MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES
_Political Heresy._
The charge of heresy, being easy to make and hard to disprove, furnished
a useful and efficacious means of attacking political enemies,
especially as there was no other offence for which the penalty was so
severe. Crusades against heretics were common. Prior to the great
Albigensian war there were several crusades against the Stedingers of
north-western Germany, a harmless sect of Waldensian tendencies, who
were finally suppressed in the twelfth century. During the three
following centuries the Papacy started or sanctioned crusades against
Viterbo, Aix la Chapelle, Aragon, Ezzelin da Romano, Manfred of Sicily,
Ferrara, Venice, the Visconti of Milan, the Hussites, the Maffredi, and
others. During this period Italy was a scene of almost chronic disorder,
turbulence, and war of the most ruthless character. At the capture at
Cesena in 1376 the Papal Legate ordered that all the inhabitants should
be put to the sword, “without distinction of age or sex, after they had
admitted him and his bandits into the city under his solemn oath that no
injury would be inflicted on them. The number of the slain was estimated
at 5,000.”[36] In the early part of the fourteenth century many noble
Italian families had sentences of heresy pronounced against them by the
Inquisition.
The earnest efforts of Savonarola to purify the Church and the freedom
of his preaching induced the Papacy to proceed against him, though, as
usual, political considerations also were influential. He was tried
under a Papal commission and in accordance with the formulas of the
Inquisition, though it does not appear that the proceedings were
officially held by that body. At any rate, he was burnt in 1498, and
after his death it was discovered that his writings contained no
definitely heretical opinions.
_The Templars._
A very important case in the fourteenth century was the trial of the
Templars, which dragged on for over six years. Some of the accusations
were of a trivial and ridiculous character, others implied traces of the
Catharist heresy and dark practices at the initiation of neophytes, none
of which could be proved, and the whole proceedings were a mockery of
justice. The real motive was the desire of the King of France to seize
the immense wealth of the Order, and grossly exaggerated charges were
made with a view of giving a suitable colour to the course of “justice.”
The Inquisition set to work, and secured many confessions, of course by
the liberal use of torture; and that it was of a rigorous kind is shown
by the fact that in Paris alone thirty-six Templars perished under their
torments, at Sens twenty-five, and many more elsewhere. So untrustworthy
and contradictory is the recorded evidence that there is little reason
to doubt the innocence of the accused. Special Inquisitors were
appointed all over Europe; the slow process of ecclesiastical law, which
then sanctioned abuses from which the secular power shrank, was
expedited by the Pope, the bishops were compliant, the State was
greedy. The king and the Pope entered into an agreement defining the
disposition of the victims’ property. In the clutches of the Inquisition
the Order of the Temple was doomed. After a prolonged series of trials
it was condemned, and its property confiscated. On May 12, 1310,
fifty-four Templars were burnt in Paris, four more a few days later, and
about twenty at other places. In Lorraine many of the Order suffered at
the stake, while in Germany the victims were comparatively few, some in
the diocese of Maintz being fortunate enough to secure an acquittal--a
verdict highly displeasing to the Pope. In England the prosecution was
greatly hampered by that peculiarity of English law which made torture
illegal. The difficulty was got over by the express instructions of the
Pope; but, in spite of a certain temporary success in that method of
extracting evidence, no Templars were put to death, and the Inquisition
failed to establish itself in this country. Results hardly more
satisfactory attended its operations in Italy. The Templars were few;
they strenuously avouched their innocence, and produced evidence highly
favourable to their plea. They were, nevertheless, imprisoned, their
property was confiscated, and the Pope in 1311 gave urgent instructions
to have them tortured, but with what result is not known. In Castile and
Aragon the Templars, notwithstanding another Papal command for their
torture and the presence of special Inquisitors sent for the purpose,
were declared innocent of the crimes attributed to them; but their Order
was dissolved, and its property in Aragon handed over to the
Hospitallers, who were burdened with their support. All over Europe
repeated and urgent orders were received from Rome that the Templars
were to be tortured, and the historian justly remarks that these Papal
Bulls were “perhaps the most disgraceful that ever proceeded from a
vicegerent of God.”[37]
The magnitude of the proceedings against the Templars may be estimated
from the fact that when the Papal archives were by order of Napoleon
transferred to Paris in 1810 the boxes of documents relating to the
trial numbered 3,239; and many further records were, it is said, sold by
Papal agents to grocers as waste paper. At the Council of Vienne
convened in 1312, mainly to consider the case of the Templars, the Pope
did his utmost to get them condemned without a hearing; and, though
unsuccessful in this, the Order was formally abolished at his
instigation, and the bulk of its property, as in Aragon, transferred to
the Hospitallers, who did not relish the duty of supporting their
unfortunate rivals. The rest of the booty was divided among the royal
and other thieves who had long lusted for it. Many of the principal
Templars were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, in the course of
which they rotted to death. The two chiefs, De Molay and De Charny, were
slowly burned to death in Paris in March, 1314, as relapsed heretics, on
the day after their declaration that they had confessed merely to save
their lives. It would have been impossible thus to destroy the
wealthiest and most powerful Order in Europe without the agency of the
Holy Office.
