CHAPTER I.

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A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION

VOL. I.

A HISTORY OF

THE INQUISITION

OF

THE MIDDLE AGES.

BY

HENRY CHARLES LEA,

AUTHOR OF

"AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY," "SUPERSTITION AND FORCE,"

"STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY."

_IN THREE VOLUMES_.

VOL. I.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE.

Copyright, 1887, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._

PREFACE.

The history of the Inquisition naturally divides itself into two

portions, each of which may be considered as a whole. The Reformation is

the boundary-line between them, except in Spain, where the New

Inquisition was founded by Ferdinand and Isabella. In the present work I

have sought to present an impartial account of the institution as it

existed during the earlier period. For the second portion I have made

large collections of material, through which I hope in due time to

continue the history to its end.

The Inquisition was not an organization arbitrarily devised and imposed

upon the judicial system of Christendom by the ambition or fanaticism of

the Church. It was rather a natural--one may almost say an

inevitable--evolution of the forces at work in the thirteenth century,

and no one can rightly appreciate the process of its development and the

results of its activity without a somewhat minute consideration of the

factors controlling the minds and souls of men during the ages which

laid the foundation of modern civilization. To accomplish this it has

been necessary to pass in review nearly all the spiritual and

intellectual movements of the Middle Ages, and to glance at the

condition of society in certain of its phases.

At the commencement of my historical studies I speedily became convinced

that the surest basis of investigation for a given period lay in an

examination of its jurisprudence, which presents without disguise its

aspirations and the means regarded as best adapted for their

realization. I have accordingly devoted much space to the origin and

development of the inquisitorial process, feeling convinced that in this

manner only can we understand the operations of the Holy Office and the

influence which it exercised on successive generations. By the

application of the results thus obtained it has seemed to me that many

points which have been misunderstood or imperfectly appreciated can be

elucidated. If in this I have occasionally been led to conclusions

differing from those currently accepted, I beg the reader to believe

that the views presented have not been hastily formed, but that they are

the outcome of a conscientious survey of all the original sources

accessible to me.

No serious historical work is worth the writing or the reading unless it

conveys a moral, but to be useful the moral must develop itself in the

mind of the reader without being obtruded upon him. Especially is this

the case in a history treating of a subject which has called forth the

fiercest passions of man, arousing alternately his highest and his

basest impulses. I have not paused to moralize, but I have missed my aim

if the events narrated are not so presented as to teach their

appropriate lesson.

It only remains for me to express my thanks to the numerous friends and

correspondents who have rendered me assistance in the arduous labor of

collecting the very varied material, much of it inedited, on which the

present work is based. Especially do I desire to record my gratitude to

the memory of that cultured gentleman and earnest scholar, the late Hon.

George P. Marsh, who for so many years worthily represented the United

States at the Italian court. I never had the fortune to look upon his

face, but the courteous readiness with which he aided my researches in

Italy merit my warmest acknowledgments. To Professor Charles Molinier,

of the University of Toulouse, moreover, my special thanks are due as to

one who has always been ready to share with a fellow-student his own

unrivalled knowledge of the Inquisition of Languedoc. In the Florentine

archives I owe much to Francis Philip Nast, Esq., to Professor Felice

Tocco, and to Doctor Giuseppe Papaleoni; in those of Naples, to the

Superintendent Cav. Minieri Riccio and to the Cav. Leopoldo Ovary; in

those of Venice to the Cav. Teodoro Toderini and Sig. Bartolomeo

Cecchetti: in those of Brussels to M. Charles Rahlenbeck. In Paris I

have to congratulate myself on the careful assiduity with which M.L.

Sandret has exhausted for my benefit the rich collections of MSS.,

especially those of the Bibliothèque Nationale. To a student, separated

by a thousand leagues of ocean from the repositories of the Old World,

assistance of this nature is a necessity, and I esteem myself fortunate

in having enlisted the co-operation of those who have removed for me

some of the disabilities of time and space.

Should the remaining portion of my task be hereafter accomplished, I

hope to have the opportunity of acknowledging my obligations to many

other gentlemen of both hemispheres who have furnished me with

unpublished material illustrating the later development of the Holy

Office.

PHILADELPHIA, _August_, 1887.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.--ORIGIN AND ORGANIZATION OF THE INQUISITION.

CHAPTER I.--THE CHURCH.

Page

Domination of the Church in the Twelfth Century 1

Causes of Antagonism with the Laity 5

Election of Bishops 6

Simony and Favoritism 7

Martial Character of Prelates 10

Difficulty of Punishing Offenders 13

Prostitution of the Episcopal Office 16

Abuse of Papal Jurisdiction 17

Abuse of Episcopal Jurisdiction 20

Oppression from the Building of Cathedrals 23

Neglect of Preaching 23

Abuses of Patronage 24

Pluralities 25

Tithes 26

Sale of the Sacraments 27

Extortion of Pious Legacies 28

Quarrels over Burials 30

Sexual Disorders 31

Clerical Immunity 32

The Monastic Orders 34

The Religion of the Middle Ages 39

Tendency to Fetishism 40

Indulgences 41

Magic Power of Formulas and Relics 47

Contemporary Opinion 51

CHAPTER II.--HERESY.

Awakening of the Human Intellect in the Twelfth Century 57

Popular Characteristics 59

Nature of Heresies 60

Antisacerdotal Heresies 62

Nullity of Sacraments in Polluted Hands 62

Tanchelm 64

Éon de l'Étoile 66

Peculiar Civilization of Southern France 66

Pierre de Bruys 68

Henry of Lausanne 69

Arnaldo of Brescia 72

Peter Waldo and the Waldenses 76

Passagii, Joseppini, Siscidentes, Runcarii 88

CHAPTER III.--THE CATHARI.

Attractions of the Dualistic Theory 89

Derivation of Catharism from Manichæism 89

Belief and Organization of the Catharan Church 93

Missionary Zeal and Thirst for Martyrdom 102

Not Devil-worshippers 105

Spread of Catharism from Slavonia 107

Diffusion throughout Europe in the Eleventh Century 108

Increase in Twelfth Century 110

Comparative Exemption of Germany and England 112

Growth in Italy. Efforts of Innocent III. 114

Its Stronghold in Southern France 117

Its Expected Triumph 121

Failure of Crusade of 1181 124

Period of Toleration and Growth 125

CHAPTER IV.--THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADES.

Policy of the Church towards Heresy 129

Suppression of Heresy in the Nivernais 130

Translations of Scripture forbidden at Metz 131

Power of Raymond VI. of Toulouse 132

Condition of the Church in his Dominions 134

Innocent III. Undertakes the Suppression of Heresy 136

The Prelates Refuse their Aid 137

Arnaud of Citeaux Sent as Chief Legate 139

Fruitless Effort to Organize a Crusade in 1204 139

The Bishop of Osma and St. Dominic Urge Fresh Efforts in 1206 141

Attempt to Organize a Crusade in 1207 144

Murder of Pierre de Castelnau, Jan. 16, 1208 145

Crusade successfully Preached in 1208 147

Raymond's Efforts to Avert the Storm 149

His Submission and Penance; Duplicity of Innocent III 150

Raymond Directs the Crusade against the Vicomte de Béziers 153

Sack of Béziers.--Surrender of Carcassonne 154

Pedro of Aragon and Simon de Montfort 157

De Montford Accepts the Conquered Territories.--His Difficulties 159

Raymond Attacked.--Deceit Practised by the Church 162

His Desperate Efforts to Avert a Rupture 166

First Siege of Toulouse.--Raymond Gradually Overpowered 167

Intervention of Pedro of Aragon 170

Raymond Prejudged.--Trial Denied him 173

Pedro Declares War.--Battle of Muret, Sept. 13, 1213 175

De Montfort's Vicissitudes.--Pious Fraud of the Legate 178

Raymond Deposed and Replaced by De Montfort 179

The Lateran Council.--It Decides in De Montfort's Favor 181

Rising of the People under the Younger Raymond 184

Second Siege of Toulouse in 1217.--Death of De Montfort 185

Crusade of Louis Cœur-de-Lion.--Third Siege of Toulouse 187

Raymond VII. Recovers his Lands.--Recrudescence of Heresy 189

Negotiations Opened.--Death of Philip Augustus 190

Louis VIII. Proposes a Crusade.--Raymond Makes Terms with the Church 191

Duplicity of Honorius III.--Council of Bourges, Nov. 1225 193

Louis Organizes the Crusade in 1226 197

His Conquering Advance.--His Retreat and Death 199

Desultory War in 1227.--Negotiations in 1228 201

Treaty of Paris, April, 1229.--Persecution Established 203

CHAPTER V.--PERSECUTION.

Growth of Intolerance in the Early Church 209

Persecution Commences under Constantine 212

The Church Adopts the Death-penalty for Heresy 213

Duty of the Ruler to Suppress Heresy 215

Decline of Persecuting Spirit under the Barbarians 216

Hesitation to Punish in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 218

Uncertainty as to Form of Punishment 220

Burning Alive Adopted in the Thirteenth Century 221

Evasion of Responsibility by the Church 223

The Temporal Authority Coerced to Persecute 224

Persecution of the Dead 230

Motives Impelling to Persecution 233

Cruelty of the Middle Ages 234

Exaggerated Detestation of Heresy 236

Influence of Asceticism 238

Conscientious Motives 239

CHAPTER VI.--THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

Material for Reform within the Church 243

Foulques de Neuilly 244

Durán de Huesca anticipates Dominic and Francis 246

St. Dominic, his Career and Character 248

His Order founded in 1214.--Its Success 251

St. Francis of Assisi 256

His Order Founded.--Injunction of Poverty 257

He Realizes the Christian Ideal 260

Extravagant Laudation of Poverty 264

Influence of the Mendicant Orders 266

Emotional Character of the Age.--The Pastoureaux.--The Flagellants 268

The Mendicants Rendered Independent of the Prelates 273

Their Utility to the Papacy 274

Antagonism between them and the Secular Clergy 278

The Battle Fought out in the University of Paris 281

Victory of the Mendicants.--Unappeasable Hostility 289

Degeneracy of the Orders 294

Their Activity as Missionaries 297

Their Functions as Inquisitors 299

Inveterate Hostility between the Orders 302

CHAPTER VII.--THE INQUISITION FOUNDED.

Uncertainty in the Discovery and Punishment of Heretics 305

Growth of Episcopal Jurisdiction 308

Procedure in Episcopal Courts.--The Inquisitorial Process 309

System of Inquests 311

Efforts to Establish an Episcopal Inquisition 313

Endeavor to Create a Legatine Inquisition 315

Fitness of the Mendicant Orders for the Work 318

Secular Legislation for Suppression of Heresy 319

Edict of Gregory XI. in 1231.--Secular Inquisition Tried 324

Tentative Introduction of Papal Inquisitors 326

Dominicans Invested with Inquisitorial Functions 328

Episcopal Functions not Superseded 330

Struggle between Bishops and Inquisitors 332

Settlement when Inquisition Becomes Permanent 335

Control Given to Inquisitors in Italy; in France; in Aragon 336

All Opposing Legislation Annulled 341

All Social Forces Placed at Command of Inquisition 342

Absence of Supervision and Accountability 343

Extent of Jurisdiction 347

Penalty of Impeding the Inquisition 349

Fruitless Rivalry of the Bishops 350

Limits of Extension of the Inquisition 351

The Northern Nations Virtually Exempt 352

Africa and the East 355

Vicissitudes of Episcopal Inquisition 356

Greater Efficiency of the Papal Inquisition 364

Bernard Gui's Model Inquisitor 367

CHAPTER VIII.--ORGANIZATION.

Simplicity of the Inquisition 369

Inquisitorial Districts.--Itinerant Inquests 370

Time of Grace.--Its Efficiency 371

Buildings and Prisons 373

_Personnel_ of the Tribunal 374

The Records.--Their Completeness and Importance 379

Familiars.--Question of Bearing Arms 381

Resources of the State at Command of Inquisitors 385

Episcopal Concurrence in Sentence 387

The Assembly of Experts 388

The _Sermo_ or _Auto de fé_ 391

Co-operation of Tribunals 394

Occasional Inquisitors-general 397

CHAPTER IX.--THE INQUISITORIAL PROCESS.

Inquisitor both Judge and Confessor 399

Difficulty of Proving Heresy 400

The Inquisitorial Process universally Employed 401

Age of Responsibility.--Proceedings in _Absentia_.--The Dead 402

All Safeguards Withdrawn.--Secrecy of Procedure 405

Confession not Requisite for Conviction 407

Importance Attached to Confession 408

Interrogatory of the Accused 410

Resources for Extracting Confession.--Deceit 414

Irregular Tortures, Mental and Physical.--Delays 417

Formal Torture 421

Restricted by Clement V. 424

Rules for its Employment 426

Retraction of Confessions 428

CHAPTER X.--EVIDENCE.

Comparative Unimportance of Witnesses 430

Flimsiness of Evidence Admitted 431

The Crime Known as "Suspicion of Heresy" 433

Number of Witnesses.--No Restrictions as to Character or Age 434

Mortal Enmity the only Disability 436

Secrecy of Confessional Disregarded 437

Suppression of Names of Witnesses 437

Evidence sometimes Withheld 439

Frequency of False-witness.--Its Penalty 440

CHAPTER XI.--THE DEFENCE.

Opportunity of Defence Reduced to a Minimum 443

Denial of Counsel 444

Malice of Witnesses the only Defence 446

Prosecution of the Dead 448

Defence practically Impossible.--Appeals 449

Condemnation virtually Inevitable 453

Suspicion of Heresy.--Light, Vehement, and Violent 454

Purgation by Conjurators 455

Abjuration 457

CHAPTER XII.--THE SENTENCE.

