public entry into Trent, and the council was formally opened. Paul III's
continued desire to conciliate the Emperor was shown by his adherence to
Trent as the locality of the council, when the legates again urged the
choice of a town on Italian soil. Yet the very Bishop of Trent, Cardinal
Madruccio, was a prince of the Empire, and by descent attached to the
house of Austria, whose interests he consistently represented during the
first series of sessions. The papal legates, with whose control over the
council the Emperor at the outset showed no intention of interfering,
typified the different elements in the ecclesiastical policy of Paul
III. The presiding legate, Cardinal del Monte--afterward Pope Julius
III--while notable neither for religious zeal nor for wise self-control,
was a thoroughgoing supporter of the interests of the Curia. Cardinal
Cervino, afterward Pope Marcellus II, a prelate of blameless life, was
animated by those ideas of ecclesiastical reform of which Pope Paul had
encouraged the open expression; but he was more especially eager for the
extirpation of heresy, and not over-scrupulous in the choice of means
for reaching his ends. Lastly, Cardinal Pole's[54] presence at Trent, in
which some have seen a mere papal ruse, must have surrounded the early
proceedings of the council with a hopeful glamour in the eyes of those
who, like himself, expected from it the reunion as well as the
reinvigoration of Western Christendom.
Nothing, as had probably been foreseen at Rome, could have better
facilitated the immediate establishment of the ascendency in the council
of the papal policy than the composition of its opening meeting. Of the
thirty-four ecclesiastics present, only five were Spanish and two French
bishops, and no German bishop had crossed the Alps. Nor had any secular
power except the Emperor and King Ferdinand sent their ambassadors. The
business machinery of the council, which the legates lost no time in
getting into order, was altogether in favor of their influence as
managers. Learned doctors, without being, as in former councils, allowed
to take part in the debates, prepared the work of the three committees
or congregations, who in their turn brought it up for discussion to the
general congregations.
The sessions in which the decrees thus prepared were actually passed
had a purely formal character, but before they were successively held
opportunity enough was given for manipulation and delay. The voting in
the council was by heads, instead of by nations, as at Constance and
Basel; and care was taken to refresh by occasional additions the working
majority of Italian bishops, mostly, in comparison with the
"ultramontane" prelates, holders of petty sees. Some of these are even
stated to have bound themselves by a sworn engagement to uphold the
interests of the holy see, though by no means all of the Italian bishops
were servile Curialists; witness those of Chioggia and of Fiesole. The
council in its second session (January 7, 1546) waived the form of title
by which previous councils had implicitly declared their representative
authority paramount. On the other hand, it boded well for the cause of
reform that, by an early resolution, virtually all abbots and members of
the monastic orders except five generals were excluded.
Clearly, episcopal interest was resolved upon asserting itself. So long,
however, as the German bishops were detained in their dioceses by the
duty of repressing heresy there, while the great body of the French were
kept away by the vigilant jealousy of their government, the episcopal
interest and the episcopal principle were mainly represented in the
council by the Spanish prelates, the loyal subjects of Charles. Their
leader was Pacheco, Cardinal of Jaen. With him came eminent theological
professors, who in the early period of the council at least were without
rivals--Dominico de Soto, whom Queen Mary afterward placed in Peter
Martyr's chair at Oxford, and Bartolomeo Carranza, afterward primate of
all Spain and for many years a prisoner of the Inquisition. Through the
Emperor's ambassador, the accomplished and indefatigable but not
invariably discreet Mendoza, the Spanish bishops were carefully apprised
of the wishes of their sovereign.
The crucial question as to the order in which the council should debate
the two divisions of subjects which it had met to settle had to be
decided at once; and the compromise arrived at showed both the strength
of the minority and the unwillingness of the leaders of the majority,
the presiding legates, to push matters to an extreme. Their instructions
from the Pope were to give the declaration of dogma the preference over
the announcement of disciplinary reforms; for it seemed to him of
primary necessity to draw, while there was time, a clear line of
demarcation between the Church and heresy; and for this, as he correctly
judged, the assistance of the council was absolutely indispensable. The
Emperor, on the other hand, was still unwilling to shut the door
completely against the Protestants, while both he and the episcopal
party at the council were eager for that reformation of the life and
government of the Church which seemed to them her most crying need.
