NO pope since the year 1600 united to an energetic ambition talents
worthy of seconding it. Henceforward the Holy See becomes but a power of
the second order, which, scarcely capable of bold aggressions, defends
itself by intrigue, and no longer attacks but by secret machinations.
The reforms which separated from the Romish Church one part of
Christendom, serve to deliver the remainder from the pontifical tyranny.
Everywhere the civil power became confirmed; disturbances even tended
either to organize and especially to enfranchise it. The annals of the
popes become more and more detached from the general history of Europe,
and thus lose all their splendour and a great part of their interest. We
shall therefore only have to collect into this chapter a very limited
number of facts, after we shall have considered in a general point of
view the influence of the Roman court in the seventeenth century over
the principal courts of Europe.
In England, James I. the successor of Elizabeth had escaped, himself,
his family and his parliament, from the powder plot, hatched by the
Jesuits and other agents of the sovereign pontiff. A prodigal and
consequently indigent king, James had seen the formation of the opposite
parties of Whigs and Tories. The House of Commons, in which the Whigs
governed, resisted Charles I.; Charles menaced, they insulted him; he
takes arms, they compel him to fly; he perishes on a scaffold, the
ignoble victim of tragical proceeding. The protector of the English
republic, Cromwell, tyrannizes over it, and renders it powerful: but
Cromwell dies, and Monk delivers England up to Charles II. The
inconstancy and contradictions which accumulated during this new reign,
disclose the indecisive influence of the Roman court; the catholics are
tolerated, accused, protected, excluded from employments; five Jesuits
are decapitated; the king dissolves the parliament, and signs the act of
Habeas Corpus; an anti-papistical oath is enacted, and the duke of York,
who refuses to take it, is, nevertheless, appointed to the rank of high
admiral; soon after he succeeds Charles his brother, under the name of
James II. and wearies by barbarous executions the patience of his
subjects. James without friends, even among the catholics whom he loaded
with favours, deserts himself, and loses without a combat his degraded
sceptre. The English government re-organized itself, and William of
Nassau, prince of Orange, the son-in-law of James, was called to the
throne of Great Britain. William, at the same time Statholder in
Holland, and king of England, governed both countries with energy, and
triumphed over the conspiracies continually fomented or encouraged
against him by the Holy See. Thus disturbances and crimes, the weakening
of catholicity, the restoration of the civil authorities, such have been
among the English of the seventeenth century the only results of the
dark manœuvres of the court of Rome.
The peace of Munster, in 1648, proclaimed the independence of the united
provinces. In spite of the soil, the climate, and their discord,
Holland, already flourishing, and freed from the Spanish yoke, assumed a
distinguished rank among the powers escaped from the dominion of the
Holy See. The king of Spain, Philip III. also lost Artois, which Louis
XIV. became master of, and Portugal which crowned the duke of Braganza
king. Charles II. son of Philip IV. lost Franche Comte, died without
children, and bequeathed his kingdom to a grandson of the king of the
French. The ascendancy which the popes still possessed over Spain, so
fallen herself, and who seemed to place herself under French influence,
was therefore a weak resource.
In Germany, the orthodoxy of the emperors Ferdinand II. Ferdinand III.
and Leopold, did not check the progress of heresy. After the despotism
of-Ferdinand II. had disgusted the Germans and the North of Europe, we
behold the imperial authority decline in the hands of Ferdinand III.;
and Leopold, ruled for forty-seven years by his ministers, women, and
confessors, the useless friend of the popes, supported himself only by
the idea he inspired of his weakness.
After Henry IV. who was assassinated in 1610, the seventeenth century
presents us with but two kings of France, Louis XIII. and Louis XIV.
