THE ORDER OF ST. DOMINIC
_“If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven; and come and follow Me!”_
The contrast between the condition thus enjoined by the Founder of
Christianity and the worldly position occupied by His Vicar on earth
was now fast approaching the climax which was to become absolute with
the era of the Renaissance.
From the simple folk foregathering in Rome in the middle of the first
century to discuss and to guide one another in the practice of the
new doctrine of love and humility, conveyed by word of mouth from the
East, in all its pristine simplicity, unburdened as yet by theological
complexities, unfettered by formularies, it is a far cry indeed to the
proud curial Christians of the Rome of Pope Innocent III.
The successor of Peter, the poor fisherman of Galilee, was enthroned
with a splendour outrivalling that of any other earthly potentate.
Temporally he was lord of considerable dominions; spiritually he
claimed empire over the entire Christian world, and maintained his
supremacy with the thunderbolts of anathema which he had forged
himself. His glittering court was thronged with rustling, scarlet
prelates, with patricians in cloth of gold and silver, captains in
steel, mincing fops and stately senators. He was arrayed in garments
woven of the very finest fleece, crowned with the triple diadem of
white peacock feathers within three flaming circlets of precious
stones. On his coronation kings served him upon the knee at table;
throughout his reign princes and patricians were his lackeys.
From the steps of the Lateran on the day of his accession he would
fling a handful of money to the Roman crowd, exclaiming: “Gold and
silver are not for me. What I have I give to thee.”
Yet his riches were vast, their sources almost inexhaustible. The
luxury in which he lived and moved was the most sumptuous that wealth
could command and art and artifice produce.
Nor was this ecclesiastical magnificence confined to Rome and the Papal
Court. Gradually it had come to permeate the entire body clerical until
it had affected even the monastic orders. From the simplicity of their
beginnings these orders had developed into baronial institutions.
The fathers presided in noble abbeys over wide tracts of arable and
vineyard which they owned and cultivated, and over rural districts and
parishes, which they governed and taxed as feudal lords rather than
served as priests.
So arrogant and aristocratic was become the spirit of a clergy whose
mission was to preach the sublimest and most ideal of democratic
doctrines, that the Church seemed no longer within the reach of
plebeian and peasant-folk. It was fast becoming an institution of
patricians for patricians.
How long this state of things might have endured, what results might
have attended its endurance, it were perhaps idle to speculate. That a
change was wrought, that provision was made for the lowly and the poor,
is due to the advent of two men as similar in much as in much else they
were dissimilar. They met in Rome at the foot of the pontifical throne.
Either might have been the founder of a religion had he not found
already in the world an ideal religion which he could serve. Both were
men born into easy circumstances of life; one, Francesco Bernardone,
was the son of a wealthy merchant of Assisi; the other, Domingo de
Guzman, of Calahorra, was a nobleman of Spain.
To-day the Church includes them in her Calendar as St. Francis of
Assisi and St. Dominic. They are the resplendent twain whom Dante
beheld together in his “Paradise”:
“L’un fu tutto serafico in ardore,
L’altro per sapienza in terra fue
Di cherubica luce un splendore.”[16]
St. Francis--through the sweetness and tenderness that emanated from
his poetic, mystic nature, the most lovable of all the saints--came
from his native Assisi to implore the Father of Fathers to permit him
to band together into an order the barefoot companions he had already
gained, to the end that they should practise Christ’s injunction of
poverty and self-abnegation, and minister to the afflicted.
St. Dominic--and our concern is more with him--had been chosen for
his eloquence and learning to accompany the Bishop of Osma upon an
inquisitorial journey into Southern France. There he had witnessed
the fierce carnage that was toward. He had preached to the heretics
at Toulouse, and the burning, passionate eloquence of his oratory had
made converts of many of those who were prepared to resist the cruel
arguments of fire and steel.
In the ardour of his zeal he had flung aside his rank and the ease and
dignity it afforded him. Like St. Francis he went barefoot, embracing
poverty and self-denial; yet, less mystical, less tender, entirely
practical where the propagation of the Faith was concerned, he had
exulted in the bloody victories that Simon de Montfort had won over the
heretical Albigenses.
