character of the great body of the clergy. It deprived them of the
respect due to their sacred calling, and consequently reduced them to
the level of such scant respect as was accorded to them. How long this
lasted, and how materially it degraded the ministers of Christ as a
body, cannot be questioned by any one who recalls the description of
the rural clergy in the brilliant third chapter of Macaulay’s History
of England. In 1686 an author complains that the rector is an object
of contempt and ridicule for all above the rank of the neighboring
peasants; that gentle blood would be held polluted by any connection
with the church, and that girls of good family were taught with equal
earnestness not to marry clergymen, nor to sacrifice their reputation
by amourous indiscretions—two misfortunes which were commonly regarded
as equal.[1283]
Thus eagerly accepted and grudgingly bestowed, the privilege of
marriage established itself in the Church of England by connivance
rather than as a right; and the evil influences of the prejudices thus
fostered were not extinguished for generations.
XXVII.
CALVINISM.
When John Calvin formulated the system of theology which bears his
name, sacerdotal marriage had already become recognized as one of
the necessary incidents of the revolt against Rome. That the French
Huguenots should accept it accordingly was therefore a matter of
course. Calvin himself manifested his contempt for all the ancient
prejudices by marrying, in 1539, Idelette de Bure, the widow of the
Anabaptist Jean Stordeur, whom he had converted.[1284] The Huguenot
Confession of Faith was drawn up by him, and was adopted by the
first national synod, held at Paris in 1559. Of course the Genevan
views of justification swept away all the accumulated observances
of sacerdotalism, and ascetic celibacy shared the fate of the
rest.[1285] The discipline of the Calvinist church with regard to
the morality of its ministers was necessarily severe. The peculiar
purity expected of a pastor’s household was shown by the rule which
enjoined any church officer whose wife was convicted of adultery to
dismiss her absolutely, under pain of deposition, while laymen, under
such circumstances, were exhorted to be reconciled to their guilty
partners.[1286] Any lapse from virtue on the part of a minister was
visited with peremptory deposition;[1287] nor was this a mere idle
threat such as were too many of the innumerable decrees of the Catholic
councils quoted above, for the proceedings of various synods show that
it was carried sternly into execution. A list of such vagrant and
deposed ministers was even kept and published to the churches, with
personal descriptions of the individuals, that they might not be able
to impose on the unwary. Indeed, the national synod of Lyons, in 1563,
went so far as to punish those ministers who brought contempt upon the
church by unfitting marriages;[1288] and, though this was omitted from
the final code of discipline, it shows the exceeding strictness with
which the internal economy of the ecclesiastical establishment of the
Huguenots was regulated.
The relations of the Catholic church with its apostates were somewhat
confused, and they varied with the political exigencies of the
situation. Ecclesiastics who left the Catholic communion did not
hesitate to enter into matrimony;[1289] and when the desolation of
civil war rendered a forced tolerance of the new religion necessary,
their position was a source of considerable debate, varying with
the fluctuations of the tangled politics of the time. The Edict of
Pacification of Amboise, in March, 1562, was held by the Huguenots
to legalize the marriages of these apostates, but the explanatory
declaration of August, 1563, ordered their reclamation by the church
under pain of exile. When the Spanish alliance gave fresh assurances
of triumph to the Catholics this was enforced with increased severity.
The Edict of Roussillon, in 1564, commands that all priests, monks, and
nuns, who had abandoned their profession and entered into matrimony,
shall sunder their unhallowed bonds and return to their duties.
Recalcitrants were required to leave the kingdom within two months,
under pain, in the case of men, of condemnation to the galleys for
life, and in that of women, of perpetual imprisonment.[1290] As most
of the Calvinist ministers necessarily belonged to the class thus
assailed, the effect of this legislation in stimulating the troubles of
the kingdom can readily be perceived.
