council of Trent had ostensibly been assembled were failures; that it
would effect as little for the purification of the church as for the
reconciliation of the heretics. Perhaps Maximilian felt that under
these circumstances no one could deny the necessity of such changes as
would at least afford a chance of the reformation that could no longer
be expected of the Tridentine canons; perhaps he felt strengthened by
the support of his ecclesiastical counsellors and controversialists;
perhaps, with the zealous hopefulness of youth, he felt a confidence of
which age and many disappointments had deprived his father; or perhaps
he was encouraged by the concession to his subjects and to those of
Albert of Bavaria, of the communion in both elements, not knowing
that in two short years it would be withdrawn. Certain it is that in
a negotiation with the Bishop of Vintimiglia, papal nuncio at his
court, he lost no time in renewing, with increased energy, the effort
to obtain the recognition of married priests. After the departure of
the nuncio, he addressed, in November, 1564, a most pressing demand
to Pius IV., in which he declared that the matter brooked no further
postponement; that throughout Germany, and especially in his dominions,
there was the greatest need of proper ministers and pastors; that there
was no other measure which would retain them in the Catholic church,
from which, day by day, they were withdrawing, principally from this
cause. He assured the Holy Father that the danger was constantly
increasing, and that he feared a further delay would render even this
remedy powerless to prevent the total destruction of the old religion.
If only this were granted to the clergy, even as the cup had been
communicated to the laity, he hoped for an immediate improvement.
The bishops could then exercise their authority over those who at
present were beyond their control, as unrecognized by the church; and
so thoroughly was this lawless condition of affairs understood that a
refuge was sought in his provinces by those disreputable pastors who
were banished from the Lutheran states on account of their disorderly
lives.[1405] His brother, the Archduke Charles, was equally urgent, in
a letter which he addressed, a few days later, to the Pope, repeating
the same arguments, and assuring him that the only hope for the true
religion in his dominions was to find some means of admitting the
services of a married clergy.[1406]
Ferdinand and Maximilian were actuated in these persevering efforts
not merely by the desire of gratifying the wishes of their people, or
of remedying the depravity of the ecclesiastical body. It had been a
favorite project with the father, warmly adopted by the son, to heal
the differences between the two religions, and to restore to the church
its ancient and prosperous unity. In their opinion, and in that of many
eminent men, the main obstacle to this was the question of celibacy.
It was evidently hopeless to expect this sacrifice of the Lutheran
pastors, while numerous members of the Catholic church regarded the
change as essential to the purification of their own establishment.
The only mode of effecting so desirable a reconciliation was therefore
to persuade the pope to exercise the power of dispensation which the
council of Trent had admitted to be inherent in his high office.
The spirit of the papal court, however, was that which Pallavicini
attributes to the council—that the heretics were to be cut off, and
not to be cajoled into returning. Pius IV. himself was not personally
averse to the plan so persistently urged upon him, but those around him
saw greater dangers in concession than in refusal. De Thou, indeed,
says that he was inclined to grant the privilege for the territories
of Maximilian, but that Philip II., at the instigation of Cardinal
Pacheco, fearing an example so dangerous to his turbulent and excitable
subjects in the Netherlands, opposed it strenuously, and sent Don
Pedro d’Avila to Rome, who persuaded the pope to elude the demand,
by keeping matters in suspense, and by holding out prospects of
accommodation destined never to be accomplished.[1407]
This is probably not strictly correct. Maximilian’s demand had perhaps
been rendered more pressing than respectful by the necessity of
conciliating his people in view of the war with John of Transylvania
and the Turks. Its tone was not relished at Rome, nor could the papacy
be expected to listen with as much patience to remonstrances from a
prince who had just grasped the reins of power as it had to those
of the mature and experienced Ferdinand, especially as Maximilian
had been shrewdly suspected of secretly leaning to the tenets of
the Reformers.[1408] The response to Maximilian was therefore of
the sharpest. Pius replied, arguing against clerical marriage and
positively declaring that it would not be tolerated,[1409] and to
prevent further trouble Cardinal Commendone was sent to warn him that
any interference with the interests of religion would be visited with
the severest penalties; in fact, he was threatened with deprivation of
the imperial title, and a convocation of the Catholic princes for the
purpose of electing a successor.[1410]
The Catholic church thus definitely accepted the ancient canons,
erected them into an article of faith, and resolved to meet whatever
consequences might flow from their maintenance. In the existing
condition of clerical morals, we are almost justified in saying that
it assumed the position attributed by St. Bernard to the Manichæans of
the twelfth century—that they took vows of continence in order to cover
their incontinence, and that marriage was the only sexual relation
which they regarded as a sin.[1411] We shall see hereafter what were
the results of this abnormal position.