Louis XIII. banished Mary de Medicis his mother, recalled her, and
banished her once more; he insults her because he fears her: he does not
esteem Rich-lieu whom he receives as minister and as master. The
Protestants, always restless and menaced, take arms; Rochelle, their
bulwark, capitulates after a long siege. Richlieu publishes an act of
grace: he is too fearful of Rome and the children of Loyala, to crush as
yet the followers of Calvin.³¹² He is more desirous of humbling the
great; and terrifies them by the executions of Marillac, of Montmorency,
and of Cinq-Mars; and, finishing by unworthy means what Henry IV. had
not time to perfect, he established in the interior of France the
monarchical power. His death, and that of Louis XIII. led to a stormy
minority: the Fronde repulsed Mazarin; Mazarin wearied out the Fronde,
and applied himself to ruling carelessly a frivolous people. What he
most neglected was the education of the young king, that Louis XIV. who,
from 1661 to 1716 reigned over the French, and for awhile gave law to
Europe. The revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, divides this
long reign into two parts: good services, and triumphs, immortalize the
first: hypocrisy, fanatacism, vain glory, and misfortunes, filled the
latter with intrigues, proscriptions, and slow calamities. Yet, whatever
may have been the misfortunes of Louis XIV. the most glorious
recollections of French history under its third dynasty belong to his
reign. The nation whose pride he cherished pardoned the excesses of his;
and so many of those who surrounded him merited the appellation of just,
that he has obtained it himself; other princes on the contrary reflect
their personal greatness on that which surrounds them. But his imposing
authority for a long time repressed the ambition of the popes; and the
influence which they exerted over the latter period of his reign, has
tended much more to injure France than to benefit the Roman Court.
³¹² Richlieu rejected the prayers of Urban VIII. who, in his letters
to Louis XIII., to the queen, and to Richlieu himself, ceased not
to recommend the complete extermination of the Huguenots.
“Cæterum, cùm scias quâ curâ custodiendi sint victoriarum fructus,
ne marcescant, nemo est qui ambigat a te reliquis omnes
hæreticorum in Gallicâ vineâ stabulantium propediem profligatum
iri.” Urb. VIII. Epis, ad principes, ann. 6. f. 10. Aux. Arch. of
the Empire.
The wars of the Venetians against the Turks, the conspiracy of the
Spaniards against Venice, in 1618, the sedition of Mazaniello in Naples,
in 1640, and the enterprizes of some of the Roman pontiffs, are in this
century the principal events in the annals of Italy. Never was the
country more disposed to bear and to extend the dominion of the popes:
but the popes failed in the address necessary to draw the full advantage
from this disposition: they suffered the fine arts to languish and decay
about them, while they grew and flourished elsewhere: in this century
the Italians ceased to be the most enlightened people of Europe, a
preeminence which they needed, to preserve any share of it, and not
suffer themselves to be reduced in all respects to a state of
inferiority.
The most remarkable popes of the seventeenth century were Paul V. Urban
VIII. Innocent X. Alexander VII. Clement IX. Innocent XI. Alexander
VIII. and Innocent XII.
The republic of Venice had punished with death, without the intervention
of the ecclesiastical authority, an Augustine monk convicted of enormous
crimes; a canon and an abbot were imprisoned for similar reasons; the
senate forbad the encrease, without its permission, either of convents
or churches; it prohibited the alienation of lands for the benefit of
monks or of the clergy. These acts of independence irritated Paul V.; he
excommunicated the doge and the senators, and laid an interdict on the
whole republic. He required that within twenty four days the senators,
revoking their decrees, should deliver into the hands of the nuncio, the
canon and the abbot they had imprisoned. If, after the twenty-four days,
the doge and senators persisted in their refusal for three days, the
divine functions were to cease, not only in Venice, but through all the
Venetian dominions; and, it was enjoined on all patriarchs, archbishops,
bishops, vicars-general, and others, under pun of suspension, and
deprivation of their revenues, to publish and affix in the churches this
pontifical decree, which Paul pronounced, as he said, by the authority
of God, the apostles, and his own. The Capuchins, the Theatins, and the
Jesuits, obeyed the interdict, which was disregarded by the rest of the
Venetian clergy as it was by the people. Little attention was paid to
the Theatins and Capuchins; but the Jesuits, more powerful and more
culpable, were banished for ever. A protest against the anathemas of
Paul was addressed by the doge to the prelates and clergy; and the
senate wrote on the same head to all the cities and communes of the
state. These two pieces are distinguished for their calm energy, which
mingles no insult, no indication of passion, with the expression of
unshaken resolution. We have omitted nothing, say the senators, to open
the eyes of his holiness; but he has closed his ear to our
remonstrances, as well as to the lessons of Scripture, of the holy
fathers and of councils; he perseveres in not acknowleging the secular
authority which God has committed to us, the independence of our
republic, and the rights of our fellow-citizens. Shall we appeal to a
general council? our ancestors have done it in similar circumstances;
but here the injustice is so palpable that a solemn appeal would be
superfluous. Our cause is too immediately that of our subjects, of our
allies, of our enemies themselves, that such an excommunication should
disturb for a moment the external or internal peace of our republic.
