Ignatius speedily recognised the value of the new recruit. He saw that

he was not a man to be kept long in the lower ranks of the Company, and

gave him more liberty of action than he allowed to his oldest

associates. Faber had sent him grievous reports about the condition of

affairs in Germany. "It is not misinterpretation of Scripture," he

wrote, "not specious arguments, not the Lutherans with their preaching

and persuasions, that have lost so many provinces and towns to the Roman

Church, but the scandalous lives of the ministers of religion." He felt

his helplessness. He was a foreigner, and the Germans did not like

strangers. He could not speak their language, and his Latin gave him a

very limited audience. People and priests looked on him as a spy sent to

report their weaknesses to Rome. When he discoursed about the

_Exercitia_, and endeavoured to induce men to try them, he was accused

of urging a "new religion." When he attempted to form student

associations in connection with the Company, it was said that he was

urging the formation of "conventicles" outside the Church's ordinances.

But the adhesion of Canisius changed all that. He was a German, one of

themselves; his orthodoxy was undisputed; he was an eminent scholar, the

most distinguished of the young masters of the University of Köln, a

leader among its most promising students. Under his guidance the student

associations grew strong; after his example young men offered themselves

for the discipline of the _Exercises_. Loyola saw that he had gained a

powerful assistant. He longed to see him personally at Rome; but he was

so convinced of his practical wisdom that he left it to himself either

to come to Italy or to remain in Germany. Canisius decided to remain.

Affairs at Köln were then in a critical state. The Archbishop-Elector,

Hermann von Wied, favoured the Reformation. He had thoughts of

secularising his Electorate, and if lie succeeded in his design his

example might be followed in another ecclesiastical Electorate, with the

result that the next Emperor would be a Protestant. Canisius organised

the people, the clergy, the University authorities against this, and

succeeded in defeating the designs of the Archbishop. When his work at

Köln was done, he went to Vienna. There he became the confessor and

private adviser of Ferdinand of Austria, administered the affairs of the

diocese of Vienna during a long episcopal interregnum, helped to found

its Jesuit College, and another at Ingolstadt. These Colleges became the

centres of Jesuit influence in Germany, and helped to spread the power

of the Society. But with all this activity it can scarcely be said that

the Company was very powerful in that country until years after the

Council of Trent.

The foreign mission activity of the Jesuits has been often described,

and much of the early progress of the Company has been attributed to the

admiration created by the work of Francis Xavier and his companions.

This was undoubtedly true; but in the earliest times it was the home

mission successes that drew most attention and sympathy; and these have

been too often left unmentioned.

Nothing lay nearer the hearts of devout persons who refused to accept

the Reformation than the condition of the great proportion of the Roman

Catholic priests in all countries, and the depravity of morals among

laity and clergy alike. Ignatius was deeply affected by both scandals,

and had resolved from the first to do his best to cure them. It was this

resolve and the accompanying strenuous endeavours which won Ignatius the

respect and sympathy of all those in Italy who were sighing for a reform

in the moral life of people and clergy, and brought the Company of Jesus

into line with Italian Reformers like Contarini, Ghiberti, and Vittoria

Colonna. His system of Colleges and the whole use he made of education

could have only one result--to give an educated clergy to the Roman

Church. It was a democratic extension of the work of Caraffa and Gaetano

da Thiene. Ignatius had also clear views about the way to produce a

reformation of morals in Rome. Like Luther, he insisted that it must

begin in the individual life, and could not be produced by stringent

legislation; "it must start in the individual, spread to the family, and

then permeate the metropolis." But meanwhile something might be done to

heal the worst running sores of society. Like Luther, Ignatius fastened

on three--the waste of child life, the plague of begging, and what is

called the "social evil"; if his measure of success in dealing with the

evils fell far short of Luther's, the more corrupted condition of Italy

had something to do with his failure.

His first measure of social reform was to gather Roman children, either

orphans or deserted by their parents. They were gratuitously housed,

fed, and taught in a simple fashion, and were instructed in the various

mechanical arts which could enable them to earn a living. In a brief

time, Ignatius had over two hundred boys and girls in his two industrial

schools.

How to cure the plague of beggars which infested all Roman Catholic

countries, a curse for which the teaching of the mediæval Church was

largely responsible,[692] had been a problem studied by Ignatius ever

since his brief visit to his native place in 1535. There he had

attempted to get the town council of Azpeitia to forbid begging within

the bounds of the city, and to support the deserving and helpless poor

at the town's cost. He urged the same policy on the chief men in Rome.

When he failed in his large and public schemes, he attempted to work

them out by means of charitable associations connected with and fostered

by his Society.

Nothing, however, excited the sympathy of Loyola so much as the numbers

and condition of fallen women in all the larger Italian towns. He was

first struck with it in Venice, where he declared that he would

willingly give his life to hinder a day's sin of one of these

unfortunates. The magnitude of the evil in Rome appalled him. He felt

that it was too great for him to meddle with as a whole. Something,

however, he could attempt, and did. In Rome, which swarmed with men

vowed to celibacy simply because they had something to do with the

Church, prostitution was frequently concealed under the cloak of

marriage. Husbands lived by the sinful life of their wives. Deserted

wives also swelled the ranks of unfortunates. Loyola provided homes for

any such as might wish to leave their degrading life. At first they

were simply taken into families whom Ignatius persuaded to receive them.

The numbers of the rescued grew so rapidly that special houses were

needed. Ignatius called them "Martha-Houses." They were in no sense

convents. There was, of course, oversight, but the idea was to provide a

bright home where these women could earn their own living or the greater

part of it. The scheme spread to many of the large Italian towns, and

many ladies were enlisted in the plans to help their fallen sisters.

Loyola's associations to provide ransom for Christian captives among the

Moslems, his attempts to discredit duelling, his institutions for loans

to the poor, can only be alluded to. It was these works of Christian

charity which undoubtedly gained the immediate sympathy for the Company

which awaited it in most lands south of the Alps.

Almost all earlier monastic Orders provided a place for women among

their organisation. An Order of Nuns corresponded to the Order of Monks.

Few founders of monastic Orders have owed so much to women as Ignatius

did. A few ladies of Barcelona were his earliest disciples, were the

first to undergo the discipline of the _Exercises_, then in an imperfect

shape, and encouraged him when he needed it most by their faith in him

and his plans.[693] One of them, Isabella Roser (Rosel, Rosell), a noble

matron, wife of Juan Roser, heard Ignatius deliver one of his first

sermons, and was so impressed by it, that she and her husband invited

him to stay in their house, which he did. She paid all his expenses

while he went to school and college in Spain. She and her friends sent

him large sums of money when he was in Paris. Ignatius could never have

carried out his plans but for her sympathy and assistance. In spite of

all this, Ignatius came early to the conclusion that his Company should

have as little as possible to do with the direction of women's souls

(it took so much time, he complained); that women were too emotional to

endure the whole discipline of the _Exercises_; and that there must

never be Jesuit nuns. The work he meant his Company to do demanded such

constant and strained activity--a Jesuit must stand with only one foot

on the ground, he said, the other must be raised ready to start wherever

he was despatched--that women were unfit for it. That was his firm

resolve, and he was to suffer for it.

In 1539 he had written to Isabella Roser that he hoped God would forget

him if he ever forgot all that she had done for him; and it is probable

that some sentences (unintentional on the part of the writer) had made

the lady, now a widow, believe that she was destined to play the part of

Clara to this Francis. At all events (1543) she came to Rome,

accompanied by two friends bringing with them a large sum of money,

sorely needed by Ignatius to erect his house in Rome for the Professed

of the Four Vows. In return, they asked him to give some time to advise

them in spiritual things. This Ignatius did, but not with the minuteness

nor at the length expected. He declared that the guidance of the souls

of the three ladies for three days cost him more than the oversight of

his whole Society for a month. Then it appeared that Isabella Roser

wanted more. She was a woman of noble gifts, no weak sentimental

enthusiast. She had studied theology widely and profoundly. Her learning

and abilities impressed the Cardinals whom she met and with whom she

talked. She desired Ignatius to create an Order of Jesuit nuns of whom

she should be the head. When he refused there was a great quarrel. She

demanded back the money she had given; and when this was refused, she

raised an action in the Roman courts. She lost her case, and returned

indignant to Spain.[694] Poor Isabella Roser--she was not a derelict,

and so less interesting to a physician of souls; but she needed

comforting like other people. She forgave her old friend, and their

correspondence was renewed. She died the year before Ignatius.

When the Society of Jesus was at the height of its power in the

seventeenth century, another and equally unsuccessful attempt was made

to introduce an Order of Jesuit nuns.

Ignatius died at the age of sixty-five, thirty-five years after his

conversion, and sixteen after his Order had received the apostolic

benediction. His Company had become the most powerful force within the

reanimated Roman Church; it had largely moulded the theology of Trent;

and it seemed to be winning back Germany. It had spread in the swiftest

fashion. Ignatius had seen established twelve Provinces--Portugal,

Castile, Aragon, Andalusia, Italy (Lombardy and Tuscany), Naples,

Sicily, Germany, Flanders, France, Brazil, and the East Indies.

CHAPTER V.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.[695]

§ 1. _The Assembling of the Council._

The General Council, the subject of many negotiations between the

Emperor and the Pope, was at last finally fixed to meet at Trent in

1545.[696] The city was the capital of a small episcopal principality,

its secular overlord was the Count of the Tyrol, whose deputy resided in

the town. It was a frontier place with about a thousand houses,

including four or five fine buildings and a large palace of the Prince

Bishop. It contained several churches, one of which, Santa Maria

Maggiore, was reserved for the meetings of the Council.[697] Its

inhabitants were partly Italian and partly German--the two nationalities

living in separate quarters and retaining their distinctive customs and

dress. It was a small place for such an assembly, and could not furnish

adequate accommodation for the crowd of visitors a General Council

always involved.

The Papal Legates entered Trent in state on the 13th of March (1545).

Heavy showers of rain marred the impressive display. They were received

by the local clergy with enthusiasm, and by the populace with an

absolute indifference. Months passed before the Council was opened. Few

delegates were present when the papal Legates arrived. The

representatives of the Emperor and those of Venice came early; Bishops

arrived in straggling groups during April and May and the months that

followed. The necessary papal Brief did not reach the town till the 11th

of December, and the Council was formally opened on the 13th. The long

leisurely opening was symptomatic of the history of the Council. Its

proceedings were spread over a period of eighteen years:--under Pope

Paul III., 1545-47, including Sessions i. to x.; under Pope Julius III.,

1551-52, including Sessions xi. to xvi.; under Pope Pius IV., 1562-1563,

including Sessions xvii. to xxv.[698]

The Papal Legates were Gian Maria Giocchi, Cardinal del Monte, a Tuscan

who had early entered the service of the Roman Curia, a profound jurist

and a choleric man of fifty-seven (_first_ President); Marcello Cervini,

Cardinal da Santa Croce; and Cardinal Reginald Pole, the Englishman. The

three represented the three tendencies which were apparent in

ecclesiastical Italy. The first belonged to the party which stood by the

old unreformed Curia, and wished no change. Cervini represented the

growing section of the Church, which regarded Cardinal Caraffa as their

leader. They sought eagerly and earnestly a reform in life and

character, especially among the clergy; but refused to make any

concessions in doctrines, ceremonies, or institutions to the

Protestants. They differed from the more reforming Spanish and French

ecclesiastical leaders in their dislike of secular interference, and

believed that the Popes should have more rather than less power.

Reginald Pole was one of those liberal Roman Catholics of whom Cardinal

Contarini was the distinguished leader. He was made a Legate probably to

conciliate his associates. He was a man whom most people liked and

nobody feared--a harmless, pliant tool in the hands of a diplomatist

like Cervini. The new Society of Jesus was represented by Lainez and

Salmeron, who went to the Council with the dignity of papal

theologians--a title which gave them a special standing and influence.

