ill. The father died after a few days, but the vigour of youth

aided the son’s recovery. Cæsar Borgia was at a later period cast into prison by Julius II., and fell in A.D. 1507 in the service of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre. It was generally believed that Alexander died of poisoned wine prepared by his son to secure the removal of a rich cardinal. The father as well as the two brothers were suspected of incest with Lucretia. This pope, too, did not hesitate to intrigue with the Turkish sultan against Charles VIII. of France. With unexampled assumption, during the contention of Portugal and Spain about the American discoveries, he presented Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1493 with all islands and continents that had been discovered or might yet be discovered lying beyond a line of demarcation drawn from the North to the South Pole. Once only, when grieving over the death of his favourite son, had this pope a twinge of conscience. He had resolved, he said, to devote himself to his spiritual calling and secure a reform in church discipline. But when the commission appointed for this purpose presented its first reform proposals the momentary emotion had already passed away. Nothing was further from his thought than the calling of an œcumenical council, which not only the king of France, but also the Florentine reformer Savonarola demanded (§ 119, 11).

§ 110.13. =Julius II., A.D. 1503-1513.=--Alexander’s successor, Pius III., son of a sister of Pius II., died after a twenty-six days’ pontificate. He was followed by a nephew of Sixtus IV., a bitter enemy of the Borgias, who took the name of Julius II. He was essentially a warrior, with nothing of the priest about him. He was also a lover of art, and carried on the works which his uncle had begun. His youthful excesses had seriously impaired his health. As pope, he was not free from nepotism and simony, in controversy passionate, and in policy intriguing and faithless. He transformed the States of the Church into a temporal despotic monarchy, and was himself incessantly engaged in war. When he broke with France, which held Milan from A.D. 1499 with Alexander’s consent, =Louis XII.=, A.D. 1498-1515, convened a French national council at Tours in A.D. 1510. This council renewed the Pragmatic Sanction, which in a weak hour Louis XI., in A.D. 1462, had abrogated, and had in consequence obtained, in A.D. 1469, the title _Rex Christianissimus_, and refused to obey the pope. Also =Maximilian I.=, A.D. 1493-1519, who even without papal coronation called himself “elected Roman emperor,” directed the learned humanist Wimpfeling of Heidelberg to collect the gravamina of the Germans against the Roman curia, and to sketch out a Pragmatic Sanction for Germany. France and Germany, with five revolting cardinals, convoked an œcumenical council at Pisa, in A.D. 1511. Half in sport, half in earnest, Maximilian spoke of placing on his own head the tiara, as well as the imperial crown. The pope put Pisa, where only a few French prelates ventured, under an interdict, and anathematized the king of France, who then had medals cast, with the inscription, _Perdam Babylonis nomen_. In a murderous battle at Ravenna, in A.D. 1512, the army of the papal league was all but annihilated. But two months later, the French, by the revolt of the Milanese and the successes of the Swiss, were driven to their homes ingloriously, and the schismatic council, which had been shifted from Pisa to Milan, had to withdraw to Lyons, where it was dissolved by the pope “on account of its many crimes.” Meanwhile the pope had summoned a council to meet at Rome, the =fifth œcumenical Lateran Council=, A.D. 1512-1517, at which however only fifty-three Italian bishops were present. There the ban upon the king of France was renewed, but a concordat was concluded with Maximilian, redressing the more serious grievances of which he had complained. The pope succeeded in freeing Northern Italy from French oppression, and only his early death prevented him from delivering Southern Italy from the Spanish yoke.

§ 110.14. =Leo X., A.D. 1513-1521.=--John, son of Lorenzo Medici, who was cardinal in A.D. 1488, in his eighteenth year, when thirty-eight years of age ascended the papal throne as Leo X.; a great patron of the Renaissance, but luxurious and pleasure-loving, extravagant and frivolous, without a spark of religion (§ 120, 1), and a zealous promoter of the fortunes of his own family. The attempt of Louis XII., with the help of Venice, to regain Milan failed, and being hard pressed in his own country by Henry VIII. of England, the French king decided at last, in Dec., 1513, to end the schism and recognise the Lateran Council. His successor, =Francis I.=, A.D. 1515-1547, was more fortunate. In the battle of Marignano he gained a brilliant victory over the brave Swiss, in consequence of which the duchy of Milan fell again into the hands of France. At Bologna, in A.D. 1516, the pope in person now greeted the king, who proferred him obedience, and concluded a political league and an ecclesiastical concordat with his holiness, abrogating the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., but maintaining the king’s right to nominate all bishops and abbots of his realm, with reservation of the annats for the papal treasury. The Lateran Council, though attended only by Italian bishops, was pronounced œcumenical. During its five years’ sittings it had issued concordats for Germany and France, the papal bull _Pastor æternus_ was solemnly ratified, which renewed the bull _Unam sanctam_ and by various forgeries proved the power of the pope to be superior to the authority of councils, quieted the bishops’ objections to the privileges of the begging friars by a compromise, and as a protection against heresy gave the right of the censorship of the press to bishops, while explicitly asserting the immateriality, individuality, and immortality of the human soul.[328]

§ 110.15. =Papal Claims to Sovereignty.=--From A.D. 1319 the popes secured large revenues from the Annats, revenues for a full year of all vacancies; the Reservations, the holding of rich benefices and bestowing them upon payment of large sums; the Expectances, naming for payment a successor to an incumbent still living; the Offices held _in commendam_, provisionally on payment of a part of the incomes; the _Jus spoliarum_, the Holy See being the legitimate heir of all property gained by Churchmen from their offices; the Taxing of Church property for particularly pressing calls; innumerable Indulgences, Absolutions, Dispensations, etc. The happy thought occurred to Paul II., in A.D. 1469, to extend the law of Annats to such ecclesiastical institutions as belonged to corporations. He reckoned the lifetime of a prelate at fifteen years, and so claimed his tax of such institutions every fifteenth year. The doctrine of the papal infallibility in matters of faith, under the influence of the reforming councils of the 15th century, was rather less in favour than before. The rigid Franciscans opposed the papal doctrine of poverty (§§ 98, 4; 112, 2); and John XXII. was almost unanimously charged by his contemporaries with heresy, because of his views about the vision of God. Even the most zealous curialists of the 15th century did not venture to ascribe to the pope absolute infallibility. A distinction was made between the infallibility of the office, which is absolute, and that of the person, which is only relative; a pope who falls into error and heresy thereby ceases to be pope and infallible. This was the opinion of the Dominican Torquemada (§ 112, 4), whom Eugenius IV. rewarded at the Basel Council with a cardinalate and the title of _Defensor fidei_, as the most zealous defender of papal absolutism. From the 14th century the popes have worn the triple crown. The three tiers of the tiara, richly ornamented with precious stones, indicated the power of the pope over heaven by his canonizing, over purgatory by his granting of indulgences, and over the earth by his pronouncing anathemas. Until the papal court retired to Avignon the Lateran was the usual residence of the popes, and after the ending of the schism, the Vatican.[329]

§ 110.16. =The Papal Curia.=--The chief courts of the papal government are spoken of collectively as the curia, their members being taken from the higher clergy. The following are the most important: the _Cancellaria Romana_, to which belonged the administration of affairs pertaining to the pope and the college of cardinals; the _Dataria Romana_, which had to do with matters of grace not kept secret, such as absolutions, dispensations, etc.; while the _Pœnitentiaria Romana_ dealt with matters which were kept secret; the _Camera Romana_, which administered the papal finances; and the _Rota Romana_, which was the supreme court of justice. Important decrees issued by the pope himself with the approval of the cardinals are called _bulls_. They are written on parchment in the Gothic character in Latin, stamped with the great seal of the Roman church, and secured in a metal case. The word bull was originally applied to the case, then to the seal, and at last to the document itself. Less important decrees, for which the advice of the cardinals had not been asked, are called _briefs_. The brief is usually written on parchment, in the ordinary Roman characters, and sealed in red wax with the pope’s private seal, the fisherman’s ring.

§ 111. THE CLERGY.

Provincial synods had now lost almost all their importance, and were rarely held, and then for the most part under the presidency of a papal legate. The cathedral chapters afforded welcome provision for the younger sons of the nobles, who were nothing behind their elder brothers in worldliness of life and conversation. For their own selfish interests they limited the number of members of the chapter, and demanded as a qualification evidence of at least sixteen ancestors. The political significance of the prelates was in France very small, and as champions of the Gallican liberties they were less enthusiastic than the University of Paris and the Parliament. In England they formed an influential order in the State, with carefully defined rights; and in Germany, as princes of the empire, especially the clerical elector princes, their political importance was very great. In Spain, on the other hand, at the end of the 15th century, by the ecclesiastico-political reformation endeavours of Ferdinand “the Catholic” and Isabella (§ 118, 7), the higher clergy were made completely dependent upon the Crown.

§ 111.1. =The Moral Condition of the Clergy= was in general very low. The bishops mostly lived in open concubinage. The lower secular clergy followed their example, and had toleration granted by paying a yearly tax to the bishop. The people, distinguishing office and person, made no objection, but rather looked on it as a sort of protection to their wives and daughters from the dangers of the confessional. Especially in Italy, unnatural vice was widely spread among the clergy. At Constance and Basel it was thought to cure such evils by giving permission to priests to marry; but it was feared that the ecclesiastical revenues would be made heritable, and the clergy brought too much under the State.--The mendicant orders were allowed to hear confession everywhere, and when John de Polliaco, a Prussian doctor, maintained that the local clergy only should be taken as confessors, John XXII., in A.D. 1322, pronounced his views heretical.

§ 111.2. The French concordat of A.D. 1516 (§ 110, 14), which gave the king the right of appointing commendator abbots (§ 85, 5), to almost all the cloisters, induced many of the younger sons of old noble families to take orders, so as to obtain rich sinecures or offices, which they could hold _in commendam_. They bore a semi-clerical character, and had the title of =abbé=, which gradually came to be given to all the secular clergy of higher culture and social position. In Italy too it became customary to give the title =abbate= to the younger clergy of high rank, before receiving ordination.

§ 112. MONASTIC ORDERS AND SOCIETIES.

The corruption of monastic life was becoming more evident from day to day. Immorality, sloth, and unnatural vice only too often found a nursery behind the cloister walls. Monks and nuns of neighbouring convents lived in open sin with one another, so that the author of the book _De ruina ecclesia_ (§ 118, 4, c) thinks that _Virginem velare_ is the same as _Virginem ad scortandum exponere_. In the Benedictine order the corruption was most complete. The rich cloisters, after the example of their founder, divided their revenues among their several members (_proprietarii_). Science was disregarded, and they cared only for good living. The celebrated Scottish cloister (§ 98, 1) of St. James, at Regensburg, in the 14th century, had a regular tavern within its walls, and there was a current saying, _Uxor amissa in monasterio Scotorum quæri debet_. The mendicants represented even yet relatively the better side of monasticism, and maintained their character as exponents of theological learning. Only the Carthusians, however, still held fast to the ancient strict discipline of their order.

§ 112.1. =The Benedictine Orders.=--For the reorganization of this order, which had abandoned itself to good living and luxury, Clement V., at the Council of Vienna, A.D. 1311, issued a set of ordinances which aimed principally at the restoration of monastic discipline and the revival of learning among the monks. But they were of little or no avail. Benedict XII. therefore found it necessary, in A.D. 1336, with the co-operation of distinguished French abbots, to draw up a new constitution for the Benedictines, which after him was called the Benedictina. The houses of Black Friars were to be divided into thirty-six provinces, and each of them was to hold every third year a provincial chapter for conference and determination of cases. In each abbey there should be a daily penitential chapter for maintaining discipline, and an annual chapter for giving a reckoning of accounts. In order to reawaken interest in scientific studies, it was enjoined that from every cloister a number of the abler monks should be maintained at a university, at the cost of the cloister, to study theology and canon law. But the disciplinary prescriptions of the Benedictina were powerless before the attractions of good living, and the proposals for organization were repugnant to the proud independence of monks and abbots. The enactments in favour of scientific pursuits led to better results. The first really successful attempt at reforming the cloisters was made, in A.D. 1435, by the general chapter of the Brothers of the Common Life, who not only dealt with their own institutions, but also with all the Benedictine monasteries throughout the whole of the West. The soul of this movement was Joh. Busch, monk in Windesheim, then prior in various monasteries, and finally provost of Sulte, near Hildesheim, A.D. 1458-1479. The so called _Bursfeld Union_ or Congregation resulted from his intercourse with the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Bursfeld, on the Weser, John of Hagen (ab Andagine). Notwithstanding the bitter hostility of corrupt monks and nuns, there were in a short time seventy-five monasteries under this Bursfeld rule, where the original strictness of the monastic life was enforced. The rule was confirmed by the council of A.D. 1440, and subsequently by Pius II. Most of the cloisters under this rule joined the Lutheran reformation of the 16th century, and Bursfeld itself is at this day the seat of a titular Lutheran abbot.--A new branch of the Benedictine order, the =Olivetans=, was founded by Bernard Tolomæi. Blindness having obliged him to abandon his teaching of philosophy at Siena, the blessed Virgin restored him his sight; and then, in A.D. 1313, he forsook the world, and withdrew with certain companions into almost inaccessible mountain recesses, ten miles from Siena. Disciples gathered around him from all sides. He built a cloister on a hill, which he called the Mount of Olives, and founded under the Benedictine rule a congregation of the Most Blessed Virgin of the Mount of Olives, which obtained the sanction of John XXII. Tolomæi became its first general, in A.D. 1322, and held the office till his death, caused by infection caught while attending the plague stricken in A.D. 1348. There were new elections of abbots every third year. The Olivetans were zealous worshippers of Mary, and strict ascetics. In several of their cloisters, which numbered as many as one hundred, the study of theology and philosophy was diligently prosecuted. They embraced also an order of nuns, founded by St. Francisca Romana.

§ 112.2. =The Franciscans.=--At the Council of Vienna, in A.D. 1312, Clement V. renewed the decree of Nicholas III., and by the constitution _Exivi de paradiso_ decided in favour of the stricter view (§ 98, 4), but ordered all rigorists to submit to their order. But neither this nor the solemn ratification of his predecessor’s decisions by John XXII. in A.D. 1317 put an end to the division. The contention was now of a twofold kind. The =Spirituals= confined their opposition to a rigoristic interpretation of the vow of poverty. The =Fraticelli= carried their opposition into many other departments. They exaggerated the demand of poverty to the utmost, but also repudiated the primacy of the pope, the jurisdiction of bishops, the admissibility of oaths, etc. In the south of France within a few years 115 of them had perished at the stake; and the Spirituals also suffered severely.--The Dominicans were the cause of a new split in the Seraphic order. The Inquisition at Narbonne had, in A.D. 1321, condemned to the stake a Beghard who had affirmed, what to the Dominicans seemed a heretical proposition, that Christ and the apostles had neither personal nor common property. The Franciscans, who, on the plea of a pretended transference of their property to the pope, claimed to be without possessions, pronounced that proposition orthodox, and the Dominicans complained to John XXII. He pronounced in favour of the Dominicans, and declared the Franciscans’ transference of property illusory; and finding this decision contrary to decrees of previous popes, he asserted the right of any pontiff to reverse the findings of his predecessors. The Franciscans were driven more and more into open revolt against the pope. They made common cause with the persecuted Spirituals, and like them sought support from the Italian Ghibellines and the emperor, Louis the Bavarian (§ 110, 3). The pope summoned their general, Michael of Cesena, to Avignon; and while detaining him there sought unsuccessfully to obtain his deposition by the general synod of the order. Michael, with two like-minded brothers, William Occam (§ 113, 3) and Bonagratia of Bergamo, escaped to Pisa in a ship of war, which the emperor sent for them in A.D. 1328. There, in the name of his order, he appealed to an œcumenical council to have the papal excommunication and deposition annulled which had now been issued against him. After the disastrous Italian campaign in A.D. 1330, the excommunicated churchmen accompanied the emperor to Munich, where they conducted a literary defence of their rights and privileges, and charged the pope with a multitude of heresies. Michael died at Munich, in A.D. 1342.--After the overthrow of the schismatic Minorite pope, Nicholas V. (§ 110, 3), the opposition soon gave in its submission. But to the end of his life John XXII. was a bloody persecutor of all schismatical Franciscans, who showed a fanatical love of martyrdom, rather than abate one iota of their opposition to the possession of property.

§ 112.3. The strict and lax tendencies were brought to light in connection with successive attempts at reformation. In A.D. 1368 Paolucci of Foligni founded the fraternity of Sandal-wearers, which embraced the remnants of the Cœlestine eremites (§ 98, 4). This strict rule was soon modified so as to admit of the possession of immovable property and living together in conventual establishments. Those who adhered rigidly to the original requirements as to seclusion, asceticism, and dress were now called =Observants= and the more lax =Conventuals=. Crossing the Alps in A.D. 1388, they spread through Europe, converting heretics and heathens. Both sections received papal encouragement. Their leader for forty years was =John of Capistrano=, born A.D. 1386, died A.D. 1456, who inspired all their movements, and as a preacher gathered hundreds of thousands around him. His predecessor in office, Bernardino of Siena, who died in A.D. 1444, was canonized after a hard fight in A.D. 1450. John was deputed by the pope in that same year to proceed to Austria and Germany to convert the Hussites and preach a crusade against the Turks. His greatest feat was the repulse, in A.D. 1456, of the Turks, under Mohammed II., before Belgrade, ascribed to him and his crusade, which delivered Hungary, Germany, and indeed the whole West, from threatened subjection to the Moslem yoke. Capistrano died three months afterwards. Notwithstanding all the efforts of his followers, his beatification was not secured till A.D. 1690, and the decree of canonization was not obtained till A.D. 1724.--Continuation § 149, 6.

§ 112.4. =The Dominicans.=--The Dominicans, as they interpreted the vow of poverty only of personal and not of common property, soon lost the character of a mendicant order.--One of their most distinguished members was =St. Catharine of Siena=, who died in A.D. 1380, in her thirty-third year. Having taken the vow of chastity as a child, living only on bread and herbs, for a time only on the eucharistic elements, she was in vision affianced to Christ as His bride, and received His heart instead of her own. She felt the pains of Christ’s wounds, and, like St. Dominic, lashed herself thrice a day with an iron chain. She gained unexampled fame, and along with St. Bridget procured the return of the pope from Avignon to Rome.--The controversy of the Dominicans with the Franciscans over the _immaculata conceptio_ (§ 104, 7) was conducted in the most passionate manner. The visions of St. Catherine favoured the Dominican, those of St. Bridget the Franciscan views; during the schism the French popes favoured the former, the Roman popes the latter. The Franciscan view gained for the time the ascendency. The University of Paris sustained it in A.D. 1387, and made its confession a condition of receiving academic rank. The Dominican Torquemada combated this doctrine, in A.D. 1437, in his able _Tractatus de veritate Conceptionis B. V._ In A.D. 1439, the Council of Basel, which was then regarded as schismatical, sanctioned the Franciscan doctrine. Sixtus IV., who had previously, as general of the Franciscans, supported the views of his order in a special treatise, authorized the celebration of the festival referred to, but in A.D. 1483 forbade controversy on either side. A comedy with a very tragical conclusion was enacted at Bern, in connection with this matter in A.D. 1509. The Dominicans there deceived a simple tailor called Jetzer, who joined them as a novice, with pretended visions and revelation of the Virgin, and burned upon him with a hot iron the wound prints of the Saviour, and caused an image of the mother of God to weep tears of blood over the godless doctrine of the Franciscans. When the base trick was discovered, the prior and three monks had to atone for their conduct by death at the stake. (Continuation § 149, 13.) A new controversy between the two orders broke out in A.D. 1462, at Brescia. There, on Easter Day of that year, the Franciscan Jacob of Marchia in his preaching said that the blood of Christ shed upon the cross, until its reassumption by the resurrection, was outside of the hypostatic union with the Logos, and therefore as such was not the subject of adoration. The grand-inquisitor, Jacob of Brescia, pronounced this heretical, and at Christmas, A.D. 1463, a three days’ disputation was held between three Dominicans and as many Minorites before pope and cardinals, which yielded no result. Pius II. reserved judgment, and never gave his decision.

§ 112.5. =The Augustinians.=--In A.D. 1432, =Zolter=, at the call of the general of the Augustinians, reorganized the order, and in A.D. 1438 Pius II. gave a constitution to the Observants. The “Union of the Five Convents” founded by him in Saxony and Franconia, with Magdeburg as its centre, formed the nucleus of =regular Augustinian Observants=, which had =Andrew Proles= of Dresden as their vicar-general for a second time in A.D. 1473. Notwithstanding bitter opposition, the union spread through all Germany, even to the Netherlands. In A.D. 1475 the general of the order at Rome took offence at Proles for looking directly to the apostolic see, and not to him, for his authority. He therefore abolished the institution of vicars, insisted that all Observants should return to their allegiance to the provincials, and make full restitution of all the cloisters which they had appropriated, and empowered the provincial of Saxony to imprison and excommunicate Proles and his party, in case of their refusal. Proles did not submit, and when the ban was issued appealed directly to the pope. A papal commission in A.D. 1477 decided that all Observant cloisters placed by the duke under the pope’s protection should so continue, confirmed all their privileges, and annulled all mandates and anathemas issued against Proles and his followers. With redoubled energy and zeal Proles now wrought for the extension and consolidation of the congregation until A.D. 1503, when he resigned office in his 74th year, and soon after died. He was one of the worthiest and most pious men in the German Church of his time; but Flacius is quite mistaken when he describes him as a precursor of Luther, an evangelical martyr and witness for the truth in the sense of the Reformation of the 16th century. Energetic and devoted as he was in prosecuting his reformation, he gave himself purely to the correcting of the morals of the monks and restoring discipline; but in zeal for the doctrine of merits, the institution of indulgences, mariolatry, saint and image worship, and in devotion to the papacy, he and his congregation were by no means in advance of the age.

§ 112.6. As his successor in the vicariate the chapter, in accordance with the wish of Proles, elected =John von Staupitz=. He had been prior of the Augustinian cloister at Tübingen, and became professor of theology in the University of Wittenberg, in A.D. 1502. Like his predecessor, he devoted himself to the interests of the congregation, and by the union which he effected between it and the Lombard Observant congregation, he greatly increased its importance. In carrying out a plan for uniting the Saxon Conventuals with the German Observants by combining in his own hand the Saxon provincial priorate with the German vicariate, he encountered such difficulties that he was obliged to abandon the attempt; but he succeeded thus far, that from that time the Conventuals and Observants of Germany dwelt in peace side by side. He directed the troubled spirit of Luther to the crucified Saviour (§ 122, 1), and thus became the spiritual father of the great reformer. The new constitutions for the German congregations, proffered by him and accepted by the chapter at Nuremberg, A.D. 1504, are characterized by earnest recommendations of Scripture study. But of a deep and comprehensive evangelical and reformatory application of them we find no traces as yet, even in Staupitz; neither do we see any zealous study of Augustine’s writings, and consequent appreciation of his theological principles, such as is shown by the mystics of the 13th and 14th centuries. All this appears later in his little treatise “On the Imitation of the Willingly Dying Christ” of A.D. 1515. A discourse on predestination in A.D. 1517 moves distinctly on Augustinian lines, and the mysticism of St. Bernard may be traced in the book “On the Love of God” of that same year. True as he was to Luther as a counsellor and helper during the first eventful year of struggle, the reformer’s protest soon became too violent for him, and in A.D. 1520 he resigned his office, withdrew to the Benedictine cloister at Salzburg, and died as its abbot in A.D. 1524. His continued attachment to the positive tendencies of the Reformation is proved by his “Fast Sermons,” delivered in A.D. 1523.--His successor =Link=, Luther’s fellow student at Magdeburg, was and continued to be an attached friend of the reformer. Unsuccessful in his endeavours to remove abuses, he resigned office in A.D. 1523, and became evangelical pastor in Altenburg, and married. The very small opposition chose in place of him Joh. Spangenberg, who, unable to withstand the movement among the German Conventuals, as well as among the Observants, resigned in A.D. 1529.