The dismal strife of the succeeding ten years at length showed that,
in spite of the Tridentine canons, the toleration of this iniquity
was a necessity. Thus in the Edicts of Pacification issued by Henry
III. in 1576 and 1577 there is a provision which admits as valid the
marriages theretofore contracted by all priests or religious persons
of either sex. The issue of such unions was declared competent to
inherit the personalty of the parents and such realty as either parent
might have acquired, but was incapable of other inheritance, direct or
collateral.[1291]
The church was forced to submit to this temporizing tolerance of evil,
and condescended to entreaty since force was no longer permitted. In
1581, the council of Rouen, while deploring the number of monks and
nuns who had left their convents, apostatized and married, directs
that they shall be tempted back, treated with kindness, and pardon
be sought for them from the Holy See.[1292] In the final settlement
of the religious troubles, the concessions made by Henry III. were
renewed and somewhat amplified by the Edict of Nantes in 1598.[1293]
When the reaction came, however, these provisions were held to be only
retrospective in their action, and were not admitted as legalizing
subsequent marriages. Thus in 1628 a knight of Malta, in 1630 a nun,
and in 1640 a priest of Nevers, who had embraced Calvinism, ventured on
matrimony, but were separated from their spouses and the marriages were
pronounced null.[1294] These decisions were based on the principle that
the celibacy of ecclesiastics was prescribed by municipal as well as by
canon law, and that a priest in abjuring his religion did not escape
from the obligations imposed upon him by the laws of the kingdom.[1295]
In Scotland, as in France, the question of sacerdotal marriage may
be considered as having virtually been settled in advance. Lollardry
had not been confined to the southern portion of Great Britain. It
had penetrated into Scotland, and had received the countenance of
those whose position and influence were well calculated to aid in its
dissemination among the people. In 1494, thirty of these heretics,
known as “the Lollards of Kyle,” were prosecuted before James IV. by
Robert Blacater, Archbishop of Glasgow. Their station may be estimated
from the fact that they escaped the punishment due to their sins by the
favor of the monarch, “for divers of them were his great familiars.”
The thirty-four articles of accusation brought against them are mostly
Wickliffite in tendency, and their views on the question of celibacy
are manifested in the twenty-second article which accuses them of
asserting “That Priests may have wives according to the constitution of
the Law and of the Primitive Christian Church.”[1296]
The soil was thus ready for the plough of the Reformation; while the
temper of the Scottish race gave warrant that when the mighty movement
should reach them, it would be marked by that stern and uncompromising
spirit which alone could satisfy conscientious and fiery bigots, who
would regard all half-measures as pacts with Satan. Nor was there
lacking ample cause to excite in the minds of all men the desire for a
sweeping and effectual reform. Corruption had extended through every
fibre of the Scottish church as foul and as all-pervading as that which
we have traced throughout the rest of Christendom.
Not long after the year 1530, and before the new heresy had obtained
a foothold, William Arith, a Dominican, ventured to assail the vices
of his fellow churchmen. In a sermon preached at St. Andrews, with
the approbation of the heads of the universities, he alluded to the
false miracles with which the people were deceived, and the abuses
practised at shrines to which credulous devotion was invited. “As of
late dayes,” he proceeded, “our Lady of Karsgreng hath hopped from one
green hillock to another: But, honest men of St. Andrewes, if ye love
your wives and daughters, hold them at home, or else send them in good
honest company; for if ye knew what miracles were wrought there, ye
would thank neither God nor our Lady.” In another sermon, arguing that
the disorders of the clergy should be subjected to the jurisdiction
of the civil authorities, he introduced an anecdote respecting Prior
Patrick Hepburn, afterwards Bishop of Murray. That prelate once,
in merry discourse with his gentlemen, asked of them the number of
their mistresses, and what proportion of the fair dames were married.
The first who answered confessed to five, of whom two were bound in
wedlock; the next boasted of seven, with three married women among
them; and so on until the turn came to Hepburn himself, who, proud
of his _bonnes fortunes_, declared that although he was the youngest
man there, his mistresses numbered twelve, of whom seven were men’s
wives.[1297] Yet Arith was a good Catholic, who, on being driven from
Scotland for his plain speaking, suffered imprisonment in England under
Henry VIII. for maintaining the supremacy of the pope.
