It claimed to be the supreme representative of the church, and though
it acknowledged John XXIII. as the lawful successor of St. Peter, it
had no scruples in arraigning, trying, condemning, and deposing him—an
awful expression of its supremacy, without precedent in the past, and
without imitation in succeeding ages. As regards heresy, it did the
best it could, according to the lights of its age, by burning John Huss
and Jerome of Prague. Its functions as a reformer, however, required
for their exercise more nerve than even the condemnation of a pope.
Many members were thoroughly penetrated with the conviction that reform
was of instant necessity, and such men as Gerson, Peter d’Ailly of
Cambrai, and Nicholas de Clemanges were prepared to shrink from none of
the means requisite for so hallowed an end. In the existing corruption,
however, of the body from which representatives were drawn, such men
could scarcely form a controlling majority. After the council had
been in session for nearly two years, the reformers began to despair
of effecting anything, and Clemanges did not hesitate to assert that
nothing was to be expected from men who would regard reform as the
greatest calamity that could befall themselves;[971] while another of
the members of the council declared that every one wanted such a reform
as should allow him to retain his own particular form of iniquity.[972]
These estimates, indeed, of the character of the majority of the good
fathers of Constance is borne out by the contemporary accounts of the
multitudes who flocked to it to ply their trades among the assembled
dignitaries of the church, showing that they were by no means all
devoted to mortifying the flesh.[973]
The feelings of those who sincerely desired reform, as they saw the
prospect rapidly fading before their eyes, may be estimated by a sermon
of a sturdy Gascon abbot, Bernhardus Baptisatus, preached before the
council in August, 1517, about three months before the conservatives
succeeded in carrying their point by electing Martin V. He denounces
the members of the council as Pharisees, falsely pretending to be
devout in order to elude the punishment due to their crimes. The masses
and processions, which were the main business of the assemblage, he
declares to be valueless in the eye of God, for most of those who
so busily took part in them were involved solely in worldly cares,
laughing, cheating, sleeping, or demoralizing the rest with their
ungodly conversation. The Holy Spirit did not hold the acts of the
council acceptable, nor dwell with its unrighteous members.[974] Such a
convocation could have but one result.
It is easy therefore to understand the influences that were brought
to bear to defeat the expectations of the reformers; how the subject
could be postponed until after the questions connected with the papacy
and with heresy were disposed of; and how, after the election of
Martin V., those who shrank from all reform could assume that it might
safely be intrusted to the hands of a pontiff so able, so energetic,
and so virtuous. In all this they were successful. The council closed
its weary sessions, April 22, 1418, and during its three years and
a half of labor it had only found leisure to regulate the dress of
ecclesiastics, the unclerical cut of whose sleeves was especially
distasteful to the representative body of Christendom.[975]
Still, the reformers had made a stubborn fight, and had procured the
appointment of a commission to consider all reformatory propositions
and prepare a general scheme for the adoption of the council. This
body labored as diligently as though its deliberations were to be
crowned with practical results, and various projects of reform proposed
by it have been preserved. In one of these the severest measures of
repression were suggested to put an end to the scandal of concubinage
which was openly practised in the majority of dioceses. Under this
scheme, while all the canonical punishments heretofore decreed were
maintained in full vigor, deprivation was pronounced against all
holders of ecclesiastical preferment, from bishops down, who should
not within one month eject their guilty partners; their positions
were declared vacant _ipso jure_, and their successors were to be
immediately appointed. Those who did not hold benefices were similarly
to be declared ineligible to preferment. It appears that scandals
had arisen in many places from the Hildebrandine and Wickliffite
heresy whereby parishioners declined the ministrations of those who
were living in open and notorious sin; and to avoid these, while the
commission declined to pass an opinion on the propriety of such action,
it advised that such private judgment should not be exercised.[976]
In another elaborate system of reform, which bears the marks of long
deliberation, the attempt was made to eradicate the long-standing abuse
of admitting to preferment the illegitimate children of ecclesiastics,
and it was declared that papal dispensations should no longer be
recognized except in cases of peculiar fitness or high rank.[977] The
same code of discipline struck a significant blow at the inviolability
of the monastic profession when it endeavored to check the prevailing
and deplorable licentiousness of the nunneries by decreeing that no
woman should be admitted to the vows beneath the age of twenty, and
that all vows taken at a younger age should be null and void.[978]
These projects are interesting merely as indicating the direction in
which the reforming portion of the church desired to move, and as
showing that even they did not propose to remove the celibacy which was
the chief cause of the evils they so sincerely deplored.
