_The Social State of the People in the Sixteenth Century._
SECTION I.
_Prior to the Reformation._
⭘ Aim of the Chapter――The Crown and the Government――Court of
Session and the Privy Council――Staff of the Executive
⭘ State of the Borders and the Highlands――Modes of treating the
Inhabitants of those quarters of the Kingdom――Feuds in every part
of the country
⭘ State of Crime――Theft, Robbery, Murder, Rape――Defective Police
Organisation――Crime in the Burghs; Acts of Violence; Begging;
Harlots――Penance as a Punishment――Habits of Swearing
⭘ Deplorable Sanitary Condition――Early mode of Lighting the streets
of Edinburgh
⭘ State of the Tenants and Labourers of the Land――Efforts to
relieve the Poor
⭘ Religious feelings of the People――Altars of Churches――Processions,
Patron Saints, and Altars of the various Craftsmen
⭘ Indications of the novel Doctrines among the People prior to the
Reformation――Heresy in Aberdeen――Hanging and breaking of Images;
Ballads
SECTION II.
_After the Reformation._
⭘ Evidence of the Change of Religious Sentiments――Disposal of the
Ornaments, Images, Vestments, and Silver work of the Churches
⭘ Proceedings against Idolaters, Harlots, and Swearers――Efforts to
suppress Immoralities and Social vice――Long Struggle to secure
the Observance of Sunday
⭘ Reformed Discipline compared with the System which it superseded
――A Treatise on Excommunication; its chief points――The Order of
Fasting; Illustrations of the Sentiments of the Clergy, and the
state of Society
⭘ Some of the Customs associated with Roman Catholicism continued
by the People
⭘ Relation of the Sexes――Inconsistency of Celibacy――Loose habits
of the People――Regulations connected with Marriage; Peculiarities
of the Scotch Law of Marriage――Curious points came before the
General Assembly――Age at which persons might Marry――Divorce
⭘ Provisions for the Relief of the Poor――Efforts of the Clergy to
assist them――Difficulty of treating Vagrancy
⭘ A belief in Sorcery, Witchcraft, and Necromancy, has descended
from Pre-historic Ages――By an Act of Parliament in 1563
Witchcraft was punishable by Death――James VI. a great believer
in Witchcraft――Trials for Witchcraft
⭘ Many of the Witches were accused of Conspiring the Death of
the King――The Earl of Bothwell was accused of trafficking with
Witches against the King, and imprisoned, but he escaped――Euphame
MacCalyean tried and executed――Barbara Napier tried; a speech of
the King on Witchcraft――Richard Graham, a great Sorcerer, Tried
and Executed――Bothwell continued his Exploits against the King
――At last he was driven out of the Country――The number of Witches
executed in Scotland not so great as in other Countries
⭘ Censorship of the Press
⭘ Monopoly and the disturbed condition of Society were inimical to
Commerce――The Coinage――Relative value of English and Scotch money
⭘ Mining Operations――Gold, Silver, Lead, Copper, Iron, and Coal
⭘ Commerce of the Kingdom――Foreign trade comparatively small
――Curious regulations touching the Export of Salt, Coal, and
other things――Trade between the Highlands and the Lowlands
⭘ Laws fixing the price of Ale, Malt, and other goods――Whisky
――Prices of Boots and Shoes――Complaint of Bonnet-makers
⭘ Sumptuary Laws――Dress――Eating and Drinking at Marriages and
Baptisms――Lent
⭘ Popular Amusements――Social results of the Reformation
CHAPTER XX.
_The Literature of the Nation in the
First Half of the Sixteenth Century._
⭘ Relation of Education and Literature――Introduction of Printing
into Scotland; first Printing Press; Chepman and Myllar
――Specimens of their Work――Other Scottish Printers
⭘ William Dunbar, the Court Poet――Editions of his Poems――Causes for
his Writings being neglected
⭘ Dunbar’s Writings chiefly consist of short pieces――The range of
his subjects pretty wide――Allegorical Poems; The Goldyn Targe
――Ballad sung at the Marriage of James IV.――The Thistle and the
Rose――Merit of his short Poems――The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy
――Some of Dunbar’s poems supposed to be lost
⭘ Gavin Douglas――The Palace of Honour; his Imagery; Peculiarities
of his language――King Hart, an Allegory――His Translation of
Virgil; Original Prologues――Descriptions of Winter and May
⭘ John Mair――His Career as a Professor――His Writings, Opinions, and
Views
⭘ Boece’s Writings――John Bellenden――His Translations; a Specimen of
the Vernacular Prose of the Period
⭘ Complaynt of Scotland――Its Authorship uncertain――Character and
nature of the Work――The Writer’s Opinions
⭘ State of Scotland――Discussion of the English Claims; Intention of
the Protector, Somerset――Characteristics of the English and the
Scots――The Complaints of the People against the Nobles and the
Clergy――Shortcomings of the People themselves――Corruption and
Vanity of the Nobles――Abuses of the Clergy; Heretics should not
be Burned――Internal Strife――Characteristics of the Style――Value
of the incidental Information in the Work
CHAPTER XXI.
_Literature of the Reformation,
and the later part of the Sixteenth Century._
⭘ Sir David Lyndsay――Influence of his Writings on the Reformation
movement in Scotland――He was the most popular Writer of the
Period, and wrote for the People
⭘ Lyndsay’s Attack upon the Churchmen and the Religious Orders,
specimen of his Sarcasm――Satire of the Three Estates, its humour
――The Abbot, the Parson――The Play acted upon the Green――The
Magistrates encouraged Dramatic Representations――Lyndsay’s other
Works
⭘ James Wedderburn, and Robert Wedderburn――Characteristics of the
Gude and Godly Ballads――Hymns of the Reformation――Influence of
this class of Writings
⭘ Knox’s Writings――His Style, History of the Reformation,
Admonitory Writings――Letter to the Queen Regent
⭘ Ninian Winzet――His Attack upon Knox, and the Reformers――Winzet
escaped from Scotland――His Writings
⭘ Quintin Kennedy――His Writings――Discussion with Knox on the Mass
――James Tyrie, a Jesuit――His attack on the Reformed Church,
answered by Knox
⭘ Knox’s Treatise on Predestination――History of the Doctrine of
Eternal Decree――Theories of the Origin of the Soul――Views of
Augustine, and others――Calvin’s view of the Eternal Decree,
opposed and vehemently disputed――Knox’s Defence of Predestination
unsatisfactory――The subject is beyond the powers of the Mind
――Knox’s Letters
⭘ George Buchanan――His Career as a Public Teacher Abroad――On his
return home, he became associated with the Protestant party――His
History of Scotland, Political Writings, Influence of his Views
⭘ Scottish Poets of the later part of the Century――Sir Richard
Maitland, George Bannatyne, Alexander Scott, Alexander Arbuthnot,
John Davidson――Anonymous Poems and Rhymes
⭘ Alexander Montgomery――Characteristics of his Poetry
⭘ James VI.――His Writings――Alexander Hume――James Melville――Latin
Poetry
⭘ Theological and Religious Literature of the later part of the
Century
⭘ Legal Literature――Dr. Henryson, Sir John Skene, Sir Thomas Craig,
William Welwood
⭘ Progress of Science――John Napier――A Treatise on Revelations――His
proposed Inventions for the Defence of the Island――Publication of
his great Work on Logarithms――His minor Inventions
⭘ Progress of Medical Knowledge――Dr. Skene, Dr. Lowe, Dr. Liddel
⭘ Scientific Conceptions of the Universe met much Opposition in the
Sixteenth Century――Moral and Religious Sentiments were the moving
Influences of the Reformation
CHAPTER XXII.
_Education and Art in the Sixteenth Century._
⭘ Aim of Education――Origin and Progress of Parochial Schools,
Subjects Taught
⭘ Grammar Schools prior to the Reformation――After the Reformation,
High School of Edinburgh――Grammar School of Glasgow――Method of
Teaching and Subjects Taught
⭘ Universities of Scotland――St. Andrews, new Colleges established
――Subjects Taught――Effect of the Reformation upon the
Universities――State of the University of Glasgow, New Foundation
――Andrew Melville appointed Principal, His method of Teaching
⭘ The Leaders of the Reformation movement made the utmost efforts
to reform the Universities――Reorganisation of the University
of St. Andrews, order of Teachers and Subjects Taught――Andrew
Melville appointed Principal of St. Mary’s College
――Reorganisation of the University of Aberdeen
⭘ Origin of the University of Edinburgh, Foundation――Robert
Rollock, Method of Teaching, number of Students
⭘ Aim of a Liberal Education as then conceived――Method of
Examination――Graduation――Growing interest in Education,
Foundation of Marischal College――Limited Views of Science and
the Universe which prevailed――Deficiencies of the System――Lack
of Libraries
⭘ Music Taught in the Schools prior to the Reformation――Act of
Parliament touching Music――Singing in the Reformed Church
⭘ Architecture――Carving in Oak――Painting and Sculpture almost a
Blank
CHAPTER XXIII.
_The Ultimate Problem of the Reformation._
⭘ Primitive Religious Feeling――Prime characteristic of the Human
Mind――Influence of Cosmic Forces in the Early Stages of the Race,
Crude Notions――Ancestor Worship, and Nature Worship
⭘ Brahmanism founded on a Pantheistic Conception――It issued in a
System of fixed Castes――A Reaction against It
⭘ Buddha a great Religious Teacher――Early Stage of His Career――At
last He found a New Light and the Secret of Spiritual Freedom
⭘ Henceforth Buddha proclaimed his doctrine of Salvation, founded
a new Religion, and almost effected a Social Revolution in India
――But the Interest of Caste, and Considerations of State, Caused
Buddhism to be expelled from India
⭘ Pantheistic Conception of the Universe――Nirvana
⭘ Religion of the Greeks――Romans――and Germans prior to the
Introduction of Christianity
⭘ Respect for Honesty, Justice, and Humane Sentiments have been
very slowly Developed
⭘ Distinct Character of Christianity――Roman Hierarchy――New
Testament, Faith in Immortality――A Region of Belief, and beyond
it a Region of Hope
⭘ Conclusion
THE HISTORY
OF
CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
CHAPTER XIII.
SECTION I.
_The Rise and Progress of the Reformation._
PARTLY owing to the insular position of Scotland, the means of
intercourse with the other communities of Europe had for ages been
comparatively limited, but, from the closing years of the thirteenth
century onward, the commercial and foreign relations of the kingdom
had gradually extended, and new historic conditions had arisen.
The gradual development of the industrial arts, the extension of
commercial relations, and the consequent improvement of the means
of intercommunication, had at length permitted different nations to
influence each other more freely and directly. Step by step commercial
enterprise had become a power in Europe, and the narrow feudalism of
the earlier period had begun to relax and decay. The energy of the
people of Europe had rendered it possible for the various communities
to influence each other in their ideas and opinions, as well as to
confer benefits by the exchange of their diverse commodities. This
mutual influence was most decisively manifested in the department of
thought and feeling associated with the Reformation movement. There
had been some slight attempts to sow novel doctrines among the Scots in
the fifteenth century, but they were still firmly attached to the Roman
Catholic creed. The principles and the doctrines of the Reformation
were not originated in Scotland, they were imported; and in treating
of the historic rise of this revolutionary movement, it is necessary
to extend our view beyond the boundaries of the Island.
The mechanical inventions connected with the manufacture of paper,
and the art of printing, had a relative bearing on the Reformation.
In Europe, paper was first made from cotton about the year 1000, and
from rags in 1319; and thus the material for printing on was rendered
available. In 1438, the art of printing was discovered; and a few years
later, cut metal types were invented and brought into use. Before the
end of the fifteenth century many thousands of books had been printed
and published in the various countries of Europe. Thus the printing
press soon made literature more accessible to mankind; while the range
of an individual thinker’s influence was at once greatly widened, his
ideas and opinions being easily promulgated to an extent which, in
preceding ages, was unknown and undreamed.
These new agencies appeared upon the scene when the chief nations
of Europe were seeking unity and aspiring to political independence,
and when their languages were assuming the modern forms. This had a
close relation and a deep influence on the Reformation movement. The
Italians, the French, the Spaniards, the Germans, and the English,
had each already begun to cultivate their respective languages, and to
produce poetry and other compositions. But the languages of the three
first were essentially descendants of the Latin; and it is a notable
coincidence that, though the Reformation was attempted to be introduced
among these nations, they still remain in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Italians have produced a rich and varied literature, characterised
by flowing cadence and dramatic power. Spanish literature is
distinguished for its sonorous rhythm and its romantic characteristics.
Both Italian and Spanish literature are somewhat poor in the
departments of philosophy and criticism: in these departments French
literature has taken a higher rank. German literature and English
literature were also influenced by the Latins, but in a much less
degree than the rest, each of them having retained a large body of
vernacular words, which have been developed into a great and massive
national literature. The action of the above agencies and others began
to indicate that a revolution was looming in Europe. The fetters which
had so long entangled and enslaved the human mind were soon to be
snapped; and the time was approaching when the mass of traditions, of
legends, and of wonders, would be subjected to a rude and irreparable
shock.