§ 112.7. =Overthrow of the Templars.=--The order of Knights Templar, whose chief seat was now in Paris and the south of France, by rich presents, exactions, and robberies in the island of Cyprus, vast commercial speculations and extensive money-lending and banking transactions with crusaders and pilgrims and needy princes, had acquired immense wealth in money and landed property in the East and the West. They had in consequence become proud, greedy, and vicious. Their independence of the State had long been a thorn in the eye of Philip the Fair of France, and their policy was often at variance with his. But above all their great wealth excited his cupidity. In a letter to a visitor of the order Innocent III. had in A.D. 1208 bitterly complained of their unspirituality, worldliness, avarice, drunkenness, and study of the black art, saying that he refrained from remarking upon yet more shameful offences with which they were charged. Stories also were current of apostasy to Mohammedanism, sorcery, unnatural vice, etc. It was said that they worshipped an idol Baphomet; that a black cat appeared in their assemblies; that at initiation they abjured Christ, spat on the cross, and trampled it under foot. A Templar expelled for certain offences gave evidence in support of these charges. Thereupon in A.D. 1307 Philip had all Templars in his realm suddenly apprehended. Many admitted their guilt amid the tortures of the rack; others voluntarily did so in order to escape such treatment. A Parliament assembled at Tours in A.D. 1308 heartily endorsed the king’s opinion, and the pope, Clement V., was powerless to resist (§ 110, 2). While the pope’s commissioners were prosecuting inquiries in all countries, Philip without more ado in A.D. 1310 brought to the stake one hundred Templars who had retracted their confession. The =œcumenical council at Vienne in A.D. 1311=, summoned for the final settlement of the matter, refused to give judgment without hearing the defence of the accused. But Philip threatened the pope till a decree was passed disbanding the order because of the suspicion and ill repute into which it had fallen. Its property was to go to the Knights of St. John. But a great part had already been seized by the princes, especially by Philip. Final decision in regard to individuals was committed by the pope to the provincial synods of the several countries. Judgment on the grand-master, James Molay, and the then chief dignitaries of the order, he reserved to himself. Philip paid no attention to this, but, when they refused to adhere to their confession of guilt, had them burnt in a slow fire at Paris in A.D. 1314. Most of the other knights turned to secular employments, many entered the ranks of the Knights of St. John, while others ended their days in monastic prisons.--Scholars are to this day divided in opinion as to the degree of guilt or innocence which may be ascribed to the Templars in regard to the serious charges brought against them.[330]

§ 112.8. =New Orders.=--In A.D. 1317 the king of Portugal, for the protection of his frontier from the Moors, instituted the =Order of Christ=, composed of knights and clergy, and to it John XXII. in A.D. 1319 gave the privileges of the order of Calatrava (§ 98, 13). Alexander VI. released them from the vow of poverty and allowed them to marry. The king of Portugal was grand-master, and at the beginning of the 16th century it had 450 companies and an annual revenue of one and a half million livres. In A.D. 1797 it was converted into a secular order.--Among the new monkish orders the following are the most important:

1. =Hieronymites=, founded in A.D. 1370 by the Portuguese Basco and the Spaniard Pecha as an order of canons regular under the rule of Augustine, and confirmed by Gregory XI. in A.D. 1373. Devoted to study, they took Jerome as their patron, and obtained great reputation in Spain and Italy.

2. =Jesuates=, founded by Colombini of Siena, who, excited by reading legends of the saints, combined with several companions in forming this society for self-mortification and care of the sick, for which Urban V. prescribed the Augustinian rule in A.D. 1367. They greeted all they met with the name of Jesus: hence their designation.

3. =Minimi=, an extreme sect of Minorites (§ 98, 3), founded by Francis de Paula in Calabria in A.D. 1436. Their rule was extremely strict, and forbade them all use of flesh, milk, butter, eggs, etc., so that their mode of life was described as _vita quadragesimalis_.

4. =Nuns of St. Bridget.= To the Swedish princess visions of the wounded and bleeding Saviour had come in her childhood. Compelled by her parents to marry, she became mother of eight children; but at her husband’s death, in A.D. 1344, she adopted a rigidly ascetic life, and in A.D. 1363 founded a cloister at Wedstena for sixty nuns in honour of the blessed Virgin, with thirteen priests, four deacons, and eight lay brothers in a separate establishment. All were under the control of the abbess. She also founded at Rome a hospice for Swedish pilgrims and students, made a pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem, and died at Rome in A.D. 1373. The _Revelationes S. Brigittæ_ ascribed to her were in high repute during the Middle Ages. They are full of bitter invectives against the corrupt papacy; call the pope worse than Lucifer, a murderer of the souls committed to him, who condemns the guiltless and sells believers for filthy lucre. There were seventy-four cloisters of the order spread over all Europe. Her successor as abbess of the parent abbey was her daughter, St. Catherine of Sweden, who died in A.D. 1381.

5. The French =Annunciate Order= was founded in A.D. 1501 by Joanna of Valois, the divorced wife of Louis XII., and when abolished by the French Revolution it numbered forty-five nunneries.

§ 112.9. =The Brothers of the Common Life=, a society of pious priests, gave themselves to the devotional study of Scripture, the exercise of contemplative mysticism, and practical imitation of the lowly life of Christ with voluntary observance of the three monkish vows, and residing, without any lifelong obligation, in unions where things were administered in common. Pious laymen were not excluded from their association, and institutions for sisters were soon reared alongside of those for the brothers. The founder of this organization was Gerhard Groot, _Gerardus magnus_, of Deventer in the Netherlands, a favourite pupil of the mystic John of Ruysbroek (§ 114, 7). Dying a victim to his benevolence during a season of pestilence in A.D. 1384, a year or two after the founding of the first union institute, he was succeeded by his able pupil and assistant Florentius Radewins, who zealously carried on the work he had begun. The house of the brothers at Deventer soon became the centre of numerous other houses from the Scheld to the Wesel. Florentius added a cloister for regular canons at Windesheim, from which went forth the famous cloister reformer Burch. The most important of the later foundations of this kind was the cloister built on Mount St. Agnes near Zwoll. The famous Thomas à Kempis (§ 114, 7) was trained here, and wrote the life of Groot and his fellow labourers. Each house was presided over by a rector, each sister house by a matron, who was called Martha. The brothers supported themselves by transcribing spiritual books, the lay brothers by some handicraft; the sisters by sewing, spinning, and weaving. Begging was strictly forbidden. Besides caring for their own souls’ salvation, the brothers sought to benefit the people by preaching, pastoral visitation, and instructing the youth. They had as many as 1,200 scholars under their care. Hated by the mendicant friars, they were accused by a Dominican to the Bishop of Utrecht. This dignitary favoured the brothers, and when the Dominican appealed to the pope, he applied to the Constance Council of A.D. 1418, where Gerson and d’Ailly vigorously supported them. Their accuser was compelled to retract, and Martin V. confirmed the brotherhood. Though heartily attached to the doctrines of the Catholic Church, their biblical and evangelical tendencies formed an unconscious preparation for the Reformation (§ 119, 10). A great number of the brothers joined the party of the reformers. In the 17th century the last remnant of them disappeared.[331]

II. Theological Science.

§ 113. SCHOLASTICISM AND ITS REFORMERS.

The University of Paris took the lead, in accordance with the liberal tendencies of the Gallican Church, in the opposition to hierarchical pretensions, and was followed by the universities of Oxford, Prague, and Cologne, in all of which the mendicant friars were the teachers. Most distinguished among the schoolmen of this age was John Duns Scotus, whose works formed the doctrinal standard for the Franciscans, as those of Aquinas did for the Dominicans. After realism had enjoyed for a long time an uncontested sway, William Occam, amid passionate battles, successfully introduced nominalism. But the creative power of scholasticism was well nigh extinct. Even Duns Scotus is rather an acute critic of the old than an original creator of new ideas. Miserable quarrels between the schools and a spiritless formalism now widely prevailed in the lecture halls, as well as in the treatises of the learned. Moral theology degenerated into fruitless casuistry and abstruse discussion on subtly devised cases where there appeared a collision of duties. But from all sides there arose complaint and contradiction. On the one side were some who made a general complaint without striking at the roots of the evil. They suggested the adoption of a better method, or the infusion of new life by the study of Scripture and the Fathers, and a return to mysticism. To this class belonged the Brothers of the Common Life (§ 112, 9) and d’Ailly and Gerson, the supporters of the Constance reforms (§ 118, 4). Here too we may place the talented father of natural theology, Raimund of Sabunde, and the brilliant Nicholas of Cusa, in whom all the nobler aspirations of mediæval ecclesiastical science were concentrated. But on the other side was the radical opposition, consisting of the German mystics (§ 114), the English and Bohemian reformers (§ 119), and the Humanists (§ 120).

§ 113.1. =John Duns Scotus.=--The date of birth, whether A.D. 1274 or A.D. 1266, and the place of birth, whether in Scotland, Ireland, or England, of this Franciscan hero, honoured with the title _doctor subtilis_, are uncertain; even the place and manner of his training are unknown. After lecturing with great success at Oxford, he went in A.D. 1304 to Paris, where he obtained the degree of doctor, and successfully vindicated the _immaculata conceptio B. V._ (§ 104, 7) against the Thomists. Summoned to Cologne in A.D. 1308 to engage in controversy with the Beghards, he displayed great skill in dialectics, but died during that same year. His chief work, a commentary on the Lombard, was composed at Oxford. His answers to the questions proposed for his doctor’s degree were afterwards wrought up into the work entitled _Quæstiones quodlibetales_. The opponent and rival of Thomas, he controverted his doctrine at every point, as well as the doctrines of Alexander and Bonaventura of his own order, and other shining stars of the 13th century. In subtlety of thought and dialectic power he excelled them all, but in depth of feeling, profundity of mind, and ardour of faith he was far behind them. Proofs of doctrines interested him more than the doctrines themselves. To philosophy he assigns a purely theoretical, to theology a pre-eminently practical character, and protests against the Thomist commingling of the two. He accepts the doctrine of a twofold truth (§ 103, 3), basing it on the fall. Granting that the Bible is the only foundation of religious knowledge, but contending that the Church under the Spirit’s guidance has advanced ever more and more in the development of it, he readily admits that many a point in constitution, doctrine, and worship cannot be established from the Bible; _e.g._ immaculate conception, clerical celibacy, etc. He has no hesitation in contradicting even Augustine and St. Bernard from the standpoint of a more highly developed doctrine of the Church.

§ 113.2. =Thomists and Scotists.=--The Dominicans and Franciscans were opposed as followers respectively of Thomas and of Scotus. Thomas regarded individuality, _i.e._ the fact that everything is an individual, every _res_ is a _hæc_, as a limitation and defect; while Duns saw in this _hæcitas_ a mark of perfection and the true end of creation. Thomas also preferred the Platonic, and Duns the Aristotelian realism. In theology Duns was opposed to Thomas in maintaining an unlimited arbitrary will in God, according to which God does not choose a thing because it is good, but the thing chosen is good because He chooses it. Thomas therefore was a determinist, and in his doctrine of sin and grace adopted a moderate Augustinianism (§ 53, 5), while Duns was a semipelagian. The atonement was viewed by Thomas more in accordance with the theory of Anselm, for he assigned to the merits of Christ as the God-Man infinite worth, _satisfactio superabundans_, which is in itself more than sufficient for redemption; but Duns held that the merits of Christ were sufficient only as accepted by the free will of God, _acceptatio gratuita_. The Scotists also most resolutely contended for the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, while the Thomists as passionately opposed it.--Among the immediate disciples of Duns the most celebrated was =Francis Mayron=, teacher at the Sorbonne, who died in A.D. 1325 and was dignified with the title _doctor illuminatus_ or _acutus_. The most notable of the Thomists was =Hervæus Natalis=, who died in A.D. 1323 as general of the Dominicans. Of the later Thomists the most eminent was =Thomas Bradwardine=, _doctor profundus_, a man of deep religious earnestness, who accused his age of Pelagianism, and vindicated the truth in opposition to this error in his _De causa Dei c. Pelagium_. He began teaching at Oxford, afterwards accompanied Edward III. as his confessor and chaplain on his expeditions in France, and died in A.D. 1349 a few weeks after his appointment to the archbishopric of Canterbury.[332]

§ 113.3. =Nominalists and Realists.=--After nominalism (§ 99, 2) in the person of Roscelin had been condemned by the Church (§ 101, 3) realism held sway for more than two centuries. Both Thomas and Duns supported it. By sundering philosophy and theology Duns opened the way to freer discussion, so that by-and-by nominalism won the ascendency, and at last scarcely any but the precursors of the Reformation (§ 119) were to be found in the ranks of the realists. The pioneer of the movement was the Englishman =William Occam=, a Franciscan and pupil of Duns, who as teacher of philosophy in Paris obtained the title _doctor singularis et invincibilis_, and was called by later nominalists _venerabilis inceptor_. He supported the _Spirituals_ (§ 112, 2) in the controversies within his order. He accompanied his general, Michael of Cesena, to Avignon, and escaping with him in A.D. 1328 from threatened imprisonment, lived at Munich till his death in A.D. 1349. There, protected by Louis the Bavarian, he vindicated imperial rights against papal pretensions, and charged various heresies against the pope (§ 118, 2). In philosophy and theology he was mainly influenced by Scotus. In accordance with his nominalistic principles he assumed the position in theology that our ideas derived from experience cannot reach to a knowledge of the supernatural; and thus he may be called a precursor of Kant (§ 171, 10). The _universalia_ are mere _fictiones_ (§ 99, 2), things that do not correspond to our notions; the world of ideas agrees not with that of phenomena, and so the unity of faith and knowledge, of theological and philosophical truth, asserted by realists, cannot be maintained (§ 103, 2). Faith rests on the authority of Scripture and the decisions of the Church; criticism applied to the doctrines of the Church reduces them to a series of antinomies.--In A.D. 1339 the University of Paris forbade the reading of Occam’s works, and soon after formally condemned nominalism. Thomists and Scotists forgot their own differences to combine against Occam; but all in vain, for the Occamists were recruited from all the orders. The Constance reform party too supported him (§ 118, 4).[333] Of the Thomists who succeeded to Occam the most distinguished was =William Durand= of St. Pourçain, _doct. resolutissimus_, who died in A.D. 1322 as Bishop of Meaux. =Muertius of Inghen,= one of the founders of the University of Heidelberg in A.D. 1386 and its first rector, was also a zealous nominalist. The last notable schoolman of the period was =Gabriel Biel= of Spires, teacher of theology at Tübingen, who died A.D. 1495, a nominalist and an admirer of Occam. He was a vigorous supporter of the doctrine of the immaculate conception, and delivered public discourses on the “Ethics” of Aristotle.

§ 113.4. =Casuistry=, or that part of moral theology which seeks to provide a complete guide to the solution of difficult cases of conscience, especially where there is collision of duties, moral or ecclesiastical, makes its first appearance in the penitentials (§ 89, 6), and had a great impetus given it in the compulsory injunction of auricular confession (§ 104, 4). It was also favoured by the hair-splitting character of scholastic dialectics. The first who elaborated it as a distinct science was Raimundus [Raimund] de Pennaforte, who besides his works on canon law (§ 99, 5), wrote about A.D. 1238 a _summa de casibus pœnitentialibus_. This was followed by the Franciscan _Antesana_, the Dominican _Pisana_, and the Angelica of the Genoese Angelus of A.D. 1482, which Luther in A.D. 1520 burned along with the papal bull and decretals. The views of the different casuists greatly vary, and confuse rather than assist the conscience. Out of them grew the doctrine of probabilism (§ 149, 10).

§ 113.5. =The Founder of Natural Theology.=--The Spaniard =Raimund of Sabunde= settled as a physician in Toulouse in A.D. 1430, but afterwards turned his attention to theology. Seeing the need of infusing new life into the corrupt scholasticism, he sought to rescue it from utter formalism and fruitless casuistry by a return to simple, clear, and rational thinking. Anselm of Canterbury was his model of a clear and profound thinker and believing theologian (§ 101, 1). He also turned for stimulus and instruction to the book of nature. The result of his studies is seen in his _Theologia naturalis s. liber creaturarum_, published in A.D. 1436. God’s book of nature, in which every creature is as it were a letter, is the first and simplest source of knowledge accessible to the unlearned layman, and the surest, because free from all falsifications of heretics. But the fall and God’s plan of salvation have made an addition to it necessary, and this we have in the Scripture revelation. The two books coming from the one author cannot be contradictory, but only extend, confirm, and explain one another. The facts of revelation are the necessary presupposition or consequences of the book of nature. From the latter all religious knowledge is derivable by ascending through the four degrees of creation, _esse_, _vivere_, _sentire_, and _intelligere_, to the knowledge of man, and thence to the knowledge of the Creator as the highest and absolute unity, and by arguing that the acknowledgment of human sinfulness involved an admission of the need of redemption, which the book of revelation shows to be a fact. In carrying out this idea Raimund attaches himself closely to Anselm in his scientific reconciling of the natural and revealed idea of God and redemption. Although he never expressly contradicted any of the Church doctrines, the Council of Trent put the prologue of his book into the _Index prohibitorum_.

§ 113.6. =Nicholas of Cusa= was born in A.D. 1401 at Cues, near Treves, and was originally called Krebs. Trained first by the Brothers at Deventer (§ 112, 9), he afterwards studied law at Padua. The failure of his first case led him to begin the study of theology. As archdeacon of Liège he attended the Basel Council, and there by mouth and pen supported the view that the council is superior to the pope, but in A.D. 1440 he passed over to the papal party. On account of his learning, address, and eloquence he was often employed by Eugenius IV. and Nicholas V. in difficult negotiations. He was made cardinal in A.D. 1448, an unheard of honour for a German prelate. In A.D. 1450 he was made bishop of Brixen, but owing to a dispute with Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, he suffered several years’ hard imprisonment. He died in A.D. 1464 at Todi in Umbria. His principal work is _De docta ignorantia_, which shows, in opposition to proud scholasticism, that the absolute truth about God in the world is not attainable by men. His theological speculation approaches that of Eckhart, and like it is not free from pantheistic elements. God is for him the absolute maximum, but is also the absolute minimum, since He cannot be greater or less than He is. He begets of Himself His likeness, _i.e._ the Son, and He again turns back as Holy Spirit into unity. The world again is the aggregated maximum. His _Dialogus de pace_, occasioned by the fall of Constantinople in A.D. 1453, represents Christianity as the most perfect of all religions, but recognises in all others, even in Islam, essential elements of eternal truth. Like Roger Bacon (§ 103, 8), he assigns a prominent place to mathematics and astronomy, and in his _De separatione Calendarii_ of A.D. 1436 he recommended reforms in the calendar which were only effected in A.D. 1582 by Gregory XIII. (§ 149, 3). He detected the pseudo-Isidore (§ 87, 2) and the Donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) frauds.

§ 113.7. =Biblical and Practical Theologians.=

1. The Franciscan =Nicholas of Lyra=, _doctor planus et utilis_, a Jewish convert from Normandy, and teacher of theology at Paris, did good service as a grammatico-historical exegete and an earnest expositor of Scripture. Luther gratefully acknowledges the help he got in his Bible translation from the postils of Lyra.[334] He died in A.D. 1340.

2. =Antonine of Florence= played a prominent part at the Florentine Council of A.D. 1439, and was threatened by Eugenius IV. with the loss of his archbishopric. He discharged his duties with great zeal, especially during a plague and famine in A.D. 1448, and during the earthquake which destroyed half of the city in A.D. 1457. As an earnest preacher, an unwearied pastor, and upright churchman he was universally admired, and was canonized by Hadrian VI. in A.D. 1523. He had a high reputation as a writer. His _Summa historialis_ is a chronicle of universal history reaching down to his own time; and his _Summa theologica_ is a popular outline of the Thomist doctrine.

3. The learned and famous abbot =John Trithemius=, born in A.D. 1462, after studying at Treves and Heidelberg, entered in A.D. 1487 the Benedictine cloister of Sponheim, became its abbot in the following year, resigned office in A.D. 1505 owing to a rebellion among his monks, and died in A.D. 1516 as abbot of the Scottish cloister of St. James at Würzburg. Influenced by Wessel’s reforming movement (§ 119, 10), he urged the duty of Scripture study and prayer, but still practised and commended the most extravagant adoration of Mary and Ann. Though he was keenly alive to the absurdity of certain forms of superstition, he was himself firmly bound within its coils. He lashed unsparingly the vices of the monks, but regarded the monastic life as the highest Christian ideal. He pictured in dark colours the deep and widespread corruption of the Church, and was yet the most abject slave of the hierarchy which fostered that corruption.

§ 114. THE GERMAN MYSTICS.[335]

The schoolmen of the 13th century, with the exception of Bonaventura, had little sympathy with mysticism, and gave their whole attention to the development of doctrine (§ 99, 1). The 14th century was the Augustan age of mysticism. Germany, which had already in the previous period given Hugo of St. Victor and the two divines of Reichersberg (§ 102, 4, 6), was its proper home. Its most distinguished representatives belonged to the preaching orders, and its recognised grand-master was the Dominican Meister Eckhart. This specifically German mysticism cast away completely the scholastic modes of thought and expression, and sought to arrive at Christian truth by entirely new paths. It appealed, not to the understanding and cultured reason of the learned, but to the hearts and spirits of the people, in order to point them the surest way to union with God. The mystics therefore wrote neither commentaries on the Lombard nor gigantic _summæ_ of their own composition, but wrought by word and writing to meet immediate pressing needs. They preached lively sermons and wrote short treatises, not in Latin, but in the homely mother tongue. This popular form however did not prevent them from conveying to their readers and hearers profound thoughts, the result of keen speculation; but that in this they did not go over the heads of the people is shown by the crowds that flocked to their preaching. The “Friends of God” proved a spiritual power over many lands (§ 116, 4). From the practical prophetic mysticism of the 12th and 13th centuries (§§ 107; 108, 5) it was distinguished by avoiding the visionary apocalyptic and magnetic somnambulistic elements through a better appreciation of science; and from the scholastic mysticism of that earlier age (§§ 102, 3, 4, 6; 103, 4) by abandoning allegory and the scholastic framework for the elevation of the soul to God, as well as by indulgence in a somewhat pantheistic speculation on God and the world, man and the God-Man, on the incarnation and birth of God in us, on our redemption, sanctification, and final restoration. Its younger representatives however cut off all pantheistic excrescences, and thus became more practical and edifying, though indeed with the loss of speculative power. In this way they brought themselves more into sympathy with another mystic tendency which was spreading through the Netherlands under the influence of the Flemish canon, John of Ruysbroek. In France too mysticism again made its appearance during the 15th century in the persons of d’Ailly and Gerson (§ 118, 4), in a form similar to that which it had assumed during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Victorines and Bonaventura.