How little concealment was thought requisite with regard to these
scandals is exemplified in the case of Alexander Ferrers, which
occurred about the same time. Taken prisoner by the English and
immured for seven years in the Tower of London, he returned home to
find that his wife had been consoled and his substance dissipated
in his absence by a neighboring priest, for the which cause he not
unnaturally “spake more liberally of priests than they could bear.” By
this time, heresy was spreading, and severe measures of repression were
considered necessary. It therefore was not difficult to have the man’s
disrespectful remarks construed as savoring of Lutheranism, and he was
accordingly brought up for trial at St. Andrews. The first article
of accusation read to him was that he despised the Mass, whereto he
answered, “I heare more Masses in eight dayes than three bishops there
sitting say in a yeare.” The next article accused him of contemning the
sacraments. “The priests,” replied he, “were the most contemnors of the
sacraments, especially of matrimony.” “And that he witnessed by many
of the priests there present, and named the man’s wife with whom they
had meddled, and especially Sir John Dungwaill, who had seven years
together abused his own wife and consumed his substance, and said:
because I complain of such injuries, I am here summoned and accused
as one that is worthy to be burnt: For God’s sake, said he, will ye
take wives of your own, that I and others whom ye have abused may be
revenged on you.” Old Gawain Dunbar, Bishop of Aberdeen, not relishing
this public accusation, sought to justify himself, exclaiming, “Carle,
thou shalt not know my wife;” but the prisoner turned the tables on
him, “My lord, ye are too old, but by the grace of God I shall drink
with your daughter or I depart.” “And thereat there was smiling of the
best and loud laughter of some, for the bishop had a daughter married
with Andrew Balfour in that town.” The prelates who sat in judgment
found that they were exchanging places with the accused, and, fearful
of further revelations from the reckless Alexander, commanded him to
depart; but he refused, unless each one should contribute something to
replace the goods which his wife’s paramour had consumed, and finally,
to stop his evil tongue, they paid him and bade him begone.[1298]
All prelates, however, were not so sensitive. When Cardinal Beatoun,
Archbishop of St. Andrews, primate of Scotland, and virtual governor
of the realm, about the year 1546 married his eldest daughter to the
eldest son of the Earl of Crawford, he caused the nuptials to be
celebrated with regal magnificence, and in the marriage articles,
signed with his own hand, he did not hesitate to call her “my
daughter.” It is not difficult, therefore, to credit the story that
the night before his assassination was passed with his mistress,
Marion Ogilby, who was seen leaving his chamber not long before Norman
Leslie and Kirkaldy of Grange forced their way into his castle.[1299]
His successor in the see of St. Andrews, John Hamilton, was equally
notorious for his licentiousness; and men wondered, not at his
immorality, but at his taste in preferring to all his other concubines
one whose only attraction seemed to be the zest given to sin by the
fact that she was the wife of one of his kindred.[1300]
This is testimony from hostile witnesses, and we might perhaps impugn
their evidence on that ground, were it not that the Catholic Church
of Scotland itself admitted the abandoned morals of its members when
the rapid progress of Calvinism at length drove it in self-defence to
attempt a reform which was its only chance of salvation. In the last
Parliament held by James V. before his death in 1542, an act was passed
exhorting the prelates and ecclesiastics in general to take measures
“for reforming of ther lyvis, and for avoyding of the opin sclander
that is gevin to the haill estates throucht the spirituale mens ungodly
and dissolut lyves.”[1301] Nothing was then done in spite of this
solemn warning, though the countenance afforded to the Reformers by
the Regent Arran, strengthened by his alliance with Henry VIII., was
daily causing the heresy to assume more dangerous proportions. When,
therefore, the Catholic party, rallying after the murder of Cardinal
Beatoun, at length triumphed with the aid of France, and sent the young
Queen of Scots to marry Francis II., they seemed to recognize that
they could only maintain their advantage by meeting public opinion in
endeavoring to reform the church. Accordingly, in November, 1549, a
council was convoked at Edinburgh, of which the first canon declares
that the licentiousness of the clergy had given rise to the gravest
scandals, to repress which the rules enjoined by the council of Bâle
must be strictly enforced and universally obeyed. The second canon is
no less significant in ordering that prelates and other ecclesiastics
shall not live with their illegitimate children, nor provide for them
or promote them in the paternal churches, nor marry their daughters to
barons by endowing them with the patrimony of Christ, nor cause their
sons to be made barons by the same means.[1302]
This was of small avail. Ten years afterwards, the progress of heresy
becoming ever more alarming, another council was held, in March, 1559,
to devise means to put a stop to the encroachments of the enemy. To
this assembly the Catholic nobles addressed an earnest prayer for
reformation. After alluding to the proceedings of the Parliament
of 1542, they add, “And siclyk remembring in diverss of the lait
provinciale counsales haldin within this realm, that poynt has been
treittet of, and sindrie statutis synodale maid therupon, of the
quhilks nevertheless thar hes folowit nan or litill fruitt as yitt,
bot rathare the said estate is deteriorate ... it is maist expedient
therefore that thai presentlie condescend to seik reformation of thir
lyvis ... and naymlie that oppin and manifest sins and notor offencis
be forborn and abstenit fra in tyme to cum.” In this request they
had been anticipated by the Reformers, who, the previous year, in
a supplication addressed to the queen-regent, included among their
demands “That the wicked, slanderous and detestable life of Prelats
and of the State Ecclesiasticall may be reformed, that the people by
them have not occasion (as of many dayes they have had) to contemne
their Ministrie and the Preaching whereof they should be Messengers.”
