S H A R E W A R E
This is a modern revision of that classic work
Merle D'Aubigne's HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION published in
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Angela Pitts
P.O. Box 459
Experiment, Georgia 30212
HISTORY
of
THE REFORMATION
of
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
BY J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, D.D.,
President of the Theological School of Geneva, and
Vice President of the Societe Evangelique.
FROM THE AUGUST 1835 EDITION
VOL. I.
REVISED JUNE 1989.
REVISION COPYRIGHT JUNE 1989 BY ANGELA C. PITTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CONTENTS
----
BOOK 1
STATE OF EUROPE BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
CHAPTER 1
Christianity--Two distinctive Principles--Rise of the Papacy--
Early Encroachments--Influence of Rome--Co-operation of the
Bishops and of the Sects--Visible Unity of the Church--Invisible
Unity of the Church--Primacy of St. Peter--Patriarchates--Co-
operation of Princes--Influence of the Barbarians--Rome invokes
the aid of the Franks--Secular Power--Pepin and Charlemagne--The
Decretals--Disorders of Rome--The Emperor, the Pope's Suzerain--
Hildebrand--His Character--Celibacy--Struggle with the Empire--
Emancipation of the Pope--Hildebrand's Successors--The Crusades--
The Empire--The Church.
CHAPTER 2
Grace--Dead Faith--Works--Unity and Duality--Pelagianism--
Salvation at the Hands of the Priests--Penance--Flagellations--
Indulgences--Works of Supererogation--Purgatory--The Tariff--
Jubilee--The Papacy and Christianity--State of Christendom.
CHAPTER 3
Religion--Relics--Easter Revels--Morals--Corruption--Disorders of
the Priests, Bishops, and Popes--A Papal Family--Alexander VI--
Caesar Borgia--Education--Ignorance--Ciceronians.
CHAPTER 4
Imperishable Nature of Christianity--Two Laws of God--Apparent
Strength of Rome--Secret Opposition--Decline--Threefold
Opposition--Kings and People--Transformation of the Church--The
Pope judged in Italy--Discoveries of Kings and their Subjects--
Frederick the Wise--Moderation and Expectation.
CHAPTER 5
Popular Feeling--The Empire--Providential Preparations--Impulse
of the Reformation--Peace--The Commonalty--National Character--
Papal Yoke--State of the Empire--Opposition at Rome--Middle
Classes--Switzerland--Courage--Liberty--Smaller Cantons--Italy--
Obstacles to the Reform--Spain--Obstacles--Portugal--France--
Preparations--Disappointment--The Low Countries--England--
Scotland--The North--Russia--Poland--Bohemia--Hungary.
CHAPTER 6
Roman Theology--Remains of Life--Justification by Faith--
Witnesses to the Truth--Claudius--The Mystics--The Waldenses--
Valdo--Wickliffe--Huss--Prediction--Protestantism before the
Reformation--Anselm--Arnoldi--Utenheim--Martin--New Witnesses in
the Church--Thomas Conecte--The Cardinal of Crayn--Institoris--
Savonarola--Justification by Faith--John Vitrarius--John Lallier-
-John of Wesalia--John of Goch--John Wessel--Protestantism before
the Reformation--The Bohemian Brethren--Prophecy of Proles--
Prophecy of the Eisenach Franciscan.
CHAPTER 7
Third Preparation--Letters--Revival--Recollections of Antiquity
in Italy--Influence of the Humanists--Christianity of Dante--
Valla--Infidelity in Italy--Platonic Philosophy--Commencement of
Learning in Germany--Young Students--Printing--Characteristics of
German Literature--The Learned and the Schoolmen--A New World--
Reuchlin--Reuchlin in Italy--His Labors--His Influence in
Germany--Mysticism--Contest with the Dominicans.
CHAPTER 8
Erasmus--Erasmus a Canon--At Paris--His Genius--His Reputation--
His Influence--Popular Attack--Praise of Folly--Gibes--Churchmen-
-Saints--Folly and the Popes--Attack on Science--Principles--
Greek New Testament--His Profession of Faith--His Labors and
Influence--His Failings--Two Parties--Reform without Violence--
Was such Possible?--Unreformed Church--His Timidity--His
Indecision--Erasmus loses his Influence with all Parties.
CHAPTER 9
The Nobility--Different Motives--Hutten--Literary League--Literae
Obscurorum Virorum--Their Effect--Luther's Opinion--Hutten at
Brussels--His Letters--Sickengen--War--His Death--Cronberg--Hans
Sachs--General Ferment.
PREFACE
-----
The history of one of the greatest revolutions that has ever
been accomplished in human affairs--of a mighty impulse
communicated to the world three centuries ago, and whose
influence is still visible on every side--and not the history of
a mere party, is the object of my present undertaking. The
history of the Reformation is distinct from that of
Protestantism. In the former every thing bears the mark of a
regeneration of the human race--of a religious and social change
emanating from God himself. In the latter we too often witness a
glaring degeneracy from first principles, the struggles of
parties, a sectarian spirit, and the traces of petty
individualities. The history of Protestantism may have an
interest for Protestants only; the history of the Reformation
addresses itself to all Christians, or rather to all mankind.
An historian may choose his subject in the wide field
presented to his labors: he may describe the great events which
have changed the aspect of a people or of the world; or on the
other hand he may record that tranquil onward course of a nation,
of the Church, or of mankind, which usually succeeds every great
social change. Both these departments of history are of vast
importance; yet public interest has ever been more strongly
attracted to those epochs which under the name of revolutions,
have given fresh life to a nation, or created a new era for
society in general.
It is a transformation of the latter kind that, with very
humble powers, I have undertaken to describe, not without a hope
that the beauty of the subject may compensate for my own
deficiencies. The term "revolution," which I here apply to it,
has of late fallen into discredit with many individuals, who
almost confound it with revolt. But they are wrong: for a
revolution is merely a change in the affairs of men,--something
new unfolded (revolutus) from the bosom of humanity; and this
very word, previous to the end of the last century, was more
frequently used in a good than in a bad sense: a happy, a
wonderful revolution, were the terms employed. The Reformation
was quite the opposite of a revolt: it was the re-establishment
of the principles of primitive Christianity. It was a
regenerative movement with respect to all that was destined to
revive; a conservative movement as regards all that will exist
for ever. While Christianity and the Reformation established the
great principle of the equality of souls in the eyes of God, and
overthrew the usurpations of a haughty priesthood that assumed to
place itself between the Creator and his creature, they both laid
down this fundamental rule of social order, that all power is
derived from God, and called upon all men to "love the
brotherhood, fear God, and honor the king."
The Reformation is eminently distinguished from all the
revolutions of antiquity, and from most of those of modern times.
Political changes--the consolidation or the overthrow of the
power of the one or of the many--were the object of the latter.
The love of truth, of holiness, of immortality, was the simple
yet mighty spring which set in motion that which I have to
describe. It indicates a forward movement in human nature. In
truth, man advances--he improves, whenever he aims at higher
objects, and seeks for immaterial and imperishable blessings,
instead of pursuing material, temporal, and earthly advantages.
The Reformation is one of the brightest days of this glorious
progress. It is a guarantee that the new struggle, which is
receiving its accomplishment under our own eyes, will terminate
on the side of truth, in a purer, more spiritual, and still
nobler triumph.
Primitive Christianity and the Reformation are the two
greatest revolutions in history. They were not limited to one
nation only, as were the various political movements that history
records; but their influence extended over many, and their
effects are destined to be felt to the utmost limits of the
world.
Primitive Christianity and the Reformation are one and the
same revolution, brought about at different epochs and under
different circumstances. Although not alike in their secondary
features, they are identical in their primary and chief
characteristics. One is a repetition of the other. The former
put an end to the old world; the latter began the new: between
them lie the Middle Ages. One is the parent of the other; and
although the daughter may in some instances bear marks of
inferiority, she had characters that are peculiarly her own.
One of them is the rapidity of its action. The great
revolutions that have led to the fall of a monarchy, or wrought
an entire change in a political system, or which have launched
the human mind on a new career of development, have been slowly
and gradually prepared. The old-established power has long been
undermined: one by one its chief supports have given way. This
was the case at the introduction of Christianity. But the
Reformation, at the first glance, seems to present a different
aspect. The church of Rome under Leo X appears in the height of
its power and glory. A monk speaks--and in one half of Europe
this mighty glory and power crumble into dust. In this
revolution we are reminded of the words by which the Son of God
foretells his second advent: "As the lightning cometh out of the
east, and shineth even to the west, so shall the coming of the
Son of Man be."
Such rapidity of action is inexplicable to those who see in
this event nothing more than a reform; who look upon it simply as
an act of critical sagacity, which consisted in making a choice
among various doctrines--rejecting some, preserving others, and
arranging those which were retained so as to combine them into a
new system.
But how could a whole people, how could many nations have so
promptly executed this laborious task? How could this critical
examination have kindled the fire and enthusiasm so necessary for
great and above all for sudden revolutions? The Reformation, as
its history will show, was altogether different. It was a new
outpouring of that life which Christianity brought into the
world. It was the triumph of the greatest of its doctrines,--of
that which animates all who embrace it with the purest and most
intense enthusiasm,--the doctrine of Faith, the doctrine of
Grace. Had the Reformation been what many Romanists and
Protestants of our days imagine it,--had it been that negative
system of negative reason which, like a fretful child, rejects
whatever is displeasing to it, and disowns the grand truths and
leading ideas of universal Christianity, it would never have
crossed the threshold of the schools, or been known beyond the
narrow limits of the cloister or perhaps of the friar's cell.
But with Protestantism, as many understand the word, it had no
connection. Far from being an emaciated, an enervated body, it
rose up like a man full of strength and energy.
Two considerations will account for the suddenness and
extent of this revolution. One must be sought in God; the other
among men. The impulse was given by an invisible and mighty
hand: the change accomplished was the work of Omnipotence. An
impartial and attentive observer, who looks beyond the surface,
must necessarily be led to this conclusion. But as God works by
second causes, another task remains for the historian. Many
circumstances which have often passed unnoticed, gradually
prepared the world for the great transformation of the sixteenth
century, so that the human mind was ripe when the hour of its
emancipation arrived.
It is the historian's duty to combine these two great
elements in the picture he presents to his readers. This has
been my endeavour in the following pages. I shall be easily
understood so long as I am occupied in investigating the
secondary causes that concurred in producing the revolution I
have undertaken to describe. Many perhaps will understand me
less clearly, and will even be tempted to charge me with
superstition, when I ascribe the completion of the work to God.
It is a conviction, however, that I fondly cherish. These
volumes, as well as the motto I have prefixed to them, lay down
in the chief and foremost place this simple and pregnant
principle: God in History. But as it is a principle that has
been generally neglected and sometimes disputed, it may be right
for me to explain my views on this subject, and by this means
justify the method I have adopted.
History can no longer remain in our days that dead letter of
events, to the detail of which the majority of earlier writers
restricted themselves. It is now understood that in history, as
in man, there are two elements--matter and spirit. Unwilling to
resign themselves to the task of producing a simple recital of
facts, which would have been but a barren chronicle, our great
modern historians have sought for a vital principle to animate
the materials of past ages.
