On the other hand, the =Taborites= would have no reconciliation
with the Romish church, regarding as fundamentally corrupt in
doctrine and worship whatever is not found in Scripture, and
passing over into violent fanaticism, iconoclasm, etc. After
Ziska’s death of the plague in A.D. 1424, the majority of the
Taborites elected Procopius the Great as his successor. A small
party that regarded no man worthy of succeeding the great Ziska,
refused him allegiance, and styled themselves Orphans. They were
the most fanatical of all.--Meanwhile the Council of Basel had
met (§ 110, 8) and after long fruitless negotiations it was
resolved in A.D. 1433 that 300 Hussite deputies should appear
at Basel. After a fifty days’ disputation the four Calixtine
articles with certain modifications were accepted by the council.
On the basis of this =Basel Compact= the Calixtines returned
to the Romish church. The Taborites regarded this as shameful
treason to the cause of truth, and continued the conflict. But
in A.D. 1434 they were utterly annihilated at Böhmischbrod, not
far from Prague. In the Treaty of Iglau in A.D. 1436 Sigismund
swore to observe the compact, and was recognised as king. But
the concessions sworn to by church and state were more and more
restricted and ultimately ignored. Sigismund died in A.D. 1437.
In place of his son-in-law, Albert II., the Utraquists set up a
rival king in the person of the thirteen year old Polish prince
Casimir; but Albert died in A.D. 1439. His son, Ladislaus, born
after his father’s death, had, in George Podiebrad, a Calixtine
tutor. After he had grown up in A.D. 1453, he walked in his
grandfather’s footsteps, and died in A.D. 1457. The Calixtines
now elected Podiebrad king, as a firm supporter of the compact.
Pius II. recognised him in the hope that he would aid him in his
projected war against the Turks. When this hope was disappointed
he cancelled the compact, in A.D. 1462. Paul II. put the king
under him, and had a crusade preached against him. Podiebrad
however still held his ground. He died in A.D. 1471. His
successor, Wladislaw II., a Polish prince, though a zealous
Catholic, was obliged to confirm anew to the Calixtines
at the Diet of Cuttenberg, in A.D. 1485, all their rights
and liberties. Yet they could not maintain themselves as
an independent community. Those of them who did not join
the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren gradually during the
16th century became thoroughly amalgamated with the Catholic
church.
§ 119.8. =The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren.=--George Podiebrad
took Tabor in A.D. 1453, and scattered the last remnants of the
Taborites. Joining with the evangelical Friends of God, they
received from the king a castle, where, under the leadership
of the local pastor, Michael of Bradacz, they formed a _Unitas
fratrum_, and called themselves Bohemian and Moravian Brethren.
But in A.D. 1461 Podiebrad withdrew his favour, and confiscated
their goods. They fled into the woods, and met for worship in
caves. In A.D. 1467 the most distinguished of the Bohemian and
Moravian Brethren met in a Bohemian village, Shota, with the
German Waldensians, and chose three brethren by lot as priests,
who were ordained by Michael and a Waldensian priest. But
when the validity of their ordination was disputed, Michael
went to the Waldensian bishop Stephen, got from him episcopal
consecration, and then again ordained the three chosen at Shota,
one, Matthias of Conewald, as bishop, the other two as priests.
This led Rokycana to persecute them all the more bitterly. They
increased their numbers however, by receiving the remnants of
the Waldensians and many Utraquists, until by the beginning of
the 16th century they had four hundred congregations in Bohemia
and Moravia. Under Wladislaw II. persecution was stopped from
A.D. 1475, but was renewed with great violence in A.D. 1503. They
sent in A.D. 1511 a confession of faith to Erasmus (§ 120, 6),
with the request that he would give his opinion about it; which
he however, fearing to be compromised thereby, declined to do.
After the death of Bishop Matthias, in A.D. 1500, a dislike
of monarchy led to the appointment of four _Seniors_ instead
of one bishop, two for Bohemia and two for Moravia. The most
important and influential of these was Luke of Prague, who
died in A.D. 1518, rightly regarded as the second founder
of the union. He impressed a character upon the brotherhood
essentially distinct in respect of constitution and doctrine
from the Lutheran Reformation.--Continuation § 139, 19.
§ 119.9. =The Waldensians.=
1. The range of the missionary enterprise of the
=Lombard-German Waldensians= was widely extended during
the 14th century. At the close of that period it stretched
“from western Switzerland across the southern borders
of the empire, from the upper and middle Rhine along
the Main and through Franconia into Thuringia, from
Bohemia up to Brandenburg and Pomerania, and with its
last advances reached to Prussia, Poland, Silesia, Hungary,
Transylvania, and Galicia.” The anonymous writer of Passau,
about A.D. 1260 or 1316, reports from his own knowledge
of numerous “Leonists,” who in forty-two communities, with
a bishop at Einzinspach, in the diocese of Passau, were in
his time the subject of inquisitorial interference, and in
theory and practice bore all the characteristic marks of
the Lombard Leonists. The same applies to the Austrian
Waldensians, of whose persecution in A.D. 1391 we have
an account by Peter of Pilichdorf. We may also with equal
confidence pronounce the Winkelers, so called from holding
their services in secret corners, who about this time
appeared in Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, and the Rhine
Provinces, to be Waldensians of the same Lombard type.
Their confessors, Winkelers in the narrower sense, were
itinerant, celibate, and without fixed abode, carrying
on missionary work, and administering the sacrament of
penance to their adherents. Although, in order to avoid
the attentions of the Inquisition, they took part in
the Catholic services, and in case of need confessed to
Catholic priests, they were nevertheless traced about
A.D. 1400 to Strassburg. Thirty-two of them were thrown
into prison, and induced under torture to confess. The
Dominicans insisted that they should be immediately burned,
but the council was satisfied with banishing them from the
city. At a later period the Hussites obtained an influence
over them. One of their most notable apostles at this time
was Fr. Reiser of Swabia. In his travels he went to Bohemia,
attached himself to the Hussites there, received from
them priestly ordination, and in A.D. 1433 accompanied
their representatives to the Basel Council. Then Procopius
procured him a call to a pastorate in the little Bohemian
town of Landscron, which, however, he soon abandoned.