Penance not Punishment 459

Grades of Penance 462

Miscellaneous Penances 463

Flagellation 464

Pilgrimages 465

Crusades to Palestine 466

Wearing Crosses 468

Fines and Commutations 471

Unfulfilled Penance 475

Abuses.--Bribery and Extortion 477

Destruction of Houses 481

Arbitrary Penalties 483

Imprisonment 484

Troubles about the Expenses 489

Treatment of Prisoners 491

Comparative Frequency of Different Penalties 494

Modification of Sentences 495

Penitents never Pardoned, although Reprieved 496

Penalties of Descendants 498

Inquisitorial Excommunication 500

CHAPTER XIII.--CONFISCATION

Origin in the Roman Law 501

The Church Responsible for its Introduction 502

Varying Practice in Decreeing it 504

Degree of Criminality Entailing it 507

Question of the Dowers of Wives 509

The Church Shares the Spoils in Italy 510

In France they are Seized by the State 513

The Bishops Obtain a Share 514

Rapacity of Confiscation 517

Alienations and Obligations Void 522

Paralyzing Influence on Commercial Development 524

Expenses of Inquisition, how Defrayed 525

Persecution Dependent on Confiscation 529

CHAPTER XIV.--THE STAKE.

Theoretical Irresponsibility of the Inquisition 534

The Church Coerces the Secular Power to Burn Heretics 536

Only Impenitent Heretics Burned 541

Relapse.--Hesitation as to its Penalty.--Burning Decided upon 543

Difficulty of Defining Relapse 547

Refusal to Submit to Penance 548

Probable Frequency of Burning 549

Details of Execution 551

Burning of Books 554

Influence of Inquisitorial Methods on the Church 557

Influence on Secular Jurisprudence 559

APPENDIX 563

THE INQUISITION

BOOK I.

ORIGIN AND ORGANIZATION.

CHAPTER I.

THE CHURCH.

As the twelfth century drew to a close, the Church was approaching a

crisis in its career. The vicissitudes of a hundred and fifty years,

skilfully improved, had rendered it the mistress of Christendom. History

records no such triumph of intellect over brute strength as that which,

in an age of turmoil and battle, was wrested from the fierce warriors of

the time by priests who had no material force at their command, and

whose power was based alone on the souls and consciences of men. Over

soul and conscience their empire was complete. No Christian could hope

for salvation who was not in all things an obedient son of the Church,

and who was not ready to take up arms in its defence; and, in a time

when faith was a determining factor of conduct, this belief created a

spiritual despotism which placed all things within reach of him who

could wield it.

This could be accomplished only by a centralized organization such as

that which had gradually developed itself within the ranks of the

hierarchy. The ancient independence of the episcopate was no more. Step

by step the supremacy of the Roman see had been asserted and enforced,

until it enjoyed the universal jurisdiction which enabled it to bend to

its wishes every prelate, under the naked alternative of submission or

expulsion. The papal mandate, just or unjust, reasonable or

unreasonable, was to be received and implicitly obeyed, for there was no

appeal from the representative of St. Peter. In a narrower sphere, and

subject to the pope, the bishop held an authority which, at least in

theory, was equally absolute; while the humbler minister of the altar

was the instrument by which the decrees of pope and bishop were enforced

among the people; for the destiny of all men lay in the hands which

could administer or withhold the sacraments essential to salvation.

Thus intrusted with responsibility for the fate of mankind, it was

necessary that the Church should possess the powers and the machinery

requisite for the due discharge of a trust so unspeakably important. For

the internal regulation of the conscience it had erected the institution

of auricular confession, which by this time had become almost the

exclusive appanage of the priesthood. When this might fail to keep the

believer in the path of righteousness, it could resort to the spiritual

courts which had grown up around every episcopal seat, with an undefined

jurisdiction capable of almost unlimited extension. Besides supervision

over matters of faith and discipline, of marriage, of inheritance, and

of usury, which belonged to them by general consent, there were

comparatively few questions between man and man which could not be made

to include some case of conscience involving the interpellation of

spiritual interference, especially when agreements were customarily

confirmed with the sanction of the oath; and the cure of souls implied a

perpetual inquest over the aberrations, positive or possible, of every

member of the flock. It would be difficult to set bounds to the

intrusion upon the concerns of every man which was thus rendered

possible, or to the influence thence derivable.

Not only did the humblest priest wield a supernatural power which marked

him as one elevated above the common level of humanity, but his person

and possessions were alike inviolable. No matter what crimes he might

commit, secular justice could not take cognizance of them, and secular

officials could not arrest him. He was amenable only to the tribunals of

his own order, which were debarred from inflicting punishments involving

the effusion of blood, and from whose decisions an appeal to the supreme

jurisdiction of distant Rome conferred too often virtual immunity. The

same privilege protected ecclesiastical property, conferred on the

Church by the piety of successive generations, and covering no small

portion of the most fertile lands of Europe. Moreover, the seignorial

rights attaching to those lands often carried extensive temporal

jurisdiction, which gave to their ghostly possessors the power over life

and limb enjoyed by feudal lords.

The line of separation between the laity and the clergy was widened and

deepened by the enforcement of the canon requiring celibacy on the part

of all concerned in the ministry of the altar. Revived about the middle

of the eleventh century, and enforced after an obstinate struggle of a

hundred years, the compulsory celibacy of the priesthood divided them

from the people, preserved intact the vast acquisitions of the Church,

and furnished it with an innumerable army whose aspirations and ambition

were necessarily restricted within its circle. The man who entered the

service of the Church was no longer a citizen. He owed no allegiance

superior to that assumed in his ordination. He was released from the

distraction of family cares and the seduction of family ties. The Church

was his country and his home, and its interests were his own. The moral,

intellectual, and physical forces which, throughout the laity, were

divided between the claims of patriotism, the selfish struggle for

advancement, the provision for wife and children, were in the Church

consecrated to a common end, in the success of which all might hope to

share, while all were assured of the necessities of existence, and were

relieved of anxiety as to the future.

The Church, moreover, offered the only career open to men of all ranks

and stations. In the sharply-defined class distinctions of the feudal

system advancement was almost impossible to one not born within the

charmed circle of gentle blood. In the Church, however much rank and

family connections might assist in securing promotion to high place, yet

talent and energy could always make themselves felt despite lowliness of

birth. Urban II. and Adrian IV. sprang from the humblest origin;

Alexander V. had been a beggar-boy; Gregory VII. was the son of a

carpenter; Benedict XII., of a baker; Nicholas V., of a poor physician;

Sixtus IV., of a peasant; Urban IV. and John XXII. were sons of

cobblers, and Benedict XI. and Sixtus V. of shepherds; in fact, the

annals of the hierarchy are full of those who rose from the lowest

ranks of society to the most commanding positions. The Church thus

constantly recruited its ranks with fresh blood. Free from the curse of

hereditary descent, through which crowns and coronets frequently lapsed

into weak and incapable hands, it called into its service an indefinite

amount of restless vigor for which there was no other sphere of action,

and which, when once enlisted, found itself perforce identified

irrevocably with the body which it had joined. The character of the

priest was indelible; the vows taken at ordination could not be thrown

aside; the monk, when once admitted to the cloister, could not abandon

his order unless it were to enter another of more rigorous observance.

The Church Militant was thus an army encamped on the soil of

Christendom, with its outposts everywhere, subject to the most efficient

discipline, animated with a common purpose, every soldier panoplied with

inviolability and armed with the tremendous weapons which slew the soul.

There was little that could not be dared or done by the commander of

such a force, whose orders were listened to as oracles of God, from

Portugal to Palestine and from Sicily to Iceland. "Princes," says John

of Salisbury, "derive their power from the Church, and are servants of

the priesthood." "The least of the priestly order is worthier than any

king," exclaims Honorius of Autun; "prince and people are subjected to

the clergy, which shines superior as the sun to the moon." Innocent III.

used a more spiritual metaphor when he declared that the priestly power

was as superior to the secular as the soul of man was to his body; and

he summed up his estimate of his own position by pronouncing himself to

be the Vicar of Christ, the Christ of the Lord, the God of Pharaoh,

placed midway between God and man, this side of God but beyond man, less

than God but greater than man, who judges all, and is judged by none.

That he was supreme over all the earth--over pagans and infidels as well

as over Christians--was legally proved and universally taught by the

mediæval doctors.[1] Though the power thus vaingloriously asserted was

fraught with evil in many ways, yet was it none the less a service to

humanity that, in those rude ages, there existed a moral force superior

to high descent and martial prowess, which could remind king and noble

that they must obey the law of God even when uttered by a peasant's son;

as when Urban II., himself a Frenchman of low birth, dared to

excommunicate his monarch, Philip I., for his adultery, thus upholding

the moral order and enforcing the sanctions of eternal justice at a time

when everything seemed permissible to the recklessness of power.

* * * * *

Yet, in achieving this supremacy, much had been of necessity sacrificed.

The Christian virtues of humility and charity and self-abnegation had

virtually disappeared in the contest which left the spiritual power

dominant over the temporal. The affection of the populations was no

longer attracted by the graces and loveliness of Christianity;

submission was purchased by the promise of salvation, to be acquired by

faith and obedience, or was extorted by the threat of perdition or by

the sharper terrors of earthly persecution. If the Church, by sundering

itself completely from the laity, had acquired the services of a militia

devoted wholly to itself, it had thereby created an antagonism between

itself and the people. Practically, the whole body of Christians no

longer constituted the Church; that body was divided into two

essentially distinct classes, the shepherds and the sheep; and the lambs

were often apt to think, not unreasonably, that they were tended only to

be shorn. The worldly prizes offered to ambition by an ecclesiastical

career drew into the ranks of the Church able men, it is true, but men

whose object was worldly ambition rather than spiritual development. The

immunities and privileges of the Church and the enlargement of its

temporal acquisitions were objects held more at heart than the salvation

of souls, and its high places were filled, for the most part, with men

in whom worldliness was more conspicuous than the humbler virtues.

This was inevitable in the state of society which existed in the early

Middle Ages. While angels would have been required to exercise

becomingly the tremendous powers claimed and acquired by the Church, the

methods by which clerical preferment and promotion were secured were

such as to favor the unscrupulous rather than the deserving. To

understand fully the causes which drove so many thousands into schism

and heresy, leading to wars and persecutions, and the establishment of

the Inquisition, it is necessary to cast a glance at the character of

the men who represented the Church before the people, and at the use

which they made, for good or for evil, of the absolute spiritual

despotism which had become established. In wise and devout hands it

might elevate incalculably the moral and material standards of European

civilization; in the hands of the selfish and depraved it could become

the instrument of minute and all-pervading oppression, driving whole

nations to despair.

As regards the methods of election to the episcopate there cannot be

said at this period to have been any settled and invariable rule. The

ancient form of election by the clergy, with the acquiescence of the

people of the diocese, was still preserved in theory, but in practice

the electoral body consisted of the cathedral canons; while the

confirmation required of the king, or semi-independent feudal noble, and

of the pope, in a time of unsettled institutions, frequently rendered

the election an empty form, in which the royal or papal power might

prevail, according to the tendencies of time and place. The constantly

increasing appeals to Rome, as to the tribunal of last resort, by

disappointed aspirants, under every imaginable pretext, gave to the Holy

See a rapidly-growing influence, which, in many cases, amounted almost

to the power of appointment; and Innocent II., at the Lateran Council of

1139, applied the feudal system to the Church by declaring that all

ecclesiastical dignities were received and held of the popes like fiefs.

Whatever rules, however, might be laid down, they could not operate in

rendering the elect better than the electors. The stream will not rise

above its source, and a corrupt electing or appointing power is not apt

to be restrained from the selection of fitting representatives of itself

by methods, however ingeniously devised, which have not the inherent

ability of self-enforcement. The oath which cardinals were obliged to

take on entering a conclave--"I call God to witness that I choose him

whom I judge according to God ought to be chosen"--was notoriously

inefficacious in securing the election of pontiffs fitted to serve as

the vicegerents of God; and so, from the humblest parish priest to the

loftiest prelate, all grades of the hierarchy were likely to be filled

by worldly, ambitious, self-seeking, and licentious men. The material to

be selected from, moreover, was of such a character that even the most

exacting friends of the Church had to content themselves when the least

worthless was successful. St. Peter Damiani, in asking of Gregory VI.

the confirmation of a bishop-elect of Fossombrone, admits that he is

unfit, and that he ought to undergo penance before undertaking the

episcopate, but yet there is nothing better to be done, for in the whole

diocese there was not a single ecclesiastic worthy of the office; all

were selfishly ambitious, too eager for preferment to think of rendering

themselves worthy of it, inflamed with desire for power, but utterly

careless as to its duties.[2]

Under these circumstances simony, with all its attendant evils, was

almost universal, and those evils made themselves everywhere felt on the

character both of electors and elected. In the fruitless war waged by

Gregory VII. and his successors against this all-pervading vice, the

number of bishops assailed is the surest index of the means which had

been found successful, and of the men who thus were enabled to represent

the apostles. As Innocent III. declared, it was a disease of the Church

immedicable by either soothing remedies or fire; and Peter Cantor, who

died in the odor of sanctity, relates with approval the story of a

Cardinal Martin, who, on officiating in the Christmas solemnities at the

Roman court, rejected a gift of twenty pounds sent him by the papal

chancellor, for the reason that it was notoriously the product of rapine

and simony. It was related as a supreme instance of the virtue of Peter,

Cardinal of St. Chrysogono, formerly Bishop of Meaux, that he had, in a

single election, refused the dazzling bribe of five hundred marks of

silver. Temporal princes were more ready to turn the power of

confirmation to profitable account, and few imitated the example of

Philip Augustus, who, when the abbacy of St. Denis became vacant, and

the provost, the treasurer, and the cellarer of the abbey each sought

him secretly, and gave him five hundred livres for the succession,

quietly went to the abbey, picked out a simple monk standing in a

corner, conferred the dignity on him, and handed him the fifteen hundred

livres. The Council of Rouen, in 1050, complains bitterly of the

pernicious custom by which ambitious men accumulated, by every possible

means, presents wherewith to gain the favor of the prince and his

courtiers in order to obtain bishoprics, but it could suggest no

remedy. The council was directly concerned only with the Norman dukes,

but the contemporary King of France, Henry I., was notorious as a vendor

of bishoprics. He had commenced his reign with an edict prohibiting the

purchase and sale of preferment under penalty of forfeiture of both

purchase-money and benefice, and had boasted that, as God had given him

the crown gratis, so he would take nothing for his right of

confirmation, reproaching his prelates bitterly for the prevalence of

the vice which was eating out the heart of the Church. Yet in time he

yielded to the custom, and a single instance will illustrate the working

of the system. A certain Helinand, a clerk of low extraction and

deficient training, had found favor at the court of Edward the

Confessor, where he had ample opportunities of amassing wealth.