Some have borrowed this principle from the rules of art:
they have aimed at being ingenuous, exact, and picturesque in
description, and have endeavoured to give life to their narrative
by the characteristic details of the events themselves.
Others have sought in philosophy the principle that should
fertilize their labors. With the relation of events they have
interwoven extended views, instructive lessons, political and
philosophical truths; and have given animation to their narrative
by the idea they have drawn from it, and by the theory they have
been able to associate with it.
Both these methods, undoubtedly, are good, and should be
employed within certain limits. But there is another source to
which, above all, we must look for the intelligence, spirit, and
life of past ages; and this source is Religion. History should
live by that life which belongs to it, and that life is God. In
history, God should be acknowledged and proclaimed. The history
of the world should be set forth as the annals of the government
of the Sovereign King.
I have gone down into the lists whither the recitals of our
historians have invited me. There I have witnessed the actions
of men and of nations, developing themselves with energy, and
contending in violent collision. I have heard a strange din of
arms, but I have been nowhere shown the majestic countenance of
the presiding Judge.
And yet there is a living principle, emanating from God, in
every national movement. God is ever present on that vast
theater where successive generations of men meet and struggle.
It is true he is unseen; but if the heedless multitude pass by
without caring for him because he is "a God that dwelleth in the
thick darkness," thoughtful men, who yearn for the very principle
of their existence, seek for him the more ardently, and are not
satisfied until they lie prostrate at his feet. And their
inquiries meet with a rich reward. For from the height to which
they have been compelled to soar to meet their God, the history
of the world, instead of presenting to their eyes a confused
chaos, as it does to the ignorant crowd, appears as a majestic
temple, on which the invisible hand of God himself is at work,
and which rises to his glory above the rock of humanity.
Shall we not recognize the hand of God in those grand
manifestations, those great men, those mighty nations, which
arise, and start as it were from the dust of the earth, and
communicate a fresh impulse, a new form and destiny to the human
race? Shall we not acknowledge him in those heroes who spring
from society at appointed epochs--who display a strength and
activity beyond the ordinary limits of humanity--and around whom,
as around a superior and mysterious power, nations and
individuals unhesitatingly gather? Who has launched into the
expanse of time, those huge comets with their fiery trains, which
appear but at distant intervals, scattering among the
superstitious crowd abundance and joy, calamity and terror? Who,
if not God? Alexander sought his origin in the abodes of the
Divinity. And in the most irreligious age there has been no
eminent glory that has not endeavoured in some way or other to
connect itself with heaven.
And do not those revolutions which hurl kings from their
thrones, and precipitate whole nations to the dust,--do not those
wide-spread ruins which the traveller meets with among the sands
of the desert,--do not those majestic relics which the field of
humanity presents to our view; do they not all declare aloud--a
God in history? Gibbon, seated among the ruins of the Capitol,
and contemplating its august remains, owned the intervention of a
superior destiny. He saw it--he felt it: in vain would he avert
his eyes. That shadow of a mysterious power started from behind
every broken pillar; and he conceived the design of describing
its influence in the history of the disorganization, decline, and
corruption of that Roman dominion which had enslaved the world.
Shall not we discern amidst the great ruins of humanity that
almighty hand which a man of noble genius--one who had never bent
the knee to Christ--perceived amid the scattered fragments of the
monuments of Romulus, the sculptured marbles of Aurelius, the
busts of Cicero and Virgil, the statues of Caesar and Augustus,
Pompey's horses, and the trophies of Trajan,--and shall we not
confess it to be the hand of God?
What a startling fact, that men brought up amid the elevated
ideas of Christianity, regard as mere superstition that Divine
intervention in human affairs which the very heathens had
admitted!
The name given by ancient Greece to the Sovereign Ruler
shows it to have received primeval revelations of the great truth
of a God, who is the principle of history and the life of
nations. He was styled Zeus, or the life-giver to all that
lives,--to nations as well as to individuals. On his altars
kings and people swore their solemn oaths; and from his
mysterious inspirations Minos and other legislators pretended to
have received their laws. This is not all: this great truth is
figured forth by one of the most beautiful fables of heathen
antiquity. Even mythology might teach a lesson to the
philosophers of our days; and I may be allowed to establish the
fact, as perhaps there are readers who will feel less prejudice
against he instructions of paganism than of Christianity itself.
This Zeus, this supreme Ruler, this Eternal Spirit, this life-
giving Principle, is the father of Clio, the muse of history,
whose mother is Mnemosyne or Memory. Thus, according to the
notions of antiquity, history combines a heavenly with an earthly
nature. She is the daughter of God and man; but, alas! the
purblind philosophy of our proud age is far from having attained
the lofty views of that heathen wisdom. Her divine paternity has
been denied; and the illegitimate child now wanders up and down
the world, like a shameless adventurer, hardly knowing whence she
comes or whither she is going.
But this God of pagan antiquity is only a faint reflection,
a dim shadow of Jehovah--of the Eternal One. The true God whom
the Hebrews worship, willing to impress on the minds of all
nations that he reigns continually upon earth, gave with this
intent, if I may venture the expression, a bodily form to this
sovereignty in the midst of Israel. A visible theocracy was
appointed to exist once upon the earth, that it might unceasingly
remind us of that invisible theocracy which shall for ever govern
the world.
And see what luster this great truth (God in history)
receives under the Christian dispensation. What is Jesus Christ,
if he be not God in history? It was this discovery of Jesus
Christ which enable John Muller, the greatest of modern
historians, fully to comprehend his subject. "The Gospel," said
he, "is the fulfillment of every hope, the perfection of all
philosophy, the interpreter of every revolution, the key to all
the seeming contradictions in the physical and moral world: it
is life and immortality. Since I have known the Saviour, every
thing is clear to my eyes: with him, there is no difficulty I
cannot solve."
Thus wrote this eminent historian; and is not this great
truth, that God has appeared in human nature, in reality the
keystone of the arch,--the mysterious link which binds all
earthly things together, and connects them with heaven? History
records a birth of God, and yet God has no part in history!
Jesus Christ is the true God of man's history: it is shown by
the very meanness of his advent. When man would raise a shelter
against the weather--a shade from the heat of the sun--what
preparation of materials, what scaffolding and crowds of workmen,
what trenches and heaps of rubbish!--but when God would do the
same, he takes the smallest seed that a new-born child might
clasp in its feeble hand, deposits it in the bosom of the earth,
and from that grain, scarcely distinguishable in its
commencement, he produces the stately tree, under whose spreading
branches the families of men may find a refuge. To effect great
results by imperceptible means--such is the law of God.
In Jesus Christ is found the most glorious fulfillment of
this law. Christianity has now taken possession of the gates of
every people. It reigns or hovers over all the tribes of the
earth, from the rising to the setting sun; and even a skeptical
philosophy is compelled to acknowledge it as the social and
spiritual law of the world. And yet what was the commencement of
this religion, the noblest of all things under the vault of
heaven--nay, in the "infinite immense" of creation? A child born
in the smallest town of the most despised nation in the world--a
child whose mother had not what even the most indigent and
wretched woman of our towns possesses, a room to shelter her in
the hour of travail--a child born in a stable and cradled in a
manger! In this, O God, I acknowledge and adore thee!
The Reformation recognized this divine law, and was
conscious of fulfilling it. The idea that "God is in history"
was often put forth by the reformers. We find it particularly
expressed by Luther in one of those homely and quaint, yet not
undignified similitudes, which he was fond of using that he might
be understood by the people. "The world," said he one day at
table with his friends, "is a vast and magnificent game of cards,
made up of emperors, kings, princes, etc. The pope for many
centuries beat the emperors, kings and princes. They yielded and
fell before him. Then came our Lord God. He dealt the cards:
he took the lowest (Luther) for himself, and with it he beat the
pope, that vanquisher of the kings of the earth......This is the
ace of God. As Mary said: `He hath put down the mighty from
their seats, and exalted them of low degree.'"
The epoch whose history I am desirous of retracing is
important for the present generation. When a man becomes
sensible of his own weakness, he is generally inclined to look
for support in the institutions he sees flourishing around him,
or else in the bold devices of his imagination. The history of
the Reformation shows that nothing new can be made out of things
old; and that if, according to our Saviour's expression, we
require new bottles for new wine, we must also have new wine for
new bottles. It directs man to God as the universal agent in
history,--to that Divine word, ever old by the eternal nature of
the truths it contains, ever new by the regenerative influence
that it exerts; which purified society three centuries ago, which
restored faith in God to souls enfeebled by superstition, and
which, at every epoch in the history of man, is the fountain
whence floweth salvation.
It is singular to witness a great number of men, agitated by
a vague desire of believing in something fixed, addressing
themselves in our days to the erroneous Catholicism of Rome. In
one sense this movement is natural: religion is so little known
among them, that they think it can only be found where they see
it inscribed in large letters on a banner that time has rendered
venerable. I do not say that all Catholicism is incapable of
bestowing on man what he stands in need of. I think we should
carefully distinguish between Catholicism and Popery. The
latter, in my opinion, is an erroneous and destructive system;
but I am far from confounding it with Catholicism. How many
worthy men, how many true Christians, has not the catholic church
contained within its bosom! What important services were
rendered by Catholicism to the existing states of Europe, at the
moment of their formation--at a period when it was still deeply
impregnated with the Gospel, and when Popery was as yet only
hovering over it like a faint shadow! But we live no longer in
those days. Strenuous endeavors are now making to reunite
Catholicism with Popery; and if catholic and christian truths are
put forward, they are merely to serve as baits to draw us into
the nets of the hierarchy. We have nothing, then, to hope for on
that side. Has Popery renounced one of its observances, of its
doctrines, or of its assumptions? Will that religion which was
insupportable in former times be less so in ours? What
regeneration has ever been known to emanate from Rome? Is it
from a pontifical hierarchy, overflowing with earthly passions,
that can proceed the spirit of faith, hope, and charity, which
alone can save us? Is it an exhausted system, that has no
vitality for itself, which is everywhere in the struggles of
death, and which exists only by external aid, that can impart
life to others, or animate Christian society with the heavenly
inspiration that it requires?
Will this yearning of the heart and mind that begins to be
felt by many of our contemporaries, lead others to apply to the
new Protestantism which in many places has succeeded the powerful
teaching of the apostles and reformers? A great vagueness in
doctrine prevails in many of those reformed churches whose first
members sealed with their blood the clear and living faith that
inspired them. Men distinguished for their information, and
sensible to all the beauties which this world presents, are
carried away into strange aberrations. A general faith in the
divinity of the Gospel is the only standard they are willing to
uphold. But what is this Gospel? that is the vital question; and
yet on this, either they are silent, or else every one answers it
according to his own opinions. What avails it to know that God
has placed in the midst of all nations a vessel containing a
remedy for our souls, if we care not to know its contents, or if
we do not strive to appropriate them to ourselves? This system
cannot fill up the void of the present times. Whilst the faith
of the apostles and reformers appears everywhere active and
effectual for the conversion of the world, this vague system does
nothing--enlightens nothing--vivifies nothing.
But let us not be without hope. Does not Roman-catholicism
confess the great doctrines of Christianity,--God the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost--Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier, who is the
Truth? And does not this vague Protestantism hold in its hand
the Book of Life, which is sufficient for doctrine, correction,
and instruction in righteousness? And how many upright souls,
honored in the eyes of men, lovely in the sight of God, are there
not to be found among those subjected to these two systems? How
can we forbear loving them? How not ardently desire their
complete emancipation from human elements? Charity is infinite:
it embraces the most distant opinions, to draw them to the feet
of Christ.