Encouraged by the reformatory tendency of the council,
he now remained for a long time in Basel, then conducted
missionary work in Germany, at first on his own account,
afterwards at the head of a Taborite mission of twelve
agents, in which position he styled himself _Fridericus Dei
gratia Episcopus fidelium in Romana ecclesia Constantini
donationem spernentium_. At last, in A.D. 1457, he went
to Strassburg, with the intention of there ending his days
in peace. But soon after his arrival he was apprehended,
and in A.D. 1458, along with his faithful follower, Anna
Weiler, put to death at the stake.--On the Waldensians
in German Switzerland, and the Inquisition’s oft repeated
interference with them, Ochsenbein gives a full report,
drawn from original documents, specially full in regard
to the great Inquisition trial at Freiburg, in A.D. 1430,
consisting of ninety-nine wearisome and detailed examinations.
Subsequently terrible persecutions, aiming at their
extermination, became still more frequent in Switzerland.
Also the Swiss Waldensians already bore unmistakable
marks of having been influenced by the Hussites. Finally,
Wattenbach has made interesting communications regarding
the Waldensians in Pomerania and Brandenburg, based
upon a manuscript once in the possession of Flacius, but
afterwards supposed to have been lost, discovered again
in the Wolfenbüttel library in A.D. 1884, though in a
very defective form, which contains the original reports
of 443 prosecutions for heresy in Pomerania, Brandenburg,
and Thuringia. By far the greatest number of these trials
were conducted between A.D. 1373 and 1394, by the Cœlestine
provincial Peter, appointed inquisitor by the pope. From
A.D. 1383 Stettin was the centre of his inquisitorial
activity, and on the conclusion of his work he could boast
that during the last two years he had converted to the
Catholic faith more than 1,000 Waldensians. The victims of
the Inquisition belonged almost exclusively to the peasant
and artisan classes. Their objectionable doctrines and
opinions are essentially almost the same as those of their
ancestors of the 13th century. Although equally with their
predecessors they abhorred the practice of the Catholic
church, and declared all swearing and slaughter to be
mortal sin, they yet in great part, and as it seems even
without the application of torture, were persuaded to
abjure their heresy, and incurred nothing more than a
light penance. They did this, perhaps, only in the hope
that their indulgent confessors would absolve them from
their sin. The last protocols bring us down to A.D. 1458.
Since a great number of these heretics were found again
in Brandenburg, the elector caused one of their most
distinguished leaders, the tailor Matthew Hagen, and
three of his disciples to be taken prisoners to Berlin,
and commissioned the Bishop of Brandenburg to investigate
the case; but owing to his sickness this duty devolved
upon John Cannemann, professor and doctor of theology. The
elector was himself present at the trial. The investigation
showed that the Waldensians of Brandenburg had evidently
been influenced in their opinions by the Bohemian Taborites,
and that they were constantly in close communion with them,
and Hagen confessed that he had been there ordained by
Fr. Ryss or Reiser to the clerical office. When Hagen
persistently refused to retract, he was delivered over
to the civil authorities for punishment, and was by them
executed, probably at the stake. His three companions
abjured their heresy, and on submitting to church discipline
and wearing clothes marked with the sign of the cross, were
pardoned. Cannemann then proceeded to Angermünde, where in
the city and surrounding country crowds of such heretics
resided; and there he succeeded without great difficulty
in bringing them to abjure their errors and accept the
Catholic confession.--The Waldensians in Bohemia and
Moravia quite voluntarily amalgamated with the “_United
Brethren_” there. The remnants of the German and Swiss
Waldensians may have attached themselves to the Reformation
of the 16th century, but probably for the most part to the
Protestant sects of that age, some joining Schwenkfeld,
and still more going with the Anabaptists, to whom they
were essentially much more closely related than to Luther
or Zwingli.--As to the ultimate fate of the Lombard
Waldensians themselves, we know nothing. Probably many
of them sought escape from the persecutions which raged
against them among the French Waldensians in the valleys
of Piedmont.
§ 119.9A.
2. The remnants of the =French Waldensians= and their lay
adherents down to the beginning of the 14th century had for
the most part settled in the remote and little cultivated
valleys on both sides of the Cottian Alps. This settlement,
which bore the character of an assembly as well as that of
an isolation, now rendered indispensable the organization
of an independent congregational order, such as had never
been attempted before. In the arrangements of this community,
not only was the question of clerical rank simplified by
the combination of the order of bishop or _majoralis_ with
that of the presbyter, to which combined office was given
the honourable designation of “_barbe_,” uncle, and instead
of the hitherto annual tenure of this office was introduced
a life tenure, but also to the laity was assigned a share
in the church government at their synod meetings. A bull
of John XXII., of A.D. 1332, informs us that then in the
Piedmontese valleys _ita creverunt et multiplicati sunt
hæretici, præcipue de secta Waldensium, quod frequenter
congregationes per modum capitali facere inibi præsumpserunt,
in quibus aliquando 500 Valdenses fuerunt insimul congregati_;
yet certainly not merely clergy, as among the earlier
congregations on the yearly tenure. The great, yea,
extraordinarily great, number of the Waldensians in the
Piedmontese valleys is proved by this, that from thence,
since A.D. 1340, flourishing colonies of Waldensians were
transplanted into Calabria and Apulia with the connivance
of the larger proprietors in those parts. Those who had
settled on the western side, in the province of Dauphiné,
succumbed completely in A.D. 1545 to the oft repeated
persecutions. The colonies of southern Italy, however,
seem long to have led a quiet and little disturbed life
under the protection of the territorial princes, until
their adoption of Protestant views called down upon
them the attention of the Inquisition, and led to their
utter extermination in A.D. 1561. On the other hand, the
Waldensians of Piedmont, in spite of continuous oppression
and frequently renewed persecution, maintained their
existence down to the present day. When in the beginning
of the 15th century their residence came under the sway of
the Duke of Savoy, the persecutions began, and lasted down
to A.D. 1477, when a crusade for their extermination was
summoned by Innocent VIII., which ended in the utter rout
of the crusading army by Savoy and France. They had now a
long period of repose, till their adoption of Protestant
views in the 16th century anew awakened against them the
horrors of persecution. In this time of rest brotherly
intercourse was cultivated between the Waldensian groups
and the Bohemian Brethren, who had hitherto maintained
relations only with the German Waldensians. This movement
originated with the Bohemians. Even at an earlier date,
these, inspired by the wish to seek abroad what they could
not obtain at home, namely, communion with a church free
from Romish corruptions, had made a voyage of discovery
in the east, which yielded no result. Now, in A.D. 1497,
they determined to make another similar search, under the
leadership of Luke of Prague, in the primitive haunts of
the Waldensians in France and Italy. The deputies went
forth, beginning with the south of France, and the remnants
of the French communities in their settlements among the
Piedmontese Alps. More detailed reports of their intercourse
with these no longer exist, but it cannot be doubted that
there was a mutual interchange of religious writings. It
is a question therefore that has been much discussed as
to which party was the chief gainer by this interchange.