Happening to be sent on a mission to Henry, he made a bargain by which

he purchased the reversion of the first vacant bishopric, which chanced

in course of time to be Laon, where he was duly installed. Henry's

successor, Philip I., was known as the most venal of men, and from him,

by a similar transaction, Helinand purchased, with the money acquired

from the revenues of Laon, the primatial see of Reims. Such jobbers in

patronage were accustomed to enter into compacts with each other for

mutual assistance, and to consult astrologers as to expected vacancies.

The manipulation of ecclesiastical preferment was reduced to a system,

calling forth the indignant remonstrance of all the better class of

churchmen. Instances of these abuses might be multiplied indefinitely,

and their influence on the character of the Church cannot easily be

overestimated.[3]

Even where the consideration paid for preferment was not actually money,

the effect was equally deplorable. Peter Cantor assures us that, if

those who were promoted for relationship were required to resign, it

would cause general destruction throughout the Church; and worse motives

were constantly at work. Though Philip I., for his adultery with

Bertrade of Anjou, was nominally deprived of the confirmation, or,

rather, nomination, of bishops, there were none to prevent his exercise

of the power. About the year 1100 the Archbishop of Tours, having

gratified the king by disregarding the excommunication under which he

lay, claimed his reward by demanding that the vacant see of Orleans

should be given to a youth whom he loved not wisely but too well, and

who was so notorious for the facility with which he granted his favors

(the preceding Archbishop of Tours had likewise been one of his lovers)

that he was popularly known as Flora, in allusion to a noted courtesan

of the day, and ribald love-songs addressed to him were openly sung in

the streets. Such of the Orleans clergy as threatened trouble were put

out of the way by false accusations and exiled, and the remainder not

only submitted, but even made a jest of the fact that the election took

place on the Feast of the Innocents--

"Elegimus puerum, puerorum festa colentes,

Non nostrum morem sed regis jussa sequentes."[4]

Under such influences it was in vain that the better class of men who

occasionally appeared in the ranks of the hierarchy, such as Fulbert of

Chartres, Hildebert of Le Mans, Ivo of Chartres, Lanfranc, Anselm, St.

Bruno, St. Bernard, St. Norbert, and others, struggled to enforce

respect for religion and morality. The current against them was too

strong, and they could do little but protest and offer an example which

few were found to follow. In those days of violence the meek and humble

had little chance, and the prizes were for those who could intrigue and

chaffer, or whose martial tendencies offered promise that they would

make the rights of their churches and vassals respected. In fact, the

military character of the mediæval prelates is a subject which it would

be interesting to consider in more detail than space will here admit.

The wealthy abbeys and powerful bishoprics came to be largely regarded

as appropriate means to provide for younger sons of noble houses, or to

increase the influence of leading families. By such methods as we have

seen they passed into the hands of those whose training had been

military rather than religious. The mitre and cross had no more scruple

than the knightly pennon to be seen in the forefront of battle. When

excommunication failed to bring to reason restless vassals or

encroaching neighbors, there was prompt recourse to the fleshly arm, and

the plundered peasant could not distinguish between the ravages of the

robber baron and of the representative of Christ. One of the early

adventures of Rodolph of Hapsburg, by which he won the reputation which

elevated him to the imperial throne, was the war declared by Walter,

Bishop of Strassburg, against his burghers, because they had refused to

aid him in gratuitously interfering in a quarrel between the Bishop of

Metz and a troublesome noble. As they disregarded his excommunication,

Bishop Walter attacked them vigorously, when they placed themselves

under the command of Rodolph, and utterly defeated their pastor, after a

war which desolated every portion of Alsace. The chronicles of the

period are full of details of this nature. Worldly and turbulent, there

was little to differentiate the prelate from the baron, and the latter

had no more scruple in making reprisals on Church property than on

secular possessions. In the dissensions which reduced the wealthy Abbey

of St. Tron to beggary, the pious Godfrey of Bouillon, shortly before

the crusade which won for him the throne of Jerusalem, ravaged the abbey

lands with fire and sword. The people, on whom fell the crushing weight

of these conflicts, could only look upon the baron and priest as enemies

both; and whatever might be lacking in the military ability of the

spiritual warriors, was compensated for by their seeking to kill the

souls as well as the bodies of their foes. This was especially the case

in Germany, where the prelates were princes as well as priests, and

where a great religious house like the Abbey of St. Gall was the

temporal ruler of the Cantons of St. Gall and Appenzel, until the latter

threw off the yoke after a long and devastating war. The historian of

the abbey chronicles with pride the martial virtues of successive

abbots, and in speaking of Ulric III., who died in 1117, he remarks

that, worn out with many battles, he at last passed away in peace. All

this was in some sort a necessity of the incongruous union of feudal

noble and Christian prelate, and though more marked in Germany than

elsewhere, it was to be seen everywhere. In 1224 the Bishops of

Coutances, Avranches, and Lisieux withdrew from the army of Louis VIII.

at Tours, under an agreement that the king should make legal

investigation to determine whether the bishops of Normandy were bound to

serve personally in the royal armies; if this was found to be the case,

they were to return and pay the amercement for deserting him. The

decision apparently went against them, for in 1272 we find them serving

personally under Philippe le Hardi. This indisposition to fight the

battles of others was not often shown when the cause was their own.

Geroch of Reichersperg inveighs bitterly against the warlike prelates

who provoke unjust wars, attacking the peaceful and delighting in the

slaughter which they cause and witness, giving no quarter, taking no

prisoners, sparing neither clergy nor laity, and spending the revenues

of the Church on soldiers, to the deprivation of the poor. Such a

prelate was Lupold, Bishop of Worms, whose recklessness provoked his

brother to say, "My lord bishop, you scandalize us laymen greatly by

your example. Before you were a bishop you feared God a little, but now

you care nothing for him," to which Bishop Lupold flippantly retorted

that when they both should be in hell he would exchange seats if his

brother desired. During the wars between the emperors Philip and Otho

IV. he personally led his troops in support of Philip, and when his

soldiers hesitated about sacking churches, he would tell them that it

was enough if they left the bones of the dead. The story is well known

of Richard of England, and Philippe of Dreux, the warlike Bishop of

Beauvais, who had shown himself equally skilful and ruthless in the

predatory warfare of the age, and who, when at last captured by Earl

John, complained to Celestin III. of his imprisonment as a violation of

ecclesiastical privileges. When Celestin, reproving him for his martial

propensities, interceded for his release, King Richard sent to the pope

the coat of mail in which the prelate had been captured, with the

inquiry made to Jacob by his sons, "Know, whether it be thy son's coat?"

to which the good pontiff responded by abandoning the appeal. A

different result, not long afterwards, attended a similar experience of

Theodore, Marquis of Montferrat, when he defeated and captured Aymon,

Bishop of Vercelli. It happened that Cardinal Tagliaferro, papal legate

to Aragon, was tarrying at Geneva, and, hearing of the sacrilege, wrote

in threatening wise to the marquis, who responded with the same inquiry

as King Richard, sending him the martial gear of the prelate, including

his sword still stained with blood. Yet the proud noble felt his

inability to cope with his spiritual foes, and not only liberated the

bishop, but surrendered to him the fortress which had been the occasion

of the war. Even more instructive is the case of the Bishop-elect of

Verona, who, in 1265, when marching at the head of an army, was taken

prisoner by the troops of Manfred of Sicily. Although Urban IV. was

busily urging forward the crusade which was to deprive Manfred of life

and kingdom, he had the assurance to demand the liberation of his

bishop, telling Manfred that if he had a spark left of the fear of God

he would dismiss his prisoner. When Manfred replied, evading the demand

with exuberant humility, Clement IV., who had meanwhile succeeded to the

papacy, called upon Jayme I. of Aragon to intervene. Neither pope seemed

to imagine that there could be any hesitation in acceding to the

preposterous claim, and King Jayme interposed so effectually that

Manfred offered to release the bishop on his swearing not to bear arms

against him in future. Even this condition was not accepted without

difficulty. When the spiritual character thus only served to confer

immunity for acts of violence, it is easy to understand the irresistible

temptation to their commission.[5]

The impression which these worldly and turbulent men made upon their

quieter contemporaries was, that pious souls believed that no bishop

could reach the kingdom of heaven. There was a story widely circulated

of Geoffroi de Péronne, Prior of Clairvaux, who was elected Bishop of

Tournay, and who was urged by St. Bernard and Eugenius III. to accept,

but who cast himself on the ground, saying, "If you turn me out, I may

become a vagrant monk, but a bishop never!" On his death-bed he promised

a friend to return and report as to his condition in the other world,

and did so as the latter was praying at the altar. He announced that he

was among the blessed, but it had been revealed to him by the Trinity

that if he had accepted the bishopric he would have been numbered with

the damned. Peter of Blois, who relates this story, and Peter Cantor,

who repeats it, both manifested their belief in it by persistently

refusing bishoprics; and not long after an ecclesiastic in Paris

declared that he could believe all things except that any German bishop

could be saved, because they bore the two swords, of the spirit and of

the flesh. All this Cæsarius of Heisterbach explains by the rarity of

worthy prelates, and the superabounding multitude of wicked ones; and he

further points out that the tribulations to which they were exposed

arose from the fact that the hand of God was not visible in their

promotion. Language can scarce be stronger than that employed by Louis

VII. in describing the worldliness and pomp of the bishops, when he

vainly appealed to Alexander III. to utilize his triumph over Frederic

Barbarossa by reforming the Church.[6]

In fact, the records of the time bear ample testimony to the rapine and

violence, the flagrant crimes and defiant immorality of these princes of

the Church. The only tribunal to which they were amenable was that of

Rome. It required the courage of desperation to cause complaints to be

made there against them, and when such complaints were made, the

difficulty of proving charges, the length to which proceedings were

drawn out, and the notorious venality of the Roman curia, afforded

virtual immunity. When a resolute and incorruptible pontiff like

Innocent III. occupied the papal chair, there was some chance for

sufferers to make themselves heard, and the number of such trials

alluded to in his epistles show how wide-spread and deep-rooted was the

evil. Yet, even under him, the protraction of the proceedings, and the

evident shrinking from final condemnation, show how little encouragement

there was for prosecutions likely to react so dangerously on the

prosecutor. Thus, in 1198, Gérard de Rougemont, Archbishop of Besançon,

was accused by his chapter of perjury, simony, and incest. When summoned

to Rome the accusers did not dare to prosecute the charges, though they

did not withdraw them, and Innocent, charitably quoting the woman taken

in adultery, sent him back to purge himself and be absolved. Then

followed a long course of undisturbed scandals, through which religion

in his diocese became a mockery. He continued to live in incest with his

relative, the Abbess of Remiremont, and other concubines, one of whom

was a nun, and another the daughter of a priest; no church could be

consecrated or preferment conferred without payment; by his exactions

and oppressions his clergy were reduced to live like peasants, and were

exposed to the contempt of their parishioners; and monks and nuns who

could bribe him were allowed to abandon their convents and marry. At

last another attempt was made, in 1211, to remove him, which, after more

than a year, resulted in a sentence that he should undergo canonical

purgation; _i.e._, find two bishops and three abbots to join him in an

oath of disculpation, when negotiations as to the character of the oath

ensued, lasting until 1214. Finally the citizens rose and drove him out;

he retired to the Abbey of Bellevaux, where he died in 1225. Maheu de

Lorraine, Bishop of Toul, was a prelate of the same stamp. Consecrated

in 1200, within two years his chapter applied to Innocent for his

deposition, alleging that he had already reduced the revenues of the see

from a thousand livres to thirty. It was not until 1210 that his removal

could be effected, after a most intricate series of commissions and

appeals, interspersed with acts of violence. He was wholly abandoned to

debauchery and the chase, and his favorite concubine was his daughter by

a nun of Épinal, but he retained a valuable preferment, as Grand-prévôt

of Saint-Dié. In 1217 he caused his successor Renaud de Senlis to be

murdered, soon after which his uncle, Thiebault, Duke of Lorraine,

happening to meet him, slew him on the spot. Ordinary justice,

apparently, could do nothing with him. Very similar was the case of the

Bishop of Vence, whom Celestin III. had ordered suspended and sent to

Rome to answer for his enormities, and who had defiantly continued in

the exercise of his functions. On Innocent's accession, in 1198, his

excommunication was ordered, which was equally ineffectual; and at

length, in 1204, Innocent sent peremptory orders to the Archbishop of

Embrun to investigate the charges, and, if they were found correct, to

depose him. Meanwhile the diocese had been brought to the verge of ruin,

the churches were demolished, and divine service was performed in only a

few parishes. So in Narbonne, the headquarters of heresy, the

Archbishop, Berenger II., natural son of Raymond Berenger, Count of

Barcelona, preferred to live in Aragon, where he held a rich abbey and

the bishopric of Lerida, and never even visited his province.

