OF all the periods of modern history, the sixteenth is the fullest of
tempests, of revolutions, and of important events. It shines with the
bright lustre of Italian literature; but, it is tinged with all the
blood which fanaticism could shed in the lapse of an hundred years. Each
of the eras which divides the duration of this age, is itself a
memorable event; the league of Cambray in 1508; the concordat of Leo X.
and Francis I. in 1515: the conquest of Egypt by the Turks, new
expeditions to the two Indies, the English schism, and the establishment
of the Jesuits, in 1540; the abdication of Charles V. and the accession
of Elizabeth in 1558; the council of Trent from 1545 to 1563, and, the
increase of heresies, the Batavian confederation, the excesses of Philip
II. and St. Bartholomew’s-day in 1572; the league, the assassination of
Henry III. by James Clement, in 1589; the victories of Henry IV. his
recantation, and the edict of Nantz, in 1598. Fifteen popes during these
tragical events governed the church, almost all of them of distinguished
talents, and some of an energetic character: but the remembrance of the
Avignon schism, the permanent scandal of nepotism, the invention of
printing, the discovery of a new world, the general advancement of
knowledge, the exertions of Luther and Calvin, the influence of their
doctrines, and propagation of their errors; so many obstacles were
opposed to the progress of the pontifical power, that it required
extreme dexterity in the bishops of Rome to retard its decline.
After the concessions made by the emperor, Charles IV. in 1355 the
German Sovereigns had lost their ancient preponderance in Italy; and the
French, in carrying their arms into it, had obtained a considerable
influence, which was much less opposed by the popes than by the
Venetians, the princes of Arragon, and the powerful families that ruled
Florence and Milan. Pope Julius II. nephew of Sixtus IV. resolved to
enfranchise Italy, that is, to subject it to the court of Rome, to expel
foreigners, to sow divisions among the rivals of the Holy See, and to
take advantage of them in order to re-assume in Europe that supremacy
before aspired to by Gregory VII. and exercised by Innocent III. Gregory
VII. Innocent III. and Julius II., among so many popes, are the three
most violent enemies of kings.
After the death of Alexander VI, and during the twenty-seven days of the
pontificate of Pius III. the Venetians had regained important places
taken from their republic at the end of the fifteenth century: they
occupied a part of Romagna; Cesar Borgia had secured the other, as well
as many cities of the March of Ancona, and of the Duchy of Urbino; the
Baglioni possessed Perugia; the Bentivoglio, Bologna: divers portions of
the pontifical domains were then to be recovered. Julius succeeded in
despoiling Borgia, the Bentivoglio, the Baglioni: but, to subdue the
Venetians, he concluded against them with the king of France, the
emperor, and the king of Arragon, the famous league of Cambray.—But,
soon after, the advancement of Louis XII. rendered him uneasy: he feared
to allow that of the emperor; he hastens to enter into a secret
négociation with the Venetians, and promises them, provided they restore
Faenza and Rimini, to join them in repelling the ‘barbarians’; it is
thus he calls the French, the Spaniards, and Germans. The Venetians, who
rejected these offers, were excommunicated, defeated, and absolved by
submitting to the pope. Then Julius leagued, in fact, with the Venetians
against the French; he puts on the cuirass, lays siege to, in person,
and takes Mirandola. Vanquished by Trivulzio, general of the French, he
excommunicates Louis XII. lays France under an interdict, and endeavours
to arm England against her. Apostolic legates labour to corrupt the
French soldiers: the title of defenders of the Holy See rewards the
ravages of the Swiss; the Genoese are excited to revolt; the states of
John d’Albret, king of Navarre, the ally of Louis XII. are delivered
over by the Roman court to the first occupier.²⁹¹
²⁹¹ “About this time, 1512, says Flecher, pope Julius piqued against
France and her allies, abusing the power which God had given him,
and making religion subservient to his own particular passions,
went to such lengths as to excommunicate kings and strip them of
their kingdoms. The greatness of Louis XII. secured him from these
exactions, and France, supported by her internal force, feared
neither the violence of the pope, nor the ambition of those who
would have taken ad-vantage of it to attack this crown. The evil
fell on John d’Albret, king of Navarre, who, not being
sufficiently provident to secure himself from surprise, nor
powerful enough to defend himself against an armed neighbour,
watchful of every opportunity to aggrandize his kingdom, had been
ex-communicated because he had united with the king of France,
and was finally driven from his states, under the pretence that he
had contributed to the convocation and continuance of the council
held at Pisa against the Holy See. Ferdinand, in virtue of this
bull of excommunication, which it is believed the pope had
secretly conveyed to him before he had fulminated it, caused his
troops to advance quietly, and put himself in a position to attack
the king of Navarre, with whom he was living on good terms, and
who suspected nothing. He knew in his conscience he was about
committing " an injustice, and doubted not he would be reproached
with his invasion: on this account he sent to desire Cardinal
Ximenes might come to him in Logrogne, where he was, in order to
sanction by his presence, at least in the eyes of his subjects, a
war which in other respects had no just grounds.” Life of Cardinal
Ximenes, pa. 358, 359. Ed. of 1693.