_Joan of Arc._
When Joan of Arc was captured by John of Luxemburg in May, 1430, she was
sold by him for 10,000 livres to the English, who desired to have her
tried before the Inquisition. She was bitterly hated by them, and the
University of Paris heartily joined in their ferocious pursuit of the
heroic maid. Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, another of her
opponents, presided at the trial, which opened in February, 1431; and,
as it was assumed that the proceedings would be invalid without the
presence of an Inquisitor, though Cauchon himself was nominally one,
Jean le Maitre, Vicar for Rouen, acted (reluctantly, be it said to his
credit) as representative of the Inquisitor for France. The trial was a
monstrously unjust one; evidence in Joan’s favour was suppressed, and a
number of skilled lawyers and theologians worked hard to entrap her into
confession. It is one of the marvels of history that this untaught
peasant girl time after time baffled her persecutors by her simple and
truthful answers to their cunningly framed questions. Worn out at last
by their tireless persistence, she abjured, and received the customary
sentence of perpetual imprisonment. The English were furious, and made
desperate efforts to secure her death. It was not easy to find a
pretext, but one was discovered in her change of clothing. Joan was
tempted by having her usual man’s dress placed within her reach. She
donned it; advantage was taken of her imprudence to treat it as a formal
relapse into heresy, and two days later the noble and innocent deliverer
of her country was burnt alive in the market place of Rouen, to the
everlasting shame of France and England.
_Sorcery and Magic._
It is impossible to understand the life of the Middle Ages unless it is
borne in mind that men and women everywhere held an implicit belief in
the reality of the supernatural and of evil spirits, who were for ever
tempting them to wrong. The idea of natural law being unknown, it was
not perceived that this belief conflicted with the notion of an
intelligible cosmos, or that it violated the idea of human
responsibility by assuming that man’s actions are attributable, not to
himself, but to either good spirits or demons. It was man, however, who
received the punishment. The air was believed to be thick with spirits;
they might be seen as dust, as motes in the sunbeam, or in the falling
rain. The sounds of the wind, of any clashing objects, of running
streams and roaring cataracts, were the voices of spirits. From
Scriptural texts, such as Genesis vi, 5, Luke iv, 7, and others, the
logical deduction was drawn that intercourse between angelic and human
beings was not merely possible, but continually took place.
At first the Inquisition neither had nor claimed jurisdiction over
dealings with evil spirits. The Church, indeed, was sometimes more
rational than the people, for in 1279 an Alsatian nun would have been
burnt by the peasantry for sorcery had she not been rescued by some
friars. The question of repressing this crime had been raised in 1257,
and before many years elapsed it was generally recognized that the
Inquisition had some sort of jurisdiction over it. Astrology soon
attracted its attention, and was ranked as heresy. Peter of Abano seems
to have been the first to be prosecuted, and he would have been burnt as
a relapsed heretic had he not taken the precaution to die in the
ordinary way first. In 1324 the astrologer, Cecco d’Ascoli, was forced
to abjure, but, being imprudent enough to relapse, was burnt three years
later. Several people were excommunicated for sorcery early in the
fourteenth century, and the growing belief in the reality and gravity of
the offence was greatly stimulated by Pope John XXII.