Consecrated in 1190, he had never seen it in 1204, though he drew large

revenues from it, both in the regular way and by the sale of bishoprics

and benefices, which were indiscriminately bestowed on children or on

men of the most abandoned lives. The condition of the province, the

highest ecclesiastical dignity of France, was consequently shocking in

the extreme, through the misconduct of the clergy, the boldness of the

heretics, and the violence of the laity. As early as the year 1200,

Innocent III. summoned Berenger to account. In 1204 he made another

attempt, continued during the following years, as no amendment was

visible, and as the farce of appeals from legate to pope was

persistently kept up. At length, in 1210, we find Innocent still writing

to his legate to investigate the archbishops of Narbonne and Ausch and

execute without appeal whatever the canons require, but it was not until

1212 that Berenger was removed. It is probable that even then he might

have escaped had not the legate, Arnaud of Citeaux, been desirous of the

succession, which he obtained. We can readily believe the assertion of a

writer of the thirteenth century, that the process of deposing a prelate

was so cumbrous that even the most wicked had no dread of

punishment.[7]

Even where the enormity of offences did not call for papal intervention,

the episcopal office was prostituted in a thousand ways of oppression

and exaction which were sufficiently within the law to afford the

sufferers no opportunity of redress. How thoroughly its profitable

nature was recognized, is shown by the case of a bishop who, when fallen

in years, summoned together his nephews and relatives that they might

agree among themselves as to his succession. They united upon one of

their number, and conjointly borrowed the large sums requisite to

purchase the election. Unluckily the bishop-elect died before obtaining

possession, and on his death-bed was heartily objurgated by his ruined

kinsmen, who saw no means of repaying the borrowed capital which they

had invested in the abortive episcopal partnership. As St. Bernard says,

boys were inducted into the episcopate at an age when they rejoiced

rather at escaping from the ferule of their teachers than at acquiring

rule; but, soon growing insolent, they learn to sell the altar and empty

the pouches of their subjects. In thus exploiting their office the

bishops only followed the example set them by the papacy, which,

directly or through its agents, by its exactions, made itself the terror

of the Christian churches. Arnold, who was Archbishop of Trèves from

1169 to 1183, won great credit for his astuteness in saving his people

from spoliation by papal nuncios, for whenever he heard of their

expected arrival he used to go to meet them, and by heavy bribes induce

them to bend their steps elsewhere, to the infinite relief of his own

flock. In 1160 the Templars complained to Alexander III. that their

labors for the Holy Land were seriously impaired by the extortions of

papal legates and nuncios, who were not content with the free quarters

and supply of necessaries to which they were entitled, and Alexander

graciously granted the Order special exemption from the abuse, except

when the legate was a cardinal. It was worse when the pope came

himself. Clement V., after his consecration at Lyons, made a progress to

Bordeaux, in which he and his retinue so effectually plundered the

churches on the road that, after his departure from Bourges, Archbishop

Gilles, in order to support life, was obliged to present himself daily

among his canons for a share in the distribution of provisions; and the

papal residence at the wealthy Priory of Grammont so impoverished the

house that the prior resigned in despair of being able to reestablish

its affairs, and his successor was obliged to levy a heavy tax on all

the houses of the order. England, after the ignominious surrender of

King John, was peculiarly subjected to papal extortion. Rich benefices

were bestowed on foreigners, who made no pretext of residence, until the

annual revenue thus withdrawn from the island was computed to amount to

seventy thousand marks, or three times the income of the crown, and all

resistance was suppressed by excommunications which disturbed the whole

kingdom. At the general council of Lyons, held in 1245, an address was

presented in the name of the Anglican Church, complaining of these

oppressions in terms more energetic than respectful, but it accomplished

nothing. Ten years later the papal legate, Rustand, made a demand in the

name of Alexander IV. for an immense subsidy--the share of the Abbey of

St. Albans was no less than six hundred marks--when Fulk, Bishop of

London, declared that he would be decapitated, and Walter of Worcester

that he would be hanged, sooner than submit; but this resistance was

broken down by the device of trumping up fictitious claims of debts due

Italian bankers for moneys alleged to have been advanced to defray

expenses before the Roman curia, and these claims were enforced by

excommunication. When Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln found that his

efforts to reform his clergy were rendered nugatory by appeals to Rome,

where the offenders could always purchase immunity, he visited Innocent

IV. in hopes of obtaining some change for the better, and on utterly

failing, he bluntly exclaimed to the pope, "Oh, money, money, how much

thou canst effect, especially in the Roman court!" This special abuse

was one of old standing, and complaints of its demoralizing effect upon

the priesthood date back from the time of the establishment of the

appellate jurisdiction of Rome under Charles le Chauve. Prelates like

Hildebert of Le Mans, who honestly sought to better the depraved lives

of their clergy, constantly found their efforts frustrated, and had

scant reticence in remonstrating. Remonstrances, however, were of little

avail, though occasionally an upright pope like Innocent III., whose

biographer finds special cause of praise in his refusal of

"propinas"--gifts or bribes for issuing letters--would sometimes recall

a letter of remission avowedly issued in ignorance of the facts, or

would even grant to a prelate the right to punish without appeal, while

other popes were found who sought to neutralize the effects of their

letters without diminishing the business and fees of the chancery. Even

when papal letters were not of this demoralizing character, they were

never issued without payment. When Luke, the holy Archbishop of Gran,

was thrown in prison by the usurper Ladislas, in 1172, he refused to

avail himself of letters of liberation procured from Alexander III.,

saying that he would not owe his freedom to simony.[8]

This was by no means the only mode in which the supreme jurisdiction of

Rome worked inestimable evil throughout Christendom. While the feudal

courts were strictly territorial and local, and the judicial functions

of the bishops were limited to their own dioceses so that every man knew

to whom he was responsible in a tolerably well-settled system of

justice, the universal jurisdiction of Rome gave ample opportunity for

abuses of the worst kind. The pope, as supreme judge, could delegate to

any one any portion of his authority, which was supreme everywhere; and

the papal chancery was not too nice in its discrimination as to the

character of the persons to whom it issued letters empowering them to

exercise judicial functions and enforce them with the last dread

sentence of excommunication--letters, indeed, which, if the papal

chancery is not wronged, were freely sold to all able to pay for them.

Europe thus was traversed by multitudes of men armed with these weapons,

which they used without remorse for extortion and oppression. Bishops,

too, were not backward in thus farming out their more limited

jurisdictions, and, in the confusion thus arising, it was not difficult

for reckless adventurers to pretend to the possession of these delegated

powers and use them likewise for the basest purposes, no one daring to

risk the possible consequences of resistance. These letters thus

afforded a _carte blanche_ through which injustice could be perpetrated

and malignity gratified to the fullest extent. An additional

complication which not unnaturally followed was the fabrication and

falsification of these letters. It was not easy to refer to distant Rome

to ascertain the genuineness of a papal brief confidently produced by

its bearer, and the impunity with which powers so tremendous could be

assumed was irresistibly attractive. When Innocent III. ascended the

throne he found a factory of forged letters in full operation in Rome,

and although this was suppressed, the business was too profitable to be

broken up by even his vigilance. To the end of his pontificate the

detection of fraudulent briefs was a constant preoccupation. Nor was

this industry confined to Rome. About the same period Stephen, Bishop of

Tournay, discovered in his episcopal city a similar nest of

counterfeiters, who had invented an ingenious instrument for the

fabrication of the papal seals. To the people, however, it mattered

little whether they were genuine or fictitious; the suffering was the

same whether the papal chancery had received its fee or not.[9]

Thus the Roman curia was a terror to all who were brought in contact

with it. Hildebert of le Mans pictures its officials as selling justice,

delaying decisions on every pretext, and, finally, oblivious when bribes

were exhausted. They were stone as to understanding, wood as to

rendering judgment, fire as to wrath, iron as to forgiveness, foxes in

deceit, bulls in pride, and minotaurs in consuming everything. In the

next century Robert Grosseteste boldly told Innocent IV. and his

cardinals that the curia was the source of all the vileness which

rendered the priesthood a hissing and a reproach to Christianity, and,

after another century and a half, those who knew it best described it as

unaltered.[10]

* * * * *

When such was the example set by the head of the Church, it would have

been a marvel had not too many bishops used all their abundant

opportunities for the fleecing of their flocks. Peter Cantor, an

unexceptionable witness, describes them as fishers for money and not for

souls, with a thousand frauds to empty the pockets of the poor. They

have, he says, three hooks with which to catch their prey in the

depths--the confessor, to whom is committed the hearing of confessions

and the cure of souls; the dean, archdeacon, and other officials, who

advance the interest of the prelate by fair means or foul; and the rural

provost, who is chosen solely with regard to his skill in squeezing the

pockets of the poor and carrying the spoil to his master. These places

were frequently farmed out, and the right to torture and despoil the

people was sold to the highest bidder. The general detestation in which

these gentry were held is illustrated by the story of an ecclesiastic

who, having by an unlucky run of the dice lost all his money but five

sols, exclaimed in blasphemous madness that he would give them to any

one who would teach him how most greatly to offend God, and a bystander

was adjudged to have won the money when he said, "If you wish to offend

God beyond all other sinners, become an episcopal official or

collector." Formerly, continues Peter Cantor, there was some decent

concealment in absorbing the property of rich and poor, but now it is

publicly and boldly seized through infinite devices and frauds and

novelties of extortion. The officials of the prelates are not only their

leeches, who suck and are squeezed, but are strainers of the milk of

their rapine, retaining for themselves the dregs of sin.[11]

From this honest burst of indignation we see that the main instrument of

exaction and oppression was the judicial functions of the episcopate.

Considerable revenues, it is true, were derived from the sale of

benefices and the exaction of fees for all official acts, and many

prelates did not blush to derive a filthy gain from the licentiousness

universal among a celibate clergy by exacting a tribute known as

"cullagium," on payment of which the priest was allowed to keep his

concubine in peace, but the spiritual jurisdiction was the source of the

greatest profit to the prelate and of the greatest misery to the people.

Even in the temporal courts, the fines arising from litigation formed no

mean portion of the income of the seigneurs; and in the Courts

Christian, embracing the whole of spiritual jurisprudence and much of

temporal, there was an ample harvest to be gathered. Thus, as Peter

Cantor says, the most holy sacrament of matrimony, owing to the remote

consanguinity coming within the prohibited degrees, was made a subject

of derision to the laity by the venality with which marriages were made

and unmade to fill the pouches of the episcopal officials.

Excommunication was another fruitful source of extortion. If an unjust

demand was resisted, the recalcitrant was excommunicated, and then had

to pay for reconciliation in addition to the original sum. Any delay in

obeying a summons to the court of the Officiality entailed

excommunication with the same result of extortion. When litigation was

so profitable, it was encouraged to the utmost, to the infinite

wretchedness of the people. When a priest was inducted into a benefice,

it was customary to exact of him an oath that he would not overlook any

offences committed by his parishioners, but would report them to the

Ordinary that the offenders might be prosecuted and fined, and that he

would not allow any quarrels to be settled amicably; and though

Alexander III. issued a decretal pronouncing all such oaths void, yet

they continued to be required. As an illustration of the system a case

is recorded where a boy in play accidentally killed a comrade with an

arrow. The father of the slayer chanced to be wealthy, and the two

parents were not permitted to be reconciled gratuitously. Peter of

Blois, Archdeacon of Bath, was probably not far wrong when he described

the episcopal Ordinaries as vipers of iniquity transcending in malice

all serpents and basilisks, as shepherds, not of lambs, but of wolves,

and as devoting themselves wholly to malice and rapine.[12]

Even more efficient as a cause of misery to the people and hostility

towards the Church was the venality of many of the episcopal courts. The

character of the transactions and of the clerical lawyers who pleaded

before them is visible in an attempted reformation by the Council of

Rouen, in 1231, requiring the counsel who practised in these courts to

swear that they would not steal the papers of the other side or produce

forgeries or perjured testimony in support of their cases. The judges

were well fitted to preside over such a bar. They are described as

extortioners who sought by every device to filch the money of suitors to

the last farthing, and when any fraud was too glaring for their own

performance they had subordinate officials ever ready to play into their

hands, rendering their occupation more base than that of a pimp with his

bawds. That money was supreme in all judicial matters was clearly

assumed when the Abbey of Andres quarrelled with the mother-house of

Charroux, and the latter assured the former that it could spend in any

court one hundred marks of silver against every ten livres that the

other could afford; and in effect, when the ten years' litigation was

over, including three appeals to Rome, Andres found itself oppressed

with the enormous debt of fourteen hundred livres _parisis_, while the

details of the transaction show the most unblushing bribery. The Roman

court set the example to the rest, and its current reputation is visible

in the praise bestowed on Eugenius III. for rebuking a prior who

commenced a suit before him by offering a mark of gold to win his

favor.[13]

There was another source of oppression which had a loftier motive and

better results, but which was none the less grinding upon the mass of

the people. It was about this time that the fashion set in of building

magnificent churches and abbeys, and the invention of stained glass and

its rapid introduction show the luxury of ornamentation which was

sought. While these structures were in some degree the expression of

ardent faith, yet more were they the manifestation of the pride of the

prelates who erected them, and in our admiration of these sublime relics

of the past, in whatever reverential spirit we may view the towering

spire, the long-arched nave, and the glorious window, we must not lose

sight of the supreme effort which they cost--an effort which inevitably

fell upon suffering serf and peasant. Peter Cantor assures us that they

were built out of exactions on the poor, out of the unhallowed gains of

usury, and out of the lies and deceits of the _quæstuarii_ or pardoners;

and the vast sums lavished upon them, he assures us, would be much

better spent in redeeming captives and relieving the necessities of the

helpless.[14]