According to the arrangement come to between the Emperor and the Pope,

the Bull summoning the Council declared that it was called for the three

purposes of overcoming the religious schism; of reforming the Church;

and of calling a united Christendom to a crusade against unbelievers. By

general consent the work of the Council was limited to the first two

objects. They were stated in terms vague enough to cover real diversity

of opinion about the work the Council was expected to do.

Almost all believed that the questions of reforming the Church and

dealing with the religious revolt were inseparably connected; but the

differences at once emerged when the method of treating the schism was

discussed.

Many pious Roman Catholics believed that the Lutheran movement was a

divine punishment for the sins of the Church, and that it would

disappear if the Church was thoroughly reformed in life and morals. They

differed about the agency to be employed to effect the reformation. The

Italian party, who followed Cardinal Caraffa, maintained that full

powers should be in the hands of the Pope; non-Italians, especially the

Spaniards, thought it vain to look for any such reformation so long as

the Curia, itself the seat of the greatest corruption, remained

unreformed, and contended that the secular authority ought to be allowed

more power to put down ecclesiastical scandals.

The Emperor, Charles V., had come to believe that there were no

insuperable differences of doctrine between the Lutherans and the Roman

Catholics, and that mutual explanations and a real desire to give and

take, combined with the removal of scandals which all alike deplored,

would heal the schism. He had never seen the gulf which the Lutheran

principle of the spiritual priesthood of all believers had created

between the Protestants and mediæval doctrines and ceremonies.[699] He

persisted in this belief long after the proceedings at Trent had left

him hopeless of seeing the reconciliation he had expected brought about

by the Council he had done so much to get summoned. The Augsburg Interim

(1548) shows what he thought might have been done.[700] He was badly

seconded at Trent. The only Bishop who supported his views heartily was

Madruzzo, the Prince Bishop of Trent; his representative, Diego de

Mendoza, fell ill shortly after the opening of the Council, and his

substitute, Francisco de Toledo, did not reach Trent until March 1546.

§ 2. _Procedure at the Council._

Tho ablest of the three Legates, Cervini, had a definite plan of

procedure before him. He knew thoroughly the need for drastic reforms in

the life and morals of the clergy and for purifying the Roman Curia;

but, with the memories of Basel and Constance before him, he dreaded

above all things a conflict between the Pope and the Council, and he

believed that such a quarrel was imminent if the Council itself

undertook to reform the Curia. His idea was that the Council ought to

employ itself in the useful, even necessary task of codifying the

doctrines of the Church, so that all men might discern easily what was

the true Catholic faith. While this was being done, opportunity would be

given to the Pope himself to reform the Curia--a task which would be

rendered easier by the consciousness that he had the sympathy of the

Council behind him. He scarcely concealed his opinion that such

codification should make no concessions to the Protestants, but would

rather show them to be in hopeless antagonism to the Catholic faith. He

did not propose any general condemnation of what he thought to be

Lutheran errors; but he wished the separate points of doctrine which the

Lutherans had raised--Justification, the authority of Holy Scripture,

the Sacraments--to be examined carefully and authoritatively defined. In

this way heretics would be taught the error of their ways without

mentioning names, and without the specific condemnation of individuals.

He expounded his plan of procedure to the Council.

His suggestions were by no means universally well received by the

delegates. The proposal to leave reforms to the Pope provoked many

speeches from the Spanish Bishops, full of bitter reproaches against the

Curia; and his conception of codifying the doctrines of the Church with

the avowed intention of irrevocably excluding the Lutherans was by no

means liked by many.

A great debate took place on Jan. 18th, which revealed to the Legate

that probably the majority of the delegates did not favour his proposed

course of procedure. Madruzzo, the eloquent Prince Bishop of Trent, and

a Cardinal, made a long speech, in which he asserted that the Council

should not rashly take for granted that the Lutherans were

irreconcilable. They ought to acknowledge frankly that the corrupt

morals of the mediæval clergy had done much to cause dissatisfaction and

to justify revolt. Let them therefore assume that these evils for which

the Church was responsible had produced the schism. Let them invite the

Protestants to come among them as brethren. Let them show to those men,

who had no doubt erred in doctrine, that the Catholic Church was

sincerely anxious to reform the abounding evils in life and morals, and,

with this fraternal bond between them, let them reason amicably together

about the doctrinal differences which now separated them. The eloquent

and large-minded Cardinal condensed the recommendations in his speech in

one sentence: "Cum corrupti mores ecclesiasticorum dederint occasionem

Lutheranis confingendi falsa dogmata, sublata causa, facilius tolletur

effectus; subdens optimum fore, si protestantes ipsos amicabiliter et

fraterne literis invitaremus, ut ipsi quoque ad synodum venirent, et se

etiam reformari paterentur."[701] We are told that this speech raised

great enthusiasm among the delegates, and that the Legates had some

difficulty in preventing its proposal from being universally accepted.

At the most they were able to prevent any definite conclusion being come

to about the procedure at the close of the sitting. Cervini saw that he

could not get his way adopted. He agreed that proposals for reform and

for the codification of doctrine should be discussed simultaneously, his

knowledge of theological nature telling him that if he once got so many

divines engaged in doctrinal discussions two things would surely follow:

their eagerness would make them neglect everything else, and their

polemical instincts would carry them beyond the point where a

conciliation of the Protestants required them to come to a halt. So it

happened. The Council found itself committed to a codification and

definition of Catholic doctrine. The suggestion of the Bishop of Feltre

(Thomas Campeggio) was adopted, that the discussion of doctrines and the

proposals for reform should be discussed by two separate Commissions,

whose reports should come before the Synod alternately. The Legates

obtained a large majority for this course, and the protest of Madruzzo

was unavailing.

The decision to attack the question of reform was very unacceptable to

the Pope. He went so far as to ask the Legates to get it rescinded; but

that was impossible, and he had to content himself with the assurances

of Cervini that no real harm would come of it.

This important question being settled, the Council decided upon the

details of procedure. The whole Synod was divided into three divisions

or Commissions, to each of which allotted work was given. Each question

was first of all to be prepared for the section by theologians and

canonists, then discussed in the special Commission to which it had been

entrusted. If approved there, it was to be brought before a general

Congregation of the whole Synod for discussion. If it passed this

scrutiny, it was to be promulgated in a solemn session of the Council.

§ 3. _Restatement of Doctrines._

It ought to be said, before describing the doctrinal labours of the

Council, that the work done at Trent was not to give Conciliar sanction

to the whole mass of mediæval doctrinal tradition. There was a thorough

revision of doctrinal positions in which a great deal of theology which

had been current during the later Middle Ages was verbally rejected, and

the rejection was most apparent in that Scotist theology which had been

popular before the Reformation, and which had been most strongly

attacked by Luther. The Scotist theology, with its theological

scepticism, was largely repudiated in name at least--whether its spirit

was banished is another question which has to be discussed later. A

great many influences unknown during the later Middle Ages pressed

consciously and unconsciously upon the divines assembled at Trent and

coloured their dogmatic work. Although the avowed intention of the

theologians there was to defeat both Humanism and the Reformation, they

could not avoid being influenced by both movements. Humanism had led

many of them to study the earlier Church Fathers, and they could not

escape Augustine in doing so. They were led to him by many paths. The

Dominican theologians had begun, quite independently of the Reformation,

to study the great theologian of their Order, and Thomas had led them

back to Augustine. The Reformation had laid stress on the doctrines of

sin, of justification, and of predestination, and had therefore awakened

a new interest in them and consequently in Augustine. The New Thomism,

with Augustinianism behind it, was a feature of the times, and was the

strongest influence at work among the theologians who assembled at

Trent. It could not fail to make their doctrinal results take a very

different form from the theology which Luther was taught by John Nathin

in the Erfurt convent. Christian Mysticism, too, had its revival,

especially in Spain and in Italy, and among some of the reconstructed

monastic orders. If it had small influence on the doctrines, it worked

for a more spiritual conception of the Church. What has been called

Curialism, the theory of the omnipotence of the Pope in all things

connected with the Church's life, practice, and beliefs, was also a

potent factor with some of the assembled fathers. But above all things

the theologians who met at Trent were influenced by the thought and fact

of the Lutheran Reformation. This is apparent in the order in which they

discussed theological questions, in the subjects they selected and in

those they omitted. All these things help us to understand how the

theology of the Council of Trent was something peculiar, something by

itself, and different both from what may be vaguely called mediæval

theology and from that of the modern Church of Rome.[702]

The Council, in its third session, laid the basis of its doctrinal work

by reaffirming the Niceo-Constantinopolitan Creed with the _filioque_

clause added, and significantly called it: Symbolum fidei quo sancta

ecclesia _Romana_ utitur. This done, it was ready to proceed with the

codification and definition of doctrines.

On the 18th of April 1546, the Commission which had to do with the

preparation of the subject reported, and the Council proceeded to

discuss the sources of theological knowledge or the Rule of Faith. The

influence of the Reformation is clearly seen not merely in the priority

assigned to this subject, but also in the statement that the "purity of

the Gospel" is involved in the decision come to. The opposition to

Protestantism was made emphatic by the Council declaring these four

things:

It accepted as canonical all the books contained in the Alexandrine

Canon (the Septuagint), and therefore the Apocrypha of the Old

Testament, and did so heedless of the fact that the editor of the

Vulgate (afterwards pronounced authoritative), Jerome, had thought very

little of the Apocrypha. The Reformers, in their desire to go back to

the earliest and purest sources, had pronounced in favour of the Hebrew

Canon; the Council, in spite of Jerome, accepted the common mediæval

tradition.

It declared that in addition to the books of Holy Scripture, it

"receives with an equal feeling of piety and reverence the traditions,

whether relating to faith or to morals, dictated either orally by Christ

or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in continuous succession within the

Catholic Church."[703] The practical effect of this declaration,

something entirely novel, was to assert that there was within the Church

an infallibly correct mode of interpreting Scripture, and to give the

ecclesiastical authorities (whoever they might be) the means of warding

off any Protestant attack based upon Holy Scripture alone. The Council

were careful to avoid stating who were the guardians of this dogmatic

tradition, but in the end it led by easily traced steps to the

declaration of Pope Pius IX.: _Io sono la tradizione_, and placed a

decision of a Pope speaking _ex cathedra_ on a level with the Word of

God.

It proclaimed that the Vulgate version contained the authoritative text

of Holy Scripture. This was also new, and, moreover, in violent

opposition to the best usages of the mediæval Church. It cast aside as

worse than useless the whole scholarship of the Renaissance both within

and outside of the mediæval Church, and, on pretence of consecrating a

text of Holy Scripture, reduced it to the state of a mummy, lifeless and

unfruitful.[704]

It asserted that every faithful believer must accept the sense of

Scripture which the Church teaches, that no one was to oppose the

unanimous consensus of the Fathers--and this without defining what the

Church is, or who are the Fathers.[705] The whole trend of this

decision was to place the authoritative exposition of the Scriptures in

the hands of the Pope, although at the time the Council lacked the

courage to say so.

It must not be supposed that these decisions were reached without a good

deal of discussion. Some members of the Council would have preferred the

Hebrew Canon. Nacchianti, Bishop of Chioggia, protested against placing

traditions on the same level as Holy Scripture;[706] some wished to

distinguish between apostolical traditions and others; but the final

decision of the Council was carried by a large majority. The most

serious conflict of opinion, however, arose about the clause which

declared that the Vulgate version was the only authoritative one. It was

held that such a decision entailed the prohibition of using translations

of the Scripture in the mother tongue. The Spanish Bishops, in spite of

the fact that translations of the Scriptures into Spanish had once been

commonly used and their use encouraged, would have had all Bible reading

in the mother tongue prohibited. The Germans protested. The debate waxed

hot. Madruzzo, of Trent, eloquently declared that to prohibit the

translation of the Scriptures into German would be a public scandal.