It has long been recognised that the revival of Classical literature
aided the Reformation movement. This however only affected the educated
class, and if there had been no stronger causes of the Reformation,
classical learning would have been comparatively powerless to touch the
body of a nation; but being in accord with other and deeper causes of
the revolutionary movement, it may be reckoned a considerable factor
among the antecedents of the Reformation. Inasmuch as this revival of
ancient literature contributed to weaken the authority of the theology
of the schools, it trenched upon the supreme power of the Church,
and by assisting to modify the forms of thought and opinion proved
exceedingly favourable to the general movement. Even to awaken a spirit
of inquiry was a step of the utmost consequence. Many learned men of
the period had no intention of reforming religion, but owing to other
tendencies which had been long in operation, their efforts conduced to
that end.
At the same time the revival of art and the rise of modern painting
in Italy gave an impetus to the onward movement. It is the essential
function of painting to embody man’s feelings, emotions, and ideas
of beauty, and within certain limits to give them living form and
realised existence. The Church thought that art could help her; and to
a certain extent it did. By vividly portraying Scripture histories and
the lives of the saints, by presenting new types of serene beauty and
pure joy, by giving form to the floating notions of angelic beings, and
by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, painting lent
efficient aid to piety. But its effect was not exactly what the Church
desired. Instead of tightening the fetters of ecclesiastical authority
and encouraging mysticism and asceticism, it restored humanity to a
sense of its dignity and beauty, and helped to show the untenability
of the mediæval standpoint; for art is emphatically and uncontrollably
free, and it is free in the realm of sensuous delightfulness from which
conventual religion turns aside to enjoy her own ecstatic liberty of
contemplation. Thus art early contributed to the emancipation of the
modern mind by proclaiming to men the tidings of their greatness in a
world of manifold enjoyment created for their use. “Whatever painting
touched, became by that touch, human; piety at the lure of art, folded
her soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This the Church had
not foreseen.”¹
¹ Symonds’ _Renaissance_, Volume III., pages 29‒32, _et seq._
Before the Reformation the Catholic Church presented a vast and
powerful organisation with innumerable agencies which penetrated into
every form of society, and attempted to control the whole life of
mankind. The body of the clergy, including the monks and friars, had
assumed the characteristics and the position of a distinct caste. They
were not only distinct, but in many respects antagonistic to the other
classes of the people; in their view of life, their laws, their special
privileges, their social duties, and in the aim of their existence,
they were separated from the lay classes of society by an impassible
limit. Their theory of life was to neglect and subdue the body, to
mortify the flesh in order that the soul might be made perfect. Whether
all this was done for the good of humanity or for the benefit of the
clergy themselves is a question of the most momentous importance, and
perchance some light may be thrown upon it in the course of this volume.
In every country of Europe the Church held a considerable extent
of landed property, which varied in different kingdoms, but at
the beginning of the sixteenth century the wealth of the Church
was enormous. In England the landed estates of the bishops, of the
cathedrals, and of the monastic orders extended into every parish
of the kingdom; while the tithes and offerings which maintained the
beneficed clergy brought in a revenue larger than the lands. In France
a long series of causes and circumstances had combined to throw into
the hands of the clergy a very large stretch of landed property;
for many generations the Kings of France had vied with each other in
heaping estates upon the bishops and in endowing monasteries. The title
deeds of church property in France date from a very early period; and
in Scotland the earliest body of charters relating to land rights are
found in the registers of the Church. The Church lands however formed
but a small part of the revenues of the clergy. They had the tenth of
all the produce of land, which was extended to include not only all
kinds of grain and vegetable produce, but also cattle, sheep, poultry,
and all kinds of fish. There were also the votive offerings, many of
which were at first free gifts, but had assumed the form of lawful
demands. Then the whole life of every Catholic was interwoven with the
ceremonial of the Church, and the priest had to be paid for confession,
baptism, confirmation, marriage, and the rites of burial, and the
saying of masses which were believed to lighten the suffering of the
soul after death. Moreover, there were the offerings at the crosses and
the shrines of famous and popular saints for their intercessory prayers
to avert calamities, to grant success to schemes of ambition, to obtain
pardon for sin, and to bring down blessing. Many of the crosses and
shrines were supposed to be invested with miraculous powers, and the
miracles which were said to have been wrought at them were innumerable.
When to all these are added the large subsidies which must have been
given to the swarms of friars spread over every country of Christendom,¹
it will be easily realised that the Church was in receipt of a large
portion of the industrial produce of Europe, and drew into her coffers
an almost incredible amount of wealth.
¹ Selden’s _Book on Tithes_; Speed’s _Catalogue of Religious
Houses, Benefices_, etc.; Dugdale and Stevens on _The
Revenues of the Monasteries_; Stubbs’ _Constitutional
History Of England_, Volume III., page 521; Milman’s
_History of Latin Christianity_, Volume VI., pages 344‒375;
for Germany see Ranke’s _History of the Reformation in
Germany_, Volume I., pages 272‒278.
Such education as then existed was almost wholly under the control of
the Church, and the clergy themselves were the best educated body of
men in the world. Rome was the head of the educational department as
well as the centre of everything else connected with religion, morals,
and philosophy. No university could be properly established without the
sanction and the approval of its constitution by the Pope; but it does
not appear that the Pope threw obstacles in the way of the erection
of these institutions. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there
were upwards of fifty universities scattered over Europe: and all
learned people were regarded as belonging to the clergy, for the Pope
had long claimed them as the special subjects of his empire. It was
well understood that all the members of the universities should talk
and write in Latin, the universal language of the Church and the
learned, in which all the knowledge of the times was sealed up and
monopolised by the clergy. They were the canon lawyers, the historians,
and the philosophers, for philosophy was wholly under the dominion
of theology. They reigned supreme, and everything which they deemed
opposed to the Faith or inconsistent with their theology was rigorously
excluded from the pale of orthodox Christendom. Medicine and science
were left to the Jews and the Arabians; as the Christian had higher
objects with which to occupy his mind. If it had been possible to
continue making Latin the only medium of communication and record, the
sole vehicle of literature, with the Church as its depository, there
would have been no Reformation. The modern languages even in their
crude state aided the onward movement, and the comparatively rapid
development of their varied literature secured its success. Hence,
since the sixteenth century, in spite of every effort, the Latin tongue
has been constantly falling more and more into the background; it was
relegated into the study of the scholar, and into books intended only
for the learned. But at the beginning of that century the spiritual
authority and the power of the clergy stood unchallenged; and the
minds of men were held in the most complete slavery. They declared the
eternal destiny of every one, and to doubt their sentence was the most
abhorrent sin; those who disbelieved trembled in silence, and shrouded
themselves from their fellow creatures; the few who openly ventured to
question the unlimited power of the clergy to absolve were the outcasts
of society, detested and proscribed by the Church and hated by the
people. The whole life and moral being of man was claimed to be under
the supervision and control of the clergy; no act was beyond their
cognisance, all the thoughts of the mind and the inmost secrets of
the heart had to be disclosed to them. Every one was bound to inform
against himself, and to submit to a moral torture which threatened him
with the severest condemnation. If he concealed anything, he had to
undergo the most crushing penance. The sacraments of the spiritual life
could be granted or withheld according to the arbitrary judgment of
the priest; absolution might be delayed and even refused; after death
the body might repose in consecrated ground with the saints, or be cast
out into the domain of devils. Excommunication cut the man off from the
Church, beyond whose pale there was no possibility of salvation; no one
could presume to hope for any one who died under its ban. The inward
assurance of faith, of virtue, or of rectitude, unless avouched by the
priest, was accounted nothing; without the priestly passport admission
into the kingdom of heaven was impossible. But the sacredness of the
priest himself was indefeasible, whatever his habits and life might be.
The people might murmur in secret at his cupidity and licentiousness;
he might even be openly exposed to shame, but he was still a priest and
his verdict of condemnation or absolution remained equally valid. This
was the crowning triumph of the Roman priesthood over the moral and
intellectual faculties of mankind, but it was too complete to endure.
Great as the power of the Church was, she could not bind the human mind
for ever; she might cramp its freedom and retard its progress, but to
arrest the onward movement and destiny of humanity was more than she
could do, and the moral indignation of the people at last rent the veil.
The written creed of the Church comprised only a small part of the
belief of Roman Catholicism. During the period of a thousand and
four hundred years the Church had accumulated and interwoven with
Christianity a vast mass of mythology, which consisted partly of
notions belonging to the old heathen religions that were current in
these countries when the Gospel was introduced into them, and partly of
notions and opinions which prevailed among the Jews when Christianity
was founded, and largely of traditions and legends associated with the
Christian saints.¹ The popular religion of the middle ages composed
from these diverse sources, contained a remarkable combination of
beliefs, and a mass of crude, unsifted, and materialised notions.
Tradition claimed equal authority with the Scriptures; the Church
and the hierarchy were assumed to have the power of indefinitely
multiplying the objects and articles of faith, and by degrees the whole
imaginary belief of the Middle Ages was authorised and ingrafted upon
Christianity. Externally there was a certain unity in the diversity
of the public worship. Although each nation and even each parish had
its peculiar patron saint, no one denied the influence and the power
of the saints of other nations and parishes; as there was always plenty
of employment for them all within the vast organisation of Roman
Catholicism.
¹ Mackintosh’s _History of Civilisation in Scotland_, Volume
I., pages 99‒102, 123, 128‒130, 437. _Supernatural Religion_,
Volume I., pages 88‒141, 148, _et seq._, 1874‒77. If I
might venture to pass a remark on this important work, it
appears to me that the first part of it is by far the most
effectively handled. When the author comes into the heart
of the subject, to the examination of the evidence of the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he always seems
rather anxious to prove his special view; and his criticism
loses much of its force owing to its excessive minuteness
and length, and he sometimes fails to see the real bearings
of the points in question.
All historians of opinions and doctrines are aware that
there existed a speculative connection between the current
notions of the philosophy of the age and those set forth
in the New Testament; indeed, the speculative tendency of
the early Fathers caused them to adopt the existing logical
distinctions of philosophical schools. But nevertheless
the opinions of the Fathers were all tinged by their belief
in supernatural agencies. Numerous allusions and direct
references to good and evil spirits, angels, and demons,
occur in their writings; and the doctrine of the existence
of demons stands in close association with the existence of
evil in the world. In the onward development of Catholicism
this class of beings seems to have constantly multiplied.
“If we pass from the Fathers into the Middle Ages we find
ourselves in an atmosphere that was dense and charged
with the supernatural. The demand for miracles was almost
boundless, and the supply was equal to the demand.” (Lecky’s
_History of Rationalism_, Volume I., page 152.) Compare Dean
Milman’s _History of Latin Christianity_, Volume VI., pages
399‒332.
There were the realms of angels and devils, and the hierarchies of
heaven and hell. The celestial host of angels was divided into three
classes, and each class sub-divided into three orders;¹ and these
beings formed circles around the throne of the Trinity. They were of a
fiery nature, as fire had most of the properties of the divinity, and
they were endowed with countless eyes and wings; their form, however,
was human, their raiment priestly and exceedingly bright, and they were
holy and full of joy. Occasionally they visited the earth as messengers,
but angelic apparitions were far less frequent than the interferences
and temptations of the demons. The latter were base and cruel,
malignant, hideous, and hateful; they took a peculiar delight in the
tortures which they inflicted, but the saints often mastered them,
and exultingly repulsed their fiercest assaults. The devils were very
numerous and ever present under the name of the spirits of the air;
this world was their almost exclusive domain; sometimes they assumed
beautiful forms, as of frisky women, to tempt the saints; sometimes the
devil appeared in the shape of a monstrous animal, at other times as a
priest to declaim in the pulpit. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Catholic
writer of the fourteenth century, distinctly maintained that diseases
and tempests were the direct acts of the devil; that the devil could
transport men at his pleasure through the air, and that he could
transform himself into any shape. It was generally taught and believed
that innumerable evil spirits were ranging over the world, seeking
the misery and the ruin of mankind; and that they were always hovering
around the inhabitants of the earth, and originating wind, hail, and
tempests.²
¹ In the primitive Church the doctrine of angels was indefinite,
but it gradually assumed form, and most of the scholastics
adopted the classification indicated in the text. The
Council of Lateran, held in 1215, declared as the doctrine
of the Church that the angels are spiritual beings, and were
created in a state of innocence. But touching particular
points, ample scope was still left for poetical and
imaginary speculations. Some of the Fathers held rather
curious notions about the angels. Clement and Origen
assigned to the angels the office of watching over provinces
and towns, in accordance with the notions of individual
guardian angels. (Clement, Stromata, V., page 700.) Clement
further says――“That they have neither ears, nor tongue, nor
lips, nor entrails, nor organs of respiration,” etc.
² _Malleus Maleficarum_; Lecky’s _History of Rationalism_,
Volume I., pages 72, 74, _et seq._ Regarding the devil there
has been great diversity of doctrine and opinions. According
to the opinion of Origen, there was still hope of the final
conversion and pardon of Satan himself. Tertullian and
Origen both ascribed the failures of crops, drought, famine,
pestilence, and murrain to the influence of demons.
Closely associated with these demoniac agencies, was the belief in
witchcraft, sorcery, spells, talismans, and conjurations. These vaguely
connated notions rested upon the supposition that acts and operations
were performed by persons who were under the influence of the devil,
or who acted as the assistants of evil spirits. The Church had long
encouraged these silly notions and wild hallucinations by recognising
and treating them as facts; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, the belief in witchcraft reached a height which produced the
most frightful results. Many thousands of human creatures were burnt
and drowned for the supposed crime of having sold themselves to the
devil, and having held communication with evil spirits.
