How little there was of a courtier about him may be gathered from

the sermon which he preached before the king at the time when he was

preparing for his French war, in which, instead of offering that

monarch the welcome incense of flattery, he very plainly expounded

to his hearers the sin which Christian princes committed by wars of

ambition, in which they fought, not under the banner of Christ, but

under that of the devil.[340] Much of this was surely excellent; and

had this been all, we should be ready to yield our hearty sympathy

to Colet in spite of those “specks of human infirmity” which his

best friends saw and regretted. A reformer has rough work to do,

and in doing it has need of a certain fund of audacity which easily

overpasses the just bounds of discretion, and can scarcely avoid

wounding the susceptibilities of those whom he undertakes to amend.

Yet such things are easily pardoned in them whom we know to be only

“zealous for the Lord of Hosts,” and who cannot “restrain their

lips” when they declare His justice in the midst of the people.

But there were other elements in the character of Colet from which

we instinctively shrink, for the simple reason that they betray a

mind out of harmony with the teachings of faith. We have already

seen him bringing the charge of arrogance--himself surely with

greater arrogance--against the Angelic doctor, unable to repress

his intolerance of what he deemed his too strict definitions of

doctrine; and betraying an angry contempt for the popular devotions

sanctioned by the Church, but which _he_ impeached of superstition.

That practical abuses may easily have crept into many of these

devotions is what no Catholic will think himself called on to

deny, and that where they existed they deserved to be exposed and

denounced is equally obvious; yet when we find that the only _fact_

alluded to by Colet’s biographer as having stirred the wrath of the

reformer was the eagerness displayed by the Canterbury pilgrims to

kiss the shoe of St. Thomas, preserved there as a relic, we are

disposed to think that it was not merely these supposed abuses, but

the devotions themselves which he regarded with dislike. And this

judgment is confirmed when we find him betraying a similar want of

sympathy with the spirit and practice of the Church in cases where

there could be no question of superstition. He set very little store

by the practice of daily hearing or saying Mass: he considered the

recitation of the Divine Office in private by priests to be both a

burdensome and a superfluous duty, and seems to have been, to say the

least, indifferent to the value of prayer for the dead. All this we

learn from the correspondence of Erasmus, who further informs us that

there were a vast number of opinions received in the schools from

which Colet strongly dissented, and that he not only read the works

of heretical writers without scruple, but was accustomed to say that

he often learned more out of them than he did from orthodox writers,

who were content to be always running over a beaten track.[341] It

can therefore be no great matter of surprise that Colet, before

long, became involved in trouble. While some men regarded him as

little short of a saint, others, alarmed at his bold views and the

uncompromising language in which he expressed them, looked on him

as an incipient heretic, and as such denounced him to his bishop.

Articles were drawn up against him and laid before the Primate,

but Warham dismissed the case as frivolous, and Colet was never

afterwards interfered with on account of his liberty of speech.[342]

Erasmus, and after him Fox, tells us that the three articles of

accusation referred to his manner of treating the worship of images,

his preaching against the worldly lives of the clergy, and his

complaints of those who read their sermons in a cold and formal

manner; vague charges, which would be very justly designated as

“frivolous.” Tyndale, however, in his usual burlesque style, declares

in his “Reply to More,” that “the bishop would have made Colet a

heretic for translating the Pater Noster into English,” and this

random shot has been gravely taken up and handed on from one author

to another as a sober bit of history. “He _even_ gave the people

parts of the Bible in English,” says a Scotch reviewer, “such as the

Lord’s Prayer!” Whilst Knight seriously assures his readers that not

only were the English Scriptures at this time utterly unknown, but

that “_there was scarce so much as a Latin Testament in any cathedral

church in England_.”

Colet’s friendship with More and Erasmus meanwhile remained unbroken,

and in the intervals of graver duties the three friends were wont to

meet at the house of Dame Christian Colet, the Dean’s mother, in the

(then) pleasant country suburb of Stepney, of which parish Colet was

vicar. Erasmus has sketched the good old lady in her 90th year, with

her countenance “still so fair and cheerful, you would think she had

never shed a tear;” and Colet lets us know the pleasure which she

found in receiving her son’s guests, and in their agreeable and witty

conversation. Stepney, with its green lanes, fresh country air, and

rural population, would often picture itself to the eye of More when

he grew weary of his life in town; and in his early married days,

when his narrow means obliged him to content himself with a house

in Bucklersbury, the hardworked lawyer was glad enough, like other

cockneys, to run down to Stepney on Saturday afternoons, and refresh

himself with the merry talk of his friends, as they sauntered in the

trimly-kept gardens and admired the noble strawberries brought over

from Holland, or the damask roses lately introduced into England by

Linacre.

Not unfrequently the party included some of the learned foreigners

who just then crowded the Tudor Court, such as Andreas Ammonius,[343]

the king’s Latin secretary, whom Erasmus praises as being “so noble

and generous, so free from envy, and so full of great endowments,”

or their old Oxford crony, John Sixtine, a Frisian by birth, but now

naturalised in England, and esteemed by all good scholars for his

versatile genius. It seems strange to us in these days to associate

the names of foreign canonists and divines with our country parish

churches, of which, however, they not unfrequently enjoyed the

revenues. Hidden in a sequestered valley of Devonshire, surrounded

by woods that are dear to village children for the sweet-scented

violets that grow there in such wild profusion, shut in by hills

which they will not easily forget who have seen their sloping fields

all bright with golden sheaves, made brighter with the intense

sunshine that seems borrowed from a southern sky; the tourist may

perhaps have stumbled on the little church of St. Blaze of Haccombe,

with its quaint encaustic tiles and cross-legged effigies of the

crusading lords of Haccombe, all as perfect as in the days of John

Sixtine, the friend of More and Erasmus, who was arch-priest of the

college formerly attached to this church by Sir Stephen de Haccombe,

to the end that perpetual prayer might be made there for the souls

of his ancestors. Dr. Sixtine had other more splendid and lucrative

benefices, but the beauty of that little rural valley seems to have

clung to his heart, and among the various bequests which he names

in his will, appears the sum of fifteen pounds in honour of God and

St. Blaze, towards the reparation of the church of Haccombe. Let the

good deed be noted here, as well as the kind and homely feeling which

induced him to direct that twenty pounds should be distributed among

his parishioners at Eglescliffe, “to buy them instruments necessary

for their country labours.”

Both these distinguished men were frequent visitors to Stepney,

and in the pleasant conferences which Colet held with the familiar

coterie, one project of his must often have furnished them with a

topic of conversation: it was his wish to found a school. Schools,

indeed, there already were in rich abundance; during the last thirty

years a very harvest of them had been springing up all over England,

but none yet founded were quite to Colet’s mind. He desired to see an

academy in which there should be laid a solid foundation of learning,

both sacred and profane. Classical, or what he termed “clene Latin,”

the fashionable study of Greek, and Scriptural divinity, would

never, he argued, establish themselves in the universities until they

were first taught in preparatory schools; and he pleased himself with

the thought of attaching such a grammar-school to his own church of

St Paul’s, and bestowing his wealth and his study in bringing it to

perfection. He hoped to raise a generation of scholars who should

be trained to understand the true sense and spirit of the classical

authors, so as to read, write, and speak the learned tongues with

ease and elegance; and who, at the same time, should have gone

through a careful course of religious instruction; a large-hearted

design, which met the warm approval of his literary friends, and of

none more than of Erasmus.

The school was accordingly commenced in 1509, at the east end of St.

Paul’s churchyard. The front next the church was finished in the

year following, and bore this inscription:--_Schola catechizationis

puerorum in Christi Opt. Max. fide et bonis literis, Anno Christi,

MDX_. The endowments provided for the free education of one hundred

and fifty-three scholars,[344] and for the maintenance of a master,

usher, and chaplain. The school, when complete, was divided into four

parts. First the porch, where those whom Colet called his catechumens

were instructed in religion, no one being admitted who could not at

least say the catechism and know how to read and write. Then came a

room for the lower class taught by the usher, and a third for the

higher class taught by the master. The captain of each form had a

little desk to mark his pre-eminence, and the apartments were only

divided by curtains. Lastly, there was a small chapel opening into

the schoolroom, where Mass was said daily. The children, however,

were not intended to _hear_ Mass daily, for, according to Colet’s

views, this would have been a waste of time. Unlike Bede and

Alfred, he was ignorant of what has been called the grand secret of

education, “the way how to lose time wisely.” Week-day Masses were in

his eyes simple superfluities, and he judged the moments so consumed

much better spent in study. In accordance with this principle, he

himself only said Mass on Sundays and festivals, and argued that he

spent the time thus saved more profitably in arranging the matter for

his sermons! His scholars, indeed, had their Mass said _for_ them

every morning in the chapel; but the statutes enjoined that when

the Sacring bell was heard, they should only prostrate until after

the Elevation, and then rise and go on with their studies. What a

revelation of character appears in traits like these, and how wide

a distance separates such a tone of spirituality from that of the

monastic scholars! How little of the spirit of faith was likely to

be imbibed during this daily lesson of irreverence, and what could

have been the theory which this much-vaunted director possessed of

the spiritual life, when he practically taught his pupils by word and

example to value work above prayer, and to save time for study by

cutting short their Mass! Yet Colet designed this as a _Catechetical_

school, and intended it to be a nursery of Christian piety. The image

of the child Jesus stood on the master’s seat in the attitude of

teaching, with the apposite inscription, “Hear ye Him.” The children

were instructed to regard Him as the Master of the school, and as

they went and came, to bow to His image and salute Him with a brief

hymn. Thrice a day, moreover, they were to prostrate, and recite

appointed prayers; in short, there were not wanting provisions of

a religious character, only much of the true spirit of Catholic

devotion had been pared away.

The statutes regarding recreation were drawn up with Puritanic

rigorism. Old traditions on this head met with small indulgence

at the hands of the reforming founder, and hardening his heart to

all the infirmities of the schoolboy nature, he strictly forbade

Shrovetide cock-fighting and the disputations of St. Bartholomew’s

day, which he denounced as “idle babbling.” The abolition of

cock-fighting was beyond all praise, but I grieve to add that there

were absolutely no play days. Nay, so rigid was this rule, that

the master was to forfeit forty shillings every time he broke it,

unless at the request of an archbishop, bishop, or king. But, strange

to say, there was a special provision for the due celebration of

Childermas day, when they were all to repair to St. Paul’s church,

hear the child-bishop’s sermon, assist at the High Mass, and offer

his lordship a penny. The studies were to consist of good Greek

and Latin authors, _especially Christian ones_, “for my intent

is,” writes the founder, “by this scole specially to increase the

knowledge and worshipping of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and good

Christian life and manners in the children.” But whilst giving this

preference to Christian over Pagan authors he requires “the verrye

Romayne eloquence” to be taught, and warming at the bare notion of

Scholastic barbarism ever invading his seminary, “will utterly have

banished and excluded all such abusion as the later blind world

hath brought in, which is rather to be called _bloterature_ than

_literature_.”

Colet had no difficulty in finding a master fully qualified to

undertake the direction of this academy. William Lily, the god-son

and pupil of Grocyn, and the fellow-student of More, the very ideal

of a humble, devout, and unworldly scholar, who had never yet thought

of making his learning a way to fortune, but was still plodding on

as a poor London pedagogue, was at once promoted to the mastership

of St. Paul’s, with John Rightwyse for his usher. The next step was

to draw up a little book for the use of his scholars containing the

rudiments of grammar, and an abridgment of Christian doctrine; and

this little book, commonly called Paul’s Accidence, was dedicated by

Colet to Lily. Herein we find the creed in Latin and English, the

seven sacraments, brief explanations of the love of God, and our

duty to ourselves and our neighbours, including precepts for the

observance of appointed fasts and holy days, and some rules of holy

living, with a beautiful Latin prayer to “the Child Jesus, Master

of this school,” and two others for daily use, one for parents, and

another for the virtue of docility.