The council, thus urged by friend and foe, recognized the extreme
necessity of the case, and did its best to cure the immedicable
disease. Its first canon reaffirmed the observance of the Basilian
regulations, and appointed a commission empowered to enforce them; and,
that nothing should interfere with its efficiency, the Archbishops of
St. Andrews and Glasgow made a special renunciation of their exemption
from the jurisdiction of the council. The second canon, in forbidding
the residence of illegitimate children with their clerical fathers,
endeavored to procure obedience to the rule ordered by the council of
1549, by permitting it for four days in each quarter, and by a penalty
for infractions of £200 in the case of an archbishop, £100 in that of a
bishop, and leaving the mulct to be imposed on inferior ecclesiastics
at the discretion of the officials. The third canon prohibited the
promotion of children in their father’s benefices, and supplicated the
queen-regent to obtain of the pope that no dispensations should be
granted to evade the rule. The fourth canon inhibited ecclesiastics
from marrying their daughters to barons and lairds, and endowing them
with church lands, or making their sons barons or lairds with more than
£100 annual income, under pain of fine to the amount of the dowry or
lands abstracted from the church; and all grants of church lands or
tithes to concubines or children were pronounced null and void.[1303]
When such legislation was necessary, the disorders which it was
intended to repress are acknowledged in terms admitting neither of
palliation nor excuse. The extent of the evil especially alluded to in
the latter canons is further exemplified by the fact that during the
thirty years immediately following the establishment of the Reformation
in Scotland, more letters of legitimation were taken out than were
issued in the subsequent two centuries. These were given to the sons
of the clergy who were allowed to retain their benefices, and who then
made over the property to their natural children.[1304]
* * * * *
Such being the state of morals among the ministers of the old
religion, it is easy to appreciate the immense advantage enjoyed by
the Reformers. They made good use of it. Knox loses no opportunity of
stigmatizing the “pestilent Papists and Masse-mongers” as “adulterers
and whoremasters,” who were thus perpetually held up to the people for
execration, while the individual wrongs from which so many suffered
were noised about and made the subject of constantly-increasing popular
indignation.[1305] Yet the abrogation of celibacy occupies less space
in the history of the Scottish Reformation than in that of any other
people who threw off the allegiance to Rome.
