty an affair could appertain only to the pope; and in 1170 he renewed this claim, by a decree, which was afterwards formally adopted into the canon law.

Another, and very important, step towards the establishment of the papal universal episcopate was the assumption of the free and absolute disposal of all ecclesiastical offices. It does not appear to have entered into the plan of Gregory VII thus to exclude the temporal power from all influence in the filling up of Church offices; and perhaps it hardly developed itself in the minds of even those popes who took the first steps towards its fulfilment. Down to the middle of the twelfth century, we find no example of the interference of popes in the disposal of ecclesiastical appointments beyond the limits of their own diocese, although they had long since manifested a desire to have an indirect influence in the filling up of bishoprics and abbacies. In the middle of the twelfth century, the popes began for the first time to imitate the practice of temporal princes by sending to the bishops and chapters individuals with letters of recommendation, requesting them to provide those persons with some suitable post in their dioceses or chapters. The first papal brief of this kind was one by Adrian IV (a.d. 1154), and this was occasioned by peculiar circumstances which seemed to make it unexceptionable. It was addressed to Theobald, bishop of Parts, in favour of the chancellor of Louis VII, asking for a canonry for him,—a request which was readily complied with by the bishop, although probably not without some demur on the part of the chapter. Under the successors of Adrian such recommendations became more frequent; the popes, however, still recognising the right of collation as vested in the bishops and chapter, —in fact, recognising this right by the very act of preferring such requests. Soon, however, the number of these papal recommendations became equal to the benefices in the gift of ecclesiastical patrons; and in some cases these requests (preces, as they were called) were not complied with. The “preces” were then changed into “mandata;” and when obedience to the “mandata” was not rendered, they were accompanied with certain executors, charged with the office of putting the nominees in possession of the benefices, in failure of compliance by the bishops. To this pitch the matter came under Alexander III,—that is to say, under the second successor of that pope who gave the first example of “preces papales.”

The shameless abuse of this practice was carried to an enormous extent under succeeding pontiffs. Before the expiration of thirty years all the benefices in Germany, France, and England, the right of collation to which had been vested in bishops and chapters, were filled with papal “precists,” or nominees, and these were for the most part strangers, who were even unacquainted with the language of the country in which they were beneficed. The scandal at length became so great, and the protest of the bishops so loud, that a decree proceeded even from Rome itself to the effect that no spiritual person should be competent to hold a benefice with cure of souls in a country the language of which he did not understand. But it soon appeared that even this decree was a delusion; for the popes began to grant frequent dispensations, by which its provision was evaded, not omitting to make a separate charge for these dispensations to their own nominees. Rome had become thus thoroughly expert in the art of plunder.

In this matter the chapters fared worse than the bishops,—the popes making less hesitation to attack their rights, and finding it greatly to their interest to fill the chapters with their own friends and adherents. Still, however, the form of collation was left with the ancient patrons; and, as long as the shadow remained, there was hope that at some future time the substance might be recovered. With the thirteenth century, however, even this shadow passed away. Innocent III began not only to nominate, but to issue bulls of collation, merely giving notice to bishops and chapters that collation had been made; and, in 1210, he declared that the pope had absolute right to dispose of all benefices in favour of persons who had rendered good service to the Roman see. From this time the popes ignored or set aside, at their pleasure, the rights of all patrons, lay as well as ecclesiastical; and from this time also they assumed the right of their legates to confer benefices, and claimed the power to dispose of bishoprics and abbeys as well as of smaller benefices.

Thus had the Roman see grasped all the rights and privileges of an universal episcopate; an event which could not have been anticipated, to its full extent, even by Gregory VII. This claim to universal episcopate was favoured and supported by the previous claim to supremacy over temporal princes. Thus Adrian IV, after all his humiliations from Frederic I, assumed it as an incontrovertible fact that the pope was appointed by God himself as the sovereign proprietor of all Christian kingdoms; and in this capacity he gave permission to Henry II of England to undertake the conquest of Ireland. Innocent set himself to reduce these principles to a system; and these claims were, in many cases, too easily admitted by sovereign princes. The world thus beheld the introduction of a new form of government, on the principle of a papal theocracy.

Strong protestations, however, were made, and in some cases effectually made, against these claims and assumptions, by various sovereigns. As long as the popes exercised their pretended authority in favour of the princes, or of those whom the popes were disposed to exalt to the rank of sovereign princes, there was no difficulty. But resistance came, and that with effect, when the pope attempted to depose a prince, or to cross his will and interests. The popes, however, as much as possible, avoided contesting the principle of their theocracy; they withdrew their claims, or shifted their ground of interference, whenever there was a show of formidable opposition.

The growth of papal power was favoured also by the formation of the new canon law, assisted by the Decree of Gratian and the collection of the papal Decretals. This new canon law, doubtless, owes its origin to that zeal for the study of jurisprudence which awoke in the middle of the twelfth century. About this time a school for the study of civil Roman law flourished at Bologna under the celebrated Irnerius, thousands of students from all parts of Europe being attracted to that university by the fame of this great teacher. A monk named Gratian resolved to engraft also the study of ecclesiastical law upon the studies of this university; and in 1151 he published his manual entitled “Concordantia Canonum Discordantium.” This was an attempt to reduce the canon law to a scientific form corresponding to that of the civil law. Gratian did not content himself with merely compiling a new collection of canons, and reducing all to a better order, but he introduced a systematic study of ecclesiastical law. Accordingly, the universal zeal for the study of law now divided itself between the civil and the canon law, especially at Bologna and at Paris; and there arose doctors of canon law distinct from mere theologians, at the foundation of whose science lay the new collection made by Gratian, now called the Decree of Gratian. Soon afterwards followed a collection of papal Decretals, which was announced, doubtless under the favour of Rome, as the true source of ecclesiastical law, and very soon came to be more frequently employed as such than even the Decree of Gratian. It is to be observed that Gratian in his Decree had inserted not only the earlier papal Decretals which were included in the collection of Dionysius, and the greater number of those which had been fabricated by the Pseudo-Isidore, but also a number of more modern decretals and pretended judicial decisions. In proportion as the compilation grew into repute, and men became accustomed to regard it as the only repository of ecclesiastical law, so also necessarily the character and credit of the papal Decretals rose; and this naturally gave rise to the idea which possessed the next generation of Bolognese canonists after Gratian. It was discovered that Gratian, not having taken the pains to make his collection complete in respect of papal decrees and ordinances, had left a rich gleaning for a future collector. Hence Bernard of Pavia determined to make a still better use of the sources of ecclesiastical law; and he collected five books of papal Decretals, which, being published in 1190, were received at Bologna with avidity, and made the subject of lectures and of private study. Other such collections were now made, even at the suggestion of popes; and were sent, with papal recommendation, to the universities of Paris and Orleans, Bologna and Padua, in order to receive publicity by means of their canonists. At length, in 1230, Gregory IX caused the Dominican Raymond de Pennaforti, his penitentiary, to compile a new collection; which, by reason of its greater completeness, and its more systematic order, soon superseded all others. This comprised all the decretals, decrees, constitutions, and decisions of the popes, which had been brought together by earlier collectors, with the addition of others, especially those of Gregory IX himself. The whole was published, under the sanction of a bull of Gregory, in 1234, by the university of Paris, and in 1235 at Bologna.

Chairs were now established in all the universities for the interpretation of these Decretals. A distinction was carefully drawn between Decretalists and Decretists, the former occupying the highest consideration; so that in all suits, and before every tribunal, a ground of decision drawn from Decretals overbore every other which could be drawn only from the Decree of Gratian. In a word, these Decretals soon became the only source of law for actual practice in the courts; and the Decree of Gratian was used merely as supplementary, in cases not decided by the Decretals.

It is evident that a system of ecclesiastical law introduced at such a time, and under such circumstances, would be so constructed as to favour the establishment of the papal universal episcopate; and to assist the Roman see in obtaining the plenitude of power. It was easy for the popes to introduce and establish as law whatever they pleased They had but to form a decretal, and send it to the canonists, who placed it under its proper head in their collection, and expounded it to five thousand students at Bologna, and ten thousand at Paris, by whom it was eagerly received as a valuable addition to their learning. Besides this, the new Decretal law had the effect of stamping durability upon all those innovations in the ecclesiastical constitutions which had taken place during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

With respect to the general growth and advancement of the papacy, it would be difficult to give a more accurate and candid statement than that which is presented to us in the following words of a recent writer:—“Look back for a moment”, says Mr.Hussey, “to survey the progress of the papal supremacy, and you will perceive by what means it increased; how gradually, insensibly, and sometimes almost involuntarily, pretensions grew up, and claims were enlarged; how these were submitted to, and then acknowledged by those upon whom they were made, until half the world believed them to be just and right. It would be historically untrue to attribute all this to the personal ambition of the popes, of whom many, we cannot doubt, acted with good intentions, and were full of zeal for the name of Christ, and for the welfare of his Church. Indisputably, Rome often did good service to the Church; and every weakness in the separate members of the body, throughout the Roman empire generally, contributed to strengthen the ascendency actually possessed by the leading see. But yet, taking all these causes into the account, and making full allowance both for good motives in those who were most active, and for human infirmity in those who passively promoted it, the history of the growth of the papal power, i, e., popery, properly so called, exhibits clearly the rise and progress of a worldly principle within the Church. Setting out from an acknowledged precedence among equals in rank, possessing at first an actual influence well earned by distinguished merit, Rome proceeded by degrees to the fictions of St. Peter’s supremacy, and the pope’s inheritance of a divine right to govern the whole Church. When we observe how these doctrines, unheard of in primitive ages, were first obscurely intimated, then more broadly asserted, after this perpetually referred to, introduced into every opening, never omitted, but every incident taken advantage of, and all circumstances dexterously turned into an argument to support them; how succeeding popes never retracted, but adopted and uniformly improved upon, the pretensions of their predecessors; how an Innocent went beyond a Julius, a Leo beyond Innocent, and a Gregory VII, in later times, overshot him; when we see the care and anxiety with which popes seem in all things, and sometimes above all things, to have provided for the security of their own authority; and how this end was carried out by interpolations and falsification of ecclesiastical documents, which, when detected, were never retracted or disavowed, and somewhat later grew into a notorious and scandalous system of forgery ; when we weigh all these things, it seems impossible for unprejudiced readers to acquit the papal seat of the charge of worldly ambition and corrupt motives. Individual occupants differed in character: we must not suppose all were unprincipled; some were more, some less, free from human frailty; some were adorned by many virtues. But the system, founded on a false assumption, had this original error, that it was essentially a human polity: it was an ecclesiastical empire, which would maintain the Church of Christ by a power of the same kind as the secular, except that it claimed greater authority, and a more directly divine origin. And the corrupt seed, which was mingled thus with the first plantation, did not fail to bring forth its proper fruit, from time to time, in the evident acts of personal ambition or unjustifiable arrogance of individual popes, as well as the dishonest artifices of spurious documents and false authorities. The Church has since reaped a full harvest of bitterness in her unhappy dissensions for ages.”

 

FROM BONIFACE VIII TO THE REFORMATION.

 

After the death of Nicholas IV, in 1292, the see was vacant more than two years; while several external circumstances contributed to increase the difficulty of agreement between the two contending factions of the cardinals. The great vassal of the Roman see, the king of Naples, had formed a party in the college of cardinals attached to his interests, which gave him large influence in the election of a new pope; but to this Neapolitan-French party among the cardinals, there was opposed another which stood in connection with the leading families of Rome. At the death of Nicholas, these parties were nearly balanced. But at length the cardinals, finding themselves obliged to proceed to an election, and urged to it by the king of Naples, resolved to elect a pope from neither of the two conflicting parties; and in looking round for a person equally unconnected with the interests of both, one of the cardinals thought of an old monk, who had lived for many years as a hermit, and had attained the reputation of eminent sanctity. He was immediately elected by acclamation, and three bishops were despatched to the old man, bearing the decree of his election. He was brought from his retreat to the town of Aquila, which he entered on an ass led by the two kings of Naples and Hungary; and here he was consecrated under the name of Celestin V, amidst the shouts and rejoicings of an immense concourse of spectators. The cardinals, however, soon discovered that they had committed a great mistake. Celestin was not only incapable of the intrigues of papal policy, but unable even to transact the ordinary business of Church government. He applied himself to the task of reforming all the courtiers and individuals by whom he was surrounded, designing to convert them into saints of the same order as himself; and, finding insuperable difficulties in this undertaking, he adopted the most unwise and dangerous measures with a view to effect his object. Enraged at the opposition which he encountered from the cardinals in this good undertaking, the new pope threw himself into the arms of Charles II, king of Naples, who had discovered his weakness, and had resolved to turn it to account in his own favour. Charles affected to admire the pontiff’s sanctity, and made him believe that he was ready to look up to him as a father, and to become his very dutiful and tractable son. The old man, unacquainted with the position and relative strength of parties, and imagining that the support of Charles would be more than sufficient to enable him to carry out his plans, was soon surrounded by his creatures, and was induced to take up his residence in Naples. Even the old Neapolitan party among the cardinals, together with their opponents, were now convinced that Celestin was wholly unfit to govern, and heartily wished him back again in his hermitage: by a series of vexatious proceedings and other artifices, they soon contrived to make him concur in this desire; and on the 13th of December, in the same year, he actually resigned the office which had become to him an intolerable burden. The cardinal of Cajeta was immediately elected as his successor, who ascended the papal throne under the title of Boniface VIII. Of him it has been affirmed ad 1294. that he was the last of the popes, in the same sense in which it has been said that Brutus and Cassius were the last of the Romans; being as worthy to fall with the phantom of papal theocracy as they were to fall with that of Roman liberty. Certainly Boniface manifested in the defence of the theocracy no less spirit and courage than these noble Romans did in the cause which they had espoused; but his fall was less glorious than theirs, inasmuch as the world had good reason to believe that it was a gainer by the overthrow of his phantom,—so that even history itself has not always done him justice.

The very first undertaking of Boniface proclaimed a new pontiff who, no less bold and decided than Innocent III, had formed a right estimate of the greatness and difficulty of the part which he was called upon to sustain, as well as of the means which were at his disposal, and who was determined, in the first place, to deliver himself and the papacy from the entanglement in which the weakness of his immediate predecessor had involved them. He announced to the king of Naples, immediately after his election, his intention of returning to Rome; and he took measures for his departure before the king could recover from the surprise into which he had been thrown by this announcement from a pontiff who, before his election, had professed the utmost devotion to his interests. His prompt appearance in Rome, without previous notice, took the Romans also by surprise, and disarmed all opposition.

It now became the great object of his efforts to uphold that theocratic principle according to which the temporal and spiritual supremacy were combined in the hands of the pope.

A war between Arragon and Anjou respecting the affairs of Naples and Sicily had terminated in a compact for the partition of that kingdom, Naples being assigned to the house of Anjou and Sicily to that of Arragon. Frederic of Arragon first obtained possession of Sicily, while Naples was assigned to Charles of Anjou. The king of Arragon, in whose name Frederic was appointed to govern, being willing to concede Sicily to the house of Anjou, for the sake of peace with France, desired Frederic to quit Sicily; but the latter, supported by the Sicilians, prepared to hold it on his own account, as its sovereign. Boniface, having failed to persuade Frederic to cede Sicily, published a decree in which, assuming a very lordly tone, he commanded him to lay aside the title of king of Sicily, and also forbade all princes and their subjects, under pain of excommunication, to lend him their support.

At the same time, he sought to regain respect for the papacy, by interfering in another affair, with which he had, properly, still less to do. In 1294, a war had broken out between Philip (le Bel) king of France, and Edward I of England, the flames of which threatened to spread still further, and even to reach to Germany. It was the object of the pope to scatter this tempest before it burst; and in this he succeeded. He sent two legates across the Alps, charged to restrain the emperor (Adolph) from taking part in the quarrel by an alliance with England, and bearing an epistle from himself filled with earnest advice and fatherly counsel, together with the dictatorial language of supreme authority. The emperor did abstain from war with France; and whether this was really the effect of the papal inhibition or not, yet, at all events, the matter wore that appearance, which was all that was required for the purpose of papal influence. The pope now sent a second legation to the principal parties concerned, the kings of France and England, calling upon them to consent to a truce, by which time might be given for an amicable adjustment of their differences. He cautiously avoided claiming a right to decide the quarrel, but he did not conceal his intention, in case of necessity, to put forth his spiritual power in order to compel them to make the desired truce; and at the same time he charged his legates, in case of the obstinate refusal of either party, to pronounce sentence of excommunication against the offender. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the position which Boniface thus took was entirely in accordance with the lately acknowledged rights and duties of the papacy. Nor, according to the ideas of those times, could it be regarded as a rash or unadvised stretch of the papal power that Boniface threatened the king of France to call him to account for the detention of a daughter of the count of Flanders, unless he should render satisfaction to the count.