Already there are indications that these two extreme
opinions are moving nearer to Christ, who is the center of truth.
Are there not some Roman-catholic churches in which the reading
of the Bible is recommended and practiced? And what steps has
not Protestant rationalism already made! It did not spring from
the Reformation: for the history of that great revolution will
prove it to have been an epoch of faith. But may we not hope it
is drawing nearer to it? Will not the might of truth go forth to
it from the Word of God, and will not this rationalism be
transformed by it? Already we often witness in it a religious
feeling, inadequate doubtless, but still it is a movement towards
sound doctrine, and which may lead us to hope for some definite
progress.
But the new Protestantism and the old Catholicism are of
themselves irrelevant and ineffectual. We require something else
to restore the saving power to the men of our days. We need
something which is not of man--something that comes from God.
"Give me," said Archimedes, "a point without the world, and I
will lift it from its poles." True Christianity is this point,
which raises the heart of man from its double pivot of
selfishness and sensuality, and which will one day turn the whole
world from its evil ways, and make it revolve on a new axis of
righteousness and peace.
Whenever religion has been under discussion, there have been
three points to which our attention has been directed. God, Man,
and the Priest. There can only be three kinds of religion upon
earth, according as God, Man, or the Priest, is its author and
its head. I denominate that the religion of the priest, which is
invented by the priest, for the glory of the priest, and in which
a sacerdotal caste is dominant. By the religion of man, I mean
those various systems and opinions which human reason has framed,
and which, being the offspring of human infirmity, are
consequently devoid of all healing power. The term divine
religion I apply to the truth such as God gave it,--the end and
aim of which are the glory of God and the salvation of man.
Hierarchism, or the religion of the priest--Christianity, or
the religion of God--Rationalism, or the religion of man, are the
three doctrines that divide Christendom in our days. There is no
salvation, either for man or for society, in the first or in the
last. Christianity alone can give life to the world; and,
unhappily, of the three prevailing systems, it is not that which
has the greatest number of followers.
Some, however, it has. Christianity is operating its work
of regeneration among many Catholics in Germany, and no doubt in
other countries also. It is accomplishing its task with greater
purity and vigor, in my opinion, among the evangelical Christians
of Switzerland, France, Great Britain, and the United States.
God be praised that these individual or social regenerations,
produced by the Gospel, are no longer such rarities as must be
sought in ancient annals.
It is the history of the Reformation in general that I
desire to write. I purpose tracing it among different nations,
to show that the same truths have everywhere produced the same
results, and also to point out the diversities arising from the
dissimilar characters of the people. It is especially in Germany
that we find the primitive type of this reform: there it
presents the most organic developments,--there chiefly it bears
the character of a revolution not limited to a particular nation,
but which concerns the whole world. The Reformation in Germany
is the fundamental history of the reform--it is the primary
planet; the other reformations are secondary planets, revolving
with it, deriving light from the same source, forming part of the
same system, but each having a separate existence, shedding each
a different radiance, and always possessing a peculiar beauty.
We may apply the language of St. Paul to these reforms of the
sixteenth century: "There is one glory of the sun, and another
glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star
differeth from another star in glory." 1 Cor. xv. 41. The Swiss
Reformation occurred at the same time as the German, but was
independent of it. It presented, at a later period especially,
some of the great features observable in that of Germany. The
Reformation in Great Britain recommends itself in a very especial
manner to our attention, from the powerful influence which the
churches of that country are exerting at the present day over all
the world. But recollections of ancestry and of refuge--the
remembrance of struggles, suffering, and exile endured in the
cause of the Reformation in France, lend a particular attraction,
in my eyes, to the French reform. Considered by itself, and with
respect to the date of its origin, it presents beauties that are
peculiarly its own.
I believe the Reformation to be the work of God: his hand
is everywhere visible in it. Still I hope to be impartial in
retracing its history. I think I have spoken of the principal
Roman-catholic actors in this great drama--of Leo X, Albert of
Magdeburg, Charles V, and Doctor Eck, for instance, more
favorably than the majority of historians have done. On the
other hand, I have had no desire to conceal the faults and errors
of the reformers.
As early as the winter of 1831-32, I delivered a course of
public lectures on the epoch of the Reformation. I then
published my opening discourse. These lectures were a
preparatory labor for the history I now lay before the public.
This history is compiled from the original sources with
which a long residence in Germany, the Netherlands, and
Switzerland, has rendered me familiar; as well as from the study,
in their original languages, of the documents relating to the
religious history of Great Britain and other countries. As these
sources will be pointed out in the course of the work, it will be
unnecessary to enumerate them here.
I should have wished to authenticate the various portions of
my work by many original notes; but I feared that if they were
long and frequent, they would prove a disagreeable interruption
to my readers. I have therefore confined myself to such passages
as seemed calculated to give them a clearer view of the history I
have undertaken to write.
I address this history to those who love to see past events
exactly as they occurred, and not by the aid of that magic glass
of genius which colors and magnifies, but which sometimes also
diminishes and changes them. Neither the philosophy of the
eighteenth nor the romanticism of the nineteenth century will
guide my judgments or supply my colors. The history of the
Reformation is written in the spirit of the work itself.
Principles, it is said, have no modesty. It is their nature to
rule, and they steadily assert their privilege. Do they
encounter other principles in their paths that would dispute
their empire, they give battle immediately. A principle never
rests until it has gained the victory; and it cannot be
otherwise--with it to reign is to live. If it does not reign
supreme, it dies. Thus, at the same time that I declare my
inability and unwillingness to enter into rivalry with other
historians of the Reformation, I make an exception in favor of
the principles on which this history is founded, and I firmly
maintain their superiority.
Up to this hour we do not possess, as far as I am aware, any
complete history of the memorable epoch that is about to employ
my pen. Nothing indicated that this deficiency would be supplied
when I began this work. This is the only circumstance that could
have induced me to undertake it, and I here put it forward as my
justification. This deficiency still exists; and I pray to Him
from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, to grant that this
humble work may not be profitless to my readers.
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 1
STATE OF EUROPE BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
Christianity--Two distinctive Principles--Rise of the Papacy--
Early Encroachments--Influence of Rome--Co-operation of the
Bishops and of the Sects--Visible Unity of the Church--Invisible
Unity of the Church--Primacy of St. Peter--Patriarchates--Co-
operation of Princes--Influence of the Barbarians--Rome invokes
the aid of the Franks--Secular Power--Pepin and Charlemagne--The
Decretals--Disorders of Rome--The Emperor, the Pope's Suzerain--
Hildebrand--His Character--Celibacy--Struggle with the Empire--
Emancipation of the Pope--Hildebrand's Successors--The Crusades--
The Empire--The Church.
The enfeebled world was tottering on its foundations when
Christianity appeared. The national religions which had
satisfied the parents, no longer proved sufficient for their
children. The new generations could not repose contented within
the ancient forms. The gods of every nation, when transported to
Rome, there lost their oracles, as the nations themselves had
there lost their liberty. Brought face to face in the Capitol,
they had destroyed each other, and their divinity had vanished.
A great void was occasioned in the religion of the world.
A kind of deism, destitute alike of spirit and of life,
floated for a time above the abyss in which the vigorous
superstitions of antiquity had been engulfed. But like all
negative creeds, it had no power to reconstruct. National
prepossessions disappeared with the fall of the national gods.
The various kingdoms melted one into the other. In Europe, Asia,
and Africa, there was but one vast empire, and the human race
began to feel its universality and unity.
Then the WORD was made flesh.
God appeared among men, and as man, to save that which was
lost. In Jesus of Nazareth dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily.
This is the greatest event in the annals of the world.
Former ages had prepared the way for it: The latter ages flow
from it. It is the center of their bond of unity.
Henceforward the popular superstitions had no meaning, and
the slight fragments preserved from the general wreck of
incredulity vanished before the majestic orb of eternal truth.
The son of man lived thirty-three years on earth, healing
the sick, converting sinners, not having where to lay his head,
and displaying in the midst of this humiliation such greatness
and holiness, such power and divinity, as the world had never
witnessed before. He suffered and died-- he rose again and
ascended into heaven. His disciples, beginning at Jerusalem,
traveled over the Roman empire and the world, everywhere
proclaiming their Master as the author of everlasting life. From
the midst of a people who despised all nations, came forth a
mercy that invited and embraced all men. A great number of
Asiatics, of Greeks, and of Romans, hitherto dragged by their
priests to the feet of dumb idols, believed the Word. It
suddenly enlightened the whole earth, like a beam of the sun. A
breath of life began to move over this wide field of death. A
new people, a holy nation, was formed upon the earth; and the
astonished world beheld in the disciples of the Galilean a purity
and self-denial, a charity and heroism, of which it had retained
no idea.
Two principles especially distinguished the new religion
from all the human systems that fled before it. One had
reference to the ministers of its worship, the other to its
doctrines.
The ministers of paganism were almost the gods of these
human religions. The priests of Egypt, Gaul, Dacia, Germany,
Britain, and India, led the people, so long at least as their
eyes were not opened. Jesus Christ, indeed, established a
ministry, but he did not found a separate priesthood: he
dethroned these living idols of the world, destroyed an
overbearing hierarchy, took away from man what he had taken from
God, and re-established the soul in immediate connection with the
divine fountain of truth, by proclaiming himself sole Master and
sole Mediator. "One is your master, even Christ; and all ye are
brethren."
As regards doctrine, human systems had taught that salvation
is of man: the religions of the earth had devised an earthly
salvation. They had told men that heaven would be given to them
as a reward: they had fixed its price; and what a price! The
religion of God taught that salvation comes from him alone; that
it is a gift from heaven; that it emanates from an amnesty--from
the grace of the Sovereign Ruler: "God hath given to us eternal
life."
Undoubtedly Christianity cannot be summed up in these two
points; but they seem to govern the subject, as far as history is
concerned. And as it is impossible for me to trace the
opposition between truth and error in all its features, I have
been compelled to select the most prominent.
Such were the two constituent principles of the religion
that then took possession of the Roman empire and of the world.
With these we are within the true limits of Christianity, and
beyond them Christianity disappears. On their preservation or
their loss depended its greatness or its fall. They are closely
connected: for we cannot exalt the priests of the Church or the
works of the faithful without lowering Christ in his twofold
quality of Mediator and Redeemer. One of these principles was to
predominate in the history of the religion; the other in its
doctrine. They both reigned at the beginning. Let us inquire
how they were lost; and let us commence by tracing the destiny of
the former.
The Church was in the beginning a community of brethren,
guided by a few of the brethren. All were taught of God, and
each had the privilege of drawing for himself from the divine
fountain of light. The Epistles which then settled the great
questions of doctrine did not bear the pompous title of a single
man--of a ruler. We learn from the Holy Scriptures, that they
began simply with these words: "The apostles and elders and
brethren send greetings unto the brethren."
But these very writings of the apostles already foretell
that from the midst of this brotherhood there shall arise a power
that will destroy this simple and primitive order.
Let us contemplate the formation and trace the development
of this power so alien to the Church.