In Ireland a zealous Franciscan worked up a case against Lady Alice
Kyteler, alleged to be one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world;
and, though the lady escaped to England, her maid was mercilessly
scourged until she confessed a tissue of absurdities, after which she
was burnt. Persecution diminished when, in 1330, the Pope withdrew
sorcery from the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, but the popular belief
continued and extended, and the secular courts were sufficiently
rigorous in their treatment of offenders. In 1390 two women, after being
severely tortured two or three times without result, finally confessed
to a charge of making a love-philtre, and were burnt. The early trials
for sorcery in England were held in the civil courts, the leniency of
which was disapproved by the Church; in 1407, therefore, Henry IV placed
the offence under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which naturally made the
most of it, and prepared a congenial soil for the witchcraft delusion.
One of the most extraordinary cases in history is that of Gilles de Retz
(or Rais), who in 1440 was accused of sacrilege, child murder,
intercourse with demons, and other offences savouring of heresy. Gilles
de Rais, Marshal of France, was a rich and powerful baron of Brittany,
whose extravagance involved him in many difficulties. He was pious, as
far as the observances of religion went, a man of unusual culture, with
a passion for expensive books, paintings, music, the drama, and other
forms of art. A dabbler in the occult, he sought perseveringly for the
Philosopher’s Stone, by which he believed unlimited wealth would be
gained, enabling him to keep up his lavish display and prodigality. But
there was a very much darker side to his character. He was accustomed to
employ agents, women as well as men, to entice children from their
parents, by whom they were never seen again. These disappearances became
so numerous that suspicion was aroused, and de Rais was at last arrested
and tried before the Bishop of Nantes and the Vice-Inquisitor of the
diocese. He was found guilty, but no sentence was pronounced.
Immediately afterwards he was tried in a secular court, and sentenced to
be hanged and burnt, with two servants who had been accomplices in his
ghastly crimes. Making allowance for popular exaggeration, which
attributed countless victims to him, there is reason to believe that 140
children were outraged and murdered, their bodies being thrown into
pits. It is said that “so depraved became his appetite that he found his
chief enjoyment in the death agonies of his victims, over whose
sufferings he gloated as he skilfully mangled them and protracted their
torture. When dead he would criticize their beauties with his
confidential servitors, would compare one with another, and would kiss
with rapture the heads which pleased him most.”[38] Yet this monster
died with words of godly exhortation on his lips and confident of
salvation. Under the threat of torture he freely confessed to crimes
enough to put 10,000 men to death. He was taken into church and granted
absolution, and the execution was carried out on the following day. The
extraordinary wickedness of this man made a deep impression on the
superstitious people of Brittany, where he became, in later ages,
identified with the Bluebeard of Perrault’s nursery story, of which some
writers maintain that he furnished the original, possibly because he is
said to have had seven wives, though he possessed only one. It is
something to the credit of the Holy Office that it had a share in
bringing this fiend to justice.
The growing belief in witchcraft and demonology in the fifteenth century
gave additional strength to the long arm of the Inquisition, for witches
were of necessity heretics. They were at first treated with comparative
mildness, the secular courts being apparently the first to inflict the
penalty of burning in such cases. But the Inquisition soon equalled this
severity, and gave the accused fewer chances of escape. Venice,
however, was less energetic in this matter than most States, for in 1486
and 1521 it incurred the wrath of the Papacy by refusing to burn some
witches condemned by the Inquisition. In 1474 several women were burnt
in Piedmont for witchcraft, but two others, who were able to employ
counsel of their own, had their case transferred to Turin, and
presumably secured acquittals--a fact which seems to show the prudence
of the Inquisitors in choosing the advocate for the defence, and
excommunicating him if he was successful.