The king of England was willing to consent to a truce. But Philip declared that he could not imagine why the pope should concern himself with his war upon England, seeing that it had nothing do with religion; and that, while he was ready to take in good part his exhortation to peace, he would never consent to receive a command from him in such matters. As to the affair with the count of Flanders, he said, still more strongly, that he would never concede to the pope a right to pronounce upon a cause which belonged only to his own jurisdiction; and since, in all temporal affairs, he acknowledged no other sovereign than God, he strongly advised him to attempt no further interference in the matter between himself and the count.

Without giving any apology for having interfered in the matters of the English war and the count of Flanders, Boniface now thought it expedient to make this haughty French monarch feel that there were certainly affairs in which the king had to do with the pope, and concerning which he could not even pretend to be independent of him. Philip, like the king of England, had forcibly raised heavy contributions from the Church and the clergy of his kingdom towards the expenses of the war,—a proceeding which, although precedents were not wanting, could yet claim no foundation in right. Some French prelates having complained of this exaction at Rome, the pope gladly seized the opportunity of espousing their cause, and issued, probably in the beginning of 1296, the celebrated decree Clericis Laicos. This decree denied, in the strongest terms, the right of the laity to impose taxes upon the clergy, or upon Church property: but it was prudently addressed, not to the laity, but to the clergy, threatening all communities and individual ecclesiastics with the penalty of interdict and deposition if they should pay or promise to pay any tax imposed upon them by the civil power, without permission from the apostolic see; and also declaring that all civil rulers who should impose such tax would thereby render themselves liable to excommunication. The decree, it should be observed, appears to have been directed only against extraordinary aids or subsidies, and to have been in effect a repetition, in a more definite form, of the Lateran decree of Innocent III. on the same subject. It was by no means its design to exempt the clergy from all contributions to the necessities of the State by the payment of regular taxes; but it was intended to guard against arbitrary demands for additional supplies in great emergencies without the consent of the Church itself. The principle herein affirmed had been already recognised, and Boniface may have feared no opposition from any temporal prince while engaged in upholding it. Even the king of France himself appears to have been aware that he could not contest this point He found it prudent not to offer any open opposition to the decree; but to return the side-blow which had thus been aimed against himself by levelling another of the same kind at the pope. With this view be published an ordinance (August 17, 1296) by which he prohibited all his subjects, under the severest penalties, from exporting or carrying out of his dominions gold or silver, whether coined or uncoined, precious stones, provisions, arms or horses. The pope, well aware that Philip would not be content with the mere publication of this decree, but would seek to put it in force, could not suffer it to pass without notice, inasmuch as the failure of supplies from France would be a serious detriment to the papal treasury; and besides this, the example thus set to other powers might be of pernicious consequence. Boniface therefore addressed an expostulation to Philip on this subject (a.d. 1296), not indeed assuming that the papal see was in any special manner aimed at, or affected, by the decree, but taking the high ground of defending the liberty and rights of the Church, which he declared to be invaded if the king meant (as he hoped not) that this prohibition should extend to the bishops and clergy of his kingdom. He willingly believed that the king did not intend to include the clergy in his prohibition; the more willingly, because such an extension of the ordinance would impose on him the necessity of pronouncing a sentence of excommunication against a sovereign who had thus exceeded the bounds of his legitimate authority. He argued also that, even in a political point of view, such an ordinance was ill advised, and disadvantageous to the interests of France. And he took this opportunity of commenting upon the meaning of his own bull, and the misrepresentations to which it had been subject; assuring the king that there had been no intention on the part of himself or his predecessors, while contending for the immunity of the clergy from arbitrary and oppressive imposts, to have them exempt from their constitutional share of burdens imposed for the defence or necessities of the State. Philip, however, was not induced by these representations to abate his opposition to the pope; on the contrary, he proceeded more systematically to abridge those powers and privileges which had for some time past been possessed by the papal see under the character of acknowledged and undoubted rights.

At the same time the French bishops also applied to Boniface, entreating him to allay the unfavourable impression which the bull Clericis Laicos had made, not only on the mind of the king, but on the whole nobility of France;—an impression which, if suffered to work its way, threatened no less than the destruction of the Gallican Church. This gave another opportunity to Boniface of explaining the bull in a manner which promised to be satisfactory to the offended monarch. And the pope addressed to the king some further declarations of the meaning of the bull, by which its severity was considerably mitigated, some of the most obnoxious provisions being in fact abandoned.

Permission was also granted to Philip to impose a tribute upon all the clergy of his kingdom to the amount of one-tenth of their revenues, for the space of three years. The canonisation of Louis IX, which had been delayed during twenty-five years, was now accomplished; and this act was regarded as a great compliment and favour to the whole French nation. The pope also flattered Philip that, amidst the existing troubles of Germany, he would use his influence towards placing the imperial crown upon the head of his brother Charles of Valois, and thus again restore the empire to France.

These measures appeared to work according to the design of Boniface, for Philip now appeared willing to be reconciled. He again permitted the unrestricted export of gold, and seemed ready to listen to the proposals of the pope for a speedy termination of the war with England. At the beginning of 1298, the belligerent parties agreed to submit their disputes to the decision of the pope as umpire; and Boniface accordingly prepared his decision, which he fully expected would be satisfactory to all parties, even venturing to publish it with great solemnity in the form of a bull. But his decision was in almost all points adverse to the king of France. He had decided that Philip should again concede to the king of England all his possessions in Guyenne, that he should give back to the count of Flanders all places which he had taken from him, and that he should not only restore his daughter, but should not interfere with her marriage by free choice. He also decided that the king of England should marry the princess Margaret, the sister of the king of France; and that his eldest son should marry the princess Isabella, the daughter of Philip. In this decision, Boniface was doubtless guided by his sense of right and justice; but it is difficult to imagine how he could suppose that Philip would submit to the terms proposed. He appears to have been sincere in his desire to secure the empire for Charles of Valois ; but his efforts in this direction failed: and perhaps it was this failure, together with the adverse nature of his decision, which again aroused the hostility of Philip against him. The king vehemently protested against the decision as unjust; declaring that he would not hold himself bound by it, but would renew the war immediately on the expiration of the truce. Accordingly, at the end of that period, he entered Flanders, where he completely overpowered the count, and made him and his two sons prisoners. But it was in the following manner that he manifested his hostility to the pope with the greatest effect. For the sake of Philip, Boniface had strongly declared himself against the election of Albert as king of Germany, and had even so far proceeded in his opposition as to render future reconciliation impossible. Philip rightly considered that the pope would be unable to effect his intention of deposing Albert; and he now hastened to make an alliance with him, by which the houses of France and Austria should be firmly united. This alliance was effected at a personal interview between the two monarchs, December, 1299; and thus was taken away all hope, which the pope had doubtless cherished, that in case of necessity he might make use of one of these sovereigns against the other. Philip sent an ambassador to Rome (some say Nogaret) to announce to Boniface that he had deemed it expedient, for the good of his kingdom, to form a close alliance with the emperor, in order that he might be able with advantage to engage in that crusade in the East to which he had been so earnestly excited by the pope. But Boniface and all Europe knew that the king did not meditate any crusade at all; and the pope could not but feel that by this embassy the king designed only to insult him.

Boniface wrote to the electors of Germany, saying that he could not consent to confirm the election of Albert as their king, without due examination of weighty charges which lay against him, and requiring Albert to appear before him within six months, to answer for himself, under oath that he would submit to his decision. In default of his appearance, he threatened that the holy see would declare his election null and void, forbidding .the electors and all German subjects to acknowledge him as king, under penalty of death.

The same sincere desire of upholding what he regarded as the rights of the papacy appears in the conduct of Boniface with regard to the Colonni. Members of this family had from time to time appeared at the head of that junta of Roman nobles who had contested the sovereignty of the popes at Rome, or had sought to make it merely nominal. This party had always succeeded in attaching to themselves some portion of the Roman populace; and, not long before the accession of Boniface, one of the Colonni had been elected senator of Rome by the votes of the people. Besides this, two of them had now seats in the college of cardinals; and hence this family was in a position to counteract the influence of the pope in several quarters. The Colonni were, therefore, exceedingly obnoxious to Boniface; and were felt by him to be standing greatly in his way. He accordingly determined to rid himself of these troublesome opponents; and, having sought a quarrel with them, he carried out his plan of the political annihilation of this powerful family, by the destruction of their palaces and castles, with excommunication, confiscation, imprisonment, and exile. By this means he seemed to have delivered the papacy from the troubles and dangers of a Roman faction for an indefinite period of time.

In his further dealings with Philip of France, Boniface appears to have been carried by his wounded feelings beyond the limits of prudence. In 1301 he sent a legate to the king, with a view to procure the release of the count of Flanders and his family. For the execution of this business he unfortunately made choice of a man whose haughty and insolent conduct had already made him personally offensive to the king, Bernard of Caisset, bishop of Pamiers. On the present occasion also the legate assumed a dictatorial and threatening tone; and the king commanded him to quit the court and his dominions without delay. Boniface, however, sent him back to his diocese in France; and, Philip having caused the insolent prelate to be seized and tried for high treason, the pontiff now possessed the opportunity, which he appears to have desired, of an open rupture with the king. He addressed an epistle to Philip, affirming that neither he nor any sovereign on earth had power to sit in judgment on an ecclesiastical person, and commanding him to send the bishop of Pamiers to Rome, whatever his offence might have been, and there to prefer his charges against him. He required the king himself also to answer for his conduct towards the bishop, by which he had rendered himself subject to a sentence of excommunication. This epistle was followed by a decree (December 5th, 1297) revoking all privileges which had ever been granted by the apostolic see to the crown of France, especially that which Boniface had himself accorded (in his explanations of the bull Clericis Laicos) of imposing a tribute upon the churches and clergy of his kingdom towards defraying the extraordinary expenses of the State. Boniface sent also to Philip, by the hands of a new nuncio, a bull in which he administered reproof for the public and private delinquencies of the king’s past life, and required him to reform his manners; declaring that, inasmuch as Philip had stopped his ears, like a deaf adder, against all previous admonitions, he must not be surprised to find himself exposed to the consequences of his impiety. It was also announced that the pope had determined, on the present occasion, not only to administer this paternal reproof, but also to convene a council, which should be expressly charged with the duty of reforming all the abuses that existed in the court and kingdom of France; and before this council the king must not fail to appear, in person or by deputy, in order to abide the judgment of God and the pope. This was a new and unheard-of proceeding,—altogether strange even to the Gregorian practice, although entirely consistent with the Gregorian theory when pushed to its legitimate results. Boniface doubtless hoped in this way to involve the king of France in a quarrel with his own people, or at all events to prevent the people from taking part with their sovereign in the impending struggle. He well knew that the strength of the papal weapons,—even of an interdict, the most formidable of all,—depended in a great measure upon the disposition of the people.

The measures with which Philip encountered this bold attack were deliberate and prudent. He knew the danger to which he was exposed, and felt the necessity of acting with caution. In the matter of the bishop of Pamiers he made a series of concessions, until he left Boniface without excuse for his extraordinary and insolent proceedings in convening his council; while yet the pope had already proceeded so far in this matter as to be unable to retrace his steps. As the single ground of his resistance to the pope, Philip alleged the claims which Boniface had unjustly put forward of supremacy over himself in temporal matters, maintaining that in these things he would acknowledge no superior but God. On the 10th of April he assembled a large parliament at Paris, to which deputies from the towns were summoned. This convention was opened by a remarkable speech from the chancellor, in which he explained the state of the controversy between Boniface and Philip,— dwelt at large on the relations subsisting between the Gallican Church and the Roman see,—and called upon the assembly to determine whether the pope or the king should be acknowledged sovereign of France. The assembled States unanimously decided that in temporal matters they were subject to none but God and their king; and they accompanied this decision with a request to Philip that he would defend them against any foreign power by which the independence of the state might be endangered. The French ecclesiastical dignitaries were at the same time prohibited from attending the council which the pope had convened at Rome respecting the affairs of France. And Philip sent word to Boniface that he must postpone his council, inasmuch as the French bishops could not attend it; and that he needed not to trouble himself about the reformation of the French constitution, since the French themselves were prepared to take effectual measures on that point. The epistles addressed by the bishops of France, and the representatives of the French people, after the sitting of this parliament, were not less decidedly and strongly directed against the aggressive measures and designs of the pope.

For a moment Boniface appears to have been alarmed at the firm and dignified attitude which had thus been assumed by France. He sent a fresh legate, with a view to pacify the king; but when he found that he had been forbidden to enter the kingdom, he became fully aware that the contest was for life or death, and he summoned up all his energy for the prosecution of the struggle.

He now published the celebrated bull Unam Sanctam, in which he strongly affirmed that the temporal authority is subject to the spiritual power; that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human being be subject to the Roman pontiff; and that, while the temporal sword is indeed to be wielded by kings and soldiers, yet this must take place only with permission of the priest. Philip was thus challenged to pursue his opposition to the papacy on the ground which he himself had chosen. And at the time of the promulgation of this bull there were various circumstances which made it seem probable that he would hesitate, or even be unable, to persevere in the contest. The pope had made a fresh alliance with the emperor; and it was possible that he might persuade his new ally to make war on France. The dissatisfaction which had pervaded the minds of men in Flanders was matured into open insurrection by Romish artifice. Nor did it seem unlikely that disturbances might be promoted in France itself, where it was evident that many were still devoted to the interests of Rome; no less than thirty-five bishops, four archbishops, and six abbots having repaired to Rome to attend the papal council, notwithstanding the prohibition which had been issued to restrain them. Philip, however, now confiscated the property of the bishops who had thus gone to Rome, and renewed his prohibition of departure from the kingdom without his permission, and of the export of gold. Not content with this, in the beginning of 1303, he assumed the character of an accuser of the pope, alleging against him a whole catalogue of crimes, by which he affirmed that he had rendered himself unworthy of the pontificate, and declared that, for his own part, as defender of the Church, he was bound to come forward in order to deliver it from existing tyranny. Nogaret, who had been charged with the reading of this declaration to an influential body of state counsellors, himself suggested, as a means of accomplishing the object which the king desired, the assembling of a General Council, which had power to judge and depose the pope; and he undertook to establish all the charges brought against Boniface before such council. The question now to be decided was how this council should be convened ; and Nogaret suggested the expediency, in the interval, of securing the person of Boniface, declaring him suspended from his office, and causing the see to be filled by a deputy. Boniface now despatched to France a new legate (the cardinal Le Moyne), a man personally acceptable to Philip, with a view to effect an accommodation. The object of his visit was known, and he was suffered to enter the kingdom. The demands which the pope made by him, as the price of reconciliation, were, however, far too strong to find acceptance at the hands of Philip. But the king acted on this occasion, as on others, with great caution and reserve. lie did not assent to any one of the conditions proposed, but he professed a readiness to treat concerning them; and his whole bearing induced the pope to believe that he was not prepared to proceed to extremities. Boniface determined, therefore, himself to take the initiative. Upon the first report of his legate, he pronounced sentence of excommunication against Philip, and called upon the emperor to take possession of the throne from which Philip was now deposed. In this posture of affairs, Philip possessed a fair opportunity of bringing to bear against Boniface, without further delay, the machinery which he had long since prepared for the occasion. In the middle of the following June, he convened a second assembly of the States at Paris, with a view to proceed upon the plan already intimated by Nogaret, except that, instead of Nogaret himself, four of the great barons of the kingdom appeared before this assembly as the accusers of the pope. These accusers undertook to prove that Boniface had not only been guilty of great crimes, but was also exposed to the suspicion of heresy; and the articles which they exhibited against the pope were twenty-nine in number. They did not ask for a definitive sentence from that assembly, but only that measures might be taken for convening a General Council, by which the pope might be deposed, and a new head of the Church be legitimately appointed. But it can hardly be supposed that Philip really contemplated the assembling of a council as the result of this movement, especially if we consider the nature of the charges brought against Boniface, many of which were absurd and frivolous. The real object of the king seems to have been to take precaution against any act of the pope in deposing himself, and absolving his subjects from their allegiance; a measure which he adopted in the form of an appeal to the projected council, and to the new pope whom that council should elect,—an appeal which speedily received the adhesion of all communities and classes of men throughout the kingdom.