§ 114.1. =Meister Eckhart.=--One of the profoundest thinkers of all the Christian centuries was the Dominican Meister Eckhart, the true father of German speculative mysticism. Born in Strassburg about A.D. 1260, he studied at Cologne under Albert the Great, but took his master’s degree at Paris in A.D. 1303. He had already been for some years prior at Erfurt and provincial vicar of Thuringia. In A.D. 1304 he was made provincial of Saxony, and in A.D. 1307 vicar-general of Bohemia. In both positions he did much for the reform of the cloisters of his order. In A.D. 1311 we find him teacher in Paris; then for some years teaching and preaching in Strassburg; afterwards officiating as prior at Frankfort; and finally as private teacher at Cologne, where he died in A.D. 1327. While at Frankfort in A.D. 1320 he was suspected of heresy because of alleged intercourse with Beghards (§ 98, 12) and Brothers of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5). In A.D. 1325 the archbishop of Cologne renewed these charges, but Eckhart succeeded in vindicating himself. The archbishop now set up an inquisition of his own, but from its sentence Eckhart appealed to the pope, lodged a protest, and then of his own accord in the Dominican church of Cologne, before the assembled congregation, solemnly declared that the charge against him rested upon misrepresentation and misunderstanding, but that he was then and always ready to withdraw anything that might be erroneous. The papal judgment, given two years after Eckhart’s death, pronounced twenty-eight of his propositions to be pantheistic in their tendency, seventeen being heretical and eleven dangerous. He was therefore declared to be suspected of heresy. The bull, contrary to reason and truth, went on to say that Eckhart at the end of his life had retracted and submitted all his writings and doctrines to the judgment of the Holy See. But Eckhart had indignantly protested against the charge of pantheism, and certainly in his doctrine of God and the creature, of the high nobility of the human soul, of retirement and absorption into God, he has always kept within the limits of Christian knowledge and life. Attaching himself to the Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrines, which are met with also in Albert and Thomas, and appealing to the acknowledged authorities of the Church, especially the Areopagite, Augustine, and Aquinas, Eckhart with great originality composed a singularly comprehensive and profound system of religious knowledge. Although in all his writings aiming primarily at quickening and edification, he always grounds his endeavours on a theoretical investigation of the nature of the thing. But knowledge is for him essentially union of the knowing subject with the object to be known, and the highest stage of knowledge is the intuition where all finite things sink into the substance of Deity.[336]

§ 114.2. =Mystics of Upper Germany after Eckhart.=--A noble band of mystics arose during the 14th and 15th centuries influenced by Eckhart’s writings, who carefully avoided pantheistic extremes by giving a thoroughly practical direction to their speculation. Nearest to Eckhart stands the author of “=The German Theology=,” in which the master’s principles are nobly popularized and explained. Luther, who took it for a work of Tauler, and published it in A.D. 1516, characterized it as “a noble little book, showing what Adam and Christ are, and how Adam should die and Christ live in us.” In the most complete MS. of this tract, found in A.D. 1850, the author is described as a “Friend of God.”--The Dominican =John Tauler= was born at Strassburg, studied at Paris, and came into connection with Eckhart, whose mysticism, without its pantheistic tendencies, he adopted. When Strassburg was visited with the Black Death, he laboured as preacher and pastor among the stricken with heroic devotion. Though the city was under an interdict (§ 110, 3), the Dominicans persisted for a whole year in reading mass, and were stopped only by the severe threats of the master of their order. The magistrates gave them the alternative either to discharge their official duties or leave the city. Tauler now, in A.D. 1341, retired to Basel, and afterwards to Cologne. In A.D. 1437 we find him again in Strassburg, where he died in A.D. 1361. His thirty sermons, with some other short tracts, appeared at Leipzig in A.D. 1498. The most important of all Tauler’s works is, “The Imitation of the Poverty of Christ.” It was thought to be of French authorship, but is now admitted to be Tauler’s.[337]--=Rulman Merswin=, a rich merchant of Strassburg, in his fortieth year, A.D. 1347, with his wife’s consent, retired from his business and forsook the world, gave his wealth to charities, and bought in A.D. 1366 an old, abandoned convent near the city, which he restored and presented to the order of St. John. Here he spent the remainder of his days in pious contemplation, amid austerities and mortifications and favoured with visions. He died in A.D. 1382. Four years after his conversion he attained to clear conceptions and inner peace. His chief work, composed in A.D. 1352, “The Book of the Nine Rocks,” was long ascribed to Suso. It is full of bitter complaints against the moral and religious corruption of all classes, and earnest warnings of Divine judgment. Its starting point is a vision. From the fountains in the high mountains stream many brooks over the rocks into the valley, and thence into the sea; multitudes of fishes transport themselves from their lofty home, and are mostly taken in nets, only a few succeed in reaching their home again by springing over these nine rocks. At the request of the “Friend of God from the Uplands” he wrote the “Four Years from the Beginning of Life.” His “Banner Tract” describes the conflict with and victory over the Brothers of the Free Spirit under the banner of Lucifer (§ 116, 4, 5).

§ 114.3. =The Friend of God in the Uplands.=--In a book entitled “The Story of Tauler’s Conversion,” originally called “The Master’s Book,” but now assigned to Nicholas of Basel, it is told that in A.D. 1346 a great “Master of Holy Scripture” preached in an unnamed city, and that soon his fame spread through the land. A layman living in the Uplands, thirty miles off, was directed in a vision thrice over to go to seek this Friend of God, companion of Rulman. He listened to his preaching, chose him as his confessor, and then sought to show him that he had not yet the true consecration. Like a child the master submitted to be taught the elements of piety of religion by the layman, and at his command abstaining from all study and preaching for two years, gave himself to meditation and penitential exercises. When he resumed his preaching his success was marvellous. After nine years’ labour, feeling his end approaching, he gave to the layman an account of his conversion. The latter arranged his materials, and added five sermons of the master, and sent the little book, in A.D. 1369, to a priest of Rulman’s cloister near Strassburg. In A.D. 1486 the master was identified with Tauler. This however is contradicted by its contents. The historical part is improbable and incredible, and its chronology irreconcilable with known facts of Tauler’s life. We find no trace of the original ideas or characteristic eloquence of Tauler; while the language and homiletical arrangement of the sermons are quite different from those of the great Dominican preacher.

§ 114.4. =Nicholas of Basel.=--After long hiding from the emissaries of the Inquisition the layman Nicholas of Basel, in extreme old age, was taken with two companions, and burned at Vienna, as a heretic, between A.D. 1393-1408. He has been identified by Schmidt of Strassburg with the “Friend of God.” This is more than doubtful, since of the sixteen heresies, for the most part of a Waldensian character, charged against Nicholas, no trace is found in the writings of the Friend of God; while it is made highly probable by Denifle’s researches that the “Friend of God” was but a name assumed by Rulman Merswin.

§ 114.5. =Henry Suso=, born A.D. 1295, entered the Dominican cloister of Constance in his 13th year. When eighteen years old he took the vow, and till his twenty-second year unceasingly practised the strictest asceticism, in imitation of the sufferings of Christ. He completed his studies, A.D. 1325-1328, under Eckhart at Cologne, and on the death of his pious mother withdrew into the cloister, where he became reader and afterwards prior. The first work which he here published, in A.D. 1335, the “Book of the Truth,” is strongly influenced by the spirit of his master. Accused as a heretic, he was deposed from the priorship in A.D. 1336. His “Book of Eternal Wisdom” was the favourite reading of all lovers of German mysticism. Blending the knight’s and fanatic’s idea of love with the Solomonic conception of Wisdom, which he identifies sometimes with God, sometimes with Christ, sometimes with Mary, he chose her for his beloved, and was favoured by her with frequent visions and was honoured with the title of “Amandus.”--Like most of his fellow monks at Constance, Suso was a supporter of the pope in his contest with Louis the Bavarian, while the city sided with the emperor. When, in A.D. 1339, the monks, in obedience to the papal interdict, refused to perform public worship, they were expelled by the magistrates. In his fortieth year Suso had begun his painful career of self-discipline, which he carried so far as to endanger his life. Now driven away as an exile, he began his singularly fruitful wanderings, during which, passing from cloister to cloister as an itinerant preacher, he became either personally or through correspondence most intimately acquainted with all the most notable of the friends of mysticism, and made many new friends in all ranks, especially among women. In A.D. 1346, along with eight companions, he ventured to return to Constance. There however he met with his sorest trial. An immoral woman, who pretended to him that she sorrowed over and repented of her sins, while really she continued in the practice of them, and was therefore turned away by him, took her revenge by charging him with being the father of the child she was about to bear. Probably this painful incident was the occasion of his retiring into the monastery of Ulm, where he died in A.D. 1366. In him the poetic and romantic element overshadowed the speculative, and in his attachment to ecclesiastical orthodoxy he kept aloof from all reformatory movements.

§ 114.6. =Henry of Nördlingen= is only slightly known to us by the letters which he sent to his lady friend, the Dominican nun =Margaret Ebner=. He was spiritually related to Tauler, as well as to Suso, and shared with the great preacher in his sorrows over the calamities of the age, which his sensitive nature felt in no ordinary degree during enforced official idleness under the interdict. His mysticism, by its sweetly sentimental character, as well as by its superstitious tendency to reverence Mary and relics, was essentially distinguished from that of Tauler. His friend Margaret, who had also a spiritual affinity to Tauler, and was highly esteemed by all the “Friends of God,” was religiously and politically, as a supporter of the anathematized emperor, much more decided. In depth of thought and power of expression however she is quite inferior to the earlier Thuringian prophetesses (§ 107, 2).--=Hermann of Fritzlar=, a rich and pious layman, is supposed to have written, A.D. 1343-1349, a life of the saints in the order of the calendar, as a picture of heart purity, with mystic reflections and speculations based on the legendary matter, and all expressed in pure and simple German. Hermann, however, was only the author of the plan, and the actual writer was a Dominican of Erfurt, =Giseler of Slatheim=.--A Franciscan in Basel, =Otto of Passau=, published, in A.D. 1386, “The Four-and-Twenty Elders, or the Golden Throne,” which became a very popular book of devotion, in which the twenty-four elders of Revelation iv. 4, one after another, show the loving soul how to win for himself a golden throne in heaven. Passages of an edifying and contemplative description from the Fathers and teachers of the Church down to the 13th century are selected by the author, and adapted to the use of the unlearned “Friends of God” in a German translation.

§ 114.7. =Mystics of the Netherlands.=

1. =John of Ruysbroek= was born, in A.D. 1298, in the village of Ruysbroek, near Brussels. In youth he was addicted more to pious contemplation than to scholastic studies, and in his sixtieth year he resigned his position as secular priest in Brussels, and retired into a convent of regular canons (§ 97, 3) near Brussels, where he died as its prior in A.D. 1481, when eighty-eight years old. He was called _doctor ecstaticus_, because he regarded his mystical views, which he developed amid pious contemplation in the shades of the forest, and there wrote out in Flemish speech, as the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. His mysticism was essentially theistic. The _unio mystica_ consisted not in the deification of man, but was wrought only through the free grace of God in Christ without the loss of man’s own personality. His genuine practical piety led him to see in the moral depravity of the clergy, not less than of the people generally, the cause of the decay of the Church, so that even the person of the pope did not escape his reproof. Numerous pilgrims from far and near sought the pious sage for counsel and quickening. His favourite disciple was Gerhard Groot of Deventer, who impressed much of his master’s spirit upon the brotherhood of the Common Life (§ 112, 9).--Of this noble school of mystics the three following were the most distinguished.

2. =Hendrik Mande=, who died A.D. 1430, impressed by a sermon of Groot’s, and favoured during a long illness by visions, abandoned the life of a courtier for the fellowship of the Brethren of Deventer, and in A.D. 1395 entered the cloister of Windesheim, to which he bequeathed his wealth, and where he continued to enjoy visions of the Saviour and the saints. His works, written in Dutch, are characterized by spirituality and depth of feeling, copious and appropriate imagery, and great moral earnestness.

3. =Gerlach Peters= was the favourite scholar of Florentius in Deventer. He subsequently entered the monastery of Windesheim, where, after a painful illness, he died in A.D. 1411, in his thirty-third year. “An ardent spirit in a body of skin and bone,” praising God for his terrible bodily sufferings as a means of grace bestowed on him, his devotion reaches the sublimest heights of enthusiasm. He wrote the _Soliloquium_, the voice of a man who has daily struggled in God’s presence to free his heart from worldly bonds, and by God’s grace in the cross of Christ to have Adam’s purity restored and union with the highest good secured.

4. =Thomas à Kempis=, formerly Hamerken, was born in A.D. 1380 at Kempen, near Cologne. He was educated at Deventer, and died as sub-prior of the convent of St. Agnes, near Zwoll, in A.D. 1471. To him, and not to the chancellor Gerson, according to the now universally accepted opinion, belongs the world renowned book _De Imitatione Christi_. Reprinted about five thousand times, oftener than any other book except the Bible, it has been also translated into more languages than any other. Free from all Romish superstition, it is read by Catholics and Protestants, and holds an unrivalled position as a book of devotion. A photographic reproduction of the original edition of A.D. 1441 was published from the autograph MSS. of Thomas, by Ch. Ruelans, London, 1879.[338]

III. The Church and the People.

§ 115A. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.

Preaching in the vernacular was carried on mainly by the Brothers of the Common Life, the mystics, and several heretical sects, _e.g._ Waldensians, Wiclifites, Hussites, etc.; and stimulated by their example, others began to follow the same practice. The so called _Biblia pauperum_ set forth in pictures the New Testament history with its Old Testament types and prophecies; _Bible Histories_ made known among the people the Scripture stories in a connected form; and, after the introduction of printing, the German _Plenaries_ helped also to spread the knowledge of God’s word by renderings for private use of the principal parts of the service. For the instruction of the people in faith and morals a whole series of _Catechisms_ was constructed after a gradually developed type. The “Dance of Death” in its various forms reminded of the vanity of all earthly pleasures. The spirit of the Reformation was shown during this period in the large number of hymns written in the vernacular. Church music too received a powerful impulse.

§ 115.1. =Fasts and Festivals.=--New =Mary Festivals= were introduced: _F. præsentationis M._ on 21st Nov. (Lev. xii. 5-8), _F. visitationis M._ (Luke i. 39-51), on 2nd July. In the 15th century we meet with the festivals of the Seven Pains of Mary, _F. Spasmi M._, on Friday or Saturday before Palm Sunday. Dominic instituted a rosary festival, _F. rosarii M._, on 1st Oct., and its general observance was enjoined by Gregory XIII. in A.D. 1571.--The =Veneration of Ann= (§ 57, 2) was introduced into Germany in the second half of the 15th century, but soon rose to a height almost equal to that of Mary.--The =Fasts= of the early Church (§ 56, 7) had, even during the previous period, been greatly relaxed. Now the most special fast days were mere days of abstinence from flesh, while most lavish meals of fish and farinaceous food were indulged in. Papal and episcopal dispensations from fasting were also freely given.

§ 115.2. =Preaching= (§ 104, 1).--To aid and encourage preaching in the language of the people, unskilled preachers were supplied with _Vocabularia prædicantium_. Surgant, a priest of Basel, wrote, in the end of the 15th century, a treatise on homiletics and catechetics most useful for his age, _Manuale Curatorum_. In it he showed how Latin sermons might be rendered into the tongue of the people, and urged the duty of hearing sermons. The mendicants were the chief preachers, especially the mystics of the preaching orders, during the 14th century (§ 114), and the Augustinians, particularly their German Observants, during the 15th (§ 112, 5), and next to them, the Franciscans.--The most zealous preacher of his age was the Spanish Dominican =Vincent Ferrér=. In A.D. 1397 he began his unprecedentedly successful preaching tours through Spain, France, Italy, England, Scotland, and Ireland. He died in A.D. 1419. He laboured with special ardour for the conversion of the Jews, of whom he is said to have baptized 35,000. Wherever he went he was venerated as a saint, received with respect by the clergy and prelates, highly honoured by kings and princes, consulted by rich and poor regarding temporal and spiritual things. He was canonized by Calixtus III. in A.D. 1455. Certain Flagellants (§ 116, 3) whom he met in his travels followed him, scourging themselves and singing his penitential songs, but he stopped this when objected to by the Council of Constance. His sermons dealt with the realities of actual life, and called all classes to repent of their sins. Of a similar spirit was the Italian Dominican =Barletta=, who died in A.D. 1480, whose burlesque and scathing satire rendered him the most popular preacher of the day. In his footsteps went the Frenchmen =Maillard= and =Menot=, both Franciscans, and the German priest of Strassburg, =Geiler of Kaisersberg=, quite equal to them in quaint terseness of expression and biting wit. All these were preeminently distinguished for moral earnestness and profound spirituality.[339]

§ 115.3. =The _Biblia Pauperum_.=--The typological interpretation of the Old Testament history received a fixed and permanent form in the illustrations introduced into the service books and pictures printed on the altars, walls, and windows of churches, etc., during the 12th century. A set of seventeen such picture groups was found at Vienna, of which the middle panels represent the New Testament history, _sub gracia_, above it an Old Testament type from the period _ante legem_, and under it one from the period _sub lege_. This picture series was completed by the =Biblia pauperum=, so called from the saying of Gregory I., that pictures were the poor man’s Bible. Many of the extant MSS., all depending on a common source, date from the 14th and 15th centuries. The illustrations of the New Testament are in the middle, and round about are pictures of the four prophets, with volumes in their hands, on which the appropriate Old Testament prophecies are written. On right and left are Old Testament types. The multiplication of copies of this work by woodcuts and types was one of the first uses to which printing was put.[340]

§ 115.4. =The Bible in the Vernacular.=--The need of =translations of the Bible= into the language of the people, specially urged by the Waldensians and Albigensians, was now widely insisted upon by those of reformatory tendencies (§ 119). On the introduction of printing, about A.D. 1450, an opportunity was afforded of rapidly circulating translations already made in most of the European languages. Before Luther, there were fourteen printed editions of the Bible in High and five in Low German. The translations, made from the Vulgate, were in all practically the same. The translators are unknown. The diction is for the most part clumsy, and the sense often scarcely intelligible. Translations had been made in England by the Wiclifites, and in Bohemia by the Hussites. In France, various renderings of separate books of Scripture were circulated, and a complete French Bible was issued by the confessor of Charles VIII., Jean de Rely, at Paris, in A.D. 1487. Two Italian Bibles were published in Venice, in A.D. 1471, one by the Camaldulite abbot Malherbi, closely following the Vulgate; the other by the humanist Bruccioli, which often falls back on the original text. The latter was highly valued by Italian exiles of the Reformation age. In Spain a Carthusian, Ferreri, attempted a translation, which was printed at Valencia in A.D. 1478. More popular however than these translations were the =Bible Histories=, _i.e._ free renderings, sometimes contracted, sometimes expanded, of the historical books, especially these of the Old Testament. From A.D. 1470 large and frequent editions were published of the German =Plenaries=, containing at first only the gospels and epistles, afterwards also the Service of the Mass, for all Sundays and festivals and saints’ days, with explanations and directions.

§ 115.5. =Catechisms and Prayer Books.=--Next to preaching, the chief opportunity for imparting religious instruction was confession. Later catechisms drew largely upon the baptismal and confessional services. In the 13th and 14th centuries the decalogue was added, and afterwards the seven deadly sins and the seven principal virtues. Pictures were used to impress the main points on the minds of the people and the youth. The catechetical literature of this period, both in guides for priests and manuals for the people, was written in the vernacular.--During the 15th century there were also numerous so-called _Artes moriendi_, showing how to die well, in which often earnest piety appeared side by side with the grossest superstition. There were also many prayer books, _Hortuli animæ_, published, in which the worship of Mary and the saints often overshadowed that of God and Christ, and an extravagant belief in indulgences led to a mechanical view of prayer that was thoroughly pagan.

§ 115.6. =The Dance of Death.=--The fantastic humour of the Middle Ages found dramatic and spectacular expression in the Dance of Death, in which all classes, from the pope and princes to the beggars, in turn converse with death. It was introduced into Germany and France in the beginning of the 14th century, with the view of raising men out of the pleasures and troubles of life. It was called in France the Dance of the Maccabees, because first introduced at that festival. Pictures and verbal descriptions of the Dance of Death were made on walls and doors of churches, around MSS. and woodcuts, where death was generally represented as a skeleton. Hans Holbein the Younger gave the finishing touch to these representations in his _Imagines Mortis_, the originals of which are in St. Petersburg. In this masterpiece, the idea of a dancing pair is set aside, and in its place forty pictures, afterwards increased to fifty-eight, full of humour and moral earnestness, pourtray the power of death in the earthly life.[341]

§ 115.7. =Hymnology= (§ 104, 10).--The =Latin Church poetry= of the 14th and 15th centuries was far beneath that of the 12th and 13th. Only the mystics, _e.g._ Thomas à Kempis, still composed some beautiful hymns. We have now however the beginnings of =German= and =Bohemian= hymnology. The German flagellators sang German hymns (§ 116, 3), and so obtained much popular favour. The Hussite movement of the 15th century gave a great impulse to church song. Huss himself earnestly urged the practice of congregational singing in the language of the people, and himself composed Bohemian hymns. The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren were specially productive in this department (§ 119, 8). In many churches, at least on high festivals, German hymns were sung, and in some even at the celebration of mass and other parts of public worship. The spiritual songs of this period were of four kinds: some half German, half Latin; others translations of Latin hymns and sequences; others, original German compositions by monks and minstrels; and adaptations of secular songs to spiritual purposes. In the latter case the original melodies were also retained. Popular forms and melodies for sacred songs were now secured, and these were subsequently appropriated by the Reformers of the 16th century.

§ 115.8. =Church Music= (§ 104, 11).--Great improvements were made in organs by the invention of pedals, etc. =Church music= was also greatly developed by the introduction of harmony and counterpoint. The Dutch were pre-eminent in this department. Ockenheim, founder of the second Dutch school of music, at the end of the 15th century, was the inventor of the canon and the fugue. The greatest composer of this school was Jodocus Pratensis, about A.D. 1500, and next to him may be named the German, Adam of Fulda.

§ 115.9. =Legendary Relics.=--The legend of angels having transferred the house of Mary from Nazareth, in A.D. 1291, to Tersato in Dalmatia, in A.D. 1294 to Reccanati, and finally, in A.D. 1295, to Loretto in Ancona, arose in the 14th century, in connection with the fall of Acre (§ 94, 6) and the overthrow of the last remnants of the kingdom of Jerusalem. When and how the legend arose of the _Scala santa_ at Rome being the marble steps of Pilate’s prætorium, brought there by St. Helena, is unknown.--Even Frederick the Wise, at an enormous cost, brought together 1,010 sacred relics into his new chapel at Wittenberg, a mere look at which secured indulgence for 100 years. In a catalogue of relics in the churches of St. Maurice and Mary Magdalene at Halle, published in A D. 1520, are mentioned a piece of earth, from a field of Damascus, of which God made the first man; a piece from a field at Hebron, where Adam repented; a piece of the body of Isaac; twenty-five fragments of the burning bush of Horeb; specimens of the wilderness manna; six drops of the Virgin’s milk; the finger of the Baptist that pointed to the Lamb of God; the finger of Thomas that touched the wounds of Jesus; a bit of the altar at which John read mass for the Virgin; the stone with which Stephen was killed; a great piece of Paul’s skull; the hose of St. Thomas of Canterbury; the baret of St. Francis, etc. The collection consisted of 8,933 articles, and could afford indulgence for 39,245,100 years and 220 days! Benefit was to be had by contributions to the church, which went into the pocket of the elector-archbishop, Albert of Mainz. The craze for =pilgrimages= was also rife among all classes, old and young, high and low. Signs and wonders and newly discovered relics were regarded as consecrating new places of pilgrimage, and the stories of pilgrims raised the fame of these resorts more and more. In A.D. 1500 Düren, by the possession of a relic of Ann, stolen from Mainz, rapidly rose to first rank. The people of Mainz sought through the pope to recover this valuable property, but he decided in favour of Düren, because God had meanwhile sanctioned the transfer by working many miracles of healing.

§ 115B. NATIONAL LITERATURE AND ECCLESIASTICAL ART.

Toward the close of the 13th century, and throughout the 14th, a national literature, in prose and poetry, sprang up in Italy, which in several respects has close relations to the history of the church. The three Florentines, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, boldly burst through the barriers of traditional usage, which had made Latin the only vehicle for literature and science, and became the creators of a beautiful Italian style; while their example powerfully influenced their own countrymen, and those of other western nations, during the immediately succeeding ages. The exclusive use of the Latin language had produced a uniform hierarchical spirit, and was a restraint to the anti-hierarchical movements of the age after independent national development in church and State. The breaking down of this barrier to progress was an important step. But all the three great men of letters whom we have named were also highly distinguished for their classical culture. They introduced the study of the ancient classics, and were thus the precursors of the humanists. They also presented a united front against the corruptions of the church, against hierarchical pretensions, the greed and moral debasement of the papacy, as well as against the moral and intellectual degradation of the clergy and the monks. Petrarch and Boccaccio too warred against the depraved scholasticism. The Augustan age of German national poetry was contemporary with the age of the Hohenstaufens. It consisted in popular songs, these often of a sacred character. During the 14th century the sacred drama reached the highest point of its development, especially in Germany, England, France, and Spain. The spirit of the Renaissance, which during the 15th century dominated Italian art, made itself felt also in the domain of ecclesiastical architecture and painting.