In fact, the anathema remained inefficacious within and without.³¹³ In
vain did the pope employ the Jesuits to raise or indispose the European
courts against the Venetians. In Spain even, where these Jesuitical
intrigues were somewhat more successful than elsewhere, the Venetian
ambassador was admitted to all the ecclesiastical ceremonies, in spite
of the threats of the nuncio. The governor of Milan, the dukes of Mantua
and Modena, the grand duke of Tuscany, the viceroy of Naples, openly
espoused the interests of the excommunicated republic. Sigismund, king
of Poland, also declared that it was the cause of his kingdom; and the
duke of Savoy, that it was that of every sovereign in Christendom. The
court of Vienna blamed the pope’s conduct, and invited Sorance, the
Venetian ambassador, to a procession of the holy sacrament, in despite
of the apostolic nuncio, who refused to be present at it. The nuncio
Barberini did not succeed better in France when he required that
entrance into the churches should be prohibited the Venetian ambassador.
Priuli. Abandoned thus at all the courts, and reduced to his own
spiritual and temporal resources, the sovereign pontiff resolved to levy
troops against Venice: happily for this papal army, Henry IV. offered
his mediation, and ended the dispute,³¹⁴ on terms more favourable than
Paul could have hoped for, although he had formed a ‘board of war:’ it
was in truth a committee of priests, and a perfectly novel application
of sacerdotal functions.
³¹³ The court of Rome, says Dumarsais, fears only those who do not
fear her, and concedes only to those who will not concede to her;
she has no power but that derived from the weakness of those who
are ignorant of their own rights, and who ascribe to her, what she
would never have dared to attribute to herself but for their blind
deference.—Exp. of the Doctrine of the Gallican Church, v. 228 of
7th vol. of Dumariais’ Works.
³¹⁴ Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. 1. 4, c. 12.
Paul V. conspired to disturb England also, by two briefs, in which he
forbade the catholics to take the oath of allegiance to their king James
I: he renewed the bull ‘In caena Domini,’ and inserted it in the Roman
ritual, accompanied by a surplusage of anathemas.³¹⁵ The pretensions of
this pope gave rise to many publications on the pontifical power. The
8th of June, 1610, twenty-four days after the assassination of Henry IV.
the parliament of Paris condemned to the flames a book in which the
Jesuit Mariana permitted, nay advised, the attempting the lives of
intractable kings. The 28th of November following, justice was done the
treatise in which Bellarmin extends over the temporalities of princes
the spiritual power of the popes.³¹⁶
³¹⁵ ‘Pastoralis Romani pontificis vigilantia,’ such are the words of
the bull ‘In cænâ Domini,’ renewed by Paul; it has thirty
articles, that is, six more than the bull ‘Consuevernnt’ of Paul
III.
³¹⁶ Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. 1. 4, c. 16.
In 1614 the same parliament consigned to the flames a book, equally
seditious, of the Jesuit Suarez. The court of Rome took a tender
interest in these three works; that of Suarez is more frequently
referred to in the correspondence kept up with the nuncio resident in
France, in 1614: By what right does a parliament judge of points of
doctrine? What does Suarez teach but the catholic faith? What dogma is
more sacred than that of the sovereignty of popes over kings; direct
sovereignty in religious matters, and not less efficacious though
indirect in political ones? Even if some inaccuracies had glided into
the book of father Suarez, did it not belong to the Holy See, alone, to
perceive and ratify them? Such is the substance, during one entire year,
of the letters written in the popes name to his nuncio Ubaldini³¹⁷
However, the civil authority found defenders in two Scotch men, William
Barclay and John his son; then in Anthony de Dominis, who did not spare
the visible head of the church; but, especially in Edmund Richer, who
combated with more calmness the ultramontane opinions, and yet was not
the less the victim of his zeal for the Gallican liberties.³¹⁸
Disputes with the dukes of Parma and of Savoy, the republic of Lucca,
the Ligurians, and with the Swiss; attempts on the Valtaline; intrigues
to support the inquisition at Naples, and to favour the Jesuits in
Spain: these trifling details we shall dispense with, as generally
tending but to prove the impotence of pontifical ambition from 1505 to
1621.
Urban VIII. who gave to the cardinals the title of ‘Eminence,’ refused
to Louis XIV. that of king of Navarre. This refusal, of which there are
other examples, had for its source the excommunication and deposition of
John d’Albret by Julius II³¹⁹ To support the sentence of Julius, the
popes have been as silent as possible on this title of king of Navarre,
in speaking of the kings of France, heirs to John d’Albret.