To crush France, overthrow Florence, such were the designs of Julius
when he died in 1513, the tenth year of his pontificate. Medals, struck
by his order, represent him with the tiara on his head, a scourge in his
hand, pursuing the French, and trampling under his feet the crown of
France. Julius II. was so much of a temporal prince, that it would be
hard to discover the bishop in him; he attended too little to even the
forms of the Apostolat; this was the principal deficiency in his
policy.²⁹² It was nevertheless in his pontificate that the doctrine of
the infallibility of the pope was established. Julius II. according to
Guicciardini,²⁹³ did not merit the title of a great man; and he obtains
it from those only who, incapable of appreciating the value of words,
imagine that a sovereign pontiff becomes less illustrious by setting an
example of the pacific virtues, than in extending the domains of the
church by the effusion of Christian blood. He was detested even in
Italy. Before his death, the inhabitants of Bologna, threw down his
statue, the work of Michael Angelo.
²⁹² John Lemaire, a contemporary author, made upon the warlike
disposition of Julius II. the following observation: “Still shall
we declare another wonderful change it is, the Sultan’s
graciousness and tractability towards the Very Christian King,
compared with the rigour and obstinacy of this modern pope, who,
so martial and quarrelsome in his accoutrements, as if it was a
duty of his to cause his terrible and warlike arms to be famous,
like the great Tamerlane emperor and sultan of the Tartars, wishes
always to be engaged in war, which is as becoming to him as for a
dirty monk to dance. Unless he shall make some monstrous world to
accord with his own ideas: for hogs will ever feed on
acorns.”—Preface to the Treatise on Schisms, p. 5. Julius II.
²⁹³ History of Italy. 1. 11. ann. 1513.
Leo X. though he reigned but eight years, has given his name to the age
in which he lived: the just and invariable effect of liberal protection
extended to men of letters, when it is bestowed with equal judgment and
generosity. This pontiff loved power still less for its own sake and the
vast designs it facilitates, than for the magnificence and
gratifications it procures. The son of Lorenzo de Medicis, he especially
interested himself in ways of securing to his family a lasting
ascendancy in Italy. He destined for his nephew the sovereignty of
Tuscany, and to his own brother the kingdom of Naples. Louis XII.
absolved from the anathemas with which Julius had loaded him, was
pledged to favour the ambition of the Medicis, who, on their part, were
to support their pretensions to Milan. This alliance, secretly
stipulated²⁹⁴ not having sufficiently speedy effects, Leo purchased the
state, of Modena from the emperor Maximilian, which he purposed uniting
with those Of Reggio, of Parma, and of Placentia, and possibly Ferrara,
to bestow on his brother, or enrich with them the court of Rome.
²⁹⁴ Guicciardini’s Hist, of Italy, 1. 12. The King of France promised
to aid the pontiff in the acquisition of the kingdom, of Naples,
either for the church or for Giuliano his brother.
After being leagued with the king of France, Francis I. to compel the
emperor Charles V. to relinquish the kingdom of Naples, incompatible, he
said, with the empire, the pope formed an alliance against the French
with this same Charles, whose menaces terrified him to that degree, that
he acceded in his favour to the re-union of the two crowns. Leo took
into his pay a body of Swiss troops, and vowed thenceforward so violent
a hatred to the French, that, when he had heard of their repulsion from
the Milanese territory, he almost instantly expired, as is asserted from
joy. He was but forty-six years of age; and notwithstanding the errors
into which pontifical policy led him, we must regret that he did not
live to protect for a longer period the advancement of the fine arts. He
encouraged them like a man worthy of cultivating them; he cherished them
with a sincere and constant love, with which they never inspire bad
princes. His interior administration merited the gratitude of the
Romans:²⁹⁵ their grief when deprived of him was profound; and, a few
years before, equally pure homage was rendered to him when he escaped a
conspiracy similar to that of the Pazzi, and in which the same Cardinal
Riario, one of the accomplices in the former with Sixtus IV. was
concerned. Guicciardini and other writers have judged too hastily of Leo
X. For what pope can obtain approbation, if it be not due to him, who
has done more for Rome than any of his predecessors since Leo IV. and
who did in Europe but a part of the mischief which tradition and example
had bequeathed to him.
²⁹⁵ They have erected a statue to him with this inscription: Optimo,
principi. Leoni. X. Joan. Med. Pont. Max. ob. restitutam.
restauratamque. urbem. aucta. sacra, bonasq. artes. adscitos.
patres, sublatum, vectigal. datumq. congiarium. S.P.Q.R.P.
The expense which the building the church of St. Peter exacted, obliged
Leo to have recourse to the sale of indulgences. The clamours of Luther
against this traffic were the prelude of a great revolution in
Christendom. Leo X. excommunicated Luther and his followers. Bossuet²⁹⁶
thinks with reason, that the heresies and schisms of this century might
have been prevented, if necessary reformations had not been neglected.
But, in the history of this pontificate, what most relates to the
present subject is, the concordat concluded between Leo X. and Francis
I. in 1516.
²⁹⁶ Hist, of the Variat. 1. I, n. 1, 2, 3.
In vain Julius II. excommunicated Louis XII. and menaced transferring
the title of the Very Christian King to the king of England who was
destined to merit it so badly, Henry VIII.; in vain the fifth council of
the Lateran published a monitory against the parliament of Paris, and
all the abettors of the pragmatic sanction, enjoining them to appear at
Rome to give an account of their conduct: Julius died without shaking
Louis. This excellent prince himself died at the moment in which Leo was
preparing to deceive him and the crown of France devolved on Francis I.
of whom Louis had often said: ‘This great booby will spoil all.’—In
fact, Francis I. in an interview with Leo at Bologna, consented to a
concordat, and directed his chancellor Anthony Duprat to digest it in
unison with two cardinals appointed for this purpose by the pope. The
principal articles of this concordat are those which import, that for
the future the chapters of the cathedral and metropolitan churches
should not proceed in future to the election of bishops; that the king,
within the term of six months from the date of a see becoming vacant,
shall present to the pope a doctor or lieutenant of twenty-seven years
of age at least, who shall be made by the pope incumbent of the vacant
see; but, if the person proposed does not possess the requisite
qualifications, the king shall be required to propose another within
three months, reckoning from the day of the refusal; that moreover the
pope, without the previous presentation of the king, shall nominate to
the bishops and archbishops’ sees, which shall become vacant whilst the
incumbents are in attendance at the court of Rome. It is proper to
remark that, in granting the nomination to the king, the pope reserved
to himself the first fruits.²⁹⁷
²⁹⁷ On this subject observe the remark of Mezerai: "There never was
seen go odd an exchange; the pope, who is a spiritual power,
takes the temporal to himself, and bestows the spiritual on a
temporal prince.”