§ 115.10. =The Italian National Literature.=[342]--=Dante Alighieri=, born at Florence in A.D. 1265, was in A.D. 1302 banished as a Ghibelline from his native city, and died an exile at Ravenna, in A.D. 1321. His boyish love for Beatrice, which after her early death continued to fill his soul to the end of his life, gave him an impulse to a “New Life,” and proved the unfailing source of his poetic inspiration. His studies at Bologna, Padua, and Paris made him an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas, but alongside of his scholastic culture there lay the quick perception of the beautiful, combined with a lively imagination. He was thus able to deal with the burning questions of his day in one of the greatest poetic masterpieces of any age, people, or tongue. His _Divina Commedia_ describes a vision in which the poet is led, first by the hand of Virgil, as the representative of human wisdom, through Hell and Purgatory, then by Beatrice, whose place at times is taken by the German Matilda (§ 107, 2), and finally by St. Bernard, as representatives of revealed religion, through Paradise and the several heavens up to the empyræum, the eternal residence of the triune God. The poet presents his readers with a description of what he saw, and reports his conversations with his guides and the souls of more important personages, most of them shortly before deceased, in which the problems of philosophy, theology, and politics are discussed. His political views, of which he treats _ex professo_ in the three books of his _De monarchia_, are derived from Aquinas’ theory of the State, but breathe a strong Italian Ghibelline patriotism, so that he places not only Boniface VIII. but also Frederick II. in Hell. In the struggle between the empire and the papacy he stands decidedly on the side of the former. With profound sorrow he bewails the corruption of the church in its head and members, but holds firmly by its confession of faith. And while lashing vigorously the corruptions of monkery, he eulogizes the heavenliness of the lives of Francis and Dominic.[343] =Petrarch=, who died in A.D. 1374, broke away completely from scholasticism, and turned with enthusiasm to classical studies. He combated superstition, _e.g._ astrology, but also contends against the unbelief of his age, and in his letters and poems lashes with merciless severity the immorality of the papacy and the secularization of the church.[344] In =Boccaccio= again, who died in A.D. 1375, antipathy to scholasticism, monkery, and the hierarchy had reached its utmost stage. He has no anger and denunciation, but only contempt, reproach, and wit to shoot against them. He also makes light of the moral requirements of Christianity and the church, especially the seventh commandment. But in later years he manifested deep penitence for the lascivious writing of his youth, to which he had given reckless and shameless expression in his “Decameron.”

§ 115.11. =The German National Literature.=--The German prose style was greatly ennobled by the mystics (§ 114), and the highest development of German satire against the hierarchy, clergy, and monks was reached by Sebastian Brant, of Strassburg, who wrote in A.D. 1494 his “Ship of Fools.” Among popular preachers John Tauler held the first rank (§ 114, 2). In Strassburg, Geiler of Kaisersberg distinguished himself as an original preacher. His sermons were full of biting wit, keen sarcasm, and humorous expressions, but also of profound earnestness and withering exposures of the sins of the clergy and monks. His best known work is a series of sermons on Brant’s “Ship of Fools,” published in A.D. 1498.

§ 115.12. =The Sacred Drama= (§ 105, 5).--The poetic merit of most of the German mysteries performed at high festivals is not great. The Laments of Mary however often rose to true poetic heights. Comedy and burlesque too found place especially in connection with Judas, or the exchangers, or the unconverted Magdalene. A priest, Theodoric Schernberg, wrote a play on the fall and repentance of the popess Johanna (§ 82, 6). On Shrove Tuesday plays were performed, in which the clergy and monks were held up to ridicule. Hans Roseuplüt of Nuremberg, about A.D. 1450, was the most famous writer of German Shrovetide plays. In France, about the end of the 14th century, a society of young people of the upper rank was formed, called _Enfans sans souci_, whose _Sotties_, buffooneries, in which the church was ridiculed, were in high repute in the cities and at the court. Their most distinguished poet was Pierre Gringoire, who, in the beginning of the 16th century, in the French _Chasse du Cerf des Cerfs_, parodied the _Servus servorum_ (§ 46, 10), and the church is represented as the old befooled mother. The numerous Italian mysteries were produced mainly by the gifted and cultured sons of Tuscany, who had already developed their native tongue into a beautiful and flexible language. In Spain, during the 15th century, the _Autos_, partly as Christmas plays and partly as sacramental or passion plays, were based on the ancient mysteries, and in form inclined more to the allegorical moralities.

§ 115.13. =Architecture and Painting= (§ 104, 12, 14)--=Gothic architecture= was the prevailing style in the churches of Germany, France, and England. In Italy, the humanist movement (§ 120, 1) led to the imitation of ancient classical models, and thus the Renaissance style was introduced, which flourished for 300 years. Its real creator was the Florentine Bruneleschi, who won imperishable renown by the grand cupola of the cathedral of Florence. Bramante, died A.D. 1514, marks the transition from the earlier Renaissance of the 15th century to the later of the 16th, at the summit of which stands Michael Angelo, A.D. 1474-1564. After a plan of Bramante Julius II., in A.D. 1506, began the magnificent reconstruction of St. Peter’s at Rome, the execution of which in its gigantic proportions occupied the reigns of twenty popes. It was completed under Urban VIII., in A.D. 1636. This great building, in consequence of the traffic in indulgences, entered on to defray its cost, became the occasion of the loss to the papacy of the half of western Christendom.--Sacred =Statuary=, in the hands of Ghiberti, died A.D. 1455, and Michael Angelo, reached the highest stage of excellence.--Of =Painting=, the Augustan age of which was the 15th century, there were properly four schools. Giotto, who died in A.D. 1336, was founder of the Florentine school, which was specially distinguished by its delineations of sacred history. To it belonged the Dominican Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, who painted only as he prayed, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, and Michael Angelo. Then there was the Lombard or Venetian School, at the head of which stands Giovanni Bellini, died A.D. 1516, which turned away from the church and applied itself with its fresh living colouring to the depicting of earthly ideals. Its most eminent representatives were Correggio, died A.D. 1534, and Titian, died A.D. 1576. In the Umbrian school, again, the spirit of St. Francis continued still to breathe. Its greatest master was Raphael of Urbino, the noblest and most renowned of all Christian painters, distinguished also as an architect. The German school had its ablest representatives in the brothers Hubert and John van Eyk, Albert Dürer, and Hans Holbein the Elder.--Continuation § 149, 15.

§ 116. POPULAR MOVEMENTS.

In consequence of the shameful debasement of the papacy and the deep corruption of the clergy and monks, the influence of the church on the moral and religious culture of the people, in spite of the ardent zeal of the homilists and catechists, was upon the whole much less than formerly. Reverence for the church as it stood was indeed tottering, but was not yet completely overthrown. The religious enthusiasm of earlier times was fading away, but occasional phenomena still continued to arise, like St. Bridget and St. Catharine of Siena (§ 112, 4, 8), Claus of Flüe, and the Maid of Orleans. But in order to elevate a John of Nepomuk into a recognised national saint, it was necessary to produce forged legendary stories in post-Reformation times. The market-place tricks of John of Capistrano (§ 112, 3) were of such a kind, that even the papal curia only after a century and a half had passed could venture to adorn him with the halo of saintship. The ever-increasing nuisance of the sale of indulgences smothered religious earnestness and crushed all religious spirit out of the people. But earnestness showed itself again in the reactions of the Beghards and Lollards, or in the explosions of the Flagellants, and spirituality often found rich nourishment in the preaching of the mystics. One current issuing from the widespread Friends of God passed deep into the heart of the German people; another, springing probably from the same source, but with a quite different tendency, appears in the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit. On the other hand, superstition also prevailed, and was all the more dangerous the more it parted with its poetic and naïve character (§ 117, 4). Toward the end of that period however a new era dawned in social life, as well as in national literature. Knighthood paled before gunpowder. The establishment of civic corporations developed a sense of freedom, and introduced a healthy understanding and appreciation of civil liberty. The printing of books began the dissemination of knowledge, and the discovery of America opened to view a new world for trade, colonization, and the spread of Christianity. To the pious heart of the discoverer the extension of Christ’s kingdom proved the most powerful motive to his continued exertions, and from the treasures of the new world he hoped also to obtain the means for conquering again the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Land.

§ 116.1. =Two National Saints.=--=John of Nepomuk=, of Pomuk in Bohemia, was from A.D. 1380 pastor, then canon, archiepiscopal secretary, and vicar-general of Prague. King Wenzel had him seized, cruelly tortured, and flung over the bridge into the Moldau, because, so runs the legend, he as confessor of the queen sturdily refused to betray the secrets of the confessional, but really because he had roused the king’s anger to the uttermost in a violent controversy between the king’s archbishop, John of Jenzenstein, and the chapter over their election and consecration of an abbot. The confession legend appears first in an Austrian writer of A.D. 1451, who gives it distinctly as a tradition. It is evidently connected with the Taborite rejection of the Catholic doctrine of auricular confession (§ 119, 7). If it be accepted as true, then, seeing that all the older chroniclers ascribe the cruel treatment of this prelate to the share he took in the abbot’s election, it will be necessary to assume two victims of the king’s wrath instead of one. The John Nepomuk of the legend, and the confessor of the queen, was tortured by the king’s command in A.D. 1383; the other, who figures in the old chronicles as archiepiscopal vicar-general, and is simply called John, was tortured in A.D. 1393, and then thrown over the bridge into the Moldau. This latter story appears first in a Bohemian chronicle of A.D. 1541. In the 17th century the Jesuits, in order to deprive the heretical national saint and martyr John Huss of his supremacy by bringing forward another genuine Bohemian, but also a thoroughly Catholic saint, gave currency to the legend, adorned with many additional stories of miracles. Benedict XIII. (§ 164, 1) was just the pope to aid such a device by sanctioning, as he did in A.D. 1729, the canonization of a purely fictitious saint-confessor John Nepomuk. He is patron saint of bridges, whose image in Bohemia, and other strictly Catholic lands, is met with at almost every bridge, and is reverenced as the protector from unjust accusations, as well as the dispenser of rain in seasons of great drought. Although no mention is made of the story about the confessional in the letter of complaint to Rome by Archbishop Jenzenstein, Catholic historians still insist that the confessor’s steadfastness was the real cause, the election of the abbot the ostensible cause, of the martyrdom of A.D. 1393.[345] The need of strengthening the position of the Romish church, in face of the progress of the Swiss Reformation of the 16th century, led also to the elevation of the recluse, =Nicolaus [Nicolas] of Flüe= upon the pedestal of a Swiss national saint. Esteemed even before his birth a saint by reason of signs and wonders, “Brother Claus,” after a long, active life in the world, in his 50th year, the father of ten children, forsook house and home, with the approval of his wife, abstained from all nourishment save that of the sacrament, and died, after spending nineteen years in the wilderness, in A.D. 1487. During this period he was the trusted adviser of all classes upon public and private affairs. He is specially famous as having saved Switzerland, by appearing personally at the Diet of Stanz, in A.D. 1481, stopping the conflict between cities and provinces, which threatened to break up the confederation and bring about civil war, and suggesting the peaceable compromise of the “Agreement of Stanz.” That Brother Claus did assist in securing harmony is a well established fact, but it is also demonstrable that he was not personally present at Stanz. He was beatified by Clement X. in A.D. 1671, but notwithstanding repeated endeavours by his admirers, he has not yet been canonized.

§ 116.2. =The Maid of Orleans, A.D. 1428-1431.=--Joan of Arc was the daughter of a peasant in the village of Domremy, in Champagne. Even in her thirteenth year she thought she saw a peculiar brightness and heard a heavenly voice exhorting her to chastity and piety. She now bound herself by a vow to perpetual virginity. Afterwards the heavenly voices became more frequent, and the brightness took the shape of the archangel Michael, St. Catharine, and other saints, who saluted her as saviour of her fatherland. France was, under the imbecile king Charles VI., and still more after his death, rent by the rival parties of the Armagnacs and Burgundians. The former fought for the rights of the dauphin Charles VII.; the latter supported his mother Isabella and the English king Henry V., who was succeeded in A.D. 1422 by his son Henry VI., then only nine months old. Joan was the enthusiastic supporter of the dauphin. He found himself in A.D. 1428 in the greatest straits. The last bulwark of his might, the city of Orleans, was besieged by the English, and seemed near its fall. Then her voices commanded Joan to relieve Orleans, and to accompany the dauphin to his coronation at Rheims. She now published her call, which had been hitherto kept secret, overcame all difficulties, was recognised as a messenger of heaven, assumed the male attire of a soldier, and placed herself at the head of an enthusiastic crowd. Great success attended the movements of this girl of seventeen years. In the latter campaigns of the war she became the prisoner of Burgundy, who delivered her over to the English. At Rouen she was subjected to an ecclesiastical tribunal, which after four months’ investigation condemned her to the stake as a heretic and sorceress. In view of the fire, her courage failed. Yielding to the persuasion of her confessor, she acknowledged her guilt, and had her sentence commuted to that of imprisonment for life. But eight days later she was led forth to the stake. Her rude keepers had taken away her female attire, and forced her to wear again male garments, and this act to which she was compelled was made a charge against her. She died courageously and piously in A.D. 1431. At the demand of her family, which had been ennobled, a revision of the process against her was made in A.D. 1450, when she was pronounced innocent, and the charges against her false. The endeavour of Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, in A.D. 1876, in the name of Catholic France, to have her canonized, was not responded to by the papal curia. The infallible church, that had burnt her as a witch in A.D. 1431, could scarcely give her a place among its saints, even after 450 years had gone.

§ 116.3. =Lollards, Flagellants, and Dancers.=--During a plague at Antwerp in A.D. 1300 the =Lollards= made their appearance, nursing the sick and burying the dead. They spread rapidly over the Netherlands and the bordering German provinces. Like the Beghards however, and for the same reasons, they soon fell under suspicion of heresy, and were subjected to the persecution of the Inquisition, until Gregory XI., in A.D. 1347, again granted them toleration. But the name Lollard still continued to be associated with heresy or hypocrisy (§ 119, 1).[346] The =Flagellant= fraternities, which had sprung up in the 12th century (§ 106, 4), greatly increased during this period, and reached their height during the 14th century. Their influence was greatest during the visitation of the Black Death, A.D. 1348-1350, which cost Europe many millions of lives. Issuing from Hungary, rushing forth with the force of an avalanche, and massing in great numbers on the upper Rhine, they spread over all Germany, Belgium and Holland, Switzerland, England, and Sweden. Entrance into France was refused them at the bidding of the Avignon pope Clement VI. In long rows of penitents, with uncovered head, screaming forth their penitential songs, and with tears streaming down their cheeks, they rushed about lashing their bare backs. They also from city to city and from village to village read aloud a letter of warning, said to have been written by Christ, and brought to the Patriarch of Jerusalem by an angel. This paroxysm lasted for three years. In Lombardy, in A.D. 1399, when famine, pestilence, the Turkish war, and expectation of the end of the world inclined men to such extravagances, the Flagellants made their appearance again, dressed in white robes, and so called _Bianchi_, _Albati_. Princes, scholars, and popes, universities and councils sought to check this silly fanaticism, but were not able to suppress it. Many Flagellants were also heretical in their views, spoke of the hierarchy as antichrist, withdrew from the worship of the church, declared the bloody baptism of the scourge the only true sacrament, and died at the stake of the Inquisition.--The =Dancers=, _Chorisantes_, were a sect closely related to the Flagellants, but their fanaticism seemed more of a pathological than of a religious order. Half naked and crowned with leaves they rushed along the streets and into houses, dancing in a wild, tumultuous manner. They made a great noise in the Rhine Provinces in A.D. 1374 and in A.D. 1418. They were regarded as demoniacs and cured by calling upon St. Vitus.

§ 116.4. =The Friends of God.=--During the 14th century many detachments of mystic sects spread through all Southern Germany, and even from the Netherlands to Hungary and Italy. A powerful religious awakening, with an undertone of contemplative mysticism, was now experienced in the castles of the knights, in the shops of artisans, and in the stalls of traders, as well as in the Beguine houses, the monasteries, and nunneries of the Dominicans and other monkish orders. A great free association was then called forth under the name of “Friends of God” (John xv. 15), whose members maintained personal and epistolary correspondence with one another. The headquarters of this movement were Cologne, Strassburg, and Basel. Its preachers and supporters were mostly Dominicans. They drew their intellectual and spiritual nourishment from the writings of the German mystics. They repudiated all sectarian intentions, carefully observed the rites and ceremonies and attended on the worship of the church, and accepted all its dogmas. But all the greater on this account was their sorrow over the deep decay of religious and moral life, and their lamentations over the corruption of the clergy and hierarchy. Fantastic visionary conceptions, however, derived from the domain of mysticism, were by no means rare among them.

§ 116.5. =Pantheistic Libertine Societies.=--A demoniacally inspired counterpart to the fraternity of the “Friends of God” is found in the sect of the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit. This sect, derived for the most part from the artisan class, may be regarded as carrying out to a consistent development the views of Amalrich of Bena (§ 108, 4). We meet with these in the beginning of the 14th century wandering about, missionarising and agitating in all parts of Southern Germany as well as in Switzerland, while they were particularly numerous in the Rhine Provinces, where Cologne and Strassburg were their main resorts. Often associating with strolling Beghards (§ 98, 12) they are frequently confounded with these. They were communistic libertine pantheists. Every pious man is a Christ, in whom God becomes man. Whatever is done in love is pure. The perfect are free from the law, and cannot sin. The church with her sacraments and institutions is a thorough cheat; purgatory, heaven, and hell are mere figments, the marriage bond contrary to nature, all property is common good, and theft of it allowable. Their secret services ended with immoral orgies. The Inquisition exterminated the sect by sword and stake.--The Adamites in Austria in A.D. 1312 and the Turlupines in the Isle of France showed similar tendencies. In the beginning of the 15th century they reappeared as _Homines intelligentiæ_ at Brussels. In A.D. 1421 the Hussite leader Ziska rooted out the Bohemian Adamites or Picards, who went naked after the pattern of paradise, and had a community of wives. Picard is just a modification of the heretical designation Beghard. They gained a footing in several villages, and built an establishment on a small island in a tributary of the Moldau, from which they made excursions into the surrounding districts, until Ziska put an end to them by conquering the island in A.D. 1421.

§ 117. CHURCH DISCIPLINE.

The reckless and shameless sale of indulgences often made the exercise of church discipline impossible, and the discreditable conduct of the mendicant monks destroyed all respect for the confessional. The scandalous misuse of the ban and interdict had shorn these of much of their terror. Frightful curses were pronounced at Rome every Maundy Thursday against heretics by the solemn reading of the bull _In Cœna Domini_. The Inquisition was still abundantly occupied with persecuting and burning numerous heretics, and at the end of our period Innocent VIII. carried to the utmost extreme the persecution and burning of witches.

§ 117.1. =Indulgences.=--The scholastic theory of indulgences (§ 106, 2) was authoritatively proclaimed by Clement VI. in A.D. 1343. The reforming councils of the 15th century wished only to prevent them being misused, for the purpose of filling the papal treasury. Sixtus IV., in A.D. 1477, declared that it was allowable to take money for indulgences for the dead, and that their souls might be freed from purgatory. The pert question, why the pope would not rather free all souls at once by the exercise of his sovereign power, was answered by the assertion that the church, in accordance with Divine righteousness, could dispense its grace only _discrete et cum moderamine_. The institution of the jubilee gave a great impulse to the sale of indulgences. In A.D. 1300 Boniface VIII., at the bidding of an old man, proclaimed a complete indulgence for one hundred years to all Christians who would do penance for fifteen days in the churches of the apostles at Rome, and by this means gathered from day to day 200,000 pilgrims within the walls of the Holy City. Later popes made a jubilee every fiftieth year, then every thirty-third, and finally every twenty-fifth. Instead of appearing personally at Rome, it was enough to pay the cost of such a journey. The nepotism and extravagance of the popes had left an empty exchequer, which this sale of indulgences was intended to fill. The war with the Turks and the building of St. Peter’s gave occasion to repeated indulgence crusades. Traffickers in indulgences in the most barefaced way cried up the quality of their wares; the conditions of repentance and purpose of reformation were scarcely so much as named. Indulgences were even granted beforehand for sins that were contemplated.

§ 117.2. =The Inquisition=, since A.D. 1232 under the direction of the Dominicans (§ 109, 2), spread through all European countries during the 14th century. While the papal court resided at Avignon the Inquisition was at its height in =France=, where Waldensians and Albigensians, Beghards and Lollards, Fraticelli and Fanatical Spiritualists, were brought in crowds to the stake and subjected to the most cruel tortures. Bernard Delicieux, a Franciscan, raised his voice, A.D. 1300-1320, against the inhuman cruelty of the inquisitors, and with noble independence and heroic bravery appealed to king and pope against the merciless sacrifice of so many victims. He was shut up for life in a dark dungeon, and fed on bread and water.--In =Germany=, where, from the murder of Conrad of Marburg in A.D. 1233 (§ 109, 3), for almost a century and a half we find no trace of a regularly constituted Inquisition, it made its appearance again in A.D. 1368. During that year Urban V. issued a bull, by which he required that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Germany should support with their counsel and influence the two inquisitors who were searching out the heretical Beghards and Beguines (§ 116, 5), and place their prisons at the disposal of the Holy Office, which had still no prison of its own. His successor, Gregory XI., in A.D. 1372 increased the number of inquisitors in Germany to five, one in each of the archdioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Salzburg, Magdeburg, and Bremen; while his successor, Boniface IX., in A.D. 1399 added a sixth for North Germany. But these papal bulls would probably, owing to the disinclination of the Germans to the Inquisition, like the attempts of Gregory IX., never have been put in force, had not Charles IV. (§ 110, 4, 5) taken up the matter with an ardent zeal that even went beyond the intentions of Urban and Gregory. During his second journey to Rome, in A.D. 1369, he issued from Lucca four imperial decrees, and in A.D. 1378 from Treves a fifth, by which he granted to the Inquisition throughout Germany all the rights, powers, and privileges which it had anywhere, and required that all civil and ecclesiastical authorities, under pain of severest penalties and confiscation of all their goods, should support the Inquisition in its search for heretics and in its discovery and burning of all religious writings in the vulgar tongue composed and circulated by laymen or semi-laymen.--The =Spanish Inquisition= was re-established under Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1480, and thoroughly organized by the grand-inquisitor Torquemada, A.D. 1483-1499. One of the first inquisitors appointed by him in A.D. 1484 was an Augustinian, Pedro Arbires, who amid the most unrelenting cruelties performed the duties of his office with such zeal, that in sixteen months many hundreds had perished at the stake; but his fanatical career was ended by his murder at the altar in A.D. 1485. Not only the two who did the deed, but also all their relatives and friends, to the number of two hundred, suspected of complicity in a plot, were burned, while the “martyr” himself was beatified by Alexander VII. in A.D. 1661, and canonized by Pius IX. in A.D. 1867. This terrible tribunal further undertook the persecution of the hated Moors and Jews who had been baptized under compulsion (§ 95, 2, 3), which through numerous confiscations greatly enriched the national exchequer of Spain. This institution reached its highest point under the grand-inquisitor the Cardinal Francis Ximenes, A.D. 1507-1517, under whom 2,536 persons were burnt alive and 1,368 in effigy. The _auto da fès_, which ended at the stake, were conducted with a horrible pomp. Even those who were acquitted of the charge of heresy were compelled for a long time to wear the _san benito_, an armless robe with a red cross marked on it before and behind. According to Llorente, who had been general secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid, the Spanish inquisition, down to its suppression by Joseph Buonaparte in A.D. 1808, had executed in person 31,912, burned in effigy 17,659, and subjected to severe punishments 291,456.[347]

§ 117.3. =The Bull “_In Cœna Domini_.”=--It was customary to repeat from time to time the more important decrees of excommunication, to show that they were still valid. In this way the famous bull _In Cœna Domini_ was gradually constructed. The earliest sketch of it was given by Urban V., who died in A.D. 1370, and it was published in its final form by Urban VIII. in A.D. 1627. It contains a summary of all the rights of the Roman hierarchy, with anathemas against all opposing claims, not only on the part of secular princes and laymen, but also of antipapal councils, and concludes with a solemn excommunication of all heretics, to which Paul V. in A.D. 1610 added Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists, together with all their sympathisers. Pius V., in A.D. 1567, in a new redaction insisted that it should be read yearly in the Catholic churches of all lands, but could not get this carried out, especially in France and Germany. In A.D. 1770 Clement XIV. forbade its being read.