³¹⁷ Register of Letters from the Secretary of State of Paul V. to the
bishop of Montepulciano, nuncio in France, 1613, 1614.—In the
Archivet of the Empire.
³¹⁸ Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. 1. 6, c. 30.
³¹⁹ See p. 380.
The parliament refused registering any bulls in which they noticed this
omission: Urban VIII. was particularly reproached with it. This pontiff
being desirous to interfere in the differences of the courts of France
and Spain, on the affair of the Valteline, he had the vexation to learn
that these two powers had signed the peace without his knowledge.
Nevertheless he succeeded in uniting to the Holy See the duchy of
Urbino, with the counties of Montefeltro and Gubbio, the lordship of
Pesaro, and vicariat of Sinigaglia: these domains were given him by the
duke Francis Maria, the last branch of the house of Rovere. But cardinal
Richlieu kept his eyes fixed on the designs of the pontiff; he refused
an audience to the nuncio Scoti, and never suffered him to be ignorant,
that the court of France would not consent to a dependence on the Holy
See. The parliament had a publication of an Italian Jesuit, Santarelli,
burned, which ascribed to the pope the right of deposing kings,
condemning them to temporal punishments and loosing their subjects from
their oath of allegiance. The work of Peter de Marca, on the concord of
the priesthood and the empire, appeared about this time, and so
displeased the court of Rome that it refused to confirm the nomination
of the author to a bishoprick. De Marca had the weakness to modify his
opinions at the pleasure of this court; and in the sequel, coveting the
cardinalat, he dictated, a short time before his death, a treatise to
Baluze on the infallibility of the pope. Intriguing as he was learned,
de Marca sacrificed his sentiments to his interests: the works of this
writer are useful from the quotations and facts which they embrace.
A pope could no longer declare war but against petty princes. Urban
VIII. did so with the duke of Parma, who had refused to the holy
father’s relatives the price of services he pretended to have rendered
him. The duke is cited, excommunicated, his duchy of Castro taken
possession of, which was obliged to be restored him, by treaty, after
four years of disputing and fighting. But, this war, badly extinguished,
recommended under Innocent X. the successor of Urban: and, because the
duke of Parma could not pay soon enough the enormous interests due to
the ‘Mont-de-piete,’ Castro was confiscated, sacked, and razed, by order
of the head of the church: on the ruins of this city, a column was
raised with tills inscription, “Here Castro was.”³²⁰ When a terrible
war in which two great states engage, two powerful princes, or two blind
and numerous factions, leads to such disasters, humanity must lament it:
but, when a pecuniary interest, an obscure and trifling quarrel between
two petty rivals, leads to the destruction of a city, the depression of
its inhabitants, and the ruin of their families, and that this useless
devastation was coolly ordered by one who had conquered without danger,
and almost without an effort, we are filled with more astonishment than
indignation; and we could not anticipate such gratuitous severity in a
prince, if this prince were not a pontiff, and this pontiff not the
successor of Boniface VIII. Yet, it is astonishing that the popes could
have been so ignorant of their direct interest in husbanding the Italian
cities, in attaching them to the Holy See by benefits, and finally, in
restoring them that degree of prosperity and influence, which would
enable them to contribute to the re-establishment in Europe of the
pontifical dominion. Many popes of the sixteenth century acted on this
policy; and it is in consequence of its neglect by those of the
fifteenth and seventeenth, that the temporal power of the Roman church
seems henceforth doomed to languish and become extinct.
³²⁰ Qui fu Castro.
A revolution had placed on the throne of Portugal John of Braganza, or
John IV. whose ancestors had been dispossessed by the king of Spain,
Philip II. Philip IV. who languished in a disgraceful supineness, did
not attempt to re-conquer the kingdom of Portugal by arms. The court of
Madrid had recourse to the pope Innocent X. who refused bulls to the
bishops nominated by John of Braganza, and declared he would never
recognize this new monarch. John consulted the universities of his
States: they replied, if the pope persisted in his refusal, they had
only to dispense with his bulls.—This was also the opinion of the
assembly of the French clergy, interrogated on the same point by the
Portuguese ambassador. This assembly did more, it wrote to the pope,
respectfully representing to him, that it was but right to grant the
bulls to the prelates named by John; by which perhaps the French clergy
evinced too great an interest in foreign affairs; but it shews us what
its views were of canonical institution, and the right to consider it as
obtained, when refused by a vain caprice. Furthermore, Innocent at this
period feared France and Portugal more than Spain: he therefore
dispatched the bulls, and no longer contested with John of Braganza the
title of king.