Of the Vaudois, or witches of Arras, several persons after being cruelly
tortured, were burnt in 1460, a hermit being the first to suffer at
Langres; and seven persons were put to death in one _auto de fé_ in July
of that year. Many of the leading and wealthiest men of Arras were
arrested; confessions, some of them afterwards withdrawn, were wrung
from them by torture, and twelve persons in all were burnt out of the
thirty-four apprehended. The epidemic of credulity died away after a
time, and the Inquisition stopped further prosecutions; but the
prosperous city of Arras suffered enormous loss by the confiscations
imposed and the panic which dislocated its trade. The return to sanity
was chiefly due to the son of one of the victims succeeding in an appeal
to the Parliament of Paris (previous appeals had been suppressed),
which, after a brief inquiry lasting thirty years, issued a decree
rehabilitating some of the accused, and caused the promoters of the
prosecutions to be heavily fined. It was decreed that torture should be
for the future prohibited. This is “probably the only case on record in
which an Inquisitor was brought before a law court to answer for his
official actions.”[39] Thus a healthy scepticism was beginning to enter
the public mind. Several persons were charged before the Bishop of
Amiens, who acquitted them; another was acquitted by the Archbishop of
Besançon; while a third was tried by a tribunal consisting of the
Archbishop of Rheims, the Bishop of Paris, the Inquisitor of France, and
some theological experts. He was not only acquitted, but authorized to
prosecute his accusers for reparation and damages. A poor man who went
mad on the subject of witchcraft was burnt in August, 1460.
In its early stages the belief in witchcraft was artificially stimulated
by the Church, and flourished in an atmosphere of ignorance and dread of
the unseen. “Had the Church resolutely repressed the growing
superstition in place of stimulating it with all the authority of the
Holy See, infinite bloodshed and misery might have been spared to
Christendom.”[40] Every Inquisitor was an agent for the spread of the
belief, and the Church industriously taught it. An Italian Inquisitor in
1485 burnt forty-one people for witchcraft in one district in the
Grisons--an exploit which gratified the historian Sprenger; and
Innocent’s Bull of 1484 gave a perceptible impulse to the superstition,
forty-eight persons being burnt in one small German town in five years
by order of Sprenger and a fellow Inquisitor. To doubt the reality of
the crime was to dispute the authority of the Church; to aid an accused
person was to impede the Inquisition. A woman charged with witchcraft
had little chance of escape, for if her defence made a favourable
impression on the judges they also were considered to have been
bewitched, and few of them cared to run that risk. Confessions made
under severe torture were, of course, numerous, and were afterwards used
as proving the reality of the crime. The small amount of incredulity
which existed vanished before Sprenger’s _Malleus Malficarum_, which Lea
terms “the most portentous monument of superstition which the world has
produced.” With perfect good faith and absolute belief in the truth of
demoniacal possession, Sprenger brought forward an overwhelming mass of
evidence, which no one in those times was able to rebut or dared to
dispute. This terrible book, which remained the recognized authority on
the subject for more than a century, immensely stimulated a belief
which, as Lea remarks, is “ a process of purely natural evolution from
the principles which the Church had succeeded in establishing.”[41] For
200 years the Church had done all it could to promote this belief. Pope
Calixtus, in 1457, ordered the repression of witchcraft, and towards the
end of the century Alexander VI urged the Inquisitor of Lombardy to show
greater zeal in his work. Early in the sixteenth century Julius II
defined the powers of the Inquisitors, and issued to their helpers
indulgences similar to those given to Crusaders. Thus persecution
produced its natural effect in a great revival of superstition in
Northern Italy. The Inquisitors burnt 140 persons at Brescia in 1510,
and 300 at Como four years later.