§ 117.4. =Prosecution of Witches.=--Down to the beginning of the 13th century many churchmen had spoken against the popular superstition regarding sorcery, witchcraft, and compacts with the devil, and a whole series of provincial councils had pronounced such belief to be heathenish, sinful, and heretical. Even in Gratian’s decretal (§ 99, 5) there was a canon which required the clergy to teach the people that witchcraft was a delusion, and belief in it incompatible with the Christian faith. But upon the establishment of the Inquisition in the beginning of the 13th century witchcraft came more and more to occupy the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities. Heresy and sorcery were now regarded as correlates, like two agencies resting on and serviceable to the demoniacal powers, and were therefore treated in the same way as offences to be punished with torture and the stake. The Dominicans, as administrators of the Inquisition, were the most zealous defenders of the belief in witchcraft, whereas the Franciscans generally spoke of it simply as foolish, heathenish, and heretical. Thomas Aquinas included it in his theological system, and Eymerich in his _Directorium Inquisitorium_ (§ 109, 2). Yet witch prosecutions were only occasional incidents during the 14th and 15th centuries, especially in Germany, where clergy and people were adverse to them. But it was quite otherwise after Innocent VIII., on 3rd December, 1484, by his bull _Summis desiderantes affectibus_, complaining of previous laxity, called attention to the spread of witchcraft in the country, and appointed two inquisitors, Sprenger and Institor, to secure its extermination. These administered their office with such zeal and success, that in A.D. 1489 at Cologne they were able, as the result of their experiences, to publish under the title _Malleus maleficarum_ a complete code for witch prosecutions. From the confessions wrung from their victims by torture and suggestive questions, they obtained a full, dogmatic system of compacts and intrigues with the devil, of _Succubis_ and _Incubis_, of witch ointment, broomsticks, and ovenforks, of witches’ sabbaths, Walpurgis nights, and flights up chimneys. Soon this illusion spread like an epidemic, and thousands throughout Germany and all other Catholic countries, mostly old women, but also some young maidens, were subjected to the most horrible tortures, and after confession had been extorted, to death by fire. The _Malleus_ accounted for the fact that women and very rarely men were found engaged in such proceedings, by this statement: _Dicitur enim femina a feret minus, quia semper minorem habet et servat fidem, et hoc ex natura._--The Reformation of the 16th century made no change in these horrible proceedings, which rather rose to a height during the 17th century. Theologians of all confessions believed in the possibility and reality of compacts with the devil, and regarded this to be as essential to an orthodox creed as belief in the devil’s existence. The jurists and civil judges in Protestant and Catholic countries were no less narrow-minded and superstitious than the theologians. Among Catholics the most celebrated defenders of the witch prosecutions were Jean Bodin (§ 148, 3), Peter Binsfeld, and the Jesuit Mart. Delrio (§ 149, 11). Among Protestant vindicators of these prosecutions may be named the Heidelberg physician Thomas Erastus (§ 144, 1), James I. of England, and the famous criminal lawyer Carpzov of Leipzig. Noble men however were not wanting on both sides who were shrewd and sensible enough to oppose such crude conceptions. In the 16th century we have the physician Weier, who wrote his _De præstigiis dæmonorum_ in A.D. 1563, and in the 17th the Jesuits Tanner and Spee (§ 149, 11; 156, 3), and the Dutch Protestant Bekker (§ 160, 5). The writings of the Halle jurist Thomasius in A.D. 1701, 1704, were the first to tell powerfully in favour of liberal views. In A.D. 1749 a nun of seventy years old was burnt at Würzburg as a witch. In A.D. 1754 a girl of thirteen and in A.D. 1756 one of fourteen years were put to death at Landshut as suspected of witchcraft. In German Switzerland a servant girl at Glarus in A.D. 1782 was the last victim. In bigoted Catholic countries the delusion lasted longer, but prosecutions were seldomer carried the length of judicial murder. In Mexico however, the Alcade Ignacio Castello of San Jacobo on 20th August, 1877, “with consent of the whole population,” burnt five witches alive. Altogether since the issue of the bull of Innocent there have been certainly no less than 300,000 women brought to the stake as witches.

IV. Attempts at Reformation.

§ 118. ATTEMPTED REFORMS IN CHURCH POLITY.

The struggle between imperialism and hierarchism, which is present through the whole course of the Middle Ages, rose to a height in the times of Louis the Bavarian, A.D. 1314-1347 (§ 110, 3, 4), and is of special interest here because of the literary war waged against one another by the rival supporters of the emperor and the pope. It concerns itself first of all only with the questions in debate between the imperial and the sacerdotal parties; but soon on the imperialist side there appeared a reforming tendency, which could not be given effect to without carrying the discussion into a multitude of other departments where reformation was also needed. Of quite another kind was the “reformation of head and members” desired by the great councils of the 15th century. The contention here was based, not so much upon any superiority claimed by the emperor over the pope and by the State over the church, but rather upon the subordination of the pope to the supreme authority of the universal church represented by the œcumenical councils. Yet both agreed in this, that with like energy they attacked the corruption of the papacy, in the one case in the interest of the State, in the other in the interest of the church.

§ 118.1. =The Literary War between Imperialists and Curialists in the 14th Century.=--The literary controversy over the debatable land between church and State was conducted with special vigour in the earlier part of our period, on account of the conflict between Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair of France (§ 110, 1). The ablest vindicators of the independence of the State were the advocate =Peter Dubois= and the Dominican theologian =John of Paris=. Among their scholars were the men who twenty years later sought refuge from the wrath of Pope John XXII. at the court of Louis the Bavarian at Munich. Of these the most important was the Italian =Marsilius of Padua=. As teacher of theology, philosophy, and medicine at Paris, in A.D. 1324, when the dispute between emperor and pope had reached its height, he composed jointly with his colleague =John of Jandun= in Champagne a _Defensor pacis_, a civil and ecclesiastical memoir, which, with an insight and clearness very remarkable for that age, developed the evangelical mean of the superiority of the State over the church, and of the empire over the papacy, historically, exegetically, and dogmatically; and for this end established theories of Scripture and tradition, of the tasks and place of the church in the State, of excommunication and persecution of heretics, of liberty of faith and conscience, etc., which even transcend the principles laid down on these points by the Reformation of the 16th century. Both authors accompanied Louis to Italy in A.D. 1326, and there John of Jandun died in A.D. 1328. Marsilius continued with the emperor as his physician, counsellor, and literary defender, and died at Munich between A.D. 1341-1343. In A.D. 1327 John XXII. condemned the _Defensor pacis_, and Clement VI. pronounced its author the worst heretic of all ages. The book, often reprinted during the 16th century, was first printed at Basel in A.D. 1522.

§ 118.2. Alongside of Marsilius there also stood a goodly array of schismatical Franciscans, with their general, Michael of Cesena, at their head (§ 112, 2), who were like himself refugees at the court of Munich. They persistently contested the heresies of John XXII. in regard to the vision of God (§ 110, 3) and his lax theory of poverty. Their polemic also extended to the whole papal system, and the corruption of church and clergy connected therewith. The most celebrated of them in respect of scientific attainments was =William Occam= (§ 113, 3). His earlier treatises dealt with the pope’s heresies, and only after the Diet of Rhense (§ 110, 4) did he take up the burning questions about church and State. In the comprehensive _Dialogus_ he rejects the infallibility of the pope as decidedly as his temporal sovereignty, and denies the Divine institution of the primacy. Also a German prelate, =Leopold of Bebenburg=, Canon of Würzburg, and from A.D. 1353 Bishop of Bamberg, inspired by genuinely German patriotism, made his appearance in A.D. 1338 as a brave and prudent defender of imperial rights against the assumptions of the papacy.--The ablest of all Marsilius’ opponents was the Spanish Franciscan =Alvarus Pelagius=, who wrote in A.D. 1330 the treatise _De planctu ecclesiæ_, in which, while sadly complaining of the corruption of the church and clergy, he yet ascribes to the pope as the vicar of Christ unlimited authority over all earthly principalities and powers, and regards him as the fountain of all privileges and laws. A still more thoroughgoing deification of the papacy had appeared a few years earlier in the _Summa de potestate ecclesiæ ad Johannem Papam_ by the Augustinian =Augustinus Triumphus= of Ancona. But neither he nor Pelagius, in view of the manifest contradictions of the pope’s doctrines of poverty (§ 112, 2), dared go the length of maintaining papal infallibility. A German canon of Regensburg, =Conrad of Megensburg=, also took part in the controversy, seeking to vindicate and glorify the papacy.

§ 118.3. =Reforming Councils of the 15th Century.=--The longing for reform during this period found most distinct expression in the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel (§ 110, 7-9). The fruitlessness of these endeavours, though they had the sympathy of the people generally, shows that there was something essentially defective in them. The movement had kept itself aloof from all sectaries and separatists, wishing to hold by and reform the presently existing church. But its fault was this, that it insisted only upon a reformation in the head and members, not in the spirit, that it aimed at lopping off the wild growths of the tree, without getting rid of the corrupt sap from which the very same growths would again proceed. Only that which was manifestly unchristian in the pretensions of the hierarchy, the covetousness and greed of the pope, the immorality of the clergy, the depravity and ignorance of the monks, etc.--in short, only abuses in hierarchical constitution and discipline--were dealt with. There was no word about doctrine. The Romish system, in spite of all its perversions, was allowed to stand. The current forms of worship, notwithstanding the introduction of many unevangelical elements and pagan superstitions, were left untouched. It was not seen that what was most important of all was the revival of the preaching of repentance and of justification through Him who is the justifier of the ungodly. And so it happened that at Constance Huss, who had pointed out and followed this way, was sent to the stake, and at Basel the doctrine of the immaculate conception (§ 112, 4) was admitted as a doctrine of the church. It was not merely the election of a new pope opposed to the Reformation that rendered the negotiations at Pisa and Constance utter failures, the wrong principle upon which they proceeded insured a disappointing result.

§ 118.4. =Friends of Reform in France during the 15th Century.=

1. =Peter d’Ailly=, professor and chancellor of the University of Paris, Bishop of Cambray in A.D. 1397 and cardinal in A.D. 1411, was one of the ablest members of the councils of Pisa and Constance. He died in A.D. 1425 as cardinal-legate in Germany. His chief dogmatic treatise, the _Quæstiones_ on the Sentences of the Lombard, occupies the standpoint of Occam. In many of his other works he falls back upon the position of the mystics of St. Victor (§ 102, 4), and recommends with much warmth the diligent study of the Scriptures. His ideas about church reform are centred in the affirmation of the Gallican Liberties, which he had to maintain as a French bishop, but are expressed with the moderation becoming a Roman cardinal. In opposition to Occam and the Spirituals, he founds the temporal sovereignty of the pope on the _Donatio Constantini_. He also holds by the primacy of the Roman bishop, as firmly established by Scripture. But the πέτρα of Matthew xvi. 18 he understands not of Peter, but of Christ. In this passage therefore no pre-eminence is given to Peter over the other apostles in the _potestas ordinis_, but by the injunction of John xx., “Feed My sheep,” such pre-eminence is given in the _potestas regiminis_. The œcumenical council, as representative of the whole church, stands superior to the pope as administrative head.

2. d’Ailly’s successor as professor and chancellor was the celebrated =Jean Charlier=, better known from the name of his birthplace near Rheims as =Gerson=. Having denounced the Duke of Burgundy’s murder of the Duke of Orleans, and having thus incurred that prince’s hatred, he withdrew after the Council of Constance into Bavaria. Soon after the duke’s death, in A.D. 1419, he returned to France, and settled at Lyons, where he died in A.D. 1429. Like d’Ailly, Gerson was a decided nominalist, and sought to give new life to scholasticism by combining with it Scripture study and mysticism. He, too, was powerfully influenced by the Victorine mystics, and yet more by Bonaventura He had no appreciation of the speculative element in German mysticism. Gerson was the first French theologian who employed the language of the people, particularly in his smaller practical tracts. He was mainly instrumental in bringing about the Council of Pisa. In the Council of Constance he was one of the most conspicuous figures. Restrained by no personal or official relationship with the curia, he could by speech and writing express himself much more freely than d’Ailly. The principle and means of the reform of the church, in its head and members, was recognised by Gerson in his statement that the highest authority of the church is to be sought not in the pope, but in the œcumenical council. He held however in every point to the Romish system of doctrine. He did indeed unweariedly proclaim the Bible the one norm and source of all Christian knowledge, but he would not allow the reading of it in the vernacular, and regarded all as heretics who did not in the interpretation of it submit unconditionally to the judgment of the church.

3. Nicholas of Clemanges was in A.D. 1393 rector of the University of Paris, but afterwards retired into solitude. He had the profoundest insight into the corruption of the church, and acknowledged Holy Scripture to be the only source of saving truth. From this standpoint he demanded a thorough reform in theological study and the whole constitution of the church.

4. Louis d’Aleman, cardinal and Archbishop of Arles, who died in A.D. 1450, was the most powerful and most eloquent of the anti-papal party at Basel. He was therefore excommunicated by Eugenius IV. At last submitting to the pope, he was restored by Nicholas V. and in A.D. 1527 beatified by Clement VII.

§ 118.5. =Friends of Reform in Germany.=

1. Even before the appearance of the Parisian friends of reform, a German, =Henry of Langenstein=, at Marburg had insisted upon the princes and prelates calling an œcumenical council for putting an end to schism and reforming the church. In a treatise published in A.D. 1381 he gave a sad but only too true picture of the desolate condition of the church. The cloisters he designated _prostibula meretricium_, cathedral churches _speluncæ raptorum et latronum_, etc. From A.D. 1363 he taught in Paris, from A.D. 1390 in Vienna, where in A.D. 1397 he died as rector of the university.

2. =Theodorich or Dietrich of Niem= in Westphalia accompanied Gregory XI. from France to Rome as his secretary in A.D. 1377. From A.D. 1395-1399 he was Bishop of Verdun, was probably present at the Council of Pisa, and certainly at that of Constance. He died in this latter place in A.D. 1417. His writings are of great value for the history of the schism and of the councils of Pisa and Constance. His language is simple, strong, and faithful.

3. =Gregory of Heimburg= was present at the Basel Council, in terms of close friendship with Æneas Sylvius, who was then also on the side of reform. He became in A.D. 1433 syndicus at Nuremberg, went to the council at Mantua in A.D. 1459 as envoy of Duke Sigismund of Austria, was banished in A.D. 1460 by his old friend, now Pius II., afterwards led a changeful life, never free from the papal persecutions, and died at Dresden in A.D. 1472. His principal writings on civil and ecclesiastical polity, powerful indictments against the Roman curia inspired by love for his German fatherland, appeared at Frankfort in A.D. 1608 under the title _Scripta nervosa justitiæque plena_.

4. =Jacob of Jüterboyk [Jüterbock]=, who died in A.D. 1465, was first a Cistercian monk in Poland and teacher of theology at Cracow, then Carthusian at Erfurt, and to the end of his life a zealous defender of the positions of the Council of Basel, at which he was present in A.D. 1441. His writings leave untouched the doctrines of the church, but vigorously denounce the political and moral corruption of the papacy and monasticism, the greedy misuse of the sale of indulgences, and insist upon the subordinating of the pope under general councils, and their right even to depose the pontiff. Whoever contests this latter position teaches that Christ has given over the church to a sinful man, like a bridegroom who surrenders his bride to the unrestrained will of a soldier. All possession of property on the part of those in sacred offices is with him an abomination, and unhesitatingly he calls upon the civil power to put an end to this evil.

5. The =Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa= (§ 113, 6) also for a long time was one of the most zealous friends of reform in the Basel Council.

6. =Felix Hemmerlin=, canon at Zürich, was to the end of his life an ardent supporter of the reform measures of the Council of Basel, at which he had been present. As he gave effect to his views in his =official= position, he incurred the hatred and persecution of the inmates of his convent to such an extent, that they laid a plot to murder him in A.D. 1439. His whole life was an almost unbroken series of sufferings and persecutions. These in great part he brought on himself by his zealous support of the reactionary party of the nobles that sided with Austria in opposition to the patriotic revolutionary party that struggled for freedom. Deprived of his revenues and deposed from office, he was imprisoned in A.D. 1454, and died between A.D. 1457-1464 in the prison of the monastery of the Minorites at Lucerne, martyr as much to his political conservatism as to his ecclesiastical reformatory principles. His writings were placed in the _Index prohibitorum_ by the Council of Trent.

7. To this place also belongs the work written in the Swabian dialect, “=The Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund=,” which demands a thoroughgoing and radical reform of the clergy and the secular priests, insisting upon the renunciation of all personal property on the part of the latter, enforcing against prelates, abbots, monasteries, and monks all the reforms of the Basel Council, and making proposals for their execution in the spirit of the Taborites and Hussites. The author is styled in the MSS. Frederick of Landscron, and describes himself as a councillor of Sigismund. The tract was therefore regarded during the 15th and 16th centuries as a work composed under the direction of the emperor, setting forth the principles of reformation attempted at the Basel or Constance Council. According to Böhm its author was the Taborite Reiser (§ 119, 9), who, under the powerful reforming impulse of the Basel Council of A.D. 1435-1437, composed it in A.D. 1438.

§ 118.6. =An Italian Apostate from the Basel Liberal Party.=--=Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini=, born at Siena in A.D. 1405, appeared at Basel, first as secretary of a bishop, then of a cardinal, and finally of the Basel anti-pope Felix V., as a most decided opponent of Eugenius IV., and wrote in A.D. 1439 from this point of view his history of the council. In A.D. 1442 he entered the service of the then neutral Emperor Frederick III., was made _Poeta laureatus_ and imperial councillor, and as such still fought for the independence of the German church. But in A.D. 1445, with all the diplomatic arts which were so abundantly at his disposal, he wrought to secure the subjection of the emperor and German princes under the pope (§ 110, 10). Made bishop of Siena in A.D. 1450, he was raised to the cardinalate by Calixtus III. in A.D. 1456, and two years later ascended the papal throne as Pius II. The lasciviousness of his earlier life is mirrored in his poems, novels, dialogues, dramas, and letters. But as pope, old and weak, he maintained an honourable life, and in a bull of retractation addressed to the University of Cologne exhorted Christendom _Æneam rejicite, Pium recipite_!

§ 118.7. =Reforms in Church Policy in Spain.=--Notwithstanding the church feeling awakened by the struggle with the Moors, a vigorous opposition to papal pretensions was shown during the 14th century by the Spanish princes, and after the outbreak of the great schism the anti-pope Clement VII., in A.D. 1381, purchased the obedience of the Spanish church by large concessions in regard to appointment to its bishoprics and the removal of the abuses of papal indulgences. The popes, indeed, sought not unsuccessfully to enlist Spain in their favour against the reformatory tendencies of the councils of the 15th century, until =Ferdinand= of Aragon [Arragon], A.D. 1479-1516, and =Isabella= of Castille [Castile], A.D. 1474-1504, who had on account of their zeal for the Catholic cause been entitled by the pontiff himself “their Catholic majesties,” entered so vigorous a protest against papal usurpations, that toward the end of the 15th century the royal supremacy over the Spanish church had won a recognition never accorded to it before. They consistently refused to acknowledge any bishop appointed by the pope, and forced from Sixtus IV. the concession that only Spaniards nominated by the Crown should be eligible for the highest ecclesiastical offices. All papal rescripts were subject to the royal approval, ecclesiastical tribunals were carefully supervised, and appeals from them were allowed to the royal judicatures. The church had also to give ordinary and extraordinary tithes of its goods and revenues for State purposes. The Spanish inquisition (§ 117, 2), thoroughly recognised in A.D. 1483, was more of a civil than an ecclesiastical institution. As the bishops and inquisitors were appointed by the royal edict, the orders of knights (§ 98, 13), by the transference of the grand-mastership to the king, were placed in complete subjection to the Crown; and whether he would or not Alexander VI. was obliged to accord to the royal commission for church and cloister visitation and reform the most absolute authority. But in everything else these rulers were worthy of the name of “Catholics,” for they tolerated in their church only the purely mediæval type of strict orthodoxy. The most distinguished promoter of their reforms in church polity was a Franciscan monk, =Francis Ximenes=, from A.D. 1492 confessor to Isabella, afterwards raised by her to the archbishopric of Toledo, made a Roman cardinal by Alexander VI., and grand-inquisitor of Spain in A.D. 1507. He died in A.D. 1517.

§ 119. EVANGELICAL EFFORTS AT REFORM.

Alongside of the Parisian reformers, but far in advance of them, stand those of the English and Bohemian churches represented by Wiclif and Huss. The reformation aimed at by these two was essentially of the same kind, Wiclif being the more original, while Huss was largely dependent upon his great English precursor. For in personal endowment, speculative power, rich and varied learning, acuteness and wealth of thought, originality and productivity of intellect, the Englishman was head and shoulders above the Bohemian. On the other hand, Huss was far more a man for the people, and he conducted his contention in a sensible, popular, and practical manner. There were also powerful representatives of the reform movement in the Netherlands during this period, who pointed to Scripture and faith in the crucified Saviour as the only radical cure for the corruptions of the church. While Wiclif and Huss attached themselves to the Augustinian theology, the Dutchmen gave themselves to quiet, calm contemplation and the acquirement of practical religious knowledge. In Italy too a reformer appeared of a strongly evangelical spirit, who did not however show the practical sense of those of the Netherlands.