But it can now be no longer questioned that the Waldensians,
as those who were far less advanced in the direction of
the evangelical reformation, learnt much from the Bohemians,
and by transferring it into their own literature, secured
it as their permanent property.
§ 119.10. =The Dutch Reformers= sprang mostly from the Brothers
of the Common Life (§ 112, 9).
1. =John Pupper of Goch= in Cleves, prior of a cloister
founded by him at Mecheln, died A.D. 1475. His works
show him to have been a man of deep spirituality. Love,
which leads to the true freedom of sons of God, is
the _material_, the sole authority of Scripture is the
_formal_, principle of his theology, which rests on a
purely Augustinian foundation. He contends against the
doctrine of righteousness by works, the meritoriousness
of vows, etc.
2. =John Ruchrath of Wesel=, professor in Erfurt, afterwards
preacher at Mainz and Worms, died in A.D. 1481. On the
basis of a strictly Augustinian theology he opposed the
papal systems of anathemas and indulgences, and preached
powerfully salvation by Jesus Christ only. For the church
doctrine of transubstantiation he substituted one of
impanation. He spiritualized the doctrine of the church.
Against the ecclesiastical injunction of fasts, he wrote
_De jejunio_; against indulgences, _De indulgentiis_;
against the hierarchy, _De potestate ecclesiastica_. The
Dominicans of Mainz accused and condemned him as a heretic
in A.D. 1479. The old man, bent down with age and sickness,
was forced to recant, and to burn his writings, and was
sentenced to imprisonment for life in a monastery.
3. =John Wessel= of Gröningen was a scholar of the Brothers
of the Common Life at Zwoll, where Thomas à Kempis exerted
a powerful influence over him. He taught in Cologne, Lyons,
Paris, and Heidelberg, and then retired to the cloister
of Agnes Mount, near Zwoll, where he died in A.D. 1489.
His friends called him _Lux mundi_. Scholastic dialectics,
mystical depths, and rich classical culture were in him
united with a clear and accurate knowledge of science.
Luther says of him: “Had I read Wessel before, my enemies
would have said, Luther has taken everything from Wessel,
so thoroughly do our ideas agree.” His views are in
harmony with Luther’s, especially in what he teaches of
Holy Scripture, the universal priesthood of Christians,
indulgence, repentance, faith, and justification. He
taught that not only popes but even councils may err and
have erred; excommunication has merely outward efficacy,
indulgence has to do only with ecclesiastical penalties,
and God alone can forgive sins; our justification rests
on Christ’s righteousness and God’s free grace. Purgatory
meant for him nothing more than the intermediate position
between earthly imperfection and heavenly perfection, which
is attained only through various stages. The protection
of powerful friends saved him from the persecution of
the Inquisition. Many of his works were destroyed by the
diligence of the mendicant friars. The most important of
his extant writings is the _Farrago_, a collection of short
treatises.[351]
4. The priest of Rostock, =Nicholas Russ=, in the end of
the 15th century, deserves honourable mention alongside
of these Dutchmen. Living in intimate relations with
Bohemian Waldensians, he was subjected to many indignities,
and died a fugitive in Livonia. He wrote in the Dutch
language a tract against the hierarchy, indulgences,
worship of saints and relics, etc., which was translated
into German by Flacius. A copy of it was found in Rostock
library in A.D. 1850. It is entitled, “Of the Rope or
of the Three Strings.” The rope that will raise man from
the depths of his corruption must be made up of the three
strings, faith, hope, and love. These three strings are
described in succession, and so the book forms a complete
compendium of Christian faith and life, with a sharp polemic
against the debased church doctrine and morals of the age.