The intense and vivid sense of satanic presence which pervaded the
minds of the clergy and the legislators of those times, induced them to
look upon heresy and witchcraft as nearly allied, and the zeal against
both grew together. The idea of demoniac power had so deep a hold upon
the minds of men that even the Reformation failed to shake it; and for
some time this revolution gave a new impetus to the persecution for
witchcraft, and it required the enlightenment of other two centuries to
weaken and dispel this dark and cruel belief.
The saints were an intermediate class of beings between God and the
living Catholic world of Christians. As they were endowed with human
feelings and sympathies, they were naturally supposed to be more
closely associated with, and interested in, the welfare of their
kindred upon the earth. This kinship between the blessed saints and
their brethren and votaries still in the flesh seemed to be mutual;
and each saint willingly kept up his special interest and attachment
for the places and the associates of his earthly sojourn. By his
intercession he exercised a beneficent influence; he was tutelar within
his sphere, and so he became an object of devout adoration. So useful
a class of beings could not fail to be constantly multiplied, and some
of them deified, as they had assumed the position of the rulers and the
disposing providence of the earth, and it appeared that the Deity had
almost abandoned the government of the world to them. The unmistakable
evidence of their place and power in the popular imagination was seen
in the numbers of their altars in every church and chapel throughout
Christendom, and the costly oblations that were continually offered at
their shrines.
But the Virgin Mary was seated far above all the saints and martyrs.
Since the beginning of the seventh century the worship of the Virgin
had been constantly on the ascendant. Every cathedral, and almost every
church, had its Chapel of our Lady; and in every breviary the hymns to
the Virgin teemed with poetic images expressive of the homage paid to
her: in the worship of the people she was addressed in words similar
to those applied to the Deity. A copious and rich legend unfolded
the whole history of her birth and life, a subject on which the New
Testament was silent: but the spurious gospels had furnished ample
incidents, which threw a halo of authority around the details.¹
Painting and sculpture both lent their aid to embody and realise this
worship of the Blessed Virgin. At last the question was raised, whether
she was entirely free from the sin of Adam, and there were great
discussions on the point. The Council of Basle in 1439 passed a decree
in favour of the Immaculate Conception; yet some still doubted, and
Pope Sixtus the Fourth, in 1477, and again in 1483, declared that the
opposite doctrine should not be called heretical, but his bulls did not
prohibit those who differed from retaining their own views.² At this
time the festivals in honour of the Virgin had increased to seven; and
it is almost unnecessary to say that countless miracles were attributed
to her.
¹ _Supernatural Religion_, Volume I., pages 308, 314, _et seq._
² “Those theologians who sought to clear the Mother of Christ
from the guilt of original sin, did not bear in mind that
they only pushed the miracle one step further back, without
entirely removing it; for in that case the parents of Mary
must have been free from original sin, and again their
parents, etc., and so on up to Adam. Bernard of Clairvaux
seems to have perceived this difficulty.” Hagenbach’s
_History of Doctrines_, Volume II., page 23; 1847.
This worship of the Virgin and the Saints was continually receiving
fresh accessions. For many centuries the passions and feelings were
kept in a state of excitement, as new saints were always arising and
crowding on to the Calendar, and whenever a saint was canonised, it
was deemed necessary to show that he had worked miracles; so all the
lives of the old saints are full of miracles. Some of the saints had
a world-wide fame; their churches were erected in every Christian
kingdom, and their shrines sprung up in all lands; but others had
only a national or a merely local fame, although within these limits
they were worshipped with equal fidelity, their legends, their acts,
and their miracles, were commemorated and presented to the eye in
architecture, sculpture, and painting. A few of the patron saints of
the western kingdoms of Europe belong to a comparatively late date,
England placed herself under St. George, a personage of very doubtful
origin; St. Louis was the Saint of the Crusades; and St. Thomas Aquinas
of Scholasticism. Each order of monks and of friars were bound to
hold up to the utmost the saints of their order, and it was the sacred
duty of all who wore the garb to spread their fame with especial
assiduity. It was also the duty of every king, burgess, and craftsman
and parishioner, to assist in propagating the renown and the miracles
of his patron saint.¹ Most of the chief churches of a kingdom had a
commemorative anniversary of their patron saint, when his wonders were
made the subject of endless sermons. Great processions, rejoicings, and
feastings were held, and occasionally rendered more attractive by some
new miracle, some marvellous cure, some demon ejected, or something
which outdid the miracles of every neighbouring saint. Each of these
notable saints had his life of strange incidents, the legend of his
virtues and miracles, his shrines and his relics; and this legend was
to his votaries a kind of gospel, which was worked into the popular
belief by constant iteration. Legend, in fact, was the universal poetry
of the times. The mythic literature of Roman Catholic Christianity is
almost interminable in quantity, and its life and strength is centred
in its particularity and individuality; whenever it is reduced to
a more compendious form it withers, the chill of the tomb gathers
around it; and under the searching grasp of comparative criticism, the
specified particulars and the minute detail, are found to lack evidence,
and one by one, each story is made to pass from the realm of fact into
that of belief, or the hallucinations of the dark and perplexed
imagination of the sons of men.
¹ Incidental evidence of this has already been given in the
first volume of this work, pages 125 _et seq._, 406, 438.
The great authority for the lives of the Saints is the large
folio volumes of the Bollandists’ Collection, which was
begun in 1643 by the Jesuit, Bolland. Within the past fifty
years many of the materials relating to the Roman Catholic
Church in England and Scotland have been published by the
authority of the Commissioners of Records; and by Clubs and
Societies formed with the object of printing early records.
The worship of the saints was connected with the adoration of images,
and the veneration of relics. The legend was confirmed and kept alive
by the somewhat dimly shown relics, which were generally in the church,
either under or upon the altar. In 787, the Second Council of Nice
issued a decree prohibiting the consecration of any church without
relics; hence it may easily be understood that objects of such virtue
and importance continually multiplied. The reliquary was the most
precious ornament in the king’s hall, in the lady’s chamber, and in the
knight’s armoury. It cannot be denied that there is something human and
even amiable in preserving memorials of the departed; and this natural
and universal feeling when transferred to the relics of the Blessed
Virgin and the saints had an almost incredible power. No one doubted
that the relics of the saints worked miracles; while the wood of the
true cross grew into a forest, and the most perishable things――the
garments of the Saviour and of the saints――became imperishable. To
such a degree was the veneration of relics carried, and the belief in
their virtue and miraculous powers had become so absolute, that the
very devil himself failed to detect imposture. Up to the verge of the
Reformation period the veneration of relics and the worship of images
continued in unshaken authority.
As the Catholic Church developed and completed her organisation, the
world after death became more and more distinctly imagined and vividly
described. Hell, purgatory, and heaven, were palpably represented
to the senses. The conception of hell and the doctrine of future
punishment was especially clear and minutely elaborated; the site of
the former, its topography, trials and torments, were all portrayed
with harrowing exactness and repulsiveness. Hell was described in the
writings of the Middle Ages in words too gross to be repeated here;
its imagery, gathered from various sources besides the Old and New
Testaments, had been for long accumulating. It was held and taught that
eternal damnation was the lot which God had prepared for an immense
majority of the human race; that their punishment consisted in the
burning of their bodies in a literal fire; that the flames of this
fire were never quenched and that the bodies of the damned were never
consumed; that God had made the contemplation of their sufferings
an essential element of the happiness of the redeemed; and that the
saint was frequently permitted in visions to behold the agonies of the
lost, and to describe the fearful spectacle he had seen. “He loved to
tell how by the lurid glare of the eternal flames he had seen millions
writhing in every form of ghastly suffering, their eyeballs rolling
with unspeakable anguish, their limbs gashed and mutilated and
quivering with pain, tortured by pangs that seemed ever keener by their
recurrence, and shrieking in vain for mercy to an unpitying heaven.
Hideous beings of dreadful aspect and of fantastic forms hovered around,
mocking them and their torments, casting them into cauldrons of boiling
brimstone, or inventing new tortures more subtle and refined. Amid
all this a sulphur stream was ever seething, feeding, and intensifying
the waves of fire. There was no respite, no alleviation, no hope. The
tortures were ever varied in their character, and they never paused
for a moment upon the sense. Sometimes, it was said, the flames while
retaining their intensity withheld their light; a shroud of darkness
covered the scene, but the ceaseless shriek of anguish attested the
agonies that were below.”¹
¹ Lecky’s _History of Rationalism_, Volume I., pages 348‒349;
St. Thomas Aquinas, In Question 97, Articles 4, 5, 6;
Hagenbach’s _History of Doctrines_, Volume II., pages
148‒149, 151‒152. There is a large literature on hell and
the punishment of the lost. Besides passages in the Fathers,
and in the writings of the Schoolmen, and in the legends
of the saints, we have the well-known works of the great
Italian poet Dante; but another of his countrymen, not so
well known, Antonio Rusca, was the author of a book entitled
_De Inferno_; Milan, 1621. It settles logically, and with
great learning, every question relating to hell and its
inhabitants――its place, extent, divisions, and torments.
The more modern books which treat on the subject are very
numerous, and quite recently the main points involved in the
doctrine of future punishment have been handled from very
opposite standpoints.
The doctrine of hell and eternal punishment as presented in the tenets
of the Church of the Middle Ages, destroyed all sense of the Divine
goodness, and would at length have extinguished the principles of right
and morality. Religion, instead of exhibiting a pure and exemplary
morality, had become a system of dogmas, of ceremonies and of relics,
of asceticism and of abuse, of extreme credulity and of savage
persecution, and all this was mainly supported and maintained by fear.
The doctrine of purgatory seems to have arisen gradually from the
notion of a purifying fire, and it was afterwards brought into
connection with the notion of the mass. It came in to soften the
horrible idea of eternal torture in hell; in another respect it was
simply a continuation of the doctrine of penance. The possession of the
keys of heaven and hell certainly entailed a terrible responsibility
upon the priesthood; and it is only charitable to suppose that many a
priest might have thought that the key of purgatory might be used with
much less presumption; and so it came to pass that praying souls out of
purgatory by saying masses on their behalf was speedily developed into
an elaborate office which demanded large remuneration. The purchase of
indulgence naturally followed in the same wake; and so much alms-giving
to churches or to churchmen was understood to secure the remission of
so many years, or it might be, centuries of purgatory.
But the idea of heaven, the state of the blessed, was not nearly so
firmly realised as the notions of hell and purgatory. Many had brought
back visions of hell and purgatory, but no one had returned from
heaven with clear information about it; though some of the saints
might occasionally descend on beneficent missions to the world of
living men, yet of the state of the blessed they gave only the vaguest
tidings. In fact, the notion of heaven was mixed up with the prevailing
cosmic theory, as well as with the theology of the age. The whole
belief of Roman Catholicism was materialistic; a palpable image or a
representation of everything was eagerly sought and as fully supplied.
At the opening of the sixteenth century the political power of the
Church varied in different kingdoms. Although the head of the Church
made the same absolute claims upon all the rulers of Christendom, the
rulers did not always respond equally to his calls and pretensions.
In England the aristocracy and the commons had united to limit the
exorbitant power and influence of the Pope within the kingdom, and his
remonstrances and threats were often unavailing. The English clergy, as
a body, had a considerable share of political power; they constituted
one of the estates of the realm, and the territorial wealth of the
bishops being large, contributed to enhance their social importance.
The Pope, however, was still recognised as the head of the Church, and
by artful management, and the policy of seizing every opportunity to
extend his influence, he as yet retained a firm hold upon the English
clergy.
In France the clergy were very powerful in the Middle Ages; and in
the first half of the thirteenth century they had begun to exercise
an almost complete social tyranny. Heresy was a crime which fell under
their jurisdiction; they had a monopoly of granting licences to marry
and of power to sanction wills; they had an exclusive right to give
judgment in cases of usury, that is loans; and thus became the judges
in nearly all the important disputes of daily life. Indeed they
interfered in everything, and upon every opportunity launched forth
their excommunications, which, if not removed, ended in confiscation.
The French nobles who tamely yielded to the encroachments of the
kings, resisted the clergy, and entered into a bond to aid each other
in defying the Papal ban. In 1249, King Louis issued his Pragmatic
Sanction, an ordinance against the undue privileges of the clergy and
the usurpations of the Popes. It established the rights of the national
prelates to confer benefices as handed down to them, and the right
of chapters and cathedrals to elect their bishops; it also abolished
simony, which Rome in her urgent need of funds had introduced on a
large scale. All these arrangements King Louis declared to be under
the protection of his own royal courts. The decree forbade the levy of
any tax by the court of Rome, unless it was sanctioned by the King, and
consented to, by the national Church. This ordinance remained in force
till the reign of Francis I. in the sixteenth century. The Pragmatic
Sanction was not a very bold assertion of religious freedom, but it
seems to have been highly valued by the French; although one of its
results was to foster the growth of the royal authority which long
proved fatal to the peace and happiness of the French.
The French nobility were a separate caste and paid no national taxes.
Their estates descended to their eldest sons, but the younger sons,
according to etiquette, also belonged to the noble class; they became
very numerous, and though often poor they were extremely proud of their
blood and privileges. Thus it was that the hard worked tillers of the
soil of France from an early period were hard pressed by the payment of
rents to the nobles, taxes to the King, tithes to the Church, and other
fees and payments, which were rigorously exacted from them. In 1483
the French peasants laid their grievances before Charles VIII., hoping
for some remedy, but in vain, as the new monarch proceeded to invade
Italy, and thereby increased their taxes and shed more of their blood.