§ 119.1. =Wiclif and the Wiclifites.=--In England the kings and the Parliament had for a long time withstood the oppressive yoke of the papal hierarchy. Men too like John of Salisbury, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Bradwardine had raised their voices against the inner corruption of the church. =John Wiclif=, a scholar of Bradwardine, was born about A.D. 1320. As fellow of the University of Oxford, he supported in A.D. 1366 the English Crown against the payment of tribute to the papal court then at Avignon, admitted by John Lackland (§ 96, 18), of which payment had now for a long time been refused. This secured him court favour, the title of doctor, and a professorship of theology at Oxford; and in A.D. 1374 he was chosen as member of a commission which was to discuss at Brügge in the Netherlands with the papal envoys the differences that had arisen about the appointing to ecclesiastical offices. After his return he openly spoke and wrote against the papal “antichrist” and his doctrines. Gregory XI. now, in A.D. 1377, condemned nineteen propositions from his writings, but the English court protected him from the strict inquiry and punishment threatened. Meanwhile Wiclif was ever becoming bolder. Under his influence religious societies were formed which sent out travelling preachers of the gospel among the people. By their opponents they were called Lollards (§ 116, 3), a name to which the stigma of heresy was already attached. Wiclif translated for them the Scriptures from the Vulgate into English. The bitterness of his enemies now reached its height. Just then, in A.D. 1381, a rebellion of the oppressed peasants that deluged all England with blood broke out. Its origin has been quite gratuitously assigned to the religious movement. When he had directly repudiated the doctrine of transubstantiation, a synod at London, in A.D. 1382, condemned his writings and his doctrine as heretical, and the university also cast him out. Court and Parliament could only protect his person. He now retired to his rectory at Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where he died on 31st December, 1384.--For five centuries his able writings were left unprinted, to moulder away in the obscurity of libraries. His English works have now been edited by Matthews, London, 1880. Lechler of Leipzig edited Wiclif’s most complete and comprehensive work, the “_Trialogus_” (Oxford, 1869), in which his whole theological system is developed. Buddensieg of Dresden published the keen antipapal controversial tract, “_De Christo et suo adversario Antichristo_” (Leipzig, 1880). The Wiclif Society, instituted at the fifth centenary of Wiclif’s death for the purpose of issuing critical editions of his most important works, sent forth as their first performance Buddensieg’s edition of “twenty-six Latin controversial tracts of Wiclif’s from MSS. previously unprinted,” in 2 vols., London, 1883. Among Wiclif’s systematic treatises we are promised editions of the _Summa theologiæ_, _De incarnatione Verbi_, _De veritate s. Scr._, _De dominio divino_, _De ecclesia_, _De actibus animæ_, etc., some by English, some by German editors.--As the principle of all theology and reformation Wiclif consistently affirms the sole authority of Divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures. He has hence been called _doctor evangelicus_. Anything that cannot be proved from it is a corrupting human invention. Consistently carrying out this principle, he denounced the worship of saints, relics, and images, the use of Latin in public worship, elaborate priestly choir singing, the multiplication of festivals, private masses, extreme unction, and generally all ceremonialism. The Catholic doctrine of indulgence and the sale of indulgences, as well as the ban and the interdict, he pronounced blasphemous; auricular confession he regarded as a forcing of conscience; the power of the keys he explained as conditional, its binding and loosing powerless, except when in accordance with the judgment of Christ. He denied the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, and affirmed, like Berengar, a spiritual communication thereof, which however he makes dependent, not only on the faith of the receiver, but also on the worthiness of the officiating priest. The doctrine of purgatory he completely rejected, and supported Augustine’s predestinationism against the prevalent semipelagianism. The papacy was antichrist; the pope has his power only from the emperor, not from God. The hierarchical system should be replaced by the apostolic presbyterial constitution. Ordination confers no indelible character; a priest who has fallen into mortal sin cannot dispense the sacrament. Every believer is as such a priest. The State is a representation of Christ, as the God-Man ruler of the universe; the clergy represent only the poor and suffering life of His humanity. Monkery is contrary to nature, etc.--Wiclif’s supporters, many of them belonging to the noblest and most cultured orders, were after his death subjected to violent persecution, which reached its height when the House of Lancaster in the person of Henry IV. ascended the English throne in A.D. 1399. An act of parliament was passed in A.D. 1400 which made death by fire the punishment of the heresy of the Lollards. Among the martyrs which this law brought to the stake was the noble Sir John Oldcastle, who in A.D. 1418 was hung up between two beams in iron chains over a fire and there slowly burnt. The Council of Constance in A.D. 1415 condemned forty-five propositions from Wiclif’s writings, and ordered his bones to be exhumed and scattered abroad. Many germs sown by him continued until the Reformation came.[348]

§ 119.2. =Precursors of the Hussite Movement.=--Owing to its Greek origin (§ 79, 2, 3), the Bohemian church had a certain character of its own and barely tolerated the Roman constitution and ritual. In Bohemia too the Waldensians had numerous supporters during the 13th century. And even before the appearance of Huss three distinguished clergymen in and around Prague by earnest preaching and pastoral work had awakened in many a consciousness of crying abuses in the church.

1. =Conrad of Waldhausen= was a famous preacher when called by Charles IV. to Prague, where after fifteen years’ labour he died in A.D. 1369. Preaching in German, he inveighed against the cupidity, hypocrisy, and immorality of the clergy and monks, against the frauds connected with the worship of images and relics and shrines, and threw back upon his accusers the charge of heresy in his still extant _Apologia_.

2. More influential than Conrad as a preacher of repentance in Prague was =John Milicz of Cremsier= in Moravia, who died in A.D. 1374. Believing the end of the world near and antichrist already come, he went to Rome in A.D. 1367 to place before Urban V. his scheme of apocalyptic interpretation. Escaping with difficulty from the Inquisition, he returned to Prague, and there applied himself with renewed zeal to the preaching of repentance. His preaching led to the conversion of 200 fallen women, for whom he erected an institution which he called Jerusalem. But the begging friars accused him before Gregory XI. as a heretic. Milicz fearlessly went for examination to Avignon in A.D. 1374, where he soon died before judgment had been passed. The most important of his works is _De Antichristo_.

3. =Matthias of Janow=, of noble Bohemian descent, died in A.D. 1374, after fourteen years’ work as a preacher and pastor in Prague. His sermons, composed in Bohemian, lashed unsparingly the vices of the clergy and monks, as well as the immorality of the laity, and denounced the worship of images and relics. None of his sermons are extant, but we have various theological treatises of his on the distinguishing of the true faith from the false and the frequent observance of the communion. At a Prague synod of A.D. 1389 he was obliged to retract several of his positions, and especially to grant the propriety of confessing and communicating half-yearly. Janow however, like Conrad and Milicz, did not seriously contest any fundamental point of the doctrine of the church.

§ 119.3. =John Huss of Hussinecz= in Bohemia, born A.D. 1369, was Bachelor of Theology at Prague, in A.D. 1394, Master of Liberal Arts in A.D. 1396, became public teacher in the university in A.D. 1398, was ordained priest in A.D. 1400, undertook a pastorate in A.D. 1402 in the Bethlehem chapel, where he had to preach in the Bohemian language, was chosen confessor of Queen Sophia in A.D. 1403, and was soon afterwards made synodal preacher by the new archbishop, Sbynko of Hasenburg. Till then he had in pious humility accepted all the doctrines of the Romish Church, and even in A.D. 1392 he offered his last four groschen for an indulgence, so that for a long time dry bread was his only nourishment. But about A.D. 1402 he reached an important crisis in his life through the study of Wiclif’s theological works.--Bohemians who had studied in Oxford brought with them Wiclif’s philosophical works, and in A.D. 1348 the discussion on realism and nominalism broke out in Prague. The Bohemians generally sided with Wiclif for realism; the Germans with the nominalists (§ 113, 3). This helped to prepare an entrance for Wiclif’s theological writings into Bohemia. Of the national party which favoured Wiclif’s philosophy and theology, Huss was soon recognised as a leader. A university decree of A.D. 1403 condemned forty-five propositions from Wiclif’s works as heretical, and forbade their promulgation in lectures or sermons. Huss however was still highly esteemed by Archbishop Sbynko. In A.D. 1405 he appointed Huss, with other three scholars, a commission to investigate a reputed miracle at Wilsnack, where on the altar of a ruined church three blood-red coloured hosts were said to have been found. Huss pronounced the miracle a cheat, and proved in a tract that the blood of Christ glorified can only be invisibly present in the sacrament of the altar. The archbishop approved this tract, and forbade all pilgrimages to the spot. He also took no offence at Huss for uttering Wiclifite doctrine in his synod sermon. Only when, in A.D. 1408, the clergy of his diocese complained that Huss by his preaching made the priests contemptible before the people, did he deprive him of his function as synod preacher. When the majority of cardinals at Leghorn in A.D. 1408 took steps to put an end to the schism, king Wenzel determined to remain neutral, and demanded the assent of the university as well as the clergy of his realm. But only the Bohemian members of the university agreed, while the rest, along with the archbishop, supported Gregory XII. Sbynko keenly resented the revolt of the Bohemians, and forbade Huss as their spokesman to preach within his diocese. Huss paid no attention to the prohibition, but secured a royal injunction, that henceforth in the university Bohemians should have three votes and foreigners only one. The foreigners then withdrew, and founded the University of Leipzig in A.D. 1409. Huss was made first rector of the newly organized University of Prague; but the very fact of his great popularity in Bohemia caused him to be profoundly hated in other lands.[349]

§ 119.4. The archbishop escaped prosecution only by unreservedly condemning the doctrines of Wiclif, burning his books, and prohibiting all lectures upon them. Huss and his friends appealed to John XXIII., but this did not prevent the archbishop burning in his palace yard about two hundred Wiclifite books that had previously escaped his search. For this he was hooted in the streets, and compelled by the courts of law to pay the value of the books destroyed. John XXIII. cited Huss to appear at Rome. King, nobles, magistrates, and university sided with him; but the papal commission condemned him when he did not appear, and the archbishop pronounced anathema against him and the interdict against Prague (A.D. 1411). Huss appealed to the œcumenical council, and continued to preach. The court forced the archbishop to become reconciled with Huss, and to admit his orthodoxy. Sbynko reported to the pope that Bohemia was free from heresy. He soon afterwards died. The pope himself was the cause of a complete breach, by having an indulgence preached in Bohemia in A.D. 1412 for a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples, the powerful adherent of Gregory XII. Huss opposed this by word and writing, and in a public disputation maintained that the pope had no right to grant such indulgence. His most stanch supporter was a Bohemian knight, Jerome of Prague, who had studied at Oxford, and returned in A.D. 1402 an enthusiastic adherent of Wiclif’s doctrines. Their addresses produced an immense impression, and two days later their disorderly followers, to throw contempt on the papal party, had the bull of indulgence paraded through the streets, on the breast of a public prostitute, representing the whore of Babylon, and then cast into the flames. But many old friends now withdrew from Huss and joined his opponents. The papal curia thundered against him and his followers the great excommunication, with its terrible curses. Wherever he resided that place was put under interdict. But Huss appealed to the one righteous Judge, Jesus Christ. At the wish of the king he left the city, and sought the protection of various noble patrons, from whose castles he went forth diligently preaching round about. He spread his views all over the country by controversial and doctrinal treatises in Latin and Bohemian, as well as by an extensive correspondence with his friends and followers. Thus the trouble and turmoil grew from day to day, and all the king’s efforts to restore peace were in vain.

§ 119.5. The Roman emperor Sigismund summoned Huss to attend the Council of Constance (§ 110, 7), and promised him a safe-conduct. Though not yet in possession of this latter, which he only got at Constance, trusting to the righteousness of his cause, for which he was quite willing to die a martyr’s death, he started for Constance on 11th October, A.D. 1414, reaching his destination on 3rd November. On 28th November he was sentenced to imprisonment at a private conference of the cardinals, on the pretended charge of an attempt at flight, first in the Dominican cloister, then in the bishop’s castle of Gottlieben, where he was put in chains, finally in the Franciscan cloister. Sigismund, who had not been forewarned when he was cast into prison, ordered his release; but the council convinced him that Huss, arraigned as a heretic before a general council, was beyond the reach of civil protection. His bitterest enemies and accusers were two Bohemians, Michael of Deutschbrod and Stephan of Palecz. The latter extracted forty-two points for accusations from his writings, which Huss from his prison retracted. D’Ailly and Gerson were both against him. The brave knight John of Chlum stood faithfully by him as a comforter to the last. For almost seven months was he harassed by private examinations, in which, notwithstanding his decided repudiation of many of them, he was charged with all imaginable Wiclifite heresies. The result was the renewed condemnation of those forty-five propositions from Wiclif’s writings, which had been condemned A.D. 1408 by the University of Prague. At last, on 5th June, A.D. 1415, he was for the first time granted a public trial, but the tumult at the sitting was so great that he was prevented from saying a single word. Even on the two following days of the trial he could do little more than make a vain protest against being falsely charged with errors, and declare his willingness to be better instructed from God’s word. The humility and gentleness of his demeanour, as well as the enthusiasm and believing joyfulness which he displayed, won for him many hearts even outside of the council. All possible motives were urged to induce him to submit. Sigismund so exhorted him, with the threat that if he did not he would withdraw his protection. The third and last day of trial was 8th June, A.D. 1415, and judgment was pronounced in the cathedral church on the 6th July. After high mass had been celebrated, a bishop mounted the pulpit and preached on Romans vi. 6. He addressed Sigismund, who was present, “By destroying this heretic, thou shalt obtain an undying name to all ensuing generations.” Once again called upon to recant, Huss repeated his previous protests, appealed to the promise of a safe-conduct, which made Sigismund wince and blush, and kneeling down prayed to God for his enemies and unjust judges. Then seven bishops dressed him in priestly robes in order to strip him of them one after another amid solemn execrations. Then they put on him a high pyramidal hat, painted with figures of devils, and bearing the inscription, _Hæresiarcha_, and uttered the words, “We give thy soul to the devil.” He replied: “I commend it into the hands of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” On that same day he was given over by Sigismund to Louis Count-palatine of the Rhine, and by him to the Constance magistrates, and led to the stake. Amid prayer and praise he expired, joyfully, courageously, and confidently, showing himself worthy to rank among the martyrs who in the best times of Christianity had sealed their Christian confession with their blood. His ashes were scattered on the Rhine. The later Hussites, in accordance with an old Christian custom (§ 39, 5), celebrated the day of his death as the _dies natalis_ of the holy martyr John Huss.--=Jerome of Prague= had gone unasked to Constance. When he saw that his longer stay would not help his friend, but only involve himself in his fate, he left the city; but was seized on the way, and taken back in chains in April, A.D. 1415. During a severe half-year’s imprisonment, and wearied with the importunities of his judges, he agreed to recant, and to acquiesce in the sentence of Huss. But he was not trusted, and after as before his recantation he was kept in close confinement. Then his courage revived. He demanded a public trial before the whole council, which was at last granted him in May, A.D. 1416. There he solemnly and formally retracted his previous retractation with a believer’s confidence and a martyr’s joy. On May 30th, A.D. 1416, he, too, died at the stake, joyfully and courageously as Huss had done. The Florentine humanist Poggio, who was present, has given enthusiastic expression in a still extant letter to his admiration at the heroic spirit of the martyr.

§ 119.6. In all his departures from Romish doctrine Huss was dependent upon Wiclif, not only for the matter, but even for the modes of expression. He did not however separate himself quite so far from the Church doctrines as his English master. He firmly maintained the doctrine of transubstantiation; he was also inclined to withhold the cup from the laity; and, though he sought salvation only from the Saviour crucified for us, he did not refuse to give any place to works in the justification of the sinner, and even invocation of the saints he did not wholly condemn. While he energetically protested against the corruption of the clergy, he never denied that the sacrament might be efficaciously administered by an unworthy priest. In everything else however he was in thorough agreement with the English reformer. The most complete exposition of his doctrine is found in the _Tractatus de ecclesia_ of A.D. 1413. Augustine’s doctrine of predestination is its foundation. He distinguishes from the church as a visible human institution the idea of the church as the true body of Christ, embracing all elected in Christ to blessedness from eternity. Its one and only head is Christ: not Peter, not the pope; for this church is no monster with two heads. Originally and according to Christ’s appointment the bishop of Rome was no more than the other bishops. The donation of Constantine first gave him power and dignity over the rest. As the church in the beginning could exist without a pope, so the church unto the end can exist without one. The Christian can obey the pope only where his commands and doctrines agree with those of Christ. In matters of faith Holy Scripture is the only authority. Fathers, councils, and popes may err, and have erred; only the word of God is infallible.--That this liberal reforming Council of Constance, with a Gerson at its head, should have sentenced such a man to death is not to be wondered at when we rightly consider how matters stood. His hateful realism seemed to the nominalistic fathers of the council the source of all conceivable heresies. It had even been maintained that realism consistently carried out would give a fourth person to the Godhead. His devotion to the national interests of Bohemia in the University of Prague had excited German national feeling against him. And, further, the council, which was concerned only with outward reforms, had little sympathy with the evangelical tone of his spirit and doctrine. Besides this, Huss had placed himself between the swords of two contending parties. The hierarchical party wished, in order to strike terror into their opponents, to show by an example that the church had still the power to burn heretics; and the liberal party refused to this object of papal hate all protection, lest they should endanger the cause of reformation by incurring a suspicion of sympathy with heresy.--The prophecy said to have been uttered by Huss in his last moments, “To-day you burn a goose (this being the meaning of Huss in Slavonian), but from its ashes will arise a swan (Luther’s coat of arms), which you will not be able to burn,” was unknown to his contemporaries. Probably it originated in the Reformation age from the appeals of both martyrs to the judgment of God and history. Huss had often declared that instead of the weak goose there would come powerful eagles and falcons.[350]

§ 119.7. =Calixtines and Taborites.=--During the imprisonment of their leader the Hussite party was headed by Jacob of Misa, pastor of St. Michael’s church in Prague. With consent of Huss he introduced the use of the cup by the laity and rejected the _jejunium eucharisticum_ as opposed to Matthew xxvi. 26. This led to an interchange of controversial tracts between Prague and Constance on the withholding of the cup. The council decreed that whoever disobeys the Church on this point is to be punished as a heretic. This decree, followed by the execution of Huss, roused Bohemia to the uttermost. King Wenceslaw died in A.D. 1419 in the midst of national excitement, and the estates refused to crown his brother Sigismund, “the word-breaker.” Now arose a civil war, A.D. 1420-1436, characterized by cruelties on both sides rarely equalled. At the head of the Hussites, who had built on the brow of a steep hill the strong fortress Tabor, was the one-eyed, afterwards blind, =John Ziska of Trocznov=. The crusading armies sent against the Hussites were one after another destroyed; but the gentle spirit of Huss had no place among most of his followers. The two parties became more and more embittered toward one another. The aristocratic =Calixtines= (_calix_, cup) or Utraquists (_sub utraque_), at whose head was Bishop Rokycana of Prague, declared that they would be satisfied if the Catholic church would concede to them four articles:

1. Communion under both kinds;

2. Preaching of the pure gospel in the vulgar tongue;

3. Strict discipline among the clergy; and

4. Renunciation by the clergy of church property.

On the other hand, the =Taborites= would have no reconciliation with the Romish church, regarding as fundamentally corrupt in doctrine and worship whatever is not found in Scripture, and passing over into violent fanaticism, iconoclasm, etc. After Ziska’s death of the plague in A.D. 1424, the majority of the Taborites elected Procopius the Great as his successor. A small party that regarded no man worthy of succeeding the great Ziska, refused him allegiance, and styled themselves Orphans. They were the most fanatical of all.--Meanwhile the Council of Basel had met (§ 110, 8) and after long fruitless negotiations it was resolved in A.D. 1433 that 300 Hussite deputies should appear at Basel. After a fifty days’ disputation the four Calixtine articles with certain modifications were accepted by the council. On the basis of this =Basel Compact= the Calixtines returned to the Romish church. The Taborites regarded this as shameful treason to the cause of truth, and continued the conflict. But in A.D. 1434 they were utterly annihilated at Böhmischbrod, not far from Prague. In the Treaty of Iglau in A.D. 1436 Sigismund swore to observe the compact, and was recognised as king. But the concessions sworn to by church and state were more and more restricted and ultimately ignored. Sigismund died in A.D. 1437. In place of his son-in-law, Albert II., the Utraquists set up a rival king in the person of the thirteen year old Polish prince Casimir; but Albert died in A.D. 1439. His son, Ladislaus, born after his father’s death, had, in George Podiebrad, a Calixtine tutor. After he had grown up in A.D. 1453, he walked in his grandfather’s footsteps, and died in A.D. 1457. The Calixtines now elected Podiebrad king, as a firm supporter of the compact. Pius II. recognised him in the hope that he would aid him in his projected war against the Turks. When this hope was disappointed he cancelled the compact, in A.D. 1462. Paul II. put the king under him, and had a crusade preached against him. Podiebrad however still held his ground. He died in A.D. 1471. His successor, Wladislaw II., a Polish prince, though a zealous Catholic, was obliged to confirm anew to the Calixtines at the Diet of Cuttenberg, in A.D. 1485, all their rights and liberties. Yet they could not maintain themselves as an independent community. Those of them who did not join the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren gradually during the 16th century became thoroughly amalgamated with the Catholic church.

§ 119.8. =The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren.=--George Podiebrad took Tabor in A.D. 1453, and scattered the last remnants of the Taborites. Joining with the evangelical Friends of God, they received from the king a castle, where, under the leadership of the local pastor, Michael of Bradacz, they formed a _Unitas fratrum_, and called themselves Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. But in A.D. 1461 Podiebrad withdrew his favour, and confiscated their goods. They fled into the woods, and met for worship in caves. In A.D. 1467 the most distinguished of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren met in a Bohemian village, Shota, with the German Waldensians, and chose three brethren by lot as priests, who were ordained by Michael and a Waldensian priest. But when the validity of their ordination was disputed, Michael went to the Waldensian bishop Stephen, got from him episcopal consecration, and then again ordained the three chosen at Shota, one, Matthias of Conewald, as bishop, the other two as priests. This led Rokycana to persecute them all the more bitterly. They increased their numbers however, by receiving the remnants of the Waldensians and many Utraquists, until by the beginning of the 16th century they had four hundred congregations in Bohemia and Moravia. Under Wladislaw II. persecution was stopped from A.D. 1475, but was renewed with great violence in A.D. 1503. They sent in A.D. 1511 a confession of faith to Erasmus (§ 120, 6), with the request that he would give his opinion about it; which he however, fearing to be compromised thereby, declined to do. After the death of Bishop Matthias, in A.D. 1500, a dislike of monarchy led to the appointment of four _Seniors_ instead of one bishop, two for Bohemia and two for Moravia. The most important and influential of these was Luke of Prague, who died in A.D. 1518, rightly regarded as the second founder of the union. He impressed a character upon the brotherhood essentially distinct in respect of constitution and doctrine from the Lutheran Reformation.--Continuation § 139, 19.

§ 119.9. =The Waldensians.=

1. The range of the missionary enterprise of the =Lombard-German Waldensians= was widely extended during the 14th century. At the close of that period it stretched “from western Switzerland across the southern borders of the empire, from the upper and middle Rhine along the Main and through Franconia into Thuringia, from Bohemia up to Brandenburg and Pomerania, and with its last advances reached to Prussia, Poland, Silesia, Hungary, Transylvania, and Galicia.” The anonymous writer of Passau, about A.D. 1260 or 1316, reports from his own knowledge of numerous “Leonists,” who in forty-two communities, with a bishop at Einzinspach, in the diocese of Passau, were in his time the subject of inquisitorial interference, and in theory and practice bore all the characteristic marks of the Lombard Leonists. The same applies to the Austrian Waldensians, of whose persecution in A.D. 1391 we have an account by Peter of Pilichdorf. We may also with equal confidence pronounce the Winkelers, so called from holding their services in secret corners, who about this time appeared in Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, and the Rhine Provinces, to be Waldensians of the same Lombard type. Their confessors, Winkelers in the narrower sense, were itinerant, celibate, and without fixed abode, carrying on missionary work, and administering the sacrament of penance to their adherents. Although, in order to avoid the attentions of the Inquisition, they took part in the Catholic services, and in case of need confessed to Catholic priests, they were nevertheless traced about A.D. 1400 to Strassburg. Thirty-two of them were thrown into prison, and induced under torture to confess. The Dominicans insisted that they should be immediately burned, but the council was satisfied with banishing them from the city. At a later period the Hussites obtained an influence over them. One of their most notable apostles at this time was Fr. Reiser of Swabia. In his travels he went to Bohemia, attached himself to the Hussites there, received from them priestly ordination, and in A.D. 1433 accompanied their representatives to the Basel Council. Then Procopius procured him a call to a pastorate in the little Bohemian town of Landscron, which, however, he soon abandoned. Encouraged by the reformatory tendency of the council, he now remained for a long time in Basel, then conducted missionary work in Germany, at first on his own account, afterwards at the head of a Taborite mission of twelve agents, in which position he styled himself _Fridericus Dei gratia Episcopus fidelium in Romana ecclesia Constantini donationem spernentium_. At last, in A.D. 1457, he went to Strassburg, with the intention of there ending his days in peace. But soon after his arrival he was apprehended, and in A.D. 1458, along with his faithful follower, Anna Weiler, put to death at the stake.--On the Waldensians in German Switzerland, and the Inquisition’s oft repeated interference with them, Ochsenbein gives a full report, drawn from original documents, specially full in regard to the great Inquisition trial at Freiburg, in A.D. 1430, consisting of ninety-nine wearisome and detailed examinations. Subsequently terrible persecutions, aiming at their extermination, became still more frequent in Switzerland. Also the Swiss Waldensians already bore unmistakable marks of having been influenced by the Hussites. Finally, Wattenbach has made interesting communications regarding the Waldensians in Pomerania and Brandenburg, based upon a manuscript once in the possession of Flacius, but afterwards supposed to have been lost, discovered again in the Wolfenbüttel library in A.D. 1884, though in a very defective form, which contains the original reports of 443 prosecutions for heresy in Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Thuringia. By far the greatest number of these trials were conducted between A.D. 1373 and 1394, by the Cœlestine provincial Peter, appointed inquisitor by the pope. From A.D. 1383 Stettin was the centre of his inquisitorial activity, and on the conclusion of his work he could boast that during the last two years he had converted to the Catholic faith more than 1,000 Waldensians. The victims of the Inquisition belonged almost exclusively to the peasant and artisan classes. Their objectionable doctrines and opinions are essentially almost the same as those of their ancestors of the 13th century. Although equally with their predecessors they abhorred the practice of the Catholic church, and declared all swearing and slaughter to be mortal sin, they yet in great part, and as it seems even without the application of torture, were persuaded to abjure their heresy, and incurred nothing more than a light penance. They did this, perhaps, only in the hope that their indulgent confessors would absolve them from their sin. The last protocols bring us down to A.D. 1458. Since a great number of these heretics were found again in Brandenburg, the elector caused one of their most distinguished leaders, the tailor Matthew Hagen, and three of his disciples to be taken prisoners to Berlin, and commissioned the Bishop of Brandenburg to investigate the case; but owing to his sickness this duty devolved upon John Cannemann, professor and doctor of theology. The elector was himself present at the trial. The investigation showed that the Waldensians of Brandenburg had evidently been influenced in their opinions by the Bohemian Taborites, and that they were constantly in close communion with them, and Hagen confessed that he had been there ordained by Fr. Ryss or Reiser to the clerical office. When Hagen persistently refused to retract, he was delivered over to the civil authorities for punishment, and was by them executed, probably at the stake. His three companions abjured their heresy, and on submitting to church discipline and wearing clothes marked with the sign of the cross, were pardoned. Cannemann then proceeded to Angermünde, where in the city and surrounding country crowds of such heretics resided; and there he succeeded without great difficulty in bringing them to abjure their errors and accept the Catholic confession.--The Waldensians in Bohemia and Moravia quite voluntarily amalgamated with the “_United Brethren_” there. The remnants of the German and Swiss Waldensians may have attached themselves to the Reformation of the 16th century, but probably for the most part to the Protestant sects of that age, some joining Schwenkfeld, and still more going with the Anabaptists, to whom they were essentially much more closely related than to Luther or Zwingli.--As to the ultimate fate of the Lombard Waldensians themselves, we know nothing. Probably many of them sought escape from the persecutions which raged against them among the French Waldensians in the valleys of Piedmont.