Francis I. went himself to the parliament to have the concordat
registered, and the chancellor Duprat explained the reasons which
dictated it. They refuse to register it; the king gets angry. The
parliament places a protest in the hands of the bishop of Langres, that,
if the registry take place, it will be by constraint, and that they will
not act in consequence in less conformity with the pragmatic. It is at
length registered, but in endorsing on the folds of the concordat, that
it has been read and published at the express command of the king, many
times reiterated.
The see of Alby became vacant in 1519: the chapter nominated agreeable
to the pragmatic sanction, and the king according to the concordat; the
parliament of Paris, deciding between the two candidates, pronounced in
favor of the one elected by the chapter of Alby. In 1521, a bishop of
Condom, elected by the chapters of this church, was in the same manner
supported against him whom the king had nominated. All the causes of
this kind were similarly decided, until after the imprisonment of
Francis I. and would have continued so to be, if a declaration of the
6th of September, 1529, had not referred to the grand council the
cognizance of all proceedings relative to bishopricks, abbeys, and other
benefices, the nomination to which had been granted to the king by Leo
X.
The president Henault²⁹⁸ has collected all the reasons alleged in favor
of the concordat, and which may be reduced to the two following: 1st,
kings in founding benefices, and in receiving the church into the state,
have succeeded to the right of election exercised by the early
believers: 2dly, simony, intrigue, and ignorance, govern electors, and
give to the dioceses unworthy pastors.²⁹⁹
²⁹⁸ Ab. Chron. of Hist, of France: remark, particul.
²⁹⁹ The worst of it was, says Brantome, when they could not agree in
their elections, they often came to blows, and cuffed each other
with their fists, knocked each other down, wounded nay killed each
other......They generally elected him who was the best companion,
who loved the girls and was the greatest toper; in short he who
was most debauched: others elected, from pity, some wretch of a
monk who had been secretly plundering them, or kept his own
private purse and starved his poor friars.....The bishops, elected
and installed in these great dignities, God knows what lives they
led...A dissolute life after dogs, birds, feasts, banquets, clubs,
weddings and girls, of whom they kept seraglios...I would add
more; but I do not wish to give offence.
But, at bottom, the royal nominations were not the thing which most
excited the clamours of the parliament; it complained more particularly
of the first fruits, and the bull of Leo against the pragmatic sanction;
of the first fruits, which, from St. Louis to Charles VII. all the kings
of France had prohibited, and which the early popes had declared
improper and simoniacal, when they were enacted by the emperors; of the
bull of Leo, which denounces as a public pest, as an impious
constitution, a pragmatic, founded on the decrees of general councils,
cherished by the people and promulgated by the sovereign. This bull
suspended, excommunicated, menaced with loss of temporal possessions,
civil or ecclesiastic, the French prelates, and even lay lords, who
should re-demand or regret the pragmatic sanction of Charles VII. In
fine, they dared to cite in this same bull of Leo X. the bull of
Boniface VIII. “Unam sanctam,” in which the right of humbling thrones,
of taking and bestowing crowns, is ascribed to the Roman pontiff. This
is what provoked the opposition of the parliament; and we must admit,
apparently, this was neither unreasonable nor contrary to the interests
of the monarchy.³⁰⁰ If the question had only been to substitute to the
right of confirming the elections, possessed for a long time by the
monarch, that of making the choice himself, we have reason to think the
registry would have experienced much less difficulty.
³⁰⁰ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. xxiii. p. 161, &c.—Gaillard’s Hist,
of Francis I. vol. vi. p. 1—120.
Such as it was concluded, in 1516, the concordat could not be pleasing
to a people who had received with enthusiasm the pragmatic of 1439.
Under Francis I., under his successors Henry II., Francis II., Charles
IX., Henry III., the universities and the parliaments seized every
opportunity of remonstrating against this alteration of the fundamental
laws of the Gallican church. The states of Orleans under Charles IX.,
those of Blois under Henry III. expressed the same regret: the clergy
themselves have often demanded the restoration of the ‘pragmatic;’ they
said in their remonstrance of 1585, that the king Francis I., when near
death, had declared to his son, that there was nothing which weighed so
heavily on his conscience as the concordat.³⁰¹
³⁰¹ This mode of thinking on the pragmatic and concordat was so
national, so constant, that in 1789 even the petitions prepared
for the sessions of the States general unanimously demanded the
abolition of the concordat and restoration of the pragmatic
sanction.. Summary of the Petitions, vol. i. p. 33; vol. ii. p.
277; vol. iii. p. 409, 410.