XXIX.
THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH.
The great council, on which so long had hung the hopes of the Christian
world, had at last been held. The reformation of the church, postponed
by the skilful policy of the popes, had been reached in the closing
sessions, and had been hurriedly provided for. As we have seen, the
regulations which concerned the morals of the clergy were sufficient
for their purpose, if only they could be enforced, yet as they were but
the hundredth repetition of an endeavor to conquer human nature, which
had always previously failed, even those who enacted them could have
felt little faith in their efficacy. August Baumgartner, the Bavarian
ambassador, in his address to the council, June 27th, 1562, had alluded
to the prevailing belief that any comprehensive effort to enforce the
chastity required by the canons would result in driving the mass of
the Catholic clergy over to Protestantism.[1412] Since continence was
held by them to be impossible, it was thought that they would prefer
to marry their concubines as Lutherans rather than give them up as
Catholics. Possibly the fear of such untoward result may explain the
slender effect which can be discerned from a scheme of reform so
laboriously reached and so pompously heralded as the panacea for the
woes which were destroying the church.
Although Catherine de Medicis and her sons refused to allow the council
to be formally published in France, yet she permitted its decrees to be
freely circulated, and her bishops were at liberty to adopt them as the
code of discipline in their dioceses.[1413] The difficulties raised by
the Emperor Maximilian on the score of priestly celibacy were met with
a vigor on the part of Pius IV. which savored of the thirteenth rather
than the sixteenth century. Philip II., after some hesitation, ordered
the reception of the council in all his dominions, which extended from
Naples to the North Sea;[1414] and Poland, despite some opposition
from an ambitious prelate, submitted to it before the year 1564 was
ended.[1415]
As an authoritative exposition of the law of the church of Christ,
conceived and elaborated under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and
commanded for implicit observance by the Vicegerent of God; as the
expression of the needs and wants of the Catholic faith, wrought by the
concentrated energy and wisdom of the leading doctors of Christendom,
and transmitted for practical application through the wondrous
machinery of the Catholic hierarchy, it should have had an immediate
influence on the evils which it was intended to eradicate. Those evils
had confessedly done much to create and foster the schism under which
the church was reeling; their magnitude was admitted by all, and no one
ventured to defend or to palliate them. Their removal was acknowledged
to be a necessity of the gravest character, and every adherent of
Catholicism was bound to lend his aid to the good work. What, then,
was accomplished by the Council which had for so long a period labored
ostensibly with the object of restoring Latin Christianity to its
primitive purity?
Pius IV. rested satisfied with promulgating and confirming the decrees
of the council, and waited to see them produce their destined effect.