In his preface to his “Rudiments,” Colet apologises for writing on

a subject whereon so many had written before him, but explains his

purpose to have been the putting things in a clear order for the use

of young wits, out of compassion to the tenderness and small capacity

of little minds. “I pray God,” he continues, “that all may be to His

honour and the erudition of children. Wherefore I pray you all, lytel

babes, learn gladly this lytel treatise, and commende it dyligently

unto your memorye, trusting that ye shall proceed and growe to

perfyte literature, and come to be grete clerkes. And lyfte up your

lytel whyte hands for me also, which prayeth for you to God.”

Wolsey reprinted this little manual for the use of his Ipswich

scholars, recommending it to the masters in an epistle from his own

pen. In 1513 the indefatigable founder resolved on providing his

boys with something more complete. Grammars, indeed, there were in

plenty; there was the old Donatus, and the more modern “Lac puerorum”

of good Master Holte,[345] and a host of others whose quaint names

and flimsy contents have been whimsically criticised by Erasmus. But

they did not satisfy the requirements of Colet, and he accordingly

composed his treatise on the Eight Parts of Speech, which, with

some alterations and considerable additions, forms the syntax of

the grammar which afterwards bore the name of Lily’s grammar. After

Lily had revised and corrected the manuscript, Colet put it into the

hands of Erasmus, who made so many alterations, that neither of them

could in justice call the work his own, and in 1515 it was published,

with an epistle from Erasmus. After its publication Lily drew up the

rules, known as the _Propria quæ maribus_, and _As in præsenti_, his

usher Rightwyse adding some finishing touches. About the same time

Linacre was engaged on a somewhat similar work, but his “Compendium

of Grammar,” originally drawn up for the use of the Princess Mary,

was judged by Colet rather too abstruse for the comprehension of

beginners, and he did not, therefore, admit it into his school. This

seems to have been resented by the sensitive grammarian, and Erasmus

had to interpose to restore a good understanding between him and the

dean.

Lily proved an excellent master, and among his first pupils were the

famous antiquary Leland and Thomas Lupset, son to Colet’s amanuensis,

who was afterwards admitted to close intimacy by More and Reginald

Pole. One fault, however, appeared in the management of the school,

too common at that time, namely, the excessive severity of the

discipline. This is perhaps to be charged partly to the account of

Colet, whose views were as austere in what regarded the education of

children, as they were in the direction of souls; and partly to the

influence of Rightwyse, who was a scholar of Eton, and brought with

him thence maxims of school government, which were exceedingly harsh,

not to say cruel. In fact, since education had passed from the hands

of the monastics into those of professional pedagogues, the paternal

spirit which formerly presided over the Catholic schoolroom had

been gradually fading away. It seemed agreed by all that the Greek

grammar, and the “verrye Romayne eloquence,” could not be attained

without an unsparing use of the rod; for we find the same complaint

of cruelty made of the French professors of the time. In England

this unmerciful system kept its ground throughout the whole of the

Tudor period, and we find Sir John Elyot advising his “governor” to

provoke a child to study with a pleasant face, and deprecating “cruel

and yrous masters, by whom the wits of children be dulled, whereof

we need no better witness than daily experience.” The Eton fashion

was to flog a boy directly he appeared in the school, as a sort of

entrance fee, of which old Tusser dolefully complains;[346] and

something of this sort of discipline existed at St. Paul’s, and was

supported by the approval of Colet.

To the credit of Erasmus, it must be said that he strongly condemned

such severity; he knew from his own experience that brutal tutors

ruin many a hopeful lad, and advocated the milder system of teaching,

which he himself followed with so much success. He was wont to

quote the example of Spensippus, who would have pictures of joy and

gladness to be set round his school: and in his tract on education,

quotes with pleasure the story of an English gentleman, who seeing

that his little son was very fond of archery, bought him a bow and

arrows, and painted them with the letters of the Greek alphabet. The

capitals were marked on the butt, and whenever the child had hit a

letter and could tell the name of it, he was rewarded with a cherry.

This was not at all in Colet’s way, and Erasmus tells a frightful

story of the cruelty which he himself witnessed--practised under his

direction. “I once knew a certain theologian,” he says, “who must

needs have masters who were zealous floggers. He esteemed this an

excellent means for subduing all asperity of character, and mastering

the wantonness of youth. Never did he sit down to a repast with his

disciples, but at the end of the meal some one or other of them was

brought out to be flogged; and his cruelty was sometimes exercised on

the innocent, merely to accustom them to stripes. I was once standing

by when he thus called out from dinner a boy of, I should think,

ten years old, who had recently come to the school from his mother.

He began by saying that his mother was a most pious woman, and had

specially recommended the boy to his care, and then that he might

have an opportunity of flogging him, he charged him with I know not

what atrocity, and made a sign to the prefect of the school to give

him a flogging. The latter at once knocked the boy down, and beat him

as if he had committed a sacrilege. The doctor called out several

times, ‘Enough, enough,’ but the savage went on with his barbarity,

till the boy almost swooned. Then turning to us, the doctor quietly

observed that he had not merited any punishment, but that it was done

to humble his spirit. Who would treat his bondslave in such a way?

nay, I may say, who would thus treat his ass?”[347] Though Colet is

not named in this passage, yet he is generally believed to have been

the “theologian” in question, the prefect of discipline being no

other than his usher, Rightwyse.

We gather from Colet’s letters to his friend, that on one point of

opinion they greatly differed, namely, in the view they took of

religious life. Erasmus, when he speaks of monks, forgets his usual

politeness, and descends to a style of which Luther might have been

proud. They are designated as “foul and noxious insects, which

it is a sort of pollution to touch; creatures so detested and so

detestable, that it is regarded as an ill omen to meet one in the

street; dolts and idiots, who think it a mark of consummate piety

not to be able to read; wretched beings, who are distinguished by

a certain obstinate malignity of disposition, and who think that

they are charming the ears of the saints when, with asinine voices,

they bray out their psalms in choir.” One is ashamed to transcribe

such language, and to remember that the greatest scholar of his time

considered it to be wit.

But Colet was of another mind. He condemned the relaxed life led

in many religious houses; but there was a theory of monasticism

which he loved and admired. It was hardly the Catholic theory of

religious life, for Colet’s dream seems to have been to have found

some retreat where he could have spent the close of life with a few

chosen friends of kindred tastes, living and conversing with them

after the manner of the ancient philosophers. He even set on foot

inquiries, to discover if any house suitable for his purpose existed

in Italy or Germany; but finding none to his mind, he built himself

a residence adjoining the Carthusian monastery at Shene, whither he

often retired, and purposed withdrawing there altogether, and giving

up all his public engagements that he might prepare in quiet for his

end. In his last letter to Erasmus, we see that his old interests

were fast losing their hold upon him as he felt the sands of life

running out. His friend had sent him some of Reuchlin’s Cabalistic

works. “O Erasmus,” he replies, “of books and knowledge there is no

end. There is no better thing in this world than a holy life, and

no other way to attain it than by the earnest love and imitation of

Jesus. Wherefore, leaving all wandering paths, this, to the best of

my ability, is what I long for.” He made all his last dispositions,

therefore, bestowing extraordinary care in drawing up his will, in

which there occurs no word suggestive of suffrages for his soul; a

fact which shows, that if he did not condemn the practice of praying

for the dead, he at any rate attached no value to it. Death overtook

him sooner than he anticipated, and in the year 1519 he expired at

his favourite retreat, almost at the moment when Luther was making

his mock submission to the Sovereign Pontiff.

What shall we say of the character of this celebrated man? a strong

and earnest one it was, no doubt; one that loved justice and hated

iniquity, and had a zeal for the interests of God. Erasmus somewhere

speaks of his “passionate admiration for the wonderful majesty of

Christ.” Nor in judging him must we forget that he lived in an age

when worldliness had infected the high places in the Church; and

that, if his denunciation of abuses was often arrogant, there were

plenty of abuses to denounce. Yet granting all this, our readers

will long ago have agreed on their verdict. From such a type of

Catholicism, they will say, in which we see piety without unction,

austerity without sweetness, and an absence--if not of faith--at

least of all its tenderest instincts; from such a form of godliness,

over which the coming spectre of Lutheranism had already projected

somewhat of its baneful shadow, may the schools and scholars of

England be long preserved! Such characters, if we cannot impeach

them of formal heresy, yet indicate a woful wane of faith, and fully

explain the significance of those rules[348] left by St. Ignatius to

his disciples, wherein he taught them how to conform their sentiments

to the sentiments of the Catholic Church. He was not content with

bidding them hold fast to her creeds, but would have them esteem and

speak highly of all her minor practices of devotion. For these, in

the judgment of one of the most sagacious among the saints, are the

pulses by which we count the heart-beatings of the true believer; and

in Colet these were silent. Though he died a Catholic, therefore,

Protestants unanimously claim him as one of their precursors; and

his panegyric, from which we gather all that is known of his life,

was drawn up by Erasmus for the edification of his Lutheran friend,

the notorious Dr. Jonas Jodocus.

The mention of Shene may fitly introduce a younger and more

illustrious scholar, who had received his early education in that

monastery, and who, at the time of Colet’s death, was studying at

Oxford, and was received as a frequent and welcome visitor in the

family circle of Sir Thomas More. Reginald Pole was then a youth

of nineteen, exhibiting both the comely dignity of his Plantagenet

blood, and a promise of intellectual excellence that was not belied

by his after career. From Shene he had passed on to Oxford, and at

Corpus Christi College, under the tuition of Linacre and Latymer,

had thrown himself heart and soul into classical studies. Though he

afterwards in great part laid them aside, in order more exclusively

to devote himself to sacred letters, yet he always retained the style

of a polished Latinist, as all his writings testify. Young as he was,

he had secured the friendship of More, and was often admitted into

the family circle and the happy schoolroom of Chelsea. In a letter to

his daughter Margaret, More speaks of the admiration he had expressed

on reading one of his Latin epistles, and calls him “not so noble by

birth as he is by learning and virtue;” while Pole, on his side, was

wont in after years to boast of the friendship of More and Fisher

as something he valued more highly than the familiarity of all the

princes of Christendom.

The society at this time gathered round the English Court was

extraordinarily brilliant. Besides a throng of native scholars, it

included several illustrious foreigners, such as Ludovicus Vives, the

Spanish Quinctilian, as he was called, who condescended to direct the

education of the Princess Mary. Three queens graced the royal circle,

one of them the consort of Henry, and the other two his widowed

sisters of France and Scotland. The poets and pageant-makers of the

time racked their fancies to find new ways of introducing the Tudor

roses white and red and the rich pomegranates of Arragon (the devices

of the royal dames), and to make the most of a Court illuminated

by three crowned beauties. Erasmus is never weary of praising the

king, the queen, the cardinal, and the bishops; they are all patrons

of letters, the Court is the seat of the Muses, and might vie with

Athens in the days of Pericles. The queen is as virtuous as she is

learned; she daily reads the English Scriptures, spends six hours at

her prayers and kneels all the time without a cushion. The king is a

scholar and a musician; he is devout, moreover, writes very elaborate

Masses in eight parts, and has gone on pilgrimage to Our Lady of

Walsingham, walking barefoot from the town of Barsham; and Erasmus

has gone there too, and has hung up a copy of verses as his offering

at her altar. How artistically he paints the broad green way across

the fields by which the pilgrims approach, and the little chapel

built within the splendid church, in imitation of the Holy House of

Loretto, wherein there is no light save from the tapers that burn

with so delicious an odour, and the walls of which are blazing with

gold and jewels!