The remote position of Scotland and its comparative barbarism rendered
it in some degree inaccessible to the early doctrines of Luther and
Zwingli. Before it began to show a trace of the new ideas, clerical
marriage had long passed out of the region of disputation with the
Reformers, and was firmly established as one of the inseparable
results of the doctrine of justification professed by all the reformed
churches.[1306] Not only was it thus accepted as a matter of course by
all converts to the new faith, but that faith, when once introduced,
spread in Scotland with a rapidity proportioned to the earnest
character of the people. The permission to read the Scriptures in
the vulgar tongue, granted by Parliament in 1543, doubtless had much
to do with this; the leaning of the Regent Arran to the same side
gave it additional impetus, and the savage fierceness with which the
Reformers were prepared to vindicate their belief is shown by the
murder of Cardinal Beatoun, which was countenanced and justified by
Knox himself. Powerful nobles soon saw in it the means of emancipating
themselves from the vacillating control of the regent; nor was the
central authority strengthened when, in 1554, the reins of power were
wrested from the feeble Arran and confided to the queen-dowager, Mary
of Guise, who found herself obliged to encourage each party by turns,
and to balance one against the other, to prevent either Catholic or
Calvinist from obtaining control over the state. Then, too, as in
Germany and England, the temporal possessions of the church were
a powerful temptation to its destruction. From the great Duke of
Chatelleraut to the laird of some insignificant peel, all were needy
and all eager for a share in the spoil. When, in 1560, an assembly of
the nobles at Edinburgh listened to a disputation on the Mass, and the
Catholic doctors were unable to defend it as a propitiatory sacrifice,
the first exclamation of the lords revealed the secret tendencies of
their thoughts—“We have been miserably deceived heretofore; for if the
Mass may not obtain remission of sins to the quick and to the dead,
Wherefore were all the Abbies so richly doted and endowed with our
Temporall lands?”[1307]
Of course less selfish purposes were put forward to enlist the support
of the people. On the 1st of January, 1559, when the storm was
gathering, but before it had burst, the inmates of the religious houses
found affixed to their gates a proclamation in the name of “The Blinde,
Crooked, Lame, Widows, Orphans, and all other Poor, so visited by the
hand of God as cannot work,” ordering the monks to leave the patrimony
intended to relieve the suffering, but usurped by indolent shavelings,
giving them until Whit-Sunday to make their exit, after which they
would be ejected by force, and ending with the significant warning—“Let
him, therefore, that hath before stolen, steal no more, but rather let
him work with his hands that he may be helpfull to the poore.”[1308]
Such a cry could hardly fail to be popular, but when the threat was
carried into execution, the blind and the crooked, the widow and orphan
received so small a share of the spoil that they were worse off than
before. As we have already seen in England, the destruction of the
Scottish monasteries was the commencement of the necessity of making
some public provision for paupers.[1309] The nobles seized the lion’s
share; the rest fell to the crown, subject to the payment of the very
moderate stipends assigned to the comparatively few ministers required
by the new establishment, and these stipends were so irregularly paid
that the unfortunate ministers were frequently in danger of starvation,
and were constantly besieging the court with their dolorous complaints.
Where the lands and revenues went is indicated with grim humor by
Knox, in describing the resistance offered in 1560 to the adoption of
his Book of Discipline by those who had professed great zeal for the
Lord Jesus. Lord Erskine had been one of the first and most consistent
of the “Lords of the Congregation,” yet he also refused to sign the
book—“And no wonder, for besides that he had a very evill woman to his
wife, if the Poore, the Schooles, and the Ministerie of the Church had
their owne, his Kitchin would lack two parts and more of that which he
unjustly now possesseth.”[1310]
Yet, when compared with the rich abbatial manors of England or the
princely foundations of Germany, the spoil of the church was mean
indeed. Knox had resided much abroad, and had seen the vast wealth
which the piety of ages had showered upon the church in the most
opulent lands of Europe, yet his simplicity or fanaticism finds
source of wondering comment in the homespun luxury of the unfortunate
monks whom he assisted in dispossessing. When the destruction of the
monasteries in 1559 commenced by a brawl in Perth, caused by a sermon
preached by Knox, and three prominent convents were broken up, he
expatiates on the extravagance revealed to sight—“And in very deed the
Grey-Friers was a place so well provided that unlesse honest men had
seen the same, we would have feared to have reported what provision
they had, their sheets, blankets, beds and coverlets were such that no
Earle in Scotland had better: Their naperie was fine; they were but
8 persons in the Convent, and yet they had 8 puncheons of salt beef
(consider the time of the yeere, the eleventh of May), wine, beere,
and ale, beside store of victuals belonging thereto.”[1311] Imagine an
abbot of St. Albans or an abbess of Poissy reduced to the coverlets and
salt beef which the stern Calvinist deemed an indulgence so great as to
be incredible!