§ 119.9A.

2. The remnants of the =French Waldensians= and their lay adherents down to the beginning of the 14th century had for the most part settled in the remote and little cultivated valleys on both sides of the Cottian Alps. This settlement, which bore the character of an assembly as well as that of an isolation, now rendered indispensable the organization of an independent congregational order, such as had never been attempted before. In the arrangements of this community, not only was the question of clerical rank simplified by the combination of the order of bishop or _majoralis_ with that of the presbyter, to which combined office was given the honourable designation of “_barbe_,” uncle, and instead of the hitherto annual tenure of this office was introduced a life tenure, but also to the laity was assigned a share in the church government at their synod meetings. A bull of John XXII., of A.D. 1332, informs us that then in the Piedmontese valleys _ita creverunt et multiplicati sunt hæretici, præcipue de secta Waldensium, quod frequenter congregationes per modum capitali facere inibi præsumpserunt, in quibus aliquando 500 Valdenses fuerunt insimul congregati_; yet certainly not merely clergy, as among the earlier congregations on the yearly tenure. The great, yea, extraordinarily great, number of the Waldensians in the Piedmontese valleys is proved by this, that from thence, since A.D. 1340, flourishing colonies of Waldensians were transplanted into Calabria and Apulia with the connivance of the larger proprietors in those parts. Those who had settled on the western side, in the province of Dauphiné, succumbed completely in A.D. 1545 to the oft repeated persecutions. The colonies of southern Italy, however, seem long to have led a quiet and little disturbed life under the protection of the territorial princes, until their adoption of Protestant views called down upon them the attention of the Inquisition, and led to their utter extermination in A.D. 1561. On the other hand, the Waldensians of Piedmont, in spite of continuous oppression and frequently renewed persecution, maintained their existence down to the present day. When in the beginning of the 15th century their residence came under the sway of the Duke of Savoy, the persecutions began, and lasted down to A.D. 1477, when a crusade for their extermination was summoned by Innocent VIII., which ended in the utter rout of the crusading army by Savoy and France. They had now a long period of repose, till their adoption of Protestant views in the 16th century anew awakened against them the horrors of persecution. In this time of rest brotherly intercourse was cultivated between the Waldensian groups and the Bohemian Brethren, who had hitherto maintained relations only with the German Waldensians. This movement originated with the Bohemians. Even at an earlier date, these, inspired by the wish to seek abroad what they could not obtain at home, namely, communion with a church free from Romish corruptions, had made a voyage of discovery in the east, which yielded no result. Now, in A.D. 1497, they determined to make another similar search, under the leadership of Luke of Prague, in the primitive haunts of the Waldensians in France and Italy. The deputies went forth, beginning with the south of France, and the remnants of the French communities in their settlements among the Piedmontese Alps. More detailed reports of their intercourse with these no longer exist, but it cannot be doubted that there was a mutual interchange of religious writings. It is a question therefore that has been much discussed as to which party was the chief gainer by this interchange. But it can now be no longer questioned that the Waldensians, as those who were far less advanced in the direction of the evangelical reformation, learnt much from the Bohemians, and by transferring it into their own literature, secured it as their permanent property.

§ 119.10. =The Dutch Reformers= sprang mostly from the Brothers of the Common Life (§ 112, 9).

1. =John Pupper of Goch= in Cleves, prior of a cloister founded by him at Mecheln, died A.D. 1475. His works show him to have been a man of deep spirituality. Love, which leads to the true freedom of sons of God, is the _material_, the sole authority of Scripture is the _formal_, principle of his theology, which rests on a purely Augustinian foundation. He contends against the doctrine of righteousness by works, the meritoriousness of vows, etc.

2. =John Ruchrath of Wesel=, professor in Erfurt, afterwards preacher at Mainz and Worms, died in A.D. 1481. On the basis of a strictly Augustinian theology he opposed the papal systems of anathemas and indulgences, and preached powerfully salvation by Jesus Christ only. For the church doctrine of transubstantiation he substituted one of impanation. He spiritualized the doctrine of the church. Against the ecclesiastical injunction of fasts, he wrote _De jejunio_; against indulgences, _De indulgentiis_; against the hierarchy, _De potestate ecclesiastica_. The Dominicans of Mainz accused and condemned him as a heretic in A.D. 1479. The old man, bent down with age and sickness, was forced to recant, and to burn his writings, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life in a monastery.

3. =John Wessel= of Gröningen was a scholar of the Brothers of the Common Life at Zwoll, where Thomas à Kempis exerted a powerful influence over him. He taught in Cologne, Lyons, Paris, and Heidelberg, and then retired to the cloister of Agnes Mount, near Zwoll, where he died in A.D. 1489. His friends called him _Lux mundi_. Scholastic dialectics, mystical depths, and rich classical culture were in him united with a clear and accurate knowledge of science. Luther says of him: “Had I read Wessel before, my enemies would have said, Luther has taken everything from Wessel, so thoroughly do our ideas agree.” His views are in harmony with Luther’s, especially in what he teaches of Holy Scripture, the universal priesthood of Christians, indulgence, repentance, faith, and justification. He taught that not only popes but even councils may err and have erred; excommunication has merely outward efficacy, indulgence has to do only with ecclesiastical penalties, and God alone can forgive sins; our justification rests on Christ’s righteousness and God’s free grace. Purgatory meant for him nothing more than the intermediate position between earthly imperfection and heavenly perfection, which is attained only through various stages. The protection of powerful friends saved him from the persecution of the Inquisition. Many of his works were destroyed by the diligence of the mendicant friars. The most important of his extant writings is the _Farrago_, a collection of short treatises.[351]

4. The priest of Rostock, =Nicholas Russ=, in the end of the 15th century, deserves honourable mention alongside of these Dutchmen. Living in intimate relations with Bohemian Waldensians, he was subjected to many indignities, and died a fugitive in Livonia. He wrote in the Dutch language a tract against the hierarchy, indulgences, worship of saints and relics, etc., which was translated into German by Flacius. A copy of it was found in Rostock library in A.D. 1850. It is entitled, “Of the Rope or of the Three Strings.” The rope that will raise man from the depths of his corruption must be made up of the three strings, faith, hope, and love. These three strings are described in succession, and so the book forms a complete compendium of Christian faith and life, with a sharp polemic against the debased church doctrine and morals of the age.

§ 119.11. =An Italian Reformer.=--=Jerome Savonarola=, born A.D. 1452, monk and from A.D. 1481 prior of the Dominican cloister of San Marco in Florence, was from A.D. 1489 in high repute in that city as an eloquent and passionate preacher of repentance, with even reckless boldness declaiming against the depravity of clergy and laity, princes and people. With his whole soul a Dominican, and as such an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas, practising rigid self-discipline by fasts and flagellations, he was led by the study of Augustine and Scripture to a pure and profound knowledge of the evangelical doctrine of salvation, which he sought, not in the merits and intercession of the saints, nor in the performance of good works, but only in the grace of God and justification through faith in the crucified Saviour of sinners. But with this he combined a prophetic-apocalyptic theory, according to which he thought himself called and fitted by Divine inspiration, like the prophets of the Old Testament, to grapple with the political problems of the age. And, in fact, he made many a hardened sinner tremble by revealing contemplated secret sins, and many of his political prophecies seem to have been fulfilled with surprising accuracy. Thus he prophesied the death of Innocent VIII. in A.D. 1492, and proclaimed the speedy overthrow of the house of the Medici in Florence, as well as the punishment of other Italian tyrants and the thorough reformation of the church by a foreign king crossing the Alps with a powerful army. And lo, in the following year, the king of France, Charles VIII., crossed the Alps to enforce his claims upon Naples and force from the pope recognition of the Basel reforms; the Medici were banished from Florence, and Naples unresistingly fell into the hands of the French. Thus the ascetic monk of San Marco became the man of the people, who now began with ruthless energy to carry out, not only moral and religious reformatory notions, but also his political ideal of a democratic kingdom of God. In vain did Alexander VI. seek by offer of a cardinal’s hat to win over the demagogical prophet and reformer; he only replied, “I desire no other red hat than that coloured by the blood of martyrdom.” In vain did the pope insist that he should appear before him at Rome; in vain did he forbid him the pulpit, from which he so powerfully moved the people. An attempt to restore the Medici also failed. At the carnival in A.D. 1497 Savonarola proved the supremacy of his influence over the people by persuading them, instead of the usual buffoonery, to make a bonfire of the articles of luxury and vanity. But already the political movements were turning out unfavourably, and his utterances were beginning to lose their reputation as true prophecies. Charles VIII. had been compelled to quit Italy in A.D. 1495, and Savonarola’s assurances of his speedy return were still unfulfilled. Popular favour vacillated, while the nobles and the libertine youth were roused to the utmost bitterness against him. The Franciscans, as members of a rival order, were his sworn enemies. The papal ban was pronounced against him in A.D. 1497, and the city was put under the interdict. A monk of his cloister, Fra Domenico Pescia, offered to pass the ordeal of fire in behalf of his master, if any of his opponents would submit to the same trial. A Franciscan declared himself ready to do so, and all arrangements were made. But when Domenico insisted upon taking with him a consecrated host, the trial did not come off, to the great disappointment of a people devotedly fond of shows. A fanatical mob took the prophet prisoner. His bitterest enemies were his judges, who, after torture had extorted from him a confession of false prophecy most repugnant to his inmost convictions, condemned him to death by fire as a deceiver of the people and a heretic. On 23rd May, A.D. 1498, he was, along with Domenico and another monk, hung upon a gallows and then burned. The believing joy with which he endured death deepened the reverence of an ever-increasing band of adherents, who proclaimed him saint and martyr. His portrait in the cell once occupied by him, painted by Fra Bartolomeo, surrounded with the halo of a saint, shows the veneration in which he was held by his generation and by his order. His numerous sermons represent to us his burning oratory. His chief work is his _Triumphus crucis_ of A.D. 1497, an eloquent and thoughtful vindication of Christianity against the half pagan scepticism of the Renaissance, then dominant in Florence and at the court. An exposition of the 51st Psalm, written in prison and not completed, works out, with a clearness and precision never before attained, the doctrine of justification by faith. It was on this account republished by Luther in A.D. 1523.[352]

§ 120. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

The classical literature of Greek, and especially of Roman, antiquity was during the Middle Ages in the West by no means so completely unknown and unstudied as is commonly supposed. Rulers like Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Alfred the Great, and the German Ottos encouraged its study. Such scholars as Erigena, Gerbert, Barnard Sylvester, John of Salisbury, Roger Bacon, etc., were relatively well acquainted with it. Moorish learning from Spain and intercourse with Byzantine scholars spread classical culture during the 12th and 13th centuries, and the Hohenstaufen rulers were its eager and liberal patrons. In the 14th century the founders of a national Italian literature, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, earnestly cultivated and encouraged classical studies. But an extraordinary revival of interest in such pursuits took place during the 15th century. The meeting of Greeks and Italians at the Council of Florence in A.D. 1439 (§ 67, 6) gave the first impulse, while the Turkish invasion and the downfall of Constantinople in A.D. 1453 gave it the finishing touch. Immense numbers of Byzantine scholars fled to Italy, and were accorded an enthusiastic reception at the Vatican and in the houses of the Medici. With the aid of printing, invented about A.D. 1450, the treasures of classical antiquity were made accessible to all. From the time of this immigration, too, classical studies took an altogether new direction. During the Middle Ages they were made almost exclusively to subserve ecclesiastical and theological ends, but now they were conducted in a thoroughly independent spirit, for the purpose of universal human culture. This “humanism” emancipated itself from the service of the church, assumed toward Christianity for the most part an attitude of lofty indifference, and often lost itself in a vain worship of pagan antiquity. Faith was mocked at as well as superstition; sacred history and Greek mythology were treated alike. The youths of all European countries, thirsting for knowledge, crossed the Alps, to draw from the fresh springs of the Italian academies, and took home with them the new ideas, transplanting into distant lands in a modified form the libertinism of the new paganism that had now over-run Italy.

§ 120.1. =Italian Humanists.=--Italy was the cradle of humanism, the Greeks who settled there (§ 62, 1, 2), its fathers. The first Greek who appeared as a teacher in Italy was Emmanuel Chrysoloras, in A.D. 1396. After the Council of Florence, =Bessarion= and =Gemisthus Pletho= settled there, both ardent adherents of the Platonic philosophy, for which they created an enthusiasm throughout all Italy. From A.D. 1453 Greek _littérateurs_ came in crowds. From their schools classical culture and pagan ideas spread through the land. This paganism penetrated even the highest ranks of the hierarchy. =Leo X.=[353] is credited with saying, “How many fables about Christ have been used by us and ours through all these centuries is very well known.” It may not be literally authentic, but it accurately expresses the spirit of the papal court. Leo’s private secretary, Cardinal =Bembo=, gave a mythological version of Christianity in classical Latin. Christ he styled “Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter,” the Holy Spirit “the breath of the celestial Zephyr,” and repentance was with him a _Deos superosque manesque placare_. Even during the council of Florence Pletho had expressed the opinion that Christianity would soon develop into a universal religion not far removed from classical paganism; and when Pletho died, Bessarion comforted his sons by saying that the deceased had ascended into the pure heavenly spheres, and had joined the Olympic gods in mystic Bacchus dances. In the halls of the Medici there flourished a new Platonic school, which put Plato’s philosophy above Christianity. Alongside of it arose a new peripatetic school, whose representative, =Peter Pompanazzo [Pomponazzo]=, who died A.D. 1526, openly declared that from the philosophical point of view the immortality of the soul is more than doubtful. The celebrated Florentine statesman and historian =Macchiavelli=,[354] who died A.D. 1527, taught the princes of Italy in his “Prince,” in direct contradiction to Dante’s idealistic “Monarchia,” a realistic polity which was completely emancipated from Christianity and every system of morality, and presented the monster Cæsar Borgia (§ 110, 12) as a pattern of an energetic prince, consistently labouring for the end he had in view. Looseness of morals went hand in hand with laxity in religion. Obscene poems and pictures circulated among the humanists, and their practice was not behind their theory. Poggio’s lewd facetiæ, as well as Boccadelli’s indecent epigrams, fascinated the cultured Christian world as much by their lascivious contents as by their classical style. From the dialogues of Laurentius Valla on lust and the true good, which were meant to extol the superiority of Christian morals over those of the Epicureans and Stoics, comes the saying that the Greek courtesans were more in favour than the Christian nuns. The highly gifted poet, Pietro Aretino, in his poetical prose writings reached the utmost pitch of obscenity. He was called “the divine Aretino,” and not only Charles V. and Francis I. honoured him with presents and pensions, but also Leo X., Clement VIII., and even Paul III. showed him their esteem and favour. In their published works the Italian humanists generally ignored rather than contested the church and its doctrines and morality. But =Laurentius Valla=, who died A.D. 1457, ventured in his _Adnotationes in N.T._ freely to find fault with and correct the Vulgate. He did even more, for he pronounced the Donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) a forgery, and poured forth bitter invectives against the cupidity of the papacy. He also denied the genuineness of the correspondence of Christ with Abgarus [Abgar] (§ 13, 2), as well as that of the Areopagite writings (§ 47, 11) and questioned if the Apostles’ Creed was the work of the apostles (§ 35, 2). The Inquisition sought to get hold of him, but Nicholas V. (§ 110, 10) frustrated the attempt and showed him kindness. With all his classical culture, however, Valla retained no small reverence for Christianity. In a still higher degree is this true of =John Picus=, Prince of =Mirandola=, the phœnix of that age, celebrated as a miracle of learning and culture, who united in himself all the nobler strivings of the present and the past. When a youth of twenty-one he nailed up at Rome nine hundred theses from all departments of knowledge. The proposed disputation did not then come off, because many of those theses gave rise to charges of heresy, from which he was cleared only by Alexander VI. in A.D. 1493. The combination of all sciences and the reconciliation of all systems of philosophy among themselves and with revelation on the basis of the Cabbala was the main point in his endeavours. He has wrought out this idea in his _Heptaplus_, in which, by means of a sevenfold sense of Scripture, he succeeds in deducing all the wisdom of the world from the first chapter of Genesis. He died in A.D. 1494, in the thirty-first year of his age. In the last year of his life, renouncing the world and its glory, he set himself with all his powers to the study of Scripture, and meant to go from land to land preaching the Cross of Christ. His intentions were frustrated by death. His saying is a very characteristic one: _Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia invenit, religio possidet_.

§ 120.2. =German Humanism.=--The home of German humanism was the University of =Erfurt=, founded A.D. 1392. At the Councils of Constance and Basel Erfurt, next to Paris, manifested the greatest zeal for the reformation of head and members, and continued to pursue this course during the twenty years’ activity of John of Wesel (§ 119, 10). About A.D. 1460 the first representatives of humanism made their appearance there, a German Luder and a Florentine Publicius. From their school went forth among others Rudolph of Langen, who carried the new light into the schools of Westphalia, and John of Dalberg, afterwards Bishop of Worms. When these two had left Erfurt, =Maternus Pistorius= headed the humanist movement. Crowds of enthusiastic scholars from all parts of Germany gathered around him. As men of poetic tastes, who appreciated the ancient classics, they maintained excellent relations with the representatives of scholasticism. But in A.D. 1504 Busch, a violent revolutionist, appearing at Erfurt, demanded the destruction of the old scholastic text-books, and thus produced an absolute breach between the two tendencies. Maternus retired, and =Mutian=, an old Erfurt student, assumed the leadership in Gotha. Erfurt and Gotha were kept associated by a lively intercourse between the students resident at these two places. Mutian had no literary ambitions, and firmly declined a call to the new University of Wittenberg. All the more powerfully he inspired his contemporaries. His bitter opposition to hierarchism and scholasticism was expressed in keen satires. On retiring from public life, he devoted himself to the study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Shortly before his death he wrote down this as his confession of faith: _Multa scit rusticus, quæ philosophus ignorat; Christus vero pro nobis mortuus est, qui est vita nostra, quod certissime credo_. The leadership passed over to Eoban Hesse. The members of the society joined the party of Luther, with the exception of Crotus Rubianus. =Ulrich von Hutten= was one of the followers of Mutian, a knight of a noble Franconian family, inspired with ardent patriotism and love of freedom, who gave his whole life to battle against pedantry, monkery, and intolerance. Escaping in A.D. 1504 from Fulda, where he was being trained for the priesthood, he studied at Erfurt, fought in Maximilian’s army with the sword, in Mutian’s and Reuchlin’s ranks with the pen, and after the fall of Sickingen became a homeless wanderer, until he died in want, in A.D. 1523, on Ufenan, an island in the Lake of Zürich.[355]

§ 120.3. Next to Erfurt, =Heidelberg=, founded in A.D. 1386, afforded a congenial home for humanist studies. The most brilliant representative of humanism there was =Rudolph Agricola=, an admirer and disciple of À. Kempis and Wessel. His fame rests more on the reports of those who knew him personally than on any writings left behind by him. His pupils mostly joined the Reformation.--The University of =Wittenberg=, founded by Frederick the Wise in A.D. 1502, was the nursery of a wise and moderate humanism. Humanist studies also found an entrance into Freiburg, founded in A.D. 1455, into =Tübingen=, founded in A.D. 1477, where for a long time Reuchlin taught, and into =Ingolstadt=, founded in A.D. 1472, where the Duke of Bavaria spared no efforts to attract the most distinguished humanists. Conrad Celtes, a pupil of Agricola, taught at Ingolstadt until his removal to Vienna in A.D. 1497. Eck and Rhegius, too, were among its ablest alumni. As a bitter opponent of Luther, Eck gave the university a most pronounced anti-reformation character; whereas Rhegius preached the gospel in Augsburg, and spent his life in the service of the Reformation. Reuchlin also taught for a time in Ingolstadt, and the patriotism and reformatory tendencies of Aventinus the Bavarian historian received there the first powerful impulse. At =Nuremberg= the humanists found a welcome in the home of the learned, wealthy, and noble Councillor Pirkheimer. In Reuchlin’s controversy with the scholars of Cologne he showed himself an eager apologist, and headed the party of Reuchlin. He greeted Luther’s appearance with enthusiasm, and entertained the reformer at his own house on his return from the discussion with Cajetan (§ 122, 3), on account of which Eck made the papal bull against Luther tell also against him. What he regarded as Luther’s violence, however, soon estranged him, while the cloister life of his three sisters and three daughters presented to him a picture of Catholicism in its noblest and purest form. His eldest sister, Christas, abbess of the Clara convent at Nuremburg [Nuremberg], one of the noblest and most cultured women of the 16th century, had a powerful influence over him. He died in A.D. 1530.