Or we are introduced to the “solemn Christmas” kept by the Court at

Richmond or Greenwich, with “revels, disguisings, and banquets royal,

all with great nobleness;” and we observe how the quaint mummings

which found favour at the beginning of the reign are gradually giving

place to “masks, after the manner of Italy, a thing not seen before

in England, with which some were content, but which others that knew

the fashion of it,”[349] appear to have disapproved. Such scenes were

well calculated to dazzle and fascinate a young courtier; but Pole

was proof against them; he showed no hurry either to plunge into the

amusements of his age, or to enter on the brilliant political career

which fortune seemed to open before him, and had hardly appeared at

Court before he solicited from the king a fresh leave of absence.

The six years he had spent at Oxford did not by any means satisfy

his ardour for study, and, with the consent of the king, who

had charged himself with the education of his young kinsman, he

proceeded to Padua, which Erasmus styled the Athens of Europe, and

where students from all countries were eager to resort. Here “the

nobleman of England,” as he was called by the Italians, soon won

golden opinions--from some, for his singular modesty and virtue, from

others, for the graceful acquirements that so well became his royal

birth; and here he first became introduced to Bembo and Sadolet,

with the latter of whom his acquaintance ripened into friendship.

After the fashion of the times, he received a certain number of

humbler scholars into his household, and among these were Longolius,

who records his dislike for frivolous conversation, and Lupset,

afterwards Greek Professor at Oxford. Erasmus, too, was often a

welcome guest when the wanderings of that restless scholar led him to

Padua, and his voluminous correspondence includes many letters to

Pole, who, though totally opposed to his views on religious matters,

was yet unable, like the rest of the world, to shut him out of his

affections.

Meanwhile the breach between the reformers and the Church had

terribly widened, and open war was being waged between the two

parties. Henry VIII. had written his “Defence of the Seven

Sacraments,” and Luther had published his “Reply;” the scurrility

of which had called both More and Fisher into the field as

controversialists. But Erasmus still kept silence. He was on

excellent terms with Luther and Melanchthon, the worthy Dr. Jonas,

and the other Coryphæi of the Reform. He corresponded with them

all, and did them every service in his power at the head of those

German Humanists whose literary labours were directed against the

old-fashioned theologians, while their political intrigues aimed

at winning over the young emperor to their side, or at least at

procuring his neutrality. It is true he regretted that Luther should

openly have broken from the Church, and the excesses of the heretics

offered fair mark for his satire; nevertheless with most of their

views of reform he heartily sympathised. On the other hand, as he was

not ashamed of avowing, he had no intention of dying a martyr for his

principles, neither did he at all contemplate offending the Catholic

sovereigns by whom he was petted and pensioned. He counted on his own

address for enabling him to steer a middle course, to save both his

head and his Court remittances, and earn a good name for moderation.

But on this fair horizon clouds were now about to rise. He received

an official hint from Cuthbert Tonstall that King Henry was surprised

and offended at his silence, and that rumours were even afloat that

he had assisted Luther in the composition of his “Reply.” In vain

did Erasmus protest his innocence; only one course would satisfy the

king. Let him write against Luther, if he wished his sincerity to

be believed; the whole Catholic world expected it of him, and was

scandalised at his delay. But if this did not suit him, he could not

be surprised if his pension from the Court of England were withdrawn.

Thus sorely pressed, Erasmus prepared to obey. But meanwhile, a

whisper of what was going on had reached Luther’s ears, and he wrote

at once, advising his quondam ally to be wise and preserve silence.

Luther, at least, had the merit of being a plain speaker; “If you

take up the cudgels against me,” he says, “you will be beset on both

sides, and must infallibly be worsted. Everybody knows that what

you style moderation, is really duplicity. All I ask is, that you

will stand quietly by and see the play, and not take part in it, and

then I will leave you alone; but if not, you know very well what

you have to expect.” This letter by some means became public, and

Erasmus felt that his last chance was gone. If _now_ he held his

tongue, he should be accused of collusion; so, in pure desperation,

he plunged into the combat, and wrote his treatise on Free Will,

copies of which he was careful to send to all the crowned heads of

Europe. Wonderful credit he took to himself for this achievement,

declaring that he had exposed himself to be stoned to death by the

heretics, but that he gloried in suffering for so good a cause. At

the same time his letters to Melanchthon are couched in the most

pitiful and apologetic strain. He could not help himself; he was a

lost man if he had held his peace; the _figuli Romanenses_ had made

the Catholic sovereigns believe he was a Lutheran; he would have been

ruined if he had refused to write. To Vives he was more explicit.

“I have written a treatise on Free Will,” he says, “but to confess

the truth I lost my own. There my heart dictated one thing, and my

pen wrote another.”[350] However, whether his attack were sham or

earnest mattered little to Luther; it was a declaration of war, and

as such he treated it, replying to it with his usual promptitude, and

with more than his usual grossness. The other leaders of the Reform

likewise gave tongue on the occasion, and denounced the unwilling

controversialist as a Balaam who had been hired to curse Israel.

Poor Erasmus had reaped the just reward of his shuffling policy, and

felt himself in a sad quandary. He knew not whether to advance or

retreat, and either way he had to wade through the mire. He pours out

his vexation in a letter to Pole; in which, however, he is careful

to keep up the tone of a sufferer for the faith. “Luther has written

a huge volume against me,” he says, “in a style one would not use in

addressing the Turk; and so, from the partisan of peace and quiet

which I would fain remain, I am forced to turn gladiator, and, what

is worse, to fight with wild beasts in the arena.”

On his return to England, Pole found a sad and ominous cloud hanging

over the Court which he had left so prosperous and splendid. The

question of the divorce had already been mooted, and the bad success

of the negotiations with Rome had brought about the fall of Wolsey.

Henry was anxious to secure the support of Pole, whose influence

at Rome he foresaw would one day be powerful, and employed his new

favourite, Cromwell, to sound and tempt him. That worthy minister

commenced operations by putting a copy of Machiavel’s works into the

hands of Reginald, who returned it to him with disgust, and contrived

to get leave to retire to Shene, where he took up his residence

in Colet’s old house. Here he remained for two years, carefully

abstaining from taking any part in public affairs, and at the end

of that time asked and obtained leave to proceed for another term

of study to the University of Paris. He was not long suffered to

remain there in peace. The notable scheme of consulting the European

universities and divines, which had been originally proposed by

Wolsey, was warmly taken up by his successors, and royal agents were

now busy in every foreign country, seeking, by bribes and cajolery,

to obtain opinions favourable to the king’s divorce. To the credit

of the English universities it must be said they opposed a stubborn

resistance, and the affirmative declaration sent to the king never

received the votes of the majority.[351] But foreign academies were

found more pliant; it is true the charge for a professor’s conscience

was somewhat exorbitant, but still they had their price, and did not

refuse to be bargained for. In Germany, indeed, Luther’s influence

was powerful enough to prevent his old adversary from receiving any

assistance, but greater success was met with in France and Italy, and

a commission was now sent to Pole, requiring him to gather up the

suffrages of the Paris professors. He contrived to evade the odious

office thus wilily thrust upon him, and was sickened to the heart

by observing the eagerness with which the Humanists came forward in

this disgraceful business. No one was a more active agent than Croke,

the Greek orator, who wrote complacently to the king, detailing the

success which attended his “honourable presents” to the Italian

professors. Richard Pace, too, the successor of Colet, and the holder

of several diplomatic offices, writes to say he has found a man ready

to put the case _either for or against_ the divorce, according to his

Majesty’s pleasure, so as all the divines of England shall not be

able to reply. The facile casuist here alluded to was no other than

Wakefield, the Hebrew professor at Oxford; and, in short, turn where

we will, we find the pedagogues busily engaged in doing very dirty

work at high wages.

Pole was next recalled to England to be tempted with caresses. The

Archbishopric of York, it was hinted, was at his command, if he were

willing to bend to the king’s wishes. His own family were employed to

move his determination, and at last, beset on all sides, he wavered,

and consented to see the king. Henry received him graciously in

the gallery at Whitehall; but when he tried to speak, conscience

gained the day, and, with a faltering voice, instead of protesting

his readiness to serve his Grace in his “secret matter,” he plainly

declared his conviction that the proposed divorce was utterly

unlawful. Though Henry cut him short with a volley of reproaches,

he treated him with more magnanimity than might have been expected.

He did not order him to the Tower, and silenced the officious

courtiers who expressed their disgust at Reginald’s ingratitude,

by the unexpected declaration that he loved him in spite of his

obstinacy.[352] His pension was not withdrawn, and he was suffered

once more to retire abroad; and in 1531 Pole withdrew to Italy, never

again to set foot on the English shores till he landed there a Papal

legate, to reconcile his country, for too brief a space, to the

communion of the Catholic Church.

It is unnecessary to pursue the events of the great tragedy, save in

so far as they affected the career of Pole. In his retreat at Padua,

his heart was torn by the news of each successive step by which the

infatuated king was plunging his country into schism; the rupture

with Rome, the repudiation of Catherine, the marriage with Anne, and

the formal establishment of the royal supremacy. The English Lords

and Commons submitted to all this with wonderful docility, but to

Henry’s vexation he found that his proceedings were daily losing him

the countenance of friends abroad. The Emperor of course, was his

sworn enemy; Francis I. had refused to listen to the explanations of

his ambassadors; Cochlæus, and other grave writers, had drawn the pen

against him; and even Calvin made game of his new-fangled supremacy,

and ridiculed the man who had delivered his country from the primacy

of Peter to saddle it with the primacy of Henry. Erasmus, too, had

withdrawn from a country where it was no longer safe for a man to

have an opinion. He was just then directing his irony against the

Protestants, who had disgusted him with their grossness, and whom he

pronounces a sad set of hypocrites. “People talk of Lutheranism as

a tragic business, but for my part I think it is a regular comedy,

and, like other comedies, the piece always ends with a marriage.”

Elsewhere he says, “We have been stunned long enough with the cry

of _Gospel, Gospel, Gospel_. What we want is Gospel manners. These

Evangelicals love money and pleasure, and despise everything else.”

Henry’s Acts of Parliament, too, seasoned as they were with axe and

fagot, did not suit his notions of moderation; and, besides, just

then Pope Paul III. was making him tempting offers, so that Erasmus

was not at all disposed to take up the gauntlet on behalf of a

prince, against whose conduct all the respectable part of Europe was

protesting. Henry had, therefore, no one to look to out of his own

kingdom save the small German princes and Protestant divines; and it

was a sore humiliation to sue for support to the religionists whom

it was his boast to have defeated in controversy. In this extremity,

his thoughts turned to Pole, who owed him everything, and who, he

could not believe, would ever openly take part against him. Cuthbert

Tonstall, Reginald’s dearest friend, had swallowed the new oath, and

accepted the bishopric of Durham; why should Reginald’s conscience

be more tender? A messenger was, therefore, posted to Padua, with

letters to Pole inviting him to accept the king’s offers of favour,

and write in defence of those royal claims which had been accepted

as law by the English Parliament and Hierarchy.[353] Pole saw that

the time was come to take his part openly and decidedly. He sat

down and counted the cost, and then he took pen in hand and wrote,

not an apology for the supremacy, but his celebrated treatise _De

Unitate Ecclesiastica_ in which he sums up all the acts by which

England has been severed from Catholic communion, fearlessly condemns

the sacrileges of the king, and calls on him to enter on the path

of penance. Whilst thus engaged, terrible tidings reached him: the

axe had fallen at last, and More and Fisher were numbered with the

martyrs; and, with the tears blotting his paper, he gave vent to his

sorrow in that magnificent apostrophe to the memory of his friends,

which he introduces in his Third Book. The treatise was finished in

four months, and despatched to England by a faithful messenger, who

was charged to deliver it into the king’s own hands; and then, fully

aware of the consequences of his determination, Reginald set out for

Rome, whither he had been invited by Paul III. almost immediately on

his accession. His friends entreated him not openly to break with

the king by accepting any preferment from the Pope. The two Houses

of Parliament even sent him a common letter to the same effect; but

before it reached him, Pole was at Rome, and had received from the

new Pontiff the dignity of Cardinal.

