rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian
despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he
being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed “in letting every
man be blessed in his own way,” religious persecution ceased.
In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time
the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered
by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to “money clipping.”
The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of
municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars,
as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of
the Estates was lost. “The clergy,” writes Havemann, “had long since
sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public
spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad
remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates.”
In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and
Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by
Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to
the axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_.
On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant
farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of
these peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy
and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant
beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be
killed.
It appeared to Burnet (_History of Reformation_) that the intention of
the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were
72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing
a large contingent.
Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for
the first time in the history of Christendom.
I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made
shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant
revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and
freedom of conscience of their fellow-men.
In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics
were _emancipated_ on their native soil.[25]
Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of
religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic
spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution
of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened
its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of
Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative
government.
Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by
J. J. Rousseau, when he said “that a people with a representative
government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they
were sovereigns.” France to-day is a striking illustration.[26]
An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who
hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative
government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since
twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and
American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all
rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and
congratulated him on Italy’s having acquired a representative
constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in
that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he
hired out was taxed.
If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to
untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was
truly representative.
In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant,
unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective
barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and
the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the
oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be
more than one Bridge of Sighs.
It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism,
some vague “moral element of Christianism,” will combine with
rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some
transcendent form.
Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly
connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus,
was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving
personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a
Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation.
The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce
controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of _Homoousion_
and _Homoiousion_ merely betrays their ignorance of its vital
importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and
Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the
brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery.
It is as absurd to suppose that the “moral element of Christianity” will
continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect
that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed
for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we
often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives
and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost
ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will
cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. “The
elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us,” writes
Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other
words, which has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent,
shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of
godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be
compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish.
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION
“At the end of the fourth century,” writes Guizot, “the Church saved
Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the
barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of
civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have
been abandoned to purely material force” (_History of Civilization_, I,
38).... “When all was chaos, when every great social combination was
vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the
universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has
rendered immense service to humanity” (_ibid._, II, 19).
This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it
the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to
speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal
force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of
independence which characterized the barbarians.
Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious
unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of
all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was
considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the
nation and against all Christendom.
“Thus,” writes another great Protestant, “Christianity became
crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all
life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind” (Hurter, _Life of
Innocent III_, I, 38).
A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the
recognition of a supreme tribunal. “One of the most elevated principles
of the age,” writes the same eminent German, “was that, in the struggles
between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior
authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their
interpreter were himself a man.” Referring to the fiercely contested
election of Othon, he continues: “Othon was the first to have recourse
to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters,
when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war.”
In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating
with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the
King, with whom he was often at odds.
“I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you
must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King,
especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the
King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was
proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by
our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and
could easily have reconciled all differences.”
In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to
the arbitrament of the Papacy.
“The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a
bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and
philosophers,” writes Lecky. “Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of
the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law”
(_History of Rationalism_, 245).
Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. “The
interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain
sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of
religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign
Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels,
rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on
earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without
force” (_Essai sur les mœurs_, II).
He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course,
papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution
needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it
otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times
between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself
was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and
ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day
on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized
and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to
deliver him by main force.
“Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right
found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand
idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in
last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have
been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been
Pope. His rôle would have been to save the lives of the people”
(Hurter’s _Innocent III_, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like
Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true
rôle of the Papacy in the Middle Ages.
The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the
public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons
enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and
often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property
rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in
virtue of the “fist right,” which we now translate variously by “the
right of the strongest,” political “majorities,” and the “survival of
the fittest.”
The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to
the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the
brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small
way was done by princes on a larger scale.
Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in
possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and
insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:--“Robert
Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a
precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and
rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of
Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The
Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the
Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but
also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of
political piety like Peter’s Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the
Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms”
(_Essai sur les mœurs_, II, 44).
It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most
unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising
therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter,
in the following centuries.
“In 1329,” continues Voltaire, “the King of Sweden, who wished to
conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: ‘Your Holiness knows
that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.’
... I only wish to show,” Voltaire adds, “how every prince who wished to
recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope
defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the
case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the
ancient usage.”
Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of
Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of
the Church in all times. “As they (the Jews) claim our succour against
their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following
in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander,
Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be
baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No
Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their
property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their
feast days by striking or throwing stones at them,” etc.
It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a
spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an
authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a
divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing
its credentials--on public opinion in fact?
It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his
rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so
heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian,
fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a
year he had not been absolved. In his _Historia Imperatorum_ Schafnaburg
explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his
eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise
he would have forfeited his crown. _Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur,
deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur._
Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the
excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith.
Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated
churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his
neighbour’s. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed
out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings
and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and
elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the
Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of
Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case,
so to speak.
“It was not,” writes Hurter, “a question of contested claims of the
Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws
of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should
triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of
Christendom” (_Life of Innocent III_). Montesquieu’s testimony is
unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was
universally recognized. “All the sovereigns,” he writes, “with
inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public
opinion, which had no force except by it.”
If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the
anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely
be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which
they were made. “Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in
bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the
ecclesiastical authorities.” It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky
refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the
Albigenses or Manichæans of Provence, and probably to the wars of
Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth
century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions)
against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe
began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated
Gnostic, Paulician, Manichæan, and other subversive theories, imported
from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence.
Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was
maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil
religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted.
Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire
whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some
ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair
estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades,
about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp?
Lecky the rationalist assures us that “the overwhelming majority of the
human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly
like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither
time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves” (_History
of Rationalism_, I, 101).
Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for
predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by
Presbyterians in the United States?
In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition
were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as
a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the
true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon,
“the least-erected spirit that fell,” Moloch, “horrid king besmeared
with blood,” Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent
forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between “the
serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman.”
In this unholy struggle “all the bonds of cohesion on which political
organization depended were weakened or destroyed,” writes Lecky. “The
spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of
self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury”
(_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary.
He describes the Hussites as “wild beasts whom the severity of the
emperor had roused to furor.”
In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking
their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted
into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus
Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of
this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years
War_ Schiller writes as follows:--
“The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to
religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen)....
It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish
himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already
Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new
monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could
only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to
conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide
the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army.
His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is
unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour
required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid
doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him.”
It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate
to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown.
What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of
Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel
the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the
_tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that
defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the
Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in
possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting
assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches
and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand,
just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the
Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The
German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but
administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or
no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom
_Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The
ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. “If
any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained,
and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I
have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone
should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a
like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed
under the Papacy” (Walch’s _Augs._, XIV, p. 520).
In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. “No
country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy
weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its
sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther
and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the
Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent
and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling
the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son
should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this
will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to
Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the “heretical
doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even.” It is
easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was
thus tyrannized over” (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40).
What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law?
Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries
of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise
some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the
illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace
the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well
as could be expected in those days of liquescence.
All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded
was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were
pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court
questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but
these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord
build the house, in vain they labour who build.