It was hardly to be expected that prelates such as filled most of the

sees of Christendom should devote themselves to the real duties of their

position. Foremost among these duties was that of preaching the word of

God and instructing their flocks in faith and morals. The office of

preacher, indeed, was especially an episcopal function; he was the only

man in the diocese authorized to exercise it; it formed no part of the

duty or training of the parish priest, who could not presume to deliver

a sermon without a special license from his superior. It need not

surprise us, therefore, to see this portion of Christian teaching and

devotion utterly neglected, for the turbulent and martial prelates of

the day were too wholly engrossed in worldly cares to bestow a thought

upon a matter for which their unfitness was complete. In 1031 the

Council of Limoges expressed a wish that preaching should be done, not

only at the episcopal seat, but in other churches, when the will of God

inspires a competent doctor to the task; but the Church slumbered on

until the spread of heresy aroused it to a sense of its unwisdom in

neglecting so powerful a source of influence. In 1209 the Council of

Avignon ordered the bishops to preach more frequently and diligently

than heretofore, and, when opportunity offered, to cause preaching to be

done by honest and discreet persons. In 1215 the great Council of

Lateran admitted the impracticability of bishops attending to this among

so many more pressing avocations, and directed them to provide and pay

proper persons to visit their parishes and edify the people by word and

example. Yet little improvement could be expected from exhortations such

as these, and the heretics had the field virtually to themselves until

the Preaching Friars arose and were steadily rebuffed by those whose

negligence they replaced. The Troubadour Inquisitor Izarn does not

hesitate to declare that heresy never could have spread had there been

good preachers to oppose it, and that it never could have been subdued

but for the Dominicans.[15]

* * * * *

The character of the lower orders of ecclesiastics could not be

reasonably expected to be better than that of their prelates. Benefices

were mostly in the gift of the bishops, though, of course, advowsons

were frequently held by the laity; special rights of patronage were held

by religious bodies, and many of these latter filled vacancies in their

own ranks by co-optation. Whatever was the nominating power, however,

the result was apt to be the same. It is the universal complaint of the

age that benefices were openly sold, or were bestowed through favor,

without examination into the qualifications of the appointee, or the

slightest regard as to his fitness. Even the rigid virtue of St. Bernard

did not prevent him, in 1151, from soliciting a provostship for a

graceless youth, the nephew of his friend the Bishop of Auxerre, though

repentance induced by cooller reflection led him to withdraw his

application, which he could the more easily do on learning that his

friend, in dying, had left no less than seven churches to his beloved

nephew. In the same year he was more cautious in refusing Count Thibaut

of Champagne some preferment which he had asked for his son, a child of

tender years; but the mere request for it shows how benefices, when not

sold, were wont to be distributed; and it is safe to say that there were

few like St. Bernard, with courage and conviction to reject the

solicitations of the powerful. It is true that the canon law was full

of admirable precepts respecting the virtues and qualifications

requisite for incumbents, but in practice they were a dead letter.

Alexander III. was moved to indignation when he learned that the Bishop

of Coventry was in the habit of giving churches to boys under ten years

of age, but he could only order that the cures should be intrusted to

competent vicars until the nominees reached a proper age, and this age

he himself fixed at fourteen; while other popes charitably reduced to

seven the minimum age for holding simple benefices or prebends. No

effectual check for abuses of patronage, of course, could be expected of

Rome, when the curia itself was the most eager recipient of benefit from

the wrong. Its army of pimps and parasites was ever on the watch to

obtain fat preferments in all the lands of Europe, and the popes were

constantly writing to bishops and chapters demanding places for their

friends.[16]

That pluralities, with all their attendant evils and abuses, should be

habitual under such a system follows as a matter of course. In vain

reforming popes and councils issued constitutions prohibiting them; in

vain indignant moralists inveighed against the scandals and injuries

which they occasioned, the ruin of the temporalities, the sacrifice of

souls, and the general contempt excited for the Church. Forbidden by the

canon law, like all other abuses they were a source of profit to the

Roman curia, which was always ready to issue dispensations when the

holders of pluralities found themselves likely to be disturbed in their

sin; or they could be used for purposes of statecraft, as when Innocent

IV., in 1246, by skilful use of such dispensations broke up the menacing

combination of the nobles of France. In fact, learned doctors of

theology were found to defend the lawfulness of the abuse, as was done

in a public disputation about the year 1238 by Master Philip, Chancellor

of the University of Paris, who was a notorious pluralist himself. His

fate, however, was a solemn warning to others. On his death-bed his

friend, William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, urged him to resign all

his benefices but one, promising to make good the sacrifice if he should

recover, but Philip refused, on the ground that he wished to experience

whether he should be subjected to damnation on that account. The

disputatious ardor of the schoolman was gratified. Soon after his death

a dusky shade appeared to the good bishop at his prayers, announced

itself to be the chancellor's soul, and declared that it was damned to

eternity; though it must be admitted that habitual licentiousness was

super-added to pluralism as a cause of hopeless perdition.[17]

A clergy recruited in such a manner and subjected to such influences

could only, for the most part, be a curse to the people under their

spiritual direction. A purchased benefice was naturally regarded as a

business investment, to be exploited to the utmost profit, and there was

little scruple in turning to account every device for extorting money

from parishioners, while the duties of the Christian pastorate received

little attention.

One of the most fruitful sources of quarrel and discontent was the

tithe. This most harassing and oppressive form of taxation had long been

the cause of incurable trouble, aggravated by the rapacity with which it

was enforced, even to the pitiful collections of the gleaner. It had

proved the greatest of the obstacles to Charlemagne's proselyting

efforts among the Saxons, and, as we shall see, in the thirteenth

century it led to a most devastating crusade against the Frisians. The

resistance of the people to its exaction in some places was such that

its non-payment was stigmatized as heresy, and everywhere we see it the

cause of scandalous altercation between pastor and flock, and between

rival claimants, giving rise to a very intricate branch of canon law.

Carlyle states that at the outbreak of the French Revolution there were

no less than sixty thousand cases arising from tithes then pending

before the courts, and though the statement may be exaggerated, it is by

no means improbable. Anciently the tithe had been divided into four

parts, of which one went to the bishop, one to the parish priest, one to

the fabric of the Church, and one to the poor, but in the prevailing

acquisitiveness of the period, bishop and priest each seized and held

all they could get, the Church received little, and the poor none at

all.[18]

The portion of the tithe which the priest could retain in this scramble

was rarely sufficient for his wants, addicted as he frequently was to

dissolute living, and exposed to the rapacity of his superiors. The form

of simony which consists in selling his sacred ministrations therefore

became general. Thus confession, which was now becoming obligatory on

the faithful and the exclusive function of the priest, afforded a wide

field for perverse ingenuity. Some confessors rated the sacrament of

penitence so low that for a chicken or a pint of wine they would grant

absolution for any sin, but others understood its productiveness far

better. It is related of Einhardt, the priest of Soest, by a

contemporary, that he sharply reproved a parishioner who, in preparation

for Easter, confessed incontinence during Lent, and demanded of him

eighteen deniers that he might say eighteen masses for his soul. Another

came who said that during Lent he had abstained from his wife, and he

was fined the same amount for masses because he had lost the chance of

begetting a child, as was his duty. Both men had to sell their harvests

prematurely to raise money to pay the fine, and, happening to meet upon

the market-place, compared notes, when they complained to the Dean and

Chapter of St. Patroclus, and the story came out, to the scandal of the

faithful, but Einhardt was permitted to continue his speculative career.

Every function of the priest was thus turned to account, and the

complaints of the practice are too frequent and sweeping for us to doubt

that it was a general custom. Marriage and funeral ceremonies were

refused until the fees demanded were paid in advance, and the Eucharist

was withheld from the communicant unless he offered an oblation. To the

believer in Transubstantiation nothing could be more inexpressibly

shocking, and Peter Cantor well describes the priests of his day as

worse than Judas Iscariot, who sold the body of the Lord for thirty

pieces of silver, while they do it daily for a denier. Not content with

this, many of them transgressed the rules which forbade, except on

special occasions, the celebration by a priest of more than one mass a

day, and it was almost impossible to enforce its observance; while those

who obeyed the rule invented an ingenious evasion through which, by

repeating the Introit, they would split a single mass up into half a

dozen, and collect an oblation for each.[19]

If the faithful Christian thus was mulcted throughout life at every

turn, the pursuit of gain was continued to his death-bed, and even his

body had a speculative value which was turned to account by the ghouls

who quarrelled over it. The necessity of the final sacraments for

salvation gave rise to an occasional abuse by which they were refused

unless an illegal fee or perquisite was paid, such as the sheet on which

the dying sinner lay, but this we may well believe was not usual. More

profitable was the custom by which the fears of approaching judgment

were exploited and legacies for pious uses were suggested as an

appropriate atonement for a life of wickedness or cruelty. It is well

known how large a portion of the temporal possessions of the Church was

procured in this manner, and already in the ninth century it had become

a subject of complaint. In 811 Charlemagne, in summoning provincial

councils throughout his empire, asks them whether that man can be truly

said to have renounced the world who unceasingly seeks to augment his

possessions, and by promises of heaven and threats of hell persuades the

simple and unlearned to disinherit their heirs, who are thus compelled

by poverty to robbery and crime. To this pregnant question the Council

of Chalons, in 813, responded by a canon forbidding such practices, and

reminding the clergy that the Church should succor the needy rather than

despoil them; that of Tours replied that it had made inquiry and could

find no one complaining of exheredation; that of Reims prudently passed

the matter over in silence; and that of Mainz promised restoration in

such cases. This check was but temporary; the Church continued to urge

its claims on the fears of the dying, and finally Alexander III., about

1170, decreed that no one could make a valid will except in the presence

of his parish priest. In some places the notary drawing a will in the

absence of the priest was excommunicated and the body of the testator

was refused Christian burial. The reason sometimes alleged for this was

the preventing of a heretic from leaving his property to heretics, but

the flimsiness of this is shown by the repeated promulgation of the rule

in regions where heresy was unknown, and the loud remonstrances against

local customs which sought to defeat this development of ecclesiastical

greed. Complaints were also sometimes made that the parish priest

converted to his personal use legacies which were left for the benefit

of pious foundations.[20]

Even after death the control which the Church exercised over the living

and the profit to be derived from him were not abandoned. So general was

the custom of leaving considerable sums for the pious ministrations by

which the Church lightened the torments of purgatory, and so usual was

the bestowal of oblations at the funeral, that the custody of the corpse

became a source of gain not to be despised, and the parish in which the

sinner had lived and died claimed to have a reversionary right in the

ashes which were thus so profitable. Occasionally intruders would

trespass upon their preserves, and some monastery would prevail upon the

dying to bequeath his fertilizing remains to its care, giving rise to

unseemly squabbles over the corpse and the privilege of burying it and

saying mortuary masses for its soul. As early as the fifth century Leo

the Great did not hesitate to condemn in the severest terms the rapacity

which led the monasteries to invite the living to their retreats for the

sake of the possessions which they would bring with them, to the

manifest detriment of the parish priest, thus deprived of his legitimate

expectations. Leo therefore ordered a compromise, by which one half of

the goods and chattels thus acquired should be transferred to the church

of the deceased, whether he had entered the monastery dead or alive. The

parish churches at last came to claim the bodies of their parishioners

as a matter of right, and to deny to the dying the privilege of electing

a place of sepulture. It required repeated papal decisions to set aside

claims so persistently urged, but these decisions invariably conceded to

the churches a portion of one fourth, one third, or one half the sum the

deceased had set apart for the care of his soul. In some places the

parish church asserted a right by custom to certain payments on the

death of a parishioner, and the Council of Worcester, in 1240, decided

that when this claim would reduce the widow and orphans to beggary, the

Church should mercifully content itself with one third of the estate and

relinquish the other two thirds to the family of the defunct; while in

Lisbon the last consolations of religion were denied to any one who

refused to leave a portion, usually one third, of his property to the

Church. Under other local customs, the priest claimed as a perquisite

the bier on which a corpse was brought to his church, leading, in case

of resistance, to quarrels more lively than edifying. In Navarre the law

stepped in to define the amount which the poorer classes should give as

an offering in the mortuary mass, being two measures of corn for a

peasant. Among the caballeros the usual offering was the incongruous one

of a war-horse, a suit of armor, and jewels; and the cost of this was

frequently defrayed by the king to honor the memory of some

distinguished knight. That the amounts were not small is evident when we

see that, in 1372, Charles II. of Navarre paid to the Franciscan

Guardian of Pampeluna thirty livres to redeem the charger, armor, etc.,

offered at the funeral of Masen Seguin de Badostal. With the rise of the

mendicant orders and their enormous popularity, the rivalry between them

and the secular clergy for the possession of corpses and the

accompanying fees became more intense than ever, creating scandals of

which we shall have more to say hereafter.[21]

On no point were the relations between the clergy and the people more

delicate than on that of sexual purity. I have treated this subject

fully in another work, and can be spared further reference to it, except

to say that at the period under consideration the enforced celibacy of

the priesthood had become generally recognized in most of the countries

owing obedience to the Latin Church. It had not been accompanied,

however, by the gift of chastity so confidently promised by its

promoters. Deprived as was the priesthood of the gratification afforded

by marriage to the natural instincts of man, the wife at best was

succeeded by the concubine; at worst by a succession of paramours, for

which the functions of priest and confessor gave peculiar opportunity.