Two months later he found himself charged with a dangerous and

difficult mission. The fate of Anne Boleyn had, it was hoped, removed

from the king his worst councillor, and the insurrection of the

northern counties of England bore witness that the people themselves

were still true to the faith. Hopes were, therefore, entertained that

negotiations for a reconciliation might now be opened, and Pole was

accordingly appointed legate north of the Alps, with instructions to

proceed to Flanders, to bring about a peace between France and the

Empire, to announce the Pope’s resolve to call a General Council, and

to seize any occasion that might present itself for confirming the

English Catholics in their faith, and negotiating with the king’s

government. The legation, however, was an utter failure. Henry had

proclaimed the Cardinal a traitor, and set a price on his head; he

had offered to buy him of the Emperor in exchange for a force of

four thousand men; he had so managed matters that the legate was

warned to leave France as quickly as possible, and refused admission

into the imperial territory; the English agents were everywhere

busy endeavouring to procure either his open seizure or his secret

assassination; and in the midst of these multiplied perils Pole

had no support save his own great heart and dauntless courage. His

chaplains and followers were perplexed and terrified. A legate in

those days travelled in state, with his cross borne openly at the

head of his train; but the attendant, whose duty it was to carry

the cross, turned faint-hearted, and suggested the prudence of

concealing these marks of dignity in a hostile country. The last of

the Plantagenets, however, was not the man to quail in the presence

of danger; he calmly took the cross from the hands of the bearer,

and fixing its point firmly in his own stirrup, rode along, thinking

perhaps of St. Thomas, and certainly as ready as he to face the

assassins, and shed his life-blood in the cause of the Church.

A second legation in 1538 proved equally fruitless, and its only

result was the slaughter of every one of Pole’s family on whom Henry

could lay his hands. The Cardinal meanwhile was recalled to Rome,

and appointed to the government of Viterbo, where he heard, in

1541, of the murder of his aged mother, and gave thanks that she,

too, had been deemed worthy to suffer for the faith. His political

engagements had not weaned him from the love of letters, and, amid

his many trials, he found his chief solace, after his exercises of

piety, in the company of his learned friends. Pole entertained very

strong views as to the necessity of restoring a more Christian system

of studies, and laboured hard to bring those around him to the same

mind. Sadolet had just published his “Treatise on Education,” and

Pole addressed him a letter which Erasmus calls worthy of Cicero,

touchingly remonstrating with him for not giving a more prominent

place to Christian theology. Sadolet defends himself by saying

that theology is a part of philosophy, and the perfection of it;

but Pole was not satisfied. It might do well enough, he says, if

your pupil lived in the time of Plato or Aristotle, but a Christian

scholar requires something more than philosophy. Their difference of

opinion, however, was expressed on both sides with equal courtesy and

moderation, and the correspondence between them offers a pleasing

contrast to those acrimonious disputes, in which the scholars of the

last generation had so frequently disgraced themselves.

This was not the only occasion when Pole exerted himself to give a

more decidedly Christian direction to his friend’s studies. Sadolet

had two works on hand; one a treatise in praise of philosophy, the

other a Commentary on St. Paul. He was doubting which to finish

first, and Bembo of course advised the preference to be given to

philosophy. Pole was as great a lover of classical antiquity as

either of them, but at that grievous juncture, when a swarm of

heretics were in the field, it seemed to him a kind of infidelity for

the children of the Church to waste their time and genius on elegant

trifling. His arguments decided Sadolet in favour of St. Paul, and

he afterwards received his friend’s hearty thanks for having thus

determined his choice. “There were not wanting plenty,” writes

Sadolet, “who were ready to give me very different advice, but you

counselled me to embrace studies, the emoluments of which extend to

the other life, and your words have decided me henceforth to devote

myself to sacred literature.”

There was, however, nothing of the narrowness of a zealot in Pole’s

character; he and Contarini were advocates for a mild policy even

with heretics; and his gentle persuasion had a happy success in

recalling many who had been seduced by the new opinions, among

others, the Latin poet Mark Anthony Flaminius. This celebrated man

had been one of his early friends, but had suffered himself to be

won over by the specious arguments of Valdes. Pole invited him to

Viterbo, and, by dint of patience and kindness, restored him to a

better mind, and it was in his house that he afterwards expired, as

Beccadelli expresses it, “like a good Christian.”[354] In the same

spirit he received into his family Lazarus Bonamico, professor of

humanity at Padua, saying that he was worth something better than the

occupation of explaining Virgil, and that the study of theology which

he wished him to embrace, required the whole man. He assisted Bembo

also in his last moments, and his house was the refuge of all those

English Catholics, who, like himself, preferred exile to apostasy.

Among these, one is glad to reckon George, the son of our old

friend William Lily, whom he took under his protection, and who,

alter writing some learned works, and contributing to the history

of Paulus Jovius, returned with Pole to England in Queen Mary’s

days, and died a prebendary of Canterbury. And so we will leave our

great countryman for a time doing the work of an apostle among the

scholars of his day, to find him again at the head of that momentous

council, which owed to his influence not a few of its most important

measures of reform. Before following him there, we have to take our

farewell of the English schools, whose destinies from this time

form a page in the history of sacrilege. The first royal visitation

of the universities, held in virtue of King Henry’s newly-claimed

supremacy, took place in 1535, when the further study of scholastic

philosophy and canon law were prohibited. For a brief space the

attempt was made to fill up the hiatus with an extra quantity of

Greek and profane studies, and then it was that Sir John Cheke

achieved that celebrity at Cambridge which Milton has commemorated

in a sonnet. All the Humanists indeed were not men of equally solid

learning, for Saunders tells us the universities were filled with a

multitude of young orators and poets, who, after celebrating the mock

obsequies of Scotus and St. Thomas, tried, by means of unbecoming

comedies, songs, and verses, to decoy the unwary into the errors of

the sects, and immorality of life. On the whole, the attempt was a

failure; English scholars were nor yet sufficiently familiarised

with the new learning to give it a very warm reception, and the

exotic Greek studies, like plants that had been overforced, soon

drooped and perished.[355] Canon law and theology, and, above all,

the despised scholastic logic, were precisely the studies in which

Catholic Oxford had most excelled; and their abolition was tantamount

to the formal closing of her schools. And during the reign of Edward

VI. the divinity school was actually closed, and in spite of every

effort on the part of the Humanists, the decay became so universal

that all the other schools, except two, were shut up, or let out

to laundresses and glovers. “There, where Minerva formerly sat as

regent,” says Wood, “was nothing during all the reign of King Edward

but wretched solitariness; nothing but a dead silence prevailed.”

The dissolution of the monasteries, moreover, had ruined upwards

of a hundred flourishing academies, which served as feeders to the

universities, the place of which was very imperfectly filled by King

Edward’s grammar-schools. Thus, a large proportion of those who had

formerly followed the pursuit of learning, now betook themselves to

mechanical trades, and the schools literally died out for want of

scholars. In 1550 we find Roger Ascham, a strenuous adherent of the

new worship, lamenting over the decay of the old grammar-schools, and

predicting in consequence the speedy extinction of the universities:

whilst Latimer about the same time is found declaring that there were

at least ten thousand fewer students in the kingdom than might have

been found twenty years previously.

The ruin of learning at the universities was completed by the

bigotry of those foreign Protestant divines, who, in King Edward’s

time, were brought over from Germany and Switzerland to fill up the

professorships which no English scholar could be found to accept

under the new ecclesiastical régime. Among these the celebrated

Peter Vermigli, better known by the name of Peter Martyr, was indeed

a good scholar, but the greater number of his colleagues were not

only without learning, but, following in the footsteps of Luther,

they proclaimed war against it as “a human thing.” They voted the

academical degrees “Antichristian,” and showed their horror of all

the vain things fondly invented by Popery, not only by the breaking

of images, but by the burning of libraries. Duke Humphrey’s precious

collection of classical authors was condemned to the flames; the

exquisite illuminations of his costly volumes possibly suggesting the

notion that they must be of the nature of Roman service books. When

Sir Thomas Bodley took up his residence at Oxford, towards the end

of Elizabeth’s reign, he informs us that he found the libraries “in

every part wasted and ruined,” and it is well known that the splendid

foundation which we owe to his munificence, was but a collection of

such poor fragments as had accidentally escaped destruction.

Of the material sacrileges committed by King Edward’s visitors it

is unnecessary here to speak, and without necessity one would not

willingly enter on the sorrowful tale. The shell of the universities

was left, to be gradually informed with a new spirit, a new learning,

a new life; which, as years rolled on, became no longer new, and so

gradually grew to be regarded by Englishmen as venerable. Oxford,

with her thousand Catholic memories, became in process of time the

stronghold of Anglican Church Toryism; a pigmy destiny, indeed, for

her who had been founded by the hands of saints, yet one with which,

on the whole, she has showed herself amply satisfied. The Royal

Supremacy, which had first cut down her fair proportions, clung to

her like the poisoned garment of Nessus, but though it sometimes

galled her, she made the most (as was fitting) of her solitary dogma,

and, in a memorable moment of her history, proclaimed fidelity to it

in its extremest form to be “the badge of the Church of England.”

Here, then, we will bid farewell to Oxford; to those venerable walls

round which there still hang shadows of the past, out of which alas!

too many build up an unsubstantial cloudland, with the gorgeous

beauty of which they rest content. The Catholic, while he feels the

power which even such phantoms of the old faith exercise over the

heart, knows well enough that he does but gaze on

The loveliness of death

That parts not quite with parting breath.

He reads her ancient motto, and can but pray that a beam of the True

Light may one day again illuminate her, and that she, over whose

beautiful places the fire has passed, may once more sing, according

to the days of her youth, “_Dominus Illuminatio mea_.”

_CHAPTER XXIV._

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

When the conclave of October 13, 1534, announced the election

of Cardinal Alexander Farnese as successor to Clement VII., few

men probably anticipated what would be the character of the new

pontificate. The antecedents of Paul III. appeared to link him with

what may be called the Conservative party of the day. He had been a

pupil of Pomponius Lætus, had been raised to the purple by Alexander

VI., had grown up in the luxurious atmosphere of Leo’s Court, and

in his early youth, before he embraced the ecclesiastical state,

had not escaped the worldly infection which clung to the literary

circles among which he mixed. Men of letters indeed might naturally

look for encouragement from the friend of Sadolet, the correspondent

of Erasmus, and the elegant commentator on Cicero, but few expected

to find in him the uncompromising champion of ecclesiastical reform.

Yet such he soon proved himself. One fault alone was charged to

his administration, the promotion of relatives whose subsequent

misconduct brought scandal on the Church, and anguish to his own

heart. But in other respects his favour was bestowed on precisely

those who were best qualified to forward the interests of religion.