* * * * *
Martin V. had assumed the responsibility of reforming the church, and
he did, in fact, attempt it after some fashion, though he apparently
took to heart Dante’s axiom—
Lunga promessa, con l’attender corto
Ti farà trionfar nell’ alto seggio.
In 1422 Cardinal Branda of Piacenza, his legate, when sent to Germany
to preach a crusade against the Hussites, was honored with the title
of Reformer General, and full powers were given to him to effect
this part of his mission. The letters-patent of the pope bear ample
testimony to the fearful depravity of the Teutonic church,[979] while
the constitution which Branda promulgated declares that in a portion of
the priesthood there was scarcely left a trace of decency or morality.
According to this document, concubinage, simony, neglect of sacred
functions, gambling, drinking, fighting, buffoonery, and kindred
pursuits, were the prevalent vices of the ministers of Christ; but
the punishments which he enacted for their suppression—repetitions of
those which we have seen proclaimed so many times before—were powerless
to overcome the evils which had become part and parcel of the church
itself.[980]
What was the condition of clerical morals in Italy soon after this
may be learned from a single instance. When Ambrose was made General
of the austere order of Camaldoli he set vigorously to work to reform
the laxity which had almost ruined it. One of his abbots was noted for
abounding licentiousness; not content with ordinary amours, he was
wont to visit the nunneries in his district to indulge in promiscuous
intercourse with the virgins dedicated to God. Yet Ambrose in taking
him to task did not venture to punish him for his misdeeds, but
promised him full pardon for the past and to take him into favor, if he
would only abstain for the future—a task which ought to be easy as he
was now old and should be content with having long lived evilly and be
ready to dedicate his few remaining years to the service of God.[981]
When a reformer, who enjoyed the special friendship and protection of
Eugenius IV., was forced to be so moderate with such a criminal, it is
easy to imagine what was the tone of morality in the church at large.
While the Armagnacs and Burgundians were rivalling the English in
carrying desolation into every corner of France, it could not be
expected that the peaceful virtues could flourish, or sempiternal
corruption be reformed. Accordingly, it need not surprise us to
see Hardouin, Bishop of Angers, despondingly admit, in 1428, that
licentiousness had become so habitual among his clergy that it was
no longer reputed to be a sin; that concubinage was public and
undisguised, and that the patrimony of Christ was wasted in supporting
the guilty partners of the priesthood. That gambling, swearing,
drunkenness, and all manner of unclerical conduct should accompany
these disorders, is too probable to require the concurrent testimony
which the worthy bishop affords us.[982] Alain Chartier, Archdeacon of
Paris and Secretary to Charles VI. and Charles VII., confirms this in
a more general way, when he attributes to enforced celibacy and the
temporal endowments of the church the vices and crimes which rendered
the clergy so odious and contemptible to the laity that he looks
forward to the speedy advent of Antichrist to wipe out the whole system
in universal ruin.[983] Apparently its corruption was too deep-seated
to hope for any milder means of reformation. To this we may at least
partially attribute the utter loss of respect for sacred things which
rendered the churches and their pastors a special mark for pillage and
persecution during the dreary civil wars of the period.[984]
In England, which had enjoyed comparative immunity from civil strife,
matters were quite as bad. At the request of Henry V., in 1414, the
University of Oxford prepared a series of articles for the reformation
of the church, whose shortcomings were vehemently attacked by the
Lollards. It is not easy to imagine a more humiliating confession than
is contained in the 38th article, directed against priestly immorality.