Were children not to be taught the Lord's Prayer in a language they

could understand? A Bull of Pope Paul II. was cited against him. He

replied that Popes had erred and were liable to err; but that the

Apostle Paul had not erred, and that he had commanded the Scriptures to

be read by every one, and that this could not be done unless they were

translated. A compromise was suggested, that each country should decide

for itself whether it would have translations of the Scriptures or not.

In the end, however, the Vulgate was proclaimed the only authentic Word

of God.

In the fifth session (June 17th, 1546) and in the sixth session (Jan.

13th, 1547) the Council attacked the subjects of Original Sin and

Justification. The Reformation had challenged the Roman Church to say

whether it had any _spiritual_ religion at all, or was simply an

institution claiming to possess a secret science of salvation through

ceremonies which required little or no spiritual life on the part of

priests or recipients. The challenge had to be met not merely on account

of the Protestants, but because devout Romanists had declared that it

must be done. The answer was given in the two doctrines of Original Sin

and Justification, as defined at the Council of Trent. They both deserve

a much more detailed examination than space permits.

The Legates had felt that the Council as constituted might come to

decisions giving room for Protestant doctrine, and pled with the Pope to

send them more Italian Bishops, whose votes might counteract the weight

of northern opinion (June 2nd, 1546). They were extremely anxious about

the way in which the Council might deal with those two doctrines.

The first, the definition of Original Sin, _seems_ to reject strongly

that Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism which had marked the later

Scholasticism which Luther had been taught in the Erfurt convent. It

appears to rest on and to express the evangelical thoughts of Augustine.

But a careful examination shows that it is full of

ambiguities--intentional loop-holes provided for the retention of the

Semi-Pelagian modes of thought. Space forbids our going over them all,

but one example may be selected from the first chapter. It is there said

that Adam lost the holiness and righteousness _in which he had been

constituted_. Why not _created_? The phrase may mean created, and all

the New Thomists at the Council doubtless read it in that way. By the

Fall man lost what Thomas, following Augustine, had called increated

righteousness. But the phrase _in qua constitutus fucrat_ could easily

be interpreted to mean that what man did lose were the superadded

_dona supernaturalia_ whose loss in no way impaired human nature;

and, if so interpreted, room is provided for Pelagianism.[707] Again,

while the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall seems to be taught, it is

added that by Original Sin _liberum arbitrium_ is _minime extinctum

viribus licet attenuatum_, which is Semi-Pelagian.[708] The whole

definition closes with a statement that it is not to be applied to the

Blessed Virgin, the doctrine about whom has been expressed in the

Constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV. of happy memory.[709]

The statement of the Doctrine of Justification is a masterpiece of

theological dexterity, and deserves much more consideration than can be

given it. The whole treatment of the subject was the cause of

considerable anxiety outside the Council. On the one hand, the Emperor

Charles V., who was greatly disappointed at the course taken by the

Council, and saw the chance of conciliating the Protestants diminishing

daily, wished to defer all discussion; while the Pope, bent on making it

impossible for the Protestants to return, desired the Council to define

this important doctrine in such a way that none of the Reformed could

possibly accept it. The Emperor's wishes were speedily overruled; but it

was by no means easy for the Legates to carry out the desires of the

Pope. There was a great deal of Evangelical doctrine in the Roman Church

which had to be reckoned with. So much existed that at one time it had

actually been proposed at the Vatican to approve of the first part of

the Augsburg Confession in order to win the Protestants over. The day

for such proposals was past; but the New Thomism was a power in the

Church, and perhaps the strongest _theological_ force at the Council of

Trent, and had to be reckoned with. If the Protestant conception of

Justification be treated merely as a doctrine,--which it is not, being

really an experience deeper and wider than any form of words can

contain,--if it be stated scholastically, then it is possible to express

it in propositions which do not perceptibly differ from the doctrine of

Justification in the New Thomist theology. At the conference at

Regensburg (Ratisbon) in 1541, Contarini was able to draft a statement

of the doctrine which commended itself to such opponents as Calvin and

Eck.[710] Harnack has remarked that the real difference between the two

doctrines appeared in this, that "just on account of the doctrine of

Justification the Protestants combated as heretical the _usages_ of the

Roman Church, while the Augustinian Thomists could not understand why it

should be impossible to unite the two."[711] But the similarity of

statement shows the difficulty of the Legates in guiding the Council to

frame a decree which would content the Pope. They were able to

accomplish this mainly through the dexterity of the Jesuit Lainez.

The discussion showed how deeply the division ran. Some theologians were

prepared to accept the purely Lutheran view that Justification was by

Faith alone. They were in a small minority, and were noisily

interrupted. One of them, Thomas de San Felicio, Bishop of La Cava, and

a Neapolitan, came to blows with a Greek Bishop. The debate then centred

round the mediating view of the doctrine, which Contarini had advocated

in his _Tractatus de Justificatione_, and which may be said to represent

the position of the New Thomists. It seemed to commend itself to a

majority of the delegates. The leader of the party was Girolamo

Seripando (1493-1553), since 1539 the General of the Augustinian

Eremites, the Order to which Luther had belonged.[712] He distinguished

between an imputed and an inherent righteousness, a distinction

corresponding to that between prevenient and co-operating grace, and to

some extent not unlike that between Justification and Sanctification in

later Protestant theology. In the former, the imputed righteousness of

Christ, lay the only hope for man; inherent righteousness was based upon

the imputed, and was useless without it. The learning and candour of

Seripando were conspicuous; his pleading seemed about to carry the

Council with him, when Lainez intervened to save the situation for the

strictly papal party. The Jesuit theologian accepted the distinction

made between imputed and inherent righteousness; he even admitted that

the former was alone efficacious in Justification; but he alleged that

in practice at least the two kinds of righteousness touched each other,

and that it would be dangerous to practical theology to consider them as

wholly distinct. His clear plausible reasoning had great effect, and the

ambiguities of his address are reflected in the looseness of the

definitions in the decree.

The definition of the doctrine of Justification which was adopted by the

Council is very lengthy. It contains sixteen chapters followed by

thirty-three canons. It naturally divides into three divisions--chapters

i.-ix. describing what Justification is; chapters x.-xiii. the increase

of Justification; and chapters xiv.--xvi. the restoration of

Justification when it is lost. Almost every chapter includes grave

ambiguities.

The first section is the most important. It begins with statements which

are in themselves evangelical. All men have come under the power of sin,

and are unable to deliver themselves either by their strength of nature

or by the aid of the letter of the law of Moses.[713] Our Heavenly

Father sent His Son and set Him forth as the propitiator through faith

in His blood for our sins.[714] It is then said that all do not accept

the benefits of Christ's death, although He died for all, but only those

to whom the merit of His passion is communicated; and this statement is

followed by a rather confused sentence which suggests but commits no one

to the Augustinian doctrine of election.[715] This is followed up by

saying that Justification is the translation from that condition in

which man is born into a condition of grace through Jesus Christ our

Saviour; and it is added that this translation, in the Gospel

dispensation, does not happen apart from Baptism or _the wish to be

baptized_.[716] In spite of some ambiguities, these first four chapters

have quite an Evangelical ring about them; but with the fifth a change

begins. While some sentences seem to maintain the Evangelical ideas

previously stated, room is distinctly made for Pelagian

work-righteousness. It is said, for example, that Justification is

wrought through the _gratia præveniens_ or _vocatio_ in which adults are

called apart from any merit of their own; but then it is added that the

end of this calling is that sinners may be _disposed_, by God's inciting

and aiding grace, to _convert themselves_ in order to their own

justification by freely assenting to and co-operating with the grace of

God.[717] This was the suggestion of Lainez. The good disposition into

which sinners are to be brought is said to consist of several things,

of which the first is faith--defined to be a belief that the contents of

the divine revelation are true. In the two successive chapters faith is

declared to be only the beginning of Justification; and Justification

itself, in flat contradiction to what had been said previously, is no

longer a translation from one state to another; it becomes the actual

and gradual conversion of a sinner into a righteous man. It is scarcely

necessary to pursue the definitions further. It is sufficient to say

that the theologians of Trent do not seem to have the faintest idea of

what the Reformers meant by faith, and never appear to see that there is

such a thing as religious experience.

The second and third sections of the decree treating of the increase of

Justification and of its renewal in the Sacrament of Penance, were

drafted still more emphatically in an anti-evangelical spirit, though

here and there they show concessions to the Augustinian feeling in the

Church. The result was that the Pope obtained what he wanted, a

definition which made reconciliation with the Protestants impossible.

The New Thomists were able to secure a sufficient amount of Augustinian

theology in the decree to render Jansenism possible in the future; while

the prevailing Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism foreshadowed its

overthrow by Jesuit theology.

While these theological definitions were being discussed and framed, the

Council also occupied itself with matters of reform. They began to make

regulations about preaching and catechising, and this led them

insensibly to the question of exemptions from episcopal control. The

Popes had for some centuries been trying to weaken the authority of the

Bishops, by placing the _regular_ clergy or monks beyond the control of

the Bishops within whose diocese their convents stood, and this

exemption had been the occasion of many ecclesiastical disorders. The

discussion was long and excited. It ended in a compromise.

When the decree on Justification was settled, the Council, guided by the

Legates, proceeded to discuss the doctrine of the Sacraments, with the

intention of still more thoroughly preventing any doctrinal

reconciliation with the Protestants. This action called forth

remonstrances from the Emperor, whose successes at the time in Germany

were alarming the Pope, and making him anxious to withdraw the Council

from Germany altogether. He sent orders to the Legates to endeavour to

persuade the members at Trent to vote for a transfer to Bologna, where

the papal influence would be stronger, and where it would be easier to

pack the Synod with a pliant Italian majority. A pretext was found in

the appearance of the plague at Trent; and although a strong minority,

headed by Madruzzo of Trent, opposed the scheme, the majority (38 to 14)

decided that they must leave Trent and establish themselves at the

Italian city. The Spanish Bishops, however, remained at Trent awaiting

the Emperor's orders.

Charles V. had suffered many disappointments from the Council he had

laboured to summon, and this action made him lose all patience. He

ordered the Spanish Bishops not to leave Trent; the Diet of Augsburg

refused to recognise the prelates who had gone to Bologna as the General

Council. After much hesitation, Pope Paul III. felt compelled to suspend

the proceedings of the Council at Bologna (September 17th, 1549). This

ended the first part of the sittings of the Council.

§ 4. _Second Meeting of the Council._

Pope Paul III. died November 10th, 1549. At the Conclave which followed,

the Cardinal del Monte, the senior Legate of the Council, was chosen

Pope, and took the title of Julius III. (February 7th, 1550). He and the

Emperor soon came to an agreement that the Council should return to

Trent. It accordingly reopened there on May 1st, 1551. The Cardinal

Marcello Crescentio was appointed sole Legate, and two assistants, the

Archbishop of Siponto and the Bishop of Verona, were entitled Nuncios.

The second meeting of the Council did not promise well. The Pope had

agreed that something was to be done to conciliate the Protestants, and

that it should be left an open question whether the preceding decisions

of the Council might not be revised. But before its assembly the policy

of the Pope again ran counter to that of the Emperor, and the

Protestants had ceased to expect much. The delegates themselves showed

little eagerness to come to the place of meeting. The Council was forced

to adjourn, and it was not until the 1st of September that it began its

work.

The earlier proceedings showed that there was little hope of

conciliatory measures. There was no attempt to revise these former

decisions, and the Council began its work of codifying doctrine and

reformation at the place where it had dropped it.