Ultimately it was agreed that the declaration of dogma and the
reformation of abuses should be treated _pari passu_, the decrees
formulated in each case being from time to time announced
simultaneously. Taking into account the subsequent history of the
council, one can hardly deny that this arrangement saved the work of the
assembly from being left half done. Nor was the progress made in the
period ending with the eighth session of the council (March 11, 1547),
intrigues and quarrels notwithstanding, by any means trifling. On the
doctrinal side, the foundations of the faith were in the first instance
examined, and the whole character of the doctrinal decrees of the
council was in point of fact determined, when the authority of the
tradition of the Church, including of course the decrees of her
ecumenical councils, was acknowledged by the side of that of Scripture.
Little to the credit of the council's capacity for taking pains, the
authenticity of the Vulgate was proclaimed, a pious wish being added
that it should be henceforth printed as correctly as possible. At first,
Pope Paul III hesitated about giving his assent to these decrees, which
had been passed before receiving his approval, and showed some anxiety
to prevent a similar course being taken in the matter of discipline by
publishing a regulatory bull on his own authority. But on being more
fully advised by the legates of the nature of the situation, he
consented to allow the debates to proceed, provided always that the
decrees should be submitted to him before publication.
During the next months (April to June, 1546) the work of the council was
accordingly vigorously continued in both its branches. In that of
discipline, the episcopal and the monastic interests at once came into
conflict on the subject of the license for preaching; and still more
excitement was aroused by the question of episcopal residence, which
brought into conflict the highest purposes of the episcopal office and
the selfish profits of the Roman Curia. The discussions on preaching
ended with a reasonable compromise, monks being henceforth prohibited
from preaching without the bishop's license in any churches but those of
their own order. The question of residence was by the Pope's wish
adjourned.
Thus the council, now augmented by Swiss and many other bishops, while
all the chief Catholic powers except Poland were represented by
ambassadors, could venture to approach those questions of dogma which
the Emperor would gladly have seen postponed, so long as he was still
pausing on the brink of his conflict with the German Protestants. The
Pope, on the contrary, while ostentatiously displaying on the frontier
the auxiliary forces which he had promised to the Emperor, was eager to
proclaim through the council as distinctly as possible the solid unity
of the orthodox Church. The doctrine concerning original sin having been
promulgated in the teeth of imperial opposition, the legates pressed for
the issue of the decree concerning justification. In the midst of the
debates the Smalkaldic War broke out (July, 1546).
For a time it seemed as if at Trent, too, the opposing interests would
have proved irreconcilable. Pole, as the justification decree began to
shape itself, had, "for reasons of health," withdrawn to Padua;
Madruccio and Del Monte exchanged personal insults; Pacheco accused the
legates of gross chicanery, and they in their turn threatened a removal
of the council to an Italian city, where, in accordance with what they
knew to be the papal wish, the council might deliberate without being
either overawed by the Emperor or menaced by his Protestant adversaries.
Soon, however, the case was altered by the manifest collapse of the
latter, notwithstanding their expectations of support from England,
Denmark, and France, long before their final catastrophe in the battle
of Muhlberg, April 24, 1547. The Emperor would not hear of the removal
of the council to Lucca, Ferrara, or any other Italian town, and in
consequence the plan of campaign at Trent was modified, in order at all
events to make the breach with the Protestants impassable. The debates
on justification were eagerly pushed on, and, after some further trials
of _finesse_, the decree on the subject which anathematized the
fundamental doctrines of the Lutheran Reformation was passed in the
sixth session of the council, January 13, 1547.