So thoroughly was this recognized that a man confessing an illicit amour

was forbidden to name the partner of his guilt for fear it might lead

the confessor into the temptation of abusing his knowledge of her

frailty. No sooner had the Church, indeed, succeeded in suppressing the

wedlock of its ministers, than we find it everywhere and incessantly

busied in the apparently impossible task of compelling their

chastity--an effort the futility of which is sufficiently demonstrated

by its continuance to modern times. The age was not particularly

sensitive on the subject of female virtue, but yet the spectacle of a

priesthood professing ascetic purity as an essential prerequisite to

its functions, and practising a dissoluteness more cynical than that of

the average layman, was not adapted to raise it in popular esteem; while

the individual cases in which the peace and honor of families were

sacrificed to the lusts of the pastor necessarily tended to rouse the

deepest antagonism. As for darker and more deplorable crimes, they were

sufficiently frequent, not alone in monasteries from which women were

rigorously excluded; and, moreover, they were committed with virtual

immunity. Not the least of the evils involved in the artificial

asceticism ostensibly imposed on the priesthood was the erection of a

false standard of morality which did infinite harm to the laity as well

as to the Church. So long as the priest did not defy the canons by

marrying, everything could be forgiven. Alexander II., who labored so

strenuously to restore the rule of celibacy, in 1064 decided that a

priest of Orange who had committed adultery with the wife of his father

was not to be deprived of communion for fear of driving him to

desperation; and, in view of the fragility of the flesh, he was to be

allowed to remain in holy orders, though in the lower grades. Two years

later the same pope charitably diminished the penance imposed on a

priest of Padua who had committed incest with his mother, and left it to

his bishop whether he should be retained in the priesthood. It would be

difficult to exaggerate the disastrous influence on the people of such

examples.[22]

Yet perhaps the most efficient cause of demoralization in the clergy,

and of hostility between them and the laity, was the personal

inviolability and the immunity from secular jurisdiction which they

succeeded in establishing as a recognized principle of public law. While

this was doubtless necessary for the independence, and even for the

safety of a presumably peaceful class in an age of violence, it worked

unhappily in a double sense. The readiness with which acquittal was

obtainable in ecclesiastical procedure by canonical purgation, or the

"wager of law," and the comparative mildness of the penalties in case of

conviction, relieved the ecclesiastic in great measure from the terrors

of the law, and removed from him the necessity of restraining his evil

propensities. At the same time it attracted to the Church vast numbers

of worthless men, who, without abandoning their worldly pursuits,

entered the lower grades and enjoyed the irresponsibility of their

position, to the injury of its character and the detriment of all who

came in contact with them. How, in maintaining its privileges, the

Church habitually threw its ægis over those least deserving of sympathy,

is well illustrated by the intervention of Innocent III. in favor of

Waldemar, Bishop of Sleswick. He was the natural son of Cnut V. of

Denmark, and had headed an armed insurrection against Waldemar II., the

reigning king, on the suppression of which he was cast into prison.

Innocent demanded his liberation, as his incarceration was a violation

of the immunities of the Church. Waldemar naturally hesitated thus to

expose his kingdom to the repetition of revolt, and Innocent at first

modified his command in so far as to order the offender conveyed to

Hungary and liberated there, promising that he should not be permitted

again to disturb the realm; but he subsequently evoked the case to Rome,

where, in spite of the bishop being the offspring of a double adultery

and thus ineligible to holy orders, and in spite of the representations

of the Danish envoys that he had been guilty of perjury, adultery,

apostasy, and dilapidation, Innocent, in behalf of the liberties of the

Church, restored him to his bishopric and patrimony, with the special

privilege of administering it by deputy if he feared that residence

would endanger his personal safety. When requested to decide whether

laymen could arrest and bring before the episcopal court a clerk caught

red-handed in the commission of gross wickedness, Innocent replied that

they could only do so under the special command of a prelate--which was

tantamount to granting virtual impunity in such cases. A sacerdotal

body, whose class-privileges of wrong-doing were so tenderly guarded,

was not likely to prove itself a desirable element of society; and when

the orderly enforcement of law gradually established itself throughout

Christendom, the courts of justice found in the immunity of the

ecclesiastic a more formidable enemy to order than in the pretensions of

the feudal seigniory. Indeed, when malefactors were arrested, their

first effort habitually was to prove their clergy, that they wore the

tonsure, and that they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the

secular courts, while zeal for ecclesiastical rights, and possibly for

fees, always prompted the episcopal officials to support their claims

and demand their release. The Church thus became responsible for crowds

of unprincipled men, clerks only in name, who used the immunity of their

position as a stalking-horse in preying upon the community.[23]

The similar immunity attaching to ecclesiastical property gave rise to

abuses equally flagrant. The cleric, whether plaintiff or defendant, was

entitled in civil cases to be heard before the spiritual courts, which

were naturally partial in his favor, even when not venal, so that

justice was scarce to be obtained by the laity. That such, in fact, was

the experience is shown by the practice which grew up of clerks

purchasing doubtful claims from laymen and then enforcing them before

the Courts Christian--a speculative proceeding, forbidden, indeed, by

the councils, but too profitable to be suppressed. Another abuse which

excited loud complaint consisted in harassing unfortunate laymen by

citing them to answer in the same case in several spiritual courts

simultaneously, each of which enforced its process remorselessly by the

expedient of excommunication, with consequent fines for reconciliation,

on all who by neglect placed themselves in an apparent attitude of

contumacy, frequently without even pausing to ascertain whether the

parties thus amerced had actually been cited. To estimate properly the

amount of wrong and suffering thus inflicted on the community, we must

bear in mind that culture and training were almost exclusively confined

to the ecclesiastical class, whose sharpened intelligence thus enabled

them to take the utmost advantage of the ignorant and defenceless.[24]

* * * * *

The monastic orders formed too large and important a class not to share

fully in the responsibility of the Church for good or for evil. Great as

were their unquestioned services to religion and culture, they were

peculiarly exposed to the degrading tendencies of the age, and their

virtues suffered proportionally. At this period they were rapidly

obtaining exemption from episcopal jurisdiction and subjecting

themselves immediately to Rome. This inevitably stimulated conventual

degeneracy. Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, complained bitterly to

Alexander III. of the fatal relaxation thus induced in monastic

discipline, but to no purpose. It abased the episcopate; it increased

the authority of the Holy See, both directly and indirectly, through the

important allies thus acquired in its struggles with the bishops; and it

was, moreover, a source of revenue, if we may believe the Abbot of

Malmesbury, who boasted that for an ounce of gold per year paid to Rome

he could obtain exemption from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of

Salisbury. In too many cases the abbeys thus became centres of

corruption and disturbance, the nunneries scarce better than houses of

prostitution, and the monasteries feudal castles where the monks lived

riotously and waged war upon their neighbors as ferociously as the

turbulent barons, with the added disadvantage that, as there was no

hereditary succession, the death of an abbot was apt to be followed by a

disputed election producing internal broils and outside interference.

Thus in a quarrel of this kind occurring in 1182, the rich abbey of St.

Tron was attacked by the Bishops of Metz and Liège, the town and abbey

were burned, and the inhabitants put to the sword. The trouble lasted

until the end of the century, and when it was temporarily patched up by

a pecuniary transaction, the wretched vassals and serfs were reduced to

starvation to raise the funds which bought the elevation of an ambitious

monk. It is true that all establishments were not lost to the duties for

which they had received so abundantly of the benefactions of the

faithful. In the famine of 1197, though the monastery of Heisterbach was

still young and poor, the Abbot Gebhardt distributed alms so lavishly

that sometimes he fed fifteen hundred people a day, while the

mother-house of Hemmenrode was even more liberal, and supported all the

poor of its district till harvest-time. At the same time a Cistercian

abbey in Westphalia slaughtered all its flocks and herds and pledged its

books and sacred vessels to feed the starving. It is satisfactory to be

assured that in each case the expenditures were more than made up by the

donations which the establishments received in consequence of their

charity. Such instances go far to redeem the institution of monachism,

but for the most part the abbeys were sources of evil rather than of

good.[25]

This is scarce to be wondered at if we consider the material from which

their inmates were drawn. It is the severest reproach upon their

discipline to find so enthusiastic an admirer of the strict Cistercian

rule as Cæsarius of Heisterbach asserting as an admitted fact that boys

bred in monasteries made bad monks and frequently became apostates. As

for those who took the vows in advanced life, he enumerates their

motives as sickness, poverty, captivity, infamy, mortal danger, dread of

hell or desire of heaven, among which the predominance of selfish

impulses was not likely to secure a desirable class of devotees. In

fact, he assures us that criminals frequently escaped punishment by

agreeing to enter monasteries, which thus in some sort became penal

settlements, or prisons, and he illustrates this with the case of a

robber baron in 1209, condemned to death for his crimes by the Count

Palatine Henry, who was rescued by Daniel, Abbot of Schonau, on

condition of his entering the Cistercian order. Scarcely less desirable

inmates were those who, moved by a sudden revulsion of conscience, would

turn from a life stained with crime and violence to bury themselves in

the cloister while yet in the full vigor of strength and with passions

unexhausted, finding, perhaps, at last their fierce and untamed natures

unfitted to bear the unaccustomed restraint. The chronicles are full of

illustrations of this passionate religious energy in natures wholly

untrained in self-control, and they explain much that otherwise would

seem incredible to the calmer and more self-contained world of to-day.

For instance when, in 1071, Arnoul III. of Flanders, fell at Montcassel

in defending his dominions against his uncle, Robert the Frisian,

Gerbald, the knight who slew his suzerain, was seized with remorse for

his act and wandered to Rome, where he presented himself before Gregory

VII. with the request that his hands be stricken off as a fitting

penance. Gregory assented, and ordered his chief cook to do the service,

secretly instructing him that if, when the axe was raised, Gerbald

shrank or wavered, he was to strike without mercy, but if the penitent

was firm, then he was to announce that he was spared. Gerbald did not

blench, and the pope declared to him that the hands thus preserved were

no longer his but the Lord's, and sent him to Cluny to be placed under

the charge of the holy Abbot Hugh, where the fierce warrior peacefully

ended his days. If, as sometimes happened, these untamable souls chafed

under the irrevocable vow, after the fit of repentance had passed, they

offered ample material for internal sedition and external violence.[26]

Among these ill-assorted crowds it was impossible to maintain the

community of property which was the essence of the rule of Benedict.

Gregory the Great, when Abbot of St. Andreas, denied the last

consolations of religion to a dying brother, and kept his soul for sixty

days in the torments of purgatory, because three pieces of gold had been

found among his garments. Yet the good monks of St. Andreas, of Vienne,

found it necessary to adopt a formal constitution segregating as a

sacrilegious thief any of the brethren detected in stealing clothing

from the dormitory, or cups or plates from the refectory, and

threatening to call in the intervention of the bishop if the offence

could not be otherwise suppressed. So it is mentioned that in the Abbey

of St. Tron, about the year 1200, each monk had a locked cupboard behind

his seat in the refectory, wherein he carefully secured his napkin,

spoon, cup, and dish, to preserve them from his brethren. In the

dormitory matters were even worse. Those who could procure chests threw

into them their bed-clothes on rising, and those who could not were

constantly complaining of the thievish propensities of their

fellows.[27]

The name of monk was rendered still more despicable by the crowds of

"gyrovagi" and "sarabaitæ" and "stertzer"--wanderers and vagrants,

bearded and tonsured and wearing the religious habit, who traversed

every corner of Christendom, living by begging and imposture, peddling

false relics and false miracles. This was a pest which had afflicted the

Church ever since the rise of monachism in the fourth century, and it

continued unabated. Though there were holy and saintly men among these

ghostly tramps, yet were they all subjected to common abhorrence. They

were often detected in crime and slain without mercy; and in a vain

effort to suppress the evil, the Synod of Cologne, early in the

thirteenth century, absolutely forbade that any of them should be

received to hospitality throughout that extensive province.[28]

It was not that earnest efforts were lacking to restore the neglected

monastic discipline. Individual monasteries were constantly being

reformed, to sink back after a time into relaxation and indulgence.

Ingenuity was taxed to frame new and severer rules, such as the

Premonstratensian, the Carthusian, the Cistercian, which should repel

all but the most ardent souls in search of ascetic self-mortification,

but as each order grew in repute for holiness, the liberality of the

faithful showered wealth upon it, and with wealth came corruption. Or

the humble hermitage founded by a few self-denying anchorites, whose

only thought was to secure salvation by macerating the flesh and eluding

temptation, would become possessed of the relics of some saint, whose

wonder-working powers drew flocks of pious pilgrims and sufferers in

search of relief. Offerings in abundance would flow in, and the fame and

riches thus showered on the modest retreat of the hermits speedily

changed it to a splendid structure where the severe virtues of the

founders disappeared amid a crowd of self-indulgent monks, indolent in

all good works and active only in evil. Few communities had the cautious

wisdom of the early denizens in the celebrated Priory of Grammont,

before it became the head of a powerful order. When its founder and

first prior, St. Stephen of Thiern, after his death in 1124, commenced

to show his sanctity by curing a paralytic knight and restoring sight to

a blind man, his single-minded followers took alarm at the prospect of

wealth and notoriety thus about to be forced upon them. His successor,

Prior Peter of Limoges, accordingly repaired to his tomb and

reproachfully addressed him: "O servant of God, thou hast shown us the

path of poverty and hast earnestly striven to teach us to walk therein.