He filled the sacred college with men worthy of the purple; Pole,

Fisher, Caraffa, Contarini, Sadolet, Aleander, and Cortese, were

all cardinals of his nomination. In his love of art and poetry he

was hardly inferior to Leo X., but the thoughts that occupied his

soul as Supreme Head of the Church had a higher and nobler aim than

even the encouragement of letters. To restore peace between France

and the Empire, to keep back the onward progress of the Turks, and

to call a General Council for the purpose of healing the wounds of

the Church, these were the objects he set before him as the work

of his pontificate, and he never rested till he had accomplished

them. Until Charles and Francis had laid down their arms, however,

the Council so loudly demanded by men of all opinions was a simple

impossibility, and ten weary years had to pass before these Christian

princes could be brought to terms. If for a moment they suspended

hostilities, it was only to renew them with greater animosity than

before, and to give the French king an opportunity of covering

himself with infamy by calling to his help the Turkish hordes, and

inviting them to overrun Italy. Whilst Europe was involved in these

broils, it was plain there could be no Council; but at least there

could be the initiatives of reform, and in 1537 Paul III. proved his

earnest desire to begin the work by naming a Commission of cardinals

and other ecclesiastics, whom he charged with the delicate task of

drawing up a statement of those abuses which, in their judgment, most

loudly called for redress.

This Commission was composed of nine men, whose names were equally

illustrious for integrity and learning. They were the cardinals

Contarini, Caraffa, Sadolet, and Pole, together with five other

prelates afterwards raised to the same dignity; namely, Fregoso,

Archbishop of Salerno; Aleander, Archbishop of Brindisi; Ghiberti,

Bishop of Verona; Gregory Cortese, Abbot of Lerins; and Father Thomas

Badia, Master of the Sacred Palace.

Some of these have already been spoken of. Contarini and Aleander

had distinguished themselves by their missions in Germany and their

fruitless efforts to conciliate and win back the misguided Lutherans.

Ghiberti had been associated with Pole in his legations, and was

bound to him by close ties of friendship. He was regarded by St.

Charles Borromeo as the ideal of a Christian bishop, and his portrait

always hung in the saint’s chamber, to urge him, as he said, to

imitate his pastoral career. He was also profoundly learned, and had

set up a printing-press in his episcopal palace, whence issued forth

magnificent editions of the Greek Fathers. Cortese, a Benedictine

abbot, had revived the fame of the old monastery of Lerins, and

restored regular observance in a great number of other houses of his

order. Tiraboschi calls him one of the most elegant writers of his

age, and says that his theological works are free from the least

tincture of scholastic barbarism. Frederic Fregoso was a Hebrew

scholar, and Aleander a learned Orientalist. Not one, in short, of

all the nine could be taunted as a disciple of the retrograde school,

and all had in one way or other taken part in the revival of polite

letters.

Out of the twenty-seven heads to which they reduced their statement

of existing abuses, one only concerns our present subject. The whole

report was indeed of great importance, and furnished the basis on

which were framed many of the decrees of discipline subsequently

promulgated by the Fathers of Trent. But it is the sixteenth article

alone which touches on the subject of university education, which

we will here reproduce as containing both a brief summary and a

sufficient justification of much that has been put forward in the

foregoing pages. After noticing the reforms urgently called for

in the collation to ecclesiastical benefices, the Congregation of

prelates proceed as follows:--

“It is a great and pernicious abuse that in the public schools,

especially of Italy, many philosophers teach impiety. Even in the

churches most impious disputations are held, and if some are of

a pious nature, yet in them sacred things are treated before the

people in a most irreverent manner. We think, therefore, that it

should be pointed out to the bishops, in those places where public

schools exist, that they admonish those who deliver lectures not to

teach impiety to the young, but to manifest to them the weakness

of natural reason in questions appertaining to God, to the recent

origin or eternity of the world, and the like, and that they rather

lead them to piety. Also, that they permit not public disputations

to be held on questions of this nature, nor even on theological

subjects, which certainly in this way lose much in vulgar esteem; but

let disputations be held in private on these matters, and let the

public disputations be on other questions of physics. And the same

thing ought to be enjoined on all other bishops, specially of great

cities where disputations of this sort are wont to be held. And the

same care should be employed about the printing of books, and all

princes should be written to, warning them not to allow books of

all sorts to be printed everywhere in their dominions. And the care

of the matter should be committed to the ordinaries. And whereas it

is now customary to read to boys in the schools the ‘Colloquies’ of

Erasmus,[356] in which there are many things which instil impiety

into inexperienced minds, the reading of this book, and of others of

a similar character, ought to be prohibited.”[357]

This certainly is a most remarkable document. It proceeded not from

a body of “Scotists” and “barbarians,” but from elegant Humanists,

all of them university scholars, whilst some, like Aleander, had

themselves occupied Professors’ chairs. It will be observed that

the evils which they point out in the existing system of education,

and which they indicate as lying at the root of so many prevailing

corruptions, are precisely those the growth of which we have been

watching from the time when the universities replaced the episcopal

and monastic schools. The whole weakness of the Professorial system

is here laid bare; its incitements to vanity, its tendency to

substitute novelties that tickle the ears of a mixed audience for the

teaching of solid truth; the system which had Berengarius and Abelard

for its fittest representatives; which had already produced a goodly

crop of heretics and false teachers, and which, while it extinguished

the old ecclesiastical seminaries, supplied in place of them,

nothing better for the training of the Christian priesthood, than

universities which, in Italy, at least, had grown to be little else

than academies of heathen philosophy. Such a grave and deliberate

declaration, and from such authority, requires no commentary; it was

a candid avowal from the choicest intellects of Christendom, that

three centuries before, a false step had been taken; and a plain and

solemn warning that if the evil results of that step were now to be

remedied, it could only be by returning to the ancient paths.

It was precisely at this time that St. Ignatius and his companions

first appeared in Rome, and submitted to the Holy See the plan for

the foundation of their society. The education of youth[358] is set

forth in the Formula of Approval granted by Paul III. in 1540 as the

first duty embraced by the new Institute, and it is to be observed

that the two patrons who most powerfully interested themselves in

obtaining this approval were both of them members of the above-named

commission, namely, Cardinal Gaspar Contarini, and the Dominican,

Father Thomas Badia. Although the new religious were not at once

able to begin the establishment of colleges, yet the plan of those

afterwards founded was gradually ripening in the sagacious mind

of St. Ignatius, who looked to these institutions as calculated

to oppose the surest bulwarks against the progress of heresy. The

first regular college of the Society was that established at Gandia

in 1546, through the zeal of St. Francis Borgia, third General of

the Society; and the regulations by which it was governed, and

which were embodied in the constitutions, were extended to all the

Jesuit colleges afterwards founded. The studies were to include

theology, both positive and scholastic, as well as grammar, poetry,

rhetoric, and philosophy. The course of philosophy was to last three

years, that of theology four; and the Professors of Philosophy were

enjoined to treat their subject in such a way as to dispose the mind

for the study of theology, instead of setting up faith and reason

in opposition to one another. The theology of St. Thomas, and the

philosophy of Aristotle, were to be followed, except on those points

where the teaching of the latter was opposed to the Catholic faith.

Those points of metaphysics which involved questions depending for

their demonstration on revealed truth, such as free-will, or the

origin of evil, were not to be treated in the course of philosophy,

but to be reserved for that of theology. No classical authors,

whether Greek or Latin, wherein was to be found anything contrary to

good morals, were to be read in the classes until first corrected,

and the students were subjected to rules of discipline which aimed at

forming in them habits of solid piety. It is clear that colleges thus

constituted were exactly fitted to carry out those reforms which Pole

and his colleagues had suggested as being so urgently called for,

and that the system of education thus proposed effectually excluded

the “impious philosophy” which had been nurtured in the academies of

Italy.

Meanwhile the political horizon was gradually growing clearer, and

on the 13th of December 1545, the first session of the long-expected

Council was opened by the three legates nominated by the Pope. They

were the Cardinals del Monte, Cervini, and Pole. The two first

successively filled the chair of St. Peter after Paul III., under

the titles of Julius III. and Marcellus II. Pole held his office

only until the October of the following year, when the state of

his health obliged him to retire from the legation. He nevertheless

continued to be employed in affairs connected with the Council, and

assisted in drawing up the Bull of Reform published by Julius III. in

1550. The exhortation addressed to the Fathers of the Council at the

opening of the second session was composed by him, and the doctrinal

decree on Justification, which defined the faith of the Church on the

point most warmly controverted by the Lutherans, is believed to have

been first sketched out by his pen,[359] and was certainly submitted

by his colleagues to his approval in its complete shape before

publication, he being then detained by sickness at Padua. In 1554

the accession of Queen Mary recalled him to England, where, for the

four remaining years of his life, he was engaged in reconstructing

the shattered constitution of the English Church, and was, of course,

unable to take any active part in the affairs of the Council. But

some of his Synodal Acts anticipated in so remarkable a manner the

Tridentine decrees of discipline that they have been even supposed

to have furnished the model on which the decrees were drawn up. At

any rate, they evince how thoroughly Pole was himself imbued with the

views and principles which guided the Fathers of the Council, and

bear too closely on our subject to be omitted here.

The first act of his primacy, after the formal reconciliation of the

nation to the Holy See, was to summon a Provincial Synod, which met

in Henry VII.’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, and continued to sit

from the November of 1554 to the same month in the ensuing year.

After regulations passed for the remedy of sundry abuses, such as

pluralities and non-residence, and others which aimed at providing

for the instruction of the people, by means of preaching, we come to

the important decrees on the subject of Church seminaries. A return

was made to the ancient ecclesiastical system, and the cathedral

schools were put on a footing which should enable them to train

the future clergy of the diocese. Every cathedral was to maintain,

in its own school, a certain number of boys, in proportion to its

revenues. Those only were to be chosen in whom there seemed to be

tokens of a vocation to the priesthood; they were to be received

about the age of eleven or twelve, rather from the ranks of the

poor than the rich, and were required before admission to know at

least how to read and write. All were to wear the tonsure and the

ecclesiastical habit, to live in common, and to assist daily at the

public office in the cathedral. They were gradually to be admitted to

Holy Orders, at proper intervals. The school was to be placed under

the superintendence of the Dean and Chapter. Other students might

be admitted, who were required to follow the rules of the seminary

in all things. Moreover, all the schools and schoolmasters of the

diocese were placed under the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, and the

books used in these schools were first to be approved by him.[360]

The acts of this synod were sent to Rome, and formally approved by

Pope Paul IV., and there is little doubt that they must have been in

the hands of many of the prelates who assisted at the later sessions

of the Council of Trent.

The next task which presented itself was the restoration of the

universities, which, as we have seen, had sunk during the reign of

Edward VI., into a state of utter decay. Here the Cardinal’s efforts

were nobly seconded by Queen Mary, who re-endowed the Colleges with

such portions of their revenues as had been seized by the Crown,

and at her own charges commenced the rebuilding of the schools. To

restore the ancient theological studies, and place the universities

on their former footing, Nicholas Ormanetti, formerly Vicar-General

to the good prelate Matthew Ghiberti, and now first Datary to the

English Legation, was appointed visitor. The heretical professors

were replaced with learned Catholics, both native and foreign, and

among the latter number were the two Spanish Dominicans, Peter

Soto and Bartholomew Carranza, both of whom had been present as

theologians at some of the sittings of the Council of Trent. By

their influence the scholastic theology was restored at Oxford--a

circumstance which occasioned the charge of _obscurantism_ to be very

unsuitably brought against the Catholic professors, by those who had

been engaged before them in crying down humane learning and burning

Duke Humphrey’s library. Pole certainly was not one to neglect the

cultivation of humane literature, but the restoration of the Divinity

schools of Oxford was just then of more urgent necessity than

anything else, and we could not have blamed the Catholic prelates

if, in their solicitude on this point, they had even allowed the

polite letters to remain for a time uncared for. They did, however,

the very reverse of this, and put such renewed life into the English

schools as inspired Sir Thomas Pope with courage to propose a new

Oxford foundation, for the express purpose of promoting classical

studies. The statutes of Trinity College, Oxford, were submitted

to the approval of Pole, who pleaded strongly for more Greek. Sir

Thomas Pope is represented by some to have resisted this, but his

own letters explain the true state of the case. “I like the purpose

well,” he says, “but I fear the times will not bear it now. I

remember when I was a young scholar at Eton the Greek tongue was

growing apace, but the study of it of late is much decayed.” That

is to say, that the real “obscurantism” had been occasioned, not

by the Spanish Dominicans, but by the Genevese Reformers, who left

it to Pole and his colleagues to undo their mischievous work. In

consequence of the Cardinal’s representations, a Greek lecturer was

appointed at Trinity, and the buildings of old Durham College were

given up to the new foundation, the present library being the very

same originally built to receive the books deposited there by Richard

of Bury.