In 1566, however, he was succeeded by Pius V., whose experience
as grand inquisitor had doubtless rendered him familiar with the
prevailing neglect of ecclesiastical discipline, while his unbending
temper made him rigorous in his determination to restore it. One
of the earliest acts of his pontificate was the publication of a
Bull commanding the ordinaries of all churches to put in force the
Tridentine canons respecting concubinary priests, thus showing that
already they were treated with contempt,[1416] while a special mandate
on the subject, addressed to the Archbishop of Salzburg, describes
the unchecked corruption of the German priesthood as threatening the
speedy destruction of the Catholic religion there.[1417] Two years
later he found it necessary to issue another Bull, directed against
darker crimes, the deplorable prevalence of which can hardly be
attributed to any additional and unaccustomed vigor in removing the
female companions of the clergy,[1418] for the Archbishop of Salzburg,
in reply to a fresh command to reform his church, had replied that he
and his suffragans had never ceased to attempt it, but that all their
efforts had been fruitless and that he despaired of success.[1419] Even
a worse experience befell Bernardt Rasfeldt, Bishop of Munster, who,
in his synod of 1566, published a papal brief commanding the dismissal
of clerical concubines, for his action roused the fury of his canons
to such a degree that they forced him to resign his bishopric and
spend the rest of his days in obscurity. He was succeeded by Johann
von Hoya, Bishop of Osnabruck and President of the Imperial Chamber, a
man distinguished by his birth and learning, but who speedily wearied
of the conflict and sought peace by imitating the example of his
subordinates.[1420]
In 1571 Pius undertook another subject of reform. Notwithstanding the
decree of the council that any action of clerical fathers for the
benefit of their offspring should be considered as fraudulent, the
transmission of ecclesiastical property to such illegitimate heirs
continued almost unchecked, and Pius recognized the necessity of
further legislation to diminish the abuse. His Bull on the subject
is drawn up with a care and minuteness which show the magnitude of
the evil and the extreme difficulty of preventing it.[1421] Nor was
there only the need of preserving the possessions of the church; the
scandal of sacerdotal families required repression, and all other
means having apparently failed, in 1572 another decretal declared
that such children were incapable of receiving even the private and
patrimonial property of their fathers.[1422] These successive edicts
are a full confession that the long-promised reformation was a failure,
and that, while the council might regulate doctrine, it was utterly
powerless to enforce discipline. The papal fulminations proved equally
powerless, and Rome itself apparently winked at contraventions of the
rule, which could be rendered profitable by the prerogative of issuing
dispensations. In 1610 the Synod of Augsburg found it necessary to
declare that it would enforce the Tridentine canons prohibiting the
illegitimate sons of priests from holding preferment in their father’s
benefices, notwithstanding what dispensations they might produce to the
contrary.[1423]
Yet even these legislative labors of the pope are less instructive
than the war which he commenced against the courtesans of Rome. If
the new enactments could have been expected to command respect, the
example should have been set in the Holy City itself, but Pius IV. had
allowed the most public and scandalous immorality to flourish unchecked
under his immediate supervision. In 1538 the “Consilium de Emendanda
Ecclesia” had animadverted upon the cynical licentiousness of the
Roman clergy in terms which show that not much improvement had taken
place since Petrarch’s description of the papal court,[1424] and the
thirty years which had intervened had not served to purify it. Pius V.
felt the disgrace keenly, and resolved on its suppression. He at first
proposed to put an end to the nefarious trade, and to banish all the
public women who would not give a pledge of reformation by an immediate
marriage. Forced to relinquish this measure as impracticably harsh, he
contented himself by restricting their residence to certain houses, and
forbade their plying their vocation in the streets by day or night.
Although he thus admitted the necessity of the evil, and endeavored
to restrain only its public manifestation, even this moderate attempt
at reform was deemed insufferable. The clergy were ashamed to offer
opposition openly, but found no difficulty in urging the Senate to
strenuous resistance. The remonstrance made by that body shows not only
the frightful extent of the prevalent immorality, but also the settled
conviction that immorality was inseparable from celibacy. It was
represented that if the proposed rules were enforced, the prosperity
of the city would be destroyed and the rents of houses be reduced to
nothing; moreover, it was urged that, amid so vast a number of men
condemned to celibacy, if any such restrictions were put in force, it
would be impossible to preserve the virtue of the wives and daughters
of the citizens. The contest was stubbornly continued until at length
Pius was driven to declare that, if any further difficulty were
interposed, he would abandon the city.[1425]
In spite of these well-meant but nugatory efforts of Pius, the
immorality of the papal court itself and of its highest dignitaries was