Now thou wishest to lead us from the straight and narrow way of

salvation to the broad road of eternal death. Thou hast preached the

solitude, and now thou seekest to convert the solitude into a

market-place and a fair. We already believe sufficiently in thy

saintliness. Then work no more miracles to prove it and at the same time

to destroy our humility. Be not so solicitous for thy own fame as to

neglect our salvation; this we enjoin on thee, this we ask of thy

charity. If thou dost otherwise, we declare, by the obedience which we

have vowed to thee, that we will dig up thy bones and cast them into the

river." This mingled supplication and threat proved sufficient, and

until St. Stephen was formally canonized he ceased to perform the

miracles so dangerous to the souls of his followers. The canonization,

which occurred in 1189, was the result of the first official act of

Prior Girard, in applying for it to Clement III., and as Girard had been

elected in place of two contestants set aside by papal authority, after

dissensions which had almost ruined the monastery, it shows that worldly

passions and ambition had invaded the holy seclusion of Grammont, to

work out their inevitable result.[29]

In the failure of all these partial efforts at reform to rescue the

monastic orders from their degradation, we hardly need the emphatic

testimony of the venerable Gilbert, Abbot of Gemblours, about 1190, when

he confesses with shame that monachism had become an oppression and a

scandal, a hissing and reproach to all men.[30]

* * * * *

The religion which was thus exploited by priest and monk had

necessarily become a very different creed from that taught by Christ and

Paul. Doctrines are beyond my province, but a brief reference is

requisite to certain phases of belief and observance to render clear the

relation between clergy and people, and to explain the religious revolt

of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The theory of justification by works, to which the Church owed so much

of its power and wealth, had, in its development, to a great extent

deprived religion of all spiritual vitality, replacing its essentials

with a dry and meaningless formalism. It was not that men were becoming

indifferent to the destiny of their souls, for never, perhaps, have the

terrors of perdition, the bliss of salvation, and the never-ending

efforts of the arch-fiend possessed a more burning reality for man, but

religion had become in many respects a fetichism. Teachers might still

inculcate that pious and charitable works to be efficient must be

accompanied with a change of heart, with repentance, with amendment,

with an earnest seeking after Christ and a higher life; but in a gross

and hardened generation it was far easier for the sinner to fall into

the practices habitual around him, which taught that absolution could be

had by the repetition of a certain number of Pater Nosters or Ave Marias

accompanied by the magical sacrament of penitence; nay, even that if the

penitent himself were unable to perform the penance enjoined, it could

be undertaken by his friends, whose merits were transferred to him by

some kind of sacred jugglery. When a congregation, in preparation for

Easter, was confessed and absolved as a whole, or in squads and batches,

as was customary with some careless priests, the lesson taught was that

the sacrament of penitence was a magic ceremony or incantation, in which

the internal condition of the soul was a matter of virtual

indifference.[31]

More serviceable to the Church, and quite as disastrous in its influence

on faith and morals, was the current belief that the posthumous

liberality of the death-bed, which founded a monastery or enriched a

cathedral out of the spoils for which the sinner had no further use,

would atone for a lifelong course of cruelty and rapine; and that a few

weeks' service against the enemies of a pope would wipe out all the

sins of him who assumed the cross to exterminate his fellow-Christians.

The use, or abuse, of indulgences, indeed, is a subject which would

repay extended investigation, and a brief reference to it may be

pardoned here, in view of the frequent allusions to it which will occur

hereafter.

That sin, confessed and repented, could be remitted through penance, was

a doctrine dating back to primitive times. That penance could be

redeemed by sacrifices made for the Church was a corollary of later

origin, but yet well established at this period. Thus, in 1059, we see

Guido, Archbishop of Milan, imposing on himself a penance of one hundred

years, to atone for rebellion against Rome, and redeeming it at a

certain sum for each year--a transaction which satisfied even so stern a

moralist as St. Peter Damiani. Then the schoolmen invented the theory of

the treasure of salvation, accumulated through the merits of the

Crucifixion and of the saints, and the pope, as the vicar of God, had

the unlimited dispensation of that treasure. It was for him to prescribe

the methods by which the faithful could partake of it, and no theologian

before Wickliffe was hardy enough to question his decisions. In the

administration of this treasure the pope issued "pardons," either

plenary or partial, the former releasing the soul absolutely from the

purgatorial punishment of its sins after their guilt had been wiped out

in the sacrament of penitence, the latter shortening the punishment by

the equivalent of the penance remitted by the terms of the concession.

At first this partial indulgence was granted in return for pious works,

pilgrimages to shrines, contributions towards the building of churches,

bridges, etc.--for a spiritual punishment could be commuted to a

corporal or to a pecuniary one, and the power to grant such indulgence

was a valuable franchise to the church which obtained it, for it served

as a constant attraction to pilgrims. Abuses, of course, crept in,

denounced by Abelard, who vents his indignation at the covetousness

which habitually made a traffic of salvation. Alexander III., about

1175, expressed his disapproval of these corruptions, and the great

Council of Lateran, in 1215, sought to check the destruction of

discipline and the contempt felt for the Church by limiting to one year

the amount of penance released by any one episcopal indulgence. At

length St. Francis of Assisi was said to have procured, in 1223, from

Honorius III. the celebrated "Portiuncula" indulgence, whereby all who

visited the Church of Santa Maria de Portiuncula, at Assisi, from the

vespers of August 1st to the vespers of August 2d, obtained complete and

entire remission of all sins committed since baptism; and even the fact

that St. Francis had been directed by God to apply to Honorius for it,

and the admission of Satan that this indulgence was depopulating hell,

did not serve to reconcile the Dominicans to so great an advantage given

to the Franciscans. Boniface VIII., when he conceived the fruitful idea

of the jubilee, carried this out still further by promising to all who

should perform certain devotions in the basilicas of St. Peter and St.

Paul, during the year 1300, not only "_plena venia_," but

"_plenissima_," of all their sins. By this time the idea that an

indulgence might avert the entire penalty of all sins had become

familiar to the Christian mind. When the Church sought to arouse Europe

to supreme exertion for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre some

infinite reward was requisite to excite the enthusiastic fanaticism

requisite for the crusades. If Mahomet could stimulate his followers to

court death by the promise of immediate and eternal bliss to him who

fell fighting for the Crescent, the vicegerent of the true God must not

be behindhand in his promises to the martyrs of the Cross. It was to be

a death-struggle between the two faiths, and Christianity must not be

less liberal than Islam in its bounty to its recruits. Accordingly when

Urban II. held the great Council of Clermont, which resolved on the

first crusade, and where thirteen archbishops, two hundred and fifteen

bishops, and ninety mitred abbots represented the universal Church

Militant, the device of plenary indulgence was introduced, and the

military pilgrims were exhorted to have full faith that those who fell

repentant would gain the completest fruit of eternal mercy. The device

was so successful that it became an established rule in all the holy

wars in which the Church engaged; all the more attractive, perhaps,

because of the demoralizing character of the service, for it was a

commonplace of the _jongleurs_ of the period that the crusader, if he

escaped the perils of sea and land, was tolerably sure to return home a

lawless bandit, even as the pilgrim who went to Rome to secure pardon

came back much worse than he started. As the novelty of crusading wore

off, still greater promises were necessary. Thus, in 1291, Nicholas IV.

promised full remission of sins to every one who would send a crusader

or go at another's expense; while he who went at his own expense was

vaguely told that in addition he would have an increase of salvation--a

term which the Decretalists perhaps could not find it easy to explain.

Finally, forgotten sins were included in the pardon, as well as those

confessed and repented.[32]

As an additional inducement to crusaders they were, moreover, released

from earthly as well as heavenly justice, by being classed with clerks

and subjected only to spiritual jurisdiction. When accused, the

ecclesiastical judge was directed to take them from the secular courts

by the use of excommunication, if necessary, and when found guilty of

enormous crime, such as murder, they were merely divested of the cross,

and punished with the same leniency as ecclesiastics. This became

embodied in secular jurisprudence, and its attraction to the reckless

adventurers who formed so large a portion of the papal armies is readily

conceivable. When, in 1246, those who had taken the cross in France were

indulging themselves in robbery, murder, and rape, St. Louis was obliged

to appeal to Innocent IV., and the pope responded by instructing his

legate that such malefactors were not to be protected.[33]

Still further rewards were offered when personal ambition and

vindictiveness were to be gratified in the crusade preached by Innocent

IV. against the Emperor Conrad IV., after the death of Frederic II.,

when he granted a larger remission of sins than for the voyage to the

Holy Land, and included the father and mother of the crusader as

beneficiaries in the assurance of heaven. A profitable device had also

been introduced by which crusaders, unwilling or unable to perform their

vow, were absolved from it on a money payment proportioned to their

ability, and very large sums were raised in this manner, which were

expended, nominally at least, for the furtherance of the holy cause. The

development of the system continued until it came to be employed in the

pettiest private quarrels of the popes as masters of the patrimony of

St. Peter. If Alexander IV. could use it successfully against Eccelin da

Romano, the next century saw John XXII. have recourse to it, not only in

making war against a formidable antagonist like Matteo Visconti or the

Marquis of Montefeltre, but even when he wished to reduce the rebellious

citizens of little places like Osimo and Recanati, in the March of

Ancona, or the turbulent people of Rome itself. The ingenious method of

granting indulgences to those who took the cross, and then releasing

them from service for a sum of money, had become too cumbrous, and the

purchase of salvation simplified itself into a direct payment, so that

John was able to raise funds for his private wars by thus distributing

the treasures of salvation over Christendom, and ordering the prelates

everywhere to establish coffers in the churches by which the pious could

help the Church while they saved their souls. The prelates who saw with

regret the coins of their parishioners disappear into the

never-satisfied maelstrom of the Holy See, in vain endeavored to resist.

They were no longer independent, and the slender barriers which they

sought to erect were easily swept away.[34]

These money payments were doubtless more practically efficacious than an

indulgence, remitting a certain number of days of penance, offered to

all who would earnestly pray to God, especially during the solemnity of

the mass, for the success of the same pope in his death-struggle with

Louis of Bavaria. This is a specimen of the minor indulgences which were

frequently granted as a stimulus to acts of devotion, such as visiting

cathedrals on the anniversaries of their patron saints; reciting, for

the peace and prosperity of the Church, on bended knees, the Pater

Noster five times, in honor of the five wounds of Christ; the Ave Maria

seven times, in honor of the seven joys of the Virgin, and other similar

practices.[35]

A more demoralizing system of indulgences was that of sending out

"quaestuarii," or pardoners, sometimes furnished with relics, by a

church or hospital in need of money, and sometimes merely carrying papal

or episcopal letters, by which they were authorized to issue pardons for

sin in return for contributions. Though these letters were cautiously

framed, yet they were ambiguous enough to enable the pardoners to

promise, not only the salvation of the living, but the liberation of the

damned from hell for a few small coins. Already, in 1215, the Council of

Lateran inveighs bitterly against these practices, and prohibits the

removal of relics from the churches; but the abuse was too profitable to

be suppressed. Needy bishops and popes were constantly issuing such

letters, and the business of the pardoner became a regular profession,

in which the most impudent and shameless were the most successful, so

that we can readily believe the pseudo Peter of Pilichdorf, when he

sorrowfully admits that the "indiscreet" but profitable granting of

indulgences to all sorts of men weakened the faith of many Catholics in

the whole system. As early as 1261 the Council of Mainz can hardly find

words strong enough to denounce the pestilent sellers of indulgences,

whose knavish tricks excite the hatred of all men, who spend their

filthy gains in vile debauchery, and who so mislead the faithful that

confession is neglected on the ground that sinners have purchased

forgiveness of their sins. Complaint was useless, however, and the

lucrative abuse continued unchecked until it aroused the indignation

which found a mouthpiece in Luther. Subsequent councils are full of

complaints of the lies and frauds of these peddlers of salvation, who

continued to flourish until the Reformation; and Tassoni fairly

represents the popular conviction that this was an unfailing resort of

the Church in its secular aims--

"Le cose della guerra andavan zoppe;

I Bolognesi richiedean danari

Al Papa, ad egli rispondeva coppe,

E mandava indulgenze per gli altari."[36]

The sale of indulgences illustrates effectively the sacerdotalism which

formed the distinguishing feature of mediæval religion. The believer did

not deal directly with his Creator--scarce even with the Virgin or hosts

of intercessory saints. The supernatural powers claimed for the priest

interposed him as the mediator between God and man; his bestowal or

withholding of the sacraments decided the fate of immortal souls; his

performance of the mass diminished or shortened the pains of purgatory;

his decision in the confessional determined the very nature of sin

itself. The implements which he wielded--the Eucharist, the relics, the

holy water, the chrism, the exorcism, the prayer--became in some sort

fetiches which had a power of their own entirely irrespective of the

moral or spiritual condition of him who employed them or of him for whom

they were employed; and in the popular view the rites of religion could

hardly be more than magic formulas which in some mysterious way worked

to the advantage, temporal and spiritual, of those for whom they were

performed.

How sedulously this fetichism was inculcated by those who profited from

the control of the fetiches is shown by a thousand stories and incidents

of the time. Thus a twelfth-century chronicler piously narrates that

when, in 887, the relics of St. Martin of Tours were brought home from

Auxerre, whither they had been carried to escape the Danish incursions,

two cripples of Touraine, who earned an easy livelihood by beggary, on

hearing of the approach of the saintly bones, counselled together to

escape from the territory as quickly as possible, lest the returning

saint should cure them and thus deprive them of claims on the alms of

the charitable. Their fears were well founded, but their means of

locomotion were insufficient, for the relics arrived in Touraine before

they could get beyond the bounds of the province, and they were cured in

spite of themselves. The eagerness with which rival princes and

republics disputed with each other the possession of these

wonder-working fetiches, and the manner in which the holy objects were

obtained by force or fraud and defended by the same methods, form a

curious chapter in the history of human credulity, and show how

completely the miraculous virtue was held to reside in the relic itself,

wholly irrespective of the crimes through which it was acquired or the

frame of mind of the possessor. Thus in the above case, Ingelger of

Anjou was obliged to reclaim from the Auxerrois the bones of St. Martin

at the head of an armed force, more peaceful means of recovering the

venerated relics having failed; and in 1177 we see a certain Martin,

canon of the Breton church of Bomigny, stealing the body of St. Petroc

from his own church for the benefit of the Abbey of St. Mevennes, which

would not surrender it until the intervention of King Henry II. was

brought to bear. Two years after the capture of Constantinople the

Venetian leaders, in 1206, forcibly broke into the Church of St. Sophia

and carried off a picture of the Virgin, said to have been painted by

St. Luke, in which popular superstition imagined her to reside, and kept

it in spite of excommunication and interdict launched against them by

the patriarch and confirmed by the papal legate. Fairly illustrative of

this belief is a story told of a merchant of Groningen who in one of his

voyages coveted the arm of St. John the Baptist belonging to a hospital,

and obtained it by bribing heavily the mistress of the guardian, who

induced him to steal it. On his return the merchant built a house and

secretly encased the relic in a pillar forming part of the structure.