During the later months of the first meeting, the question of the

Sacraments had been under discussion, and so far as the second meeting

is concerned it may be said that the whole of its theological work was

confined to this subject.

Little pains were taken to conciliate the Protestants. The decisions

arrived at pass over in contemptuous silence all the Protestant

contendings. The relations of the Sacraments to the Word and Promises of

God, and to the faith of the recipient, are not explained. The thirteen

Canons which sum up the doctrine of the Sacraments in general, and the

anathemas with which they conclude, are the protest of the Council

against the whole Protestant movement.

This did not prevent the Council being confronted with great

difficulties in their definitions--difficulties which arose from the

opposition between the earlier and more Evangelical Thomist and the

later Scotist and Nominalist theology. It would almost appear that the

fathers of Trent despaired of harmonising the multitude of Scholastic

theories on the nature of the Sacraments in general. They did not

venture on constructing a decree, but contented themselves for the most

part with merely negative definitions. They declare that there are

seven Sacraments, neither more nor fewer, all positively instituted by

Christ. They sever the intimate connection between faith and the

Sacraments, attributing to them a secret and mysterious power. They

practically deny the universal priesthood of believers (Can. 10).

Perhaps the most important Canon is the last: "If any one shall say that

the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, commonly used in

the solemn administration of the Sacraments, may be contemned, or

without sin omitted at pleasure by the ministrants, or be changed by any

pastor of the churches into other new ones: let him be anathema" (Can.

13). It enables us to see how, while not going beyond the verbal limits

of the definitions of the Thomist theology, the Council provided room

for subsequent aberrations of doctrine by raising the use and wont of

the Roman Church to the level of dogma.

In their definitions of the single Sacraments the Council could and did

found on the _Decretum pro Armenis_ of the Council of Florence (1439),

incorporated in the Bull _Exultate Deo_ of Pope Eugenius IV. The real

substance of the definition of Baptism is found in that Canon (3), which

declares that "the Roman Church, which is the mother and mistress of all

Churches, has the true doctrine of the Sacrament of Baptism." The common

practice for the Bishop to confirm, an historical testimony to the

original position of Bishops as pastors of congregations, is elevated to

the rank of a dogma. The decree and canons on the Eucharist are a

dexterous dove-tailing of sentences making a mosaic of differing

scholastic theories. One detail only need concern us. Most of the

theologians present wished the denial of the cup to the laity to be

elevated into a dogma, and a decree was actually prepared. But the

secular princes and a widespread public opinion made the theologians

hesitate, and the question was settled in a late meeting (Session xxi.,

July 16th, 1562) in a dexterously ambiguous way. It was declared that

"from the beginning of the Christian religion the use of both _species_

has not been unfrequent," but it was added that no one of the laity was

permitted to demand the cup _ex Dei præcepto_, or to believe that the

Church was not acting according to just and weighty reasons when it was

refused, or that the "whole and entire Christ" was not received "under

either species alone." Few statements have been made in such defiance of

history as this decree, with its corresponding canons, when one and

another practice of the mediæval Church are said to have existed from

the beginning.

The decree on Penance is one of the most carefully constructed and least

ambiguous. It is a real codification of Scholastic doctrine. On one

portion only was there need for dexterous manipulation, and it received

it. The immoral conception of _attrition_ was verbally abandoned and

really retained. _Contrition_, which is godly sorrow, is declared to be

necessary; and _attrition_ is declared to be only a salutary

preparation. But the real distinction thus established is at once

cancelled by calling _attrition_ an _imperfect contrition_, by

distinguishing between _contrition_ itself and a more perfect

_contrition_--contrition perfected by love; and place is provided for

the reintroduction of the immoral conceptions of the later Scotist

theologians.[718]

When the theological decrees and canons of the Council of Trent are read

carefully in the light of past Scholastic controversies and of varying

principles at work in the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth

century, it is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that while the

older and more Evangelical Thomist theology gained a verbal recognition,

the real victory lay with the Scotist party now represented by the

Jesuits. On one side of its activity, the general tendency of Scotist

theology had been to produce what was called "theological Scepticism"--a

state of mind which was compelled to dissent intellectually from most of

the great doctrines of the mediæval Church, and at the same time to

accept them on the external authority of the Church--to show that there

were no really permanent principles in dogmatic, and that there was need

everywhere for reference to a permanent and external source of

authority who could be no other than the Roman Pontiff.

The Curialist position, that the Universal Church was represented by the

Roman Church, and that the Roman Church was, as it were, condensed in

the Pope, was not confined to the sphere of jurisdiction only. It had

its theological side. Scripture, it was held, was to be interpreted

according to the tradition of the Church, and the Pope alone was able to

determine what that tradition really was. Hence, the more indefinite

theology was, the fewer permanent principles it contained, the more

indispensable became the papal authority, and the more thoroughly

religion could be identified with a blind unreasoning submission to the

Church identified as the Pope. This had been the thought of Ignatius

Loyola; the training of the mind to such a state of absolute submission

had been the motive in his _Spiritual Exercises_ and the Jesuit

theologians at the Council, Lainez and Salmeron, did very much to secure

the practical victory won by Scotist theology, in spite of the fact that

the phrases of the decrees came from the theology of their opponents.

The second meeting of the Council of Trent ended on April 28th, 1552.

The Peace of Augsburg (1555) showed that the Protestants had acquired a

separate legal standing within the Empire, and most people thought that

the work of the Council had been wasted. Things were as if it had never

been in existence. Pope Paul III. died on March 24th, 1555, and the

Conclave elected Cervini, who took the title of Marcellus II. The new

Pope survived his elevation only three weeks. He was succeeded by

Cardinal Caraffa, Paul IV., and the Counter-Reformation began in

earnest.

Paul IV., hater of Spaniards as he was, was the embodiment of the

Spanish idea of what a reformation should be. He believed that the work

of reform could be done better by the Pope himself than by any Council,

and he set to work with the thoroughness which characterised him. There

was to be no tampering with the doctrines, usages, or institutions of

the mediæval Church. Heresy and Schism were to be crushed by the

Inquisition, and the spread of new ideas was to be prevented by the

strict examination of all books, and the destruction of those which

contained what the Pope conceived to be unwholesome for the minds or

morals of mankind. But the Church needed to be reformed thoroughly; the

lives of the clergy, and especially of the higher clergy, had to be

amended; and abuses which had crept into administration had to be set

right.

For some time any real reformation was retarded by the influence of his

nephews, who played on the old Pontiff's hatred of the Spaniards, and

easily persuaded him that his first duty was to expel the Spaniards from

the Italian peninsula. But the evil deeds of these near kinsmen

gradually reached his ears. In an assembly of the Inquisition, held in

1559, he was told by Cardinal Pacheco that "reform must begin with

_us_." The old man retired to his apartments, instituted a searching

inquiry into the conduct of his nephews, and within a month had deprived

them of all their offices and emoluments, and banished them from Rome.

Free from this family embarrasment, the Pope prosecuted vigorously his

plans for reformation. The secular administration of the States of the

Church was thoroughly purified. A Congregation was appointed to examine,

classify, and remedy ecclesiastical abuses. Many of the abuses of the

Curia were swept away. The Jesuits taught him, although he had no great

love for the Order, that spiritual services should not be sold for

money. He prohibited taking fees for marriage dispensations. He was a

stern censor of the morals of the higher clergy. Under his brief rule

Rome became respectable if not virtuous. He restored some of the

privileges of the Bishops which had been absorbed by the Papacy. All the

while his zeal for purity of doctrine made him urge on the Inquisition

and the Index to use their terrible powers. He spared no one. Cardinal

Morone, one of the few survivals of the liberal Roman Catholics, was

imprisoned, and the suppression of all liberal ideas was sternly

prosecuted.[719]

§ 5. _Third Meeting of the Council._

Paul IV. died on the 18th of August 1559. He was succeeded by Giovanni

de' Medici (Dec. 26th, 1559), a man of a very different type of

character, who took the title of Pius IV. The new Pope was by training a

lawyer rather than a theologian, and a man skilled in diplomacy. He

recognised, as none of his predecessors had done, the difficulties which

confronted the Church of Rome. The Lutheran Church had won political

recognition in Germany. Scandinavia and Denmark were hopelessly lost.

England had become Protestant, and Scotland was almost sure to follow

the example of her more powerful neighbour. The Low Countries could not

be coerced by Philip and Alva. More than half of German Switzerland had

declared for the Reformation. Geneva had become a Protestant fortress,

and Calvin's opinions were gaming ground all over French Switzerland.

France was hopelessly divided. Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland were

alienated from Rome, and might soon revolt altogether. The Pope was

convinced that a General Council was necessary to reunite the forces

still on the side of the Roman Catholic Church. He saw that it was vain

to expect to do this without coming to terms with the Romanist

sovereigns. It was the age of autocracy. He pleaded for an alliance of

autocrats to confront and withstand the Protestant revolution. He tried

to persuade the Emperor (now Ferdinand), Francis II. of France, and

Philip of Spain that the independent rule of Bishops was one side of the

feudalism which was hostile to monarchy, and that the Pope and the

Kings ought to work together. His representations had some effect as

time went on.

A papal Bull (Nov. 29th, 1560) summoned a Council at Trent on April 6th,

1561. Five Legates were appointed to preside, at their head Ercole di

Gonzaga, Cardinal of Mantua. They reached Trent on the 16th of April

(1561), and were received by Ludovico Madruzzo, who had succeeded his

uncle, the Cardinal, in the bishopric. The delegates came slowly. The

first session (xvii^{th}) was not held till Jan. 18th, 1562, and was

unimportant. The real work began at the second session (xviii^{th}),

held on Feb. 26th (1562).

The Protestants had been invited to attend, but it was well known that

they would not; the assembly represented the Roman Catholic Powers, and

them alone. Its object was not to conciliate the Protestants, but to

organise the Romanist Church. The various Roman Catholic Powers,

however, had different ideas of what ought to be involved in such a

reorganisation.

The Emperor knew that there were many lukewarm Protestants on the one

hand and many disaffected Romanists on the other. He believed that the

former could be won back and the latter confirmed by some serious

modifications in the usages of the Church. His scheme of reform, set

down in his instructions to his Ambassadors, was very extensive. It

included the permission to give the cup to the laity, marriage of the

priests, mitigation of the prescribed fasts, the use of some of the

ecclesiastical revenues to provide schools for the poor, a revision of

the service books in the sense of purging them of many of their legends,

singing German hymns in public worship, the publication of a good and

simple catechism for the instruction of the young, a reformation of the

cloisters, and a reduction of the powers of the Roman Pontiff according

to the ideas of the Council of Constance. These reforms, earnestly

pressed by the Emperor in letters, had the support of almost all the

German Roman Catholics.

The French Bishops, headed by the Cardinal Lorraine, supported the

German demands. They were especially anxious for the granting the cup to

the laity, the administration of the Sacraments in French, French hymns

snug in public worship, and that the celebration of the Mass should

always be accompanied by instruction and a sermon. They also pressed for

a limitation of the powers of the Pope, according to the decisions of

the Council of Basel.

The Spanish Bishops, on the other hand, were thoroughly opposed to any

change in ecclesiastical doctrine or usages. They did not wish the cup

given to the laity; they abhorred clerical marriage; they protested

against the idea of the services or any part of them in the mother

tongue. But they desired a thorough reformation of the Curia, of the

whole system of dispensations; they wished a limitation of the powers of

the Pope, and to see the Bishops of the Church restored to their ancient

privileges.

France and Germany desired that the Council should be considered a new

Synod; Spain and the Pope meant it to be simply a continuation of the

former sessions at Trent.