After Leo X. Adrian VI. born of very obscure parents, occupied for but
twenty months the chair of St. Peter. He had taught when a simple doctor
of Louvain, that the pope was subject to err in matters of faith: far
from retracting this doctrine when pope, he caused a work to be printed
in which he professed it.³⁰² On this head, some sophist of Louvain
might have, after the example of an old Greek sophist, argued in this
manner:³⁰³
“If the pope be infalli−
“ble, it follows that Adrian must have been so when
“he asserted he was not; therefore by this very in−
“fallibility they prove it not to exist. Either Ad−
“rian deceives himself, and therefore the pope is in−
“fallible, or Adrian is right, and then we must ac−
“knowledge with him the pope may be de−
“ceived.”
³⁰² Bossnet. Def. Cler. Gall. Diss. prœria. n. 38. p. 23... The text
of Adrian is as follows: “Dico quod, si per Romanam ecclesiam
intelligatur caput illius, puta pontifex, certum est quod possit
erare, etiam in is quæ tangunt fidem, heræsim per suam
determinationem aut decretalem docendo: plures enim fuerunt
pontifices Romani hæretici. Idem et novissime fertur de Joanne
XXII.” &c. In lib. 4, Sententiæ.
³⁰³ The Italians had no love for this pope: Pallavicini, in his Hist,
of the Council of Trent, 1. 2, c. 9, n. 1, says, that Adrian VI.
was indeed a very good priest, but a very indifferent pope.
The natural and posthumous son of Giulio de Medicis, assassinated in
1478 by the Pazzi, Clement VII. was elected pope, infallible or not, in
1223 (?? Ed.).—The successes and genius of Charles V. restored at this
time to the imperial dignity its ancient splendour and its preponderance
in the affairs of Italy. Clement wished to place difficulties in the way
of it; he formed against the emperor a league, which was called holy,
because the pope was its head, and into which the king of France, the
king of England, the Venetians, and other Italian governments, entered:
but the constable of Bourbon, quitting Francis I. for Charles V. led a
German, and, in great part, Lutheran army against Rome, took this city,
sacked it, and compelled the people to retire to the castle of Saint
Angelo. Clement did not leave it, but by pledging himself to deliver it
up to the officers of the emperor, and to pay three hundred and fifty
thousand gold ducats. He bound himself, to deliver up to the
Imperialists Ostia, Civita—Vechia, Citta di Castello, and, to cause to
be restored to them Parma and Placentia. Not being able to fulfil his
engagements, the pope escaped in the disguise of a merchant to Orvieto.
Affected with the great distresses of the pontiff, Francis I. resolved
to march to his assistance, and made arrangements which compelled
Charles to become reconciled with Clement. Charles, crowned emperor by
Clement in 1530, promised to re-establish the Medicis in Florence, for
the pontiff did not neglect the interests of his family; he married his
niece Catherine, to the son of Francis I, that niece but too famous in
the annals of France, down to the year 1589. It was in these
circumstances Henry VIII. of England thought of putting away his wife,
Catherine of Arragon, aunt of the emperor, in order to marry Ann Boleyn.
While the war continued between the Holy See and Charles, Clement seemed
favourable towards this project, and the bull of divorce was prepared.
The reconciliation of the pope and the emperor led to quite ah opposite
decision. In vain did the theologians of England, of France, and of
Italy, declare, that the marriage of a brother with his brother’s widow
should be considered void; this was the situation of Henry with
Catherine of Arragon; Charles dictated to Clement a decision which
declared the validity and indissolubility of this marriage. Henry is
excommunicated if he persists in the divorce. The monarch appeals to a
general council on the matter; the English clergy decide, that the pope
has no authority over Great Britain: the parliament gives him the title
of supreme head of the church. Thus is completed a schism it Would have
been so much the more easy to avoid, as the king abhorring the name of
heretic, and emulous of the glory of being a very zealous catholic, had
written against Luther, and obtained from Leo X. the title of defender
of the faith. Henry, cut off from the church, fell to persecuting alike
the partisans of the pope and the Lutherans.
Paul III. who reigned from 1534 to the end of the year 1549, confirmed
the excommunication of Henry, convoked the council of Trent, approved
the new institution of the Jesuits, and was the first author of the
bull, “In cœnâ Domini”. Those who appeal from the decrees of the pope to
a general council, those who favour the appellants, those who say that a
general council is superior to a sovereign pontiff; those who, without
consent from Rome, exact from the clergy contributions for the
necessities of the state; the civil tribunals which presume to try
bishops, priests, those who are only tonsured, or monks; chancellor,
vice-chancellors, presidents, counsellors, and, attorney-generals, who
decide ecclesiastical causes: all those, in fine, who do not admit the
omnipotence of the Holy See and the absolute independence of the clergy,
are anathematized by this bull, which, published for the first time on
holy Thursday, of the year 1536, was to be so published annually on the
same day: it is on this account, therefore, denominated: In coena
Domini; for the practice of thus publishing it every year at Rome was
established in despite of the just remonstrances of sovereigns.
We shall here render homage to certain cardinals and prelates who
addressed to Paul III. some very judicious, though very useless
remonstrances.³⁰⁴³⁰⁵
“You are aware,” they say, “that your predecessors were
“willing to be flattered. It was unnecessary to de−
“sire it, they would have been sufficiently so without
“exacting it; for adulation follows princes as a sha−
“dows follows a body, and to this day the throne is
“difficult of access to uncompromising truth. But,
“in order to secure themselves the better from its
“intrusion, your predecessors surrounded them−
“selves with skilful doctors, whom they commanded
“not to teach duties, but to justify caprices. The
“talents of these doctors were to be exercised,
“in discovering every thing to be lawful which pre−
“sented itself as agreeable. For instance they have
“declared the sovereign pontiff absolute master of
“the benefices of Christendom; and, as a lord has
“the right of selling his domains, that so, they con−
“clude, the head of the church can never be guilty
“of simony, and that in affairs relating to benefices,
“simony can only exist when the seller is not pope.