admitted by a Bull which Sixtus V. promulgated in 1586. In decreeing
that no one who had children, even if they were legitimate, should be
eligible to the cardinalate, he took care to let the world understand
the cause of the restriction by declaring that in no other way could
evidence be had of the observance of their vows.[1426]
* * * * *
If Pius V. met with opposition in the task of purifying the Augean
stable of Rome, St. Charles Borromeo, encouraged and stimulated by his
example, found himself involved in a more dangerous quarrel when he
attempted, in the equally demoralized city of Milan, to enforce respect
for the decrees of Trent. In 1569 he undertook to reform the canons
of S. Maria della Scala, whose licentious mode of life was a scandal
to the faithful. So persistently did they deny their subjection to
his archiepiscopal jurisdiction, that, after a long discussion, his
only resource for vindicating his authority was excommunication. The
contumacious canons were still indisposed to yield, and, assembling in
their church, they maltreated his messenger. Thinking that his presence
might bring them to reason, he ventured himself to expostulate with
them, and found them drawn up in their cemetery, with arms in their
hands, and supported by soldiers whom they had hired. On reaching the
gate, he dismounted from his mule and advanced towards them with his
cross, which he had snatched from his cross-bearer. Unabashed by this
symbol at once of religion and authority, the mutinous canons rushed
upon him with shouts of “Spagna,” “Spagna,” brandishing their weapons
and discharging their fire-arms at the cross in his hands—fortunately
without injuring him. Having thus driven him off, they continued for
some time in open rebellion, until they were at length obliged to
submit, when Pius V. and Philip II. united their power in support of
St. Charles.[1427]
Still greater was the peril to which the saint was exposed in his
quarrel with the Umiliati. They were a branch of the Benedictine order,
founded in 1180 by the Milanese who escaped the destruction of their
city by Frederic Barbarossa. Sharing in the general license of the age,
the excesses of the Umiliati became so infamous that they surpassed
in turpitude the worst exploits of the unbridled youth of the city.
Supported by the decretals of Pius, in 1568 St. Charles undertook to
reduce the order to the observance of monastic rule. The Umiliati
resisted with so much energy and success that, after two years of
contest, they were still defiant. Regarding St. Charles as the cause
of all their troubles, Girolamo Lignana, Provost of S. Cristoforo di
Vercelli, who assumed their leadership in 1570, engaged a monk of the
order named Girolamo Donati to murder him. The blackness of the deed
was not relieved by the circumstances under which it was attempted.
While the holy archbishop was absorbed at midnight in his devotions,
Donati stole into the oratory and discharged full upon him an arquebuss
loaded with slugs. Some of the missiles struck St. Charles, but
rebounded to the floor, leaving him unhurt, and the miraculous nature
of his escape was proved by the depth to which others penetrated the
walls. At this moment the policy of Philip the Catholic supported
the disaffected and rebellious monks, and for some time yet they
escaped the retribution due to their many crimes, but at length those
concerned in the attempted murder were caught and executed, and the
order of the Umiliati was broken up.[1428]
These examples sufficiently show how little the great body of
ecclesiastics was disposed to submit to a curtailment of the license
which had become traditional, and how little respect was paid either
to the commands of the great Œcumenic Council, or to the general and
local authorities. It is easy to imagine that few prelates were so
disposed to court martyrdom as the saintly Charles, and that churches
with less conscientious pastors easily found means to purchase or
compel exemption from the laws which bound them to morality. In fact,
President d’Espeisses, in his memorial presented to Henry III. in 1583,
against the publication of the council in France, drew one of his
arguments from the greater corruption of the Italian church, where,
though the council was received without demur, yet none of its orders
reforming the morals of the clergy received the least attention.[1429]
That the Tridentine canons in this respect were wholly inefficacious
throughout Italy, and that the officials, with rare exceptions, did not
venture to enforce them, can indeed be seen in the series of provincial
councils held during the remainder of the century, from Lombardy to
Naples.
The papacy had succeeded in crushing the reformers who had responded in
so many Italian cities to the uprising in Germany; it had then convoked
and managed at its will the great Congress of Catholic Christendom
which was to put an end at once and forever to all the evils which
had led to the schism; it had every opportunity and every motive for
vindicating itself from the aspersions of its enemies, and yet we see
it at once recur to the old machinery of local councils enacting canons
whose frequency and wordy severity are the inverse measure of their
efficiency. Had the promises of reform so liberally made been possible
in their fulfilment, there had been no need of further legislation.
A convocation of the ecclesiastics of each province to receive
and publish the decrees of Trent would have been all-sufficient.