Paul of Tarsus, one of the greatest apostles of the new
religion, had arrived at Rome, the capital of the empire and of
the world, preaching in bondage the salvation which cometh from
God. A Church was formed beside the throne of the Caesars.
Composed at first of a few converted Jews, Greeks, and Roman
citizens, it was rendered famous by the teaching and the death of
the Apostle of the Gentiles. For a time it shone out brightly,
as a beacon upon a hill. Its faith was everywhere celebrated;
but erelong it declined from its primitive condition. It was by
small beginnings that both imperial and Christian Rome advanced
to the usurped dominion of the world.
The first pastors or bishops of Rome early employed them-
selves in converting the neighboring cities and towns. The
necessity which the bishops and pastors of the Campagna felt of
applying in cases of difficulty to an enlightened guide, and the
gratitude they owed to the church of the metropolis, led them to
maintain a close union with it. As it has always happened in
analogous circumstances, this reasonable union soon degenerated
into dependence. The bishops of Rome considered as a right that
superiority which the surrounding Churches had freely yielded.
The encroachments of power form a great part of history; as the
resistance of those whose liberties are invaded forms the other
portion. The ecclesiastical power could not escape the
intoxication which impels all who are lifted up to seek to mount
still higher. It obeyed this general law of human nature.
Nevertheless the supremacy of the Roman bishops was at that
period limited to the superintendence of the Churches within the
civil jurisdiction of the prefect of Rome. But the rank which
this imperial city held in the world offered a prospect of still
greater destinies to the ambition of its first pastor. The
respect enjoyed by the various Christian bishops in the second
century was proportionate to the rank of the city in which they
resided. Now Rome was the largest, richest, and most powerful
city in the world. It was the seat of empire, the mother of
nations. "All the inhabitants of the earth belong to her," said
Julian; and Claudian declared her to be "the fountain of laws."
If Rome is the queen of cities, why should not her pastor be
the king of bishops? Why should not the Roman church be the
mother of Christendom? Why should not all nations be her
children, and her authority their sovereign law? It was easy for
the ambitious heart of man to reason thus. Ambitious Rome did
so.
Thus, when pagan Rome fell, she bequeathed to the humble
minister of the God of peace, sitting in the midst of her ruins,
the proud titles which her invincible sword had won from the
nations of the earth.
The bishops of the different parts of the empire, fascinated
by that charm which Rome had exercised for ages over all nations,
followed the example of the Campagne, and aided this work of
usurpation. They felt a pleasure in yielding to the bishop of
Rome some portion of that honor which was due to the queen of the
world. There was originally no dependence implied in the honor
thus paid. They treated the Roman pastor as if they were on a
level with him. But usurped power increased like an avalanche.
Admonitions, at first simply fraternal, soon became absolute
commands in the mouth of the pontiff. A foremost place among
equals appeared to him a throne.
The Western bishops favored this encroachment of the Roman
pastors, either from jealousy of the Eastern bishops, or because
they preferred submitting to the supremacy of a pope, rather than
to the dominion of a temporal power.
On the other hand, the theological sects that distracted the
East, strove, each for itself, to interest Rome in its favor they
looked for victory in the support of the principal church of the
West.
Rome carefully enregistered these applications and
intercessions, and smiled to see all nations voluntarily throwing
themselves into her arms. She neglected no opportunity of
increasing and extending her power. The praises and flattery,
the exaggerated compliments and consultations of other Churches,
became in her eyes and in her hands the titles and documents of
her authority. Such is man exalted to a throne: the incense of
courts intoxicates him, his brain grows dizzy. What he possesses
becomes a motive for attaining still more.
The doctrine of the Church and the necessity of its visible
unity, which had begun to gain ground in the third century,
favored the pretensions of Rome. The Church is, above all
things, the assembly of "them that are sanctified in Christ
Jesus" (1 Cor. i. 2)--"the assembly of the first-born which are
written in heaven"(Heb. xii. 23). Yet the Church of our Lord is
not simply inward and invisible; it is necessary that it should
be manifested, and it is with a view to this manifestation that
the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper were instituted.
The visible Church has features different from those which
distinguish it as an invisible Church. The invisible Church,
which is the body of Christ, is necessarily and eternally one.
The visible Church no doubt partakes of the unity of the former;
but, considered by itself, plurality is a characteristic already
ascribed to it in the New Testament. While speaking of one
Church of God, it no sooner refers to its manifestation to the
world, than it enumerates "the Churches of Galatia, of Macedonia,
of Judea, all Churches of the saints." These Churches may
undoubtedly, to a certain extent, look for visible unity; but if
this union be wanting, they lose none of the essential qualities
of the Church of Christ. The strong bond which originally united
the members of the Church, was that living faith of the heart
which connected them all with Christ as their common head.
Different causes soon concurred to originate and develop the idea
of a necessity for external union. Men accustomed to the
political forms and associations of an earthly country, carried
their views and habits into the spiritual and eternal kingdom of
Christ. Persecution, powerless to destroy or even to shake this
new community, made it only the more sensible of its own
strength, and pressed it into a more compact body. To the errors
that sprung up in the theosophic schools and in the various
sects, was opposed the one and universal truth received from the
apostles, and preserved in the Church. This was well, so long as
the invisible and spiritual Church was identical with the visible
and external Church. But a great separation took place erelong:
the form and the life became disunited. The semblance of an
identical and exterior organization was gradually substituted for
that interior and spiritual communion, which is the essence of
the religion of God. Men forsook the precious perfume of faith,
and bowed down before the empty vessel that had contained it.
They sought other bonds of union, for faith in the heart no
longer connected the members of the Church; and they were united
by means of bishops, archbishops, popes, mitres, canons, and
ceremonies. The living Church retiring gradually within the
lonely sanctuary of a few solitary hearts, an external Church was
substituted in its place, and all its forms were declared to be
of divine appointment. Salvation no longer flowing from the
Word, which was henceforward put out of sight, the priests
affirmed that it was conveyed by means of the forms they had
themselves invented, and that no one could attain it except by
these channels. No one, said they, can by his own faith attain
to everlasting life. Christ communicated to the apostles, and
these to the bishops, the unction of the Holy Spirit; and this
Spirit is to be procured only in that order of succession!
Originally, whoever possessed the spirit of Jesus Christ was a
member of the Church; now the terms were inverted, and it was
maintained that he only who was a member of the Church could
receive the Spirit.
As these ideas became established, the distinction between
the people and the clergy was more strongly marked. The
salvation of souls no longer depended entirely on faith in
Christ, but also, and in a more especial manner, on union with
the Church. The representatives and heads of the Church were
made partakers of the trust that should be placed in Christ
alone, and became the real mediators of their flocks. The idea
of a universal Christian priesthood was gradually lost sight of;
the servants of the Church of Christ were compared to the priests
of the old covenant; and those who separated from the bishop were
placed in the same rank with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram! From a
peculiar priesthood, such as was then formed in the Church, to a
sovereign priesthood, such as Rome claims, the transition was
easy.
In fact, no sooner was the erroneous notion of the necessity
for a visible unity of the Church established, than another
appeared--the necessity for an outward representation of that
union. Although we find no traces in the Gospel of Peter's
superiority over the other apostles; although the very idea of a
primacy is opposed to the fraternal relations which united the
brethren, and even to the spirit of the Gospel dispensation,
which on the contrary requires all the children of the Father to
"minister one to another," acknowledging only one teacher and one
master; although Christ had strongly rebuked his disciples,
whenever ambitious desires of pre-eminence were conceived in
their carnal hearts the primacy of St. Peter was invented and
supported by texts wrongly interpreted, and men next acknowledged
in this apostle and in his self-styled successors at Rome, the
visible representatives of visible unity--the heads of the
universal Church.
The constitution of the Patriarchate contributed in like
manner to the exaltation of the Papacy. As early as the three
first centuries the metropolitan Churches had enjoyed peculiar
honor. The council of Nice, in its sixth canon, mentions three
cities, whose Churches, according to it, exercised a long-
established authority over those of the surrounding provinces:
these were Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch. The political origin
of this distinction is indicated by the name which was at first
given to the bishops of these cities: they were called Exarchs,
from the title of the civil governors. Somewhat later they
received the more ecclesiastical appellation of Patriarchs. We
find this title first employed at the council of Constantinople,
but in a different sense from that which it afterwards received.
It was not until shortly before the council of Chalcedon that it
was given exclusively to the great metropolitans. The second
general council created a new patriarchate, that of
Constantinople itself, the new Rome, the second capital of the
empire. The church of Byzantium, so long obscure, enjoyed the
same privileges, and was placed by the council of Chalcedon in
the same rank as the Church of Rome. Rome at that time shared
the patriarchal supremacy with these three churches. But when
the Mahometan invasion had destroyed the sees of Alexandria and
of Antioch,--when the see of Constantinople fell away, and in
later times even separated from the West, Rome remained alone,
and the circumstances of the times gathered all the Western
Churches around her see, which from that time has been without a
rival.
New and more powerful friends than all the rest soon came to
her assistance. Ignorance and superstition took possession of
the Church, and delivered it, fettered and blindfold, into the
hands of Rome.
Yet this bondage was not effected without a struggle.
Frequently did the Churches proclaim their independence; and
their courageous voices were especially heard from Proconsular
Africa and from the East.
But Rome found new allies to stifle the cries of the
churches. Princes, whom those stormy times often shook upon
their thrones, offered their protection if Rome would in its turn
support them. They conceded to her the spiritual authority,
provided she would make a return in secular power. They were
lavish of the souls of men, in the hope that she would aid them
against their enemies. The power of the hierarchy which was
ascending, and the imperial power which was declining, leant thus
one upon the other, and by this alliance accelerated their
twofold destiny.
Rome could not lose by it. An edict of Theodosius II and of
Valentinian III proclaimed the Roman bishop "rector of the whole
Church." Justinian published a similar decree. These edicts did
not contain all that the popes pretended to see in them; but in
those times of ignorance it was easy for them to secure that
interpretation which was most favorable to themselves. The
dominion of the emperors in Italy becoming daily more precarious,
the bishops of Rome took advantage of this circumstance to free
themselves from their dependence.
But already had issued from the forests of the North the
most effectual promoters of the papal power. The barbarians who
had invaded and settled in the West, after being satiated with
blood and plunder, lowered their reeking swords before the
intellectual power that met them face to face. Recently
converted to Christianity, ignorant of the spiritual character of
the Church, and feeling the want of a certain external pomp in
religion, they prostrated themselves, half savage and half
heathen as they were, at the feet of the high-priest of Rome.
With their aid the West was in his power. At first the Vandals,
then the Ostrogoths, somewhat later the Burgundians and Alans,
next the Visigoths, and lastly the Lombards and Anglo-Saxons,
came and bent the knee to the Roman pontiff. It was the sturdy
shoulders of those children of the idolatrous north that
succeeded in placing on the supreme throne of Christendom a
pastor of the banks of the Tiber.
At the beginning of the seventh century these events were
accomplishing in the West, precisely at the period when the power
of Mahomet arose in the East, prepared to invade another quarter
of the world.
From this time the evil continued to increase. In the
eighth century we see the Roman bishops resisting on the one hand
the Greek emperors, their lawful sovereigns, and endeavouring to
expel them from Italy, while with the other they court the mayors
of the palace in France, begging from this new power, just
beginning to rise in the West, a share in the wreck of the
empire. Rome founded her usurped authority between the East,
which she repelled, and the West, which she summoned to her aid.