§ 119.11. =An Italian Reformer.=--=Jerome Savonarola=, born
A.D. 1452, monk and from A.D. 1481 prior of the Dominican
cloister of San Marco in Florence, was from A.D. 1489 in high
repute in that city as an eloquent and passionate preacher of
repentance, with even reckless boldness declaiming against the
depravity of clergy and laity, princes and people. With his whole
soul a Dominican, and as such an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas,
practising rigid self-discipline by fasts and flagellations,
he was led by the study of Augustine and Scripture to a pure
and profound knowledge of the evangelical doctrine of salvation,
which he sought, not in the merits and intercession of the saints,
nor in the performance of good works, but only in the grace of
God and justification through faith in the crucified Saviour
of sinners. But with this he combined a prophetic-apocalyptic
theory, according to which he thought himself called and fitted
by Divine inspiration, like the prophets of the Old Testament,
to grapple with the political problems of the age. And, in fact,
he made many a hardened sinner tremble by revealing contemplated
secret sins, and many of his political prophecies seem to have
been fulfilled with surprising accuracy. Thus he prophesied
the death of Innocent VIII. in A.D. 1492, and proclaimed the
speedy overthrow of the house of the Medici in Florence, as
well as the punishment of other Italian tyrants and the thorough
reformation of the church by a foreign king crossing the Alps
with a powerful army. And lo, in the following year, the king
of France, Charles VIII., crossed the Alps to enforce his claims
upon Naples and force from the pope recognition of the Basel
reforms; the Medici were banished from Florence, and Naples
unresistingly fell into the hands of the French. Thus the ascetic
monk of San Marco became the man of the people, who now began
with ruthless energy to carry out, not only moral and religious
reformatory notions, but also his political ideal of a democratic
kingdom of God. In vain did Alexander VI. seek by offer of a
cardinal’s hat to win over the demagogical prophet and reformer;
he only replied, “I desire no other red hat than that coloured
by the blood of martyrdom.” In vain did the pope insist that
he should appear before him at Rome; in vain did he forbid him
the pulpit, from which he so powerfully moved the people. An
attempt to restore the Medici also failed. At the carnival in
A.D. 1497 Savonarola proved the supremacy of his influence over
the people by persuading them, instead of the usual buffoonery,
to make a bonfire of the articles of luxury and vanity. But
already the political movements were turning out unfavourably,
and his utterances were beginning to lose their reputation
as true prophecies. Charles VIII. had been compelled to quit
Italy in A.D. 1495, and Savonarola’s assurances of his speedy
return were still unfulfilled. Popular favour vacillated, while
the nobles and the libertine youth were roused to the utmost
bitterness against him. The Franciscans, as members of a rival
order, were his sworn enemies. The papal ban was pronounced
against him in A.D. 1497, and the city was put under the
interdict. A monk of his cloister, Fra Domenico Pescia, offered
to pass the ordeal of fire in behalf of his master, if any of his
opponents would submit to the same trial. A Franciscan declared
himself ready to do so, and all arrangements were made. But
when Domenico insisted upon taking with him a consecrated host,
the trial did not come off, to the great disappointment of a
people devotedly fond of shows. A fanatical mob took the prophet
prisoner. His bitterest enemies were his judges, who, after
torture had extorted from him a confession of false prophecy
most repugnant to his inmost convictions, condemned him to
death by fire as a deceiver of the people and a heretic. On
23rd May, A.D. 1498, he was, along with Domenico and another
monk, hung upon a gallows and then burned. The believing
joy with which he endured death deepened the reverence of
an ever-increasing band of adherents, who proclaimed him
saint and martyr. His portrait in the cell once occupied
by him, painted by Fra Bartolomeo, surrounded with the halo
of a saint, shows the veneration in which he was held by his
generation and by his order. His numerous sermons represent
to us his burning oratory. His chief work is his _Triumphus
crucis_ of A.D. 1497, an eloquent and thoughtful vindication
of Christianity against the half pagan scepticism of the
Renaissance, then dominant in Florence and at the court.
An exposition of the 51st Psalm, written in prison and not
completed, works out, with a clearness and precision never
before attained, the doctrine of justification by faith. It
was on this account republished by Luther in A.D. 1523.[352]
§ 120. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.
The classical literature of Greek, and especially of Roman,
antiquity was during the Middle Ages in the West by no means so
completely unknown and unstudied as is commonly supposed. Rulers
like Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Alfred the Great, and the German
Ottos encouraged its study. Such scholars as Erigena, Gerbert, Barnard
Sylvester, John of Salisbury, Roger Bacon, etc., were relatively
well acquainted with it. Moorish learning from Spain and intercourse
with Byzantine scholars spread classical culture during the 12th
and 13th centuries, and the Hohenstaufen rulers were its eager and
liberal patrons. In the 14th century the founders of a national Italian
literature, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, earnestly cultivated and
encouraged classical studies. But an extraordinary revival of interest
in such pursuits took place during the 15th century. The meeting of
Greeks and Italians at the Council of Florence in A.D. 1439 (§ 67, 6)
gave the first impulse, while the Turkish invasion and the downfall
of Constantinople in A.D. 1453 gave it the finishing touch. Immense
numbers of Byzantine scholars fled to Italy, and were accorded an
enthusiastic reception at the Vatican and in the houses of the Medici.
With the aid of printing, invented about A.D. 1450, the treasures of
classical antiquity were made accessible to all. From the time of this
immigration, too, classical studies took an altogether new direction.
During the Middle Ages they were made almost exclusively to subserve
ecclesiastical and theological ends, but now they were conducted in
a thoroughly independent spirit, for the purpose of universal human
culture. This “humanism” emancipated itself from the service of the
church, assumed toward Christianity for the most part an attitude of
lofty indifference, and often lost itself in a vain worship of pagan
antiquity. Faith was mocked at as well as superstition; sacred history
and Greek mythology were treated alike. The youths of all European
countries, thirsting for knowledge, crossed the Alps, to draw from
the fresh springs of the Italian academies, and took home with them
the new ideas, transplanting into distant lands in a modified form
the libertinism of the new paganism that had now over-run Italy.
§ 120.1. =Italian Humanists.=--Italy was the cradle of humanism,
the Greeks who settled there (§ 62, 1, 2), its fathers. The first
Greek who appeared as a teacher in Italy was Emmanuel Chrysoloras,
in A.D. 1396. After the Council of Florence, =Bessarion= and
=Gemisthus Pletho= settled there, both ardent adherents of
the Platonic philosophy, for which they created an enthusiasm
throughout all Italy. From A.D. 1453 Greek _littérateurs_ came
in crowds. From their schools classical culture and pagan ideas
spread through the land. This paganism penetrated even the
highest ranks of the hierarchy. =Leo X.=[353] is credited with
saying, “How many fables about Christ have been used by us and
ours through all these centuries is very well known.” It may not
be literally authentic, but it accurately expresses the spirit of
the papal court. Leo’s private secretary, Cardinal =Bembo=, gave
a mythological version of Christianity in classical Latin. Christ
he styled “Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter,” the Holy
Spirit “the breath of the celestial Zephyr,” and repentance
was with him a _Deos superosque manesque placare_. Even during
the council of Florence Pletho had expressed the opinion that
Christianity would soon develop into a universal religion not
far removed from classical paganism; and when Pletho died,
Bessarion comforted his sons by saying that the deceased had
ascended into the pure heavenly spheres, and had joined the
Olympic gods in mystic Bacchus dances. In the halls of the
Medici there flourished a new Platonic school, which put Plato’s
philosophy above Christianity. Alongside of it arose a new
peripatetic school, whose representative, =Peter Pompanazzo
[Pomponazzo]=, who died A.D. 1526, openly declared that from
the philosophical point of view the immortality of the soul
is more than doubtful. The celebrated Florentine statesman and
historian =Macchiavelli=,[354] who died A.D. 1527, taught the
princes of Italy in his “Prince,” in direct contradiction to
Dante’s idealistic “Monarchia,” a realistic polity which was
completely emancipated from Christianity and every system of
morality, and presented the monster Cæsar Borgia (§ 110, 12)
as a pattern of an energetic prince, consistently labouring for
the end he had in view. Looseness of morals went hand in hand
with laxity in religion. Obscene poems and pictures circulated
among the humanists, and their practice was not behind their
theory. Poggio’s lewd facetiæ, as well as Boccadelli’s indecent
epigrams, fascinated the cultured Christian world as much by
their lascivious contents as by their classical style. From the
dialogues of Laurentius Valla on lust and the true good, which
were meant to extol the superiority of Christian morals over
those of the Epicureans and Stoics, comes the saying that the
Greek courtesans were more in favour than the Christian nuns.