The death of the queen in 1558, followed sixteen hours later by that

of the Cardinal Primate, put an end to the work of restoration, and

the curtain dropped heavily over the hopes of the English Catholics.

And in what way, it may be asked, did the triumph of Protestantism

affect the schools? “Duns, and his rabble of barbarous questionists”

(to use the language of Ascham) were, of course, put to the rout; but

what was substituted in their place during the golden reign of Queen

Elizabeth? Five years after her accession, we learn from Wood, that

there were only three divines in Oxford judged capable of preaching

the university sermon. The established clergy were recruited from an

illiterate class, who preached on Sundays, and worked at their trades

on week days, some of them being hardly able to sign their names.

Four years later, when Archbishop Parker founded three scholarships

in Cambridge, for the best and ablest scholars to be elected from the

chief schools of Kent and Norfolk, it was found prudent to require no

higher attainments from the candidates than a knowledge of grammar,

“and, if it may be, that they should be able to make a verse.”

And three years later again, we find Horne, bishop of Winchester,

requiring his minor canons every week to get by heart a chapter of

St. Paul’s Epistles in Latin, which task they had to repeat aloud at

the public episcopal visitation. The universities revived in some

degree towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, and yet more under

the early Stuart princes, though it is remarkable how large a number

of the best English scholars of this period, such as Campion and

Crashaw, embraced the Catholic faith. But the free intercommunion

with the mind of Europe, which had been the great intellectual

advantage of these institutions in Catholic times, was now at an

end. Whatever scholarship they fostered was henceforth stamped with

a certain character of narrow nationality; their very Latinity

became Anglicised in its pronunciation, and thus the Latin language

ceased to be to English scholars what it was, and still is, to those

of Catholic academies--a medium of intercourse between educated

men. Among those Englishmen who have distinguished themselves

in the ranks of science and literature since the Reformation, a

very large proportion have not been university scholars, and our

two philosophers of greatest note, Bacon and Locke, so far from

acknowledging any obligations to their university training, avowedly

despised, and set themselves to make others despise, the academic

system of education.

It remains for us to speak of the decrees affecting the question of

ecclesiastical education passed in the later sessions of the Council

of Trent. The wars and political intrigues of that troublous time

caused so many interruptions in the sittings of the Council that they

were not finally closed until eighteen years from the date of their

first opening.

Few, comparatively, of those who had taken part in the first

sessions, assisted at the three last held in the year 1563, under

the presidency of five cardinal legates.[361] Of the three who had

presided at the opening of the Council, two had been successively

raised to the Chair of St. Peter, and all had passed to a better

life. Not one survived of those nine Cardinals who had sat in Paul

III.’s Congregation of Reform. But the new generation which had

arisen in their place were animated with the same spirit, or, if

there were any difference to be noticed, it lay, perhaps, in the

fact, that the deliberations of those eighteen years had supplied

them with fuller light, and deepened their desire for the restoration

of ecclesiastical discipline. The very troubles of the times had

co-operated in the development of a strong Christian reaction against

the Paganism of the last half century; and many prelates had not

waited for the close of the Council before instituting a vigorous

reform of abuses in their own dioceses. Thus the church of Verona

under Matthew Ghiberti had become a model of discipline, and in

Portugal the celebrated Bartholomew of the Martyrs, Archbishop of

Braga, had set the example of exact observance of the canons, in the

government of his large diocese. Among the other means he had adopted

for the reform of his clergy, was the establishment of a sort of

seminary in his own palace, which he endowed out of his episcopal

revenues, appointing as scholasticus a religious of his order. The

archbishop sat in the later sessions of the Council, and took a

very prominent part in its deliberations. Again, the establishment

of the Jesuit colleges, specially the German college in Rome, and

the extraordinary success which had attended the labours of the

Blessed Peter Canisius, in restoring Catholicism in Germany, had

poured a flood of light on the whole subject of educational reform.

Canisius assisted at the sittings of the Council in 1547 and again

in 1562, and even when absent his opinion was continually consulted

by Cardinal Hosius and the other legates. Reform was now not a

theory, but a fact. In Aichstadt, the old diocese of St. Wilibald,

where heresy and irreligion, had, as it seemed, firmly established

themselves, the university was purged of the evil leaven, and the

faith had revived in all its fervour. In Vienna, in spite of the

protection of the Government, religion had so rapidly declined under

the infection of the Lutheran doctrines, that for twenty years not

a single candidate for holy orders had presented himself. Parishes

were left without pastors, the sacraments were neglected, and

through timidity and human respect the Catholic clergy opposed but

a faint resistance to the encroachments of the heretics. But under

the direction of Canisius the university was restored, a college

was founded for the education of youth, and public catechisms were

instituted, which effected a change little short of miraculous, and

the same scenes were to be witnessed in the other cities of Germany.

The Fathers, therefore, who assembled at the twenty-seventh session

of the Council of Trent had facts as well as principles before them,

indicating a sound system of ecclesiastical education as the measure

best calculated to remedy the evils which afflicted the Church.

In earlier sessions the old canons had been confirmed requiring

cathedrals to maintain a theologian and grammar-master for the

instruction of the younger clergy, but this law fell very far short

of what was needed, and its frequent renewal by former Councils does

not appear to have been attended with much result. What the Church

had possessed in former ages, and what she now desired to restore,

were not mere theological classes, but rather nurseries, in which

her clergy could be trained in ecclesiastical discipline as well as

supplied with the learning proper to their state. Such seminaries

had existed before the rise of the universities; they were now to

reappear, and it was with unanimous consent, accompanied with an

emotion of grateful joy not easy to express, that the Fathers passed

that decree which has been called the practical _résumé_ of the

whole Council. It forms the eighteenth chapter of the twenty-seventh

session, and its provisions are briefly as follows:--

Every cathedral or metropolitan church is bound, according to its

means, to maintain a certain number of youths belonging to the city

or diocese in some suitable college, who shall then be trained for

the ecclesiastical state. They are to be at least twelve years old,

and chosen from those who give hopes of their being eventually fit

for the priesthood. The Holy Council desires that a “preference be

given to the children of poor parents,” though the rich are not to

be excluded. The college, which is to be “a perpetual seminary for

the service of God,” is entirely under the direction of the bishop,

who is to be assisted by two canons chosen by himself. The students,

on their entrance, are to wear the tonsure and ecclesiastical habit;

to learn grammar, church music, the ecclesiastical computation, and

the other liberal arts; but they are specially to apply themselves

to the study of the Scriptures, and all that appertains to the right

administration of the Sacraments. The bishop, or the visitors whom

he appoints, are to watch over the maintenance of good discipline

among them, and to take all proper means for the encouragement of

piety and virtue. The seminary is to be maintained by a tax on all

the benefices in the diocese. If in any province the dioceses are

too poor each to maintain its own seminary, the Provincial synod may

establish one attached to the metropolitan church for the general use

of all churches of the diocese; or, again, if a diocese be very large

and populous, the bishop may, if necessary, establish in it more

than one seminary. It belongs to the bishop to appoint or remove the

scholasticus, and no person is to be appointed who is not a doctor or

licentiate in theology or canon law. The bishop also has the right

of prescribing what studies are to be pursued by the seminarists,

according as he may think proper.[362]

So universal was the satisfaction caused by this decree, that many

prelates hesitated not to declare, that if no other good were to

result from the labours of the Council, this alone would compensate

to them for all their fatigues and sacrifices. They regarded such

a reform as was here provided, as the only efficacious means of

restoring ecclesiastical discipline, well knowing that in every state

and government, as are the heads, so are the members, and that the

character of a people depends on that of their teachers.[363]

It will be observed that in this famous decree there is no allusion

to the universities as in any way regarded as nurseries of the

clergy. Canons for their reform were passed in the twenty-fifth

session,[364] but not a word was said connecting them in any way with

the proposed seminaries. It is not even recommended that seminaries

should be established in the vicinity of universities where these

already existed, though at that time universities were far more

numerous than now, every province almost possessing one in its

territory; but it is distinctly laid down, that they are to form a

part of the cathedral establishment, and, where it can conveniently

be done, that they be erected in the cathedral city of the diocese.

The radical idea of the seminary is that of its being _the bishop’s

school_,[365] formed under his eye, and subject to his control--an

idea which is manifestly totally inconsistent with the plan of a

university. So strictly is this the case, that where colleges have

since been founded (as at Rome) for ecclesiastical students of

different nations, which of course could not be placed under the

jurisdiction of their own bishops, these colleges are rarely given

the name of seminaries, the nature of such institutions, properly

so-called, requiring them to be subject to the canonical authority of

their own Ordinary. Universities were not abolished or condemned, or

even discountenanced, by the Fathers of Trent: they were reformed,

indeed, and laws were passed requiring all masters and doctors

to engage by oath, at the beginning of each year, to explain the

Catholic faith according to the canons of the Council, and obliging

visitors to institute the necessary corrections of discipline. But

universities, when doing their own proper work, continued to receive

the same encouragement as before; and even in our own time, we have

witnessed new ones established, at the express recommendation of the

Sovereign Pontiff, to the end that the Catholic youth of Belgium

and Ireland might enjoy the same advantages for following a course

of liberal studies as were at the command of the uncatholic world

around them.[366] But other schools than those of the world were

to be provided for those who were to minister divine things, that

they might be “_wholly in them_, and that their profiting might be

manifest to all.”[367] Them the world was not to touch; the smell

of the fire was not to pass on them; from childhood they were to be

taken out of it, and fashioned after another model, signed and set

apart as “holy to the Lord.” Their consecration was not to be the

change of a moment, but the formation of a life; and for ever they

were to be preserved from what even the heathen poet bewailed as “the

intolerable calamity of yielding to what is base,” and to enjoy that

which he declares should be the object of all men’s prayers,--to

dwell in those sacred temples where “nature and the law of the place

should both conspire to present us in innocence to the Deity.”[368]

Besides the important decrees already referred to, the reform of

education was encouraged by other provisions of the Council of

Trent, in which we recognise the same solicitude for restoring the

Christian spirit, and abolishing the corrupt Paganism which had crept

into its place. The Tridentine Fathers had something to say on the

matter of art. The object of pictures and images, is, they remind

us, to instruct the people, and recall to them the mysteries of the

Faith; therefore everything profane and indecorous is to be avoided

in the House of God, and the beauty that is represented must be that

alone which savours of holiness. Nor was it to be supposed that

they could be silent on the subject of that ecclesiastical chant,

which from the very infancy of the Christian schools had taken its

place by the side of grammar. The Gregorian chant had by this time

all but disappeared in the greater number of churches, and had been

replaced by orchestral music of the most profane and unsuitable

description. Against this abuse, which had been growing for upwards

of two centuries, Popes and Councils had uniformly protested, but

with little fruit. The Fathers of Trent seriously contemplated

prohibiting the use of instrumental music altogether, but at the

earnest representations of the Emperor Ferdinand, they contented

themselves with prescribing the abuses introduced by the musical

professors,[369] and making the study of the plain-song of the Church

one of the indispensable studies of the new seminaries. They number

among the duties of those promoted to cathedral canonries that they

should “reverently, distinctly, and devoutly praise the name of God

in hymns and canticles in the choir appointed for psalmody;” and

require the Provincial synods to regulate the proper way of singing

and chanting the divine office. And the various Provincial councils

and synods held to promulgate the Tridentine decrees, failed not to

enforce the same salutary provisions, as that of Toledo, in 1566,

which forbade those noisy exhibitions wherein the sense of the words

is buried under the confusion of voices.[370]

The projected reforms had been very warmly urged on the Fathers by

St. Charles Borromeo in his letters from Rome. The friend of Pole

and of St Ignatius, he had watched with lively interest the success

of the German college, and in his twenty-third year had already put

his hand to the work of educational reform, by giving up the Borromeo

palace at Pavia, for the purpose of a college which he founded out

of his own revenues. When in the July of 1563, therefore, letters

from Trent arrived in Rome notifying to the Holy Father the decree

which had been passed, and soliciting his confirmation of the same,

St. Charles earnestly supported the petition of the Legates, and had

the happiness of conveying to them the warm approval of his Holiness,

and his promise that the confirmation should be published with the

least possible delay, and that he himself would be the first to carry

it into execution. Accordingly, on the 18th of August following he

convoked the Cardinals to deliberate with them on the subject. The

foundation of seminaries in all the dioceses of the Roman State was

at once determined on; 6000 scudi were assigned for the purpose by

the Pope, and a Commission of Cardinals, of whom St. Charles was one,

was appointed to carry the resolution into effect.