She raised her throne between two revolts. Startled by the
shouts of the Arabs, now become masters of Spain, and who boasted
that they would speedily arrive in Italy by the gates of the
Pyrenees and Alps, and proclaim the name of Mahomet on the Seven
Hills; alarmed at the insolence of Astolphus, who at the head of
his Lombards, roaring like a lion, and brandishing his sword
before the gates of the eternal city, threatened to put every
Roman to death: Rome, in the prospect of ruin, turned her
frightened eyes around her, and threw herself into the arms of
the Franks. The usurper Pepin demanded her pretended sanction of
his new authority; it was granted, and the Papacy obtained in
return his promise to be the defender of the "Republic of God."
Pepin wrested from the Lombards the cities they had taken from
the Greek emperor; yet, instead of restoring them to that prince,
he laid they keys on St. Peter's altar, and swore with uplifted
hands that he had not taken up arms for man, but to obtain from
God the remission of his sins, and to do homage for his conquests
to St. Peter. Thus did France establish the temporal power of
the popes.
Charlemagne appeared; the first time he ascends the stairs
to the basilic of St. Peter, devoutly kissing each step. A
second time he presents himself, lord of all the nations that
formed the empire of the West, and of Rome itself. Leo III
thought fit to bestow the imperial title on him who already
possessed the power; and on Christmas day, in the year 800, he
placed the diadem of the Roman emperors on the brow of the son of
Pepin. From this time the pope belongs to the empire of the
Franks: his connection with the East is ended. He broke off
from a decayed and falling tree to graft himself upon a wild and
vigorous sapling. A future elevation, to which he would have
never dared aspire, awaits him among these German tribes with
whom he now unites himself.
Charlemagne bequeathed to his feeble successors only the
wrecks of his power. In the ninth century disunion everywhere
weakened the civil authority. Rome saw that this was the moment
to exalt herself. When could the Church hope for a more
favorable opportunity of becoming independent of the state, than
when the crown which Charles had worn was broken, and its
fragments lay scattered over his former empire?
Then appeared the False Decretals of Isidore. In this
collection of the pretended decrees of the popes, the most
ancient bishops, who were contemporary with Tacitus and
Quintilian, were made to speak the barbarous Latin of the ninth
century. The customs and constitutions of the Franks were
seriously attributed to the Romans in the time of the emperors.
Popes quoted the Bible in the Latin translation of Jerome, who
had lived one, two or three centuries after them; and Victor,
bishop of Rome, in the year 192, wrote to Theophilus, who was
archbishop of Alexandria in 385. The impostor who had fabricated
this collection endeavored to prove that all bishops derived
their authority from the bishop of Rome, who held his own
immediately from Christ. He not only recorded all the successive
conquests of the pontiffs, but even carried them back to the
earliest times. The popes were not ashamed to avail themselves
of this contemptible imposture. As early as 865, Nicholas I drew
from its stores of weapons by which to combat princes and
bishops. This impudent invention was for ages the arsenal of
Rome.
Nevertheless, the vices and crimes of the pontiffs suspended
for a time the effect of the decretals. The Papacy celebrated
its admission to the table of kings by shameful orgies. She
became intoxicated: her senses were lost in the midst of drunken
revellings. It is about this period that tradition places upon
the papal throne a woman named Joan, who had taken refuge in Rome
with her lover, and whose sex was betrayed by the pangs of
childbirth during a solemn procession. But let us not needlessly
augment the shame of the pontifical court. Abandoned women at
this time governed Rome; and that throne which pretended to rise
above the majesty of kings was sunk deep in the dregs of vice.
Theodora and Marozia installed and deposed at their pleasure the
self-styled masters of the Church of Christ, and placed their
lovers, sons, and grandsons in St. Peter's chair. These
scandals, which are but too well authenticated, may perhaps have
given rise to the tradition of Pope Joan.
Rome became one wild theater of disorders, the possession of
which was disputed by the most powerful families of Italy. The
counts of Tuscany were generally victorious. In 1033, this house
dared to place on the pontifical throne, under the name of
Benedict IX, a youth brought up in debauchery. This boy of
twelve years old continued, when pope, the same horrible and
degrading vices. Another party chose Sylvester III in his stead;
and Benedict, whose conscience was loaded with adulteries, and
whose hands were stained with murder, at last sold the Papacy to
a Roman ecclesiastic.
The emperors of Germany, filled with indignation at such
enormities, purged Rome with the sword. The empire, asserting
its paramount rights, drew the triple crown from the mire into
which it had fallen, and saved the degraded papacy by giving it
respectable men as its chiefs. Henry III deposed three popes in
1046, and his finger, decorated with the ring of the Roman
patricians, pointed out the bishop to whom the keys of St. Peter
should be confided. Four popes, all Germans, and nominated by
the emperor, succeeded. When the Roman pontiff died, the
deputies of that church repaired to the imperial court, like the
envoys of other dioceses, to solicit a new bishop. With joy the
emperor beheld the popes reforming abuses, strengthening the
Church, holding councils, installing and deposing prelates, in
defiance of foreign monarchs: The Papacy by these pretensions
did but exalt the power of the emperor, its lord paramount. But
to allow of such practices was to expose his own authority to
great danger. The power which the popes thus gradually recovered
might be turned suddenly against the emperor himself. When the
reptile had gained strength, it might wound the bosom that had
cherished it: and this result followed.
And now begins a new era for the papacy. It rises from its
humiliation, and soon tramples the princes of the earth under
foot. To exalt the Papacy is to exalt the Church, to advance
religion, to ensure to the spirit the victory over the flesh, and
to God the conquest of the world. Such are its maxims: in these
ambition finds its advantage, and fanaticism its excuse.
The whole of this new policy is personified in one man:
Hildebrand.
This pope, who has been by turns indiscreetly exalted or
unjustly traduced, is the personification of the Roman
pontificate in all its strength and glory. He is one of those
normal characters in history, which include within themselves a
new order of things, similar to those presented in other spheres
by Charlemagne, Luther, and Napoleon.
This monk, the son of a carpenter of Savoy, was brought up
in a Roman convent, and had quitted Rome at the period when Henry
III had there deposed three popes, and taken refuge in France in
the austere convent of Cluny. In 1048, Bruno, bishop of Toul,
having been nominated pope by the emperor at Worms, who was
holding the German Diet in that city, assumed the pontifical
habits, and took the name of Leo IX; but Hildebrand, who had
hastened thither, refused to recognize him, since it was (said
he) from the secular power that he held the tiara. Leo, yielding
to the irresistible power of a strong mind and of a deep
conviction, immediately humbled himself, laid aside his
sacerdotal ornaments, and clad in the garb of a pilgrim, set out
barefoot for Rome along with Hildebrand (says an historian), in
order to be there legitimately elected by the clergy and the
Roman people. From this time Hildebrand was the soul of the
Papacy, until he became pope himself. He had governed the Church
under the name of several pontiffs, before he reigned in person
as Gregory VII. One grand idea had taken possession of this
great genius. He desired to establish a visible theocracy, of
which the pope, as vicar of Jesus Christ, should be the head.
The recollection of the universal dominion of heathen Rome
haunted his imagination and animated his zeal. He wished to
restore to papal Rome all that imperial Rome had lost. "What
Marius and Caesar," said his flatterers, "could not effect by
torrents of blood, thou hast accomplished by a word."
Gregory VII was not directed by the spirit of the Lord.
That spirit of truth, humility, and long-suffering was unknown to
him. He sacrificed the truth whenever he judged it necessary to
his policy. This he did particularly in the case of Berenger,
archdeacon of Angers. But a spirit far superior to that of the
generality of pontiffs--a deep conviction of the justice of his
cause--undoubtedly animated him. He was bold, ambitious,
persevering in his designs, and at the same time skillful and
politic in the use of the means that would ensure success.
His first task was to organize the militia of the church.
It was necessary to gain strength before attacking the empire. A
council held at Rome removed the pastors from their families, and
compelled them to become the devoted adherents of the hierarchy.
The law of celibacy, planned and carried out by popes, who were
themselves monks, changed the clergy into a sort of monastic
order. Gregory VII claimed the same power over all the bishops
and priests of Christendom, that an abbot of Cluny exercises in
the order over which he presides. The legates of Hildebrand, who
compared themselves to the proconsuls of ancient Rome, travelled
through the provinces, depriving the pastors of their legitimate
wives; and, if necessary, the pope himself raised the populace
against the married clergy.
But chief of all, Gregory designed emancipating Rome from
its subjection to the empire. Never would he have dared conceive
so bold a scheme, if the troubles that afflicted the minority of
Henry IV, and the revolt of the German princes against that young
emperor, had not favored its execution. The pope was at this
time one of the magnates of the empire. Making common cause with
the other great vassals, he strengthened himself by the
aristocratic interest, and then forbade all ecclesiastics, under
pain of excommunication, to receive investiture from the emperor.
He broke the ancient ties that connected the Churches and their
pastors with the royal authority, but it was to bind them all to
the pontifical throne. To this throne he undertook to chain
priests, kings, and people, and to make the pope a universal
monarch. It was Rome alone that every priest should fear: it
was in Rome alone that he should hope. The kingdoms and
principalities of the earth are her domain. All kings were to
tremble at the thunderbolts hurled by the Jupiter of modern Rome.
Woe to him who resists! Subjects are released from their oaths
of allegiance; the whole country is placed under an interdict;
public worship ceases; the churches are closed; the bells are
mute; the sacraments are no longer administered; and the
malediction extends even to the dead, to whom the earth, at the
command of a haughty pontiff, denies the repose of the tomb.
The pope, subordinate from the very beginning of his
existence successively to the Roman, Frank, and German emperors,
was now free, and he trod for the first time as their equal, if
not their master. Yet Gregory VII was humbled in his turn: Rome
was taken, and Hildebrand compelled to flee. He died at Salerno,
exclaiming, "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity,
therefore do I die in exile." Who shall dare charge with
hypocrisy these words uttered on the very brink of the grave?
The successors of Gregory, like soldiers arriving after a
victory, threw themselves as conquerors on the enslaved Churches.
Spain rescued from Islamism, Prussia reclaimed from idolatry,
fell into the arms of the crowned priest. The Crusades, which
were undertaken at his instigation, extended and confirmed his
authority. The pious pilgrims, who in imagination had seen
saints and angels leading their armed bands,--who, entering
humble and barefoot within the walls of Jerusalem, burnt the Jews
in their synagogue, and watered with the blood of thousands of
Saracens the places where they came to trace the sacred footsteps
of the Prince of Peace,--carried into the East the name of the
pope, who had been forgotten there since he had exchanged the
supremacy of the Greeks for that of the Franks.
In another quarter the power of the Church effected what the
arms of the republic and of the empire had been unable to
accomplish. The Germans laid at the feet of a bishop those
tributes which their ancestors had refused to the most powerful
generals. Their princes, on succeeding to the imperial dignity,
imagined they received a crown from the popes, but it was a yoke
that was placed upon their necks. The kingdoms of Christendom,
already subject to the spiritual authority of Rome, now became
her serfs and tributaries.