The Witch Sabbaths were a well-known institution in the Middle Ages, and
it is reported that more than 25,000 persons were sometimes present at
these weird gatherings. In view of the danger incurred, such popularity
seems unaccountable enough to suggest that the narratives spring from
sheer delusion. In the district of Valcamonica an Inquisitor burnt
seventy witches and sent as many more to prison, while those suspected
or accused numbered 5,000, about one-fourth of the population of the
valleys. The Venetian Senate thought this was going too far, but its
protest only brought strong remonstrances from the Pope, Leo X, and
fresh orders for persecution. The Senate replied by a dignified and
rational document, laying it down that the accused were to have a fair
trial with legal safeguards, that torture must be discontinued, that the
Inquisition’s expenses were to be kept within moderate bounds, that
greed for money was not to be the reason for prosecution, and that the
excesses alleged against Inquisitors would have to be investigated. This
document, “a monument of considerate wisdom and common-sense,” was
ignored, and Christendom abandoned itself to a senseless, delirious orgy
of superstition and cruelty. Between the madness of the Catholic and the
madness of the Protestant there was little to choose. On one point at
least they were in accord, and it is significant that Calvin used the
arguments of the Inquisitors to justify persecution. In Geneva 500
persons are said to have been burnt within three months, at Toulouse 400
on a single occasion (some say 1,500), at Bamberg 600, at Wurzburg 900
in one year--all in the sixteenth century. The Senate of Savoy condemned
800 at one time. That a cold spring in 1586 was caused by witchcraft was
proved by the confessions of the guilty parties, and for this crime 118
women and two men were burnt by the Archbishop of Treves. This city
seems to have exceeded all others in its atrocities. According to Lecky,
7,000 persons were burnt there for sorcery, but he does not state over
what period these figures extend. The Inquisitor Paramo, who wrote in
the sixteenth century, boasts that since 1404 the Holy Office burnt as
many as 30,000 persons, who, if let alone, would have “brought the whole
world to destruction.”[42] This Paramo defended the secrecy of the
Inquisition on the ground that God was the first Inquisitor, and that in
secret Adam and Eve had been tried.
_Intellect and Faith._
A religion which imagined that it was the repository of a full and final
revelation, that it possessed the keys of the invisible world, and which
regarded every doubt as a heresy born of the devil, naturally became in
practice a vast machine for persecution. When mental activity was thus a
crime, and any attempt to increase knowledge an act of rebellion against
God, it was clear that human progress was brought to a standstill. No
one can tell what progress would have been made had the Inquisition not
existed; that it kept Europe for hundreds of years in mental torpor, and
did what it could to make the reign of stupidity eternal, does not admit
of question. What the magnificent brain of Roger Bacon could have
achieved is matter for speculation. It has been disputed, but seems to
be true, that he was imprisoned for his advanced opinions, and died a
captive; but, however that may be, it is certain that the Church
succeeded in preventing mankind from benefiting by his researches.
Anything like modern Freethought was out of the question, but distinct
approaches to it were made in the twelfth century by Averrhoes, whose
particular tenets were that matter is uncreated and eternal, that the
soul dies with the body, only collective humanity being immortal, and
that all religions are of human origin and, though useful incentives to
virtue, contain only relative truth. These doctrines, which were looked
upon as deadly heresies, surprisingly anticipate some of the
speculations of our own times. It is remarkable that under the rigorous
conditions which prevailed Averrhoism should have spread so rapidly as
it did, but it could have been only among the scholarly few; and in the
thirteenth century, which was in certain respects more advanced than the
fifteenth, these opinions made some slight impression on the popular
mind. Had the impression been deeper, the results might have been in
some respects more disastrous. The general ignorance was so great that a
premature abandonment of the orthodox faith might have been made the
occasion of even more flagrant moral licence than actually existed, and
so have strengthened the hands of the persecutors. A system which held
all religions to be untrue, especially the religion of the Christians,
who daily ate their God, would naturally enough be thought to emanate
from the bottomless pit, and it is an astonishing circumstance that for
a long time the Inquisition left Averrhoism alone. Herman of Ryswick,
the most famous successor of Peter of Abano, after being sentenced to
perpetual imprisonment, continued to propagate his errors, and in 1512
was burnt at the Hague by order of the Inquisition. It is evident that
at times considerable freedom of speech existed, or Laurentius Valla
would scarcely have been able, in the middle of the fifteenth century,
to assail the “Donation of Constantine,” or to declare that the Papacy
should be deprived of its temporal power. Valla got off cheaply by a
simple declaration that he believed as Mother Church believed, though
Mother Church, he added, knew nothing about it. Ultimately this restless
disputant obtained a clerical sinecure in Rome, and died in peace.
Several other unbelievers escaped the customary doom of mental
independence. It is one of the anomalies of ecclesiastical history prior
to the Reformation that, while the most trifling variations from
orthodoxy were relentlessly crushed, a philosophical humanism hardly
distinguishable from downright Atheism was fashionable among the
intellectual classes, even those in clerical orders, and frequently
went unpunished. The writings of the famous Raymond Lully--perhaps the
most voluminous author on record, for he is credited with 321
volumes--brought him into conflict with the Inquisition; and long after
his death in 1315 Eymeric, the Inquisitor of Aragon, sought to have his
memory condemned. This was partially done in 1620, though the main
object of Lully had been to suppress the heresy of Averrhoism, and many
miracles wrought by his remains had evidenced his saintliness. Not many
figures of the Middle Ages have had the doubtful honour of being both
heretic and saint.