Innocent even detached himself so from the court of Spain, that to
support the Neapolitans who had revolted against her, he invited the
duke of Guise, a descendant of the princes of Anjou, former kings of
Naples, to assert his claims on this kingdom, and endeavour to conquer
it; but the pope kept none of his promises which seduced the duke; and
this perfidy was one of the causes which prevented his success. We shall
observe, that there did not exist at this period any sort of alliance or
friendship between the courts of France and of Rome. Innocent X. having
commanded all the cardinals to reside in the capital of Christendom,
with a prohibition to quit the territories of the Holy See, without the
permission of the sovereign pontiff, the parliament of Paris annulled
the decrees as unjustifiable; and cardinal Mazarin forbade the sending
money from France to the Roman court. In reflecting on this last
arrangement, the pope perceived he must relinquish the residence of the
sacred college; but was consoled with the acquisition of the city of
Albano from the duke Savelli.
But the most remarkable event of the pontificate of Innocent was, the
opposition he presumed to make to the treaties of Munster and
Osnabruck.—Long rivalries and bloody wars harrassed, and almost
exhausted, Europe; these treaties were at length to terminate those
disasters. But a bull arrives, in which the vicar of the lamb of God
protests against the peace of the world, and in which he annuls, as far
as in him lies, the concord of the Christian republic. They have, he
said, given up ecclesiastical property to the reformed; they have
permitted to the reprobate the exercise of civil employments; they have,
without the permission of the Holy See, encreased the number of
electors; they have preserved privileges in the states to those who have
ceased to have them in the church; the church abrogates these odious
articles, these rash concessions, these heretical conventions. Innocent,
no doubt, suspected, that war would afford more chances to the court of
Rome, and that the ecclesiastical power had nothing to gain by a peace
which would restore to the secular governments more stability, activity,
and interior prosperity: but he was too little acquainted with the
period at which he published such a bull; he did not perceive, that the
pontifical ambition, before detested, was now only ridiculed; and he
compromised by a silly step, which they scarcely deigned to notice, the
weak remains of the authority of his predecessors.
Not having undertaken a detailed history of all the pontifical
intrigues, we shall take leave to be silent on the five propositions of
Jansenius, condemned by Innocent X. and his successor Alexander VII. who
ordered the signature of a formulary, long famous. These quarrels,
already deplorable at the end of the seventeenth century, became so
contemptible in the course of the eighteenth, that success or defeat was
equally attended with dishonour. In dividing the clergy into two
parties, almost equally disregarded, these wretched controversies
weakened the influence of the priesthood, and consequently that of the
first pontiff. From 1659, Alexander might have perceived the decline of
his credit in Europe, when, after having attempted to mingle in the
negociations between France and Spain, he found they had treated without
him. Nevertheless he ventured three years after to displease the most
powerful monarch of the age. Crequi, the ambassador of Louis XIV. at
Rome, was insulted by the pontifical guard, which killed one of his
pages and fired on the carriage of his lady. Obtaining no satisfaction
of the pope or of his ministers, Crequi retired to the Florentine
territories. Louis demanded a solemn reparation: and, not considering
that adequate which he had been made wait four months for, he marched
some troops against Rome, and took possession of the city and county of
Avignon, which a decree of the parliament re-united to the crown the
26th of July 1663. Alexander did not let slip this opportunity of
displaying against a great prince the spiritual and temporal arms, only
until he had solicited in vain the support and concurrence of all the
catholic states rivals of France. Then the Holy See prudently humbled
itself, and the cardinal Chigi, nephew of the pope, came to make to
Louis all the reparation which this monarch required. In Europe no high
idea existed of the veracity of Alexander: “We have a pope,” writes
Renaldi, the ambassador of Florence at Rome, “we have a pope who never
speaks a word of truth.”³²¹
³²¹ Mem. of Cardinal de Retz. vol. 5. p. 177, ed. of 1718. In support
of this testimony of Renaldi, in our 2d vol. will be found a
secret writing in which Alexander VII. contradicts his own public
declarations. This document, of eight pages, is wholly in the hand
writing of this pontiff, and is dated by him 18th of February,
1664.
This pontiff died in 1664, leaving his family abundantly enriched, and
the Roman people loaded with nine new subsidies besides the old, which
had been very scrupulously maintained.