On the other hand, the decree on residence was again postponed, and a
very high tone was taken toward the prelates absent from the
council--the Germans being, of course, those principally glanced at. In
the next session (March 5th) decrees followed asserting the orthodox
doctrine of the Church concerning the sacraments, and baptism and
confirmation in particular, and with these was at last issued the decree
concerning residence. It avoided pronouncing on the view which had been
so ardently advocated by the Spanish bishops and argued by the pen of
Archbishop Carranza, that the duty of residence was imposed by divine
law, and it took care to safeguard the dispensing authority of the Roman
see. Yet, though at times evaded or overridden, the prohibition of
pluralism contained in this decree, together with certain other
provisions for the _bona-fide_ execution of bishops' functions, has
indisputably proved most advantageous to the vigor and vitality of the
episcopacy of the Church of Rome.
Paul III's attitude toward the Emperor had meanwhile grown more and more
suspicious. Partly they had become antagonists on the great question of
Church reorganization; partly the Emperor was becoming disposed to
thwart the dynastic policy of the Farnese; partly, again, the Pope now
thought himself able to fall back on the alliance of France. In January
Paul III recalled the auxiliaries and stopped the subsidies which he had
furnished to Charles V; and in March Henry II succeeded to the French
throne, whose intrigues with the German Protestants, though leaving
unaffected his fanatical rigor against his own heretics at home, seemed
likely to break the current of imperial success. Thus at Trent the
struggle against the Spanish bishops acquired an intense significance;
and in the eighth session, March 11th, the legates at last made use of
the power intrusted to them, it was said, eighteen months before, and
carried, against the votes of Spain, the removal of the council to
Bologna, on the plea of an outbreak of the plague at Trent. By the
Emperor's desire, the Spanish bishops, plague or no plague, remained in
the city.
"The obstinate old man," said Charles, "would end by ruining the
Church;" and sanguine Protestants might dream of a renewal of the
situation of 1526-1527. The progress of events widened the breach
between the Emperor and the Pope. After Muhlberg Charles V seemed
irresistible, and, as he would hear of no solution but a return of the
council to Trent, there seemed no choice between submission and
defiance. Gradually, however, it became clear that he had no wish again
to drive things to extremes, and least of all to provoke anything of the
nature of a schism. Moreover, France, where the Guises were now in the
ascendant, was becoming more hostile to him; and the murder of the
Pope's son at Piacenza, followed by the occupation of that city by
Spanish troops, September, 1547, nearly brought about the conclusion of
a Franco-Italian league against Charles. But though French bishops
arrived at Bologna, their attitude there was by no means acceptable to
the Pope, and Henry II had no real intention of making war upon the
Emperor. Thus the latter thought himself able to take into his own hands
the settlement of the religious difficulty.
In the midst of further disappointments and of fresh designs, the
immediate purposes of which are not altogether clear, Pope Paul III
died, November 15, 1549. That the most generous of the aspirations which
had under his reign first found full opportunity for asserting
themselves had survived his manoeuvring, was shown by the favorable
reception, both outside and inside the conclave, of the proposal that
Reginald Pole should be his successor. But Pole refused to be elected by
the impulsive method of adoration, and in the end the Farnese[55]
interest, supported by the French, prevailed, and Cardinal del Monte was
chosen.
The papal government of Julius III (1550 to 1555) showed hardly more of
temperate wisdom than had marked his conduct of the presidency at Trent;
but he had the courage at the very outset to decide upon the safest
course. After a few conditions, most of them quite in the spirit of the
imperial policy, had been proposed and accepted, the bull summoning the
council to Trent for the following spring was issued without further ado
(November).