These difficulties might well have daunted the Pope; but the suave

diplomatist faced the situation, trusting mainly to his own abilities to

carry matters through to a successful issue. He knew that he must have

command of the Council, and to that end several resolutions were passed

mainly by the adroit generalship of the Legates. It was practically, if

not formally, resolved that the Synod should be simply a continuation of

that Council which had begun at Trent in 1545. This got rid at once of a

great deal of difficult doctrinal discussion, and provided that all

dogmas had to be discussed on the lines laid down in previous sessions.

It was decreed that no proxies should be allowed. This enabled the Pope

to keep up a constant majority of Italian Bishops, who outnumbered those

of all other nations put together. By a clever ruse the Council was

induced to vote that the papal Legates alone should have the privilege

of proposing resolutions to the Council. This made it impossible to

bring before the Council any matter to which the Pope had objection.

The Pope knew well, however, that it mattered little what conclusions

the Council came to, if its decisions were to be repudiated by the Roman

Catholic Powers. He therefore carried on elaborate negotiations with the

Emperor and the Kings of Spain and France while the Council was sitting,

and arranged with them the wording of the decrees to be adopted. His

tactics, which never varied during the whole period of the Council, and

which were finally crowned with success, were simple. He maintained at

all costs a numerical majority in the Synod ready to vote as he

directed. This was done by systematic drafts of Italian Bishops to

Trent. Many of the poorer ones were subsidised through Cardinal

Simonetta, whose business it was to see that the mechanical majority was

kept up, and to direct it how to vote. His Legates had the exclusive

right of proposing resolutions; couriers took the proposals drafted by

the various Congregations to Rome, and the Pope revised them there

before they were laid before the whole Council to be voted upon; spies

informed him what were the objections of the French, Spanish, or German

Bishops, and the Pope was diligent to bring all manner of influences to

bear upon them to incline them to his mind; if he failed, he prevented

the proposals being laid before the Council until he had consulted and

bargained with the monarchs through special agents. The papal post-bags,

containing proposed decrees or canons, went the round of the European

Courts before they were presented to the Council, and the Bishops spoke

and voted upon what had been already settled behind their backs and

without their knowledge.

In spite of all this dexterous manipulation, the Council, composed of so

many jarring elements, did not work very smoothly. The papal diplomacy

sometimes increased the disturbances. Men chafed under the thought that

they were only puppets, and that the matters they had been called

together to discuss were already irrevocably settled.

"Better never to have come here at all," said a Spanish Bishop, "than to

be reduced to mere spectators." Few ecclesiastical assemblies have seen

stormier scenes than took place during these later sittings of the

Council of Trent.

In the end, the papal diplomacy prevailed. His conciliatory manner

helped Pius through difficulties in which another would have failed. No

man was readier to give way in things which he did not consider

essential, and what he promised he scrupulously performed. The success

of the last meeting of the Council was due to bargaining and dexterous

persuasion. When the critical point arrived, and it seemed as if the

Council must fall to pieces, his agents, Morone and Peter Canisius, the

great German Jesuit, won Ferdinand over to the Pope's side. Similar

persuasive diplomacy secured the influence of the Cardinal of Lorraine.

Even Philip of Spain was brought to see that the Spanish Bishops were

asking too much.

It must also be remembered that while Pius IV. refused to tolerate any

loss of papal rights or privileges, he consented to and did his best to

carry out numberless salutary reforms; and that the Council of Trent not

only reorganised, but greatly purified the Roman Church. Almost all that

was good in the reformation wrought by his predecessor Paul IV. was made

part of the Tridentine regulations.

The special matter in dispute between the Pope and the great majority of

non-Italian Bishops concerned the relations in which the Bishops of the

Catholic Church stood to the Bishop of Rome, whom all acknowledged as

their head. The Spanish, French, and German Bishops were strongly

opposed to that doctrine of papal supremacy which had been assiduously

taught by the canonists of the Roman Curia for at least two centuries,

and which was called _curialism_. Curialism taught that the Pope was

lord of the Church in the sense that all the clergy were his servants,

and that Bishops in particular were mere assistants whom he had

appointed for the purpose of oversight to act as his vicars. Whatever

powers of jurisdiction they possessed came from him, and from him alone.

The opposite conception, that insisted on at Trent by the northern and

Spanish Bishops, that maintained at the great Councils of Constance and

Basel, was that every Bishop had his power directly from Christ, and

that the Pope, while he was the representative of the unity of the

Church, and therefore to be recognised as its head, was only a _primus

inter pares_, and subject to the episcopate as a whole in Council

assembled. The question kept cropping up in almost all the discussions

in the Council which turned on reform. It began as early as the fifth

session (June 17th, 1546) and went on intermittently; but it positively

raged in the later sessions.

The question was raised on its practical side. One of the standing

abuses in the mediæval Church was the non-residence of Bishops. The

Council was passionately called upon by the Spanish and northern Bishops

to declare that residence was a necessary thing, and unanimously

responded that it was. Their function was the oversight of their

dioceses, and this could only be done when they were resident. But how

was this to be enforced? To compel the Bishops to reside within their

dioceses would depopulate the Court of Rome, and make it very much

poorer. Bishops from every country in Europe were attached to the Roman

Court, and their stipends, drawn from the countries in which their Sees

lay, were spent in Rome, and aided the magnificence of the papal

entourage. The reformers felt that a theoretical question lay behind the

practical, and insisted that the oversight and therefore the residence

of Bishops was _de jure divino_ and not merely _de lege

ecclesiastica_--something enjoined by God, and therefore beyond

alteration by the Pope. Behind this lay the thought, first introduced by

Cyprian, that every Bishop was within his congregation or diocese the

Vicar of Christ, and in the last resort responsible to Him alone. Thus

the old conciliar conception, maintained at Constance and at Basel,

faced the curial at Trent; and both were too powerful to give way

entirely. In spite of his Italian majority, the Pope could not get a

majority for a direct negative denying the _de jure divino_ theory. At

the final vote, sixty-six fathers declared for the _de jure divino_

theory, while seventy-one either rejected it altogether or voted for

remitting it to the decision of the Pope. The Pope dared not make use of

the liberty of decision thus accorded to him by a majority of five. If

he did he would then be left to face the European Roman Catholic Courts

of Germany, France, and Spain--all of whom supported the conciliar view.

Thus the theoretical question was left undecided at Trent, but the papal

diplomacy prevailed to the extent of creating a bias in favour of

curialist ideas, which left the Pope in a stronger position as regards

the episcopate than any other General Council had ever placed him in.

The prominence given to the _Roman_ (_i.e._ the papal) Church throughout

the decisions of the Council, beginning with the way in which the

Constantinopolitan (Nicene) Creed was affirmed;[720] the insertion of

the phrase _His own Vicar upon earth_;[721] the injunction that

Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and all others who of right

and custom ought to be present at a provincial council ... _promise and

profess true obedience to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff_;[722] the 10th

clause in the _Professio Fidei Tridentinæ_: "I acknowledge the holy

Catholic Apostolic Roman Church for the mother and mistress of all

Churches; and I promise and swear true obedience to the Bishop of Rome,

successor to St. Peter, Prince of Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ";

the way in which the Council at its last session (Dec. 4th, 1563) left

entirely in the Pope's hands the confirmation of its decrees and the

measures to be used for carrying them out; and above all its calm

acquiescence in the Bull _Benedictus Deus_ (Jan. 24th, 1564), in which

Pope Pius IV. reserved the exposition of its decrees to

himself[723]--all testify to the triumph of curialist ideas at the

Council of Trent. The Roman Catholic Church had become, in a sense never

before universally accepted, the "Pope's House."

This Council, so eagerly demanded, so greatly protracted, twice

dissolved, buffeted by storms in the political world, exposed, even in

its later sessions, to many a danger, ended in the general contentment

of the Roman Catholic peoples. When the prelates met together for the

last time on the 4th of December 1563, ancient opponents embraced, and

traces of tears were seen in many of the old eyes.

It had done three things for the Roman Catholic Church. It had provided

a compact system of doctrine, stript of many of the vagaries of

Scholasticism, and yet opposed to Protestant teaching. Romanism had an

intellectual basis of its own to rest on. It had rebuilt the hierarchy

on what may be called almost a new foundation, and made it symmetrical.

It had laid down a scheme of reformation which, if only carried out by

succeeding Pontiffs, would free the Church from many of the crying evils

which had given such strength to the Protestant movement. It had

insisted on and made provisions for an educated clergy--perhaps the

greatest need of the Roman Church in the middle of the sixteenth

century.

All this was largely due to the man who ruled in Rome. Pope Pius IV.,

sprung from the shrewd Italian middle-class, caring little for

theology, by no means distinguished for piety, had seen what the Church

needed, and by deft diplomacy had obtained it. A stronger man would have

snapped the threads which tied all parties together; one more zealous

would have lacked his infinite patience; a deeply pious man could

scarcely have employed the means he continually used. He was

magnificently assisted by the new Company of Jesus. No theologians had

so much influence at Trent as Lainez and Salmeron; the Council would

have broken down altogether but for the aid given by Canisius to Morone

in his negotiations with the Emperor.

Pius IV. was not slow to fulfil the promises he had made to sovereigns

and Council. The Breviary and the Missal were revised, as Ferdinand had

requested. Ecclesiastical music was purified. Exertions were made to

establish colleges and theological seminaries. But a sterner Pontiff was

needed to guide the battle against the growing Protestantism. He was

found in the next, Pope Pius V.

The influence of Cardinal Borromeo, the pious nephew of Pius IV., was

powerful in the Conclave, and was exerted to procure the election of

Michele Ghislieri, Cardinal of Alessandria, who took the name of Pius V.

The new Pontiff had entered a Dominican convent when fourteen years of

age, and had given himself up heart and soul to the strictest life his

Order enjoined. He had all the zeal for strict orthodoxy which

characterised the Dominicans, an asceticism which never spared himself,

and a detestation of the immoralities and irregularities which too often

disgraced the lives of ecclesiastics. He carried the habits of the

cloister with him into the Vatican. He never missed attendance at the

prescribed services of the Church, and in his devotion there was no

trace of hypocrisy. He was a Pope to lead the new Romanism, with its

intense hatred of heresy, its determination to reform the moral life,

and its contempt for the Renaissance and all its works. Philip II. of

Spain sent a special letter of congratulation to Cardinal Borromeo to

thank him for his efforts in the Conclave.

The new Pontiff believed, heart and soul, in repression. He meant to

fight the Reformation by the Inquisition and the Index; and these two

instruments were unsparingly used.

CHAPTER VI.

THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX.[724]

§ 1. _The Inquisition in Spain._

The idea conveyed in the term Inquisition is the punishment of spiritual

or ecclesiastical offences by physical pains and penalties. It was no

new conception in the Christian Church. It had existed from the days of

Constantine. So far as the mediæval Church is concerned, historians

roughly distinguish between the Episcopal, the Papal, and the Spanish

Inquisitions. In the half-barbarous Church of the early Middle Ages, in

which a curious give-and-take policy existed between the secular and

civil powers, a seemingly consistent understanding was arrived at

between Church and State, which may be summed up by saying that it was

recognised to be the Church's duty to point out heretics, and that of

the State to punish them--the Church being represented by the Bishops.

This episcopal Inquisition took many forms, and was never a very

effective instrument in the suppression of heresy.

In 1203, Pope Innocent III., alarmed at the spread of heresies through

southern France and northern Italy, published a Bull censuring the

indifference of the Bishops, appointing the Abbot of Citeaux his

delegate in matters of heresy, and giving him power to judge and

_punish_ heresy. This was the beginning of the Inquisition as a

separate institution. It was an act of papal centralisation, and a

distinct encroachment on the episcopal jurisdiction. The papal

Inquisition, thus started, took root. It did not displace the old

episcopal Inquisition; the two existed side by side; but the "Apostolic

Tribunal for the suppression of heresy" was by far the more effective

weapon. It was usually managed by the Dominican and Franciscan Orders.