“By this, and similar reasoning, they have arrived
“at the sweeping conclusion they were to demon−
“strate, to wit, that, that which is pleasing to the
“pope is always lawful to him. Behold, holy fa−
“ther, the remonstrating cardinals add, behold the
“indubitable source from whence have issued as
“from the wooden horse, all the abuses, and all the
“plagues which have afflicted the church of God.”
³⁰⁴ It commences with these words: “Consuererunt Romiani Pontiiicis,”
and contains twenty-four paragraphs.
³⁰⁵ See Appendix.
Paul III. had destined for his grandson, Octavius Farnese, the States of
Parma and Placentia: Charles V. who intended to unite them to the duchy
of Milan, was threatened with the heaviest censures. Afterwards the
pontiff wished for Parma for the Holy See, and they say, died of grief
when he learned that Octavios was on the point of obtaining this duchy.
Julius III. by agreement with the emperor, refused the investiture to
Farnese; but the king of France, Henry II. protected the duke, and sent
him troops. At this news Julius excommunicated the king of France, and
threatened to place the kingdom under interdict. Henry was not
terrified; he forbade his subjects from taking money to Rome, or
addressing themselves to others than the usual prelates in
ecclesiastical matters. This firmness softened the holy father, who even
laboured to reconcile the emperor with the king of France.
After Marcellus II. who reigned but twenty-one days, John Peter Caraffa,
was elected pope, who took the name of Paul VI.:
“Although he was se−
“venty nine years old,” says Muratori,
“his head
“was an epitome of Mount Vesuvius near which he
“was born. Overbearing, passionate, cruel, inflex−
“ible, his zeal for religion, was without prudence,
“and without bounds. His savage look, his eyes
“hollow, but sparkling and inflamed, presaged a
“a severe and sullen government. Paul neverthe−
“less began with acts of clemency and liberality
“which seemed to belie the apprhensions which
“his character had inspired: he so lavished
“favors and courtesies, that the Romans erected
“a statue to him in the capitol. But his natural tem−
“per soon returned, burst the banks, and verified the
“most unfortunate forebodings.”
Family interests made him the enemy of Spain: he not only persecuted the
Sforzi, the Columnas, and other Roman families attached to this power,
but he entered into a league with France to deprive the Spaniards of the
kingdom of Naples. The cardinal of Lorain and his brother, the duke of
Guise, led Henry II. into this league in spite of the constable,
Montmorenci. But the cardinal Pole, minister of Mary, Queen of England,
and wife of Philip the Spaniard, had the address to make the French
monarch sign a truce of five years with the court of Madrid. Paul is
enraged; his nephew, the cardinal Caraffa, comes to France to complain
of the treaty they have presumed to make with Spain, without the
knowledge of the Court of Rome. The duke of Alba, viceroy of Naples is
dessous of lulling this quarrel; he sends a delegate to the pope, whom
the pope imprisons. This outrage compels the viceroy to take arms; he
makes himself master in a short time of a great part of the
ecclesiastical state. Alarmed at the progress of the duke of Alba, the
court of France sends an army of twelve thousand men against him,
commanded by the duke of Guise. But, in the mean time the French lose
the battle of Saint Quentin: to repair this loss, they are obliged to
recall Guise and his troops, and the pope is compelled to negotiate with
the viceroy.
Charles V. in uniting the imperial crown to that of Spain and of the Two
Sicilies, had obtained, not only in Italy, but in Europe, a
preponderance vainly disputed by Francis I. The abdication of Charles,
in 1556, divided his power between his brother Ferdinand, who became
emperor, and his son, Philip II. who reigned over Spain and Naples. But,
in spite of this division, this house was nevertheless, during the
greatest part of the sixteenth century, that which most justly excited
the jealously of the sovereign pontiffs; and Paul IV. in declaring war
against him, was led into it by the general policy of the Holy See, as
much as by family interests and personal resentments. He refused to
confirm Ferdinand’s election to the empire, and maintained that Charles
V. had no power to abdicate this dignity without the approbation of the
Court of Rome³⁰⁶ Frederick had the good sense to dispense with the
pope’s concurrence, and the succeeding emperors followed his example.
The most certain means of restraining the pontifical power within just
bounds was, to suppress in this way, the forms and ceremonies which had
so importantly contributed to extend it.
³⁰⁶ We shall transcribe in our 2d vol. some of the arguments of Paul
and his theologians, to prove that the pope was the “superior” of
the emperor.
Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary in 1558 on the British throne,
was disposed by the circumstances of her accession to favor catholicity.
The impetuous Paul, mistook the prudence of this queen for weakness and
fear: he replied to the ambassador of Elizabeth, that she was but a
bastard, and that England was but a fief of the Holy See; that the
pretended queen ought to commence by suspending the exercise of her
functions, until the Court of Rome had sovereignly pronounced on her
claims. A bull declared that all prelates, princes, kings and emperors,
who fall into heresy, are, by the act itself, deprived of their
benefices, states, kingdoms and empires, which belong to the first
catholic who may wish to make himself master of them, and that the said
heretical princes or prelates never can resume them. From this moment
Elizabeth no longer hesitated to establish the English schism; she
embraced, favoured, and propagated heresy: we must blame her no doubt;
but how can we excuse a pope whose violence led him to such extremities,
and who refrained not from participating in the conspiracies framed
against the authority and even life of this sovereign? When after four
years reign this pontiff died, the Romans broke his statue and cast it
into the Tiber; scarcely could his body be secured from the fury of the
populace: the prison of the Inquisition was burned; Paul had made a
terrible use of this detestable tribunal, and he reproached with
severity the German princes for their indulgence towards heretics.