In 1331 Pope John XXII had imprisoned an English priest who maintained
that the saints after death are at once admitted to the presence of God.
This doctrine, known as the “Beatific Vision,” had aroused the Pope’s
anger, but he was subsequently compelled by the strength of the general
opinion in its favour to accept it, after a controversy which nearly
cost him his tiara. Years of bitter dispute ensued on a subject about
which no human being knew anything whatever, and it even became a
question of grave political consequence, for the monarchs of the time
ventured to differ from the Papal opinion. The Inquisition espoused the
popular view, and made questions on the subject an important part of the
interrogatories addressed to the unlucky persons brought before its
tribunals.
About the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, a purely dogmatic
development, a further mass of superstition spread, and gave rise to
bitter controversies, the Franciscans and Dominicans quarrelling so
fiercely that in 1482 popular tumults broke out in Italy on this
mysterious topic, of which everybody was supposed to know something. The
theory that the Virgin Mary never from the moment of her conception
shared the sinful tendencies of ordinary mortals was something of a
novelty, and the Dominicans who rejected it had tradition in their
favour, but they were overborne by the increasing power of the new
superstition. An Italian priest who in 1504 maintained that Christ was
conceived in the Virgin’s heart was seized by the Inquisition, and had a
narrow escape from death by fire. A special appearance of the Virgin
herself, who expressed her annoyance at the doctrine, caused an immense
sensation until it was discovered that the manifestation was a trick got
up by the Dominicans, and four of the culprits were burnt. Not until
1854, after five centuries of struggle, was the doctrine officially
proclaimed as a formal act of faith, when the Dominicans obediently
began to find reasons in its favour. It would seem to be a logical
sequence that the reputed father of the Virgin was no more concerned in
her birth than Joseph was supposed to be in that of Jesus, but for
maintaining this thesis a man was condemned so recently as 1876.
_Censorship of Books._
Notwithstanding the extent to which heresy was propagated by printed
books, it was a long time before the Inquisition was recognized as the
most convenient instrument for their supervision and suppression. The
first Papal deliverance on the subject was a Bull by Gregory XI in 1376,
instructing the Inquisition to examine and condemn suspected writings,
but what were the results is not known. An Archbishop who burnt some
writings of John Wycliffe at Prague was found to have exceeded his
powers, and it was not till the beginning of the sixteenth century that
a regular censorship was organized, and then in Germany only. However,
the Inquisition was willing to undertake additional responsibilities,
and at length made a rule that any one possessing books of doubtful
orthodoxy must within eight days deliver them to the Bishop or
Inquisitor of his district, on pain of being under vehement suspicion of
heresy. That the Church was more anxious to preserve its privileges than
to promote religion may be inferred from the fact that translations into
the vernacular of any parts of the Bible were prohibited. As it was
found before long that books containing heretical doctrines were being
circulated, it was deemed expedient to forbid anything being printed
without previous examination by the Holy Office and the Papal and
episcopal authorities. The religious world, however, became so
disorganized by the Reformation that these precautions were of little
avail, and it was not until the Church had regained much of its power in
the counter Reformation that a really strict censorship could be
established.
_The Greek Church._
Although one Pope, Boniface VIII, issued a Bull decreeing that every
human being, including the members of the Greek Church, was bound to
obey the Roman Pontiff, a prudent and tolerant attitude was usually
maintained towards that unsound but powerful rival. Stray members of the
Greek communion who happened to be found in Western Europe were at times
persecuted as heretics, and in 1351 all Greeks were ordered once a year
to confess and take the sacrament according to the Latin usage. Any
person who after this decree violated it was a relapsed heretic, and
entitled to no mercy. But to coerce effectively a great religious
organization, every member of which was in the eyes of Rome a heretic,
proved too arduous a task for orthodoxy, and the Inquisition failed to
utilize the glorious opportunities for persecution afforded by Eastern
Europe, with its variety of races and religious ideas. The Church was
therefore prudent enough to follow a line of policy as mild and tolerant
as it was novel.