The Spanish Inquisition took its rise in the closing decades of the

fifteenth century. The Popes had frequently desired to see the papal

Inquisition introduced into Spain, and leave had always been refused by

the sovereigns, jealous of papal interference. Pope Sixtus IV. had gone

the length of granting to his Legate, Nicolo Franco, "full inquisitorial

powers to prosecute and punish false Christians who after baptism

persisted in the observance of Jewish rites," but Isabella and Ferdinand

did not allow him to exercise them. But the power and wealth of the

_Conversos_--Jews who had nominally embraced Christianity--had made them

detested by the Spanish people, and a large section of the clergy were

clamouring for their overthrow. Thomas de Torquemada, the Queen's

confessor, eagerly pressed the Inquisition upon his royal penitent, and

at last the sovereigns applied to the Pope for a Bull to enable them to

establish in Spain an Inquisition of a peculiar kind. It was to differ

from the ordinary papal Inquisition in this, that it was to be strictly

under royal control, that the sovereigns were to have the appointment of

the Inquisitors, and that the fines and confiscations were to flow into

the royal treasury. The Bull was granted (November 1st, 1478), but the

sovereigns hesitated to use the rights it conveyed. After a year's

delay, two royal Inquisitors were appointed (September 17th, 1480), and

the first _auto-da-fé_, at which six persons were burnt, took place on

February 6th, 1481. The succeeding years saw various modifications in

the constitution of the Holy Office; but at last it was organised with a

council, presided over by an Inquisitor-General, Thomas de Torquemada.

He was a man of pitiless zeal, stern, relentless, and autocratic; and he

stamped his nature on the institution over which he presided. The Holy

Office was permitted to frame its own rules. The permission made it

practically independent, while all the resources of the State were

placed at its command. When an Inquisitor came to assume his functions,

the officials took an oath to assist him to exterminate all whom he

might designate as heretics, and to observe, and compel the observance

by all, of the decretals _Ad abolendum, Excommunicamus, Ut officium

Inquisitionis_, and _Ut Inquisitionis negotium_--the papal legislation

of the thirteenth century, which made the State wholly subservient to

the Holy Office, and rendered incapable of official position any one

suspect in the faith or who favoured heretics. Besides this, all the

population was assembled to listen to a sermon by the Inquisitor, after

which all were required to swear on the cross and the Gospels to help

the Holy Office, and not to impede it in any manner or on any pretext.

The methods of work and procedure were also taken from the papal

Inquisition. The Inquisitors were furnished with letters patent. They

travelled from town to town, attended by guards and notaries public.

Their expenses were defrayed by taxes laid on the towns and districts

through which they passed. Spies and informers, guaranteed State

protection, brought forward their information. The Court was opened;

witnesses were examined; and the accused were acquitted or found guilty.

The sentence was pronounced; the secular assessor gave a formal assent;

and the accused was handed over to the civil authorities for punishment.

When Torquemada reorganised the Spanish Inquisition, a series of rules

were framed for its procedure which enforced secrecy to the extent of

depriving the accused of any rational means of defence; which elaborated

the judicial method so as to leave no loop-hole even for those who

expressed a wish to recant; and which multiplied the charges under which

suspected heretics, even after death, might be treated as impenitent

and their property confiscated. The Spanish Inquisition differed from

the papal in its close relation to the civil authorities, its terrible

secrecy, its relentlessness, and its exclusion of Bishops from even a

nominal participation in its work. Thus organised, it became the most

terrible of curses to unhappy Spain. During the first hundred and

thirty-nine years of its existence the country was depopulated to the

extent of three millions of people. It had become strong enough to

overawe the monarchy, to insult the episcopate, and to defy the Pope.

The number of its victims can only be conjectured. Llorente has

calculated that during the eighteen years of Torquemada's presidency

114,000 persons were accused, of whom 10,220 were burnt alive, and

97,000 were condemned to perpetual imprisonment or to public penitence.

This was the terrible instrument used relentlessly to bring the Spanish

people into conformity with the Spanish Reformation, and to crush the

growing Protestantism of the Low Countries. It was extended to Corsica

and Sardinia; but the people of Naples and Sicily successfully resisted

its introduction when proposed by the Spanish Viceroys.

§ 2. _The Inquisition in Italy._

Cardinal Caraffa (afterwards Pope Paul IV.), the relentless enemy of the

Reformation, seeing the success of this Spanish Inquisition in its

extermination of heretics, induced Pope Paul III. to consent to a

reorganisation of the papal Inquisition in Italy on the Spanish model,

in 1542. The Curia had become alarmed at the progress of the Reformation

in Italy. They had received information that small Protestant

communities had been formed in several of the Italian towns, and that

heresy was spreading in an alarming fashion. Caraffa declared that "the

whole of Italy was infected with the Lutheran heresy, which had been

extensively embraced both by statesmen and ecclesiastics." Ignatius

Loyola and the Jesuits highly approved of the suggestion, and they were

all-powerful with the Cardinal Borromeo, the pious and trusted nephew

of the Pope. In 1542 the Congregation of the Holy Office was founded at

Rome, and six Cardinals, among them Cardinals Caraffa and Toledo, were

named Inquisitors-General, with authority on both sides of the Alps to

try all cases of heresy, to apprehend and imprison suspected persons,

and to appoint inferior tribunals with the same or more limited powers.

The intention was to introduce into this remodelled papal Inquisition

most of the features which marked the thoroughness of the Spanish

institution. But the jealousy of the Popes prevented the Holy Office

from exercising the same independent action in Italy as in Spain. The

new institution began its work at once within the States of the Church,

and was introduced after some negotiations into most of the Italian

principalities. Venice refused, until it was arranged that the Holy

Office there should be strictly subject to the civil authorities.

Although modelled on the Spanish institution, the work of the Holy

Office in Italy never exhibited the same murderous activity; nor was

there the same need. The Italians have never showed the stern

consistency in faith which characterised the Spaniards. It was generally

found sufficient to strike at the leaders in order to cause the relapse

of their followers. Still the records of the Office and contemporary

witnesses recount continuous trials and burnings in Rome and in other

cities. In Venice, death by drowning was substituted for burning. The

victims were placed on a board supported by two gondolas; the boats were

rowed apart, and the unfortunate martyrs perished in the waters. The

Protestant congregations which had been formed in Bologna, Faenza,

Ferrara, Lucca, Modena, Naples, Siena, Venice, and Vicenza were

dispersed with little or no bloodshed. A colony of Waldenses, settled

near the town of Cosenza in the north-central part of Calabria, were

made of sterner stuff. Nothing would induce them to relapse, and they

were exterminated by sword, by hurling from the summits of cliffs, by

prolonged confinement in deadly prisons, at the stake, in the mines, in

the Spanish galleys. One hundred elderly women were first tortured and

then slaughtered at Montalto. The survivors among the women and children

were sold into slavery. Such was the work of the Counter-Reformation in

Italy, and the measures to which it owed much of its success.

§ 3. _The Index._

Leaders of the Counter-Reformation in Italy like Popes Paul IV. and Pius

V. were determined on much more than the dispersion of Protestant

communities and the banishment or martyrdom of the missionaries of

Evangelical thought. They resolved to destroy what they rightly enough

believed to be its seed and seed-bed--the cultivation of independent

thinking and of impartial scholarship. They wished to extirpate all

traces of the Renaissance. In the fifteenth and first half of the

sixteenth centuries, Italy had been "the workshop of ideas," the

_officina scientiarum_ for the rest of Europe. The Inquisition, in Italy

as in Spain, attacked the Academies, the schools of learning, above all

the libraries in which the learning of the past was stored, and the

printing-presses which disseminated ideas day by day. They had the

example of Torquemada before them, who had burnt six thousand volumes at

Salamanca in 1490 on pretence that they taught sorcery.

It was no new thing to order the burning of heretical writings. This had

been done continuously throughout the Middle Ages. The episcopal

Inquisition, the Universities, the papal Inquisition, had all

endeavoured to discover and destroy writings which they deemed to be

dangerous to the dogmas of the Church. After the invention of printing

such a method of slaying ideas was not so easy; but the ecclesiastical

authorities had tried their best. The celebrated edict of the Archbishop

of Mainz of 1486, prompted by the number of Bibles printed in the

vernacular, and trying to establish a censorship of books, may be taken

as an example.[725]

Pope Sixtus IV. in 1547 had ordered the University of Köln to see that

no books (_libri, tractatus aut scripturæ qualescunque_) were printed

without previous licence, and had empowered the authorities to inflict

penalties on the printers, purchasers, and readers of all unlicensed

books. Alexander VI. had sent the same order to the Archbishops of Köln,

Mainz, Trier, and Magdeburg (1501). In a _Constitution_ of Leo X.,

approved by the Lateran Council of 1515, it was declared that no book

could be printed in Rome which had not been expressly sanctioned by the

_Master of the Palace_, and in other lands by the Bishop of the diocese

or the Inquisitor of the district; and this had been homologated by the

Council of Trent.[726] From its reorganisation in 1543 the papal

Inquisition in Rome had undertaken this work of censorship.

Outside the States of the Church the suppression of books and the

requirement of ecclesiastical licence could only be carried out through

the co-operation of the secular authorities; and they naturally demanded

some uniformity in the books condemned. This led to lists of prohibited

books being drawn up--as at Louvain (1546 and 1550), at Köln (1549), and

by the Sorbonne, who managed the Inquisition for the north of France

(1544 and 1551). Pope Paul IV. drafted the first papal Index in 1559. It

was very drastic, and its very severity prevented its success.[727] It

was this _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ which was discussed by the

Commission appointed at the Council of Trent.[728]

The Commission drafted a set of ten rules to be followed in constructing

a list of prohibited books, and left the actual formation of the Index

to the Pope. This new Index (the Tridentine Index) was published by Pope

Pius IV. in 1564. His successor, Pius V., appointed a special Commission

of Cardinals to deal with the question of prohibited books. It was

called the Congregation of the Index, and although distinct from the

Inquisition, worked along with it. Its work was done very thoroughly.

Italian scholarship was slain so far as the peninsula was concerned. The

scholarship of Spain and Portugal was also destroyed. Learning had to

take shelter north of the Alps and the Pyrenees. So thoroughly was the

work of prohibition carried out, so many difficulties beset even Roman

Catholic authors, that Paleario called the whole system "a dagger drawn

from the scabbard to assassinate all men of letters"; Paul Sarpi dubbed

it "the finest secret which has ever been discovered for applying

religion to the purpose of making men idiots"; and Latini, a champion of

the Papacy, declared it to be a "peril which threatened the very

existence of books."

The rules for framing the Index, drafted by the commission of the

Council of Trent, are curious reading. The writings of noted Reformers,

of Zwingli, Luther, and especially of Calvin, were absolutely

prohibited. The Vulgate was to be the only authorised version of the

Scriptures, and the only one to be quoted as an inspired text. Scholars

might, by special permission of their ecclesiastical superiors, possess

another version, but they were never to quote it as authoritative.

Versions in the vernacular were never to be quoted. Bible Dictionaries,

Concordances, books on controversial theology, had to pass the strictest

examination at the hands of the censors before publication. The censors

were directed to examine with the utmost care not merely the text, but

all summaries, notes, indexes, prefaces, and dedications, searching for

any heretical phrases or for sentences which the unwary might be tempted

to think heretical, for all criticisms on any ecclesiastical action, for

any satire on the clergy or on religious rites. All such passages were

to be expunged.