The highly gifted poet, Pietro Aretino, in his poetical prose
writings reached the utmost pitch of obscenity. He was called
“the divine Aretino,” and not only Charles V. and Francis I.
honoured him with presents and pensions, but also Leo X.,
Clement VIII., and even Paul III. showed him their esteem and
favour. In their published works the Italian humanists generally
ignored rather than contested the church and its doctrines and
morality. But =Laurentius Valla=, who died A.D. 1457, ventured
in his _Adnotationes in N.T._ freely to find fault with and
correct the Vulgate. He did even more, for he pronounced the
Donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) a forgery, and poured forth
bitter invectives against the cupidity of the papacy. He also
denied the genuineness of the correspondence of Christ with
Abgarus [Abgar] (§ 13, 2), as well as that of the Areopagite
writings (§ 47, 11) and questioned if the Apostles’ Creed was
the work of the apostles (§ 35, 2). The Inquisition sought to
get hold of him, but Nicholas V. (§ 110, 10) frustrated the
attempt and showed him kindness. With all his classical culture,
however, Valla retained no small reverence for Christianity. In
a still higher degree is this true of =John Picus=, Prince of
=Mirandola=, the phœnix of that age, celebrated as a miracle
of learning and culture, who united in himself all the nobler
strivings of the present and the past. When a youth of twenty-one
he nailed up at Rome nine hundred theses from all departments
of knowledge. The proposed disputation did not then come off,
because many of those theses gave rise to charges of heresy,
from which he was cleared only by Alexander VI. in A.D. 1493.
The combination of all sciences and the reconciliation of all
systems of philosophy among themselves and with revelation on
the basis of the Cabbala was the main point in his endeavours.
He has wrought out this idea in his _Heptaplus_, in which, by
means of a sevenfold sense of Scripture, he succeeds in deducing
all the wisdom of the world from the first chapter of Genesis.
He died in A.D. 1494, in the thirty-first year of his age. In
the last year of his life, renouncing the world and its glory,
he set himself with all his powers to the study of Scripture,
and meant to go from land to land preaching the Cross of Christ.
His intentions were frustrated by death. His saying is a very
characteristic one: _Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia
invenit, religio possidet_.
§ 120.2. =German Humanism.=--The home of German humanism was
the University of =Erfurt=, founded A.D. 1392. At the Councils
of Constance and Basel Erfurt, next to Paris, manifested
the greatest zeal for the reformation of head and members,
and continued to pursue this course during the twenty years’
activity of John of Wesel (§ 119, 10). About A.D. 1460 the first
representatives of humanism made their appearance there, a German
Luder and a Florentine Publicius. From their school went forth
among others Rudolph of Langen, who carried the new light into
the schools of Westphalia, and John of Dalberg, afterwards Bishop
of Worms. When these two had left Erfurt, =Maternus Pistorius=
headed the humanist movement. Crowds of enthusiastic scholars
from all parts of Germany gathered around him. As men of poetic
tastes, who appreciated the ancient classics, they maintained
excellent relations with the representatives of scholasticism.
But in A.D. 1504 Busch, a violent revolutionist, appearing
at Erfurt, demanded the destruction of the old scholastic
text-books, and thus produced an absolute breach between the
two tendencies. Maternus retired, and =Mutian=, an old Erfurt
student, assumed the leadership in Gotha. Erfurt and Gotha were
kept associated by a lively intercourse between the students
resident at these two places. Mutian had no literary ambitions,
and firmly declined a call to the new University of Wittenberg.
All the more powerfully he inspired his contemporaries. His
bitter opposition to hierarchism and scholasticism was expressed
in keen satires. On retiring from public life, he devoted himself
to the study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Shortly before
his death he wrote down this as his confession of faith: _Multa
scit rusticus, quæ philosophus ignorat; Christus vero pro nobis
mortuus est, qui est vita nostra, quod certissime credo_. The
leadership passed over to Eoban Hesse. The members of the society
joined the party of Luther, with the exception of Crotus Rubianus.
=Ulrich von Hutten= was one of the followers of Mutian, a knight
of a noble Franconian family, inspired with ardent patriotism
and love of freedom, who gave his whole life to battle against
pedantry, monkery, and intolerance. Escaping in A.D. 1504 from
Fulda, where he was being trained for the priesthood, he studied
at Erfurt, fought in Maximilian’s army with the sword, in Mutian’s
and Reuchlin’s ranks with the pen, and after the fall of Sickingen
became a homeless wanderer, until he died in want, in A.D. 1523,
on Ufenan, an island in the Lake of Zürich.[355]
§ 120.3. Next to Erfurt, =Heidelberg=, founded in A.D. 1386,
afforded a congenial home for humanist studies. The most
brilliant representative of humanism there was =Rudolph
Agricola=, an admirer and disciple of À. Kempis and Wessel.