The plan of the king was now about to receive its full development. The decrees of the national convention were sent to Nogaret, in Italy, who was there eagerly seeking for an opportunity of getting possession of the person of Boniface, in order to convey him to France. Sciarra Colonna, one of the mortal enemies of Boniface, who had been associated with Nogaret in his mission to Italy, had easily found means to collect a party which gave trouble to the pope in Rome itself; and Boniface retired from Rome to Anagni, his native town, upon the fidelity of whose inhabitants he felt that he could rely. Nogaret and Sciarra, however, soon discovered that a violent assault would be more likely to succeed in this comparatively small place than in Rome. Accordingly, Sciarra collected a band of desperate men from the neighbouring country, while, by means of money, Nogaret secured some assistance within Anagni itself; and so well was the plan concerted that on the 7th of September the place was taken by surprise, and Boniface was in their hands. In the course of a few days, however, the people of Anagni effected the pontiff’s release, and took measures for his safe removal to Rome. But it soon appeared that his enemies had gained their end, even more completely than they had anticipated. The terror, and perhaps ill-treatment, to which the aged Boniface had been subjected overpowered his feeble frame, and, together with the violence of his emotions in connection with the whole transaction in which he had been involved, hastened his death, which took place on the 11th of October, a few days after his arrival at Rome. Boniface was firm and consistent in his opposition to Philip, even to the last. At Anagni he published a manifesto, declaring to the world that no General Council could be convened without the sanction of his authority, and rebutting the charge of heresy which had been brought against him in France. When he was surprised by Nogaret, he had prepared the draught of a bull, in which he prohibited Philip, as excommunicated, from the exercise of all rights which he might otherwise have possessed in relation to the Church,—released all his subjects from their oath of allegiance,—and annulled all treaties which had been made between himself and other princes. He maintained his dignity against all the threatenings of Nogaret, and endured ill-treatment from the Colonni with the constancy of a martyr; and he was indeed a martyr in the cause of papal rights, according to the idea of those rights which he had imbibed from his youth.—In such a situation as that in which Boniface stood with regard to Philip, an Innocent III or a Gregory VII, equally firm and resolute, would have said much less and done much more. Boniface was not wanting in decision; but his fault or misfortune lay in thinking that he had done enough by the mere announcement or assertion of his rights, under the conviction that he could never be shaken from his position.

After the death of Boniface, it soon appeared how completely he had stood alone, and that there was no successor to be found possessing either courage or ability to persevere in the course which he had so unflinchingly maintained. His immediate successor, ad 1303. Benedict XI, was a man distinguished by a peaceable and gentle disposition; and he immediately came to a good understanding with Nogaret, professing himself ready to restore union between the Church and France. Philip’s ambassador at Borne urged the immediate assembling of a General Council, and this too, as he did not attempt to conceal, with a view to the better adjustment of the relations subsisting between the papacy and the temporal power, and to the putting of ecclesiastical matters upon their old constitutional footing. This was enough to make the idea of the proposed council abundantly unpopular among the cardinals, and to give rise to evasion and delay. Nor does it appear that Philip himself was bent upon the actual assembling of a council; he rather employed the proposal or threat of such an event, in order to serve his purpose.

The peaceful, and even submissive, conduct of the new pope went far beyond the expectation of the king of France. In April, 1304, appeared a papal bull, by which the king was absolved from all penalties and censures which he had incurred during his dispute with Boniface; the pope herein declaring that, out of regard to Philip’s soul, he could not rest until he had left the ninety and nine sheep, and had gone after that which was lost,—and imposing no condition of absolution, except that the king should in future show himself more obedient to the Church. Philip now felt persuaded that he could extort from Benedict whatever he might desire; and Benedict met his demands, not by refusing submission, but only by endeavouring to defer it as long as possible. He now restored to the ecclesiastical corporations and the universities of France all the rights and privileges of which they had been deprived by Boniface; and declared null and void all those decrees in which that pontiff had assailed the prerogatives of the French crowm, and had released French subjects from their oath of allegiance: and, by another bull, he granted to the king the tenth of Church revenues in his dominions for the space of two years. He refused, however, to restore the two Colonni to the college of cardinals; nor would he consent to take off the sentence of excommunication from Nogaret, until he should exculpate himself from the charge laid against him concerning his participation in the seizure of Boniface.

It does not appear that Benedict would have been able for any length of time to defer compliance with the wish of the king for the assembling of a General Council. But his sudden and unexpected death (not without suspicion of poison) at once removed every difficulty out of the way of Philip, and gave him an opportunity, not only of carrying out his design, but also of doing far more than he had hitherto contemplated. He immediately resolved upon influencing the election of the next pope, so as to have the chair filled by a dependent and creature of his own. This design he easily accomplished, with the outlay of very little money and pains; and so completely did he succeed that not only was the new pope entirely at his command, but the papacy itself appeared to have been delivered into his power. In the college of cardinals, the French party on the one side, and the Romano-Italian on the other, were so evenly balanced, that the conclave sat at Perugia no less than nine months without coming to a decision. At length, by an artifice of the leader of the French party, the choice fell upon Bertrand, archbishop of Bourdeaux, whom Philip had previously secured to his interests, and who ascended the papal chair under the title of Clement V.

Of all the concessions to the demands of Philip, Clement at the very commencement of his pontificate, the most comprehensive and important was that of enacting that the papal residence should be fixed within the limits of France. By this means the king of France had the pope completely in a state of dependence on himself; and henceforward it became his policy, and that of his successors, not to work the complete overthrow of the papal power, but to perpetuate and uphold it so far as it could be made instrumental in favour of France. But the new pontiff carefully concealed, as far as possible, his state of dependence on the French crown. His obligation to reside in France was kept for some time as a profound secret, even from the French party among the cardinals; and when the continuance of his sojourn in that country, during several successive years, began to give rise to suspicion, the circumstances of the times were pleaded in excuse, not without some effect. At first, no particular place of residence was chosen, but Clement removed, with his court, from one town or monastery to another. At the end of about five years, however, the intentions of the pontiff, and his real position with regard to Philip, could no longer be concealed; and Clement fixed his residence at Avignon, which was in the territory of the count of Provence, and, as part of the kingdom of Burgundy, was nominally under the protection of the German emperor.

Immediately upon his accession, Clement granted Philip the tenth of all Church property in France, for the space of five years; he also nominated ten French cardinals. The absolution of Nogaret, and the final and complete cancelling of the obnoxious decrees of Boniface, were accomplished without any unnecessary delay. Clement, however, contrived eventually to escape from the necessity of condemning Boniface as a heretic.

A flagrant instance of the servile compliance of Clement with the will of Philip was the part which he took in the abolition of the order of Knights Templar,—an event accomplished by one of the most oppressive and cruel acts of violence with which the annals of European history are stained. Clement abolished the order by a bull; and the sentence against the knights, including the confiscation of their property, was passed by the General Council of Vienne. It was now well known that Clement was no more than a tool in the hands of Philip; and, while his person was the object of contempt, the papacy itself, by this means, received no inconsiderable detriment.

The emperor, Albert I, having been murdered in 1308, Philip resumed his old project of securing the imperial throne for his brother, Charles of Valois. It is uncertain whether or not it had been matter of previous stipulation that Clement should consent to this measure, but it is certain that he now endeavoured to promote it by an epistle addressed to the electors. Some say, however, that, by a secret communication with the electors, he at the same time endeavoured to thwart the designs of Philip; but it is by no means clear that he ventured upon so dangerous a step: be this as it may, the electors themselves were not disposed to comply with the wishes of the king of France, and their choice fell upon Henry of Luxemburg. This election was duly notified to the pope. The new emperor sent a solemn embassy to declare his obedience to the holy see, and professed himself ready to take the oath of fidelity as soon as Clement should perform the ceremony of his coronation; whereupon Clement issued a bull by which the election was approved and confirmed. The new emperor, Henry VII, seemed resolved on recovering the ancient imperial and royal rights in Italy; and a favourable opportunity was afforded him of accomplishing this object, by the absence of the pope, and the disorders which prevailed throughout the country, amid the contests of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Henry, having announced his intention of receiving the imperial crown in Italy, Clement commissioned his cardinals to perform the ceremony, which took place at Rome (Jan. 27th, 1312), although not without some difficulty from the opposition of the Guelphs. Henry now boldly advanced his claims as sovereign of Italy. He summoned before him Robert, king of Naples, as his vassal, and, upon his refusing to appear, placed him under the ban of the empire: but Clement formally took off the ban, by virtue (as he said) of his superior authority; and when Henry presumed to enter the territories of Frederic, king of Sicily, contrary to an express papal monition, the pontiff pronounced sentence of excommunication against the emperor himself. For these measures, the papacy would doubtless have paid dearly, had not the emperor been removed by an early death (Aug. 25, 1313). After this event, the triumph remained with the pope, and the measures which he had taken contributed to uphold the influence of the holy see. A similar advantage was gained by his humiliation of the Venetians, who had taken possession of Ferrara, and, after a short opposition, were compelled to yield to the twofold coercion of an interdict and a crusade.

Upon the death of Clement, in 1314, the Italian party of the cardinals was compelled to submit to the election of  another French pope, John XXII, after a delay of two years. Philip died in 1314; and his successor, Louis X, also died during the vacancy of the papal chair. The majority of the cardinals were now in the pay of France, and the papal court at Avignon was extremely dissolute and corrupt. Concerning the election of an emperor, the electors were now pretty equally divided between Louis of Bavaria, and Frederic of Austria; and it was an object with each party to have the pope on its side. It was the obvious policy of the pope not to declare hastily in favour of either party; and, two months after his accession, John sent into Germany a bull admonishing the dissentient parties to come to a friendly agreement,—his real object being to gain time for the administration of the newly-established papal right of acting as vicar of the empire, during an interregnum. Clement V, in his bull of 1313, while exercising this right, derived it from an assumed larger right of administrating the affairs of the whole empire during an interregnum; and the same claim was now advanced by John in a bull of 1317. During the present vacancy, John took an oath from all the German bishops, that they would not acknowledge as emperor any one whom he should not, in due course of time, confirm in that dignity. He could, therefore, well afford to preserve his neutrality as to the candidates for the empire, until, at length, in 1322, the state of affairs in Italy, disposed him to incline towards the side of Frederic of Austria. Matthew Visconti of Milan, at the head of the Ghibellines, had become so formidable, that the Guelphs, whose support the pope could not consent to lose, were closely pressed. At the same time, even Robert, king of Naples, began to apprehend danger to himself from the power of Visconti, and he entreated the pope to adopt some effectual measures against him. John now proclaimed a crusade against the Ghibellines, and was glad to have recourse to the arms of Frederic of Austria: Frederic, however, could accomplish but little in Italy, and he withdrew his troops, in order to assist his operations against Louis of Bavaria, by whom he was soon afterwards defeated and made prisoner. It might have been expected that the pope would now declare himself in favour of the victor: but, whether under the influence of Charles IV, who had succeeded to the throne of France in 1322, or from any other cause, John was persuaded that it was still his interest to remain neutral; and, in an epistle addressed to Louis, in which he exhorted him to treat his prisoner with humanity, he still gave him to understand that he regarded the contest for the empire as undecided. Louis, however, proceeded to act as emperor, regardless of the want of papal confirmation, and openly espoused the cause of the Ghibellines in Italy. Irritated by these proceedings, John now published a decree, in which he expressed his astonishment at the conduct of Louis, duke of Bavaria, who had not only assumed the title of king of the Romans while his election was still disputed, and therefore without having received confirmation from the pope, but had also taken upon himself to exercise imperial rights in Germany and Italy, even for the purpose of aiding and abetting heretics, and the enemies of the Church. He commanded him to revoke, within three months, all the acts which he had performed as emperor, and immediately to abandon all administration of the affairs of the empire, under penalty of excommunication; all spiritual and temporal estates of the empire being, at the same time, forbidden to acknowledge or obey him as emperor, until he had received papal confirmation, under the penalty of the loss of all their privileges and fiefs. Louis, at first, manifested some symptoms of submission ; but he soon drew up and published a strong protest against the claims and conduct of John, with an appeal from him, upon whom he retorted the charge of heresy, to the true apostolic see and a General Council. Hereupon the pope proceeded to excommunicate the emperor, in a bull, dated March, 1324, which Louis met by a second manifesto, containing a renewed appeal to a council. John was supported in Germany by the Austrian party, at the head of which stood the duke Leopold, brother of the imprisoned Frederic,—John, king of Bohemia, having also been enlisted on its side. Still, however, the fulminations of the pontiff produced little effect throughout Germany; and the Diet of Ratisbon, ad 1324, decreed that no papal bull against the emperor should be anywhere received, but that any person who should attempt to introduce such document be expelled from the limits of the empire,—a decree which was, for the most part, readily obeyed.

In 1325, Louis, suspecting that he was about to lose the support of some influential parties who had hitherto adhered to him, released his prisoner, Frederic, upon condition that he should renounce all claim to the empire, and should support the empire against all its enemies, and especially against the pope. Leopold, however, refused his assent to the terms which had been imposed upon his brother, and continued the war against Louis, who thus found himself compelled, in the course of the same year, to enter into a new compact, by which he conceded to Frederic the title of Roman king, and agreed to associate him with himself in the administration of the empire. Leopold was now satisfied; and all the princes of the house of Austria urged the pope to give his consent to the compact Herein, however, was involved the retraction of his decree against Louis, and it seemed scarcely possible to assent to such an act without sacrificing the honour of the papacy : John, therefore, resisted this compact, and its terms were never fulfilled ; but, unfortunately for the pope, the duke Leopold died in 1326, and hostilities were suspended between the emperor and Austria. In 1327, Louis marched into Italy, having been invited thither by the Ghibellines, with whom he so successfully co-operated that, in the beginning of 1328, he made his solemn entry into Rome, where he received the imperial crown in St. Peter’s, at the hands of four temporal barons, having already received the crown of Lombardy at Milan. On the 18th of April, in a public assembly of the Roman people and his nobles, he declared “ John of Porto, who falsely calls himself John XXII.” deposed from the pontificate as an arch-heretic; and in a similar assembly, on the 12th of May, he presented the  Romans with a pope, under the title of Nicholas V.  During this time, the pope at Avignon could do no more than fulminate bulls and decrees against the emperor, and call upon the electors to make choice of a new king. All these measures were powerless; and it was this circumstance, marking the decline of the papal hold upon the minds of men, which was really the most formidable in the estimation of the papal court.

The emperor soon lost his popularity at Rome, and found himself obliged to retire from that place in August 1328; and, as the influence of the Guelphs continued to gather strength throughout Italy, he was obliged to quit the country altogether, and to return to Germany in 1329. His pope was soon delivered up to the legates of John, who compelled him to perform a solemn act of abjuration, and then sent him to Avignon, where he was confined as a prisoner during the remainder of his life. Louis now found the affairs of Germany in a very unsatisfactory state, and was desirous of an accommodation with the pope. In 1330 he made proposals to him by means of John, king of Bohemia, which were highly acceptable. He offered entirely to abandon the cause of the pope whom he had set up ; to withdraw his appeal to a General Council; to retract all that he had said or done against the Church of Rome ; to acknowledge the justice of the sentence of excommunication which had been pronounced against him; and to trust to the clemency of the pope respecting the penance to be imposed upon him : in return for all which, he only required that the pope should confirm his election, and acknowledge him as emperor. The king of Bohemia, duke Otho of Austria, and the elector of Treves, urged the pope to accept these proposals, and the emperor himself sent an embassy to Avignon, declaring his readiness to enter upon further negotiations, if necessary. John, however, encouraged by the emperor’s concessions, which he regarded as a confession of weakness, insisted upon his unconditional abdication, and he almost succeeded in carrying his point thus far. At the end of three years more, Louis felt himself weary of the strife, and even prepared an act of abdication, which he promised to execute upon a condition not likely to be refused ; but from the completion of this act he was earnestly dissuaded by several of the estates of Germany. In 1334, John died : the controversy was continued throughout the whole pontificate of his successor, Benedict XII, and sometimes under circumstances which threatened extreme danger to the papacy ; but the danger was adroitly evaded, or even turned to profitable account. Negotiations for an accommodation were carried on between Benedict XII and the emperor, but were frustrated by the new king of France, Philip of Valois; indeed, no less than three times was Benedict thus hindered from accepting offers made by the emperor on terms most advantageous to the papacy. A diet, assembled by the emperor at Frankfort, in 1338, declared that the emperor had done all that he could in order to reconciliation with the holy see, and that all further proceedings of the pope against him must be treated as unfair and unjust; it was, therefore, decreed that wherever Divine worship had been suspended in consequence of the interdict, it should be restored, and that any of the clergy who might refuse to perform it should be regarded as enemies to the state. The electors met, with a view to maintain their electoral rights and privileges; and, at their instance, all the estates agreed to adopt, as a fundamental maxim of state, the propositions that the imperial dignity and power are derived immediately from God,—that the person elected as king and emperor by all, or the majority of, the electors, must be immediately put in possession of all imperial and regal rights by virtue of this election, — that from that moment obedience should be rendered to him by all as a matter of right,— and that he needed confirmation from no other power, forasmuch, as in things temporal, he has no superior. In 1338, the emperor made an offensive alliance with Edward, king of England, against France, which the pope could not but regard as directed against himself. In 1341, however, this alliance was renounced, and the emperor declared himself the firm friend and ally of the king of France. And now a German embassy to Avignon was supported by one from France, entreating the pope to take off the sentence of excommunication from the emperor of Germany; but this was met by a reproof from Benedict, addressed to the king of France, for having allied himself to an heretical and schismatical sovereign, before he was reconciled to the Church.