_Indulgences and Simony._
The scandal to the cause of true religion which accompanied the sale of
Indulgences was so notorious all over Europe that it is surprising to
find that this abuse--deeply prejudicial to the Church and to public
morals--was not considered to deserve vigorous repression. It is true
that the practice was sometimes officially denounced, as when Pope
Alexander IV gave the Inquisitors power to deal with the evil. But Lea
asserts that, so far as he can discover, only one man was tried by the
Inquisition for this prevalent offence. He admitted that he had been in
the habit of telling monstrous falsehoods and filling the superstitious
people with absurdities, but it is doubtful whether he was punished--if
at all, it was by nothing more than a light penance. The remarkable
lenity of the Church towards this traffic was, of course, due to the
fact that it furnished a very substantial source of profit; but if the
Popes had expended on the internal reform of the Church a hundredth part
of the energy which they devoted to the suppression of minor differences
of opinion the Reformation might conceivably have been averted. It was
the Reformation that made imperative that moral renewal which prolonged
the influence of the Church and still constitutes one of the chief
elements of its strength.
It is a striking proof of human selfishness and of the extent to which
it blinds mankind to its own failings that the Inquisition was never
instructed to put down simony (which, as heresy, came within its
jurisdiction), and that it never volunteered to do so--a fact which
shows very clearly that, in the view of the Christian Church, morals
were of trifling importance compared with belief. One or two of the
Popes worked with genuine zeal and immense energy to extirpate the
evil, but without avail. The practice being highly profitable
financially to the Church, its disastrous moral effects were ignored,
the laudable desires of some Pontiffs being thwarted by others less
scrupulous. Every clerical office, from the highest to the lowest, was
virtually sold by auction. Pope John XXII even drew up a scale on which
absolutions for simony could be granted at the lowest market rates. The
prevalence of this offence was perhaps the chief of all the causes which
contributed to the degradation of the Christian Church. In this
connection it may be interesting to reproduce here a clever and daring
satire which was popular in the thirteenth century:--
Here beginneth the Gospel according to the silver marks. In those
days the Pope said to the Romans: When the Son of Man shall come to
the throne of our majesty, first say to him: Friend, why comest
thou? And if he continue to knock, giving you nothing, ye shall
cast him into outer darkness. And it came to pass that a certain
poor clerk came to the court of the lord pope, and cried out
saying: Have mercy on me, ye gate-keepers of the pope, for the hand
of poverty hath touched me. I am poor and hungry; I pray you to
help my misery. Then were they wroth and said: Friend, thy poverty
perish with thee; get thee behind me, Satan, for thou knowest not
the odour of money. Verily, verily, I say unto thee that thou shalt
not enter into the joy of thy Lord until thou hast given thy last
farthing.
Then the poor man went away, and sold his cloak and his coat and
all that he had, and gave it to the cardinals and gate-keepers and
chamberlains. But they said: What is this among so many? And they
cast him beyond the gates, and he wept bitterly and could find
naught to comfort him. Then came to the court a rich clerk, fat and
broad and heavy, who in his wrath had slain a man. First he gave
to the gate-keeper, then to the chamberlain, then to the cardinals;
and they thought they were about to receive more. But the lord
pope, hearing that the cardinals and servants had many gifts from
the clerk, fell sick unto death. Then unto him the rich man sent an
electuary of gold and silver, and straightway he was cured. Then
the lord pope called unto him the cardinals and servants, and said
unto them: Brethren, take heed that no one seduce you with empty
words. I set you an example; even as I take so shall ye take.[43]
Avaricious men were enabled by an incredibly bad system to make religion
a public danger. Priests who led women astray on the plea that
intercourse with holy men was not sinful, a depraved laity, religion
severed from morals--these made up a state of society in which
apprehensions existed that the wickedness of the clergy would provoke
the people to rise against them, or perhaps even bring on the world the
final visitation of Divine wrath. Good men asked why God did not
intervene to save his Church from ruin. No intervention came.