Pius IV. exercised against the nephews of Paul the most cruel revenge,
advised to it, it is said, by the King of Spain, Philip II., the
implacable enemy of the Caraffa. The Queen of Navarre was summoned by
this pope to appear at Rome within six months, under the usual penalties
of excommunication, deprivation, and degradation: menaces almost as
ridiculous as they were criminal, the only effect of which was to
irritate the court of. France. But the pontificate of Pius is especially
remarkable for the termination of the council of Trent, which had lasted
eighteen years, from 1545 to 1563. The doctrinal decisions of this
council do not concern us: we shall say something of its legislative
decrees.
The council of Trent pronounces, in certain cases, excommunication,
deposition and deprivation, against kings themselves. It ascribes to
bishops the power to punish the authors and the printers of forbidden
books, to interdict notaries, change the directions of testators, and
apply the revenues of hospitals to other uses. It renders the marriages
of minors, without the consent of parents, valid: it permits
ecclesiastical judges to have their own decisions against laymen
executed, by seizure of goods and imprisonment of person; it screens
from the secular jurisdiction all the members of the clergy, even those
who have only received simple tonsure; it desires that criminal
proceedings against bishops should be judged only by the pope; it
authorises the pope to depose non-resident bishops, and appoint
successors to them; it subjects in fine its own decrees to the approval
of the sovereign pontiff, whose unbounded supremacy it recognizes.
Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and Julius III., never
aspired to a more absolute theocracy, more subversive of all civil
authority and of all social principle.³⁰⁷ In consequence, they
determined in France, that the council of Trent, infallible in its
dogmas, was not so in its legislation; and not to be surprised into it,
they published neither its legislation nor dogmas: the States of Blois
in 1570, and of Paris in 1614, opposed themselves warmly to this
publication, demanded by the popes, and solicited even by the clergy of
France; for we are obliged to avow, that since 1560 the larger
proportion of this body did not cease, whatever they may say to the
contrary, to confound its interests with those of the court of Rome; and
if it appeared for a while to detach itself from it, by the Five
Articles of 1682, of which we shall shortly treat, it has since amply
repaid by compliances and connivance, a step into which peculiar
circumstances had led it.
³⁰⁷ We here beheld with what immense auxiliaries the clergy had
encompassed and enriched their pastoral office. “They had,” says
Pasquin, “extended their spiritual jurisdiction over so many
matters and affairs, that the suburbs became thrice as large as
the city.”—Researches on France, 1. 3, x. 22.
Pius V. had been grand inquisitor under Paul IV.; he continued to act
the part when pope: no pontiff has burned more heretics, or persons
suspected of heresy, at Rome than he. Among the victims of his zeal we
observe many learned men, and especially Palearius, who had compared the
Inquisition to a poignard directed against men of letters; “sicam
districtam in jugula litteratorum.” A bull of Pius V. against certain
propositions of Michael Baius, was the first signal of a long and
melancholy quarrel. This pope in renewing and amplifying the bull of
Paul III. “In cænâ Domini,” commanded it to be published on holy
thursday throughout all the churches; previously it had been fulminated
only at Rome:³⁰⁸ it may be said, that Pius V. wished to arm against the
Holy See the remnant of the Catholic princes, and to condemn them to the
alternative of renouncing the independence of their crowns or the faith
of their ancestors.
³⁰⁸ In 1580, many French bishops attempted to publish, in their
dioceses, the bull “In coena Domini,” but on the complaint of the
procureur general, the parliament of Paris ordered the seizure of
the temporal revenues of the prelates who should publish this
bull, and declared, that any attempt to enforce it would be
reputed rebellion and the crime of high treason.
The remonstrances were universal; Philip II. the most superstitious of
the kings of this period, forbade under severe penalties the publication
of this bull in his states. By another bull Pius excommunicated
Elizabeth: an anathema at least superfluous, and which produced no other
consequence than the execution of John Felton, who had ventured to
placard this sentence in London. A league entered into between the Pope,
Spain, and Venice, against the Turks, was successful: Don John of
Austria, rendered himself illustrious by the victory of Lepanto; and the
pope was not afraid to apply to this warrior, the bastard of Charles V.
these words of the Gospel: “There was a man sent from God, and this
man’s name was John.” Finally, by the power which he said he held from
God, and in character of pastor charged with examining into the claim of
those who had merited extraordinary honours by their superior zeal for
the Holy See, Pius V. decreed the title of grand duke of Tuscany to
Cosmo de Medicis. The emperor remonstrated in vain: Cosmo with his new
title had himself crowned at Rome, and took the oath at the hands of the
pope. But that which is most remarkable here is, the reasons assigned to
Maximilian by the cardinal Commendon to justify this pontifical act:
Commendon said, that the pope had deposed Childerick, invested Pepin,
transferred the empire of the East into the West, appointed the
electors, confirmed and crowned the emperors; from whence he concludes
that the pope is the distributor of thrones, of titles, and in some
sort, the nomenclator of princes, as Adam had been that of animals.
We shall here remark that the same Pius V. who, to avenge some articles
of the Catholic faith, armed Christian against Christian, wrote to the
Persians and to the Arabs, that in spite of the diversity of worship, a
common interest ought to unite Europe and Asia to combat the Mussulmans.
This apparent contradiction should surprise no one: we know that in
religious dissensions, hatred is proportionately lively as the
sentiments recede least from each other.