In the following year, 1342, Benedict was succeeded by Clement VI. In answer to a fresh application from the emperor, absolution was again refused ; and the refusal was followed, in 1343, by a new bull of excommunication, and a demand upon the electors to proceed to the choice of a new emperor without further delay. Notwithstanding their previous determination, the electors had actually met for this purpose, when the king of France informed the emperor that his request to the pope had been refused only because it had not been couched in proper terms; and the emperor, through him, now requested Clement to furnish him with the draught of a petition such as he would be willing to receive; nor did he hesitate to adopt almost every word of a formulary which was accordingly prepared for him, unspeakably humiliating and disgraceful. His ambassadors were authorised to promise the pope any satisfaction which he might require for his crimes and offences against the Roman see; declaring, especially, that he was ready to lay aside, unconditionally, the imperial title which he had unjustly assumed, and to place himself entirely in the hands of the pope. In reply to this communication, the pope made extravagant and haughty demands, which affected the honour and interests of the empire no less than those of the emperor, and, on this account, were indignantly rejected by the electors, before whom the emperor laid them. Hereupon, in 1346, the pope put forth a new bull of excommunication against Louis, at the end of which he called upon the electors to lose no time in proceeding to the choice of an emperor; adding a threat that, if they should fail to do so, he would exercise his own unquestionable authority, and nominate one himself. The pope had already agreed with Charles, the eldest son of the king of Bohemia, to advance him to the empire upon sufficiently humiliating terms of this the electors were aware, and, as the pope had left them the appearance of an election, thinking that their honour was hereby sufficiently maintained, they elected Charles. The other estates, however, assembled at the same time in a diet at Spires, declared this election null and void, and strongly protested against the assumption that the pope bad power to depose the emperor. Upon these grounds, they hesitated for two years after the death of Louis, which took place in 1347, to recognise Charles as emperor. At length, however, they consented to accept him, on condition of his being elected again at Frankfort, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle ; thus throwing a flimsy veil of disguise over that sacrifice of the honour and rights of the empire which they were making to the pope. It was in vain that they endeavoured to make it appear that they did not receive Charles for the sake of .the pope and his confirmation ; all the world perceived and knew that they had elected him for no other reason than because they were weary of the contest with the Roman see.

During the progress of these affairs, matters were proceeding in other countries of Europe which indicated partly the remaining influence, and partly the decline, of papal authority. In 1312, Edward II, king of England, requested the pope to send legates into his kingdom for the adjustment of a dispute between himself and the other estates of the realm; the cardinals who formed the legation brought with them full power to annul all treaties and compacts which had been formed against the king, to absolve from all oaths by which such treaties might have been confirmed, and to pronounce sentence of excommunication upon all refractory persons, even although bishops or archbishops should be found among the number. The powerful party which was at that time combined against the king, took care, however, that the legates should not enter the kingdom; and although they laid the kingdom under an interdict on this account, yet their measures took no effect, since the pope (for the king’s sake) did not choose to push the matter to extremities.

In 1316, the same sovereign appealed to John XXII with a request which contained a fresh recognition of all previously existing relations of the papacy to the English Crown, and an express acknowledgment of papal rights in England. The war in which he was involved with the Scotch and their newly-made king, Robert Bruce, had taken an unfavourable turn; and he felt obliged to seek the interference of the pope, even at a considerable cost. His ambassadors were instructed to promise payment of all arrears due to the holy see, and to pay at once the amount accruing for the current year. The pope hereupon commanded Robert to cease hostilities and to make a truce with Edward, sending at the same time to the Irish, who had taken this opportunity to rebel, an admonition to obedience; and when his orders on this head were disobeyed, he laid both Scotland and Ireland under an interdict. It was a mark of the decline of respect to the papal see, that both Scotland and Ireland at first cared little even for the interdict. In England, the papal legates were plundered by highwaymen. The king himself did not conceal the fact that he had applied to the pope only because he hoped to make good use of him; and in 1318 his position was improved by a victory obtained over the Irish. The pope, however, derived more advantage from this whole affair than he could at first have expected; for the king of Scotland, being now hard pressed by the English, and having applied in his turn to the pope, succeeded, by his humble representations, and probably also by other means which had great influence at the court of Avignon, in inducing the pope not only to take off the interdict from Scotland, but also to compel the king of England to conclude a truce for two years. It is probable that Edward felt himself controlled in this matter not so much by respect to the pope as by the interference of the king of France, who had made an alliance with Scotland; still, how­ever, it was an advantage to the Roman pontiff that he had thus interfered in the temporal affairs of princes with an appearance of success, and with the recognition of his right by two sovereigns who had applied to him. At the same time Clement interposed also in the domestic affairs of Edward. His queen Isabella having fled from him to her brother Charles IV of France, Edward applied to the pope, beseeching him to command her to return to England. Clement accordingly wrote to the king of France, requiring him to send his sister back; and with this request, under colour of a poor excuse, that sovereign complied.

The kings of France, while they often made the popes of Avignon feel that they were in their power, yet suffered them to employ the old style of authority and dictation towards themselves; submitting, in some cases, to receive from them a refusal of their requests, and even the infliction of penalties. Thus, in 1323, John XXII refused to grant Charles IV. a subsidy which he required, in order professedly to defray the expenses of an expedition to the East, but in reality to enable him to prosecute war with England. Eight years afterwards, when Philip of Valois made enormous demands under pretence of needing a supply of money for the purpose of a crusade, the pope did not directly and entirely refuse, but he accompanied his promise of a subsidy with such strict conditions, in the event of a crusade not taking place, that Philip did not find it desirable to continue the negotiation. Benedict XII, the successor of John, finding that Philip had for many years collected the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues as for the purpose of a crusade, insisted upon his either actually undertaking the crusade or ceasing to collect this money; and, when the king entreated permission to continue to raise this revenue for assistance in his war with England, the pope replied that he could not conscientiously comply with his request.

In 1340, when the English power had obtained such preponderance in France that Edward III already regarded the country as conquered, and caused himself to be crowned king of France, Philip seized an ambassador who had been sent from England to Avignon. The pope interpreted this act as an affront to himself, and laid the whole kingdom of France under an interdict, to continue in force until the ambassador should arrive in Avignon; and this measure took such effect that the king was obliged to submit, disclaiming any share in the commission of the crime, and offering to assist in punishing the guilty parties.

In the smaller states and republics of Italy there was for the most part a papal party, more or less powerful and important; and the king of Naples was the firm friend of the pontiff In Rome there was a formidable faction against the pope. Here the removal of the court to Avignon was very unpopular, several embassies being from time to time sent to solicit a return; and sometimes the opposition gained great head, as when the Romans opened their gates to Louis of Bavaria, and afterwards again at the exaltation of the tribune Rienzi. Still, however, on the whole, Rome was loyal to the papacy, and well understood that it was indebted to it for its remaining greatness.

Upon the election of Innocent VI, which took place a few days after the death of Clement VI, in 1352, the cardinals compelled the new pontiff to take an oath to the effect that he would not create any new cardinals during his pontificate without the consent of the whole college,—that he would not add any new members to the college until the number was reduced to sixteen,—and that the number should never exceed twenty;—that he would never act without the advice of the college, and certainly would never deprive or imprison a cardinal without its consent;—and that he would place one half of the revenues of the Church of Rome at the disposal of the cardinals. At the same time each cardinal bound himself by oath to observe all the points of this agreement if at any time he should be elected pope. If this arrangement had taken effect, it would in course of time have changed the whole form of ecclesiastical government, and would have been highly injurious to the papal system. It was, therefore, an act of good service to the papacy when the new pope made it one of the first acts of his government to annul this capitulation, as containing a rash and insane attempt to set limits to the fulness of that power which had been committed to the pontiff by God himself; and very soon the cardinals, convinced of the imprudence of the measure, yielded a willing assent to the deed o cassation.

Circumstances placed it in the power of Innocent VI to rectify some of the disorders which had abounded in the papal court at Avignon. The war which raged during his whole pontificate between England and France, and the weakness to which the latter was reduced, rendered him more independent of France than his immediate predecessors had been; while at the same time the emperor Charles IV considered it prudent to make a show of submission to the pontiff.

Under Urban V, who succeeded to the pontificate in 1362, all things seemed to revert to the ancient order. He transferred the papal court again to Rome (ad 1367), notwithstanding all the representations and remonstrances of the French court, and the complaints of the French cardinals. The Romans were intoxicated with joy when, in the following year, the emperor having come to Rome, they beheld the spectacle, which had not been witnessed for two centuries previously, of a solemn procession in which the pope appeared as the emperors superior,—the emperor leading the pope’s horse from the castle of St. Angelo to St Peter’s church, and attending him as his deacon at the celebration of high mass. Urban now remained undisturbed at Rome during a space of two or three years; but, to the utter astonishment of the Romans, at the expiration of this time, he declared that regard to the general good of the Church rendered it his duty to return to France.

This step could hardly have been occasioned by any necessity of his presence in France for the sake of putting an end to the war between France and England; still less could the pope have been urged to this measure by the entreaties of the French cardinals; and, in fact, he must have been impelled by reasons which are unknown to history. Be this as it may, this untimely return to Avignon was the occasion of many misfortunes to the papacy. The people of Rome were highly incensed at the proceeding; and, Urban IV having died in the same year, 1370, they had an opportunity of organising their opposition while the pontificate was passing into the hands of his successor, Gregory XI. Visconti again assembled his followers, and carried matters with a high hand.

At Florence and Bologna, at Genoa and Pisa, the Ghibellines again lifted up their heads; and in most of the cities belonging to the ecclesiastical states some leader, either aristocratic or democratic, was in possession of the chief power. In order to suppress these disorders, the pope determined, in 1376, to return to Rome, to which he was called, in the name of God, by the fanatical Catharine of Sienna. But he was badly received by the Romans, who suspected that he intended to reside among them no longer than necessity should require. He made preparations for a return to France, but died before he could accomplish his object, March 27, 1378. The conclave being held in Rome, the Romans had now an opportunity of influencing the election; and hence arose a long schism, disastrous to the Church, and injurious especially to the papacy. In this matter some share of blame attaches to each party.

 

COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT SCHISM.

 

Immediately upon the death of Gregory, the Roman people declared their determination to insist upon the election of a Roman, or at all events an Italian, pope, and proceeded to measures of violence in order to enforce their demands. An Italian, archbishop of Bari, was then unanimously elected, and presented to the people, by whom he was joyfully received, under the title of Urban VI. There can be no doubt that, with regard to the majority of cardinals, this election was made under the pressure of intimidation, and, therefore, was not free; but at the same time it is equally certain that the cardinals professed it to be the act of their free choice. It is also clear that they were in a condition of complete liberty, or were in a position to obtain their liberty, when they notified the election of Urban to the emperor, to the kings of France and Naples, and to their brethren who had re­mained at Avignon, without mention of any circumstances tending to cast doubt upon the election.

Soon, however, Urban made it appear that he was bent upon reducing the influence of the French party among the cardinals. He upbraided them with their luxury and vices, diminished their pensions, and required possession of the castle of St. Angelo, which had been in their occupation, or under the power of their adherents. Hence, therefore, in May of the same year, this section of the cardinals, having retired to Anagni, where they were protected by the presence of some French troops, invited the pope to hold a conference with them on the affairs of the Church, intending, no doubt, to compel his consent to the return of the papal court to Avignon. Still they recognised him as pope. Soon, however, finding that he was adopting measures with a view to maintain his ground against them, they resolved upon proceeding to extremities in self-defence. They in­vited the cardinals who remained at Rome to join them at Anagni, in order to consider what measures were to be adopted with reference to the late scandalous election. Upon their refusal to comply with this invitation, they sent to the king of France, Charles V, a report of the compulsion under which they had on that occasion acted; and, as soon as they had received the assurance of his support, on the 2nd of August, they published a manifesto, declaring to all the world under what circumstances Urban had been elected. Urban now endeavoured to enter into negotiations, and offered to submit the validity of his election to the decision of a General Council; but this proposal was met by a new manifesto, warning all persons to have nothing to do with this sacrilegious man, and calling upon him to vacate the chair of St. Peter without delay. After the expiration of a month, the cardinals elected one of their own body, whom they set up as the only legitimate head of the Church, under the title of Clement VII. The fault of the protracted schism which ensued is to be equally upon both parties.

The emperor of Germany, the kings of England, Hungary, and Poland, of Sweden and Denmark, declared themselves immediately in favour of Urban; the counts of Castile and Arragon seemed to hesitate which side to take; France, Scotland (in alliance with France), and queen Joanna of Naples took the part of Clement. Clement at first endeavoured to maintain his position in Italy by the assistance of Neapolitan arms; but he soon found himself compelled to retire from Anagni to Naples (a.d. 1379), where, however, the court could not protect him against the people, so that he was glad to escape to France by sea.

Each of the rival pontiffs now excommunicated the other, and declared his adherents schismatical; but Urban showed himself far more ready than Clement to yield to measures which might effectually put an end to the schism. Again he declared himself ready to refer the question of the validity of his election to a General Council; but, as this was to be upon the understanding that in the meantime he should be, recognised as the legitimate pope, he could hardly expect his opponent to assent to his terms. Six years afterwards, Clement made a somewhat similar proposal, but accompanied with conditions which secured its rejection. Urban died in 1389, execrated and despised even by his own adherents in Italy, where he had caused six cardinals to be put to death. This unpopularity might have served as a ground for the Romans to desire reconciliation with the pope at Avignon; but such was their aversion to the French that they hastened to elect another pope, Boniface IX, before the other party could find time even to enter into negotiations.

Boniface made a proposal to Clement that, if he would resign his pretensions to the pontificate, he, on his part, would appoint him his legate in all countries which had hitherto acknowledged him as pope. At this juncture, the university of Paris, and especially its college of divines, including many eminent and excellent men, began to make earnest efforts for effecting a settlement of this dispute, for the sake of the general welfare of the Church; and such was the influence of this university that it could not be disregarded either at Avignon or at Rome. In a formal memorial, drawn up by Nicholas de Clemangis on behalf of the university, and presented to the king (Charles VI), June 30th, 1394, the university recommended either the voluntary abdication of both popes, or submission to the decision of an umpire, or the decree of a council, as the only possible means of putting an end to the schism; declaring their decided preference of the first of these plans, as at once the most certain and the most expeditious, and urging the king to employ his authority and influence in order to effect it. The university, at the same time, sent a copy of this memorial to Clement at Avignon, which exasperated him to such a degree as to occasion his death.

At the instance of the university, the French court now called upon the cardinals at Avignon not to proceed to the election of a new pope. The cardinals declared that this was inconsistent with their duty; but, having offered to bind the newly-elected pope, by an oath, to perform an act of abdication as soon as the pope at Rome should do the same, they elected the cardinal Peter de Luna, under the title of Benedict XIII,—a man who had hitherto greatly contributed to prolong the confusion of affairs, largely pretending to be most anxious for the restoration of unity and concord. Benedict took the oath required; but, when called upon to abdicate according to the prescribed terms, he refused. The question was now raised at Paris how to compel him to accomplish this act; and it was resolved that the most effectual means would be to withdraw his revenues, by no longer allowing him to collate to French benefices, and by not paying the annates, or first-fruits. At the same time, the king of France endeavoured to engage the courts of Europe in the work of pacification. In the following year (1396), Richard, king of England, began to co-operate with him, and undertook to treat with his pope, Boniface IX, in order to induce him to make a voluntary abdication. In 1397, the German estates also, in an assembly at Frankfort, deliberated concerning the same matter. A common embassy was sent from several princes to Rome, bearing this proposal to the pope and cardinals; and the emperor Wenceslaus seemed, for a moment, disposed to step in as supreme protector of the Church and settle the question by an imperial decree. But neither of the popes really desired this result; rather, each was anxious to maintain his own ground, and to throw impediments in the way of peace. This desire appeared more plainly in the conduct of the French pope than in that of the Roman, and hence he became the more unpopular amongst the sovereigns of Europe, who felt that their efforts at compulsion must be directed chiefly against him. France began the task. In 1398, the king published an edict, inveighing, in the strongest terms, against the disgraceful conduct of both popes, especially Benedict; renouncing, in the name of the French nation, all obedience to him; refusing him all protection; and enacting that the French Church should be governed only by its own bishops, by whom alone all vacant benefices should be filled up. At the same time, the king declared that the other pope should not be recognised as such, and called upon the king of England and the emperor to adopt similar measures; and, having received the adhesion of the king of Castile and the emperor, he proceeded against Benedict by sending an army to Avignon, which, though it did not succeed in dislodging him from his strong palace, kept him shut up as a prisoner for the space of three years.