After Clement IX. had suppressed for awhile the disputes excited by the
formulary, and that the cardinal Altieri had, for the space of six
years, peacefully governed the church under the name of Clement X. his
uncle Odescalchi, or Innocent XI. bore with him to the chair of St Peter
more energy and ambition. He felt for Louis XIV. a personal enmity which
he could not dissimulate, and which burst forth on two important
occasions, that of the ‘regale.’ and that of the right of franchise.
The ‘regale’ was a right which the kings of France had for many
centuries enjoyed, and which consisted in receiving the revenues of the
vacant sees, and in nominating to the benefices dependent on the bishop.
Some churches having attempted to emancipate themselves from this law,
Louis, by an edict of 1673, declared that the ‘regale’ applied to all
the bishoprics of the kingdom. Two bishops protested against this edict;
those of Pamiers and of Aleth, known by their opposition to the
formulary of Alexander VII. These two prelates, refractories to the
decrees of the popes, were supported by Innocent XI. in their resistance
to the will and rights of their sovereign. An assembly of the clergy of
France, having adhered to the king’s edict, and the pope having
condemned this adhesion, the heat of their disputes led minds on to an
examination into the rights and pretensions of the pope himself, and the
four celebrated articles of 1682 were produced.
That the ecclesiastical power does not extend to the temporals of
sovereigns; that a general council is superior to a pope, as decided by
the fathers of Constance; that the judgment of the pope in matters of
faith is not an infallible rule, until after having received the
approbation of the church; that the laws and customs of the Gallican
church ought to be maintained: such is the substance of the four
articles. Innocent XI. condemned them; he refused bulls to the bishops
nominated by the king, and forgot nothing that might provoke a
separation; already a patriarchate was spoken of in France, independent
of the court of Rome.
It is of Innocent XI. that Fontaine speaks in these lines, addressed in
1688 to the Prince de Conti:
Pour nouvelles de l’Italie
Le pape empire tons les jours—
Expliquez, seigneur, ce discours
Du coté de la maladie:
Car aucun Saint−pere autrement
Ne doit empirer nullement
Celai−ci, véritablement.
N'est envers nous ni saint ni pere, &c.
In English:
As to the news from Italy,
The pope each day grows worse and worse.—
Upon the score of malady
Explain my lord this strange discourse.
In any other sense than this
So to decline would be amiss,
Yet much I fear the man you paint
Will prove to us no other father−saint.
Racine, in 1689, alluded to the same pope in these lines of the prologue
of ‘Esther’:
Et l’enfer, couvrant tout de ses vapeurs funèbres,
Sur les yeux les plus saints ajete les tenèbres.
In English.:
“And hell with darkness spreading all the skies
“Casts its thick film o’er the most holy eyes.”
Bossuet had been the principal compiler of the four articles; the court
of Rome, which wished to oppose to him an adversary worthy of him,
offered the cardinalat to the celebrated Arnauld, if he would write
against these four maxims. Amauld replied to this proposal as to an
insult: it became necessary to, he says, “have not concealed the fact,
that it depended on himself alone to be clothed with the Roman purple,
and, that to attain a dignity which would have so gloriously washed away
all the reproaches of heresy which his enemies have dared to make
against him, it would have cost him nothing but to write against the
propositions of the clergy of France relative to the pope’s authority.”
Far from accepting these offers, he even wrote against a Flemish doctor
who had treated these propositions as heretical. One of the king’s
ministers who read this piece, charmed with the force of its reasoning,
proposed having it printed at the Louvre; but the jealousy of M.
Amauld’s enemies carried it against the fidelity of the minister and
even the interest of the king; it might apply for defenders to an
humbler rank, to the theologians of Louvain, to Gonzales general of the
Jesuits, to Roccaberti the Dominican, Sfrondati the Benedictine, and to
Aguirre, another Benedictine, who was rewarded with a red hat. Their
writings are forgotten, but the ‘Defence of the four articles,’ remains
among the number of Bossuet’s best works. We must observe, it was not
printed till 1730, a delay which can only be ascribed to the intrigues
of a part of the clergy, already repentant for their firmness in 1682. A
more correct edition of the work of Bos-suet, and a French translation
accompanied by notes, appeared in 1745, without privilege, and as issued
from the press of Amsterdam. No direction of Louis XIV. if we except
those of his will, has been worse executed than the edict by which he
commanded that the doctrine of the four articles should be annually
taught in the schools of theology. The Jesuits have never professed
them, and the idea of abrogating them has been often entertained from
the year 1700 to the end of cardinal Fleury’s ministry. If this
abrogation has not taken place it was, that they feared the
remonstrances of the Jansenists, and foresaw the credit it would give
them, by constituting them sole defenders of the liberties of the
Gallican church. In the matter of the franchises Louis XIV. was perhaps
wrong. The other catholic monarchs had relinquished this strange
privilege, by which the palaces of the ambassadors, and even their
precincts, offered an asylum to malefactors from the pursuit of justice.