Absolute monarchy became firmly established in France, and there
the Reformation failed, not because the French were Roman Catholic,
but mainly because the struggle in France was finally decided upon
secular and political grounds. The persecution of heresy in France
was excessively severe till Catholicism gained the upper hand, and as
it was more favourable to despotic government than Protestantism, the
absolute monarchy of France ruled the people almost without a challenge
for nearly two centuries. But the accumulated oppressions and wrongs
perpetrated upon the people for many generations at last exhausted
their endurance, and they arose and laid the Throne and the Church both
in the dust. The Reformation which was stifled in the sixteenth century
burst with volcanic violence at the end of the eighteenth, when the
people, goaded almost to madness, rose in their might, scattered the
glittering brass of the Crown, and rent to shreds the hallowed veil
of the Church, which had so long favoured the instruments of the
oppressors.
In Germany the strife between the Emperor and the Pope had ceased;
while externally there seemed to be peace with the head of the Church
in that quarter of Christendom. But there were many other elements of
discord among the Germans. As yet they were far from having attained
national unity. The country, though nominally under the Emperor, was
really ruled by a number of petty princes and prelates, and the Emperor
merely held a kind of feudal headship. Germany was still under the
meshes of the feudal system; she had a class of little princes and
great dukes, and under them a host of petty nobles and lords, most of
whom were poor but proud and independent, and these constantly resisted
all the attempts of the higher powers to control them. They claimed the
right of waging private war, and the public peace was often broken. It
was only in the free towns of Germany that there was union and orderly
organised society; the citizens were thrifty, toiled hard, and saved
much, and thus they had obtained wealth. The great want of Germany was
a central and organised government with sufficient power to maintain
the public peace.
No class in Germany had suffered more from the lawlessness of the
nobles and knights than the peasantry, who were still in feudal serfdom.
Since the beginning of the sixteenth century there had been several
insurrections among the peasantry against their masters; and at last
these risings began to be mixed up with the religious movement. They
were the natural result of oppression――in the circumstances rebellion
was the only remedy. The peasants of Swabia, a district of South
Germany, rebelled in 1525 against the exactions of the Church and the
nobles, but they were soon crushed. The demands which the leaders of
the peasants put forward were comprised in twelve short articles――“The
right to choose their own pastors; they would pay tithe of corn, out
of which the pastors should be paid, the rest to go for the use of the
parish; but small tithes, that is, the produce of animals, every tenth
calf, lamb, pig, or egg, and so on, they would not pay; they would be
free and no longer serfs and bondmen; wild game and fish to be free
to all; woods and forests to belong to all for fuel; rent when above
the value of the land to be valued and lowered; common land to be again
given up to common use; punishments for crimes to be fixed; death gifts,
that is, the right of the lord to take the best chattel of the deceased
tenant, to be done away with. If any of these articles be proved
contrary to Scripture or God’s justice, such to be null and void.” But
there was no chance of their demands being granted.
Other local rebellions of the peasantry followed, and severe and savage
measures were adopted on both sides, and many were put to death. It has
been calculated that before the Peasants’ War was terminated 100,000
were slain. Luther throughout this struggle sided with the ruling
powers; he was firmly opposed to the use of the sword against the civil
authorities. The sons of toil naturally thought that they should have
found a friend in Luther but they were bitterly disappointed, as he
openly exhorted the princes and the nobles to crush the rebellion, and
urged them on in the work of slaughter.¹ It need not be denied that
in some degree this rebellion was incited by the seed which Luther
himself had sown, and therefore he deserves the less sympathy for his
hard and cruel bearing towards the poor peasantry and their somewhat
wild leaders. The monks, who had suffered severely at the hands of the
peasants during the progress of the rebellion, blamed Erasmus and the
new learning for causing it; Erasmus blamed Luther, and Luther blamed
the wild teachers. But history must tell that it was the refusal of
timely reforms by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities that was the
real cause of these rebellions, and so persistent were the authorities
against social reform that the German peasantry were doomed to groan
under the yoke of serfdom till the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Since then, unhappily for the German race, they have been subjected to
a crushing and exhausting militarism, a modern form of despotism, which
is threatening to extinguish the spirit and consume the heart of this
great but too submissive people.
¹ Worsley’s _Life of Luther_, Volume II., pages 62‒64, 67‒69,
71‒73. There is a full account of the Peasants’ War in
Ranke’s _History of the Reformation in Germany_, Volume I.
The revival of learning had a remarkable influence on the Reformation
movement in Germany. Erasmus had a European reputation and influence,
but there was a number of other notable scholars more immediately
connected with the rise of the Reformation in Germany; amongst whom
were Reuchlin, Buschius, and Hutten; they were called “Humanists,” and
those who were bent on maintaining the old modes of learning branded
them as “preachers of perversion, and winnowers of the devil’s chaff.”
Greek in particular was declared to be heretical: the monks and masters
of the Universities were afraid of the light. Reuchlin was the greatest
Hebrew scholar of his day, at once a man of the world and of books,
but Hebrew was not more in favour than Greek with the theologians of
the old school, and they resolved to crush the leaders of the literary
reformation. Great efforts were put forth by the enemies of light to
overwhelm Reuchlin; the struggle was desperate, and for some time the
issue seemed doubtful. His enemies were fast closing around him, when,
as a last resort, he wrote to his friends throughout Europe, entreating
them to make the utmost efforts to obtain for him new allies. He
received from all quarters expressions of sympathy and assistance.
Reuchlin’s victory in public opinion was completed by a satire
which appeared in the beginning of the year 1516, entitled _Epistolæ
Obscurorum Virorum_, etc. The aim of this memorable satire was to make
the enemies of Reuchlin and polite letters represent themselves: “And
the representation is managed with a truth of nature only equalled by
the absurdity of the postures in which the actors are exhibited....
Never certainly were unconscious barbarism, self-glorious ignorance,
intolerant stupidity, and sanctimonious immorality so ludicrously
delineated. The _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_ are at once the most
cruel and the most natural of satires, and as such they were the most
effective.... So truly, in fact, did it hit the mark that the objects
of the ridicule themselves, with the exception of those who were
necessarily in the secret, read the letters as the genuine product of
their brethren, and even hailed the publication as highly conducive to
the honour of scholasticism and monasticism.”¹
¹ Sir W. Hamilton’s _Discussions_, pages 203‒217; 1852. Ranke’s
_History of the Reformation in Germany_, Volume I., pages
300‒308; 1845.
Hutten, who has generally been supposed to be one of the authors of the
above satire, at first wrote in Latin rhyme, but he at length resolved
to write in German for the instruction of the people. The burden of
his popular German rhymes was that Germany should abandon Rome; and he
exposed her tyranny and worldliness, and stirred up the people against
it. Many other writers also freely ridiculed the existing priestcraft
in fables, letters, and rhymes, and prepared the people for the
inception of the Reformation.
Before the end of the fifteenth century Spain had fully entered
upon the task of persecuting the heretics. The Inquisition was early
established in Spain, and more effectively applied to crush all
attempts for the reformation of religion than in any other country; and
she long enjoyed the glory of being the most Catholic nation in Europe.
The modern form of the Inquisition was adopted in Spain in 1484. It was
at this time that Torquemada, a friar, was placed at its head with the
title of Inquisitor-General, and he at once proceeded to organise the
institution. After constituting the new tribunal, he framed a body of
rules for its government, which were issued in 1484, and from time to
time new rules were added till 1561, when the whole code was revised
and published in eighty-one articles, which continued to be the law,
with slight variations, down to the present century. Without entering
into minute details, it may be stated that the Inquisition was not
merely a court for the trial and condemnation of heretics; it exercised
the duties of an organised body of police employed in searching out
heresy, and thus it was one of its chief functions to hunt for the
crimes on which it was afterwards to sit in judgment, and every member
of its higher and lower courts was charged with this work. At times
when its vigilance was aroused by the alarm of heresy, it had its spies
and agents at every port and pass of the kingdom, fully armed with
authority to arrest the persons and goods of all who incurred their
suspicion. The forms of trial in its courts were all on the side of the
inquisitors, and to render it an instrument at once of injustice and
terror, all its proceedings were shrouded in complete secrecy. The part
of the procedure relating to torture was full of inhuman cruelties;
and when the evidence was not sufficient to convict the heretic, he was
tortured in order to force him to give answers against himself. From
1484 to 1517 the victims of the Inquisition in Spain numbered thirteen
thousand persons who were burnt alive, eight thousand seven hundred
burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty-nine thousand, seven hundred
and twenty-three condemned to undergo penance, all within a period of
thirty-four years.¹
¹ Limborch’s _History of the Inquisition_, Volume I., pages
119‒127, 156‒159; Volume II., pages 211‒226; 1731. Compare
M‘Crie’s _History of the Progress and Suppression of the
Reformation in Spain_, Works, Volume III., pages 50‒51; 1855.
Various attempts were made to introduce the reformed doctrines into
Spain, but they completely failed. Everything savouring of heresy
was utterly extinguished. In the sixteenth century, Spain constituted
herself the great champion of Roman Catholicism; but the ends for which
she leagued with the court of Rome were chiefly political. She aimed
at subjecting all classes to the absolute will of the monarch, and
the power and seeming greatness which was raised upon this foundation,
contained within itself the vices which soon consumed her energy and
ensured her decay.
At the opening of the sixteenth century Italy had made but little
progress towards becoming a united nation. The country was divided into
a number of separate states with varying and opposite interests. The
chief states were Venice, Milan, and Florence, in the north; Naples to
the south; and the States of the Church lying between them, over which
the Pope had endeavoured to rule. These States of the Church contained
a number of petty lordships and cities which claimed independence, and
the Nobles and the Pope were always quarrelling as to who should bear
the chief sway. Quarrels were constantly fomented among the Italian
states; and the governments of the neighbouring kingdoms were apt to
seize these comparatively weak principalities. Milan was claimed by
the Kings of France, Spain, Naples, and the German Emperor; and through
these internal and external forces Italy was kept in a sea of unrest
and disorder. The power of the Papal Court was not so complete in Italy
as it was in some other countries; and even excommunication had lost
some of its former power and terrors.
Touching the morals of the clergy before the Reformation, there was
a general concurrence of testimony against them; to the historian,
however, this subject appears as a complicated problem tinged by the
contorted notions of the age; inasmuch as it is difficult to reach
the truth and do justice to opposing parties. From the beginning of
the fifteenth century, a reformation of the Church had been loudly
demanded; and the shortcomings of the clergy were generally, if
somewhat reluctantly, acknowledged throughout Christendom. They
neglected the religious instruction of the people, and their sacred
functions were often prostituted to worldly purposes; while the
exactions of the Church were becoming more and more unbearable.
Nowhere were these abuses and grievances more rampant than in Italy.
The Court of Rome itself was more corrupted than any of the political
Courts of Europe; the unprincipled and faithless character of its
policy was everywhere notorious; in fact, it was a system of intrigue,
of cabal, and of bribery. The sacred bodies of clerical dignitaries
who surrounded the throne of the Pope might agree to dupe the world;
yet they rarely scrupled to supplant and deceive each other when their
personal interests were at stake.¹ Many of the clergy did nothing but
say masses for the dead, a more lucrative occupation than praying for
the living. The education of the clergy and their modes of life were
not well calculated to encourage self-culture nor the study of Divine
truth, in order to qualify them to instruct others; and the root of the
prevailing system directly tended to narrow their sympathy and to dwarf
their humanity. Celibacy cut them off from all the interests and duties
of domestic life, and this left them at leisure for mischief of all
kinds. “The history of the clerical celibacy, in England as elsewhere,
is indeed tender ground; the benefits which it is supposed to secure
are the personal purity of the individual, his separation from secular
ways and interests, and his entire devotion to the work of God and
the Church. But the results, as legal and historical records show
us, were very different. Instead of personal purity, there is a long
story of licensed and unlicensed concubinage, and appendant to it,
much miscellaneous profligacy and a general low tone of morality in
the very point that is supposed to be secured. Instead of separation
from secular work is found in the higher class of the clergy entire
devotion to the legal and political service of the country, and in the
lower class idleness and poverty as the alternative. Instead of greater
spirituality, there is greater frivolity. The abuses of monastic life,
great as they may occasionally have been, sink into insignificance by
the side of this evil, as an occasional crime tells against the moral
condition of a nation far less fatally than the prevalence of a low
morality. The records of the spiritual courts of the middle ages remain
in such quantity and in such concord of testimony as to leave no doubt
of the facts; among the laity as well as among the clergy, of the towns
and clerical centres, there existed an amount of coarse vice which
had no secrecy to screen it or prevent it from spreading.... And in
this, as in other particulars, the mediæval Church incurred a fearful
responsibility. The evils against which she had to contend were beyond
her power to overcome, yet she resisted interference from any other
hand. The treatment of such moral evils as did not come within the
contemplation of the common law were left to the Church courts; the
Church courts became centres of corruption which archbishops, legates,
and councils tried to reform and failed, acquiescing in the failure
rather, than allow the intrusion of the secular power. The spiritual
jurisdiction over the clergy was an engine which courts altogether
failed to manage, or so far failed as to render reformation of manners
by such means absolutely hopeless: yet any interference of the temporal
courts was resented and warded off until the evil was irremediable,
because a clerk stripped of the reality of his immunities, but
retaining all the odium with which they had invested him would have
no chance of justice in a lay court. Thus on a smaller stage was
reproduced the result which the policy of the papacy brought about in
the greater theatre of ecclesiastical politics. The practical assertion
that, except by the court of Rome, there should be no reformation, was
supplemented by an acknowledgment of the evils that were to be reformed,
and of the incapacity of the court of Rome to cure them: there popes
and councils toiled in vain; they could neither bear the evils of
the age nor their remedies. Strange to say, some part of the mischief
of the spiritual jurisdiction survived the Reformation itself, and
enlarged its scope as well as strengthened its operation by the close
temporary alliance between the Church and Crown.”² Everywhere there
was a number of priests and friars, whose religious duties occupied
only a small portion of their time, and whose standard of morality was
formed upon an extremely low ideal; and it was the moral standard that
required to be raised before there could be any real improvement in the
social condition either of the clergy or the people.