Yet, if he gloried in the end achieved--conceiving it the supremest of
all human ends--he must have been touched with regret for the means
employed.
He has been termed a fierce and cruel zealot. But ferocity and cruelty
do not go hand in hand with such lowly humility as undoubtedly was
his. And the very object of his mission to Rome permits, if it does
not point to, a very different conclusion. He went deploring the
bloodshed he had witnessed, however greatly he may have prized the
fruits of it. Inspired by the success that had attended his oratory,
he aimed at providing other and gentler means by which in the first
instance to seek the attainment of the same ends. He went to implore
Pope Innocent’s leave to found an order of preachers who in poverty and
lowliness should go abroad to win back to the Roman fold the sheep that
had strayed into heretical pastures.
* * * * *
Pope Innocent considered the simultaneous requests of both these
men--requests which, springing from the same passionate fervour in
both, yet came by different, if similar, channels to a sort of unity in
the end.
He perceived the services which such men as these might render to
the Church, endowed as they were with the magnetic power of creating
followings, of inflaming hearts, and replenishing the flickering lamp
of public zeal.
He detected no heresy, no irony, in the cult of pauperdom which
they would go forth to preach under the sanction and charter of the
luxurious, aristocratic, curial court.
But there existed another obstacle to his granting them their prayers.
So numerous already were the monastic orders that a Council of the
Lateran had decreed that no more should be created. Favouring these
petitioners, however, he was applying himself to the surmounting of the
difficulty when death took him.
Thus the burden of solving this problem was thrust upon his successor,
Honorius III. And it is said that the new pope was spurred to discover
a solution by a dream--which has been made the subject of a fresco by
Bennozzo Gozzoli--in which he beheld this saintly pair supporting with
their hands the tottering Lateran.
Since he could not establish them and their followers as monastic
fathers, he had recourse to creating brotherhoods for them. These
brotherhoods, he affiliated to the order of St. Augustine, the
Dominicans as friars-preachers (_fratres predicatores_) and the
Franciscans as friars-minors (_fratres minores_).
Thus were launched these two mendicant orders, which by the enormous
following they were so soon to win, were destined to become one of the
greatest means of power of the Roman Church.
In the lifetime of their founders the fundamental laws of poverty were
observed in all their intended purity. But soon thereafter, being
men under their rough habits, and susceptible to the ambition that
is man’s, upon the acquisition of power followed the acquisition of
wealth. Their founders had accomplished a renascence of the original
spirit of Christianity. But soon this began to undergo modification,
and to respond to worldly influences, until the history of the
friars-mendicant repeats and mirrors the history of Christianity
itself. In a measure as they spread through Christendom, so they
acquired convents, lands, and property as they went. The personal
poverty of each brother remained, it is true; they still went abroad
barefoot and coarsely garbed, “without staff, or bag, or bread, or
money,” as their rule decreed. Individually they kept the vow of
privation; but considered collectively their poverty “remained outside
the convent gate,” as Gregorovius says, echoing what Dante had said
before him.[17]
For the service of the Church the friars-mendicant became a splendid
army, and an army, moreover, whose maintenance made no draught upon the
pontifical treasury, since, by virtue of their mendicancy, the orders
were entirely self-supporting. And whilst both orders, magnificently
organized, grew extremely powerful, the Dominicans became formidable
through their control of that Inquisition whose early stirrings had
inspired St. Dominic to his task.
His aim had been to found a preaching order whose special mission
should be the overthrow of heresy wherever found. The brethren were
to combat it, employing their eloquence on the one hand to induce the
heretic to abjure his error, on the other to inflame the faithful
against him, so that terror should accomplish what might not be
possible to persuasion.
It may be that this mission which they had made specially their own, as
their founder ordained, peculiarly fitted the Dominicans to assume the
government of an ecclesiastical establishment whose aim was identical.
It was this order of St. Dominic that was to erect the grim edifice
of the Holy Office, and to develop and assume entire control of the
terrible machinery of the Inquisition. Their persuasion was to be the
ghastly persuasion of the rack; their eloquence was to be the burning
eloquence of the tongues of material flame that should lick their
agonizing victims out of existence. And all for the love of Christ!