These measures would probably have soon put an end to the schism, but for the deposition of Wenceslaus, and the election of Robert, in Germany, a.d. 1400. Robert thought that he stood in need of a pope such as Boniface; he therefore declared himself on his side, and by an expedition into Italy, 1401, he contributed greatly to sustain his power. Hence the great advocate of Benedict at the French court, the duke of Orleans, found it tolerably easy, in 1403, to induce the king to enter into negotiations with him ; the result of which was a reconciliation on terms sufficiently easy to Benedict, who was made only to promise that he would abdicate as soon as the interests of the Church should make such a step necessary. In order still further to protract and to complicate the affair, Benedict sent an embassy to Rome (in 1404), inviting Boniface to a personal conference for consultation concerning the best means of restoring peace. Boniface died during the visit of these ambassadors at Rome; and they did not fail to employ their utmost influence to persuade the cardinals to elect Benedict, and thus at once to put an end to the schism. Benedict, however, had already made himself so universally unpopular that the cardinals chose rather to elect a new pope, Innocent VII, imposing upon him the condition of abdication as soon as the same step should be adopted by Benedict; and upon the death of Innocent, in 1406, they elected Gregory XII on the same condition. No abdication, however, took place; and Europe began earnestly to look round for some other method of terminating the dispute. Benedict, still interposing excuses and delays, received notice from the king of France not to provoke him to withdraw his protection a second time; whereupon he published a bull, pronouncing excommunication against all those who should, at any future time, withdraw their obedience from him. This it was which, at length, convinced the whole world that nothing could be accomplished by any of the methods hitherto attempted, and that some more effectual course must be adopted. As long ago as 1398, the university of Oxford had earnestly proposed the assembling of a General Council; and it was to this expedient that the minds of men now recurred, after the doctors at Paris had decided that even popes were bound to submit to the decrees of such council. The difficulty was, to determine what measures to begin with in order to the convening of this council. It was soon, however, resolved that this step should be effected by the cardinals of both parties; nor was it difficult toobtain a majority of them, who met at Pisa, in 1408, and convened a General Council, to assemble at that place in the following year, 1409. The announcement of this decision was everywhere received with great joy, notwithstanding that each of the rival popes had, in despair, convened a council in opposition,— Gregory XII at Aquileia or Ravenna, and Benedict at Perpignan.

The eyes of men were turned towards this council at Pisa for the accomplishment of an object still more important than the mere termination of the schism, which was nothing less than the general reformation of the Church, including a limitation of the papal authority and power. The aggressive nature of this power had been felt especially during the schism, when there were not only two popes instead of one, but each was driven to the adoption of violent measures for the support of his own cause, tending to deepen a conviction already existing, especially in France and England, that some measures must be adopted in order to put an end to papal exactions and oppression. Such was the prevailing sentiment of the ambassadors of more than twenty of the European powers, great and small, the delegates of fifteen universities, and more than three hundred doctors of theology and canon law, who assembled at Pisa, in March, 1409. Somewhat different, perhaps, were the views of twenty-two cardinals, sixteen archbishops and patriarchs, and eighty bishops, who formed the nucleus of the council; but, among the archbishops and bishops, at least one half were as fully bent as the civil power upon the accomplishment of the so-called reformation. Still more was this the case with three hundred proctors of absent bishops and abbots, and the deputies of more than one hundred chapters,—these being the parties who had suffered most severely from the oppression and exactions of the papal see. From the temper of the council, the cardinals soon found themselves obliged to promise that any one of their body who should be elected as pope should not suffer the council to separate without carrying into effect a fit, rational, and efficient reform of the Church, both in its head and in its members; and they proposed that any pope who should be elected, not being one of their body, should enter into the same engagement This was, in fact, to acknowledge that the reformation was the chief business of the council, and that its first duty was the termination of the schism. In the fifteenth session, June 5th, the council decreed that Benedict and Gregory, as schismatics, heretics, and perjured persons, were deposed from the pontificate, and that henceforward neither of them should be recognised as pope by orthodox Christians. In one of the sessions immediately following, the cardinals made their solemn promise concerning the work of reformation; whereupon the council did not hesitate to leave the choice of the new pope entirely to them. They went into conclave on the 15th of June, and on the 26th they presented to the council the cardinal Peter of Milan as the new head of the Church, under the title of Alexander V. In the session of the 1st of July, at which the new pope presided, he not only promised immediately to enter with zeal upon the work of reformation, but he called upon the council to Pisa, form a committee, consisting of some of its most learned and fit members of all nations, to confer with the cardinals on this subject, and to take the necessary preliminary measures. But, after the despatch of some other business, the work of reformation was speedily postponed until the next council, to be assembled within three years. This must have taken the greater number of the members entirely by surprise, no ground for this postponement being apparent; but the whole direction of the council had been left in the hands of the cardinals, and it could hardly have been expected that they would really endeavour to promote a reformation which would, in fact, consist, to a great extent, in withdrawing power and wealth from themselves. Nor was the new pope, whom they now chose, at all likely to act as a reformer. Immediately on his accession, he released the Church from the burden of many papal exactions, and he gratified the assembled bishops by a liberal and even profuse distribution of benefices, expectancies, and other favours; while the promise of a future council served to suppress that outburst of indignation which might have been expected to follow his refusal to fulfil the promise of immediate reformation.

The sentence of deposition pronounced by the Council of Pisa against Benedict and Gregory took effect only in those countries which had already renounced obedience to them. Each of these popes retained a certain number of faithful adherents, who acknowledged him as the only lawful head of the Church; so that the schism was not ended, but only aggravated, there being now three popes instead of two. But the party of Alexander V was by far the strongest, Gregory being acknowledged only in Italy and in some of the smaller states of Germany, and Benedict XII only by Scotland and Arragon, and one or two insnignificant provinces.

In 1410, Alexander V was succeeded by Joh XXIII, who had already become leader in the college of cardinals. This pontiff, who in his youth had been a pirate, and had been subsequently distinguished by rude energy and the violence of his measures, probably expected to be able to rule with a strong hand, and to bring his two rivals to submission without the intervention of the promised council. Soon, however, he found himself constrained by circumstances, and especially by the disposition of the new emperor Sigismund, to convene the council, only two years later than the time fixed at Pisa; and he ordained that it should meet at Constance, within the dominions of the emperor of Germany. At the opening of this council it became evident that the desire for reformation had gathered strength since the date of the Council of Pisa, and that the elevation of John to the pontificate had contributed in no small measure to this result, the minds of men having been outraged by the appointment of an ecclesiastic so notorious for his vices and excesses, at the very moment when they had begun to call for reform of the Church in its head and in its members.

It had been noticed at the Council of Pisa that the ancient manner of deciding by individual votes was greatly in favour of the pope and his party, on account of the number of Italian bishops who accompanied him, and from his influence in attaching individuals to his interests as his creatures and dependents. At the opening of the council at Constance it was proposed by some leading members that the votes should now be reckoned, not by individuals, but according to the nations represented; that all individuals present should be divided into four national sections, as French, English, Italian, or German, and that the bishops and divines of each nation should first deliberate in separate congregations upon all the questions brought before the council, and decide according to the majority of votes in that congregation, which decision should be reckoned as the vote of that nation in the general sitting of the council. By this means the overwhelming number of Italian votes would no longer be dangerous, inasmuch as they would only contribute to make up the one vote of that nation; while the votes of the creatures of the pope scattered throughout all other nations, which were of weight only when combined, would only form a minority in each nation. This measure was accordingly opposed by the pope and his adherents; but its promoters enlisted the emperor on its side, and succeeded in carrying it without any considerable delay.

The adverse disposition of the council was still more decidedly displayed with reference to the question which next arose, as to the order in which the subjects before it should be discussed. It was soon, however, decided that the acts of the Council of Pisa must be regarded as null and void, and that all the existing popes must be called upon to make a voluntary abdication. John, for his part, at first refused to make any abdication. He was subsequently terrified, by an appearance of prosecution, into a promise to abdicate upon certain conditions; but, when he found that the council would insist upon unconditional abdication, he fled by night from Constance to the territories of Frederic, duke of Austria, who had undertaken to protect him. Here he hoped to be able to set the council at defiance, or at all events to compel it to consent to his own conditions. The council, however, was resolute, and, under the auspices of the emperor, who had determined that its sittings should be continued in the absence of the pope, it sent a message to John, requiring his immediate return or the transmission of his act of abdication. On the 7th of April, his protector Frederic of Austria was placed under the ban of the empire, and was soon compelled to submit to all the demands of the emperor, including even that of bringing back John to Constance. Here, while he still refused to abdicate, it was resolved to proceed against him in the way of prosecution for criminal conduct, with a view to his deposition. He was accordingly cited to appear before the council to answer the charges brought against him: upon non­appearance at the end of nine days, sentence of suspension was pronounced; and, in the course of the next fourteen days, during which time he was brought as a prisoner into the neighbourhood of Constance, so many of the seventy charges brought against him were established as to justify the sentence of deposition, which was pronounced on the 29th of May. Gregory XII sent in his act of abdication on the 4th of July following; and was made cardinal bishop of Porto, and perpetual legate in the March of Ancona, a dignity which he retained during the remaining two years of his life. Benedict, however, continued obstinately to resist all overtures. The emperor, who sent to him in person, could only obtain a promise of abdication under the most monstrous conditions; but he prevailed upon the kings of Arragon, Castile, and Navarre, to withdraw their obedience, and, on the 6th of January, 1416, formally to renounce their protection of Benedict. After this, the council proceeded against this pontiff in the same manner as John, and sentence of deposition was pronounced, July 26, 1417. Benedict, now ninety years old, would not yield ; he retired to a fortress at Peniscola, in the kingdom of Valencia, and thence fulminated a sentence of excommunication against the whole world, with an interdict also upon the kingdom of Arragon. Here he remained until his death in 1424, with four cardinals whom, before he died, he bound by oath to elect one of their number as his successor. In this position, however, Benedict was no longer formidable to the Church; the schism was, in fact, at an end; and the council now felt satisfied that the new pope whom it should elect would be recognised by the universal Church. There was therefore now no impediment in the way of its proceeding to the great business of ecclesiastical reform; and some measures in this direction had been already taken while it was occupied with the determination of the schism. During its fourth session, the council had prepared a decree establishing it as a constitutional principle that a General Council represents the whole Church catholic, and that, as the Church has received its power immediately from Christ, even the pope is bound to submit to all its regulations, especially to those which relate to matters of faith, and to the reformation of the Church in its head and its members, —a measure which was strongly recommended by the celebrated Gerson, chancellor of Paris, and by Peter d’Ailly, cardinal of Cambray. It was now proposed by the emperor that the election of the new pope should be deferred until the questions of reformation had been settled; but this proposal was met with so strong an opposition from all the national sections of the council, except the German, that he was obliged to abandon it, after a series of stormy debates. Even Gerson and D’Ailly resisted this proposal; but at the same time they and others were fully prepared to make common cause with the emperor, if the new pope, after his election, should throw any impediments in the way of reformation. At the suggestion of the German nation, the council agreed that the new pope should be bound by oath not to quit Constance, nor to dissolve the council, until the reformation should have been accomplished. And in the remarkable thirty-ninth session of the council, October 9th, 1417, it made the most important regulation that, for the future, a General Council should be held at least once in every ten years, but that the next should take place at the expiration of five years after the termination of the present Council of Constance. By a second decree of the same session, made with a view to prevent the recurrence of a schism, it was ordained that if a pope should at any time have notice of the existence of an anti-pope, he should immediately convene a General Council, at which neither of the rival pontiffs should preside, but, from the moment of its meeting, both popes should be bound to suspend their functions of government.

The result of all this was that a work which bore the name of reformation was accomplished before the council separated, but a work so trifling and inefficient that the council was ashamed to recognise its own offspring. And thus the predictions of the emperor and the German bishops were fully verified.

Each of the other nations having vainly endeavoured to secure a pope of their own, the choice was ultimately left to the Italians. The new pontiff elected by the cardinals was raised to the papal chair under the title of Martin V.

The new pontiff was a man who had been hitherto distinguished by his moderation, and by a certain liberality of sentiment and conduct. All this, however, had rested only on the surface of the character of an accomplished man of the world, belonging to one of the first princely houses of Rome; and it is therefore not surprising that the hopes which many persons had ventured to build upon this fair appearance were doomed to suffer disappointment Immediately after his coronation, Martin nominated a commission of six cardinals who should confer with the deputies of the several nations on the matter of reformation. Before this committee were laid eighteen articles in which the council had already stated the grievances that required reformation; and to these the German national section appended a project of their own, which they delivered to the pope under the title of Advisamenta Nationis Germanies. In January, 1418, scarcely two months after it had begun its labours, this committee was ready with its report, which the pope laid before the council (Reformatio Martini papae in Capite et Curia Romana). But the committee had attended only to the points which were laid before it by the council, relating to some comparatively modern innovations and acts of papal oppression. Concerning the chief of these points, the report said that—circumstances did not permit any alteration. With respect to some others, it promised an improvement, by which only a very small part of the evils complained of could be removed. With regard to two or three of the least important, the report magnanimously professed to adopt the recommendation of the council for their entire removal. The council laboured in vain for any further concessions; and, wearied out by the firmness and determination of the pope, it consented, to the great discredit of its wisdom and courage, to accept the few paltry concessions that had been made as an equivalent for that great and extensive work of ecclesiastical reform which it had so loudly demanded. It had indeed so far a feeling of self-respect as not to embody its work in any synodal decree; but at length it accepted the proposals of the pope in another form. Concerning the matters which the council had desired to be reformed, or the grievances which it had proposed to be redressed, almost every one of the nations represented at the council concluded a separate compact with the pope, by which he con­ceded on the whole about as much as he had already proposed to concede to the council. At the same time, consistently enough with his line of policy, Martin published, under the form of papal ordinances or constitutions, in a public session of the council, those other articles which were contained in his project of reformation. And after he had thus given the final blow to the character of the council, he announced to the members, in their forty-fifth session, that they might now separate, in the name of God, since their work had been accomplished. To each of the members, at his departure, he gave a plenary indulgence, the virtue of which, under certain conditions, was to last until the hour of death; and to the emperor he granted, besides the plenary indulgence, a tenth of all the revenues of the German churches,—a gift not only made without the consent of those churches, but one against which they protested. The whole council attended the pope in solemn procession to the gates of Constance, the emperor leading his horse by the bridle.

At the opening of this council, it could hardly have been expected that the spirit of reform, which was then so zealous and ardent, could have been thus allayed. But, during the debates concerning the elec­tion of the pope, there sprang up a jealousy among the several nations of which the council consisted; and especially there was a feeling of ill-will on the part of all the other nations against the Germans. It was this state of things which gave full scope for the machinations of the enemies of reform, and secured a preponderating influence to the new pope when elected.

By this result of the Council of Constance, the measures which had been adopted for future progress in the work of reformation were rendered nugatory, and, in fact, reversed. As to the position which had been established relating to the superiority of a General Council to the pope, Martin published a bull, which he caused to be read in the council, declaring all appeals from a pope to a council unlawful and prohibited; nor did the council venture to protest against this bull. What, then, could be expected from a new council, which, according to the regulations lately passed, was to assemble in five years, even if it should really meet? Twelve years elapsed before another council was convened; and it is probable that none would have been assembled throughout the remainder of the century, had not unexpected circumstances called one into existence.

During the last quarter of the fourteenth century an opponent of the papal power had appeared in England, who boldly attacked it at some of its deepest foundations. This was no other than John Wickliffe, head of a college, and afterwards professor of divinity, at Oxford. In the year 1360, he engaged in a controversy with the powerful order of Mendicant Friars, who, upon their appeal to Urban V, obtained from him a decision in their favour, against Wickliffe, in 1370. Wickliffe, with the greater part of the English clergy and people, had already felt no small indignation at the treatment which the English had received from the popes; and men were disposed to resist that claim of feudal sovereignty which had been put forward by the papal see with reference to this kingdom. To these sentiments Wickliffe now gave open expression; and, at the same time, he found himself conscious that many of his views of divine truth were opposed to the decrees of popes and the influence of the Roman see. He did not hesitate to declare his conviction that it was now high time that a change should be made in the papacy and its relations to the Church. He not only insisted upon the necessity of recalling those new powers of provisions, reservations, and dispensations, of which the ancient Church and the old canon law knew nothing, —openly affirming that by these new claims the pope had become antichrist,—but he attacked, in general, the claims of the pope to ecclesiastical supremacy, or, at all events, he denied the divine right of this supremacy. He would not allow that the pope was to be regarded as the infallible depositary of religion, or the sure oracle of doctrine according to divine institution; for popes, said he, like other men, may err, and it was even notorious that they had erred: and he said that it would probably be best not to elect another pope at all, since it was so difficult to obtain a good one, and the Church could do very well without one.

These ideas were not wholly new. Some of the Franciscans, although adverse to Wickliffe, had expressed themselves even still more strongly in the same way during their quarrels with the popes, and had systematically endeavoured to destroy respect for the papacy in the minds of the people; and disgust at papal abuses had been often expressed by the nobility and superior clergy of England. So that Wickliffe could reckon upon the support of a powerful party in his opposition to the papacy, and against the attacks which he had reason to expect.