The carnal and undisguised profligacy of ecclesiastics is declared
to be a scandal to the church, and its impurity to be a dangerous
temptation to others. It is therefore recommended that all public
fornicators be suspended for a limited time from the ministry of the
altar, and that some corporal chastisement be inflicted on them, in
place of the trifling pecuniary mulct, which, levied in secret, had no
effect in deterring them from their evil courses.[985]
Such was the state of sacerdotal morals when the great council of Bâle
attracted to itself the hopes of Christendom as the sole instrument by
which the purification of the church could be effected—a purification
which was felt to be the only safeguard against a revolutionary
uprising of the indignant laity. When Eugenius IV., towards the close
of the year 1431, dreading the antagonism between the council and the
papacy, sent his Bull ordering its dissolution, his legate, Cardinal
Cesarini, took the responsibility of refusing obedience. His letter
explaining the reasons of his contumacy affords a curious picture of
the internal condition of the church and of the relations existing
between it and the laity. The extreme corruption of ecclesiastical
morals had been the principal object of convoking the council and had
given rise to a feeling of fierce hostility towards the church. To this
was attributable the success which had attended the Hussite movement,
and unless the people could have reason to anticipate amendment, there
was ample cause to fear a general imitation of the Hussites. So many
provincial synods were daily held without result that confidence was
no longer felt in the ordinary ecclesiastical machinery; the state of
the public mind grew constantly more threatening as fresh scandals were
wrought by the clergy, and the hopes entertained of the council were
the only restraint which prevented the breaking out of a wide-spread
revolt. As a proof of his assertions, the legate refers to various
local troubles. Magdeburg had expelled her archbishop and clergy, was
preparing wagons with which to fight, after the Bohemian fashion, and
was said to have sent for a Hussite to command her forces. Passau had
revolted against her bishop, and was even then laying close siege to
his citadel. Bamberg was engaged in a violent quarrel with her bishop
and chapter. These cities were regarded as the centres of formidable
secret confederacies, and were believed to be negotiating with the
Hussites.[986] The good fathers evidently recognized the full magnitude
of the danger. The results of the inaction of the Council of Constance
were full of pregnant warnings. The reformers could no longer be
brought to trust the papacy, and those who might secretly deprecate
reform were fully alive to the threatening aspect of affairs. They
therefore addressed themselves resolutely to the removal of the cause.
All who were guilty of public concubinage were ordered to dismiss
their consorts within sixty days after the promulgation of the canon,
under pain of deprivation of revenue for three months. Persistent
contumacy or repetition of the offence was visited with suspension from
functions and stipend until satisfactory evidence should be afforded of
repentance and amendment. Bishops who neglected to enforce the law were
to be held as sharing the guilt which they allowed to pass unpunished;
and those prelates who were above the jurisdiction of local tribunals
or synods were to be remanded to Rome for trial. The council deplored
the extensive prevalence of the “cullagium,” by which those to whom was
entrusted the administration of the church did not hesitate to enjoy a
filthy gain by selling licenses to sin. A curse was pronounced on all
involved in such transactions; they were to share the penalties of the
guilt which they encouraged, and were, in addition, to pay a fine of
double the amount of their iniquitous receipts.[987] In the Pragmatic
Sanction, moreover, agreed upon in 1438 between the Emperor Albert II.
and Charles VII. of France, the regulation confiscating three months’
revenues of concubinary priests was embodied.[988]
Honest, well-meant legislation this; yet the fathers of the council
or the princes of Christendom could hardly deceive themselves with
the expectation that it would prove effectual. If legislation could
accomplish the desired result, there had already been enough of it
since the days of Siricius. The compilations of canon law were full
of admirable regulations, by which generation after generation had
endeavored to attain the same object by every imaginable modification
of inquisition and penalty. Ingenuity had been exhausted in devising
laws which were only promulgated to be despised and forgotten.
Something more was wanting, and that something could not be had without
overturning the elaborate structure so skilfully and laboriously built
up by the craft and enthusiasm of ten centuries.