Yet even before the council actually reopened, _i.e._, May 1, 1551, it
had become evident that the papal view of its purposes remained as
widely divergent from the Imperial as in the days of Paul III. The
nomination of Cardinal Crescentio, a Roman by birth, as president of the
council, with two Italian prelates, Pighino of Siponto and Lippomano of
Verona, by his side, was in itself ominous; and the German Protestants,
upon whom the Emperor pressed safe-conducts at Augsburg (1551),
perceived the papal intention of treating the council as a mere
continuation of that which had previously sat at Trent. Still, several
of them, as well as the Catholic electors, finally promised to attend.
On the other hand, Henry II of France prohibited the appearance of a
single French prelate, and began to talk of a Gallican council. Thus the
brief series of sessions held at Trent from May, 1551, to April, 1552,
proved in the main, though not altogether, barren of results. Unless the
assembled fathers were prepared to reconsider the decrees already
passed, and to force the assent of the Pope to a religious policy of
quite unprecedented breadth, another deadlock was at hand; and already,
in the early months of 1552, the council, this time with the manifest
connivance of Rome, began to thin. When, in April, Maurice of Saxony,
now the ally of France, approached the southern frontier of the Empire,
the Pope, whose own French war had taken a disastrous turn, had reason
enough for shunning further cooperation with the Emperor. The council
dwindled apace in spite of the efforts of Charles V, who had never
ceased to believe in his schemes. Finally, however, he could not prevent
the remnants of the council from passing a decree suspending its
sessions for two years, which was opposed by not more than a dozen loyal
Spanish votes, April 28, 1552.
Charles V's resignation of his thrones (1554-1556) resulted, though far
from being so intended, in a confession of his failure. While it was in
progress, Julius III died (March 23, 1555), leaving behind him scant
evidence to support the rumor of his having indulged, at all events in
the last period of his reign, in ideas of church reformation. But the
choice of his successor, Marcellus II (April-May, 1555), shows that
these ideas were not yet extinct in the sacred college, notwithstanding
the simultaneous creation by Julius III of fourteen cardinals; for
Cervino had always been reckoned a member, though a moderate one, of the
reforming party. Far greater, however, was the significance attaching to
the election of the Pope who speedily took the place of Marcellus.
The pontificate of Paul IV (Gian Pietro Caraffa, May, 1555-August, 1559)
forms one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of the
Counter-reformation, which in him seemed under both its aspects to have
secured the mastery of the Church. God's will alone, he was convinced,
had placed him where he stood; for he was unconscious of having achieved
anything through the favor of man. He was now seventy-nine years of age,
but he had never been more eager to devote himself to his chosen
purpose--the establishment in the eyes of all peoples of a pure and
spiritually active church, free from all impediments of corruptions and
abuses, and purged of all poison of heresy and schism.
Fully aware--though he had belonged to it himself--of the virtual
failure of Paul III's commission of reform, Paul IV, in his first bull,
solemnly promised an effectual reform of the Church and the Roman Curia,
and lost no time in instituting a congregation for the purpose. The
commission, which consisted of three divisions, each of them composed
jointly of cardinals, bishops, and doctors, wisely addressed itself in
the first instance to the question of ecclesiastical appointments. The
new Pope likewise issued orders for the specific reform of monastic
establishments, and his energy seemed to stand in striking contrast with
the hesitations and delays of the recently suspended council.
But once more the seductions of the temporal power overcame its holder.
Caraffa's residence in Spain, and enthusiasm for the religious ideals
and methods prevalent there, had not eradicated the bitterly
anti-Spanish feeling inborn in him as a Neapolitan, and Charles V,
returning hatred for hatred, had done his utmost to offend the dignity
and damage the interests of the Cardinal. To these personal and
national sentiments had been added the conviction that the Emperor's
dealings with the German Protestants had encouraged them to deal a
deadly blow to the unity and strength of the Church; and thus Paul IV
allowed himself to be borne away by passion. His fiery temperament,
fretted rather than soothed by old age, left him and those around him no
peace; he maltreated the imperialist cardinals and the dependents of the
Emperor within his reach, and sought to instigate the French government
to take up arms once more.