¹ “The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding
moral ♦weakness throughout Italy.”――Symonds’ _Renaissance_,
Volume I., page 382, and the whole of the 7th Chapter.
♦ “weaknass” replaced with “weakness”
² Stubbs’ _Constitutional History Of England_, Volume III.,
pages 372‒374; 1878.
For several centuries before the Reformation much of the popular
literature of Europe was directed against the vices of the clergy and
the abuses of the Church; upon this theme the most orthodox and the
most heretical were agreed. The secular clergy often despised the monks,
the monks satirised the begging friars, and thus their inconsistencies
were exposed to the people, and gradually the strength of the old
traditions and prejudices were loosened and impaired, and the people
partly prepared for a revolution in their opinions and belief.
From an early period in Italy the corruptions of the Church were ably
exposed by persons who had not thought of renouncing her communion. The
Italian poets laid open the abuses of the head of the Church as well
as of the subordinate orders of the clergy. Dante, who was a sincere
believer in the Roman Catholic Church, showed little faith in the
infallibility of the Popes or general councils, and he describes
the avarice and the luxurious lives of the clergy in the language of
indignation and ridicule. In his treatise on Monarchy, he inveighed
with remarkable boldness against the corruption of the Church; and
in the same work he also attacked tradition, the grand fortress of
Catholicism. Petrarch and Boccaccio followed in a similar strain; and
the latter, especially by his broad humour, keen wit, and reckless
pleasantry was exceedingly effective. He mercilessly assailed the
popular religion; its pilgrimages, relics, and miracles were scoffed at
in the most playful style; its corruptions were exposed, and the monks,
the nuns, and the friars were stripped of their sanctity and derided
in profane mockery and jeering scorn.¹ The _Decameron_ of Boccaccio is
the bitterest satire of the religion of the Middle ages ever written,
and to this day it remains the most curious illustration of the
belief and notions of that age. Many other Italian poets and writers
employed their talents to unmask the ignorance, the vice, the greed,
the hypocrisy, and the absurdities of the hierarchy, from the Popes
downward to the wandering mendicants; and this warfare was continued
down to the eve of the Reformation.
¹ Dante’s _Inferno_, H. F. Cary’s Translation; Petrarch’s
_Sonnets_ and other Poems; Milman’s _History of Latin
Christianity_, Volume VI., pages 516‒518, etc.; M‘Crie’s
_History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation
in Italy_, Works, Volume III., pages 14‒19; 1855. “While
so much liberty of thought prevailed in Italy it may be
wondered why the Renaissance, eminently fertile in the
domains of arts and culture, bore but meagre fruit in those
of religion and philosophy. The German Reformation was
the Renaissance of Christianity; and in this the Italians
had no share, though it should be remembered that, without
their previous labours in the field of scholarship, the band
which led the Reformation could hardly have given that high
intellectual character to the movement which made it a new
starting point in the history of the reason. To expect from
Italy the ethical regeneration of the modern world would be
to misapprehend her true vocation; art and erudition were
sufficient to engage her spiritual energies.”
“True to culture as their main preoccupation, the
Italian thinkers sought to philosophise faith by bringing
Christianity into harmony with antique speculation, and
forming for themselves a theism that should embrace the
system of the Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew Cabbala,
and the Sermon on the Mount. There is much that strikes
us as both crude and pedantic, at the same time infantine
and pompous in the systems elaborated by those pioneers
of modern eclecticism.”――Symonds’ _Renaissance in Italy_,
Volume II., pages 21‒23; 1877.
In the latter part of the fifteenth century, Savonarola, a Dominican
friar, became a religious reformer; he was an Italian by birth and
education, a man of talents and great piety; but he seems to have
yielded to the illusions of his imagination, and at last persuaded
himself that he was possessed of supernatural gifts. In 1486, he
commenced preaching against the vices of the popes, cardinals, priests,
and monks, the tyranny of princes, and the immorality of the people;
he was an eloquent and powerful preacher, and he called earnestly for
repentance and reformation. He preached in various cities, and vast
crowds of the people came to hear him. Florence was chosen as the
scene of his labour, and for a short time he had a great influence
in that city. His aim was to improve the morals of the clergy and the
people, not to change the faith of the Christian world. He was also a
warm friend of the cause of political liberty and freedom. From this
standpoint he was one of the most ardent reformers. Towards the close
of his career his mind seems to have become fevered and unbalanced.
In 1495, Pope Alexander VI. deemed it time to extinguish so bold a
preacher, and he was excommunicated and proclaimed a heresiarch; and he
was afterwards taken, tortured, condemned to the flames, and strangled
and burned in May, 1498, by the order of the Pope, who had himself
committed many dark crimes.¹
¹ Symonds’ _Renaissance_, Volume I., pages 428, 471.
For two centuries preceding the Reformation a literature in the
language of the people had been growing up in Germany, France, and
England, and in each of these countries the vernacular contained a
mass of writings which satirised the corruptions of the Church and
the vices of the clergy. These compositions were sometimes in the form
of rude rhymes and short poems, and sometimes songs or ballads, but
occasionally they assumed a more ambitious form, as in the poems of
Chaucer, and Piers Ploughman. As before indicated, the general result
of this literature upon the minds of the people was that gradually and
with difficulty they began to see some of the inconsistencies of the
Church, and their moral and religious consciousness at last awoke to a
clearer conception of their rights.
But the causes of the Reformation were manifold and extremely varied,
rising so high and at the same time descending so low, and yet invoking
so many venerated feelings and sentiments; and it must be added, so
many prejudices and passions were inflamed on both sides, so many great
prizes and vested interests depended upon the issue, that even at this
day it is almost impossible for any man to assign the true and just
measure of all the causes and influences which contributed to this the
most momentous struggle of the Christian era.
Another important agency of the revolutionary movement was implied
in the printing and publication of editions and translations of the
Scriptures. In Italy during the fifteenth century much attention was
devoted to the Hebrew language and to sacred literature. The Psalter
appeared in 1477, and from that date parts of the Old Testament in the
original continued to be issued from the press till in 1488 a complete
Hebrew Bible was printed at Soncino in Italy. The first edition of
the Septuagint came from the Aldine press at Venice in 1518. Erasmus
published at Basle in 1516 his edition of the Greek text of the
New Testament, together with his own Latin version and explanatory
annotations. The book of Job in Hebrew was printed at Paris in 1516.
The Complutensian Polyglot Bible under the patronage and at the expense
of Cardinal Ximenes, was printed at Alcala between 1502 and 1517 and
published in 1520, in six volumes folio, six hundred copies on paper,
and three on vellum. It contained in three columns the Hebrew, the
Septuagint Greek, and the Latin Vulgate version of Jerome; the Chaldee
paraphrase of the Pentateuch by Onkelos was printed at the foot of
the page, and to it a Latin translation was given; the New Testament
included the original Greek and the Vulgate Latin version. The work
also had a grammar and dictionary of the Hebrew, a Greek vocabulary,
and other explanatory treatises attached to it. Spain thus had the
credit of printing the first complete edition of the Scriptures. It is
said that this work cost 250,000 ducats. An edition of the Septuagint
and of the Greek New Testament was published at Strasburg by Cephalæus
in 1524 and 1526; editions of the New Testament also appeared at Paris
in 1534, and at Venice in 1538; and about the same time editions were
printed at various other places. Hebrew and Greek grammars and lexicons
then began to appear, and commentaries on the Scriptures followed.¹
¹ Ginguene’s _History of Italian Literature_, Tome VII.;
M‘Crie’s Works, Volume III., pages 31, 34, 36; 1855. Among
the earliest books of any kind printed was a Psalter in 1457,
and a Latin Bible about the year 1455, usually called the
Mazarin Bible, the exact date of its printing is uncertain,
but it is not earlier than 1450 nor later than 1455.
But these important works were confined to the learned, and could
have had no impression upon the popular mind. The influences, however,
which had contributed to produce them were general and not limited to
any class; for the religious feelings and sentiments were as active
among the unlearned as among the most cultured men of the age. The
activity of the learned class, as manifested in the publication
of the Scriptures, was the effect of general and widely spread
influences which were running in a definite direction. Translations
of the Scriptures were therefore eagerly solicited, and then for
the first time began to be supplied. It is said that the Scriptures
were translated into the Italian language in the thirteenth century,
and it appears that fragments of very early translations were found
in libraries during the fifteenth century. Nicolo Malermi, a monk,
produced an Italian version of the Bible from the Vulgate, which
was published in 1471. Before the end of the century it went through
eleven editions, and in the following century through twelve. About
this period also Italian versions of parts of the Scriptures appeared.
An improved and more faithful translation of the New Testament was
executed by Antonio Brucioli, and printed at Venice in 1530. His
translation of the whole Bible was published in 1532, and revised and
printed in 1541. Other Italian versions of the Scriptures soon followed.
But in none of the modern languages were so many translations and
editions of the Bible published as in the Flemish or Dutch tongue.
A Flemish version of the Bible appeared in 1477; a translation from
the Vulgate was printed at Delft in 1497, and reprinted several times
before the Reformation at the presses of Antwerp and Amsterdam. A
Flemish version of the New Testament from that of Luther was published
at Antwerp in 1522, and reprinted twelve times within the next five
years. During the first thirty-six years of the sixteenth century
fifteen editions of the entire Bible were printed in the Flemish
language, and thirty-four editions of the New Testament alone within
the same period, twenty-four of which were printed at Antwerp; some of
them were taken from the Vulgate, but most of them were from Luther’s
version. The earliest French translation of the Old Testament from the
Vulgate was printed about 1477; a French version of the New Testament
was published in 1512, and a version of the Bible in 1530. The earliest
Protestant translation of the Bible in French was printed at Neufchatel
in 1535.¹
¹ Panfer’s _An. Typ. In._; Simon’s _Critical History of the New
Testament_; M‘Crie’s Works, Volume III., pages 38‒40.
In Spain the Scriptures were translated into the Castilian dialect in
the year 1260, and other ancient versions of the Bible in the dialects
of the Spanish people have been preserved in the libraries of the
Continent. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Bonifacio Ferrer,
a Carthusian monk, translated the whole of the Scriptures into the
Spanish language, and this translation was printed at Valencia in 1478;
but shortly after its publication it was suppressed by the Inquisition,
and the whole impression ordered to be burned. A Spanish version of
the New Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1543.¹ Luther’s German
translation of the Old and New Testaments was published between the
years 1522 and 1530. Translations of the Bible were published in the
Danish language in 1524, and in the Swedish in 1526.
¹ _The Bible of Saci_, Book I. Andres.
Wycliffe commenced his English translation of the Bible from the
Vulgate in 1380, and it is supposed that portions of it were widely
circulated in manuscript. Tyndale’s English version of the New
Testament was printed in 1526, and within ten years fourteen editions
of it were published. Coverdale’s translation of the whole Bible was
published in 1535; and another version, mainly based upon Tyndale’s,
appeared in 1537. A revised translation was issued in 1539,¹ which
was sometimes called Cranmer’s Bible. The publication of so many
translations of the Scriptures in the languages and dialects of the
people, and the numerous editions which they passed through, seemed to
indicate that a crisis was approaching, as the religious sentiments of
the people were warmed, and that their feelings and passions were being
raised to a pitch of excitement which might be extremely difficult
to control. The lower classes in many parts of Europe had been long
groaning under oppression, and a sense of wrong had begun to rankle
in their minds. A century and a half earlier the English peasantry
had rebelled against their masters, and we have seen that the same
classes had revolted against the Church and the nobles in Germany. The
inconsistencies of the profession and the practice of the clergy could
not fail to open the eyes of the people, while the social position
in which they found themselves placed did not harmonise with the
most elementary ideas of justice and truth. They therefore listened
with keen emotion and swelling hearts to the impassioned appeals of
the reformed preachers, who they easily won over the multitude; but
there was much more difficulty in moderating the zeal and the passions
aroused by their preaching. Even in Luther himself the destructive
leaning was pretty strong and pronounced; he said――“I believe it to
be impossible that the Church should be reformed without completely
eradicating canons, decretals, scholastic theology, philosophy, and
logic, as they are now received and taught, and instituting others in
their place.”²
¹ Dibdin’s _Typographical Antiquities_; Anderson’s _Annals of
the English Bible_, 1862.
² Ueberweg’s _History of Philosophy_, Volume II., pages 16‒17.