Thanks to the exertions of St. Charles, the solemn confirmation of

the Canons of Trent was not long delayed. In a consistory held on

the 30th of December, Pius IV, addressed a moving discourse to the

assembled Cardinals, including several who had recently returned from

the Council, in which, while declaring his firm resolve to enforce

every one of the reforms which had been therein recommended, he

took special notice of the decree on seminaries, which he praised

as having been suggested by the “special inspiration of God,”[371]

declaring again that he desired to be the first who should put his

hand to so blessed a work. The confirmation of the Tridentine Canons

followed on the 26th of January 1564, and on the 15th of April the

same year, in a consistory which met in the Hall of Constantine,

plans were proposed for the foundation of the Roman Seminary, the

care of which was committed to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus.

Nor was it at Rome alone that the decree of the Council was thus

eagerly and promptly carried out. The first act of Bartholomew of

the Martyrs, on returning to his diocese, was to institute measures

for the establishment of a seminary, in precise conformity to the

prescribed canons. He accordingly summoned his chapter and laid

before them the urgency of the business; giving them a noble example

by his own munificent contribution to the necessary expenses. As it

was an undertaking involving a question of finances, there were not

wanting those who murmured at the idea of a compulsory taxation, but

the prudence and moderation of the archbishop prevailed over every

difficulty, and at the end of six months he had the satisfaction of

seeing accommodation provided for sixty students, and of opening the

first seminary founded in Portugal. This appears to have been in

the year 1565. In the same year Daniel, the worthy successor of St.

Boniface in the See of Mentz, commenced the foundation of the first

episcopal seminary of Germany, which he appropriately dedicated to

our great English apostle, and placed under the direction of the

Jesuits. The Provincial Councils, held at Salzburg and Toledo in

1569, decreed the establishment of provincial seminaries, and, not to

multiply examples, we have but to turn to the correspondence of St.

Pius V. to see how rapidly this great work was taken up throughout

every part of Christendom, and how energetically it was encouraged by

the Sovereign Pontiff himself.

One Saint, however, and one diocese, stands out pre-eminent in the

history of Church seminaries. St. Charles Borromeo had protected the

design in its infancy, and he lived to give the Church a perfect

model of its practical realisation. Appointed to the archbishopric

of Milan when only in his twenty-second year, St. Charles found it

impossible for several years to obtain leave from Pope Pius IV.

to withdraw from Rome and devote himself to his pastoral cares.

Nevertheless, he never ceased to occupy himself with plans for

its benefit, and sought the counsel of every one whom he deemed

best able to instruct him in the duties of government. One of the

friends whose advice he most highly esteemed was Bartholomew of the

Martyrs; another was one whose name, if less famous than that of the

great Archbishop of Braga, has a peculiar interest to the English

reader--it was the good priest, Nicholas Ormanetti. This saintly

ecclesiastic had acted as Vicar-General to Matthew Ghiberti, and

assisted in the reforms which that zealous prelate had instituted

in his diocese. He had afterwards been appointed first Datary under

Cardinal Pole to the English Legation, and as we have seen, had been

named by him visitor of the English universities. He continued to

act as confidential adviser to our last Archbishop of Canterbury up

to the time of his death, when he left England and attended several

sessions of the Council of Trent.[372] After this he retired to a

humble country parish in the diocese of Verona, where he busied

himself with his parochial duties as quietly and happily as if he

had never exercised a more weighty charge. From this obscurity he was

drawn by St. Charles, who conjured Navagerio, now Bishop of Verona,

to send Ormanetti to him at Rome, that he might enjoy the benefit

of his counsels. He received the humble Curé with extraordinary

respect, and for weeks, to the amazement of the Roman courtiers, he

was closeted day after day with a man whom nobody knew, and nobody

thought worth knowing, and whose exterior was altogether poor and

unpretending. In these long conferences every point of pastoral

discipline was gravely and deliberately discussed, and the whole

plan of the future government of Milan moulded, as it were, into

shape. St. Charles listened eagerly to the account which Ormanetti

gave of the views and methods of government which had been adopted

by the two men whose example and maxims he most venerated, Ghiberti

and Reginald Pole. They consulted together on the fittest method of

executing the Tridentine decrees, and specially on the formation of

seminaries, and the holding of diocesan synods. And these measures

being thus concerted, Ormanetti was despatched to Milan to discharge

the office of Vicar-General until St. Charles should himself be able

to assume the government of his diocese. Poor Ormanetti, however,

found his new dignity beset with thorns, and the contradictions

he had to endure from the clergy who would not endure the name of

reform, moved St. Charles to make such renewed entreaties that he

might repair himself to his diocese, that he at last obtained from

the Pope the desired permission, and set out for Milan in 1565, where

he almost immediately held his first Provincial Synod. He commenced

the visitation of his diocese in the following year, and in spite of

the overwhelming labour which was thus imposed on him, found time to

begin a series of educational establishments such as never before, we

may confidently affirm, owed their existence to any single founder.

“Reform education,” said the sagacious Leibnitz, “and you will have

reformed the world.” And it was on this principle that St. Charles

applied himself to the task of reforming, not the world indeed, but

a vast province, in which doctrine and discipline had alike fallen

into decay. To begin with his foundations for seculars, which were

very numerous, the Borromeo College, dedicated to St. Justina, of

which mention has been already made, had been planned by him while

a student at Pavia, where his own observation of the disorders

prevalent there moved him to make larger provision for the protection

of his fellow-students. In 1572 he founded at Milan the College of

St. Fidelis, in which Humane Literature and all the higher branches

of study were taught, and which was more particularly intended for

the benefit of poor scholars. A second college was in the following

year attached to the church of St. John the Evangelist, for the

education of noble youths. It was under the care of the Oblates of

St. Ambrose, and was commonly known as the College of Nobles. St.

Charles himself drew up the rules both for the masters and scholars.

He marked the time to be assigned to prayer, reading, and study, and

established such a discipline as was calculated to form a character

of solid piety in the most influential classes of the laity. Next

to virtue and learning he desired to see his noble scholars trained

in habits of Christian courtesy, and was accustomed to insist much

on the importance of good manners. He often visited the school

in person, examined the boys at their tasks, and addressed them

some brief religious instructions. Every year, at the close of the

studies, he attended their public literary exercises, and distributed

prizes with his own hand; and so solicitous was he to perfect this

establishment, that he engaged Cardinal Sylvius Antonianus, his

former secretary and a man of rare learning, to write a work on

the education of the higher classes, for the guidance of those who

taught in his College of Nobles. Besides these colleges, he founded

others at Arona, Lucerne, and Fribourg, as well as the admirable

Swiss college established at Milan, for the education of young Swiss

ecclesiastics, which became afterwards the great means of upholding

religion in the Catholic cantons.

For the clergy of his own province he founded no fewer than six

seminaries--three in his cathedral city, and three in other parts of

the diocese. It must be remembered that the giant evil with which

St. Charles had to struggle was a slothful and corrupt clergy: the

salt had lost its savour, and had to be salted anew. The whole face

of the diocese had to be changed; and such a change demanded a body

of skilful workmen. To create these was his first care, and with

the sagacity of a mind illuminated with something higher than mere

human prudence, he perceived at once that an undertaking so vast as

the creation of a new body of clergy, and the reform of the old one,

could only be grasped by division. He had to classify his work in

order to master it, and in this lay the secret of his success.

His first and principal seminary was attached to his cathedral

church, and was intended to receive 150 of the most promising

candidates for the ecclesiastical state. In this greater seminary

dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the students went through a

regular course of philosophy, theology, and canon law.[373] But the

second seminary, called the _Canonica_, which was intended for youths

of less ability, who from their good dispositions, nevertheless

promised to make useful parish priests, nothing more was required

than a course of instruction on moral theology, Scripture, the

Catechism of the Council of Trent, and the rubrics and ceremonies of

the Church. A third seminary in the city was set apart to receive

such priests as, either from ignorance or negligence, were found

unfit to discharge their sacred duties, and were placed here for a

time to renew their ecclesiastical spirit, and acquire the learning

necessary for their state. These city seminaries received altogether

about 300 students--a number quite inadequate to supply the wants of

the diocese. Three others were, therefore, added in the different

deaneries, and these were intended as nurseries to those at Milan.

In them were received youths of all ages and ranks of society,

principally those of the poorer classes, who, when properly prepared,

were passed on into the higher schools, all being dependent on the

great seminary of St. John the Baptist as their head.

At first the archbishop supported these establishments at his private

charge, but he was at length obliged to have recourse to the plan

of taxation laid down by the Council of Trent, though this was only

continued until a permanent endowment had been secured. The rules

for their government he drew up himself, placing the care of their

temporal affairs in the hands of four of his clergy, chosen by

himself.

Every student on entering was required to make a spiritual retreat

under the director of the seminary, and a general retreat was made

yearly by all before the opening of the classes. The great object

aimed at in every regulation was to train the subjects in the

spiritual life, and to supply them with both the learning and the

habits proper to their state. The care and personal supervision

which the archbishop bestowed on his seminarists, whom he used to

call “the restorers of his diocese,” were rather such as might

have been expected from a father than a superior, and one whose

time was never at his own command. There were few days that he did

not visit the seminary, which occupied one side of his cathedral

quadrangle; it was his wish to receive all new-comers in person,

that he might examine their vocation himself; and when once he had

seen and conversed with them, each one had a peculiar place in his

memory, and became a separate object of his paternal care. Twice a

year he made a visitation of his seminaries, and held an examination

of all the classes. On such occasions he determined those who were

to be promoted to higher classes, and when the course of study was

finished, assigned them offices and benefices, according to the

ability of each. These visitations lasted a fortnight, besides other

shorter ones which he made in the course of the year. One result of

the extreme solicitude he bestowed on the spiritual training of his

disciples was not altogether such as he had anticipated: so many of

his priests evinced an inclination to embrace the religious life,

that he had to solicit from Pope Clement XIII. that some means might

be adopted for keeping them for the service of the diocese;[374]

for every religious order and every bishop were eager to obtain

subjects who had been educated in a seminary of St. Charles. On the

other hand, detractors were not wanting who busied themselves in

representing these colleges as prisons, in which the unhappy students

were worn to death by prayers, watchings, and austerities, by which

means they succeeded in frightening away some who were about to

enter. But the seminarists had but to show themselves in the streets

of Milan to dispel these malicious rumours; their countenances and

their whole deportment being marked with a certain character of peace

and joy, that was recognised as the effect of that holy discipline

under which the whole interior and exterior man was being formed anew.