Of a sudden, as if in another gust of passion, he made a clean sweep of
the obstacles which his own perversity had placed in his path, and then
took up in terrible earnest the work of church reform. He would allow no
appointment savoring of corruption to any spiritual office; he would
hear of no exception to the duty of residence; he completely abolished
dispensations for marriages within prohibited degrees. Into the general
management of the churches of the city, as well as into that of his own
papal court, he introduced so strict a discipline that Rome was likened
to a well-conducted monastery. But the agency which above all others he
encouraged was that which his own advice had established in the centre
of the Catholic world--the Inquisition. From the sacred college
downward, no sphere of life was exempted from its control; and his
intolerance extended itself to the very Jews whose privileges in the
papal states he ruthlessly revoked. On his death-bed he recommended the
Inquisition with the holy see itself to the pious cardinals surrounding
him. It was afterward observed that many reforms decreed in its third
period by the Council of Trent were copied from the ordinances issued by
Paul IV in this memorable _biennium_. But inasmuch as during his
pontificate the Church of Rome had lost ground in almost every country
of Europe except Italy and Spain, his death (August 18, 1559) naturally
brought with it a widespread renewal of the demand for remedies more
effective than those supplied by his feverish activity and by the
operations of his favorite institution.
Personally, Pius IV (1559-1566) was regarded, and probably chosen, as an
opponent of the late Pope; his family history inclined him to the
Imperial interest, and he was understood to favor concessions to
Germany with a view of bringing her stray sheep back into the fold. But
in general he furthered rather than arrested the religious reaction.
Above all, the Inquisition, though he is not known to have done anything
to intensify its rigor or augment its authority, went on as before.
Carlo Borromeo,[56] the nephew of Pius IV, served the holy see in a
spirit of unselfish devotion, and began those efforts on behalf of
religion which in the end obtained for him a place among the saints of
the Church--a position not reached by many popes' nephews. With the aid
of this influence, Pius IV came to perceive that the future, both of the
Church and of the papacy, depended on the spirit of confidence and
cohesion which could be infused into the former; nor had he from the
very outset of his pontificate ever doubted the expediency of
reassembling the council at Trent.
The emperor Ferdinand and the French Government, who persisted in
treating the reunion of the Church as the primary object of the council,
at first strongly urged the substitution for Trent of a genuinely German
or French town, where the German bishops, and perhaps even the
Protestants, would feel no scruple about attending. But a totally free
and _new_ council of this description lay outside the horizon of the
papacy; and Pius IV might have let fall the plan altogether but for the
fear of the entire separation in that event of the Gallican Church from
Rome. In France, Protestantism had made considerable strides during the
reign of Henry II (1547-1559). About six weeks before the death of Henry
the first national synod of Protestants was held at Paris (May, 1559).
Under Francis II the Guise influence became paramount, and the
persecution of the Protestants continued. But though the suppression,
just before this, of the so-called conspiracy of Amboise had temporarily
added to the power of the Guises, it had also made the Queen-mother,
Catherine de' Medici, resolve not to let the power of the state pass
wholly out of her hands. Hence the appointment of the large-hearted
L'Hopital as chancellor, and the assembly of notables at Fontainebleau
(August), where the grievances against Rome found full expression, and
where arrangements were made for a meeting of the States-general and a
national council of the French Church. This resolution determined Pius
IV to lose no further time. On November 29, 1560, he issued a bull
summoning all the prelates and princes of Christendom to Trent for the
following Easter. The invitation included both Eastern schismatics and
Western heretics, Elizabeth of England among the rest; but neither she
nor the German Protestant princes assembled at Naumburg, nor the kings
of the Scandinavian North, would so much as receive the papal summons.
In France the death of Francis II (December 5, 1560) further depressed
the Guise influence; and Catherine entered into negotiations with the
Pope with a view to concessions such as would satisfy the Huguenots
while approved by the French bishops. The "Edict of January" (1562),
which followed, long remained a sort of standard of fair concessions to
the Huguenots.