The king of France declared that he never took the conduct of others for
his rule, but on the contrary, that he meant to serve as their example.
His ambassador, Lavardin, in 1687, came to Rome to assert the
‘Franchises’ and affected to brave the pontiff by a pompous entry. The
censures thundered against Lavardin irritated Louis XIV: Avignon was
once more taken; and these hasty disputes had led to a decisive rupture,
if it were not possible to reconcile it with the severities exercised
since 1685 against the protestants. The proscription of the Calvinists
restored harmony in this delicate conjuncture between the court of
France and the Holy See.
Avignon was restored to the successor of Innocent XI. Alexander VIII.
who condemned equally the Four Articles of 1682. Innocent XII. after
him, persevered in refusing bulls to the bishops, favourers of the four
articles, and he obtained from them a letter which he accepted as a
retraction. It said, in effect,³²²
“that
“all which might have been held decreed in 1682, on
“the ecclesiastical power, ought to be held as not de−
“creed, since they had no intention of making any
“decree, nor of doing prejudice to the churches.”−—
Ambiguous words and most fortuitously framed, which assuredly do not
tend to confirm the four articles, but which, on the other hand, would
be quite insignificant, if they did not evince a disposition to abandon
them. This letter, but little creditable, was one of the effects of the
revocation of the edict of Nantes, one of the evidences of the decaying
character of Louis the Great,³²³ and one of the proofs of what we have
elsewhere³²⁴ asserted, the secret inclination which, since the year
1560, biassed the French clergy towards the ultramontane system.
³²² D’Aguesseau says that “the terms of this letter were coached so
that it could only be considered as a testimony of the grief of
these bishops, in learning the prejudice which this pope
entertained with respect to them, in regard to what had passed in
the assembly held at Paris in 1682. They did not avow that these
pretensions were well founded.” Whatever d’Aguesseau may say
about it, the letter of these bishops does them no honour: it will
be found in our second volume.
³²³ We shall transcribe in vol. 2, the letter of Louis to the pope,
announcing that the edict of March, 1632, would not be executed.
This letter is dated, as is that of the bishops, on the 14th of
Sept 1693.
³²⁴ See page 302.
Happily, the other orders of the state upheld with perseverance the four
maxims of the clergy, against the clergy itself, and the interests of
the throne, almost forgotten by the declining monarch. Among the
magistrates to whom the Gallican church owes the maintenance of her
ancient doctrine, at this era, the advocate general Talon is
distinguished, author of a treatise on the authority of kings in the
administration of the church, one of the best works published on this
subject. He professed the same principles in the exercise of his duties,
and especially in a request preferred in 1688. We shall terminate this
chapter by some extracts from this requisition.:
“In an assembly held on the subject matter of
“the regale, the bishops, aware that the ultramon−
“tane doctors, and the emissaries of the Court of
“Rome, omitted no care to spread through the
“kingdom the new doctrines of the pope’s infalli−
“bility, and of the indirect power which Rome en−
“deavours to usurp over the temporal power of the
“king, this assembly, we say, does not pretend to
“make a decision on a doubtful point of contro−
“versy, but, to render publie and authentic testi−
“mony to an established truth, taught by all the
“fathers of the church; confirmed by all the coun−
“cils, and especially by those of Constance and
“Basle.
“We have seen however with astonishment, that
“the pope looks on this declaration as an insult
“offered to his authority; insmuch that the king,
“having nominated to the episcopacy some of those
“who were present at this assembly, and who are
“as meritorious from their piety and virtue as from
“their knowledge and learning, of which they have
“on various occasions given proof, he has refused
“the bulls, under pretence that they do not make
“profession of a sound doctrine.
“This refusal which has not the appearance of
“reason, does not fail to occasion great scandal, and
“to produce irregularities we can scarcely express.
“Who could ever suppose that the pope, whom
“we have held up to us as the model of sanctity
“and of virtue, should remain so wedded to opinions,
“and so jealous of the shadow of an imaginary au−
“thority, that he leaves the third of the churches of
“France vacant, because we are not disposed to ac−
“knowledge his infallibility?