Thus everything was changed in the Church.
It was at first a community of brethren, and now an absolute
monarchy was established in its bosom. All Christians were
priests of the living God, with humble pastors as their guides.
But a haughty head is upraised in the midst of these pastors; a
mysterious voice utters words full of pride; an iron hand compels
all men, great and small, rich and poor, bond and free, to wear
the badge of its power. The holy and primitive equality of souls
before God is lost sight of. At the voice of one man Christendom
is divided into two unequal parties: on the one side is a
separate caste of priests, daring to usurp the name of the
Church, and claiming to be invested with peculiar privileges in
the eyes of the Lord; and, on the other, servile flocks reduced
to a blind and passive submission--a people gagged and fettered,
and given over to a haughty caste. Every tribe, language, and
nation of Christendom, submits to the dominion of this spiritual
king, who has received power to conquer.
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 2
Grace--Dead Faith--Works--Unity and Duality--Pelagianism--
Salvation at the Hands of the Priests--Penance--Flagellations--
Indulgences--Works of Supererogation--Purgatory--The Tariff--
Jubilee--The Papacy and Christianity--State of Christendom.
But side by side with the principle that should pervade the
history of Christianity, was found another that should preside
over its doctrine. This was the great idea of Christianity-- the
idea of grace, of pardon, of amnesty, of the gift of eternal
life. This idea supposed in man an alienation from God, and an
inability of returning by any power of his own communion with
that infinitely holy being. The opposition between the true and
the false doctrine undoubtedly cannot be entirely summed up in
the question of salvation by faith or works. Nevertheless it is
its most striking characteristic. But further, salvation
considered as coming from man, is the creative principle of every
error and abuse. The excesses produced by this fundamental error
led to the Reformation, and by the profession of the contrary
principle it was carried out. This feature should therefore be
very prominent in an introduction to the history of that reform.
Salvation by grace was the second characteristic which
essentially distinguished the religion of God from all human
systems. What had now become of it? Had the Church preserved,
as a precious deposit, this great and primordial thought? Let us
trace its history.
The inhabitants of Jerusalem, of Asia, of Greece, and of
Rome, in the time of the first emperors, heard these glad
tidings: "By grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of
yourselves; it is the gift of God." At this proclamation of
peace, at this joyful news, at this word of power, many guilty
souls believed, and were drawn to Him who is the source of peace;
and numerous Christian Churches were formed in the midst of the
degenerate nations of that age.
But a great mistake was soon made as to the nature of this
saving faith. Faith, according to St. Paul, is the means by
which the whole being of the believer--his understanding, heart,
and will--enter into possession of the salvation purchased for
him by the incarnation and death of the Son of God. Jesus Christ
is apprehended by faith and from that hour becomes all things to
man and in man. He communicates a divine life to our human
nature; and man thus renewed, and freed from the chains of sin
and self, feels new affections and performs new works. Faith,
says the theologian in order to express his ideas, is the
subjective appropriation of the objective work of Christ. If
faith be not an appropriation of salvation, it is nothing; all
the Christian economy is thrown into confusion, the fountains of
the new life are sealed, and Christianity is overturned from its
foundations.
And this is what did happen. This practical view of faith
was gradually forgotten. Soon it became, what it still is to
many persons, a simple act of the understanding, a mere
submission to a superior authority.
From this first error there necessarily proceeded a second.
Faith being thus stripped of its practical character, it was
impossible to say that it alone had power to save: as works no
longer were its fruits, they were of necessity placed side by
side with it, and the doctrine that man is justified by faith and
by works prevailed in the Church. In place of that Christian
unity which comprises in a single principle justification and
works, grace and the law, doctrine and duty, succeeded that
melancholy duality which regards religion and morality as two
entirely distinct things--that fatal error, which, by separating
things that cannot live unless united, and by putting the soul on
one side and the body on the other, is the cause of spiritual
death. The words of the apostle, re-echoing across the interval
of ages, are--"Having begun in the spirit, are ye now made
perfect by the flesh?"
Another great error contributed still further to unsettle
the doctrine of grace: this was Pelagianism. Pelagius asserted
that human nature is not fallen--that there is no hereditary
corruption, and that man, having received the power to do good,
has only to will in order to perform. If good works consist only
in external acts, Pelagius is right. But if we look to the
motives whence these outward acts proceed, we find everywhere in
man's nature selfishness, forgetfulness of God, pollution, and
impotency. The Pelagian doctrine, expelled by Augustine from the
Church when it had presented itself boldly, insinuated itself as
demi-Pelagianism, and under the mask of the Augustine forms of
expression. This error spread with astonishing rapidity
throughout Christendom. The danger of the doctrine was
particularly manifested in this,--that by placing goodness
without, and not within, the heart, it set a great value on
external actions, legal observances, and penitential words. The
more these practices were observed, the more righteous man
became: by them heaven was gained; and soon the extravagant idea
prevailed that there are men who have advanced in holiness beyond
what was required of them.
Whilst Pelagianism corrupted the Christian doctrine, it
strengthened the hierarchy. The hand that lowered grace, exalted
the Church: for grace is God, the Church is man.
The more we feel the truth that all men are guilty before
God, the more also shall we cling to Christ as the only source of
Grace. How could we then place the Church in the same rank with
Christ, since it is but an assembly of all those who are found in
the same wretched state by nature? But so soon as we attribute
to man a peculiar holiness, a personal merit, everything is
changed. The clergy and the monks are looked upon as the most
natural channels through which to receive the grace of God. This
was what happened often after the times of Pelagius. Salvation,
taken from the hands of God, fell into those of the priests, who
set themselves in the place of our Lord. Souls thirsting for
pardon were no more to look to heaven, but to the Church, and
above all to its pretended head. To those blinded souls the
Roman pontiff was God. Hence the greatness of the popes--hence
unutterable abuses. The evil spread still further. When
Pelagianism laid down the doctrine that man could attain a state
of perfect sanctification, it affirmed also that the merits of
saints and martyrs might be applied to the Church. A peculiar
power was attributed to their intercession. Prayers were made to
them; their aid was invoked in all the sorrows of life; and a
read idolatry thus supplanted the adoration of the living and
true God.
At the same time, Pelagianism multiplied rites and
ceremonies. Man, imagining that he could and that he ought by
good works to render himself deserving of grace, saw no fitter
means of meriting it than acts of external worship. The
ceremonial law became infinitely complicated, and was soon put on
a level, to say the least, with the moral law. Thus were the
consciences of Christians burdened anew with a yoke that had been
declared insupportable in the times of the apostles.
But it was especially by the system of penance, which flowed
immediately from Pelagianism, that Christianity was perverted.
At first, penance had consisted in certain public expressions of
repentance, required by the Church from those who had been
excluded on account of scandals, and who desired to be received
again into its bosom.
By degrees penance was extended to every sin, even to the
most secret, and was considered as a sort of punishment to which
it was necessary to submit, in order to obtain the forgiveness of
God through the priest's absolution.
Ecclesiastical penance was thus confounded with Christian
repentance, without which there can be neither justification nor
sanctification.
Instead of looking to Christ for pardon through faith alone,
it was sought for principally in the Church through penitential
works.
Great importance was soon attached to external marks of
repentance--to tears, fasting, and mortification of the flesh;
and the inward regeneration of the heart, which alone constitutes
a real conversion, was forgotten.
As confession and penance are easier than the extirpation of
sin and the abandonment of vice, many ceased contending against
the lusts of the flesh, and preferred gratifying them at the
expense of a few mortifications.
The penitential works, thus substituted for the salvation of
God, were multiplied in the Church from Tertullian down to the
thirteenth century. Men were required to fast, to go barefoot,
to wear no linen, &c.; to quit their homes and their native land
for distant countries; or to renounce the world and embrace a
monastic life.
In the eleventh century voluntary flagellations were
superadded to these practices: somewhat later they became quite
a mania in Italy, which was then in a very disturbed state.
Nobles and peasants, old and young, even children of five years
of age, whose only covering was a cloth tied round the middle,
went in pairs, by hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands,
through the towns and villages, visiting the churches in the
depth of winter. Armed with scourges, they flogged each other
without pity, and the streets resounded with cries and groans
that drew tears from all who heard them.
Still, long before the disease had reached such a height,
the priest-ridden world had sighed for deliverance. The priests
themselves had found out, that if they did not apply a remedy
their usurped power would slip from their hands. They
accordingly invented that system of barter celebrated under the
title of Indulgences. They said to their penitents: "You cannot
accomplish the tasks imposed on you. Well! we, the priests of
God and your pastors, will take this heavy burden upon ourselves.
For a seven weeks' fast," said Regino, abbot of Prum, "you shall
pay twenty pence, if you are rich; ten, if less wealthy; and
three pence if you are poor; and so on for other matters."
Courageous men raised their voices against this traffic, but in
vain!
The pope soon discovered what advantages could be derived
from those indulgences. Alexander Hales, the irrefragable
doctor, invented in the thirteenth century a doctrine well
calculated to secure these vast revenues to the Papacy. A bull
of Clement VII declared it an article of faith. Jesus Christ, it
was said, had done much more than was necessary to reconcile God
to man. One single drop of his blood would have been sufficient.
But he shed it copiously, in order to form a treasure for his
Church that eternity can never exhaust. The supererogatory
merits of the saints, the reward of the good works they had done
beyond their obligation, have still further augmented this
treasure. Its keeping and management were confided to Christ's
vicar upon earth. He applies to each sinner, for the sins
committed after baptism, these merits of Jesus Christ and of the
saints, according to the measure and the quantity his sins
require. Who would venture to attack a custom of such holy
origin!
This inconceivable traffic was soon extended and
complicated. The philosophers of Alexandria had spoken of a fire
in which men were to be purified. Many ancient doctors had
adopted this notion; and Rome declared this philosophical opinion
a tenet of the Church. The pope by a bull annexed Purgatory to
his domain. In that place, he declared, men would have to
expiate the sins that could not be expiated here on earth; but
that indulgences would liberate their souls from that
intermediate state in which their sins would detain them. Thomas
Aquinas set forth this doctrine in his famous Summa Theologiae.
No means were spared to fill the mind with terror. The priests
depicted in horrible colors the torments inflicted by this
purifying fire on all who became its prey. In many Roman-
catholic countries we may still see paintings exhibited in the
churches and public places, wherein poor souls, from the midst of
glowing flames, invoke with anguish some alleviation of their
pain. Who could refuse the ransom which, falling into the
treasury of Rome, would redeem the soul from such torments?
Somewhat later, in order to reduce this traffic to a system,
they invented (probably under John XXII) the celebrated and
scandalous Tariff of Indulgences, which has gone through more
than forty editions. The least delicate ears would be offended
by an enumeration of all the horrors it contains. Incest, if not
detected, was to cost five groats; and six, if it was known.
There was a stated price for murder, infanticide, adultery,
perjury, burglary, &c. "O disgrace of Rome!" exclaims Claude
d'Espence, a Roman divine: and we may add, O disgrace of human
nature! for we can utter no reproach against Rome that does not
recoil on man himself. Rome is human nature exalted in some of
its worst propensities. We say this that we may speak the truth;
we say it also, that we may be just.
Boniface VIII, the most daring and ambitious pontiff after
Gregory VII, was enabled to effect still more than his
predecessors.