His fame rests more on the reports of those who knew him
personally than on any writings left behind by him. His pupils
mostly joined the Reformation.--The University of =Wittenberg=,
founded by Frederick the Wise in A.D. 1502, was the nursery of
a wise and moderate humanism. Humanist studies also found an
entrance into Freiburg, founded in A.D. 1455, into =Tübingen=,
founded in A.D. 1477, where for a long time Reuchlin taught,
and into =Ingolstadt=, founded in A.D. 1472, where the Duke
of Bavaria spared no efforts to attract the most distinguished
humanists. Conrad Celtes, a pupil of Agricola, taught at
Ingolstadt until his removal to Vienna in A.D. 1497. Eck
and Rhegius, too, were among its ablest alumni. As a bitter
opponent of Luther, Eck gave the university a most pronounced
anti-reformation character; whereas Rhegius preached the
gospel in Augsburg, and spent his life in the service of the
Reformation. Reuchlin also taught for a time in Ingolstadt,
and the patriotism and reformatory tendencies of Aventinus
the Bavarian historian received there the first powerful
impulse. At =Nuremberg= the humanists found a welcome in the
home of the learned, wealthy, and noble Councillor Pirkheimer.
In Reuchlin’s controversy with the scholars of Cologne he showed
himself an eager apologist, and headed the party of Reuchlin.
He greeted Luther’s appearance with enthusiasm, and entertained
the reformer at his own house on his return from the discussion
with Cajetan (§ 122, 3), on account of which Eck made the papal
bull against Luther tell also against him. What he regarded
as Luther’s violence, however, soon estranged him, while the
cloister life of his three sisters and three daughters presented
to him a picture of Catholicism in its noblest and purest form.
His eldest sister, Christas, abbess of the Clara convent at
Nuremburg [Nuremberg], one of the noblest and most cultured
women of the 16th century, had a powerful influence over him.
He died in A.D. 1530.
§ 120.4. =John Reuchlin=, born in A.D. 1455 at Pforzheim, went
to the celebrated school at Schlettstadt in Alsace, studied at
Freiburg, Paris, Basel, and Orleans, taught law in Tübingen,
and travelled repeatedly in Italy with Eberhard the Bearded
of Württemberg. After Eberhard’s death he went to the court of
the Elector-palatine Philip, and along with D’Alberg [Dalberg]
did much for the reputation of the University of Heidelberg.
Afterwards he was for eleven years president of the Swabian
court of justiciary at Tübingen. When in A.D. 1513 the seat
of this court was removed to Augsburg he retired to Stuttgart,
was called in A.D. 1519 by William of Bavaria to Ingolstadt as
professor of Greek and Hebrew. On the outbreak of the plague
at Ingolstadt in A.D. 1520, he accepted a call back to Tübingen,
where he died in A.D. 1522. He never gave in his adhesion to
the reforming ideas of Luther. He left unanswered a letter
from the reformer in A.D. 1518. But as a promoter of every
scientific endeavour, especially in connection with the study
of the original text of the O.T., Reuchlin had won imperishable
renown. He was well entitled to conclude his _Rudimenta linguæ
Hebraicæ_ of A.D. 1506 with Horace’s words, _Stat monumentum aëre
perennino_, for that book has been the basis of all Christian
Hebrew philology.[356] He also discussed the difficult subject
of Hebrew accents in a special treatise, _De Acc. et Orthogr.
Hebr._ 11. iii, and the secret doctrines of the Jews in his _De
arte Cabbalistica_. He offered to instruct any Jew who wished
it in the doctrines of Christianity, and also to care for his
temporal affairs. His attention to rabbinical studies involved
him in a controversy which spread his fame over all Europe.
A baptized Jew, Pfefferkorn, in Cologne in A.D. 1507 exhibited
a neophyte’s zeal by writing bitter invectives against the Jews,
and in A.D. 1509 called upon the Emperor Maximilian to have all
rabbinical writings burnt because of the blasphemies against
Christ which they contained. The emperor asked the opinion of
the universities of Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt, and Heidelberg,
as well as of Reuchlin and the Cologne inquisitor Hoogstraten.
Erfurt and Heidelberg gave a qualified, Reuchlin an unqualified
answer in opposition to the proposal. The openly abusive
Jewish writings, _e.g._ the notorious _Toledoth Jeschu_, he
would indeed condemn, but all other books, _e.g._ the Talmud,
the Cabbala, the biblical glosses and commentaries, books of
sermons, prayers, and sacred songs, as well as all philosophical,
scientific, poetic, and satirical writings of the Jews, he
was prepared unconditionally to defend. Pfefferkorn contended
against him passionately in his “Handspiegel” of A.D. 1511, to
which Reuchlin replied in his “Augenspiegel.” The theological
faculty of Cologne, mostly Dominicans, pronounced forty-three
statements in the “Augenspiegel” heretical, and demanded its
suppression. Reuchlin now gave free vent to his passion, and
in his _Defensio c. calumniatores suos Colonienses_ denounced
his opponents as goats, swine, and children of the devil.
Hoogstraten had him cited before a heresy tribunal. Reuchlin
did not appear, but appealed to Pope Leo X. (A.D. 1513). A
commission appointed by Leo met at Spires in A.D. 1514, and
declared him not guilty of heresy, found Hoogstraten liable
in the costs of the process, which was enforced with hearty
satisfaction by Franz von Sickingen in A.D. 1519. But meanwhile
Hoogstraten had made a personal explanation of his affairs at
Rome, and had won over the influential _magister sacri palatii_,
Sylvester Prierias (§ 122, 2), who got the pope in A.D. 1520
to annul the judgment and to condemn Reuchlin to pay the costs
and observe eternal silence. The men of Cologne triumphed, but
in the public opinion of Germany Reuchlin was regarded as the
true victor.
§ 120.5. A multitude of vigorous and powerful pens were now
in motion on behalf of Reuchlin. In the autumn of A.D. 1515
appeared the first book of the =Epistolæ obscurorum virorum=,
which pretended to be the correspondence of a friend with
the Cologne teacher Ortuinus Gratius of Deventer. In the most
delicious monkish Latin the secret affairs of the mendicant
monks and their hatred of Reuchlin were set forth, so that
even the Dominicans, according to Erasmus, for a time regarded
the correspondence as genuine. All the more overwhelming was
the ridicule which fell upon them throughout all Europe. The
mendicants indeed obtained from Leo a bull against the writers
of the book, but this only increased its circulation. The
authors remained unknown; but there is no doubt they belonged
to the Mutian party. Justus Jonas, a member of that guild,
affirms that Crotus Rubianus had a principal hand in its
composition. The idea of it was probably suggested by Mutian
himself. Ulrich von Hutten repudiated any share in it, and
on internal and external grounds this is more than probable.