In 1377, Gregory XI called upon the king, the bishops, and the university of Oxford, to proceed against this heretic; upon which the bishop of London made preparations for a formal process against him, to take place at a council: but the duke of Lancaster placed himself at the head of his protectors, and argued so strongly in his favour that the bishop would not venture to condemn him, but contented himself with prohibiting him from any further dissemination of his opinions. This prohibition, however, could give no check to the opinions of Wickliffe; and the great schism contributed to give them currency and favour. They spread beyond the limits of England, and, doubtless, tended to awaken men’s minds to a sense of the necessity of ecclesiastical reform; and, after the Council of Constance, the effects of Wickliffe’s teaching on the Continent became manifest in connection with the movements excited by Huss.

Soon after the beginning of the fifteenth century, the celebrated John Huss, professor of divinity and preacher at Prague, became acquainted with the writings of Wickliffe, which were said to have been brought to Prague by some English scholars who were attracted thither by the fame of its University. This acute and pious man felt the influence of Wickliffe’s spirit the more readily on account of its resemblance to that of Conrad of Waldhausen, Milicz of Kremsier, and Matthias of Janow,—who had already distinguished themselves at Prague as bold and zealous preachers of a purer and more practical Christianity than that which generally prevailed. Huss boldly proclaimed his own convictions; and the high esteem in which he was held by the people, in the university, and even at the court itself, soon procured him a large number of adherents in Bohemia. In this circle he propagated the doctrines of Wickliffe, especially those concerning the pope and the Church, penances and indulgences; and he accompanied this teaching with severe invectives against the ambition and avarice, the vices and excesses, the ignorance and follies, of the clergy and the monks. Soon, however, he encountered a formidable enemy in the person of Sbynco, archbishop of Prague, who adhered to the party of the Roman pope, Gregory XII, deposed by the Council of Pisa in the year 1409, while Huss, on the contrary, insisted upon obedience to the commands of the king, who desired that Bohemia should acknowledge the new pope elected by the council. Huss brought over the whole university of Prague to his side; and eventually the archbishop found himself obliged to declare for the new pope. But Sbynco, now the determined enemy of Huss, denounced him to the new pope as a heretic, and raised a storm of persecution against him which tended to give publicity and effect to his opinions, while it aroused his adherents to stedfastness and zeal in their defence. The pope, Alexander V, pronounced against the reformer a sentence from which he appealed “ad papam melius inforniandum.” From a second sentence, in 1411, Huss appealed to a council; and this appeal gave the emperor Sigismund an apparently good ground for demanding his appearance at Constance. The council persuaded the emperor that, notwithstanding his safe-conduct, he was bound to deliver Huss into its power; and, having failed in its attempt to induce him to recant, it then condemned him to the flames. The whole nation, enraged at the insult which had been offered to it in the person of Huss, renounced obedience to the weak Sigismund, and, under the lead of Ziska, offered a successful resistance to his arms, while the doctrines of Huss gained a firm footing in the country.

This commotion gave breadth and intensity to the desire that the question of papal authority and power should be finally settled in an orderly and peaceable way; and hence the general demand for a new council, which the pope, at length, found himself obliged to convoke. Martin died before the time fixed for the assembly, which was appointed to take place at Basle, in the year 1431; but the cardinals administered an oath to his successor (Eugenius IV, elected March 3, 1431), binding him not to hinder the meeting of the council.

From this Council of Basle more might have been expected than even from that of Constance; the ideas and hopes of reform had gained ground; and men, remembering how they had been disappointed by the results of the two previous councils, were resolved to make good use of the experience they had gained. And yet, after all, they were deluded and disappointed, although not so easily, yet no less effectively, the third time also!

The temper of this council was from the first highly unsatisfactory to the pope, and menacing to his interests; and he speedily formed the determination of putting an end to its sittings as soon as possible. Before its members were well assembled, he sent an order to the cardinal legate who had been appointed as its president to dismiss the few bishops and delegates who had already come to Basle, and to announce a new council to meet shortly at Bologna, under the presidency of the pope in person. To his astonishment, however, Eugenius found a firm resistance to this mandate on the part of the new and scarcely assembled council, which he expected so easily to scatter. The cardinal legate himself remonstrated, and hesitated to make known the command he had received; while several cardinals, who were dissatisfied with the new pope, hastened to join the council, which daily gathered strength, and set itself in an attitude of resolute opposition to Eugenius. In its first session, December 14, 1431, it formally constituted itself, and recognised the question of ecclesiastical reform as one of the principal subjects which lay before it. In its second session, February 15, 1432, it sanctioned the great principle of the Council of Constance concerning the superiority of a General Council to the pope, and adopted some prudent measures for its own protection, determining that the existing council should not be dissolved, transferred, or prorogued by any external authority, without its own consent,—, that its members should not be amenable to any other tribunal, not even to the court of Rome,—and that none of them should leave the council, without good cause, to be admitted as such by the council itself. The pope, however, notwithstanding representations from various quarters, continued to insist upon its dissolution. In its third sitting the council represented to the pope the injustice and impropriety of these attempts at dissolution, called upon him to revoke the bull which he had published to that effect, and fixed a term of three months within which he must appear at Basle, in person, or by a plenipotentiary, to take his proper part in the deliberations of the assembly; and it decreed that this citation, which, probably, he would not permit to be served upon him personally, should be affixed to the doors of the papal palace and of the principal churches of Rome and other places. It provided also that in case of the non-compliance of the pope, the council should continue its sittings and proceed in its deliberations for the good of the Church. In its fourth session, it enacted that the pope should create no new cardinals during the sitting of the council, and that, in case of the vacancy of the holy see, the election should take place only on the spot where the council was assembled. These decrees were maintained with firmness during the fifth session, in opposition to the representations of an embassy which the pope had sent to Basle, pleading the infallibility and the “plenitudo potestatis” of the pope as head of the Church;—against which the council contended that these qualities did not reside in the pope, but in the whole Church, represented by a General Council,—the pope being only the ministering head, “ caput ministeriale,” of the Church. In the sixth session, the friends of the council moved that, the term prescribed having now expired, the pope should be declared contumacious; but in the eighth session a new term of sixty days was allowed to him, —a decree, however, being passed, by which any new council, assembled at Bologna or elsewhere, was declared schismatical and irregular, and all kings, princes, and prelates were forbidden to attend it, under pain of excommunication and deposition. In the twelfth session, thirty days more were allowed to the pope; and in the thirteenth session, September 11, another similar space was granted, the pope having shown some disposition to yield, and appearing to desire only to settle the form in which he should give his assent to the proceedings of the council. The firmness and decision of the council prevailed. At the end of 1433, the pope, involved in a war with the duke Visconti of Milan, was obliged to quit Rome, and seek safety in Florence, his enemies professing that they had acted at the instigation of the Council of Basle, and with a view to compel him to obey its decrees. Fearing a fate similar to that of John XXIII, Eugenius now determined to submit He declared himself fully reconciled to the council, recognised the validity of all its acts, and revoked all his proceedings against it While rejoicing in this reconciliation, the council at the same time made ample provision for its own security against papal encroachment or undue influence, and for the maintenance of its rights and privileges as announced by the Council of Constance. In its eighteenth session, June 25, 1434, it repeated the decree of Constance which declared the superiority of a General Council to the pope ; and soon after this a fresh rupture took place between the council and the pope. In its twentieth session, January 22, 1435, the council applied itself to the task of reformation, directing its measures chiefly against the authority and claims of the pope. With the exception of a decree against clerical concubinage, and some regulations concerning certain abuses and disorders in matters of Divine worship and the conferring of benefices, almost all its acts of reformation had reference to the pope alone, being directed with a view to place the papal revenues and authority upon the footing of two centuries earlier. And now the pope resolved upon coming to open war with the council; he felt that, at all events, he could lose no more than what the council was disposed to take from him, and this inspired him with an obstinacy and fixedness of purpose which, at length, but not until after a protracted struggle, led to victory.

Eugenius, having taken this resolution, reverted to his old attempts to dissolve the council, or, at least, to remove it to some other place; and the Greek emperor now furnished him with a better pretext for this proceeding than he had formerly possessed. Pressed by the Turks, the emperor had already declared himself willing to promote a reunion of the Greek Church with the Latin; he was even ready, with his bishops, to attend the council now sitting, if only the Western Church would make convenient arrangements. Hereupon the pope declared that the emperor could not be expected to travel further than Italy, and announced that, on this account, the seat of the council was transferred from Basle to Ferrara. The bishops at Basle, determined not to remove to Italy, had already considered what they could do for the accommodation of the Greeks, and had consented to transfer the council to Avignon, there to await the arrival of the emperor; having, however, prescribed a term within which the pope must appear among them. Eugenius, in the meantime, caused the Venetians to convey the emperor and his bishops to Italy; and on the 8th of January, 1438, he opened his council at Ferrara,—declared the assembly at Basle schismatical, and all its acts invalid,—and proceeded with his council at Ferrara as if there was no other in the world. The council at Basle took no alarm at these proceedings. In its thirty-first session, January 24th, 1438, it declared the pope suspended, and announced that the administration of all the power of the papacy, whether civil or spiritual, had now reverted to itself. In its next session, March 24, it pronounced the council at Ferrara schismatical, and commenced formal proceedings for the deposition of Eugenius. The severity of this last measure, however, shocked many of the fathers of this council, and they themselves earnestly began to devise measures by which it might be rendered needless, and averted. Here, however, the firmness of the opposing party prevailed. In the thirty-fourth session, May 25, 1439, the sentence of deposition was formally announced; and on the 27th November following, the council agreed upon the election of a new pope in the person of Amadeus, duke of Savoy, who took the title of Felix V.

If France and Germany had received these decrees of the Council of Basle, the cause of Eugenius would  have been hopelessly lost In 1438, when the new breach between the pope and the council took place, the king of France, Charles VII, had accepted the decrees of the council concerning ecclesiastical reform, and by an edict, known as the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, had constituted them fundamental laws of the French state and of the Gallican Church. In the year following, the most important of these decrees were also solemnly accepted by the German nation in a diet at Mayence. All these events threatened the pope with an unfavourable issue of the dispute now pending between the council and himself; but the intervention of more favourable circumstances effected his deliverance at the very moment when his cause appeared desperate.

This result may be attributed, no doubt, very much to the dread of a schism, even in name, which prevailed especially in Germany, where such an event was regarded as the greatest calamity that could possibly occur. The estates of the empire accordingly admonished the council to desist from its proceedings against the pope. Not succeeding in this attempt, they then declared themselves neutral, with a view to put themselves in a position to mediate; and, upon occasion of the election of the emperor Albert II (a. D. 1438), they agreed to employ their efforts for effecting a reconciliation between the pope and the council. All this was greatly to the advantage of Eugenius. The estates of Germany,—although in a condition of neutrality, during which Germany was nominally withdrawn from the obedience of the pope, —still were in constant intercourse with Eugenius. During this period Romish nuncios were perpetually treating with one or other of the states, and with these papal agents was soon united one of the most able men of the age, the celebrated Aeneas Sylvius, of the family of the Piccolomini of Sienna, who was thoroughly acquainted with all the German courts, and was well aware of the means which could be brought to bear upon them. By him the new emperor, Frederic III, was won over to the side of the pope; and at length he found means to persuade all the electors, assembled at Frankfort, in March 1446, to propose conditions which the pope would willingly accept These conditions, in substance, were accepted; the obedience of Germany was again declared ; and Nicholas V, who shortly after succeeded to Eugenius, immediately notified his assent to the act of his predecessor. By this means the authority of the pope was upheld against the Council of Basle; — the German nation, by the renewal of its obedience, declaring null and void all the measures which had been adopted by that council against the pope. All papal decrees against the council, so far as they were not inconsistent with the agreement now made with the German nation, were declared good and valid; and a bull was accepted in which the pope pronounced absolution to all who had taken part with the council, on condition of their abandoning it within six months, and returning to their obedience to the papal see. At the same time the emperor formally renounced his protection of the council, and commanded the people of Basle not to suffer its members to reside any longer among them. The bishops who remained at Basle then retired to Lausanne, where, together with their pope Felix, they continued, or affected to continue, the sessions of the council, until Felix made his peace with Nicholas V, and resigned the pontificate, in 1449. Nicholas, however, was obliged to concede to the German nation the decrees of Basle, so far as it had accepted them. This concession assumed the form of a Concordat ; so that these articles received their validity, not from the authority of the Council of Basle, but from the compact made between the pope and the German nation. This Concordat was concluded at Vienna, February 12, 1448 ; and by it two principal decrees of Basle, which had been accepted on behalf of the empire, — the decree concerning annates, and that concerning reservations,—were again more or less sacrificed to the pope.

Small, therefore, was the fruit of the labours of the Council of Basle in the matter of ecclesiastical reform; and events occurred which contributed to make the condition of the Church in the latter half of the fifteenth century even worse than it had been before. At Rome it had become evident that there was still a charm in the papal pretensions upon which men could reckon. When the pope had been deposed by the council, no state or sovereign proceeded further against him than the Germans, who only declared neutrality. At the same time, it was well known that there existed everywhere a numerous and powerful party which desired that such measures of reform as those decreed at Basle should take effect, and that this party was likely to persevere in its efforts against the exorbitant power of the popes. It was, however, also plain that this party was not prepared to proceed to extremities, partly from the want of power, and partly from the absence of any determinate principles and aims. But at Rome there could be no hesitation as to the course to be pursued ; here it was resolved to maintain a firm and bold front against all opposition. With regard to any pontifical rights which were assailed, the policy of the papacy was openly and boldly to continue the exercise of these rights, and to ignore anything like contradiction or protest It was certain that some voices would continue to be raised against these things, and that the Councils of Constance and Basle would still be in men’s memories; but then every act of opposition could be enfeebled or nullified by a reference to the results of these synods, so well adapted to remind men of their own weakness, and of the preponderance of the papal power. And when Rome had for some time acted quietly and steadily upon the principles of this policy, under the government of several successive pontiffs, there was not only a return to the old state of things, for which a remedy had been sought by the Councils of Constance and Basle, but imperceptibly also, at least in some respects, existing abuses became more legally established and sanctioned than they had ever been before.

Outward events contributed to this result. In 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople and put an end to the Greek empire in the East. A strong sensation was hereby created among the Christian states of the West, mingled with fear that the fanatical conquerors would push their way into Europe. Under these circumstances, the pope found it easy to rekindle zeal for the crusades, and to persuade men that preparations ostensibly made for this purpose were seriously and honourably meant. Perhaps, indeed, the professed designs of Nicholas V, and his successor, Calixtus III, during the two years after the capture of Constantinople, were real. Succeeding popes, however, turned the zeal for a crusade to the advantage of the papal treasury, according to the precedents of former times. They raised money, by their mere authority, from ecclesiastical property in the way of imposts,—as though no man could object to these imposts, because the money was required for war against the Turks. They demanded the payment of annates from all the larger benefices, which had been forbidden by the Council of Basle; and they arbitrarily raised the assessment of several bishoprics which they represented as being too lightly taxed, while the people were ready to believe that the proceeds were to be applied to the holy war. Whole troops of sellers of indulgences were despatched into all countries, under pretence that the money which they should remit to Rome would be employed with a view to redeem Constantinople from the hands of the infidels. So that, whatever had been denounced at Constance and Basle, as an abuse of papal authority, was restored to its former currency; and before men could say how it had come to pass, they found themselves in all respects in the same relation to the pope as that out of which they had been extricated with so much pains. Not that this took place without some show of resistance. In 1452, when the pope’s new crusading bull was laid before the German estates in a diet at Ratisbon, they seemed to be more shocked at the announced levy of a tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues than at the capture of Constantinople by the Turks; and several German princes and bishops declared that they would not contribute a penny to the crusade, on the ground that the whole affair was only a pretence for raising money,—a cover for papal extortion. The archbishop of Treves applied to the emperor for his interference against the new exactions of the Roman see, entreating him, at all events, not to let the German churches be plundered; the archbishop of Mayence spoke of an appeal to a General Council; while other bishops not only refused to contribute, but took from the papal collectors the money which they had raised in their dioceses. In these proceedings the Germans doubtless saw a violation of the recent Concordat, at all events as to its spirit and intention ; and at the same time the popes were violating this compact in the very letter. In 1457, the chancellor of Mayence complained to Aeneas Sylvius that there was not a single article of the agreement which had not been violated on the part of the court of Rome,—by the arbitrary bestowment of German sees,—by the reservation of benefices and dignities which were expressly given to bishops and chapters by the terms of the Concordat,—and by pecuniary demands upon German Churches, which the Concordat had expressly forbidden. Before the lapse of another year, additional instances of the breach of the Concordat occurred. The author of this compact, Aeneas Sylvius himself, gave occasion to a fresh invasion of its terms; for, in order to support the rank of a cardinal, to which he was now raised, he caused the pope to collect for him a yearly income of several thousand ducats from the German benefices and cathedrals. And when Aeneas Sylvius himself ascended the papal throne, under the title of Pius II it had become a common practice, with respect to all dignities in cathedrals and collegiate churches, which were expressly excepted in the Concordat from certain papal claims, that these were, notwithstanding, filled up from Rome, and that the rights of the pope in this respect were no longer disputed by the chapters. All these things took place notwithstanding the loud complaints of the German states and bishops. In a large assembly of electors, princes, and bishops, on the Rhine, in 1457, a long list of grievances in connection with the violated Concordat was drawn up, and transmitted to the emperor. At a meeting of the clergy of Mayence, Treves, and Cologne, in 1479, at Coblentz, a large number of instances, more or less recent, were collected. At a diet of Nuremberg, in 1487, the emperor and the estates declared that these grievances could no longer be borne. But all these complaints and movements effected nothing. At Rome it was not denied that the Concordat had been violated in some particulars; but it was maintained that the pope must be left at liberty sometimes to act without regard to its provisions, when occasion should require, and that it was always to be supposed that a real occasion existed whenever he should so act, although he might not see fit to give an account of the matter. This was declared by Nicholas V, in his bull addressed to the archbishop of Salzburg, in 1452, scarcely three years after the date of the Concordat; and in 1457, Calixtus III, writing to the emperor, declared that the pope could not be bound by the terms of any compact (nullis pactionum vinculis coerceri), and that, whenever he might confine himself to the terms of the Concordat, this was to be regarded as a pure act of generosity or liberality on his part.