When, therefore, we see the endless iteration with which the guilty
clergy were threatened with the Tridentine canons, and with other
new or revivified penalties—as at the councils of Milan in 1565 and
1582,[1430] and at those of Manfredonia in 1567, of Ravenna in 1568,
of Urbino in 1569, of Florence in 1573, of Naples in 1576, of Consenza
in 1579, of Salerno in 1596, of S. Severino in 1597, and of Melfi in
1597[1431]—we can only conclude that the evil was irremediable, in
spite of the well-meant efforts to suppress it, or to throw off the
responsibility of its existence.
In fact, the manner in which the council of Trent was greeted by the
clergy may be judged from its treatment in the archiepiscopate of
Utrecht. Though Philip II. had authoritatively ordered its reception
in 1565, we find the Duke of Alva in May, 1568, issuing his commands
to the prelates of the five churches of Utrecht to offer no further
opposition to it. Even so stern a ruler could not obtain immediate
obedience, however, to so obnoxious a series of regulations, and they
responded by pleading their ancient privileges. This availed them
little, for in June he replied that his instructions were positive,
and he proceeded to enforce them by sending royal commissioners
to the province, empowered to carry them out. In July, therefore,
the Archbishop assembled his clergy and in conjunction with the
commissioners issued a series of regulations designed to give effective
force to the canons of the council. Visiting nunneries and haunting
taverns, joining in dances and hunting and indecent songs were
forbidden. The clergy were ordered to shave their beards and to give
up their concubines, whom they were not to retake or to replace. Even
yet they did not yield, but while they were ashamed to claim the right
to keep their female companions, they demurred as to the sacrifice
of their beards, and the Archbishop was obliged to issue another
peremptory command.[1432]
Throughout the whole extent of Central Europe the Tridentine canons met
with a like slackness of obedience. Even the question of sacerdotal
marriage, which had been raised by the council to the dignity of a
point of faith, was stubbornly contested, and was not yielded until
after a protracted struggle.
In 1569 we find the synod of the extensive and important province of
Salzburg virtually dividing its clergy into two classes—those who
haunt the taverns under pretext of getting their meals, but really for
the purpose of indulging in drunken riots with their parishioners,
and those who keep houses, with concubines under the guise of female
servants, whom they secretly marry, and who are openly known by their
husbands’ names. To meet this condition of affairs, the synod devised
an elaborate system by which the richer clergy were directed to keep as
domestics respectable middle-aged married women with their husbands,
while the poorer ecclesiastics were to club together for the same
purpose.[1433] This expedient proved as fruitless as its predecessors,
for in 1572 Gregory XIII. complained to the archbishop that in many
places priests who were known to be married were permitted by their
bishops to celebrate Mass and to handle the sacred elements.[1434]
In spite of all this the evil continued unabated, and in 1616 the
Archbishop of Salzburg, in his instructions for a general visitation,
ordered that all priests should remove their concubines to a distance
of at least six miles, and should not allow their illegitimate children
to live openly with them, except under special license from him.[1435]
In 1565, Anthony, Archbishop of Prague, promulgated the council of
Trent in his provincial synod. He was a man of more than ordinary
vigor; he had been the imperial orator at Trent, understood fully the
views of the council, and was not likely to underrate either their
importance or their authority. Armed with the Tridentine canons, he set
actively to work and instituted a very thorough system of inquisitorial
visitations, which ought to have succeeded if success were possible.
Yet, after the lapse of thirteen years, in a special mandate issued
by him in 1578, he deplores the obstinate blindness of many of his
clergy, who still believed, with the heretics, that marriage was not
incompatible with priesthood, while those who did not marry were guilty
of the less dangerous error of maintaining concubines and children on
the revenues of their benefices.[1436]
The same wilful ignorance apparently existed in the diocese of
Wurzburg, for Bishop Julius, in 1584, found it necessary, in his
episcopal statutes, to discountenance clerical matrimony and to prove
its nullity by laboriously quoting innumerable canons and decretals;
and he even condescended to remind his priesthood that in taking
orders they had willingly and knowingly entered into an engagement
of continence, by the consequences of which they must be prepared to
abide.[1437]