Busch, Urban, Petrejus, and Eoban Hesse most likely contributed
to it. In order to keep up the deception, Venice was given as
the place of publication, the name of the famous Aldus Manutius,
the papal publisher of Venice, was put upon the title, and
a pseudo-papal imprimatur was attached. The second book was
issued in A.D. 1517 by Frobenius in Basel. The monkish party
published as a counterblast _Lamentationes obscurorum virorum_
at Cologne in A.D. 1518, but the lame and forced wit of the
book marked it at once as a ridiculous failure. The monks and
schoolmen were once and for ever morally annihilated.[357]
§ 120.6. =Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam= was the most brilliant
of all the humanists, not only of Germany, but also of all Europe.
Born in A.D. 1465, he was educated by the Brothers of the Common
Life at Deventer and Herzogenbusch, and afterwards forced by his
relatives to enter a monastery in A.D. 1486. In A.D. 1491 he was
relieved from the monastic restraints by the Bishop of Cambray,
and sent to finish his studies at Paris. He visited England in
A.D. 1497, in the company of young Englishmen to whom he had been
tutor. There the humanist theologian Colet of Oxford exerted over
him a wholesome influence that told upon his whole future life.
After spending a year and a half in England, he passed the next
six years, sometimes in France, sometimes in the Netherlands;
was in Italy from A.D. 1507 till A.D. 1510; then again for
five years in England, for most of that time teaching Greek
at Cambridge; then other six years in the Netherlands; and at
last, in A.D. 1521, he settled with his publisher Frobenius in
Basel, where he enjoyed intercourse with the greatest scholars
of the day, and maintained an extensive correspondence. He
refused every offer of official appointment, even the rank of
cardinal, but in reality held undisputed sway as king in the
world of letters. He did much for the advancement of classical
studies, and in various ways promoted the Protestant Reformation.
The faults of the scholastic method in the study of theology
he unsparingly exposed, while the misdeeds of the clergy and
the ignorance and sloth of the monks afforded materials for his
merciless satires. The heathenish spirit of many of the humanists,
as well as the turbulent and revolutionary procedure of Ulrich
von Hutten, was quite distasteful to him; but his Pelagianising
tendencies also prevented him from appreciating the true character
of the gospel. He desired a reformation of the Church, but he had
not the reformer’s depth of religious emotion, world-conquering
faith, self-denying love, and heroic preparation for martyrdom.
He was much too fond of a genial literary life, and his perception
of the corruption of the church was much too superficial, so that
he sought reformation rather by human culture than by the Divine
power of the gospel. When the Reformation conquered at Basel in
A.D. 1529, Erasmus withdrew to Freiburg. He returned to Basel
in A.D. 1536 for conference with Frobenius, and died there under
suspicion of heresy without the sacraments of the church. His
friends the monks at an earlier period, on the occasion of a
false report of his death, had said in their barbarous Latin that
he died “_sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus_.” The most important of
his works are his critical and exegetical treatises on the N.T.
The first edition of his Greek N.T., with Latin translation,
short notes, and three introductory sections, was published
in A.D. 1516. In the second edition of A.D. 1519, one of
these introductory sections, _Ratio veræ theologiæ_, appeared
in a greatly extended form; and from A.D. 1522 it was issued
separately, and passed through several editions. Scarcely less
important were his paraphrases of all the biblical books except
the Apocalypse, begun in A.D. 1517. He did much service too
by his editions of the Fathers. On his polemic with Luther
see § 125, 3. His _Ecclesiastes s. concionator evangelicus_
of A.D. 1535 is a treatise on homiletics admirable of its kind.
In his “Praise of Folly” (Ἐγκώμιον μωρίας, _s. Laus stultitiæ_)
of A.D. 1511, dedicated to his friend Sir Thomas More, he
overwhelms with ridicule the schoolmen, as well as the monks
and the clergy; and in his “Colloquies” of A.D. 1518, by which
he hoped to make boys _latiniores et meliores_, he let no
opportunity pass of reproaching the monks, the clergy, and
the forms of worship which he regarded as superstitious. Also
his _Adagia_ of A.D. 1500 had afforded him abundant scope for
the same sort of thing. A piety of the purest and noblest type,
derived from the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and
from intercourse with Colet, breathes through his _Enchiridion
militis christiani_ of A.D. 1502.[358]--Continuation § 123, 3.
§ 120.7. =Humanism in England.=--In England we meet with two
men in the end of the 15th century, closely related to Erasmus,
of supreme influence as humanists in urging the claims of reform
within the Catholic church. =John Colet= in A.D. 1496 returned
to England after a long sojourn in Italy, where he had obtained,
not only humanistic culture, but also, through contact with
Savonarola and Mirandola, a powerful religious impulse. He then
began, at Oxford, his lectures on the Pauline epistles, in which
he abandoned the scholastic method and returned to the study
of Scripture and the Fathers. There, in A.D. 1498, he attached
himself closely to Erasmus and to young Thomas More, who was
studying in that place. In A.D. 1505 Colet was made doctor and
Dean of St. Paul’s, in which position he expounded with great
success whole biblical books and large portions of others in his
sermons. After his father’s death in A.D. 1510, he applied his
great wealth to the founding of a grammar school at St. Paul’s
for the instruction of more than 150 boys in classical, biblical,
and patristic literature. A convocation of English bishops in
A.D. 1512, to devise means for rooting out heresy (§ 119, 1),
gave him the opportunity in his opening sermon to speak plainly
to the assembled bishops. He told them that reform of their
own order was the best way to protect the church against the
incursion of heretics. This aroused the bitter wrath of the old,
bigoted Bishop Fitzjames of London, who disliked him exceedingly
on account of his reforming tendencies and his pastoral and
educational activity. But the archbishop, Warham of Canterbury,
repelled the bishop’s fanatical charge of heresy as well as King
Henry’s suspicions in regard to the political sympathies of the
simple, pious man. Colet died in A.D. 1519.--=Thomas More=, born
in A.D. 1480, was recommended to the king by Cardinal Wolsey, and
rose from step to step until in A.D. 1529 he succeeded his patron
as Lord Chancellor of England. In bonds of closest intimacy
with Colet and Erasmus, More also shared in their desires for
reform, but applied himself, in accordance with his civil and
official position, more to the social and political than to the