* * * * *
Although it might be difficult to show--as has been attempted--that
Domingo de Guzman himself was actually the first ordained Inquisitor,
nevertheless as early as 1224, within three years of his death, the
Inquisition in Italy and elsewhere was already entirely in the hands of
the Dominicans. This is shown by a constitution promulgated at Padua
in February of that year by the Emperor Frederic II. It contains the
following announcement:
“Be it known to all that we have received under our special protection
the preaching friars of the order of preachers, sent into our Empire on
business of the Faith against heretics, and likewise all who may lend
them assistance--as much in going as in abiding and returning--save
such as are already prescribed; and it is our wish that all should give
them favour and assistance; wherefore we order our subjects to receive
benignly any of the said friars whenever and wherever they may arrive,
keeping them secure from the enmity of heretics, assisting them in
every way to accomplish their ministry regarding the business of the
Faith.... And we do not doubt that you will render homage to God and
our Empire by collaborating with the said friars to deliver our Empire
from the new and unusual infamy of heretical pravity.”[18]
* * * * *
The constitution decreed that heretics when so condemned by the Church
and delivered over to the secular arm should be condignly punished;
that if any, through the fear of death, should desire to return to the
faith, he should receive the penance that might be imposed canonically
and be imprisoned for life; that if in any part of the Empire heretics
should be discovered by the inquisitors or by other zealous Catholics,
the civil powers should be under the obligation of effecting their
arrest at the request of the said inquisitors or other Catholics, and
of holding them in safe custody until excommunicated by the Church,
when they should be burnt; that the same punishment should be suffered
by _fautores_--_i.e._ those guilty of concealing or defending heretics;
that fugitives be sought for, and that converts from the same heresy be
employed to discover them.
Odious as was this last enactment, there was yet worse contained in the
Emperor’s constitution. It was decreed that “the sin of _lèse-Majesté
divine_ being, as it is, greater than that of _lèse-Majesté humaine_,
and God being the avenger of the sins of the fathers on the
children, to the end that these may not imitate the sins of those,
the descendants of heretics to the second generation shall be deemed
incapable of honours or of holding any public office--_excepting
the innocent children who shall denounce the iniquity of their
fathers_.”[19]
The barbarous provision here given in italics calls for no comment.
Within four years of issuing that harsh proclamation against all rebels
from the sway of Rome, Frederic himself, in rebellion against the
pontiff’s temporal sway, was to feel the lash of excommunication. But
with that we have no concern. After his reconciliation with the Pope
he renewed the constitution of 1224, adding a provision concerning
blasphemers, who, in common with heretics of whatever sect, should
suffer death by fire; yet if the bishops should desire to save any
such, this could only be done subject to the offender’s being deprived
of his tongue, so that never again should he blaspheme God.
* * * * *
In the year 1227 Ugolino Conti, who had been a friend of Dominic and of
Francis, ascended the papal throne under the style of Gregory IX.
It was this pontiff who, carrying forward the work that had been
undertaken in that direction by Innocent III, gave the Inquisition a
stable form. He definitely placed the control of it in the hands of the
Dominican friars, giving them, where necessary, the assistance of the
Franciscans. But the participation of the latter in the business of
that terrible tribunal is so slight as to be insignificant.
Gregory’s bull, given in “Raynaldus,”[20] is one of excommunication
against all heretics.
Further, it ordains that all condemned by the Church shall be
delivered to the secular arm for punishment, all clerics so delivered
being first degraded from their orders; that should any wish to abjure
his heresy and return to the Church, penance shall be imposed upon
him, and he shall suffer perpetual imprisonment. Abettors, concealers,
and defenders of heretics are similarly excommunicated; and if any
such shall neglect to procure absolution within one year, he shall be
accounted _infamous_, and shall be neither eligible for any public
office nor the elector of any other, nor act as witness, testator,
inheritor, nor have power to seek justice when wronged. If a judge, no
proceedings shall be laid before him, and his sentences, where passed,
shall be null and void; if an advocate, he shall not have faculty to
plead; if a notary, his deeds shall be void; if a cleric, he shall be
deposed from his office and benefices.
Similarly, the ban of excommunication shall fall upon those who hold
traffic with any who are excommunicated, and they shall further be
punished with other penalties.