Gregory XIII. crowned pope the 25th of May, 1572, three months before
the too celebrated St. Bartholomew’s day, no sooner heard of this
massacre than he caused cannon to be discharged, and kindled fires, for
joy: he returned thanks to heaven in a religious ceremony; and history
records a picture which attested the formal approbation bestowed by the
pontiff on the assassins of Coligny: “Pontifex Colignii necem probat.”
In 1584, Gregory also sanctioned the league, on the exposé of the Jesuit
Mathieu, who was deputed to Rome for this purpose. “For the rest,”
writes this Jesuit, “the pope does not think it proper to attempt the
life of the king; but if they can secure his person, and give him those
who will hold him in rein, he will approve it much.” Gregory even
avoided signing any writing which the league could take advantage of; he
assisted them only with the ‘small money’ of the Holy See, said the
Cardinal of Este: now this money consisted of indulgences.
The dissensions which distracted France at this time had without doubt
various causes, but among them the abolition of the ‘pragmatic’ and the
establishment of the concordat were not sufficiently noted. On one side,
so fatal an alteration in the discipline, in scaring people’s minds, had
disposed them to receive new doctrinal opinions disapproved by the court
of Rome; on the other, the ultramontane maxims that the concordat had
introduced, and that Catherine de Medicis had propagated, inspired
sentiments of intolerance in those who remained in the communion of the
Holy See: the ‘pragmatic’ would have preserved France both from heresy
and from persecuting zeal. Under the reign of the concordat, these two
seeds of discord, rendering each other fruitful, had enveloped with
their horrible fruits, the reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. The new
interests which the concordat gave to the clergy of France, rendered
them devoted to the court of Rome, and weakened more and more the ties
which ought to have held them to the state. They applied themselves so
to the maintenance and renewal of the maxims of the middle age, that
Gregory ventured, in this enlightened age, a new publication of the
decree of Gratian; but the pope, in reforming the calendar, performed a
service which the people separated from the Romish communion had, for a
long time, the folly not to profit by.
The successor of Gregory was the too famous Sixtus V., a sanguinary old
man, who knew how to govern his states only by punishments, and who,
without advantage to the Holy See, reanimated by bulls the troubles
which disturbed other kingdoms. He professed a high esteem for Henry IV.
and for Elizabeth; he excommunicated both, but in some measure for form
sake alone, and because such a step seemed required in his pontifical
character. He detested and dreaded Philip II.: he wished to take the
kingdom of Naples from him; he supported him against England. A solemn
bull gave Great Britain to Philip, declared Elizabeth a usurper, a
heretic, and excommunicated; commanded the English to join the Spaniards
to dethrone her, and promised rewards to those who should deliver her to
the catholics to be punished for her crimes. Elizabeth with the same
ceremony excommunicated the pope and the cardinals at St. Paul’s
cathedral in London. Nevertheless Philip failed in his undertaking, and
Sixtus was almost as well pleased as Elizabeth at it; he invited this
princess to carry the war into the heart of Spain.
Notwithstanding his detestation and contempt of the league, Sixtus
launched his anathemas against the king of Navarre and against the
prince of Conde, calling them an impious blasted race, heretics,
relapsed enemies of God and of religion; loosed their present and future
subjects from their oaths of allegiance, finally declaring these two
princes and their descendants deprived of all rights, and incapable of
ever possessing any principality. This bull commences with the most
insolent display of the pontifical power:
“superior to all the potentates of the earth,
“instituted to hurl from their thrones infidel princes,
“and precipitate them into the abyss of hell as the
“ministers of the devil.”
The king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. acted like Elizabeth; he
excommunicated Sixtus, ‘styling himself pope,’ and Sixtus applauded this
courageous resistance. But these bulls, which their author himself
laughed at, did not serve the less as cause of civil wars; the
fanaticism they cherished in the catholics, compelled Henry III. to
persecute the calvinists the more rigorously, to command them to abjure
or quit the kingdom; while, on his part, the king of Navarre found
himself compelled to take severe measures against the catholics. Henry
III. more than ever distracted between the two parties, had neither the
skill nor the power that such a situation demanded. We behold him
depriving the king of Navarre of the right of succession to the throne
of France, and afterwards throwing himself into the arms of this
generous prince. This reconciliation provoked a Monitory, in which
Sixtus orders Henry III. to appear at Rome in person, or by Attorney,
within sixty days, to give an account of his conduct, and declares him
excommunicated if he do not obey. We must conquer, said the king of
Navarre to Henry III. whom this anathema had terrified, we must conquer:
if we are beaten we shall be excommunicated and harassed again and
again. These censures had preserved so little of their ancient power,
that a bishop of Chartres said, they were without force at this side of
the mountains, that they froze in passing the Alps. The poignard of
James Clement was more efficacious. Henry III. fell beneath the blows of
the assassin: and, if we may believe the league, Sixtus V. was in an
extacy at so daring an enterprise, compared it to the incarnation of the
word and the resurrection of Jesus.
If it were necessary to explain the policy of this pontiff we would say,
that his real enemy, the rival whom he wished to overthrow, was Philip,
whom he did not excommunicate, and against whom he dared not do any
thing openly: circumstances did not permit it. Sixtus hoped, no doubt,
that the commotions excited in England, and kept up in France by
pontifical anathemas, would extend further and lead to some result fatal
to Philip. This display of the papal supremacy, exhibited against the
kings of Navarre and of England, more truly menaced him who, governing
Spain, Portugal, Belgia, the Two Sicilies, and a part of the new world,
surpassed in riches and in greatness every other potentate. To declare
Great Britain a fief of the Roman church, was to renew abundantly the
pretensions of the church over the kingdom of Naples; and, when the pope
erected himself into a sovereign arbiter of kings, he gave it plainly to
be understood, that an error or a misfortune might suffice to draw after
it the fall of the most powerful.