Under its protection he prospered mightily and grew wealthy, till once

in a conflagration he refused to take measures to save the house, saying

that it was under good guardianship. The house was not burned, and

public curiosity was so much excited that he was forced to reveal his

talisman, when the people carried it off and deposited it in a church,

where it worked many miracles, while the merchant was reduced to

poverty. It was a superstition even less rational than that which led

the Romans to conjure into their camp the tutelary deity of a city which

they were besieging; and the universal wearing of relics as charms or

amulets had in it nothing to distinguish it from the similar practices

of paganism. Even the images and portraits of saints and martyrs had

equal virtue. A single glance at the representation of St. Christopher,

for instance, was held to preserve one from disease or sudden death for

the rest of the day--

"Christophori sancti speciem quicumque tuetur

Illo namque die nullo languore tenetur--

and a huge image of the gigantic saint was often painted on the outside

of churches for the preservation of the population. The custom of

selecting a patron saint by lot at the altar is another manifestation of

the same blindness of superstition.[37]

The Eucharist was particularly efficacious as a fetich. During the

persecution of heresy in the Rhinelands by the inquisitor Conrad of

Marburg, in 1233, one obstinate culprit refused to burn in spite of all

the efforts of his zealous executioners, until a thoughtful priest

brought to the roaring pile a consecrated host. This at once dissolved

the spell by a mightier magic, and the luckless heretic was speedily

reduced to ashes. A conventicle of these same heretics possessed an

image of Satan which gave forth oracular responses, until a priest

entering the room produced from his bosom a pyx containing the body of

Christ, when Satan at once acknowledged his inferiority by falling down.

Not long afterwards St. Peter Martyr overcame, by the same means, the

imposture of a Milanese heretic in whose behalf a demon was wont to

appear in a heterodox church in the shape of the Virgin, resplendent and

holding in her arms the holy Child. The evidence in favor of heresy

seemed to be overwhelming, until St. Peter dispelled it by presenting to

the demon a host, and saying, "If thou art the true Mother of God,

adore this thy Son," whereupon the demon disappeared in a flash of

lightning, leaving an intolerable stench behind him. The consecrated

wafer was popularly believed to possess a magic efficacy of incomparable

power, and stories are numerous of the punishment inflicted on those who

sacrilegiously sought thus to use it. A priest who retained it in his

mouth for the purpose of using it to overcome the virtue of a woman of

whom he was enamoured, was afflicted with the hallucination that he had

swelled to the point that he could not pass through a doorway; and on

burying the sacred object in his garden it was changed into a small

crucifix bearing a man of flesh and freshly bleeding. So when a woman

kept the wafer and placed it in her beehive to stop an epidemic among

the bees, the pious insects built around it a complete chapel, with

walls, windows, roof, and bell-tower, and inside an altar on which they

reverently placed it. Another woman, to preserve her cabbages from the

ravages of caterpillars, crumbled a holy wafer and sprinkled it over the

vegetables, when she was at once afflicted with incurable paralysis.

This particular form of fetichism was evidently not regarded with favor,

but it was the direct evolution of orthodox teaching. It was the same in

respect to the water in which a priest washed his hands after handling

the Eucharist, to which supernatural virtues were ascribed, but the use

of which was condemned as savoring of sorcery.[38]

The power of these magic formulas, as I have said, was wholly

disconnected with any devotional feeling on the part of those who

employed them. Thus the efficacy of St. Thomas of Canterbury was

illustrated by a story of a matron whose veneration for him led her to

invoke him on all occasions, and even to teach her pet bird to repeat

the formula "Sancte Thoma adjuva me!" Once a hawk seized the bird and

flew away with it, but on the bird uttering the accustomed phrase, the

hawk fell dead and the bird returned unhurt to its mistress. So little,

indeed, of sanctity was requisite, that wicked priests employed the mass

as an incantation and execration, mentally cursing their enemies while

engaged in its solemnization, and expecting that in some way the

malediction would work evil on the person against whom it was directed.

Nay, it was even used in connection with the immemorial superstition of

the wax figurine which represented the enemy to be destroyed, and mass

celebrated ten times over such an image was supposed to insure his death

within ten days.[39]

Even confession could be used as a magic formula to escape the detection

of guilt. As demons professed a knowledge of every crime committed, and

would reveal them through the mouth of those whom they possessed,

demoniacs were frequently used as detectives in case of suspected

persons. Yet when sins were confessed with due contrition, the

absolution wiped them forever from the demon's memory, and he would deny

all knowledge of them--a fact which was regularly acted on by those

afraid of exposure; for even after the demon had revealed the guilt, the

perpetrator could go at once and confess, and then confidently return

and challenge a repetition of the denunciation.[40]

Examples such as these could be multiplied almost indefinitely, but they

would only serve to weary the reader. What I have given will probably

suffice to illustrate the degeneracy of the Christianity superimposed

upon paganism and wielded by a sacerdotal body so worldly in its

aspirations as that of the Middle Ages.

* * * * *

The picture which I have drawn of the Church in its relations with the

people is perhaps too unrelieved in its blackness. All popes were not

like Innocent IV. and John XXII.; all bishops were not cruel and

licentious; all priests were not intent solely on impoverishing men and

dishonoring women. In many sees and abbeys, and in thousands of

parishes, doubtless, there were prelates and pastors earnestly seeking

to do God's work, and illuminate the darkened souls of their flocks with

such gospel light as the superstition of the time would permit. Yet the

evil was more apparent than the good; the humble workers passed away

unobtrusively, while pride and cruelty and lust and avarice were

demonstrative and far-reaching in their influence. Such as I have

depicted the Church it appeared to all the men of the time who had the

clearest insight and the loftiest aspirations; and its repulsiveness

must be understood by those who would understand the movements that

agitated Christendom.

No more unexceptionable witness as to the Church of the twelfth century

can be had than St. Bernard, and he is never weary of denouncing the

pride, the wickedness, the ambition, and the lust that reigned

everywhere. When fornication, adultery, incest, palled upon the

exhausted senses, a zest was sought in deeper depths of degradation. In

vain the cities of the plain were destroyed by the avenging fire of

heaven; the enemy has scattered their remains everywhere, and the Church

is infected with their accursed ashes. The Church is left poor and bare

and miserable, neglected and bloodless. Her children seek not to bedeck,

but to spoil her; not to guard her, but to destroy her; not to defend,

but to expose; not to institute, but to prostitute; not to feed the

flock, but to slay and devour it. They exact the price of sins and give

no thought to sinners. "Whom can you show me among the prelates who does

not seek rather to empty the pockets of his flock than to subdue their

vices?" St. Bernard's contemporary, Potho of Pruhm, in 1152, voices the

same complaints. The Church is rushing to ruin, and not a hand is raised

to stay its downward progress; there is not a single priest fitted to

rise up as a mediator between God and man and approach the divine throne

with an appeal for mercy.[41]

The papal legate, Cardinal Henry of Albano, in his Encyclical letter of

1188 to the prelates of Germany, is equally emphatic though less

eloquent. The triumph of the Prince of Darkness is to be expected in

view of the depravity of the clergy--their luxury, their gluttony, their

disregard of the fasts, their holding of pluralities, their hunting,

hawking, and gambling, their trading and their quarrels, and, chief of

all, their incontinence, whence the wrath of God is provoked to the

highest degree and the worst scandals are created between the clergy and

the people. Peter Cantor, about the same time, describes the Church as

filled to the mouth with the filth of temporalities, of avarice, and of

negligence, so that in these points it far surpasses the laity; and he

points out that nothing is more damaging to the Church than to see

laymen superior, as a class, to the clergy. Gilbert of Gemblours tells

the same tale. The prelates for the most part enter the Church not by

election, but by the use of money and the favor of princes; they enter,

not to feed, but to be fed; not to minister, but to be ministered to;

not to sow, but to reap; not to labor, but to rest; not to guard the

sheep from the wolves, but, fiercer than wolves, themselves to tear the

sheep. St. Hildegarda, in her prophecies, espouses the cause of the

people against the clergy. "The prelates are ravishers of the churches;

their avarice consumes all that it can acquire. With their oppressions

they make us paupers and contaminate us and themselves.... Is it fitting

that wearers of the tonsure should have greater store of soldiers and

arms than we? Is it becoming that a clerk should be a soldier and a

soldier a clerk?... God did not command that one son should have both

coat and cloak and that the other should go naked, but ordered the cloak

to be given to one and the coat to the other. Let the laity then have

the cloak on account of the cares of the world, and let the clergy have

the coat that they may not lack that which is necessary."[42]

One of the main objects in convoking the great Council of Lateran, in

1215, was the correction of the prevailing vices of the clergy, and it

adopted numerous canons looking to the suppression of the chief abuses,

but in vain. Those abuses were too deeply rooted, and four years later

Honorius III., in an Encyclical addressed to all the prelates of

Christendom, says that he has waited to see the result. He finds the

evils of the Church increasing rather than diminishing. The ministers of

the altar, worse than beasts wallowing in their dung, glory in their

sins, as in Sodom. They are a snare and a destruction to the people.

Many prelates consume the property committed to their trust and scatter

the stores of the sanctuary throughout the public places; they promote

the unworthy, waste the revenues of the Church on the wicked, and

convert the churches into conventicles of their kindred. Monks and nuns

throw off the yoke, break their chains, and render themselves

contemptible as dung. "Thus it is that heresies flourish. Let each of

you gird his sword to his thigh and spare not his brother and his

nearest kindred." What was accomplished by this earnest exhortation may

be estimated from the description which Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of

Lincoln, gave of the Church in the presence of Innocent IV. and his

cardinals in 1250. The details can well be spared, but they are summed

up in his assertion that the clergy were a source of pollution to the

whole earth; they were antichrists and devils masquerading as angels of

light, who made the house of prayer a den of robbers. When the earnest

inquisitor of Passau, about 1260, undertook to explain the stubbornness

of the heresy which he was vainly endeavoring to suppress, he did so by

drawing up a list of the crimes prevalent among the clergy, which is

awful in the completeness of its details. A church such as he describes

was an unmitigated curse, politically, socially, and morally.[43]

This is all ecclesiastical testimony. How the clergy were regarded by

the laity is illustrated in a remark by William of Puy-Laurens, that it

was a common phrase "I had rather be a priest than do that," just as one

might say "I had rather be a Jew." It is true that the priests had the

same contempt for the monks, for Emeric, Abbot of Anchin, tells us that

a clerk would never associate with any one whom he had once seen wearing

the black Benedictine habit. But priest and monk were both comprehended

in the general detestation of the people. Walther von der Vogelweide

sums up the popular appreciation of the whole ecclesiastical body, from

pope downward:

"St. Peter's chair is filled to-day as well

As when 'twas fouled by Gerbert's sorcery;

For he consigned himself alone to hell,

While this pope thither drags all Christentie.

Why are the chastisements of Heaven delayed?

How long wilt thou in slumber lie, O Lord?

Thy work is hindered and thy word gainsaid,

Thy treasurer steals the wealth that thou hast stored.

Thy ministers rob here and murder there,

And o'er thy sheep a wolf has shepherd's care."[44]

Walther's echo is heard from the other end of Europe in the Troubadour

Pierre Cardinal, who enlarges on the same theme in a manner to show how

popular were these invectives and how completely they expressed the

general feeling:

"I see the pope his sacred trust betray,

For, while the rich his grace can gain alway,

His favors from the poor are aye withholden.

He strives to gather wealth as best he may,

Forcing Christ's people blindly to obey,

So that he may repose in garments golden.

The vilest traffickers in souls are all

His chapmen, and for gold a prebend's stall

He'll sell them, or an abbacy or mitre.

And to us he sends clowns and tramps who crawl

Vending his pardon briefs from cot to hall--

Letters and pardons worthy of the writer,

Which leave our pokes, if not our souls, the lighter.

"No better is each honored cardinal.

From early morning's dawn to evening's fall,

Their time is passed in eagerly contriving

To drive some bargain foul with each and all.

So, if you feel a want, or great or small,

Or if for some preferment you are striving,

The more you please to give the more 'twill bring,

Be it a purple cap or bishop's ring.

And it need ne'er in any way alarm you

That you are ignorant of everything

To which a minister of Christ should cling,

You will have revenue enough to warm you--

And, bear in mind, that lesser gifts won't harm you.

"Our bishops, too, are plunged in similar sin,

For pitilessly they flay the very skin

From all their priests who chance to have fat livings.

For gold their seal official you can win

To any writ, no matter what's therein.

Sure God alone can make them stop their thievings.

'Twere hard, in full, their evil works to tell,

As when, for a few pence, they greedily sell

The tonsure to some mountebank or jester,

Whereby the temporal courts are wronged as well,

For then these tonsured rogues they cannot quell,

Howe'er their scampish doings may us pester,

While round the church still growing evils fester.

"Then as for all the priests and minor clerks,

There are, God knows, too many of them whose works

And daily life belie their daily preaching.

Scarce better are they than so many Turks,

Though they, no doubt, may be well taught--it irks

Me not to own the fulness of their teaching--

For, learned or ignorant, they're ever bent

To make a traffic of each sacrament,

The Mass's holy sacrifice included;

And when they shrive an honest penitent,

Who will not bribe, his penance they augment,

For honesty should never be obtruded--

But this, by sinners fair, is easily eluded.

"Tis true the monks and friars make ample show

Of rules austere which they all undergo,

But this the vainest is of all pretences.

In sooth, they live full twice as well, we know,

As e'er they did at home, despite their vow,

And all their mock parade of abstinences.

No jollier life than theirs can be, indeed;

And specially the begging friars exceed,

Whose frock grants license as abroad they wander.

These motives 'tis which to the Orders lead

So many worthless men, in sorest need

Of pelf, which on their vices they may squander,

And then, the frock protects them in their plunder."[45]

It was inevitable that such a religion should breed dissidence and such

a priesthood provoke revolt.