“Luther railed against all speculative doctrines and pursuits
with violent, indiscriminate recklessness. He frequently
expresses the most withering contempt for Aristotle and
all his works.”――Blakey’s _History of the Philosophy of
the Mind_, Volume II., page 129; 1848. Compare D’Aubigne’s
_History of the Reformation_, Volume I., pages 154, 219.
This awakening of the religious consciousness, and its association with
moral and social practice, soon led to important issues. The married
life, which had hitherto been regarded as inferior to celibacy, now
appeared in a new light, as something divine, as a law imposed by God
Himself; and the domestic duties at once assumed a higher and nobler
significance. Poverty was no longer considered an object in itself,
and the life of the monk, though before deemed higher than the worldly
energy and industry of the layman who supported himself by the labour
of his hands, began to be regarded with contempt. Religious freedom
took the place of blind obedience, and henceforward monkhood and
priesthood lost much of their sway.
Again, in relation to knowledge and to thought, man returned, as
it were, from the extramundane to the genial earth――from the alien
region of authority to himself. He was at last convinced that the
entire work of salvation must be accomplished within himself, and that
reconciliation and grace were matters that stood in a direct relation
between himself and God. With this conviction in the core of his soul,
he found his real and true being; thus it is that the philosophy of the
human mind is closely connected with Protestantism, for the principle
of both is one and the same, though it realises itself in the course of
development in varying forms.¹
¹ Schwegler’s _History of Philosophy_, Stirling’s Translation,
pages 148, 149; 1868.
The Bible appeared to the early Reformers as the pure, genuine, and
true word of God, and whatever had been added to it, was not regarded
as a real advance upon the original, but rather as a debasement. The
authority of tradition was denied, the mediæval hierarchy, and the
scholastic tendency to rationalise Christian dogmas were rejected.
In the first burst of their enthusiasm, the Reformers called the
Pope Antichrist, and Aristotle, the chief of the Catholic school of
philosophy, the godless bulwark of the Papists. The logical result of
this would have been the abandonment of all philosophy in favour of
immediate, unquestioning faith: but when Protestantism gained a fixed
consistence the necessity of a definite order of instruction became as
apparent as that of a new ecclesiastical polity. Melanchthon perceived
the need of Aristotle, the master of form, and at last Luther allowed
the use of the text of the Aristotelian writings, when not encumbered
with scholastic commentaries. Thus there arose at the Protestant
Universities a new, though simpler, scholasticism; the development of
an independent philosophy on the basis of the generalised Protestant
principle was the work of a later time.¹ Modern Philosophy began when
the intellect threw off that entire subservience to theology which
characterised it in the Middle Ages. In the words of one of the best
authorities the chief divisions of modern philosophy are:――“1. The
Transitional Period, beginning with the revival of Platonism; 2.
The Epoch of Empiricism, Dogmatism, and Scepticism, from Bacon and
Descartes to the Encyclopedists and Hume; and 3. The Epoch of the
Kantian Criticism, and of the systems issuing from it, from Kant till
the present time.
¹ Ueberweg’s _History of Philosophy_, Volume II., pages 15‒16.
“Unity, servitude, freedom――these are the three stages through which
the philosophy of the Christian era has passed in its relation to
ecclesiastical theology. The stage of freedom corresponds with the
general character of the modern era, which seeks to restore, in place
of mediæval antagonism, harmonious unity. Freedom of thought, in
respect of form and substance, has been secured gradually by modern
philosophy. The first movement in this direction consisted in a mere
exchange of authorities, or in the reproduction of other ancient
systems than that of Aristotle, without much modification, and such
adaption to new and changed conditions, as the scholastics had effected
in the system of Aristotle. Then followed the era of independent
investigation in the realm of nature, and finally also in the realm
of mind. There was a transitional period marked by the endeavour
of philosophy to become independent. The second epoch, the epoch
of Empiricism and Dogmatism, was characterised by methodical
investigations and comprehensive systems, which were based on the
confident belief that knowledge of natural and spiritual reality was
independently attainable by means of experience or thought alone.
Scepticism prepared the way for the third stadium in the history of
modern philosophy, which was formed by criticism. According to the
critical philosophy, the investigation of the cognitive faculty of
man is the necessary basis for all strictly scientific philosophising,
and the result aimed at by it is, that thought is incompetent to the
cognition of the real world of phenomena, beyond which the only guide
is man’s moral consciousness. This result has been denied by the
following systems, although these systems are all lineal descendants
from the Kantian philosophy, which is still of immediate (not merely
historical) significance for the philosophy of the present day.”¹
¹ Ibid., Volume II., pages 1‒3; 1874.
There is only a limited truth in the presuppositions of a complete
parallelism between the progress of the development of the ancient
philosophy and that of modern systems. “Modern philosophy has from the
beginning owed its existence in a far greater measure to an interest
in theology (though not for the most part to an interest in the
specially ecclesiastical form of theology) than did ancient philosophy
previous to the time of Neo-Platonism.” The most remarkable difference
between the ancient and modern philosophy is in the science of mind.
Psychology has in comparatively recent times been developed to a stage
of completeness much beyond what the philosophers of Greece had reached;
and the departments of moral and social science are now treated on a
different and far wider method than in ancient times.
From the outset there were two chief doctrines which determined the
course taken by the Reformers. One of these was the Pauline doctrine
of justification by faith, the other manifested itself in the constant
appeal to the Bible as the only decisive authority in questions
concerning faith. It is pretty evident that the German Reformers held
mainly by the first, while those of Switzerland, Zuinglius and Calvin,
gave the preference to the second.
Although the leaders of the Reformation did not adopt a bold critical
method of inquiry, and though the systems which Luther and Calvin
founded were essentially dogmatic at all points; yet the admission of
an act of spiritual rebellion, of an appeal to conscience and to the
judgment of the people, instead of the authority of the Catholic Church,
involved a principle which must ultimately lead to consequences that
the Reformers hardly intended and could not have ♦foreseen. Questions
concerning the sacraments, the meaning of certain texts of Scripture,
the forms of church polity, were discussed with the utmost zeal; but
the grand issue of the revolution――the rebellion of the moral faculty
against the doctrines that collided with its teaching――was as yet
little manifested by the Reformers. They had rejected many of the
traditions and external ceremonies of the Church, but they still looked
to the Bible and historical authority for the basis of their theology.
And yet it cannot be doubted that the Reformation introduced influences
which had a powerful effect on the philosophy of the human mind;¹ and
at length greatly modified the moral ideas and sentiments of the people,
and led to political and social results. This revolutionary movement
also gave a marked impetus to scientific inquiry. It was then that
empirical science began to assume importance, and it is only from this
epoch that it has a continuous history.
♦ “forseen” replaced with “foreseen”
¹ D. Stewart’s Works, Volume I., pages 28‒30; 1854. Blakey’s
_History of the Philosophy of the Mind_, Volume II., page
128; 1848.
When we inquire what was the meaning of a national revolt from Romanism,
and look only to external circumstances, it will not appear to amount
to much. It was the claim set up by the Government or the Crown for the
control of those rights within the nation, which the Pope had before
claimed as the head of the Christian empire; the clergy, monks, and
friars had hitherto been regarded as subjects of the Pope’s sacerdotal
rule. Now, where there was a revolt from Rome, the allegiance of this
class of persons was annulled, and the civil government claimed as
full a power over them as it had over its lay subjects; there were
some partial exceptions to this, but the essential point was the entire
exclusion of all the pretensions of the Pope to interfere with any of
the affairs of the nation. Generally, matters relating to marriage and
wills still remained under the jurisdiction of the clergy, but when the
ecclesiastical courts ceased to be papal they became national, and the
special matters with which they dealt, might, if necessary, be brought
under the control of the Government. Even touching religious doctrine
and the forms of public worship, the Government often claimed the
final authority, which had been before exercised by the Pope. Thus
externally considered, the revolt from Rome was rather a political and
ecclesiastical arrangement than a purely religious matter. In relation
to the ruling powers, it was an assertion of free, independent national
life; the instinctive feeling for unity and the pride of distinct
national independence entered as a very strong influence into the
struggles of the Reformation, but it was not always on the side of
the Protestants; and in those countries where the movement failed,
as in Spain and France, it was probably owing to influences of this
kind more than to any other cause. In the imperfectly tutored mind the
instinctive tendencies, the inherited feelings, and the traditional
notions, form a conservative and unreasoning force which it is almost
impossible to overcome without a gradual change of surroundings and
circumstances; while to many highly cultured individuals, the mere idea
of belonging to the great historical and the only true and infallible
Church is exceedingly soothing and gratifying. To be relieved also from
all perplexing doubts and questions touching the spiritual and eternal
destiny of the soul, is to many a matter of exquisite satisfaction;
they glory in the thought of the certainty of their everlasting
salvation; they glory in the notion that whatever others may be,
they at least cannot be wrong; time may come and go, generation after
generation of heretics and heathens may be whirled into everlasting
misery, but they alone go on for ever, rejoicing that the universe was
specially created for their eternal happiness.
The eras of the Reformation among the different nations of Europe
were comprised within a period of about fifty years, though in
some countries the struggle lasted longer. The revolt of Luther is
usually dated 1517, the year in which he published his theses against
indulgences, but the Reformation in Germany was only partly successful.
Denmark and Sweden both broke off from Rome and adopted the Lutheran
doctrines between 1521 and 1534; about the same time several of the
cantons and chief cities of Switzerland became Protestant. England
threw off the authority of the Pope in 1535. But the struggle with
the Roman Catholic powers was long continued in the Netherlands, in
France, and in Germany; and in the two latter the Catholics ultimately
recovered much of the ground they had lost.
Luther was supported by the Elector of Saxony, and this enabled him
to continue his controversy with the Church. His activity and writings
soon raised a stir in Germany, which spread to other lands. In 1520,
he published two pamphlets. The first was addressed to the nobility of
the German nation, and in it we find the following sentiments:――“The
Romanists have raised round themselves walls to protect themselves from
reform. One is their doctrine, that there are two separate estates:
the one spiritual, including the pope, bishops, priests, and monks; the
other secular, embracing the princes, nobles, artizans, and peasants.
And they lay it down that the secular power has no authority over the
spiritual, but that the spiritual is above the secular; whereas, in
truth, all Christians are spiritual, and there is no difference between
them. The secular power is of God, to punish the wicked and protect
the good, and so has power over the whole body of Christians without
exception, pope, bishops, monks, nuns, and all. For St. Paul says――‘Let
every soul (and I reckon the pope one) be subject to the higher powers.’
Why should 300,000 florins be sent every year from Germany to Rome?
Why do the Germans let themselves be fleeced by cardinals, who get
hold of the best preferments and spend the revenues at Rome? Let us
not give another farthing to the Pope as subsidies against the Turk;
the whole thing is a snare to drain from us more money. Let the secular
authorities send no more annates to Rome; let the power of the Pope be
reduced within clear limits; let there be fewer cardinals, and let them
not keep the best things to themselves; let the national churches be
more independent of Rome; let there be fewer pilgrimages to Italy; let
there be fewer convents; let priests marry; let begging be stopped by
making each parish take charge of its own poor; let us inquire into
the position of the Bohemians, and if Huss was in the right, let us
join with him in resisting Rome.”¹ This passage shows that Luther knew
well how to catch the ear of the people, and it was a strain admirably
calculated to arrest the attention of the princes of the day; nothing
could be more gratifying to them than to set their own authority above
the clergy and the Church. From this date Luther’s impassioned nature
hurried him onward; and he burned the Pope’s bull and the canon law
books in the month of December 1520. But it would be unjust not to
mention that there were many in the Roman Catholic Church who earnestly
wished for a reform of the discipline, the manners of the clergy, and
the monastic orders, although they were averse to any separation from
her communion or any breaking up of what was deemed her legitimate
authority. This class of moderate men, though some of them were not
without influence, were doomed to effect very little, because in times
of revolution bold measures alone have the chance of commanding success.
¹ Luther’s Works, Walch’s edition; H. Worsley’s _Life of
Luther_, Volume I., pages 169‒171.
Luther was a voluminous writer as well as a great preacher, and
in spite of his faults, taking him all in all, he presents the
characteristics of a veritable hero. His works are both numerous
and diverse. They consist of sermons and expositions of Scripture,
disputations, and controversial writings, many letters and circular
epistles, maxims, and hymns, besides his translation of the Bible
already mentioned. Most of Luther’s writings were produced on the spur
of the moment to meet some exigency. None of them can be regarded as
finished compositions, yet they are fresh and full of vigour and energy.
Many editions of his works, more or less complete, have been published:
one at Wittenberg, twelve volumes in German, 1539‒59, and seven in
Latin, 1545‒58; one at Jena, eight volumes in German, 1555‒58, and
four in Latin, 1556‒58; another at Altenburg, in ten volumes in German,
1661‒64, and there are several later editions. But it fell to the
lot of the calmer and more learned Melanchthon to lead the stream of
the newly awakened life of faith into its methodically circumscribed
channel. Besides many other valuable works, he composed the first
compend of the doctrines of the Protestant Church, which formed the
basis of other treatises. His _Loci Communes rerum Theologicarum seu
Hypotyposes Theologiæ_ was published in 1521, and has passed through
upwards of a hundred editions, about fifty of which appeared during his
lifetime.
Melanchthon was appointed by the newly formed Protestant party to draw
up a Confession of Faith, in a concise and moderate form, on the basis
of the doctrines which he and Luther and other divines had determined.