Those who are under suspicion of heresy, unless they see to it
that they overcome the suspicion either by canonical purgation or
otherwise according to the quality of the person and the motives
for the suspicion, shall be excommunicated, and if they do not give
condign satisfaction within one year, they shall be deemed heretics.
Their claims or appeals shall not then be admitted, nor shall judges,
advocates, or notaries exercise their functions in favour of them;
priests shall refuse to administer the sacraments to them and to admit
their alms or oblations, and so shall the Templars and Hospitallers and
other regular orders, under pain of loss of office, from which naught
can save them but a mandate from the Holy See.
Should any give Christian burial to one who has died under
excommunication, he shall himself incur excommunication, from which he
shall not be delivered until with his own hands he shall have exhumed
the corpse, and so disposed that the place may never again be used for
sepulture.
Should any know of the existence of heretics or of any who practise
secret conventicles or whose ways of living are uncommon, they are
bound under pain of excommunication to divulge the same to their
confessor or other by whom they believe it will come to the knowledge
of their prelate.
Children of heretics and of the abettors or concealers of heretics
shall be deprived until the second generation of holding any public
office or benefice.
To the provisions of this bull, additions were made by the civil
governor of Rome, as representing the secular arm whose concern
it would be to inflict the punishments regarding which the Church
refrained from being explicit--confining herself to the promise that
they should be “condign.”
He provided that: those arrested should be detained in prison until
condemned by the Church, when, after eight days, they should be
punished.
Their property should be confiscated, one-third going to the delator,
one-third to the judge who should pronounce sentence, and one-third to
repair the walls of Rome, or otherwise as might be considered.
The dwellings of heretics or of any who should consciously have
entertained heretics should be razed to the ground.
If any man should have knowledge of the existence of heretics and fail
to denounce them he should be fined the sum of 20 livres. Should he
lack the means to pay, he was to be banished until he could find them.
Abettors and concealers of heretics should for the first offence suffer
confiscation of one-third of their property, to be applied to keeping
the walls of Rome in repair. If the offence were repeated, then they
should be banished for ever.
All who were elected senators must swear before taking office that
they would observe all laws against heretics; and were any to refuse
this oath his acts as senator would be null and void and none should
be obliged to follow or obey him, whilst those who might have sworn
obedience to him were absolved of their oath. Should a senator accept
this oath but afterwards refuse or neglect to respect its terms, he
must incur the penalties of perjury, suffer a fine of 200 silver marks,
to be applied to the repairing of the walls, and become ineligible for
any public office.
Two years later--in 1233--at a Council held at Béziers, the papal
legate, Gaultier of Tournai, elaborated these canons by the following
provisions:
“All magistrates, nobles, vassals, and others shall diligently seek to
discover, apprehend, and punish heretics wherever found. Every parish
in which a heretic is discovered shall pay as a penalty for having
harboured him one silver mark to the person who shall have discovered
him. All houses in which heretics may have preached shall be demolished
and the property confiscated, and fire shall be set to all caves and
other hiding-places where heretics are alleged to be concealed. All the
property of heretics shall be confiscated, and their children shall
inherit nothing. Their abettors, concealers, or defenders shall be
dealt with in the same manner. Any persons suspected of heresy must
make public profession of faith upon oath, under pain of suffering as
heretics; they shall be compelled to attend divine service on every
feast-day, and all who are _reconciled_ to the Church shall wear as
a distinguishing badge two crosses externally on their garments--one
on the breast, the other on the back--both of yellow cloth, three
fingers in width, the vertical limb measuring 2½ hands, the horizontal
one 2 hands.[21] If a hood is worn, this must bear a third cross--all
under pain of being deemed heretics and suffering confiscation of
property.”[22]
* * * * *
These enactments by their uncompromising harshness abundantly reveal
the extent to which heretics were execrated by the Church in her
intolerance and her firm determination to extirpate them. They also
reveal something of the far-reaching, pitiless, priestly subtlety and
craft which were to render so terrible this tribunal.