In the year 1300, he published a bull, in which he declared
to the Church that every hundred years all who made a pilgrimage
to Rome should receive a plenary indulgence. From all parts,
from Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, France, Spain, Germany,
and Hungary, people flocked in crowds. Old men of sixty and
seventy undertook the journey, and in one month two hundred
thousand pilgrims visited Rome. All these strangers brought rich
offerings; and the pope and the Romans saw their coffers
replenished.
Roman avaries soon fixed each Jubilee at fifty, then at
thirty-three, and lastly at twenty-five years' interval. Then,
for the greater convenience of purchasers, and the greater profit
of the sellers, both the jubilee and its indulgences were
transported from Rome to every market-place in Christendom. It
was no longer necessary to leave one's home. What others had
gone in search of beyond the Alps, each man could now buy at his
own door.
The evil could not become greater.
Then the Reformer appeared.
We have seen what had become of the principle that was
destined to govern the history of Christianity; we have seen also
what became of that which should have pervaded its doctrines:
both were lost.
To set up a mediatorial caste between God and man--to obtain
by works, by penance, and by money the salvation which is the
free gift of God--such is Popery.
To open to all, through Jesus Christ, without any human
mediator, without that power which calls itself the Church, free
access to the great boon of eternal life which God offers to man
--such is Christianity and the Reformation.
Popery is a lofty barrier erected by the labor of ages
between God and man. If any one desires to scale it, he must pay
or he must suffer; and even then he will not surmount it.
The Reformation is the power that has overthrown this
barrier, that has restored Christ to man, and has thus opened a
level path by which he may reach his Creator.
Popery interposes the Church between God and man.
Primitive Christianity and the Reformation bring God and man
face to face.
Popery separates them--the Gospel unites them.
After having thus traced the history of the decline and fall
of the two great principles that were to distinguish the religion
of "God from all human systems, let us see what were some of the
consequences of this immense transformation.
But first let us pay due honor to the Church of the Middle
Ages, which succeeded that of the apostles and of the fathers,
and which preceded that of the reformers. The Church was still
the Church, although fallen, and daily more and more enslaved:
that is to say, she was always the greatest friend of man. Her
hands, though bound, could still be raised to bless. Eminent
servants of Jesus Christ, who were true Protestants as regards
the essential doctrines of Christianity, diffused a cheering
light during the dark ages; and in the humblest convent, in the
remotest parish, might be found poor monks and poor priests to
alleviate great sufferings. The Catholic church was not the
Papacy. The latter was the oppressor, the former the oppressed.
The Reformation, which declared war against the one, came to
deliver the other. And it must be confessed that the Papacy
itself became at times in the hands of God, who brings good out
of evil, a necessary counterpoise to the power and ambition of
princes.
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 3
Religion--Relics--Easter Revels--Morals--Corruption--Disorders of
the Priests, Bishops, and Popes--A Papal Family--Alexander VI--
Caesar Borgia--Education--Ignorance--Ciceronians.
Let us now see what was the state of the Church previous to
the Reformation.
The nations of Christendom no longer looked to a holy and
living God for the free gift of eternal life. To obtain it, they
were obliged to have recourse to all the means that a
superstitious, fearful, and alarmed imagination could devise.
Heaven was filled with saints and mediators, whose duty it was to
solicit this mercy. Earth was filled with pious works,
sacrifices, observances, and ceremonies, by which it was to be
obtained. Here is a picture of the religion of this period
transmitted to us by one who was long a monk, and afterwards a
fellow-laborer of Luther's--by Myconius:--
"The sufferings and merits of Christ were looked upon as an
idle tale, or as the fictions of Homer. There was no thought of
faith by which we become partakers of the Saviour's righteousness
and of the heritage of eternal life. Christ was looked upon as a
severe judge, prepared to condemn all who should not have
recourse to the intercession of the saints, or to the papal
indulgences. Other intercessors appeared in his place:--first the
Virgin Mary, like the Diana of paganism, and then the saints,
whose numbers were continually augmented by the popes. These
mediators granted their intercession only to such applicants as
had deserved well of the orders founded by them. For this it was
necessary to do, not what God had commanded in his Word, but to
perform a number of works invented by monks and priests, and
which brought money to the treasury. These works were Ave-
Marias, the prayers of Saint Ursula and of Saint Bridget: they
must chant and cry night and day. There were as many resorts for
pilgrims as there were mountains, forests, and valleys. But
these penances might be compounded for with money. The people,
therefore, brought to the convents and to the priests money and
every thing that had any value--fowls, ducks, geese, eggs, wax,
straw, butter, and cheese. Then the hymns resounded, the bells
rang, incense filled the sanctuary, sacrifices were offered up,
the larders overflowed, the glasses went round, and masses
terminated and concealed these pious orgies. The bishops no
longer preached, but they consecrated priests, bells, monks,
churches, chapels, images, books, and cemeteries; and all this
brought in a large revenue. Bones, arms, and feet were preserved
in gold and silver boxes; they were given out during mass for the
faithful to kiss, and this too was a source of great profit.
"All these people maintained that the pope, 'sitting as God
in the temple of God,' could not err, and they would not suffer
any contradiction."
In the church of All Saints at Wittemberg was shown a
fragment of Noah's ark, some soot from the furnace of the Three
Children, a Piece of wood from the cradle of Jesus Christ, some
hair from the beard of St. Christopher, and nineteen thousand
other relics of greater or less value. At Schaffhausen was
exhibited the breath of St. Joseph that Nicodemus had received in
his glove. In Wurtemberg you might meet a seller of indulgences,
vending his merchandise, his head adorned with a large feather
plucked from the wing of St. Michael. But it was not necessary
to travel far in search of these precious treasures. Men who
farmed the relics traversed the whole country, hawking them about
the rural districts (as has since been the case with the Holy
Scriptures), and carrying them to the houses of the faithful, to
spare them the trouble and expense of a pilgrimage. They were
exhibited with pomp in the churches. These wandering hawkers
paid a stipulated sum to the owners of the relics,--a percentage
on their profits. The kingdom of heaven had disappeared, and in
its place a market of abominations had been opened upon earth.
Thus a spirit of profanity had invaded religion; and the
holiest recollections of the Church, the seasons which more
particularly summoned the faithful to holy meditation and love,
were disgraced by buffoonery and heathenish profanation. The
"Revels of Easter" held a distinguished place in the records of
the Church. As the festival of the resurrection of Christ ought
to be celebrated with joy, the preachers studied in their sermons
everything that might raise a laugh among their hearers. One
imitated the note of the cuckoo; another hissed like a goose.
One dragged to the altar a layman robed in a monk's frock; a
second related the most indecent stories; and a third recounted
the tricks of St. Peter, and among others, how in a tavern he had
cheated his host by not paying his reckoning. The lower clergy
took advantage of this opportunity to ridicule their superiors.
The churches were converted into a mere stage for mountebanks,
and the priests into buffoons.
If such was the state of religion, what must have been the
state of morals?
Undoubtedly the corruption was not at that time universal.
Justice requires that this should not be forgotten. The
Reformation elicited numerous examples of piety, righteousness,
and strength of mind. The spontaneous action of God's power was
the cause; but how can we deny that he had beforehand deposited
the seeds of this new life in the bosom of the Church? If in our
days we should bring together all the immoralities, all the
turpitudes committed in a single country, the mass of corruption
would doubtless shock us still. Nevertheless, the evil at this
period wore a character and universality that it has not borne
subsequently. And, above all, the mystery of iniquity desolated
the holy places, as it has not been permitted to do since the
days of the Reformation.
Morality had declined with the decline of faith. The
tidings of the gift of eternal life is the power of God to
regenerate man. Take away the salvation which God has given, and
you take away sanctification and good works. And this result
followed.
The doctrine and the sale of indulgences were powerful
incentives to evil among an ignorant people. True, according to
the Church, indulgences could benefit those only who promised to
amend their lives, and who kept their word. But what could be
expected from a tenet invented solely with a view to the profit
that might be derived from it? The venders of indulgences were
naturally tempted, for the better sale of their merchandise, to
present their wares to the people in the most attractive and
seducing aspect. The learned themselves did not fully understand
the doctrine. All that the multitude saw in them was, that they
permitted men to sin; and the merchants were not over eager to
disipate an error so favorable to their sale.
What disorders and crimes were committed in these dark ages,
when impunity was to be purchased by money! What had man to
fear, when a small contribution towards building a church secured
him from the fear of punishment in the world to come? What hope
could there be of revival when all communication between God and
man was cut off, and man, an alien from God, who is the spirit
and the life, moved only in a round of paltry ceremonies and
sensual observances, in an atmosphere of death!
The priests were the first who yielded to this corrupting
influence. By desiring to exalt themselves they became abased.
They had aimed at robbing God of a ray of his glory, and placing
it in their own bosoms; but their attempt had proved vain, and
they had only hidden there a leaven of corruption stolen from the
power of evil. The history of the age swarms with scandals. In
many places, the people were delighted at seeing a priest keep a
mistress, that the married women might be safe from his
seductions. What humiliating scenes did the house of a pastor in
those days present! The wretched man supported the woman and the
children she had borne him with the tithes and offerings. His
conscience was troubled: he blushed in the presence of the
people, before his domestics, and before God. The mother,
fearing to come to want if the priest should die, made provision
against it beforehand, and robbed her own house. Her honor was
lost. Her children were ever a living accusation against her.
Despised by all, they plunged into quarrels and debauchery. Such
was the family of the priest!......These were frightful scenes,
by which the people knew how to profit.
The rural districts were the scene of numerous disorders.
The abodes of the clergy were often dens of corruption.
Corneille Adrian at Bruges, the abbot Trinkler at Cappel,
imitated the manners of the East, and had their harems. Priests,
consorting with dissolute characters, frequented the taverns,
played at dice, and crowned their orgies with quarrels and
blasphemy.
The council of Schaffhausen forbade the priests to dance in
public, except at marriages, and to carry more than one kind of
arms: they decreed also that all who were found in houses of ill
fame should be unfrocked. In the archbishopric of Mentz, they
scaled the walls by night, and created all kinds of disorder and
confusion in the inns and taverns, and broke the doors and locks.
In many places the priest paid the bishop a regular tax for the
woman with whom he lived, and for each child he had by her. A
German bishop said publicly one day, at a great entertainment,
that in one year eleven thousand priests had presented themselves
before him for that purpose. It is Erasmus who relates this.
If we go higher in the hierarchial order, we find the
corruption not less great. The dignitaries of the Church
preferred the tumult of camps to the hymns of the altar. To be
able, lance in hand, to reduce his neighbors to obedience was one
of the chief qualifications of a bishop. Baldwin, archbishop of
Treves, was continually at war with his neighbors and his
vassals: he demolished their castles, built strongholds, and
thought of nothing but the extension of his territory. A certain
bishop of Eichstadt, when administering justice, wore a coat of
mail under his robes, and held a large sword in his hand. He
used to say he was not afraid of five Bavarians, provided they
did but attack him in fair fight. Everywhere the bishops were
continually at war with their towns. The citizens demanded
liberty, the bishops required implicit obedience. If the latter
gained the victory, they punished the revolters by sacrificing
numerous victims to their vengeance; but the flame of
insurrection burst out again, at the very moment when it was
thought to be extinguished.