It was laid before the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, and hence it has
been called the Confession of Augsburg. It consists of twenty-eight
articles; and in the first twenty-one the principal doctrines of faith
were discussed in reference to the Roman Catholic Church, but with
remarkable moderation of tone; the last seven articles treated of the
prevailing abuses of Catholicism. A confutation of this Confession
published by the Roman Catholics, was soon after followed by a treatise
from Melanchthon, entitled the Apology of the Confession. A similar
arrangement was adopted in the Apology as in the Confession, but the
number of articles was reduced to sixteen. This work long held the
first place among the theological books of the Lutheran Church; and in
argumentative power the Apology is exceptionally masterly amongst this
class of theological literature. The Articles of Schmalkald, which were
written by Luther in a far bolder strain, appeared in 1536, and the
first German edition was published in 1538. With these may be mentioned
Luther’s larger and smaller Catechisms, the larger one for the use of
the clergy and schoolmasters, and the other for the use of the people
and children.
The early Swiss Reformer, Zuinglius, proclaimed the principles of
evangelical faith in various writings, which may be regarded as the
beginning of the consecutive theology of the reformed Church. Besides
his polemical writings, sermons, and letters, he wrote _Commentaries
concerning True and False Religion_, published in 1525, and _A Brief
and Clear Exposition of the Christian Faith_. A Confession of the
Reformed Church was published in 1534, which is known as the Confession
of Basle. But owing to the controversy touching the Lord’s Supper, and
the efforts made to restore peace, a second Confession was composed
by the Swiss Reformers and divines in 1536, and is usually called the
Helvetian Confession.
From the very commencement of the Reformation it became manifest that
the Protestants must proceed upon a different method of attaining
knowledge from that followed by the Roman Catholics. The radical
difference between the two, which has continued to become wider down to
the present day, may be shortly stated: The Protestants assert that the
Old and New Testament is the only safe source of religious knowledge,
and forms the sole rule of faith; the Roman Catholic Church assumes
the existence of another source associated with the first, namely,
tradition. The Roman Catholic Church emphatically claims the sole right
of interpreting Scripture; but the Protestant Church concedes this
right, within limits, to every one who has the requisite gifts and
attainments, and in a wider sense to every one seeking after salvation;
she proceeds upon the view that Scripture should be interpreted in its
entirety according to the analogy of faith, and she also allows for the
distinction between a critical and general understanding――between the
common understanding and a deeper insight into the meaning of Scripture.
Having presented a sketch of the antecedents of the Reformation, I
return to the more immediate subject of the work.
SECTION II.
_History of the Reformation in Scotland
to the Death of Cardinal Beaton._
WHEN Europe was on the eve of the first stage of the Reformation
struggle, Scotland as we have seen in the foregoing volume, had
lost her king and many of her leading men upon the disastrous field
of Flodden. The citizens of Edinburgh, however, were equal to the
emergency, and they immediately took steps to preserve order and
to defend the capital; and it was at this time that the authorities
resolved to build a wall around Edinburgh.¹ But the fear of an invasion
was soon dispelled as the Earl of Surrey disbanded his host. In October,
1513, the infant king was crowned at Scone, and his mother named
as regent; but her frothy disposition speedily led her into actions
which rendered this arrangement nugatory, as in the following year
she married the young Earl of Angus, which at once deprived her of the
regency.
¹ _Burgh Records of Edinburgh_, Volume I., pages 143‒144, 146.
Meanwhile a party of the nobles were looking to the Duke of Albany as
a likely personage to take the reins of Government. He was a son of
Alexander Stuart, Duke of Albany, a brother of James III., who after
his forfeiture passed into France, and had attained to a position of
wealth and honour. As a member of the Royal family, after the infant
king, he was next heir to the throne. He was requested to assume the
functions of Governor of the kingdom; but the state of society in
Scotland offered comparatively few attractions to a man habituated to
the gay and fashionable society of France, and he seems to have been
very loath to leave the enjoyments of his adopted country, even in
exchange for the highest office in the Council of Scotland.
As usual there was strife amongst the nobles; while a fierce contest
was raging among the dignitaries of the Church about the See of St.
Andrews. Gavin Douglas, the provost of St. Giles, John Hepburn, the
prior of St. Andrews, and Andrew Forman, the bishop of Moray, were all
eagerly struggling to obtain possession of the much coveted primacy.
After some very unseemly demonstrations of force, a compromise was
effected by a distribution of benefices amongst the aspirants, and
Forman obtained St. Andrews with the power of _Legate a Latere_, and
the promise of a cardinal’s hat.¹
¹ Buchanan’s _History of Scotland_, Book XIII., chapter 48;
_Statutes of the Scottish Church_, Volume I., pages 125‒127.
In May 1515 the Duke of Albany arrived in Scotland, and received a warm
welcome from the people, as they hoped to enjoy greater tranquility
under his rule. The task, however, of restoring order amongst the
nobles was exceedingly difficult. Although the new governor’s talents
were above the average of his class, he laboured under the disadvantage
of being French in manner and habits, and of being quite unacquainted
with the usages and feelings of the Scots. He began his government
with bold measures. Offenders of high rank were seized, imprisoned, and
executed. But these proceedings failed to produce the intended effect,
and were too much out of the usual course. In a short time Albany
discovered the hopelessness of his task. He repeatedly returned to
France to be free of the turmoil; and after a fluctuating sway of eight
years, his regency terminated in 1524.¹
¹ Buchanan’s _History of Scotland_, Book XIII. Among modern
historians Tytler has treated the regency of Albany at
greatest length. _History of Scotland_, Volume V. pages
101‒174; 1834.
The persistent interference of Henry VIII. with the internal affairs
of Scotland added another element of anarchy, and he appears to have
had a special animus at the Duke of Albany, continuing to tease and
torment Scotland throughout his reign. Henry’s intrigues and projects
were unceasing; he endeavoured to get the young King into his hands
by encouraging his sister to flee with her children into England. He
kept a number of paid spies and agents in Scotland for the express
purpose of exciting popular tumults, private quarrels, and rekindling
the jealousy of the nobles, in order to distract and discredit the
government of Albany. Project after project arose in his passionate
breast, which his ambitious and brutal nature pursued with unrelenting
and murderous severity; sometimes his hobby was political, sometimes
religious, at other times matrimonial, and in almost every instance
he inflicted great suffering upon the people of Scotland. During the
regency of Albany, the Earl of Angus, having previously been forced to
leave the country, entered into a paction with the English Government
in ♦1524, and returned to Scotland.¹
♦ “1224” replaced with “1524”
¹ _State Papers_, reign of Henry VIII., Volume IV., throughout.
Tytler’s _History of Scotland_, Volume V., pages 99, 117‒119,
182.
At this time the chief nobles were much divided; and the Earl of Angus
quickly matured his plot. Having secured the concurrence of the Earl
of Arran and others, he seized the young King, and, as had often been
done before in similar circumstances, he shortly concentrated in his
own hands all the power of the Crown. Angus kept the King in close
restraint, and revelling in his usurped authority, he exercised a
severe tyranny on all who dared to oppose him. The kingdom remained in
this state for several years, though two attempts were made to rescue
the King from the grasp of the bold noble, in one of which the Earl
of Lennox lost his life, while the chains of the captive were more
firmly rivetted than before. The Douglases were complete masters of the
situation, Angus himself was chancellor, his uncle treasurer, and they
compelled the King to sign all deeds which they presented to him, while
the revenue and the law of the country were wholly under their control.
At last, with the assistance of Archbishop Beaton, James escaped from
Angus in May 1528, and from that time to the end of his reign, he
pursued the Earl and his adherents with relentless severity.¹
¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II., pages
301, 307, 312, 330; ♦Lesly’s _History Of Scotland_, pages
134, 136, 140; Buchanan’s _History of Scotland_, Book XIV.,
chapter 33.
♦ “Lesley” replaced with “Lesly” for consistency
In September a parliament met and passed an act of attainder against
the Douglases, and Angus was forced to flee into England. The King
appointed the Archbishop of Glasgow chancellor, the Abbot of Holyrood
treasurer, and the Bishop of Dunkeld, keeper of the privy seal.¹ These
appointments indicated that the tide was turned against the aristocracy,
and that the policy of the young King would be strongly influenced by
the circumstances in which he had been placed. James soon manifested an
unmistakeable intention to curb the nobles, but it must be added that
he entered upon his purpose without a full and proper appreciation of
the difficulties of the task; he seems to have greatly under-estimated
the power of the nobles, and accordingly he had to pay the penalty.
Whenever the nobles were excluded from the government of the kingdom,
they began to show a leaning towards the doctrines of the Reformation;
they were extremely dissatisfied with the king, and hated the clergy
on account of their influence over him, and their control of the
government.
¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II., pages
322‒323, 324; _Diurnal of Occurrents_, page 11.
But the causes and circumstances which tended to promote the
Reformation in Scotland demand a more minute examination. In the
tenth chapter of this work it was noticed that the wealth of the
Church gave the clergy much power in public affairs and the government
of the country; it was also observed that the clergy generally
ranked themselves on the side of the Crown in its struggles with the
aristocracy. This deep-seated antagonism of interests between the
clergy and the aristocracy was one of the chief external causes of
the Reformation in Scotland; and in the development of Protestantism,
the motives of this aristocratic connection finally issued in curious
and instructive results. James V. was not insensible to the prevailing
abuses of the Church, nor was he averse to moderate remedies, but he
never entertained the idea of forsaking the religion of his fathers.
He, however, incited Buchanan to lash the mendicant friars in the
Satire of the Franciscans, and he encouraged by his presence the public
performance of Sir David Lindsay’s Satire of the Three Estates, which
was acted at Linlithgow in 1540. It was reported that he exhorted
the bishops to reform their lives, and threatened if they neglected
his warning that he would treat them after the manner of the King
of England; still he was a faithful son of the Catholic Church, and
pretty well under the influence of the clergy. Many of the nobles,
from motives of self-interest, professed a willingness to embrace the
reformed opinions, and gradually ranked themselves on the side of the
Reformers; as time passed, and the prospects of the division of the
church lands approached, they became more and more ardent in their
adherence to the principles of the Reformation.
But strong as the influence of the nobles was in hastening on the
Reformation, or rather the destruction of the Roman hierarchy, it
is a misinterpretation of the historic phenomena to attribute this
revolution to them alone. Besides the religious ideas and sentiments
which the Reformers themselves honestly held and preached, there were
also the domestic, the social, and the moral causes of the Reformation,
and which comprised all the relations between the clergy and the people
that had arisen and accumulated since the introduction of Christianity.
The tenor of these relations and exactions have already been partly
noticed in the Introduction and in the fourth and tenth chapters of
this work, and again generally touched upon in the preceding pages of
the present chapter, and I must now discuss the results which they more
or less distinctly produced on the feeling and mind of the nation.
The exactions connected with the Roman Catholic rite of burial were the
most teasing and heartless. They were known under the terms of “The
Kirk Cow,” “The Uppermost Cloth,” and “Corse Presents,” that is, dues
exacted by the parochial clergy on the deaths of their parishioners.
These dues were sometimes taken from the surviving relations in cases
of the most abject poverty, and however much concern the survivors of a
father or a mother might have for the souls of the departed, surely it
was a short-sighted piece of policy to lay on a heavy exaction at such
a time, irrespective too of the circumstances of the parties. For these
and many other obvious reasons the mortuary dues were the most hateful
and galling to the people. On the eve of the Reformation (1559) a
provincial council of the Catholic clergy enacted a canon relieving
the poor from the mortuary dues, but they were to be exacted from those
immediately above the poor in a modified form. The concession, however,
came too late.¹ Then there were the paschal offerings, the Sunday
penny, the penny offering, the christening pennies, and the lights
at Candlemas for the feast of the purification of the Virgin Mary.
At first these were free gift offerings, according to the benevolence
of the giver; but in course of time they became obligatory, and the
churchmen enforced the payment of them, when necessary, by fulminating
the sentence of cursing and debarring the refractory from the
sacraments of holy Church. The priest also claimed the right of common
pasture for his cattle throughout the parish.²
¹ _Statutes of the Scottish Church_, Volume II., pages 44,
273‒274, 167‒168, 305‒306.
² _Ibid._, Volume II., pages 31, 45, 148‒149, 274‒275.
The right of the Church to enforce the payment of tithes under
penalties had been long established in Scotland as elsewhere, but this
often led to disputes between the clergy and the people. An uncounted
tithe was a tax on the fruits of industry, increasing in amount with
the increase of production and wealth; and however much the hard
toil of a man or a family might produce, the tenth part thereof had
always to go to swell the riches of the Church. This exaction pressed
extremely hard upon the class of tenant farmers and the toilers of the
soil, who amid all their difficulties and struggles could not fail to
see that the services of the clergy scarcely repaid them for the worry
and loss of so large a deduction from the products of their industry.
Such thoughts naturally would have arisen in the minds of the people,
for strong as their religious feeling was, yet it had a limit, beyond
which it could not be drawn upon with any chance of safety. Then the
tithes were extended not only to include all kinds of farm produce,
live stock, and poultry, but also the produce of gardens, descending to
flax, leeks, and cabbages; tithes of pasture and hay, tithes of mills
and fishings, tithes of wool and everything else.¹ That the collection
of all these dues must have been a constant source of annoyance to
the people cannot be doubted, or that it occasioned many disputes and
quarrels was not surprising.