North of the Alps the Index had small effect. It was impotent in lands

where the Reformation was firmly established; and in France, papal

Germany, and north Italy a class of daring colporteurs carried the

prohibited tracts, Bibles, and religious literature throughout the

lands.

The tremendous powers of suppression set forth in the Tridentine rules

could not avoid doing infinite mischief to thought and scholarship, even

if placed in the hands of qualified and well-intentioned men. But the

censors were neither capable nor high-minded. Scholars refused the

odious task. Commentaries on the Fathers were read by men who knew

little Latin, less Greek, and no Hebrew. They were discovered extorting

money from unfortunate authors, levying blackmail on booksellers,

listening to the whispers of jealous rivals.

So effectually was learning slain in Italy, that when the Popes at the

close of the sixteenth century strove to revive the scholarship of the

Church and to gather together at Rome a band of men able to defend the

Papacy with their pens, these scholars had to work under immense

disabilities. Baronius wrote his _Annals_, and Latini edited the Latin

Fathers, both of them ignorant of Greek, and both harassed by the

censorship.

Some of the more distinguished leaders of the Counter-Reformation saw

the dangers which lurked in this system of pure suppression. The great

German Jesuit, Canisius, who did more than any other man for the

maintenance and revival of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany,

pointed out that destruction was powerless to effect permanent good. The

people must have books, and the Church ought to supply them. He laboured

somewhat successfully to that end.

§ 4. _The Society of Jesus and the Counter-Reformation._

Neither the Inquisition nor the Index account for the

Counter-Reformation. Repression might stamp out Reformers in southern

Europe; but faith, enthusiasm, unselfish and self-denying work were

needed to enable the Roman Church to assume the offensive. These were

supplied to a large extent by the devoted followers of Ignatius Loyola.

Roman Catholicism reached its ebb during the pontificate of Pius IV. It

stood everywhere on the defensive, seeing one stronghold after another

pass into the hands of a victorious Protestantism. Pius V., his

successor, was the first fighting Pope of the new Roman Catholicism. He

had behind him the reorganisation effected by the Council of Trent; the

Roman Catholic revival of mediæval piety of which Carlo Borromeo, Philip

Neri, and Francis de Sales were distinguished types; the Inquisition and

Congregation of the Index; and, above all, the Company of Jesus.

Romanism under his leadership boldly assumed the offensive.

In 1564 it seemed as if all Germany might become Protestant. The States

which still acknowledged the Papacy were honeycombed with Protestant

communities. Bavaria, the Rhine Provinces, the Duchy of Austria itself,

were, according to contemporary accounts, more than half-Protestant.

Nearly all the seats of learning were Protestant. The Romanist

Universities of Vienna and Ingolstadt were almost deserted by students.

Under the skilful and enthusiastic leadership of Peter Canisius, the

Jesuits were mainly instrumental in changing this state of things. They

entered Bavaria and Austria. They appeared there as the heralds and

givers of education, and took possession of the rising generation. They

established their schools in all the principal centres of population.

They were good teachers; they produced school-books of a modern type;

the catechism written by Canisius himself was used in all their schools

(it transplanted into Romanism the Lutheran system of catechising); they

charged no fees; they soon had the instruction of the Roman Catholic

children in their hands. The astonished people of town and country

districts began to see pilgrimages of boys and girls, conducted like

modern Sunday-school treats, led by the good fathers, to visit famous

churches, shrines, holy crosses, miraculous wells, etc. The parents were

induced to visit the teachers; visits led to the confessional, and the

confessional to the directorate. Then followed the discipline of the

_Spiritual Exercises_, usually shortened to suit the capacities of the

penitents. Whole districts were led back to the confessional--the

parents following the children.

The higher education was not neglected. Jesuit colleges founded at

Vienna and Ingolstadt peopled the decaying universities with students,

and gave them new life. Student associations, on the model of that

founded by Canisius at Köln, were formed, and were affiliated to the

Company of Jesus. Pilgrimages of students wended their way to famous

shrines; talented young men submitted their souls to the direction of

the Jesuit fathers, and shared in the hypnotic trance given by the

course of the _Spiritual Exercises_. A generation of ardent souls was

trained for the active service of the Roman Church, and vowed to combat

Protestantism to the death.

The Company had another, not less important, field of work. The Peace of

Augsburg had left the management of the religion of town or principality

in the hands of the ruling secular authority. The maxim, _Cujus regio

ejus religio_, placed the religious convictions of the population of

many districts at the mercy of one man. Many Romanist Princes had no

wish to persecute, still less to see their principalities depopulated by

banishment. Some of them had given guarantees for freedom of conscience

and limited rights of worship to their Protestant subjects. The Jesuits

set themselves to change this condition of things. They could be

charming confessors and still more delightful directors for the obedient

sons and daughters of the Papacy. They were invited to take charge of

the souls of many of the Princes and especially of the Princesses of

Germany. They set themselves to charm, to command, and, lastly, to

threaten their penitents. Toleration of Protestants they represented to

be the unpardonable sin. They succeeded in many cases in inducing

Romanist rulers to withdraw the protection they had hitherto accorded to

their Protestant subjects, who, if they stood firm in their faith, had

to leave their homes and seek refuge within a Protestant district.

Thus openly and stealthily the wave of Romanist reaction rolled

northwards over Germany, and district after district was won back for

the Papacy. This first period of the Counter-Reformation may be said to

end with the sixteenth century; the second, which included the Thirty

Years' War, lies beyond our limit.

The savage struggle in France, culminating in the Massacre of St.

Bartholomew, did not belong to the New Roman Catholicism, and lay

outside of what may be called the Counter-Reformation proper. The force

of this new aggressive movement was first felt in the formation of the

Holy League, which had for its object to prevent Henry of Navarre from

ascending the throne of France. The League was the symbol in France of

this Counter-Reformation. The Jesuits never attained a preponderating

influence in that country until the days of Marie de Medici; but they

were the restless and ruthless organisers of the Holy League. The Jesuit

fathers, Auger, Henri Saumier, and, above all, Claude Matthieu, called

the _Courrier de la Ligue_, worked energetically on its behalf. The

Company issued tracts from their printing-presses asserting the

inalienable rights of the people to govern and therefore to choose their

rulers. They taught that while God had given spiritual power into the

hands of one man, the Pope, He had bestowed the secular power on the

many. Kings, they asserted, do not reign by any divine right of

hereditary succession, but by the will of the people and of the Pope.

Hence all Romanist France was justified in setting aside the King of

Navarre and putting in his place the Cardinal of Bourbon, his uncle.

The arguments they laid before the English people were based on

principles altogether different, even contradictory. There they extolled

hereditary and legitimate succession. Elizabeth was illegitimate, and

Mary of Scotland had divine rights to the throne of England. It is

needless to relate the efforts made by the leaders of the

Counter-Reformation to bring England back to the Papacy--the College at

Douai, the English College at Rome, both erected to train missionaries

for service against the heretical Queen; the mission of the Jesuits,

Parsons and Campion. The student of history can scarcely fail to note

one thing,--that the sailing of the Spanish Armada marks the flood-tide

of the first period of the Counter-Reformation. After the ruin of the

great fleet the first wave of the reaction seems to have spent itself.

The League failed in France, and Henry IV. secured the rights of his

Protestant subjects in the Edict of Nantes. The Hollanders emerged

triumphant from their long war of liberation. Even in Germany the defeat

of the Armada dates in a rough way the end of the impetus of the

Romanist reaction. The German Protestants assumed the offensive again,

and an energetic and aggressive Calvinism redeemed the halting character

of the Lutheran Reformation.

Mr. Symonds, in his brilliant sketches of the forces at work to make the

Romanist reaction, thinks that the part of the Jesuits in the

Counter-Reformation has rather been exaggerated than insufficiently

recognised. "Without the ecclesiastical reform which originated in the

Tridentine Council; without the gold and sword of Spain; without the

stakes and prisons of the Inquisition; without the warfare against

thought conducted by the Congregation of the Index,--the Jesuits alone

could not have masterfully governed the Catholic revival."[729] This is

perhaps true; but what would all these things have come to apart from

the activity of the Company of Jesus? They were little better than the

mechanism to which the enthusiasm and the indomitable work bred from

enthusiasm gave the soul. Stern, relentless, savage repression can do

much. It can make a desert and call it peace; but it cannot requicken

with renewed life. The gentle piety of Carlo Borromeo, the sweet

languishing tenderness of Francis de Sales, the revived mediæval

mysticism discernible in the Romanist reaction, had neither the

religious depth nor the endurance needed for the times. Ignatius

breathed the Spanish spirit, at once wildly visionary and intensely

practical, into his Company, and they transfused it throughout the

Church of the Counter-Reformation--the exalted devotion, the tenacity

which no reverses could wear out, and the unquenchable religious hope.

They ruled it as the soul governs the body.

It was the time of Spanish domination. Spain grasped the New World and

hoped to subdue the Old. Her soldiers were the best in Europe. They

dreamed of nothing but conquests. The Jesuits brought the Spanish spirit

into the Church. Others might scheme, and wish, and wonder. They worked.

They reaped the harvest which hard and unremitting labour gathers in

every field. It was not for nothing that Adrian and other papal

statesmen dubbed Luther another Mahomet; the word kindled in every

Spanish breast the memory of their centuries of war with the Moslems and

its victorious ending. If the gold and sword of Spain were at the

service of the Counter-Reformation, it was the Spanish spirit incarnate

in the Company of Jesus that made such dry bones live.

We must remember that in the first period of the Romanist reaction we

have to do with the Jesuits of the sixteenth century, and must banish

from our minds the history of the Order in the two centuries that

follow. Its worst side had scarcely appeared. Its theory of

Probabilism, by which directors were trained to transform all deadly

sins, even murder, adultery, and theft, into venial offences, and

casuistry became a method for the entire guidance of souls, belonged to

a later period. It was not till the seventeenth century that the

forgiveness of sins had been reduced by them to a highly refined art.

Their shameless neglect of religion and morality, when the political

interests of the Church and of the Society seemed to require it, was

also later. What the depressed Romanists of the sixteenth century saw

was a body of men whom no difficulties daunted, who spent themselves in

training boys and girls and in animating them with religious principles;

who persuaded boys and youths to attend daily Mass, to resort to monthly

confession, to study the articles of their faith; who elevated that

obedience, which for generations they had been taught was due to the

earthly head of the Church, into a sublime religious principle.

All this the Romanism of the Counter-Reformation owed to those three

unknown men, who crept into Rome through the Porto del Popolo during

Easter 1538 to beg Pope Paul III. to permit them and their companions to

enroll themselves in a new Order, for the defence of the faith.

It is true that men can never get rid of their personal responsibility

in spiritual things, but multitudes will always attempt to cast the

burden upon others. In all such souls the spirit of the

Counter-Reformation lives and moves and has its being, and they are

sustained, consciously or unconsciously, by that principle of blind

obedience which its preachers taught. It is enough for us to remember

that no weakened sense of personal responsibility and no amount of

superstitious practice can utterly quench the conscience that seeks its

God, or can hinder that upward glance to the Father in heaven which

carries with it a living faith.

INDEX.

Aare, The, Swiss river, boundary between the Provinces of Mainz

and Besançon, 23.

_Abjuration, Act of_, declaration of Dutch Independence, 267.

Abjuration of Papal Supremacy by the Church of England, 332.

_Act of Restraint of Appeals_ (England), 329.

_Act abolishing Diversity of opinion_ (England), 348.

_Act of Uniformity_ (Edward VI.), _The First_, 357, 360.

_Act of Uniformity_ (Edward VI.), _The Second_, 363.

_Act de heretico comburendo_, 374.

_Act of Uniformity_ (Elizabeth), 390 _ff._, 395, 401 _f._, 403, 419.