And what a spectacle was presented by the pontifical throne
in the times immediately preceding the Reformation! Rome, it
must be acknowledged, had seldom witnessed so much infamy.
Rodrigo Borgia, after having lived with a Roman lady, had
continued the same illicit connection with one of her daughters,
named Rosa Vanozza, by whom he had five children. He was a
cardinal and archbishop, living at Rome with Vanozza and other
women, visiting the churches and the hospitals, when the death of
Innocent VIII created a vacancy in the pontifical chair. He
succeeded in obtaining it by bribing each cardinal at a
stipulated price. Four mules laden with silver publicly entered
the palace of Sforza, one of the most influential of the
cardinals. Borgia became pope under the name of Alexander VI,
and rejoiced in thus attaining the summit of earthly felicity.
On the day of his coronation, his son Caesar, a youth of
Ferocious and dissolute manners, was created archbishop of
Valencia and bishop of Pampeluna. He next celebrated in the
Vatican the marriage of his daughter Lucretia, by festivities at
which his mistress, Julia Bella, was present, and which were
enlivened by licentious plays and songs. "All the clergy," says
an historian, "kept mistresses, and all the convents of the
capital were houses of ill fame." Caesar Borgia espoused the
cause of the Guelfs; and when by their assistance he had
destroyed the Ghibellines, he turned upon the Guelfs and crushed
them in their turn. But he desired to share alone in all these
spoils. In 1497, Alexander gave the duchy of Benevento to his
eldest son. The duke suddenly disappeared. A faggot-dealer, on
the banks of the Tiber, one George Schiavoni, had seen a dead
body thrown into the stream during the night; but he said nothing
of it, as being a common occurrence. The body of the duke was
found. His brother Caesar had been the instigator of his death.
this was not enough. His brother-in-law stood in his way: one
day Caesar caused him to be stabbed on the very stairs of the
pontifical palace. He was carried bleeding to his own
apartments. His wife and sister did not leave him; and fearful
that Caesar would employ poison, they prepared his meals with
their own hands. Alexander set a guard on the doors; but Caesar
ridiculed these precautions, and remarked, as the pope was about
to pay a visit to his son-in-law, "What is not done at dinner
will be done at supper." Accordingly, one day he gained
admittance to the chamber of the convalescent, turned out the
wife and sister, and calling in his executioner Michilotto, the
only man in whom he placed any confidence, ordered his brother-
in-law to be strangled before his eyes. Alexander had a
favorite, Perotto, whose influence also offended the young duke.
He rushed upon him: Perotto took refuge under the pontifical
mantle, and clasped the pope in his arms. Caesar stabbed him,
and the blood of his victim spirted in the face of the pontiff.
"The pope," adds a contemporary and eye-witness of these scenes,
"loves the duke his son, and lives in great fear of him."
Caesar was the handsomest and strongest man of his age. Six
wild bulls fell easily beneath his blows in single combat. Every
morning some new victim was found, who had been assassinated
during the night in the Roman streets. Poison carried off those
whom the dagger could not reach. No one dared move or breathe in
Rome, for fear that his turn should come next. Caesar Borgia was
the hero of crime. That spot of earth in which iniquity had
attained such a height was the throne of the pontiffs. When man
gives himself up to the powers of evil, the higher he claims to
be exalted before God, the lower he sinks into the abyss of hell.
The dissolute entertainments given by the pope, his son Caesar,
and his daughter Lucretia, in the pontifical palace, cannot be
described or even thought of without shuddering. The impure
groves of antiquity saw nothing like them. Historians have
accused Alexander and Luctretia of incest; but this charge does
not appear sufficiently established. The pope had prepared
poison in a box of sweetmeats that was to be served up after a
sumptuous repast: the cardinal for whom it was intended being
forewarned, gained over the attendant, and the poisoned box was
set before Alexander. He ate of it and died. "The whole city
ran together, and could not satiate their eyes with gazing on
this dead viper."
Such was the man who filled the papal chair at the beginning
of the century in which the Reformation burst forth.
Thus had the clergy brought not only themselves but religion
into disrepute. Well might a powerful voice exclaim: "The
ecclesiastical order is opposed to God and to his glory. The
people know it well; and this is but too plainly shown by the
many songs, proverbs, and jokes against the priests, that are
current among the commonalty, and all those caricatures of monks
and priests on every wall, and even on the playing-cards. Every
one feels a loathing on seeing or hearing a priest in the
distance." It is Luther who speaks thus.
The evil had spread through all ranks: "a strong delusion"
had been sent among men; the corruption of manners corresponded
with the corruption of faith. A mystery of iniquity oppressed
the enslaved Church of Christ.
Another consequence necessarily flowed from the neglect into
which the fundamental doctrine of the gospel had fallen.
Ignorance of the understanding accompanied the corruption of the
heart. The priests having taken into their hands the
distribution of the salvation that belongs only to God, had
secured a sufficient title to the respect of the people. What
need had they to study sacred learning? It was no longer a
question of explaining the Scriptures, but of granting letters of
indulgence; and for this ministry it was not necessary to have
acquired much learning.
In country places, they chose for preachers, says
Wimpheling, "miserable wretches whom they had previously raised
from beggary, and who had been cooks, musicians, huntsmen,
stable-boys, and even worse."
The superior clergy themselves were often sunk in great
ignorance. A bishop of Dunfeld congratulated himself on having
never learnt either Greek or Hebrew. The monks asserted that all
heresies arose from those two languages, and particularly from
the Greek. "The New Testament," said one of them, "is a book
full of serpents and thorns. Greek," continued he, "is a new and
recently invented language, and we must be upon our guard against
it. As for Hebrew, my dear brethren, it is certain that all who
learn it, immediately become Jews." Heresbach, a friend of
Erasmus, and a respectable author, reports these expressions.
Thomas Linacer, a learned and celebrated ecclesiastic, had never
read the New Testament. In his latter days (in 1524), he called
for a copy, but quickly threw it away from him with an oath,
because on opening it his eyes had glanced upon these words:
"But I say unto you, Swear not at all." Now he was a great
swearer. "Either this is not the Gospel," said he, "or else we
are not Christians." Even the faculty of theology at Paris
scrupled not to declare to the parliament: "Religion is ruined,
if you permit the study of Greek and Hebrew."
If any learning was found here and there among the clergy,
it was not in sacred literature. The Ciceronians of Italy
affected a great contempt for the Bible on account of its style.
Pretended priests of the Church of Christ translated the writings
of holy men, inspired by the Spirit of God, in the style of
Virgil and of Horace, to accommodate their language to the ears
of good society. Cardinal Bembo, instead of the Holy Ghost, used
to write the breath of the heavenly zephyr; for the expression to
forgive sins--to bend the mancs and the sovereign gods; and for
Christ, the Son of God--Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter.
Finding one day the worthy Sadolet engaged in translating the
Epistle to the Romans, he said to him: "Leave these childish
matters: such fooleries do not become a sensible man."
These were some of the consequences of the system that then
oppressed Christendom. This picture undoubtedly demonstrates the
corruption of the Church, and the necessity for a reformation.
Such was our design in writing this sketch. The vital doctrines
of Christianity had almost entirely disappeared, and with them
the life and light that constitute the essence of the religion of
God. The material strength of the Church was gone. It lay an
exhausted, enfeebled, and almost lifeless body, extended over
that part of the world which the Roman empire had occupied.
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 4
Imperishable Nature of Christianity--Two Laws of God--Apparent
Strength of Rome--Secret Opposition--Decline--Threefold
Opposition--Kings and People-- Transformation of the Church--
The Pope judged in Italy--Discoveries of Kings and their
Subjects--Frederick the Wise--Moderation and Expectation.
The evils which thus afflicted Christendom; superstition,
unbelief, ignorance, vain speculation, and corruption of morals--
the natural fruits of the hearts of man--were not new upon the
earth. Often they had appeared in the history of nations. They
had invaded, especially in the East, the different religious
systems that had seen their day of glory. Those enervated
systems had sunk under these evils, had fallen under their
attack, and not one of them had ever risen again.
Was Christianity now to undergo the same fate? Would it be
lost like these old national religions? Would the blow that had
caused their death be sufficient to deprive it of life? Could
nothing save it? Will these hostile powers that overwhelm it,
and which have already overthrown so many various systems of
worship, be able to seat themselves with out resistance on the
ruins of the Church of Jesus Christ?
No! There is in Christianity what none of these national
systems possessed. It does not, like them, present certain
general ideas mingled with tradition and fable, destined to fall
sooner or later under the assault of reason: it contains a pure
and undefiled truth, founded on facts capable of bearing the
examination of every upright and enlightened mind. Christianity
does not propose merely to excite in man certain vague religious
feelings, whose charm once lost can never be recovered: its
object is to satisfy, and it does really satisfy, all the
religious wants of human nature, whatever may be the degree of
development which it has attained. It is not the work of man,
whose labors pass away and are forgotten; it is the work of God,
who upholds what he has created; and it has the promise of its
Divine Head as the pledge of its duration.
It is impossible for human nature ever to rise superior to
Christianity. And if for a time man thought he could do without
it, it soon appeared to him with fresh youth and a new life, as
the only remedy for souls. The degenerate nations then returned
with new ardour toward those ancient, simple, and powerful
truths, which in the hour of their infatuation they had despised.
In fact, Christianity manifested in the sixteenth century
the same regenerative power that it had exercised at first.
After fifteen centuries the same truths produced the same
effects. In the day of the Reformation, as in the time of Peter
and Paul, the Gospel overthrew mighty obstacles with irresistible
force. Its sovereign power displayed its efficacy from north to
south among nations the most dissimilar in manners, character,
and intellectual development. Then as in the times of Stephen
and James, it kindled the fire of enthusiasm and devotedness in
the lifeless nations, and elevated them to the height of
martyrdom.
How was this revival of the church accomplished? We observe
here two laws by which God governs the Church in all times.
First he prepares slowly and from afar that which he designs
to accomplish. He has ages in which to work.
Then, when the time is come, he effects the greatest
results by the smallest means. It is thus he acts in nature and
in history. When he wishes to produce a majestic tree, he
deposits a small seed in the bosom of the earth; when he wishes
to renovate his Church, he employs the lowliest instruments to
accomplish what emperors and learned and distinguished men in the
Church could not effect. We shall soon go in search of, and we
shall discover, that small seed which a Divine hand placed in the
earth in the days of the Reformation. But we must here
distinguish and recognize the different means by which God
prepared the way for this great revolution.
At the period when the reformation was about to burst forth,
Rome appeared in peace and security. One might have said that
nothing could ever disturb her in her triumph: great victories
had been achieved by her. The general councils--those upper and
lower chambers of Catholicism--had been subdued. The Waldenses
and the Hussites had been crushed. No university, except perhaps
that of Paris, which sometimes raised its voice at the signal of
its kings, doubted the infallibility of the oracles of Rome.
Every one seemed to have taken his own share of its power. The
higher orders of the clergy preferred giving to a distant chief
the tithe of their revenues, and tranquilly to consume the
remainder, to risking all for an independence that would cost
them dear and would bring them little profit. The inferior
clergy, attracted by the prospect of brilliant stations, which
their ambition painted and discovered in the distance, willingly
purchased by a little slavery the faltering hopes they cherishe