ecclesiastical aspects of the question. His most comprehensive
contribution is found in his famous satire, “Utopia,” of
A.D. 1516, in which he sets forth his views as to the natural
and rational organization of all social and political relations
of life in contrast to the corrupt institutions of existing
states. The religious side of this utopian paradise is pure
deism, public worship being restricted to the use of what
is common to all religions, and peculiarities of particular
religions are relegated to special or private services. We
cannot however from this draw any conclusion as to his own
religious beliefs. More continued to the end a zealous Catholic
and a strict ascetic, and was a man of a singularly noble and
steadfast character. In the controversy between the king and
Luther (§ 125, 3) he supported the king, and as chancellor he
wrote, in direct contradiction to the principles of religious
toleration commended in his “Utopia,” with venomous bitterness
against the adherents of the anti-Catholic reformation. But
he decidedly refused to acquiesce in the king’s divorce; and
when Henry quarrelled with the pope in A.D. 1532 and began to
carry out reforms in a Cæsaro-papistic manner (§ 139, 4), he
resigned his offices, firmly refused to acknowledge the royal
supremacy over the English church, and, after a long and severe
imprisonment, was beheaded in A.D. 1535.[359]
§ 120.8. =Humanism in France and Spain.=--In =France= humanist
studies were kept for a time in the background by the world-wide
reputation of the University of Paris and its Sorbonne. But a
change took place when the young king Francis I., A.D. 1515-1547,
became the patron and promoter of humanism. One of its most
famous representatives was =Budæus [Buddæus]=, royal librarian,
who aided in founding a college for the cultivation of science
free from the shackles of scholasticism, and exposed the
corruptions of the papacy and the clergy. But much as he
sympathized with the spirit of the Reformation, he shrank
from any open breach with the Catholic church. He died in
A.D. 1540. His like-minded contemporary, =Faber Stapulensis=,
as a teacher of classical literature at Paris gathered crowds
of pupils around him, and from A.D. 1507 applied himself almost
exclusively to biblical exegetical studies. He criticised and
corrected the corrupt text of the Vulgate, commented on the
Greek text of the gospels and apostolic epistles, and on account
of this, as well as by reason of a critical dissertation on Mary
Magdalene of A.D. 1521, was condemned by the Sorbonne. Francis I.
and his sister Margaret of Orleans protected him from further
persecution. Also his former pupil, William Briçonnet, Bishop
of Meaux, who was eagerly endeavouring to restore morality
and piety among his clergy, appointed him his vicar-general,
and gave him an opportunity to bring out his French translation
of the New Testament from the Vulgate in A.D. 1523, which was
followed by a translation of the Old Testament and a French
commentary on the pericopes of the Sundays and festivals.
As Faber here represented the Scriptures as the only rule of
faith for all Christians, and taught that man is justified not
by his works, but only by faith in the grace of God in Christ,
the Sorbonne charged him with the Lutheran heresy, and Parliament,
during the king’s imprisonment in Spain (§ 126, 5) in A.D. 1525,
appointed a commission to search out and suppress heresy in the
diocese of Meaux. Faber’s books were condemned to the flames,
but he himself, threatened with the stake, escaped by flight to
Strassburg. After his return the king provided for him a safe
retreat at Blois, where he wrought at his translation of the Old
Testament, which he completed in A.D. 1528. He spent his last
years at Nérac, the residence of his patroness Margaret, now
Queen of Navarre, where he died in A.D. 1536 in his 86th year.
Though at heart estranged from the Catholic church, he never
formally forsook it.--In =Spain= Cardinal Ximenes (§ 118, 7)
acted as the Mæcenas of humanist studies. The most distinguished
Spanish humanist was =Anton of Lebrija=, professor at Salamanca,
a fellow labourer with Ximenes on the Complutensian Polyglott,
and protected by him from the Inquisition, which would have
called him to account for his criticism of the Vulgate. He died
in A.D. 1522.
§ 120.9. =Humanism and the Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century.=--Humanists, in common with the reformers, inveighed
against the debased scholasticism as well as against the
superstition of the age. They did so however on very different
grounds, and conducted their warfare by very different methods.
While the reformers employed the word of God, and strove
after the salvation of the soul, the humanists employed wit
and sarcasm, and sought after the temporal well-being of
men. Hence the reaction of the despised scholasticism and the
contemned monasticism against humanism was often in the right.
A reformation of the church by humanism alone would have been
a return to naked paganism. But, on the other hand, classical
studies afforded men who desired a genuine reformation of
the church a rich, linguistic, philosophical, and scientific
culture, without which, as applied to researches in church
history, the exposition of Scripture, and the revision of
doctrine, the reforms of the sixteenth century could hardly
have been carried out in a comprehensive and satisfactory manner.
The most permanent advantage won for the church and theology
by the revival of learning was the removal of =Holy Scripture=
from under the bushel, and giving it again its rightful place
as the lamp of the church. It pointed back from the Vulgate,
of which since A.D. 1500, some ninety-eight printed editions
had appeared, to the original text, condemned the allegorical
method of exposition, awakened an appreciation of the grammatical
and historical system of interpretation, afforded scientific
apparatus by its philological studies, and by issuing printed
Bibles secured the spread of the original text. From the time
of the invention of printing the Jews were active in printing
the Old Testament. From A.D. 1502 a number of Christian scholars,
under the presidency of Ximenes, wrought at Alcala at the great
Complutensian Polyglott, published in A.D. 1520. It contained the
Hebrew and Greek texts, the Targums, the LXX., and the Vulgate,
as well as a Latin translation of the LXX. and of the Targums,
with a much-needed grammatical and lexical apparatus. Daniel
Bomberg of Antwerp published at Venice various editions of the
Old Testament, some with, some without, rabbinical commentaries.
His assistants were Felix Pratensis, a learned Jew; and Jacob ben
Chaijim, a rabbi of Tunis. As the costly Complutensian Polyglott
was available only to a few, Erasmus did great service by his
handy edition of the Greek New Testament, notwithstanding its
serious critical deficiencies. Erasmus himself brought out five
successive editions, but very soon more than thirty impressions
were exhausted.