The provisions for the punishment of those who should be moved by
Christian charity to succour any of the persecuted were devised to the
end that terror should stifle all such compassion; whilst the decree
that the children of convicted heretics should suffer disinheritance
and become ineligible for any honourable appointment was calculatedly
introduced to forge a further weapon out of parental love. Where a man
might readily, himself, have endured martyrdom for his convictions,
he would be made to pause before including his children in the same
sacrifice, before suffering them to go destitute and branded.
In the eyes of the Church the end in view could not fail to justify
any means that might be employed. The extirpation of heresy was a
consummation so very fervently to be desired that any steps--almost any
sin--would be condonable if conducive to that end.
It has been argued that this crusade against heresy was political, a
campaign waged by the Church to protect herself from the onslaught of
liberty of thought, which was threatening her overthrow. Such no doubt
had been the case in earlier centuries; but it was so no longer. Roman
Catholicism had grown and spread like a mighty tree, until her shadow
lay across the face of Europe and her roots were thrust far and wide
into the soil. These had taken too firm a hold, they were too full of
vigour, to permit that the withering of an occasional branch should
give her concern for the vitality of the growth itself. She had no such
concern. However abominable, however feral, however unchristian even,
may have been the institution of the Holy Office, it is difficult to
think that the spirit in which it was founded was other than pure and
disinterested.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Lacoste._
ST. DOMINIC.
From the Painting in the Prado Gallery, attributed to Miguel Zittoz.]
It may seem bitterly ironical that men should have been found who in
the name of the meek and compassionate Christ relentlessly racked and
burnt their fellow-creatures. It was--bitterly, deplorably, tragically
ironical. But they were not conscious of the irony. In what they did
they were sincere--as sincere as St. Augustine when he urged the
extermination of heretics; and none can call in question his sincerity
or the purity of his motives.
To understand their attitude it is but necessary to consider the
absolute belief that was the Catholics’ in what Lecky calls “the
doctrine of exclusive salvation.” Starting from the premise that the
Church of Rome is the true and only Church of Christ, they held that
no salvation was possible for any man who was not a member of it. Nor
could ignorance--however absolute--of the true faith be urged as an
excuse for error, any more than may ignorance of the law be pleaded in
the worldly courts to-day. Thus, not only did they account irrevocably
damned those who schismatically deserted from the Church, and those
who like Jew and Moslem remained deliberately outside its walls, but
similarly--such was man’s indifferently flattering conception of divine
justice and divine intelligence--the savages who had never so much
as heard the name of Christ, and the very babe who died before his
heritage of Original Sin could be washed away by the baptismal waters.
Indeed, fathers of the Church had waged heated wars of controversy
concerning the precise moment at which pre-natal life sets in, and,
consequently, damnation is incurred by the soul of the fœtus should it
perish in the womb.
When it is considered that such doctrines were held dogmatically,
it will be realized that in the sight of the Church--whose business
was the salvation of souls--there could be no sin so intolerable, so
execrable, as heresy. It will be realized how it happened that the
Church could consider those of her children who were guilty of such
crimes as murder, rape, adultery, and the sin of the Cities of the
Plain, with the tolerance of an indulgent parent, whilst rising up in
intolerant wrath to smite the heretic whose life might be a model of
pure conduct. The former were guilty of only the sins of weak humanity;
and sinners who have the faith may seek forgiveness, and find it in
contrition. But heresy was not merely the worst of sins, as some have
held. In the eyes of the Church it transcended the realm of sin--it
was infinitely worse than sin, because it represented a state that was
entirely hopeless, a state not to be redeemed or mitigated by good
actions or purity of life.
Taking this view of heresy, the Church accounted it her duty to stamp
out this awful soul-pestilence so as to prevent its spreading; and she
had St. Augustine’s word for it that it was merciful to be merciless in
the attainment of that object. When viewed, as it were, from within,
there is nothing illogical in the attitude of the Church towards
heresy. What is illogical is the conception of God that is involved in
the doctrine of exclusive salvation.
Even if we survey the case of Galileo--one of the most illustrious
prisoners ever arraigned before the tribunal of the Holy Office--we
have no just cause to suppose that, in demanding his retraction of
the theory of the earth’s movement round the sun, the inquisitors
were inspired by any motives beyond the fear lest the spread of a
notion--honestly deemed by them to be an illusion--should disturb man’s
faith in the Biblical teaching with which it was in conflict.