“Those who imbue the pope with these ideas,
“do they imagine they can make us change our
“sentiments? and are they so blind, that they do
“not perceive we are no longer in those wretched
“times, when the grossest ignorance, united to the
“weakness of governments, and false prejudices,
“rendered the decrees of the pope so terrific, how−
“ever unjust they may have been; and, that these
“disputes and bickerings, far from augmenting their
“power, can only serve to excite enquiry into the
“origin of their usurpations, and diminish rather
“than encrease the veneration of the people.
“We shall say more: the bad use the popes have
“made on so many occasions of the authority of
“which they are the depositories, in prescribing no
“bounds to it but that of their will, has been the
“source of the almost innumerable evils with which
“the church has been afflicted, and the most speci−
“ous pretext for the heresies and schisms which have
“sprung up in the last century, as the theologians
“assembled by direction of Paul III. honestly con−
“fessed, and even, at present, the idea alone of
“the infallibility and indirect power, which the com−
“plaisance of the Italian doctors confers on the See
“of Rome over the * temporal* of kings, is one of
“the greatest obstacles which is opposed to the con−
“version, not of individuals alone, but, whole provin−
“ces; and we cannot too strongly impress, that
“these new opinions are no part of the doctrine of
“the universal church....
“The thunders of the Vatican have nothing terri−
“ble in them; these are transient fires which go out
“in smoke, and which do neither ill nor prejudice
“but to those who launch them.
“The refusal of the pope to grant the bulls to the
“bishops nominated by the king, causes a derange−
“ment which encreases daily, and which requires a
“prompt and efficacious remedy. The councils of
“Constance and of Basle having laboured to reduce
“to some moderation the usurpations of the court of
“Rome, and the confusion which was introduced in
“the distribution of benefices, the pragmatic sanction
“was subsequently compiled from the decrees of these
“councils. But the popes, seeing their authority
“diminished by it, exerted eveiy artifice to cause
“its abolition; and by the concordat entered into
“between Francis I. and pope Leo X., the mode of
“appointing to the vacant sees and abbeys was re−
“gulated: not only the devolution, or right of pre−
“sentation by lapse, but the reversion, was granted
“to the pope, with power to admit resignations in fa−
“vour of individuals, and many other articles; which
“were very burdensome on the ordinary collators,
“and altogether opposed to the ancient canons.
“Besides, our ancestors for a long period have re−
“monstrated against the concordat: the ordonnance
“of Orleans had restored the elections; and it would
“be very advantageous if all ecclesiastical affairs were
“arranged in the kingdom, without being obliged to
“have recourse to Rome. In the sequel, however,
“the concordat was acted on faithfully by us, and
“we cannot conceive that the pope by an invincible
“obstinacy, wishes now to compel us to deprive him
“of the advantages which the court of Rome derives
“from a treaty so advantageous to it....
“After all, those who, before the concordat, were
“elected by the clergy and people, and afterwards
“by the chapters, in presence of a king’s commissioner,
“were they not ordained by the metropolitan,
“assisted by the bishops of the province, after the
“king had approved of the election? The right
“acquired by the king in the concordat, authorised
“in this case by the tacit consent of all the Gallican
“church, and confirmed by a possession of near two
“hundred years, ought so much the less be subject−
“ed to change or attack, as, during the four first ages
“of the monarchy, they did not resort to Rome to
“ask for appointments to benefices; the bishops dis−
“posed of all those which became vacant in their
“dioceses, and our monarchs almost invariably nomi−
“nated to the bishopricks; and, if they occasionally
“granted to the clergy or the people, the privilege of
“electing a pastor, they more frequently reserved the
“selection to themselves; and without the pope
“having any concern in it, those who they
“elected were immediately consecrated. What
“prevents us from following these examples, founded
“on this excellent principle, that the right, which all
“the faithful had originally in the appointment of a
“head, when it could no longer be so exercised,
“should pass into the hands of the sovereign, on
“whom the people had conferred the government of
“the state, of which the church is the nobler
“part.”
“But, with respect to the pope, since he declines
“to grant to the king’s nomination the concurrence
“of his authority, we may presume that he is de−
“sirous of relieving himself from a part of the painful
“burden which oppresses him; and, that his infir−
“mities not permitting his extending his pastoral vigi−
“lance overevery part of his universal church, the lapse
"which sometimes takes place in cases of negli−
“gence, even of the superior to the inferior, may
“authorize bishops to confer the imposition of hands
“on those whom the king shall nominate to the
“prelacies.”