Not only were the German churches thus badly treated by the popes, but all the other states of Europe felt the oppression of Romish despotism during the latter half of the fifteenth century, even more severely than they had before the Council of Basle. The six popes who reigned during this period not only resorted to those measures which had been prohibited by the Councils of Constance and Basle, and continued to pursue the same methods of exaction as heretofore, but even carried the latter to a still greater extent, and acted as if with the express design of exposing the decrees of those councils to contempt. Thus, in a bull, bearing date 1460, Pius II condemned the principle, sanctioned by both councils, that an appeal could lie from the pope to a General Council,—and thus also condemned the principle that a council is superior to the pope. The same pontiff pursued the system of exaction with extreme rigour; and during his pontificate was introduced the new abuse of so-called Pensions,—that is to say, an assignment, with respect to all ecclesiastical offices disposed of at Rome, of a certain arbitrarily appointed payment to be made by the new incumbent to a cardinal or some other of the Roman courtiers,—a system which was pushed so far by succeeding pontiffs that, at length, by this burden, in connection with other imposts levied on ecclesiastical property, a full half of all the Church property of the West was claimed by Rome. To no less an extent prevailed also the abuses in connection with dispensations and indulgences; and most insupportable of all was the haughtiness with which the popes ridiculed all complaints concerning these acts of oppression, and neutralised all attempts which men made to protect themselves against them. The last pope of this period had the audacity to annul the decrees of the Council of Basle, in a new council which he himself convened at Rome.

We may well be surprised at finding that the world was content with thus merely making complaints, and entering protests, without effectually vindicating its independence. But there were various circumstances of the times which contributed to this result Such was the weakness of the emperor Frederic III, and the high value which he set on his coronation by the pope, for which he went to Rome in 1451, and submitted even to the most humiliating part of the Roman ceremonial,—at the same time calling upon the pope to aid him in a quarrel in which he was engaged with the estates of Austria, by pronouncing sentence of excommunication against his opponents, —thus even requesting the pope to interfere in the secular affairs of temporal princes. And the same may be said concerning the weakness of the French kings of this period. Charles VII would not effectually support his subjects against the pope when the university of Toulouse and other spiritual corporations entreated him to aid them in resisting the levy of a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of the kingdom made, by Calixtus III, professedly for the purpose of a war with the Turks; and Louis XI, who succeeded Charles, went even so far as to comply with the demands of the pope for the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction,—an act, however, from which the parliament of Paris withheld its consent. The papacy was favoured at this time also by the rising political importance of Italy, which made the European sovereigns desirous of obtaining or preserving some interest or footing in that country, and anxious, on that account, to secure the friendship of the pope, for which they were, of course, willing to pay some price, or make some sacrifice.

Hence, the last three popes of this century more than once ventured, not only to resume the attitude of their predecessors in the thirteenth century, but even to lay plans for the aggrandisement of their temporal power such as no pope of that century would have been bold enough to devise.

Louis XII of France, highly incensed against Julius II on account of his opposition to himself in Italy, making common cause with the emperor Maximilian I, who had been grossly deceived and ill-treated by the same pontiff, and having gained some discontented cardinals over to his views, convened a General Council to meet at Pisa in 1511;— but never did an undertaking directed against the influence and dignity of the papacy meet with so disgraceful a defeat. The pope himself easily neutralised this council by convening another in the Lateran at Rome; and the result proved that even this measure of precaution was superfluous. The whole assembly which actually met at Pisa consisted only of a few cardinals, two archbishops, five abbots, and some doctors, chiefly from France; the emperor having failed to induce even a single German bishop to attend. This assembly, a few days after its commencement, finding itself not safe in Pisa, transferred its sittings to Milan; and at the end of two months, feeling the same insecurity in Milan, it separated, after having in its eighth and last session suspended the pope, who had been cited but did not appear. The Lateran Council, on the other hand, was numerously attended from almost all the Christian states of Europe; and it continued its sittings four years after the death of Julius (in 1513), being universally recognised as a General Council. It received also the sanction of all temporal powers, the weak emperor Maximilian having sacrificed his Milan Council, under the pontificate of Julius, by recognising the Council of Lateran; while the new pope Leo X received a similar recognition from France, under circumstances which gave it a greater value than that which belonged to the recognition of Maximilian. Francis I, the successor of Louis XII, in 1515, entered Italy the very year of his accession, and advanced in triumph to Milan. The pope was now willing to make terms with him; and the young monarch, thinking that he could turn his friendship to good account, was equally willing to be reconciled. Francis met Leo at Bologna, and here concluded with him the celebrated Concordat, by which he fully and finally renounced the Pragmatic Sanction, and accorded other advantages to the pope, receiving nothing substantial in return.

Thus, at the close of this period, the papacy acquired in its temporal and ecclesiastical relations not only greater splendour than it had formerly possessed, but also, in appearance, greater strength; and it now seemed as if all the storms of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had tended only to root it more firmly in the soil of Europe. This, however, was only in appearance; the truth is that its very foundation had been undermined by the doctrines of Wickliffe and Huss; and when Leo came to the papal throne we find ourselves in an era, upon the consideration of which we do not propose to enter,— the era of the blessed Reformation,—a reformation, not such as had been designed by the Councils of Constance and Basle, consisting in the mere removal of certain ecclesiastical abuses, but one which, while it struck at the very root of all abuses, not content with overthrowing what was corrupt, and destroying what was evil or pernicious, accomplished the great work of giving liberty to the proclamation of gospel truth, and of presenting to men’s minds the fundamental articles of Christian faith.

All the existing abuses of papal despotism had been long since directed to the same end,—that of making money. Every fresh act of power was an act of extortion; every new oppression was connected with some financial speculation. Such was the extension of the papal rights of reservation and provision, which, at length, comprehended the unlimited disposal of all ecclesiastical offices and benefices. The way in which the Church of Rome went to work in this matter, and the insolence with which it proceeded in it, from step to step, exceeds all belief. In 1317, John XXII declared, in his celebrated bull Execrabilis, that every ecclesiastical person who held a plurality of benefices was obliged to resign all except one, and also that every benefice so resigned by the incumbent was at the disposal of the pope. In 1335, Benedict XII, by a new constitution, Ad Regimen, not only confirmed the reservation of the bull Execrabilis, but, moreover, reserved for the Roman see all benefices vacated by the deposition or translation of their incumbents,—and all which had been possessed by a cardinal, an official of the Roman court, or any other person whose names occurred under any title whatever in the calendar of that court. And this regulation brought at once into the papal grasp a large number of benefices, since the titles of papal officials and civilists were very liberally bestowed. These reservations were confirmed by Clement VI. Soon after followed the great Schism, during which the two popes wanted more money than ever; and each of the contending popes established it as a general principle that the patronage of all vacant benefices, whether those belonging to Roman courtiers, or those at a distance, should be reserved for the pope, without exception. Under these circumstances, if only a moderate tax or fine were paid for appointment to benefices at the disposal of Rome, here must have been a source of vast wealth to the papal treasury. But, in point of fact, the greater number of these benefices were sold to the highest bidder, regular auctions of benefices being established both at Avignon and at Rome; and almost every purchaser bought, not only his presentation to the vacant benefice, but also a dispensation whereby he was qualified to hold it.

This, however, was not the only means of extortion, or source of enormous revenue, which the popes employed. John XXII is usually regarded as the originator of Annates, or first-fruits; but although this may be, to a certain extent, correct, yet he cannot be considered as entitled to the whole merit of invention in this matter. The payment of annates, considered as a tax which an ecclesiastic, and especially a bishop, was bound to pay at his ordination, to the party who ordained or consecrated him, may be traced to the beginning of the fifth century. It appears, from the Life of Chrysostom, that Antoninus, metropolitan of Ephesus, had already in his time established a tax to be paid to him by all bishops whom he consecrated, and that it was assessed according to the value of their revenues. Chrysostom abrogated this tax, and the Council of Chalcedon, in one of its canons, declared it to be pure simony when anything was given or received for ordination. The bishops soon, however, put another appearance upon the matter, and made payment of those fees so regular and customary that the emperor Justinian found himself obliged to rest satisfied with merely moderating it, and restraining it within certain limits. In the Latin Church the matter took the same course. In 595, Gregory I, in a council at Rome, most strictly prohibited any kind of payment for the ordination of bishops or other clergy, and called upon all princes and bishops to look well to the observance of this decree. In 829, a council at Paris opposed the same abuse. But Ivo of Chartres declares that, at the end of the eleventh century, it was prevalent at Rome. And from a canonist of the latter half of the thirteenth century we learn that, at that period, such consecration cost the whole of one year’s revenues,—that a part of the fees payable on such occasions was designated “annates,”—and that this portion was divided between the pope and the cardinals. He says, also, that great complaints were made concerning this practice in the time of Alexander II. Hence it appears that before the time of John XXII there was such a payment as that of annates; but that the title was restricted to a certain portion only of the fees payable at the consecration of a bishop. In 1318, however, John, by a special constitution, reserved to the pope the amount of one year’s revenue from all benefices not elective, and so from all prebends, chaplaincies, and parish churches, under the name of annates, supporting his enactment by the plea that the wants of the Church made such contribution necessary. This, therefore, was, in effect, to a great extent, a new impost, under a name which had already been in use to denote something else. John appointed this reservation at first for only three years, but he afterwards continued it, and his successors made it permanent; and Boniface IX, in 1392, extended it to all benefices, elective as well as non­elective,—that is to say, to bishoprics and the like, as well as to inferior appointments. The annates were fixed in the books of the Romish treasury for every benefice, extending to something less than the value of one year’s income.

Besides the annates, there were still certain fees for consecration or confirmation in an office, payable at Rome, which went partly to the cardinals, and partly to the inferior officers.

In 1470, Paul II discovered that there were certain benefices which had escaped the observation of his predecessors, and were still untaxed, consisting of such as had gradually grown up in connection with monasteries, hospitals, and similar institutions. This pontiff caused a calculation to be made how often these benefices would be vacant if they were unconnected with such institutions; and as this was thought likely to take place, on an average, once in fifteen years, the pope ordered the revenue of every fifteenth year to be paid into the papal treasury, in lieu of annates. Until the end of the eighteenth century, this payment was always exacted, except when provision to the contrary was made by some special compact.

Such were the principal and regular imposts upon Church property by which the Roman treasury was replenished. Other methods were occasionally employed. Such were the “fructus medii temporis,” or revenues which accrued during a vacancy, and the “fructus male percepti,” revenues received by incumbents who were afterwards pronounced by the popes not to be legitimate. Thus, in 1403, Benedict XIII made it the first condition of his reconciliation with the French, who had withdrawn themselves from his obedience for the space of three years, that the amount of the whole ecclesiastical revenues of these three years, throughout the kingdom, should be paid to him, as being “fructus male percepti,” the occupiers of all benefices during these three years having been in a state of schism, and not qualified to receive the incomes of Church property.

As early as the twelfth century, temporal sovereigns had claimed the right of inheriting the property of all deceased bishops and abbots; but the popes did not rest until, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, they had extorted this source of revenue, at least from the emperors. Throughout the thirteenth century, the ecclesiastical property of bishops, abbots, and other beneficed clergy, was appropriated to the collegiate body to which the deceased belonged, or to his successor. But after the middle of the fourteenth century, the popes sent officials and collectors into every province, charged with the task of transferring to the papal treasury all the personal effects of deceased clergymen, before the appointment of their successors. This proceeding was altogether without law or precedent; but these collectors met with no opposition until the beginning of the next century, at least in Germany and France. About this period, however, they began to attack even the real property of deceased ecclesiastics, to the injury of the heirs at law; and this act of rapacity gave rise to loud complaints. In some places the civil power began to interpose. Borne, however, did not abandon the cause; and in 1487, the pope threatened an archbishop of Salzburg with deposition, because he had refused to hand over to his collectors the “spolia” of his predecessors.

Other sources of profit to the papal treasury, and of injury to the Church,—the more disgraceful to the papacy, because the amount of profit derived from them was comparatively small, while the detriment to the Church was exceedingly great,—consisted in the system of commendams, unions, and incorporations.

As early as the eighth and ninth centuries, bishoprics and abbeys were sometimes commended to lay­men,—i. e., under the form of commendation, the revenues of those benefices were made over to them. But these abuses had always been protested against. These commendams were declared illegal by several councils; and they gradually fell into desuetude during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. About the same time, a legal system of commendation was established, which was innocuous, or even useful; consisting of a provision whereby, when the patron of a benefice could not for some reason or other fill it up on occasion of a vacancy, the immediate superior was authorised to provide a temporary incumbent who should discharge the duties of the post. During the fourteenth century, however, the popes found that they could work this system to the advantage of their treasury. It often happened that some party who offered at Rome a good price for a vacant benefice was not canonically qualified to hold it: in order not to lose the sale, and at the same time to elude the force of the disqualifying canon (e. g., when a father wished to purchase a valuable living for his son, six or seven years old), the Roman curialist had now recourse to the system of commendation. It was found that parties could hold—i. e., receive the revenues of—one or more benefices in commendam, which they could not hold as regular incumbents. By this means the laws of the Church were often most insolently set aside. But the papacy knew no shame, and the abuse prevailed; only we find that, in 1307, Clement, conscience-stricken, revoked all commendams which he had granted, except those which had been made to cardinals. As late as under John XXII these commendams were usually granted only for a limited period of time,—as when one was granted to a minor, to be held as such only until he came of age for ordination, when it was provided that he should be ordained, and hold the benefice regularly. But the immediate successors of John began to grant com­mendams for life, and they gave away even bishoprics in this manner.

It was an old practice for bishops, after a war, pestilence, inundation, or other public calamity, when a parish had become too small or poor to support its own incumbent, to unite it to some neighbouring parish, and thus to make two benefices into one. Sometimes a provincial council united even two sees in this banner. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it often happened that such unions w ere effected for the benefit of monasteries, hospitals, or other religious institutions; and even by this means a door was opened to many inconveniences and abuses. Afterwards, however, such unions began to be effected in favour of individuals, in order to elude the force of laws directed against pluralities, non-residence, and want of personal qualification. Thus, a child was not qualified to hold a “beneficium curatum,” i. e. a living with cure of souls; but when this was united or annexed to a “beneficium simplex,” i. e. without cure of souls, such as a stall in a cathedral, it sufficed to bestow upon the child the latter benefice, which he could hold, and this drew after it the other as of course.

Sometimes several sees were incorporated in favour of a powerful prelate, or one who had loudly complained of the payments required of him at Rome in the shape of annates or other dues. Thus Baldwin, archbishop of Treves (1307-1354), held two or three bishoprics on the Rhine together with his archbishopric. Sometimes also rich abbeys were incorporated with bishoprics.

At the very commencement of the fourteenth century there was scarcely a single spiritual community or college, hardly a monastery or religious foundation of any importance, which had not already been withdrawn by the pope from the jurisdiction of its diocesan bishop, and declared exempt. The popes of the present period found therefore little opportunity of filling their coffers by granting new exemptions. But, while this system could not be pushed to a much greater extent than formerly, its oppressiveness, and the mischief it involved, began to be now severely felt. The insolence and insubordination of exempt monasteries, and the like, towards those who were still their ordinary superiors, were excessive; for it was generally felt that, in a contest between an exempt body and its diocesan, the pope would pretty surely decide in favour of the former.