How utterly impotent, in fact, were the efforts of the council, is
evident when, within five years after the adoption of the Basilian
canons, Doctor Kokkius, in a sermon preached before the council of
Freysingen, could scarcely find words strong enough to denounce
the evil courses of the clergy as a class;[989] and when, within
fifteen years, we find Nicholas V. declaring that the clergy enjoyed
such immunity that they scarcely regarded incontinence as a sin—a
declaration sustained by the regulations promulgated for the restraint
of the officials of his own court, which imply the previous open and
undisguised defiance of the canons.[990]
Even in this attempt of Nicholas, however, is to be seen one of the
causes which perpetuated the corruption of the church. He orders that
all who thereafter persist in keeping concubines in defiance of the
regulations shall be incapable of receiving benefices without special
letters of indulgence from the Holy See.[991] Shrouded under a thin
veil of formality, this in substance indicates the degrading source of
revenue which was so energetically condemned in inferior officials. The
pressing and insatiable pecuniary needs of the papal court, indeed,
rendered it impotent as a reformer, however honest the wearer of the
tiara might himself be in desiring to rescue the church from its
infamy. Reckless expenditure and universal venality were insuperable
obstacles to any comprehensive and effective measures of reformation.
Every one was preoccupied either in devising or in resisting extortion.
The local synods were engaged in quarrelling over the subsidies
demanded by Rome, while the chronicles of the period are filled with
complaints of the indulgences sold year after year to raise money
for various purposes. Sometimes the objects alleged are indignantly
declared to be purely supposititious; at other times intimations are
thrown out that the collections were diverted to the private gain of
the popes and of their creatures.[992] The opinion which the church in
general entertained of the papal court is manifested with sufficient
distinctness in a letter from Ernest, Archbishop of Magdeburg, to his
ambassador at Rome. The prelate states that he has deposited five
hundred florins in Fugger’s bank at Augsburg, for which he desires
to procure certain bulls, one to enable him to sell indulgences, the
other to compel the chapter of Magdeburg to allow him to dispose of
the salt-works of Halle, in defiance of the vested rights of his
church—thus taking for granted a cynicism of venality which it would
be difficult to parallel in the secular affairs of the most corrupt of
courts.[993] Even the power to dispense from the vow of continence was
occasionally turned to account in this manner. One of the accusations
against John XXIII. was that for 600 ducats he had released Jacques de
Vitry, a Hospitaller, from his vows, had restored him to the world,
and enabled him to marry.[994] In fact, when a pope like Sixtus IV.
was found who openly sold all preferment, who kept a regular scale for
every grade from the cardinalate downwards, and who only varied from
his fixed prices by putting up at auction some choice benefice,[995] it
can hardly be expected that discipline could be enforced or the ideal
of chastity realized.
* * * * *
The aspirations of Christendom had culminated in the council of Bâle
in the most potent form known to the church universal. If the results
were scarce perceptible while the influences of the council were yet
recent, and while the antagonistic papacy was under the control of
men sincerely desirous to promote the best interests of the church,
such as Nicholas V. and Pius II., we can feel no wonder, if the
darkness continued to grow thicker and deeper under the rule of such
pontiffs as Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., and Alexander VI. Savonarola
found an inexhaustible subject of declamation in the fearful vices
of the ecclesiastics of his times, whom he describes as _ruffiani e
mezzani_.[996] In the kingdom of Naples the state sought to share with
the church in the profits of impurity, and a regular tax was laid upon
the concubines of ecclesiastics. In a document still preserved in the
Neapolitan archives, Alfonso I. complains that this tax had not been
paid for three years, and directs his bishops to compel its collection
in their several dioceses.[997] In the assembly of the Trois États
of France, held at Tours in 1484, the orator of the Estates, Jean de
Rély, afterwards Bishop of Angers, in his official address to Charles
VIII., declared it to be notorious that the religious orders had lost
all devotion, discipline, and obedience to their rule, while the canons
(and he was himself a canon of Paris) had sunk far below the laity in
their morals, to the great scandal of the church.[998]
In England, the facts developed by the examination which Innocent