_Act of Supremacy_ (Elizabeth), 390 _ff._, 393 _f._, 397, 401, 408 _f._

Acts completing England's secession from Rome, 331.

Acts of Henry VIII. revived by Elizabeth, 393 and _n._

Adda, The (Val Tellina), 50.

Adrian VI., his ideas of the need of reformation, 496;

a Dutch Ximenes, 497;

an Inquisitor, 497;

in Rome, 497;

tries to reform the _Curia_, 498;

the martyr of the Spanish Reformation, 499;

failure in life, success after death, 500; 494, 610.

_Advertisements_ of Archbishop Parker, 406, 418 _n._

Advoyer, The, the chief Magistrate of Bern, 41 _n._

Agen, Reformed church at, 166.

Agrarian troubles in England, 345, 359, 387.

Agrippa, Cornelius, 64 _n._

Aigle, a district of the Pays de Vand, 67;

Farel at, 67, 69.

Albert of Brandenburg, 3.

Alcala, College at, 491 _f._, 537.

Alciat, André, lecturer in Law, 95.

Aleander, Hieronymus, Papal Legate at Worms, in the Netherlands, 229.

Alençon, The Duke of, Francis, till 1574, then Duke of Anjou,

179 _n._, 203.

Alexander, of Arles, Peter, 358.

Alva, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of, 193, 255 _f._, 259, 262.

Amboise, Town of, 146, 310;

Conspiracy of, 176;

Edict of, 192.

Ammonius, Andreas, Latin secretary to Henry VIII., 316.

Amsterdam, 236, 239.

Anabaptists, The, outside the Peace of Augsburg, 5;

in Zurich, 35;

in the Netherlands, 224 _ff._;

their origin, 235, 423, 432 _ff._;

places of refuge, 238, 451;

attempts to gain a town in the Netherlands, 238 _f._;

old mood of describing, 430 _f._, 431 _n._;

connection with the social revolt, 432;

with the _Brethren_, 432;

their organisation, 435;

their hymns, 435, 449 _ff._;

their strong individuality, 437;

views on _Passive Resistance_, 438;

their evangelists, 439;

repudiated a State Church, 442;

their "separation" from the world, 443, 461;

persecutions, 236 _ff._, 445;

in Switzerland, 445 _f._;

in Münster, 459 _ff._;

polygamy among, 463 _ff._;

their views on Marriage, 464.

Andelot, Francis de, brother of Admiral Coligny, 172, 194.

Anduze, Huguenot stronghold, 201.

Angeles, Francisco de los, and Luther 495.

Angers, Reformed church at, 166.

Anhalt becomes Calvinist, 3.

Anna Reinhard and Zwingli, 36.

_Annates_ (England), 328, 331.

Anne of Cleves, 342, 347, 349.

Anti-Trinitarians, 422, 424 _f._

Antoine de Bourbon, titular King of Navarre, 20, 172, 175, 178, 181,

186, 192. See Bourbon.

Antwerp, 234, 254 _f._

_Apology, The_, of William of Orange, 267.

_Apostles, The Twelve_ (nickname), 252.

Apostolic Tribunal (Inquisition), The, 598.

Appenzell (Swiss Canton), 22, 46, 49.

Aquila, Bishop of, Ambassador of Philip II., 386.

_Archeteles_ (treatise by Zwingli), 33.

_Areopagitica, The_, 13.

Armada, Destruction of the Spanish, 212.

Arran, the Earl of, 281, 283, 298 _n._

Arthur, Prince of Wales, married to Catharine of Aragon, 322.

_Articles of Geneva_, 105 _ff._, 124.

_Articles, The Ten_, 333 _ff._

_Articles, The Six_, 348 _f._, 355, 358.

_Articles, The Forty-two_, 363, 411.

_Articles, The Thirty-eight_, 414 _f._

_Articles, The Thirty-nine_, 363, 411 _ff._, 415, 418.

_Articles of the order and government of the Church, The_, 417.

_Articles, The Twenty-one_ (Anabaptist), 459, 465.

_Articles, The Twelve_ (The Apostles' Creed), 518.

Arundel, the Constitutions of Thomas, 337.

Assembly of Notables (France), 177.

_Attrition_ and _Contrition_, as defined at the Council of Trent, 584.

Aubenas, Huguenot stronghold, 201.

Aubigny, Reformed church at, 166.

Augsburg, Peace of, Elizabeth's desire to take advantage of, 397,

405 _n._, 408, 414.

_Augsburg Confession_, 124, 341, 397, 415, 576.

_Augsburg Interim_, 567; 20.

Augsburger, Jacob, Reformer of Mühlhausen, 43.

_Aventuriers, Les_, in France, 144.

Aytta, Vigilius van, member of the Council of State for the

Netherlands, 243.

_Babylonian Captivity of the Church of Christ_, 334, 494.

Baden (Switzerland), Diet at, 47.

Bale, John, 318.

_Band subscrivit by the Lords_, 289.

_Baptism, Ceremony of_, according to the Reformed rite, 69;

first instance in Geneva, 83;

Anabaptist mode of administering, 435;

mode in Münster, 461.

_Baptism, Doctrine of_, defined at the Council of Trent, 581.

Barcelona, Ladies of, Ignatius' earliest disciples, 533, 561.

Barlaymont, Baron de (Netherlands), 243, 250, 255.

Barnes, Dr. Robert (England), 18, 340, 349.

Barricades, the day of (France), 211.

Barry, Godfrey de, Seigneur de la Renaudie (France), 175.

Basel, Bishopric of, 23, 64.

Basel, Town of, the Reformation in, 38;

accepts Calvinism, 60;

regulation of morals in, 109; 22, 25, 122.

Bastille, The, used as a prison for Protestants, 164.

_Bauny, qui tollit peccata mundi per definitionem_, 556.

Bavaria, 48;

Anabaptists in, 449.

_Bearnese_, The, Henry IV. of France, 218.

_Beatæ_, Spanish Mystics, 530.

Beaton, David, Archbishop of St Andrews, Cardinal, 282 _f._, 345 _n._

Beatus, Rhenanus, Humanist, 18 _n._

Béda, Noël, leader of the Romanist party in the University of Paris,

94, 535.

_Beggars, The_, 250 _ff._ See _Wild-Beggars_, _Sea-Beggars_.

_Bekentones des globens und lebens der gemein Criste zu Monster_, 464.

Benedictines, Reformation among the, 509.

_Bentheim Confession_, 4 _n._

Ber, Hans, Anabaptist evangelist, 439.

Bern, The Reformation in, 40;

_The Ten Theses_ of, 42, 45 _f._, 103;

protects Swiss Protestants, 45, 63;

seeks to evangelise Western Switzerland, 63, 66, 103 _f._;

Liturgy of, in use in French Switzerland, 69, 117, 118 _ff._;

demands a Public Disputation at Lausanne, 70;

Synod at, 73;

protects the Evangelicals of Geneva, 79 _f._;

conquers the Pays de Vaud, 89;

regulation of morals in, 109;

commanding position in Western Switzerland, 116;

_Consistory_ of, 117 _ff._;

intercedes with Geneva on Calvin's behalf, 121 _ff._; 22, 48, 113,

129.

Bernard, Jacques, minister at Geneva, 131 _n._

Berquin, Louis, a French Lutheran, 18, 143.

Besançon, Archiepiscopal Province of, 23.

Bèze, Théodore de (Beza), 95, 155, 313;

at Poissy, 186 _ff._

Bible, The English, 335, 337 _ff._, 389.

Biel or Bienne (Swiss Canton), 46;

becomes Calvinist, 60.

_Bishops' Book, The_, 10, 319, 336.

Blaarer (Blauer), Ambrose, 43, 47.

Blandrata, Giorgio, Anti-Trinitarian, 426.

_Blast ... against the monstrous Regiment of Women_, 292, 296.

_Blaurock_ (Brother Jörg), 446 _f._

Blois, town of, 146, 166.

_Bloody Tribunal, The_, 255.

Boabdilla, Nicholas, Jesuit, 537, 557.

Bockelson, Jan (Jan of Leyden), arrived at Münster, 459;

leader in Münster, 463 _ff._;

introduced polygamy 465 _ff._

Bocquet, Christopher, a Dominican preacher in Geneva, 75;

called a _Lutheran_ preacher, 75 _n._

Boekbinder, Bartholomaeus, disciple of Jan Matthys, 459.

Boleyn, Anne, 324, 331.

Bolsec, Jerome (Geneva), 130.

Bonner, Edmund, Bishop of London, 369, 374 _f._, 380 _f._, 389.

_Book of Common Order, The_ (Scotland), 306.

_Book of Communion, The_ (England), 356.

_Book of Discipline, The First_ (Scotland), 307.

Books, Index of Prohibited. _See Index._

Borgia, Francis, Duke of Candia, a Jesuit, 556.

Borromean League (Switzerland), 60.

Borromeo, Carlo, Cardinal, 60, 595.

Bourbon, _Antoine_ de (1518-1562), Duke of Vendôme, and through his

wife, Jeanne d'Albret, titular King of Navarre, 20, 172, 175,

178, 181, 186, 192.

_Louis_ de, brother of Antoine, Prince of Condé (1530-1569),

Bourbon: married (1) Eléanor de Roye, (2) Françoise d'Orléans,

172, 175, 178 _f._, 187, 190 _f._

_Charles_ de, brother of Antoine (1523-1590), Cardinal de Bourbon,

chosen King by the League as Charles X., 209, 216, 212 _f._

_Henry_, son of Antoine and Jeanne d'Albret, King of Navarre and

King Henry IV. of France (1163-1610), recognised as leader of

the Huguenots, 194;

married to Marguerite de Valois, 197;

becomes heir to the French throne, 206;

declared by the Pope incapable of succeeding, 208;

at Tours with Henry III., 214;

succeeds as Henry IV., 216;

his _Declaration_, 217;

becomes a Roman Catholic, 219 _f._;

grants the Edict of Nantes, 221.

_Henry_ de (1552-1588), son of Louis of Condé and Eléanor de Roye,

195, 204, 208.

_Antoinette_ de (1494-1583), aunt of Antoine de Bourbon, married

Claude, Duke of Guise, the mother of the Guises, 190.

Bourg, Antoine du, the Chancellor, 146;

the martyr, 160, 170, 174 _f._

Bourges, Calvin at, 95;

church at, 166; 249.

Breda, 249.

Brederode, Henry, Viscount, 249 _f._

Bremen becomes Calvinist, 3.

_Bremen Consensus_, 4 _n._

Brès, Guido de, drafted the _Belgic Confession_, 272.

_Brethren, The_, 432 _f._, 434, 440, 445.

_Brethren of the Common Lot, The_, 226, 228.

_Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, The_, 441.

Briçonnet, Guillaume, Bishop of Meaux, 11, 141 and _n._

Brill (Brielle) taken by the _Sea-Beggars_, 260.

Broet, Paul, the Jesuit, 537.

Brooks, James, Bishop of Gloucester, 378, 380.

Bruno, Giordano, 423.

Bucer, Martin, Reformer of Strassburg, 43, 73, 149, 358, 507, 519.

Buchanan, George, 281, 533 and _n._, 556.

Budé, Guillaume (Budæus), 12, 95.

Buenzli Gregory, teacher of Zwingli, 25.

Bullinger, Henry, successor to Zwingli in Zurich, on ecclesiastical

excommunication, 111;

influence in England, 360, 364, 402 and _n._, 437; 60.

Burgundy. See _Charles the Bold_.

Busche, Hermann von dem, of Marburg, 457.

Cachi, Jean, Rom. Cath. in Geneva, 86.

_Caffard_, 80.

_Cahiers_, list of grievances presented to the States-General, 182,

185.