In 1300 Boniface published a bull, proclaiming a year of universal Jubilee, and promising a plenary indulgence to all pilgrims to Rome who should visit certain churches and holy places of that place in a prescribed manner. On this occasion the concourse of pilgrims to Rome was immense; Villani computes them at two hundred thousand. They left large sums of money behind them ; and so gainful was this visit to the papal city that the next jubilee was fixed by Clement V for 1350. The next was held in 1390, having been proclaimed by Urban VI in 1389. The pope in 1390 was Boniface IX, who now proclaimed that all the benefits of the jubilee should belong to those who should perform certain devotions in a neighbouring church, during a specified time, provided that they should pay to the papal receiver or collector the sum, or at least one-third of the sum, of money which they would have expended on their journey to Rome. Boniface IX proclaimed another jubilee for 1400; Martin V for 1423; Nicholas V for 1450; and Paul II ordained, in 1470, that a jubilee should be celebrated every twenty-five years, since otherwise, considering the shortness of human life, and the frequently occurring calamities of pestilence, war, and the like, only very few Christians could enjoy the benefits of a jubilee-indulgence. By this means large sums of money were collected for Rome and the papal treasury; but the greatest possible injury was inflicted upon the cause of religion and morality.

All these things being considered, it is not surprising that before the end of the fifteenth century the papacy had become exceeding unpopular, even if regarded simply as a system of wholesale exaction and plunder. Other circumstances also contributed to make impressions upon the public mind unfavourable to the pretensions of Rome.

The Universities, many of which were founded in the course of the fourteenth century, were at first highly favoured by the popes, and contributed not a little to establish the power of the Roman see by the study and explanation of the canon law; but, in no great space of time, these seats of learning became sources of weakness to the papacy rather than of strength, by the advancement of intellectual culture, and the necessary development of a state of independence, at variance with the papal system of despotic dogmatism and unscriptural pretensions.

The Mendicant orders which, at the time of their establishment, were powerful auxiliaries to the papacy, became to it, before the close of this period, a source of perplexity and weakness. A great schism having arisen among the Franciscans, consequent upon dis­putes respecting the more or less strict observance of their rules, the popes at first endeavoured to mediate between the two conflicting parties; but at length, the papacy, being evidently inclined to favour the more moderate section, drew down upon itself the indignation and opposition of the more strict or extreme Fratricelli, and thus found everywhere a number of men, in high credit with the populace, ready and eager to expose and denounce its abuses, and to assist in augmenting the general clamour for reform.

We have already taken notice of the formidable opposition of Wickliffe, who not only denied the pretended divine right of the papal supremacy, but, by his exposition of the nature and rights of the Church, and especially by his appeals to Scripture, did much towards shaking the foundations of the whole papal system.

The great Schism which existed in the papacy from 1378 to the Council of Constance, during which one pope was continually hurling anathemas against another, while the burden of papal exactions was becoming more intolerable than ever in all the countries of Europe, tended greatly to arouse a spirit of inquiry, and to alienate men’s minds from the seat and origin of such manifold mischief. And this feeling was doubtless aggravated by the failure of succes­sive attempts to carry those measures of reformation which were obviously needed.

Still, when the Councils of Constance and Basle met, under all these favourable circumstances, they missed the right starting-point from which they ought to have set out in the work of reformation. They regarded the evils of the Church as proceeding only from an abuse of papal power; and their great objectwas to set limits to that power, and to restrain its abuse. Even the Council of Basle desired still to recognise the supreme power in the Church, or the complete fulness of ecclesiastical power, as committed to the pope alone by God; and,—although it did not regard it as a necessary consequence that the pope was, properly speaking, the only ordinary in the Church, and that all other ecclesiastical power was derived from him, and all other bishops only his representatives and delegates in their several districts,— still it did not hesitate to concede to the pope all the rights of an universal episcopate. It may be doubted whether the council intended actually to leave these rights in the hands of the pope; indeed, several of its acts, and more of its explanations, appear to favour the contrary supposition, especially when it declared that the pope was to be regarded only as the “caput ministeriale,”—the ministering head,—of the Church. The truth is that the council had not formed a distinct idea on this subject; and hence came much that was inconsistent and contradictory in its acts, without its being aware of the incongruity. It was obviously the design of this council to restore the papacy as nearly as possible to its status under Innocent III. Only in one respect it maintained a great ante-Isidorian principle, by affirming the superiority of a General Council to the pope, and therefore also the validity of appeals from the pope to such council. But this again was inconsistent with the principles of many of the decretals, the authority of which it at the same time recognised.— The council was misled principally by its blind respect for the canon law,—a system which had taken complete hold on the minds of men during two centuries, and with which was bound up the reputation and very existence of the doctors and graduates of all the universities, who possessed great influence in the council. There were also other classes of men whose interests required that the existing relations of the pope to the Church should not be entirely destroyed, and even that the abuses of papal power should not be altogether removed. Hence it was that the council not only did so much less than was required, but that even what it did was done imperfectly and by halves. The bishops and other high ecclesiastics were persuaded that it was for the benefit of the Church and of church­men (such as themselves) that the Church should have a head possessing greater powers than temporal princes, against whom he might be able to protect them.

The temporal princes also felt it to be to their interest that the power of the pope should not be brought too low, since they had often found it useful to deal with the Church in their several countries through its sovereign head; as when the pope granted them tenths of the whole ecclesiastical revenues of their realms, which otherwise they would not have been able so easily to levy. And many of them, especially the lesser princes of Germany and Italy, had also found it more easy to obtain bishoprics and abbeys for their younger sons and other members of their families as a grant from the popes than by way of election from the chapters. There is no room for doubt that the princes of that age were influenced by considerations such as these.

Besides this, it is to be remembered that all these abuses were, either in fact or in appearance, connected with some real or fancied good, and that they often appeared in the light of necessary evils, or as the lesser of two evils. Thus, annates were supposed to be necessary, in order to maintain the necessarily large expenses of the papal court If judicial proceedings at Rome were troublesome and expensive, still it was considered a good thing that such an ultimate court of appeal should exist; and the courts of law in the several countries of Europe were also expensive and corrupt, especially the ecclesiastical courts of bishops and metropolitans. Even the system of papal provisions and reservations was not unattended with its own advantages. Often, perhaps for the most part, benefices did not fall into worse hands in the Roman market, than those into which they would have come if this patronage had been more regularly exercised at home; and sometimes the court of Rome made use of its power to reward merit, and to promote suitable and worthy men. The chapters, it should be borne in mind, were close corporations, usually in the hands of the aristocracy; and all their ecclesiastical patronage, if undisturbed, would soon have come to be regarded as the patrimony of a few great families: but by the strangers introduced from Rome this bond of family aristocracy was, in a great measure, broken,—men of talent and reputation were brought into these select circles, who would otherwise never have found their way into them,—and thus an aristocracy of learning was at all events made to mingle with the aristocracy of rank. So that the papal interference was thus felt to serve in many cases as a valuable corrective.

Hence it was not so much against the papal supremacy itself as against the abuses connected with the administration of that supremacy that the efforts of reformers in this age were directed. But, as long as this supremacy was conceded, the popes could always find means of administering it according to their will; and therefore it was found possible on their part even to annul the whole work of the Council of Basle. It was necessary that reform should be effected in quite another way.

The dawn of a real reformation, however, had begun. Wycliffe and Huss, although themselves not fully aware of the worst grievances of the Church and the way to procure redress, were yet the forerunners of Luther. Respect to the rights of individual conscience, and regard to the supreme authority of the word of God in matters of Christian faith and practice, soon led to an extensive discovery and explosion of the gross superstitions and errors upon which the papacy had been founded; and, by God’s blessing, the Church was, in great measure, rescued from the bondage of Rome and restored to the liberty of the Gospel.

On this new field of history, in which the hand of God was so visibly displayed, accomplishing a Divine work by a chosen instrumentality, we do not propose to enter. But in order to represent in few words the blow which had thus been inflicted on the papacy, and the work which still remained to be accomplished, I refer, in conclusion, to the following passage from the work of a modern historian, which is well worthy of attention, as being at once enlightened and earnest, and especially as having a strong practical bearing upon a question of no small importance:—

“ Though the pretensions of the popes, from the time of Nicholas to the present bishop of Rome, have never ceased, those pretensions have never been so fully regarded by the princes and kings of Europe since the great Schism, as they were before it took place. The great Schism had the same effect on the influence of the papacy, as the war between James II and William III produced on the monarchy of England. Though war maintained the monarchy, it destroyed despotism, and strengthened the influence of the people. The popular power, which had uniformly, in all ages of the English government, been opposed to the undefined pretensions of arbitrary princes, or of unreasonable laws, had hitherto wasted its strength in temporary oppositions, or in civil war. The Revolution of 1688 gave the more solemn sanction of public law to the power of the people. It defined their privileges more clearly. It limited the authority of the sovereign more effectually; and, —while it utterly overthrew and destroyed, we may hope for ever, the legality of the intolerable maxim which characterises alike the presumption both of the legitimate or the usurping despot, and which was alike common to the Stuarts, to Louis XIV, and to Napoleon, the maxim that the individual sovereign is the State (l’état, c’est moi),—it so nearly defined the ever-undefinable boundaries between the liberties of the people and the prerogatives of the prince, that we have seldom or ever been in danger of the revival of the old doctrine of ‘The right divine of kings to govern wrong. So it has also been with the great Schism. The wars between the rival candidates for the papal chair compelled the more general conviction that, of whatever nature was the supremacy which our blessed Saviour might possibly have conferred upon the pope and his successors, that supremacy could not be limited to the individual bishop. The great Schism strengthened ecclesiastical power, by destroying the despotism of the papacy. The opposition to Rome, which, before the age of Wycliffe, had manifested itself in irregular censures only, assumed the more definite form of a demand for ecclesiastical councils, to act with the bishop of Rome, in forming laws, and regulating the affairs of the Church. The consequence was that, as the popular power became blended with the monarchical power at the Revolution, so the ecclesiastical power became blended with the papal power. As the individual king ceased despotically to govern England, the individual pope ceased despotically to govern the universal Church. As the united popular monarchical power at the Revolution passed many questionable laws, and provoked much resistance on the part of the people from the reign of William III till the present day, so the ecclesiastical power of the universal Church, though it crushed the Gregorian policy and power by decreeing that the councils of the Church had an authority which was so inherent in the universal Church that it was indestructible by the pope, came to many conclusions which Scripture did not sanction. The Reformation itself was not so much the emancipation of the universal Church from the despotism of Rome, as it was the emancipation of the universal Church from the ecclesiastical despotism of which the papacy was the head. The Church universal, by resolving to be ruled by the decisions of councils, as well as by the laws of the popes, overthrew the Gregorian power; but Luther and the high-minded Reformers of England and Germany overthrew the despotism of the conciliar power itself, by restoring to every individual Christian the privilege, which God had granted to him, of arriving at religious conclusions from the study of their evidence, as soon as education, and the power of reason, had conferred upon the individual the ability to exercise that first, noblest, and most invaluable of all privileges in this life which an immortal soul can possess. The ultimate effect of the great Schism, was to destroy Gregorianism, or papal despotism. The ultimate effect of the Reformation was to destroy ecclesiastical despotism. Wycliffe accomplished the first; Luther the second. The word “popery” as a general term, describes both systems which were thus overthrown .... These reflections on the great Schism will enable us to reconcile the extreme opinions of reformed and unreformed writers.  “Never”, says one of the principal Romish historians, was the unity of the see of Rome better preserved than during this Schism.  The grand Schism, says Dean Waddington, on the other hand, frittered away the power of the papacy. The unity of the see of Rome was for a time preserved, but its authority, though not its pretensions, ceased to be Gregorian. The power of the papacy was continued, but its uncontrolled despotism was destroyed. Many ages had contributed to its growth; many ages must contribute to its fall. The Christian only wishes to destroy both papal and ecclesiastical tyranny. He neither wishes to destroy the bishops of Rome, nor the bishops of Christendom, nor the useful discipline ordained by Scripture, sanctioned by antiquity, and essential to the peace and order of every Christian Church.”

 

CONCLUSION.

 

I append the following remarks of Gieseler concerning the general condition of the papacy at the beginning of the sixteenth century:—

“By means of the reforming Councils at Constance and Basle, in opposition to the doctrine of the pope’s universal monarchy which had been hitherto maintained, the other theory of the limitation of the papacy by the ecclesiastical aristocracy, which had already reached its full growth in France, obtained full recognition in the Church. The controversy betwixt these two systems was waged incessantly from this time onward. General Council was raised up against General Council, author against author. . . .

“The chief principles of the newly-risen monarchical-aristocratic system are these:—That the secular power is not dependent upon the ecclesiastical that the supreme and legislating sovereignty in the Church belongs to General Councils alone, to which the greater number of the theologians of this party assigned at the same time infallibility;—that the pope, being subordinate to them, was no more than a caput ministeriale ecclesiae, and not authorised to give laws to the Church;—and that appeals might be made to a General Council;—that the episcopal power did not finally rest upon the papal power, but shared with it the same foundation. Although the reasons in defence of this theory were principally drawn from the earlier ecclesiastical laws, which were still preserved in the collection of statutes in force, still, as the consideration of these might easily have led men on to widely-extended historical researches, its champions took their ground almost exclusively upon the dogmatical-scholastic platform. Undoubtedly, individuals had attained, by the help of the newly-awakened knowledge of antiquity, to deeper insight into history. The fraud of the Pseudo-Isidore, and the spuriousness of the grant of Constantine, were known to many, and the latter publicly announced by Laurentius Valla. However, these discoveries were neither as yet made public property, nor used by the liberal canonists for their own advantage ; and so the weapons of history most fatal to the papacy were not yet directed against it with any effect.

“Against this new monarchic-aristocratical system, which had grown up especially in France, and was regarded and defended as the groundwork of all Church freedom, the ancient papal system under the protection of the pope found no less decided champions, principally in Italy, among the throng of men who were bound to the Curia partly by favours received, partly by their hopes; roused by opposition, they maintained this system in its most unmitigated form, and without any fear for its most obnoxious results. According to them, the pope’s authority was exalted immeasurably high over every other dignity on earth; the pope was supreme above all princes, as well as the source and the perpetual dispenser of all episcopal power; he stood above all councils, which derived their authority from him alone; he was the lawgiver on points of faith, and infallible. The excitement of controversy and mean flattery advanced so far that many persons elevated the Donatio Constantini,—proved by Laurentius Valla to be a falsehood,—to a Restitutio, and the pope to be a god upon earth.

“ Each of these systems declared the opposite view to be a pernicious error; but the imminent danger of an irremediable schism hindered these condemnations from being vindicated to the utmost. A peculiar embarrassment was prepared for the popes by the fact that they were obliged to regard the Council of Constance as ecumenical, in order to prove the validity of their own succession; while they were nevertheless compelled to reject its fundamental principles, which were the groundwork of the Gallican system. For this reason they most readily passed over the unpleasant decrees of Constance in silence; if they were forced to speak, they helped themselves out with a version of their own : many of their adherents did not shrink from a down­right denial of their validity.

“ Whilst this controversy took root in the hierarchy, the secular power regained its ascendency in the different countries, from the fact that it principally depended upon this power which system should prevail. But the temporal governments allowed themselves to be principally swayed by political influences in their demeanour towards the pope. Whilst in France the principles of the papal system, if ever they preponderated, were immediately condemned by the Parliament and the University of Paris, in other countries the same fate befel the opposite doctrines of the Gallican system. And if, from the side of France and Germany, humiliating demands were not un frequently made upon the popes, Spain and Portugal found it advantageous to their own interests to allow themselves to receive from Rome, as their peculiar property, the countries which had been conquered, and for the most part newly discovered, by themselves, and thereby to concede to the papal see its loftiest pretensions. On the whole, then, the pope, both by his spiritual sway over men’s minds, and his temporal dominions in Italy, at that time the apple of discord betwixt the most powerful monarchs, was of so great importance that all princes necessarily attached great value to his friendship, and that even a king of France was ready to sacrifice for it the welfare of his national church. These political connections now constituted the strongest hold of the papal see; and so it became the aim of papal policy to win over the support of the princes of the world against the encroachments of the ecclesiastical aristocracy. True, the devotion of the nations to the papal see now rested no longer, as of old in the period of the Crusades, upon religious enthusiasm, but only, for some time past, upon habit. However, even this would hardly have been destroyed by any theories, had not the immorality of the Curia, their avarice, their venality and injustice, so greatly injured the commonweal, and outraged public morality. The more closely any nation was brought into connection with the customs of the popes and their Court, the lower sank their feeling of reverence towards the pope; and in Italy, although the papal system seemed to reign there supreme, nevertheless the pope’s excommunication was least regarded. Accordingly, their most faithful counsellors recommended to the popes an abatement of their oppressions and a reform of the abuses prevailing at their Court; and throughout the whole fifteenth century a strong feeling was displayed that unless there were some alterations on these points, spreading downwards from the highest rank, there would be a compulsory reformation rising upward from below, not effected .without violence and schism. But, at the same time, the conviction that Rome would not undertake of herself so great a reformation, and that neither the ecclesiastical aristocracy nor the temporal princes would be able to enforce it, from the want of union among themselves, was firmly established by the events of this period.”