¹ _Ibid._, Volume II., pages 21‒23; _Acts of the Parliaments of
Scotland_, Volume I., page 47.
But from another point of view the practice of the Roman Catholic
Church had issued in a social corruption of the clergy and the
religious orders which was too palpably inconsistent to endure.
Touching the principle of celibacy, it was briefly noticed in the
fourth chapter that the clergy of Scotland had not strictly practised
the rule of the Church; and in the sixteenth century this blot on the
clergy was not a matter of doubt or dispute, it was a notorious fact
and patent to the eyes of all. The result in Scotland was this, the
rule of celibacy was enjoined by law but abrogated in practice among
those of the clergy who were rich enough to support a household;
council after council protested against it, canon after canon called
upon the bishops and the clergy to put away their concubines, but
all was in vain, on the failing of incontinence they seemed to be
utterly irredeemable. Cardinal Beaton had five children; his successor,
Archbishop Hamilton, had three; William Gordon, Bishop of Aberdeen, had
several children, and one of his daughters married the Laird of Udny;
Bishop Chisholm of Dunblane had children, in 1542 one of his daughters
married Sir James Stirling of Keir, and her father gave her a dowry
of £1000, and also bound himself to keep her and her husband for five
years. The Bishop of Moray, when Prior of St. Andrews had three sons,
legitimated in 1533; when Bishop of Moray he had five sons legitimated
in 1545, and two daughters in 1550――making ten of a family. In fact
most of the bishops and many of the abbots and monks had children at
the period immediately preceding the Reformation. The statutes passed
in the Provincial Council of the clergy held at Edinburgh in 1549,
were prefaced with a confession that the cause of the troubles and
heresies which afflicted the Church were the corruption, the lewdness,
and the gross ignorance of churchmen of almost all ranks. “The clergy,
therefore, were enjoined to put away their concubines under pain
of deprivation of their benefices; to dismiss from their houses the
children born to them in concubinage; not to promote such children
to benefices, nor to enrich them, the daughters with doweries, the
sons with baronies, from the patrimony of the Church. Prelates were
admonished not to keep in their households manifest drunkards, gamblers,
whoremongers, brawlers, night-walkers, buffoons, blasphemers, and
profane swearers. The clergy in general were exhorted to amend their
lives and manners; to dress modestly and gravely; to keep their faces
shaven and their heads tonsured; to live soberly and frugally, so as to
have more to spare to the poor; to abstain from secular pursuits, and
especially trading.
“Provision was made for preaching to the people; for teaching grammar,
divinity, and canon law in cathedrals and abbeys; for visiting
and reforming monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals; for recalling
fugitives and apostates, whether monks or nuns, to their cloisters;
for sending from every monastery one or more monks to a university; for
preventing unqualified persons from receiving orders and from holding
cure of souls; for enforcing residence and for restraining pluralities;
for preventing the evasion of spiritual censures by bribes or fines;
for silencing pardoners or itinerant hawkers of indulgences and relics;
for compelling parish clerks to do their duty in person, or to find
sufficient substitutes; for registering testaments and inventories of
persons deceased, and for securing faithful administration of their
estates by bringing their executors to yearly account and reckoning;
for suspending unfit notaries, and for preserving the protocols
of notaries deceased; for reforming the abuses of the Consistorial
courts.”¹ This is a very formidable array of abuses to reform brought
forward by the Roman Catholic clergy themselves; but the proceedings
and canons of subsequent councils show that they were not carried into
effect――indeed it would have been marvellous if the churchmen had
complied with the canons of 1549. Sir David Lindsay in the Satire of
the Three Estates makes Spiritually say――
“Howbeit I dar not plainlie spouse a wife,
Yet concubeins I haif had four or five,
And to my sons I have given rich rewards,
And all my daughters maryit upon lairds.”
¹ _Statutes of the Scottish Church_, Volume I., pages 149‒150,
173; Volume II., pages 15, 17, 28, 35, 42, 48, 51, 55, 65,
81‒88, 89‒118, 128, 153‒156, 301‒303. _Register of the Great
Seal_, Book 26; _Acts of the Lords of Council and Session_,
Book 36; Lord Lindsay’s _Lives of the Lindsays_, Volume I.,
page 201; Gordon’s _History of the Earldom of Sutherland_,
pages 172, 478; W. Fraser’s _Stirlings of Keir_, pages 39,
40, 378.
Again Diligence announces――
“From this day forth our barons temporall
Sail na mair mix thair noble ancient blood
With bastard bairns of stait spirituall.”¹
¹ Lindsay’s _Poetical Works_, Volume II., pages 88, 119.
This must have tended to lower the character of the clergy in the
popular estimation; there seems also reason to believe that the example
of the dignified clergy sporting with their damsels in the face of
society had an injurious effect in other directions, by weakening
the feeling of chastity and modesty in the relations of the sexes, it
encouraged immorality among all ranks of the nation, it lowered and
tended to discredit the whole group of feelings and sentiments which
should be concentrated around the domestic circle, and which really
forms the foundation of social well-being and virtuous life.
Celibacy and monasticism, and the associated group of ascetic and
sanctimonious notions, originated from the same principle. Looking on
the subject from the standpoint of history, and from the broad ground
of morality and freedom, it is not necessary at this time of day to
argue that the State should suppress and prohibit monasteries and
nunneries. All that the State should be fairly called upon to perform
is to see that protection is afforded to those who are forcibly seized
and detained in such establishments. But circumstances might arise when
it would be necessary for the government to interfere; in well-ordered
communities, however, where public opinion has its proper influence,
such instances would rarely happen. If men and women voluntarily
resolve to shut themselves up within the walls of a building, it
is best, perhaps to let them follow their special hobby; when the
dominant idea and feeling of their minds lead them to adopt this mode
of life, it may be pretty safely assumed that such persons would form
comparatively useless members of society. It is not therefore on the
ground of any theory of government that the system of monasticism is
here discussed; but upon the principles of human nature, morality, the
rational and harmonious exercise of the varied faculties of the mind in
the development of civilisation.
It is true that the ascetic sentiment has often entered largely into
other religions as well as Christianity. This is especially true of
the great religions of the East, but it is not unknown in some of the
less developed forms of religion. When Mexico and Peru were conquered
by the Spaniards in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, they
were amazed to find among the inhabitants of these countries religious
customs and practices which much resembled some of those of the old
world. The resemblance was most noticeable in relation to monasticism;
as some of the customs of the natives corresponded pretty closely with
the Christian monastic institutions.¹ In Africa and Asia the monastic
type of religion has always existed; the horrifying macerations and
ascetic rites of the Buddhists surpass those of any Christian order.
¹ Viscount Amberley’s _Analysis of Religious Belief_, Volume
I., pages 98‒108. Hereafter it will come within my purpose to
give a more detailed criticism of this work, especially the
second Book, which deals with the Religious sentiment itself.
Although the candour, the talents, the industry, and the
literary culture of the author are worthy of all admiration,
it must be admitted that his elaborate performance lacks the
logical grasp of principles and ideas which characterise the
highest minds, and that before all other qualifications is
necessary to one who aspires to revolutionise the religions
and theologies of the human race. It may also be stated that
his sympathies were rather feeble to enable him to fathom
the real sufferings and the inner pangs of the heart of
mankind, or to reach and faithfully represent the deepest
chords which have throbbed in the soul of humanity. This
weakness of sympathy is most apparent in his treatment of
Jesus Christ. He devotes about 240 pages to an account of
Jesus and his sayings; but even from the standpoint of the
school to which he belongs, the criticism is uncommonly
contorted and flippant. Sometimes he condescends to sneer
at the ignorance of Jesus――“His intellectual weakness, his
irrational prejudices,” and so on. He was evidently much
offended because the moral doctrines of Jesus did not assign
more respect to wealth and rich men――it was a sad error on
the part of Jesus not to extol them; since from these and
such-like reasons the author is led to the conclusion that
Jesus had only a very imperfect sense of justice, “crude
ideas of social connections,” and no proper esteem for the
aristocracy. The work in its historical character is also
defective in consecutive continuity and in the appreciation
of internal sequence. Volume I., pages 254‒496.
The monastic system was first introduced from Egypt into Christendom
about the beginning of the fourth century. By the end of that century
the system was in vogue and growing rapidly. “At first it called into
existence a class of men who for self-denial, sincerity of purpose,
heroic endurance, and unyielding fanaticism, have rarely been matched.
They abandoned all the ties of home and friendship, renounced all
the pleasures and even most of the necessaries of life; they scourged
and macerated their bodies, lived in loneliness and desolation, and
wandered half-starved and half-naked through deserts, till they had
almost extinguished every natural feeling and every human sentiment
within their breasts. No affliction could move them, no sympathy for
suffering stirred their heart; they embraced misery with an ardent
yearning; they gloried in multiplying forms of loathsome penance and in
trampling upon every natural desire. To promote the interests of their
church was their only passion, and to gratify it there was no torture
that they were not ready to endure or to inflict.”¹ The monastic
system under various orders of monks, but all founded on the theory of
mortification, continued to develop till it reached enormous dimensions;
and as centuries passed, the first enthusiasm of the monks died away,
the monasteries became rich, and then multitudes entered into them
merely to escape the burdens of life. At last the monasteries, instead
of being the abodes of saints and holy men and women entirely devoted
to the service of God, had become dens of corruption and of luxury;
yet until near the end of the fifteenth century the ascetic theory of
life, the philosophy of mortification, was everywhere held throughout
Christendom; asceticism still represented the highest point of moral
dignity, and Protestantism was the first effective declaration against
it.
¹ Lecky’s _History of Rationalism_, Volume II., pages 28‒29,
396; Montalembert’s _Monks of the West_, Volume I.
According to every worthy conception of the philosophy of human nature,
man has been constituted with feelings, emotions, sentiments, and ideas,
which naturally seek gratification; and the chief question is how their
varied claims should be subordinated and developed. Every feeling and
emotion and idea has an unquestionable right to seek gratification,
subject to the necessary limitations, on the ground of reasonable
subordination in the interest of development on the lines of harmonious
inclusion, instead of exclusion and unnaturally attempted extinction.
The most advanced thinkers, moralists, and educators now recognise this;
and history presents masses of evidence against the principle of rigid
exclusion and asceticism――the method of maiming the body, dwarfing
the human sympathy, and starving the mind, in order to save the soul.
The results of this may be seen in the establishment of caste, in
Oriental religions and despotisms, in oligarchies and aristocracies,
in imperialism and fatalism, and in many other forms.
In the history of the form and the manifestation of the religious
feeling and aspiration there has been a tendency in many quarters to
draw the lines too sharply between the teachers of religion and the
body of the people. This has often resulted in the establishment of a
class specially charged with the oracles and message of God; and once
the idea began to be entertained, sentiments and habits associated with
it sprung up and accumulated around it, till the priesthood finally
assumed a strong and commanding position. They were supposed to be the
holy servants of God, and they should therefore show to the profane
world of the flesh that they were exalted above the most natural
and deeply rooted feelings of mankind. Accordingly they proceeded to
renounce the idea of marriage, and to forego all the touching domestic
feelings and duties associated therewith; the members of the priesthood
from the highest to the lowest must forsake all such earthly pleasures;
the salvation of the human race having been committed to them by heaven,
they in sooth must rise to the height of their sublime calling. The
intoxication of power inevitably asserted its supremacy, and then they
declared themselves to be the final legislators for this world and the
next. If a point of morals, a case of mutual association among any body
of men, or a novel opinion were expressed, or a tradition or article
of the creed which time had consecrated, were called in question, then,
on all such matters, they alone were the arbiters who could pronounce a
true verdict.
A celibate clergy among a rude people would probably command most
influence. The priest with no family ties was supposed to have
abandoned the engrossing interest of earthly enjoyments, to have
devoted himself to his God, and to care only for the salvation and
eternal welfare of his flock. With nothing else to divert his energies
or to ruffle the serenity of his soul, he professed to toil for the
benefit of his fellow-creatures. Many priests of all religions have
earnestly laboured in such work; the Roman Catholic priesthood have
rarely shrunk from facing danger and toil in the cause to which they
have devoted themselves. It is, however, possible for the priests
to make too stringent rules of self-denial――rules which aim at
extinguishing the natural feelings of our common humanity, and by
pushing this to extremes, instead of enhancing their influence, they
may degrade themselves. It is possible to be over holy, by publicly
professing to believe doctrines and to obey rules which in practice are
continually broken by some of their number. Now this was exactly what
happened in Scotland, celibacy was the rule and law of the Church but
in practice the clergy disregarded it. It may well be asked, why should
any class of men be placed in such a position? why should rules be
imposed upon the clergy whereby their human feelings become twisted and
tied down? Why should their humanity be shorn and mangled as if this
was a necessary part of their calling?
The most sympathetic races are those among whom monogamy has been long
established. All genuine social feeling and sentiment begins in the
family circle, and this is the altar where, if anywhere, love should
reign supreme. There the little ones looking up to their father with
all the simplicity of a primitive faith, are full of trust and ready
to be impressed with reverence. Those who do not love their own, will
never care much for any doctrines of religion or morality, however
clearly they may be understood. We have no faith in the son who rails
against his father and mother; for the best part of our nature is
almost unconsciously formed during our earliest years, while all those
feelings and sentiments that assist in sustaining the development of
the moral character and the finer emotions of the heart, those touches
of kindness which sweeten human life and cheer the soul of humanity are
the result of family life.