VIII. in 1489 authorized Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, to make
into the condition of the religious houses, present a state of affairs
quite as bad. Henry VII.’s first Parliament, in 1485, had endeavored
to accomplish some reform by passing an Act empowering the episcopal
authorities to imprison all priests and monks convicted of carnal
lapses,[999] but this, like all similar legislation, whether secular or
ecclesiastical, appears to have been useless. Innocent describes the
monasteries, in his bull to the archbishop, as wholly fallen from their
original discipline, and this is folly confirmed by the results of the
visitation. The old and wealthy abbey of St. Albans, for instance, was
little more than a den of prostitutes, with whom the monks lived openly
and avowedly. In two priories under its jurisdiction the nuns had been
turned out and their places filled with courtezans, to whom the monks
of St. Albans publicly resorted, indulging in all manner of shameless
and riotous living, the details of which can well be spared.[1000]
These irregularities were emulated by the secular ecclesiastics. Among
the records of the reign of Henry VII. is a memorial from the gentlemen
and farmers of Carnarvonshire, complaining that the seduction of their
wives and daughters was pursued systematically by the clergy.[1001]
That the prevalence of these practices was thoroughly understood is
shown in a book of instructions for parish priests drawn up by a canon
of Lilleshall about this period. In enumerating the causes for which a
parson may shrive a man not of his own parish, he includes the case in
which the penitent has committed sin with the concubine or daughter of
his own parish priest.[1002]
Spain was equally infected. The council of Aranda, in 1473, denounced
bitterly the evil courses by which the clergy earned for themselves the
wrath of God and the contempt of man, and it endeavored to suppress the
sempiternal vice by the means which had been so often ineffectually
tried—visitations, fines, excommunication, suspension, forfeiture
of benefice, and imprisonment—but all to as little purpose as
before.[1003] The trouble continued without abatement and the council
of Seville, in 1512, felt itself obliged to repeat as usual all the old
denunciations and penalties, including those against ecclesiastics who
officiated at the marriages of their children, which it prohibited for
the future under a fine of 2000 maravedis—a mulct which it likewise
provided for those who committed the indecency of having their children
as assistants in the solemnity of the Mass.[1004]
What was the condition of morals in Germany may be inferred from some
proceedings of the chapter of Brunswick in 1476. The canons intimate
that the commission of scandals and crimes has reached a point at
which there is danger of their losing the inestimable privilege of
exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. They therefore declare that for
the future the canons, vicars, and officiating clergy ought not to keep
their mistresses and concubines publicly in their houses, or live with
them within the bounds of the church, and those who persist in doing
so after three warnings shall be suspended from their prebends until
they render due satisfaction.[1005] In this curious glimpse into the
domestic life of the cathedral close, it is evident that the worthy
canons were moved by no shame for the publicity of their guilt, but
only by a wholesome dread of giving to their bishop an excuse for
procuring the forfeiture of their dearly prized right of self-judgment.
The Hungarian church, by a canon dating as far back as 1382, had
finally adopted a pecuniary mulct as the most efficacious mode of
correcting offenders. The fine was five marks of current coin, and by
granting one-half to the informer or archdeacon, and the other to the
archiepiscopal chamber, it was reasonably hoped that the rule might
be enforced. The guardians were not faithful, however, for two synods
of Gran, one in 1450 and the other in 1480, reiterate the complaint,
not only that the archdeacons and other officials kept the whole fine
to themselves, but also, what was even worse, that they permitted the
criminals to persevere in sin, in order to make money by allowing them
to go unpunished.[1006] This state of affairs was not to be wondered
at if the description of his prelates by Matthias Corvinus be correct.
They were worldly princes, whose energies were devoted to wringing
from their flocks fabulous revenues to be squandered in riotous
living on the hordes of cooks and concubines who pandered to their
appetites.[1007] The morals of the regular clergy were no better, for
a Diet held by Vladislas II. in 1498 complained of the manner in which
abbots and other monastic dignitaries enriched themselves from the
revenues of their offices, and then, returning to the world, publicly
took wives, to the disgrace of their order.[1008]