Unhappily, the catholicity of Philip was impregnable; Henry IV. was
satisfied in defending himself against Spain, Queen Elizabeth preferred
securing her own throne to disturbing those of others, and Sixtus
finally died too soon.³⁰⁹
After him Urban VII. reigned but thirteen days, Gregory XIV. but ten
months, and Innocent IX. but eight weeks. Gregory had sufficient time to
encourage the leaguers, notwithstanding, to excommunicate Henry IV., and
to levy at a great expense an army of brigands, who ravaged some of the
provinces of France.
³⁰⁹ In execution of a decree of the council of Trent, a decree
pronounced in 1546, Sixtus published in 1590, an official edition
of the Vulgate; and, in a bull which served as a preface, he
declares of his personal knowledge, and with the plenitude of his
power, that this was the version consecrated by the holy council,
commanding every old edition to be corrected by it, forbidding all
persons from publishing any not exactly copied from this model,
under penalty of the greater excomunication by the act alone. Who
would believe that after such a sentence, this edition, which had
been waited for forty and four years, should have been suppressed
immediately after the death of Sixtus, and replaced, in 1592, by
that which bears the name of Clement VIII. Between these two
editions they reckon about two thousand variations, the most of
which, however, are trifling. But the edition of Clement has
prevailed in the catholic church; it is recognised and revered by
it as the true Vulgate. We make this remark as one of those
tending to prove, that even in matters of doctrine, the general
consent of the churches abrogates, or confirms, the decisions of
the popes. “We must admit, says Dumarsais, either that Clement was
wrong in revising the Bible of Sixtus V.; or, that Sixtus erred in
declaring by his bull, that the edition published by his order was
very correct and in its purity.” Exposition of the doctrine of the
Gallican church, pa. 163 of the 7 vol. of Dumarais works.
Clement VIII., the last pope of the 16th century, having ordered the
French to choose a king catholic in name and in deed, the sudden
Catholicism of Henry turned the tables on the court of Rome, the league,
and the intrigues of Spain. The pope preferred absolving Henry to seeing
him reign and prosper in defiance of the Holy See. In truth, the
representatives of the king, Perron and d’Ossat, lent themselves very
complaisantly to the ceremonies of the absolution;³¹⁰ and they had not
much difficulty in obtaining the suppression of the formula: “We
reinvest him in his royalty.” But the absolved prince took a decisive
measure against the pretensions of the court of Rome, in securing to the
Protestants, by the Edict of Nantes, the free exercise of their religion
and full enjoyment of their civil rights. When the catholic clergy came
to require of him the publication of the decrees of the council of
Trent, he evaded the proposition with that ingenious and easy politeness
which distinguished the manners of the French, and which embellished in
those of Henry IV. courage, fortitude and truth. Yet this Henry,
publicly adored by the nation, fanaticism proscribed in secret; and the
Jesuits, whom the poignards of Barriere and John Chatel had ill served,
sharpened that of Ravaillac.
³¹⁰ Bossuet Def. Clsr. Gall. 1. 3. c. 28.
In 1597, Alphonso II. duke of Ferrara, dying without children, Clement
resolved to make himself master of this duchy, and made so good a use of
his spiritual and temporal arms, that he succeeded in this undertaking
to the exclusion of Cesar d’Este, the heir of Alphonso. This pope and
his predecessors have been often reproached, since the death of Julius
II. with a vacillating policy, and an extreme fickleness in their
enmities and alliances. Let us not mistake these charges for proofs of
unskilfulness; they evidence only the difficulties of the circumstances,
and the state of weakness, in which the the schism of Avignon, the
progress of heresy, and the ascendancy of some princes, had placed the
Holy See. If during the sixteenth century the chair of St. Peter has
been almost continually occupied by skilful pontiffs, this age also
presents to us seated on most of the thrones, celebrated sovereigns,
whose virtues, talents, or energetic characters, severally recommended
them to the historian: for example, Henry VIII. and his daughter
Elizabeth, in England; Louis XII. Francis 1. and Henry IV. in France;
Charles V. and Philip II. in Spain. None of our modern eras has been
more fertile in memorable men in all pursuits. And yet the court of Rome
renounced none of its pretensions; it upheld the traditions of its
ancient supremacy; it continued to speak in the language of Gregory VII.
and Innocent III. What more could she do in the midst of so many
formidable rivals? It was doing much to weather the tempests and
preserve herself for better times. But these times did not come, and the
popes of the seventeenth century, far inferior to those of the
sixteenth, to Julius II. to Leo X. and to Sixtus V. have suffered even
the hope to be lost of ever re-establishing in Europe the pontifical
authority.
Among the numerous writings published in the course of this century on
the liberties of the Gallican church, that of Peter Pithou in 1504 is
particularly distinguished. Comprised in eighty-three articles, it has
the form and has almost obtained the authority of a code; for, we find
it not only quoted in pleadings but in the laws themselves.³¹¹ The
pragmatic of St Louis in the thirteenth century, the Vergers Dream in
the fourteenth, the pragmatic of Charles VII. in the fifteenth, Pithou’s
treatise in the sixteenth, and the Four Articles in 1682, present, among
the French, an unbroken tradition of the soundest doctrine on the limits
of the pontifical office.
³¹¹ The 50th article of Pithou is cited in the edition of 1719.