St. Charles had now provided for the education of his clergy and

seculars of the upper ranks, but he did not stop there; he had

thought also for the children of the poor; and his plans on this

point were formed when he was still at the Court of Rome, presiding

over the brilliant academy of learned men which he had formed in

the palace of the Pope, and taking part in the erudite conference

of the _Noctes Vaticanæ_. Among the instructions which he gave to

his Vicar-General, Ormanetti, the establishment of poor schools

for teaching the Christian doctrine held a prominent place, and in

his first Provincial Synod he made a special decree obliging his

curates to assemble the children of each parish for catechism on

Sundays and other festivals. By his exhortations he moved a greater

number of pious persons, of both sexes, to interest themselves in

the good work, so that at the appointed hour the churches of Milan

were crowded with catechists and their classes, and it was the

good archbishop’s recreation, to go from one church to another,

encouraging teachers and learners with his presence and his gracious

words. Before he died there was not a parish in his diocese, however

remote, which had not its school; and whereas before his time it was

common enough to meet with persons of advanced age who scarcely knew

the Our Father and the Hail Mary correctly, it was now as common

to find children of ten or twelve perfectly instructed in their

religion. The schools of the diocese were at last entirely placed

under the care of the Oblates of St. Ambrose, that congregation which

had been created by St. Charles, and which he employed as a kind of

spiritual militia for carrying out all his charitable designs. The

discipline established in the poor schools of Milan by their means

was the admiration of every stranger, and the extent of their labours

may be estimated from the fact, that at the death of the archbishop

there existed in his diocese seven hundred and forty poor schools,

two hundred and seventy-three superintending officers, and seventeen

hundred and twenty-six others acting under their orders, having under

their care no fewer than 40,098 scholars.

* * * * *

Here, then, we may fitly close our studies of the Christian schools.

We have watched them in their infancy springing up under the shadow

of the cloister, and having traced them through their varied fortunes

of good and ill, we leave them at the moment when the episcopacy

was recovering its ancient jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical

seminaries, and when a vast majority of the secular schools of

Catholic Christendom were passing into the hands of a great religious

order, raised up, as it would seem, with the special design of

consolidating anew a system of Christian education. Did we need a

token that the reforms of the sixteenth century were truly the work

of God, we should find it in that deadly hostility which the enemies

of religion, and the rulers of the world, have never ceased to

exhibit against the seminaries of the Church and the colleges of her

religious orders. And this, not in Protestant countries alone, but

under nominally Catholic Governments, where heretical impieties have

been excluded, only, as it would seem, that there might be set up the

odious idol of the State.

For two centuries at least, education has been the battle-ground of

the Church, and the battle is not yet fought out and finished. In

France, in Belgium, in Germany, and in Switzerland, infidelity has

triumphed exactly in proportion as it has succeeded in substituting

an Anti-Christian State system of education for the system of the

Church, and has never done its work more surely than when its

agents have been philosophic universities, and ministers of public

instruction.

For us in England, who, by a strange anomaly enjoy a freedom denied

to many a Catholic land, and who are called on in one way or other

to take part in the reconstruction of so many of our shattered

institutions, the educational annals of the past have imperative

claims on our attention. It is not for a writer to point the moral

of his own tale; we can but hope, therefore, that our story, however

rambling and diffuse, may yet have been told with sufficient

clearness for our readers to draw that moral for themselves, and to

resolve that, in so far as they may be called on to lend their aid in

the great work of education, they will take no lower models for their

guidance than those that have been bequeathed them by the saints.

And what a calendar is that which belongs to the Christian schools!

The profession of the teacher, which in our day falls, by choice or

duty, on so vast a number, is irradiated by the light which streams

from ten thousand saintly aureoles. If the work be often wearisome

and seem to promise little hope; if the spirit flag, and, ignorant

of those sweet secrets by which the saints kept fresh their springs

of devotion in a thirsty soil, the teacher too often finds his heart

grow dry with incessant labour of the head; if pressed on by a busy

age, be he ever tempted to shorten prayer that he may double toil,

forgetful of the example of those who with one hand only did the

work, while with the other they held the sword;[375] if, in short,

the spirit of the world steal in upon him and assault him with its

manifold vexations, what can he do better than turn to those who

have gone before him, and learn from their examples, and invoke their

aid?

And what can we do better than commend these pages to the saints,

under whose patronage they were first undertaken; but chiefly

and above all to those,--too seldom venerated by us, too little

loved,--the saints and martyrs of England? To St. Bede and St.

Aldhelm, therefore, to St. Boniface, and St. Dunstan and St.

Ethelwold; to St. Edmund and St. Richard, and all who with them have

sanctified our cloisters with their prayers and studies,--for were

not the studies of the saints themselves a prayer?--to them in whose

ears the names of our own homes were once sweet household words,

and who, as they listen to the eternal chimes, do not, as we fondly

trust, forget those scenes where, in the days of their sojourning,

they learnt at the springs of heavenly wisdom “the true knowledge of

the things that are;” whose memory has been to us, wandering in the

wilderness, “as the flower of roses in the days of spring, and as the

lilies that grow upon the brink of the waters,”[376]--to our glorious

English Saints we offer these pages as an act of homage due to them

on a thousand grounds, and which, if unworthy of their greatness, may

by its own littleness the better move them to shelter it with their

aid, and may at least bear witness to the grateful love of the least

and humblest of their clients!

INDEX.

Abacus, the, 235, 287, and _note_.

Abbo of Fleury, 221, 248, 249.

Abbo, father to St. Odo, 242.

Abelard, 347, 352.

Abingdon, monastery and school of, 215-217.

Academy, Palatine, of St. Gregory, 58;

of Charlemagne, 128.

---- Florentine, 523.

---- Platonic, 613, 615.

---- Rhenish, 637.

---- Roman, 616, 662, 670.

---- Toulouse, 29.

Adalberon of Metz, 249, 252.

Adalbert of Prague, St., 268.

Adalhard, St., 136.

Adam Marisco, 484.

Adegrim, 240.

Adelaide of Gueldres, St., 192.

Ado of Vienne, St., 159;

his martyrology, 160.

Adrian, Abbot, 66.

Adrian I., Pope, 122, 125.

---- VI., Pope, his education at Louvain, 643;

his election, 666;

and death, 667.

Advice to ladies, 538.

Ædmer, death of, 216.

Ælfric, the homilist and grammarian, 219.

Æneid, the, 42.

Ængus, St., 52.

Æsop, fables of, 181.

Agatho, Pope, his letter, 27.

Agnellus, 483.

Aidan, St., 64.

Alban’s, St., school at, 316, 317.

Albert of York, 85.

Albert the Great, 415;

his writings, 418-422.

Albigenses, the, 407, 442.

Alcala, University of, 649-653.

Alcuin at York, 84.

---- in France, 119, 142.

Aldhelm, St., his studies, 68-70.

Alexander of Toulouse, 410.

Alexander Hales, 475.

---- III., Pope, 364, 365, 393.

Alexandria, 1-3;

its catechetical school, 3-10.

Alfred, King, 195-209.

Alpais, B. of Cudot, 340.

Alphabet, St. Patrick and the Roman, 43.

Amalarius of Metz, 193.

Amauri de Bene, 407.

Ambrose, St., 45, 59.

---- Traversari, 523.

Anastasius, Papal Librarian, 145.

Andreas Ammonius, 683, and _note_.

Angelbert, 136.

Angervyle, Richard, 529;

his library, 530.

Anglo-Saxon language, formation of, 81, 82.

---- grammars, 219.

---- versions of Scripture, 82, 208.

---- studied at Tavistock Abbey, 462.

Anglo-Saxon enigmas, 127.

Annibal Annibaldi, 441, 442.

Anscharius, St., 164-169.

Anselm of Laon, 343, 344.

Anselm, St., 307-315.

“Anthonie Pigs,” 588.

Anthony Woodville, 593, 594.

Antiphonary of St. Gregory, 60, 369.

---- Roman, 122, 173.

Antoninus, St., of Florence, 524.

Apollinaris, Sidonis, St., 2-8.

Apostolic Rule, the, 5, 13.

Aquileja, St. Paulinus of, 118.

Aquitaine, William of, 242.

Arabian Schools, frequented by medieval scholars, 317.

Arabic language, study of, 440, 441.

Aran, isle of, 45, 46.

Archdeacon, his duties, 12, 401.

Archetrenius, 367.

Aristotle, studied in the Dark Ages, 78, 113, 148, 174, 181, 274,

286.

---- translations of, 274, 407, 441.

---- errors arising from the study of, 360, 406, 408.

---- his Physics prohibited in the schools, 372, 408.

---- commented by Albert the Great, 418;

and by St. Thomas, 428.

Arithmetic, early study of, 69, 131, 179, 185.

---- much advanced by Gerbert, 287, 289.

Arles, St. Hilary of, 33.

Armagh, School of, 44.

---- Richard, Archbishop of, his complaints of the friars, 495.

Art, 444, 445, and _note_, 524.

Arts, the seven liberal, 31, 36, 131, 134, 147, 179, 225, 243, 249,

258, 286, 289, 350, 354.

---- decay of, 356, 375.

---- faculty of, 372.

---- contempt of, shown by Berengarius, 306;

and Abelard, 346.

Asaph, St., 38.

Asser, 199.

Astrology, 69, 79.

Astronomy, 79, 124, 125, 248, 287.

Athelhard of Bath, 320, 321.

Athens, Schools of, 17.

Attraction of gravitation, taught by Vincent of Beauvais, 436.

Augustine, St., of Hippo, 5, 16.

---- ---- of Canterbury, 63.

Aurelian, St., of Aries, 24.

Auricular confession, Colet on, 682, _note_.

Averrhoes, his errors, 406, 407, 428.

Avitus, St., of Vienne, 28.

Aymeric of Placentia, establishes Greek and Oriental studies, 441.

Bachelor’s degree, 372, 412, 414.

Bacon, Roger, 486-488.

Bald men, poem on, 159.

Baldwin of Canterbury, his journey through Wales, 459.

Bangor, 37, 38.

Barbarians, irruptions of the, 230-234.

Barbarous Latin, 496-498.

Barlaam, the Calabrian monk, 520.

Baronial households, 532-540.

Baronius on the Iron Age, 223.

Basil, St., 18, 23, 24.

Basilica of the Octagon, 20.

Basing of St. Alban’s, 485.

Bathildis, Queen, foundress of School of Chelles, 191.

Baume, La, 244, 245.

Beauvais, Vincent of, 434-436.

Bec, foundation of, 306.

---- its schools, 307-313.

Becket, St. Thomas à, 358.

Bede, St., 77-84.

Bembo, Cardinal, 657, 659, 660, 666, 701.

Benchor and its schools, 48, 49.

Benedict, St., 32, 33.

---- ---- of Anian, 135.

---- XI., Pope, 445.

Benedictine Schools, 113, 131.

Benignus, St., disciple of St. Patrick, 43.

Bennet Biscop, St., 66, 72, 76.

Benno, Cardinal, 288.

Bennon, St., of Misnia, his education, 265, 267.

Berengarius, 304-309.

Berington, Mr., quoted, 225, 226, 284, 486, 516.

Bernard, St., 351-355.

Bernardine Colleges, 371, 372, 373.

Bernward, St., of Hildesheim, 263-267.

Bertilla, 191.

Bessarion, Cardinal, 604, 605.

Beverley, St. John of, 67, 77.

Bibiena, Cardinal, author of “Calandra,” 657.

Bible, copies of the entire, 71, 72, 335, 337, 372.

---- Alcuin corrects the whole, 119;

as does Lanfranc, 318.