§ 120.4. =John Reuchlin=, born in A.D. 1455 at Pforzheim, went to the celebrated school at Schlettstadt in Alsace, studied at Freiburg, Paris, Basel, and Orleans, taught law in Tübingen, and travelled repeatedly in Italy with Eberhard the Bearded of Württemberg. After Eberhard’s death he went to the court of the Elector-palatine Philip, and along with D’Alberg [Dalberg] did much for the reputation of the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he was for eleven years president of the Swabian court of justiciary at Tübingen. When in A.D. 1513 the seat of this court was removed to Augsburg he retired to Stuttgart, was called in A.D. 1519 by William of Bavaria to Ingolstadt as professor of Greek and Hebrew. On the outbreak of the plague at Ingolstadt in A.D. 1520, he accepted a call back to Tübingen, where he died in A.D. 1522. He never gave in his adhesion to the reforming ideas of Luther. He left unanswered a letter from the reformer in A.D. 1518. But as a promoter of every scientific endeavour, especially in connection with the study of the original text of the O.T., Reuchlin had won imperishable renown. He was well entitled to conclude his _Rudimenta linguæ Hebraicæ_ of A.D. 1506 with Horace’s words, _Stat monumentum aëre perennino_, for that book has been the basis of all Christian Hebrew philology.[356] He also discussed the difficult subject of Hebrew accents in a special treatise, _De Acc. et Orthogr. Hebr._ 11. iii, and the secret doctrines of the Jews in his _De arte Cabbalistica_. He offered to instruct any Jew who wished it in the doctrines of Christianity, and also to care for his temporal affairs. His attention to rabbinical studies involved him in a controversy which spread his fame over all Europe. A baptized Jew, Pfefferkorn, in Cologne in A.D. 1507 exhibited a neophyte’s zeal by writing bitter invectives against the Jews, and in A.D. 1509 called upon the Emperor Maximilian to have all rabbinical writings burnt because of the blasphemies against Christ which they contained. The emperor asked the opinion of the universities of Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt, and Heidelberg, as well as of Reuchlin and the Cologne inquisitor Hoogstraten. Erfurt and Heidelberg gave a qualified, Reuchlin an unqualified answer in opposition to the proposal. The openly abusive Jewish writings, _e.g._ the notorious _Toledoth Jeschu_, he would indeed condemn, but all other books, _e.g._ the Talmud, the Cabbala, the biblical glosses and commentaries, books of sermons, prayers, and sacred songs, as well as all philosophical, scientific, poetic, and satirical writings of the Jews, he was prepared unconditionally to defend. Pfefferkorn contended against him passionately in his “Handspiegel” of A.D. 1511, to which Reuchlin replied in his “Augenspiegel.” The theological faculty of Cologne, mostly Dominicans, pronounced forty-three statements in the “Augenspiegel” heretical, and demanded its suppression. Reuchlin now gave free vent to his passion, and in his _Defensio c. calumniatores suos Colonienses_ denounced his opponents as goats, swine, and children of the devil. Hoogstraten had him cited before a heresy tribunal. Reuchlin did not appear, but appealed to Pope Leo X. (A.D. 1513). A commission appointed by Leo met at Spires in A.D. 1514, and declared him not guilty of heresy, found Hoogstraten liable in the costs of the process, which was enforced with hearty satisfaction by Franz von Sickingen in A.D. 1519. But meanwhile Hoogstraten had made a personal explanation of his affairs at Rome, and had won over the influential _magister sacri palatii_, Sylvester Prierias (§ 122, 2), who got the pope in A.D. 1520 to annul the judgment and to condemn Reuchlin to pay the costs and observe eternal silence. The men of Cologne triumphed, but in the public opinion of Germany Reuchlin was regarded as the true victor.

§ 120.5. A multitude of vigorous and powerful pens were now in motion on behalf of Reuchlin. In the autumn of A.D. 1515 appeared the first book of the =Epistolæ obscurorum virorum=, which pretended to be the correspondence of a friend with the Cologne teacher Ortuinus Gratius of Deventer. In the most delicious monkish Latin the secret affairs of the mendicant monks and their hatred of Reuchlin were set forth, so that even the Dominicans, according to Erasmus, for a time regarded the correspondence as genuine. All the more overwhelming was the ridicule which fell upon them throughout all Europe. The mendicants indeed obtained from Leo a bull against the writers of the book, but this only increased its circulation. The authors remained unknown; but there is no doubt they belonged to the Mutian party. Justus Jonas, a member of that guild, affirms that Crotus Rubianus had a principal hand in its composition. The idea of it was probably suggested by Mutian himself. Ulrich von Hutten repudiated any share in it, and on internal and external grounds this is more than probable. Busch, Urban, Petrejus, and Eoban Hesse most likely contributed to it. In order to keep up the deception, Venice was given as the place of publication, the name of the famous Aldus Manutius, the papal publisher of Venice, was put upon the title, and a pseudo-papal imprimatur was attached. The second book was issued in A.D. 1517 by Frobenius in Basel. The monkish party published as a counterblast _Lamentationes obscurorum virorum_ at Cologne in A.D. 1518, but the lame and forced wit of the book marked it at once as a ridiculous failure. The monks and schoolmen were once and for ever morally annihilated.[357]

§ 120.6. =Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam= was the most brilliant of all the humanists, not only of Germany, but also of all Europe. Born in A.D. 1465, he was educated by the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer and Herzogenbusch, and afterwards forced by his relatives to enter a monastery in A.D. 1486. In A.D. 1491 he was relieved from the monastic restraints by the Bishop of Cambray, and sent to finish his studies at Paris. He visited England in A.D. 1497, in the company of young Englishmen to whom he had been tutor. There the humanist theologian Colet of Oxford exerted over him a wholesome influence that told upon his whole future life. After spending a year and a half in England, he passed the next six years, sometimes in France, sometimes in the Netherlands; was in Italy from A.D. 1507 till A.D. 1510; then again for five years in England, for most of that time teaching Greek at Cambridge; then other six years in the Netherlands; and at last, in A.D. 1521, he settled with his publisher Frobenius in Basel, where he enjoyed intercourse with the greatest scholars of the day, and maintained an extensive correspondence. He refused every offer of official appointment, even the rank of cardinal, but in reality held undisputed sway as king in the world of letters. He did much for the advancement of classical studies, and in various ways promoted the Protestant Reformation. The faults of the scholastic method in the study of theology he unsparingly exposed, while the misdeeds of the clergy and the ignorance and sloth of the monks afforded materials for his merciless satires. The heathenish spirit of many of the humanists, as well as the turbulent and revolutionary procedure of Ulrich von Hutten, was quite distasteful to him; but his Pelagianising tendencies also prevented him from appreciating the true character of the gospel. He desired a reformation of the Church, but he had not the reformer’s depth of religious emotion, world-conquering faith, self-denying love, and heroic preparation for martyrdom. He was much too fond of a genial literary life, and his perception of the corruption of the church was much too superficial, so that he sought reformation rather by human culture than by the Divine power of the gospel. When the Reformation conquered at Basel in A.D. 1529, Erasmus withdrew to Freiburg. He returned to Basel in A.D. 1536 for conference with Frobenius, and died there under suspicion of heresy without the sacraments of the church. His friends the monks at an earlier period, on the occasion of a false report of his death, had said in their barbarous Latin that he died “_sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus_.” The most important of his works are his critical and exegetical treatises on the N.T. The first edition of his Greek N.T., with Latin translation, short notes, and three introductory sections, was published in A.D. 1516. In the second edition of A.D. 1519, one of these introductory sections, _Ratio veræ theologiæ_, appeared in a greatly extended form; and from A.D. 1522 it was issued separately, and passed through several editions. Scarcely less important were his paraphrases of all the biblical books except the Apocalypse, begun in A.D. 1517. He did much service too by his editions of the Fathers. On his polemic with Luther see § 125, 3. His _Ecclesiastes s. concionator evangelicus_ of A.D. 1535 is a treatise on homiletics admirable of its kind. In his “Praise of Folly” (Ἐγκώμιον μωρίας, _s. Laus stultitiæ_) of A.D. 1511, dedicated to his friend Sir Thomas More, he overwhelms with ridicule the schoolmen, as well as the monks and the clergy; and in his “Colloquies” of A.D. 1518, by which he hoped to make boys _latiniores et meliores_, he let no opportunity pass of reproaching the monks, the clergy, and the forms of worship which he regarded as superstitious. Also his _Adagia_ of A.D. 1500 had afforded him abundant scope for the same sort of thing. A piety of the purest and noblest type, derived from the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and from intercourse with Colet, breathes through his _Enchiridion militis christiani_ of A.D. 1502.[358]--Continuation § 123, 3.

§ 120.7. =Humanism in England.=--In England we meet with two men in the end of the 15th century, closely related to Erasmus, of supreme influence as humanists in urging the claims of reform within the Catholic church. =John Colet= in A.D. 1496 returned to England after a long sojourn in Italy, where he had obtained, not only humanistic culture, but also, through contact with Savonarola and Mirandola, a powerful religious impulse. He then began, at Oxford, his lectures on the Pauline epistles, in which he abandoned the scholastic method and returned to the study of Scripture and the Fathers. There, in A.D. 1498, he attached himself closely to Erasmus and to young Thomas More, who was studying in that place. In A.D. 1505 Colet was made doctor and Dean of St. Paul’s, in which position he expounded with great success whole biblical books and large portions of others in his sermons. After his father’s death in A.D. 1510, he applied his great wealth to the founding of a grammar school at St. Paul’s for the instruction of more than 150 boys in classical, biblical, and patristic literature. A convocation of English bishops in A.D. 1512, to devise means for rooting out heresy (§ 119, 1), gave him the opportunity in his opening sermon to speak plainly to the assembled bishops. He told them that reform of their own order was the best way to protect the church against the incursion of heretics. This aroused the bitter wrath of the old, bigoted Bishop Fitzjames of London, who disliked him exceedingly on account of his reforming tendencies and his pastoral and educational activity. But the archbishop, Warham of Canterbury, repelled the bishop’s fanatical charge of heresy as well as King Henry’s suspicions in regard to the political sympathies of the simple, pious man. Colet died in A.D. 1519.--=Thomas More=, born in A.D. 1480, was recommended to the king by Cardinal Wolsey, and rose from step to step until in A.D. 1529 he succeeded his patron as Lord Chancellor of England. In bonds of closest intimacy with Colet and Erasmus, More also shared in their desires for reform, but applied himself, in accordance with his civil and official position, more to the social and political than to the ecclesiastical aspects of the question. His most comprehensive contribution is found in his famous satire, “Utopia,” of A.D. 1516, in which he sets forth his views as to the natural and rational organization of all social and political relations of life in contrast to the corrupt institutions of existing states. The religious side of this utopian paradise is pure deism, public worship being restricted to the use of what is common to all religions, and peculiarities of particular religions are relegated to special or private services. We cannot however from this draw any conclusion as to his own religious beliefs. More continued to the end a zealous Catholic and a strict ascetic, and was a man of a singularly noble and steadfast character. In the controversy between the king and Luther (§ 125, 3) he supported the king, and as chancellor he wrote, in direct contradiction to the principles of religious toleration commended in his “Utopia,” with venomous bitterness against the adherents of the anti-Catholic reformation. But he decidedly refused to acquiesce in the king’s divorce; and when Henry quarrelled with the pope in A.D. 1532 and began to carry out reforms in a Cæsaro-papistic manner (§ 139, 4), he resigned his offices, firmly refused to acknowledge the royal supremacy over the English church, and, after a long and severe imprisonment, was beheaded in A.D. 1535.[359]

§ 120.8. =Humanism in France and Spain.=--In =France= humanist studies were kept for a time in the background by the world-wide reputation of the University of Paris and its Sorbonne. But a change took place when the young king Francis I., A.D. 1515-1547, became the patron and promoter of humanism. One of its most famous representatives was =Budæus [Buddæus]=, royal librarian, who aided in founding a college for the cultivation of science free from the shackles of scholasticism, and exposed the corruptions of the papacy and the clergy. But much as he sympathized with the spirit of the Reformation, he shrank from any open breach with the Catholic church. He died in A.D. 1540. His like-minded contemporary, =Faber Stapulensis=, as a teacher of classical literature at Paris gathered crowds of pupils around him, and from A.D. 1507 applied himself almost exclusively to biblical exegetical studies. He criticised and corrected the corrupt text of the Vulgate, commented on the Greek text of the gospels and apostolic epistles, and on account of this, as well as by reason of a critical dissertation on Mary Magdalene of A.D. 1521, was condemned by the Sorbonne. Francis I. and his sister Margaret of Orleans protected him from further persecution. Also his former pupil, William Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, who was eagerly endeavouring to restore morality and piety among his clergy, appointed him his vicar-general, and gave him an opportunity to bring out his French translation of the New Testament from the Vulgate in A.D. 1523, which was followed by a translation of the Old Testament and a French commentary on the pericopes of the Sundays and festivals. As Faber here represented the Scriptures as the only rule of faith for all Christians, and taught that man is justified not by his works, but only by faith in the grace of God in Christ, the Sorbonne charged him with the Lutheran heresy, and Parliament, during the king’s imprisonment in Spain (§ 126, 5) in A.D. 1525, appointed a commission to search out and suppress heresy in the diocese of Meaux. Faber’s books were condemned to the flames, but he himself, threatened with the stake, escaped by flight to Strassburg. After his return the king provided for him a safe retreat at Blois, where he wrought at his translation of the Old Testament, which he completed in A.D. 1528. He spent his last years at Nérac, the residence of his patroness Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, where he died in A.D. 1536 in his 86th year. Though at heart estranged from the Catholic church, he never formally forsook it.--In =Spain= Cardinal Ximenes (§ 118, 7) acted as the Mæcenas of humanist studies. The most distinguished Spanish humanist was =Anton of Lebrija=, professor at Salamanca, a fellow labourer with Ximenes on the Complutensian Polyglott, and protected by him from the Inquisition, which would have called him to account for his criticism of the Vulgate. He died in A.D. 1522.

§ 120.9. =Humanism and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century.=--Humanists, in common with the reformers, inveighed against the debased scholasticism as well as against the superstition of the age. They did so however on very different grounds, and conducted their warfare by very different methods. While the reformers employed the word of God, and strove after the salvation of the soul, the humanists employed wit and sarcasm, and sought after the temporal well-being of men. Hence the reaction of the despised scholasticism and the contemned monasticism against humanism was often in the right. A reformation of the church by humanism alone would have been a return to naked paganism. But, on the other hand, classical studies afforded men who desired a genuine reformation of the church a rich, linguistic, philosophical, and scientific culture, without which, as applied to researches in church history, the exposition of Scripture, and the revision of doctrine, the reforms of the sixteenth century could hardly have been carried out in a comprehensive and satisfactory manner. The most permanent advantage won for the church and theology by the revival of learning was the removal of =Holy Scripture= from under the bushel, and giving it again its rightful place as the lamp of the church. It pointed back from the Vulgate, of which since A.D. 1500, some ninety-eight printed editions had appeared, to the original text, condemned the allegorical method of exposition, awakened an appreciation of the grammatical and historical system of interpretation, afforded scientific apparatus by its philological studies, and by issuing printed Bibles secured the spread of the original text. From the time of the invention of printing the Jews were active in printing the Old Testament. From A.D. 1502 a number of Christian scholars, under the presidency of Ximenes, wrought at Alcala at the great Complutensian Polyglott, published in A.D. 1520. It contained the Hebrew and Greek texts, the Targums, the LXX., and the Vulgate, as well as a Latin translation of the LXX. and of the Targums, with a much-needed grammatical and lexical apparatus. Daniel Bomberg of Antwerp published at Venice various editions of the Old Testament, some with, some without, rabbinical commentaries. His assistants were Felix Pratensis, a learned Jew; and Jacob ben Chaijim, a rabbi of Tunis. As the costly Complutensian Polyglott was available only to a few, Erasmus did great service by his handy edition of the Greek New Testament, notwithstanding its serious critical deficiencies. Erasmus himself brought out five successive editions, but very soon more than thirty impressions were exhausted.

THIRD DIVISION.

History of the Development of the Church under Modern European Forms of Civilization.

§ 121. CHARACTER AND DISTRIBUTION OF MODERN CHURCH HISTORY.

In the Reformation of the sixteenth century the intelligence of Germany, which had hitherto been under the training and tutelage of the Romish church, reached maturity by the application of the formal and material principles of Protestantism,--the sole normative authority of Scripture, and justification by faith alone without works of merit. It emancipated itself from its schoolmaster, who, for selfish ends, had made and still continued to make strenuous efforts to check every movement towards independence, every endeavour after ecclesiastical, theological, and scientific freedom, every struggle after evangelical reform. Yet this emancipation was not completely effected in all the purely German nationalities, much less among those Romanic and Slavonic peoples which had bowed their necks to the papal hierarchy. The Romish church of the Reformation not only adhered to the form and content of its former unevangelical constitution, but also still further developed and formally elaborated its creed in the same unevangelical direction, and the result was a split in the western church into an Evangelical Protestant and a Roman Catholic church. Then again the principles of the Reformation were set forth in different ways, and Protestantism branched off into two divisions, the Lutheran and the Reformed. Besides these three new western churches and the one old eastern church, which all rested upon the common œcumenical basis of the old Catholic church, a variety of sects sprang out of them. Through these greater and lesser divisions, modern church history, where, with some advantages and some disadvantages, one church is pitted against another, possesses a character entirely different from the church history of earlier times.

Modern church history naturally falls into four divisions. The distinguishing characteristic of each is found partly in the opposition of particular churches to one another, partly in the antagonism of faith and unbelief. The transition from one to another corresponds generally with the boundaries of the centuries. The =sixteenth century= forms the Reformation period, in which the new Protestantism, parted from the old Roman Catholicism, cast off the deformatory elements which had attached themselves to it, and developed for itself a system of doctrine, worship, and constitution; while the Roman Catholic church, from the middle of the century, set to work upon a counter-Reformation, by which it succeeded in large measure in reconquering the field that had been lost. The =seventeenth century= was characterized on the Protestant side as the age of orthodoxy, in which confessionalism obtained undivided supremacy, deteriorating however in doctrine and life into a frigid formalism, which called forth the movement of Pietism as a corrective; but, on the Roman Catholic side, it was characterized as a period of continued successful restoration. In the =eighteenth century= begins the struggle against the dominant church and the prevailing conceptions of Christianity in the forms of deism, naturalism, and rationalism within both the Protestant and Catholic churches. The fourth division embraces the =nineteenth century=. The newly awakened faith strives vigorously with rationalism, and then, on the Protestant side, splits into unionism and confessionalism; while, on the Roman Catholic side, it makes its fullest development in a zealous ultramontanism. But rationalism again renews its youth under the cloak of science, and alongside of it appears a more undisguised unbelief in the distinctly antichristian forms of pantheism, materialism, and communism, which seeks to annihilate everything Christian in church and state, in science and faith, in social and political life.

FIRST SECTION.

CHURCH HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

I. The Reformation.[360]

§ 122. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE WITTENBERG REFORMATION.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century everything seemed to combine in favour of those reforming endeavours which had been held back during the Middle Ages. There was a lively perception of the corruptions of the church, a deep and universal yearning after reformation, the scientific apparatus necessary for its accomplishment, a pope, Leo X., careless and indolent; a trafficker in indulgences, Tetzel, stupidly bold and shameless; a noble, pious, and able prince, Frederick the Wise (§ 123, 9), to act as protector of the new creed; an emperor, Charles V. (§ 123, 5), powerful and hostile enough to kindle the purifying fire of tribulation, but too much occupied with political entanglements to be able to indulge in reckless and violent oppression. There were also thousands of other persons, circumstances, and relations helping, strengthening, and furthering the work. And now, at the right hour, in the fittest place, and with the most suitable surroundings, a religious genius, in the person of Luther, appeared as the reformer, with the rarest combination of qualities of head and heart, character and will, to engage upon that great work for which Providence had so marvellously qualified him. This mighty undertaking was begun by ninety-five simple theses, which he nailed to the door of the church of Wittenberg, and the Leipzig Disputation marked the first important crisis in its history.

§ 122.1. =Luther’s Years of Preparation.=--Martin Luther, a miner’s son, was born on November 10th, A.D. 1483. His childhood was passed under severe parental control and amid pinching poverty, and he went to school at Mansfeld, whither his parents had migrated; then at Magdeburg, where, among the Brothers of the Common Life, he had mainly to secure his own support as a singing boy upon the streets; and afterwards at Eisenach, where Madame Ursula Cotta, moved by his beautiful voice and earnest entreaty, took him into her house. In A.D. 1501 he entered on the study of jurisprudence at Erfurt (§ 120, 2), took the degree of bachelor in A.D. 1502, and that of master in A.D. 1505. During a fearful thunderstorm, which overtook him as he travelled home, he was driven by terror to vow that he would become a monk, impressed as he was by the sudden death of an unnamed friend which had taken place shortly before. On the 17th July, A.D. 1505, he entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt. In deep concern about his soul’s salvation, he sought by monkish asceticism, fasting, prayer, and penances to satisfy his conscience, but the inward struggles only grew stronger. An old monk proclaimed to the weary inquirer, almost fainting under the anxiety of spirit and self-imposed tortures, the comforting declaration of the creed, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Still more powerful in directing him proved the conversation of his noble superior, John Staupitz (§ 112, 6). He showed him the way of true repentance and faith in the Saviour crucified not for _painted_ sins. Following his advice, Luther diligently studied the Bible, together with, of his own accord, Augustine’s writings. In A.D. 1507 he was ordained priest, and in A.D. 1508 Staupitz promoted him to the University of Wittenberg, founded in A.D. 1502, where he lectured on the “Dialectics” and “Physics” of Aristotle; and in A.D. 1509 he was made _Baccalaureus biblicus_. In the autumn of the same year he went again, probably by Staupitz’ advice, to Erfurt, until, a year and a half afterwards, he obtained a definite settlement at Wittenberg. Highly important for his subsequent development was the journey which, in A.D. 1511, he took to Rome in the interests of his order. On the first view of the holy city, he sank upon his knees, and with his hands raised to heaven cried out, “I greet thee, holy Rome.” But he withdrew utterly disgusted with the godless frivolity and immorality which he witnessed among the clergy on every side, and dissatisfied with the externalism of the penitential exercises which he had undertaken. During his whole journey the Scripture sounded in his ear, “The just shall live by his faith.” It was a voice of God in his soul, which at last carried the blessed peace of God into his wounded spirit. After his return, in A.D. 1512, Staupitz gave him no rest until he took the degree of doctor of divinity; and now he gave lectures in the university on Holy Scripture, and afterwards preached in the city church of Wittenberg. He applied himself more and more, by the help of Augustine, to the study of Scripture and its fundamental doctrine of justification by faith alone. About this time too he was powerfully influenced by Tauler’s mysticism and the “Deutsche Theologie,” of which he published an edition in A.D. 1516.

§ 122.2. =Luther’s Theses of A.D. 1517.=--The æsthetic and luxurious pope Leo X. (§ 110, 14), avowedly for the building of St. Peter’s, really to fill his own empty coffers, had proclaimed a general indulgence. Germany was divided between three indulgence commissions. The elector-cardinal Albert of Mainz, archbishop of Magdeburg, and brother of Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, undertook the direction of the commission for his archiepiscopal province, for which he was to receive half the proceeds for the payment of his debts. The most shameless of the traffickers in indulgences employed by him was the Leipzig Dominican prior, John Tetzel. This man had been sentenced at Innsbrück to be drowned for adultery, but on the intercession of the Elector of Saxony had his sentence commuted to imprisonment for life. He now was taken from his prison in order to do this piece of work for Albert. With great success he went from place to place, and offered his wares for sale, proclaiming their virtues in the public market with unparalleled audacity. He went to Jüterbock, in the vicinity of Wittenberg, where he attracted crowds of purchasers from all around. Luther discovered in the confessional the corrupting influence of such procedure, and on the afternoon of All Saints’ Day, =October 31st, A.D. 1517=, he nailed on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg ninety-five theses, explaining the meaning of the indulgence. Although they were directed not so much against the principle of indulgences as against their misunderstanding and abuse, they comprehended the real germ of the Reformation movement, negatively in the conception of repentance which they set forth, and positively in the distinct declaration that the grace of God in Christ can alone avail for the forgiveness of sin. With incredible rapidity the theses spread over all Germany, indeed over all Europe. Luther accompanied them with a sermon on indulgence and grace. The immense applause which its delivery called forth led the supporters of the old views to gird on their armour. Tetzel publicly burnt the theses at Jüterbock, and with the help of Wimpina posted up and circulated at Frankfort and other places counter-theses. The Wittenberg students purchased quantities of these theses, and in retaliation burnt them, but Luther did not approve their conduct. In April, A.D. 1518, Luther went to Heidelberg, to take part there in a regular chapter of the Augustinians, which was usually accompanied by public preaching and disputations by members of the order. The disputation, which on this occasion was assigned to Luther, gave him the welcome opportunity of making known to wider circles these philosophical and theological views which he had hitherto uttered only in Wittenberg. The professors of the University of Heidelberg repudiated and opposed them, but in almost every case mildly and with tolerance. On the other hand, many of the young theologians studying there enthusiastically accepted his doctrines, and several of them, _e.g._ Martin Bucer of Strassburg (§ 125, 1), John Brenz and Erhard Schnepf of Swabia (§ 133, 3), as well as Theobald Billicanus, afterwards reformer of Nördlingen, etc., there and then consecrated themselves to their life work.

§ 122.3. =Prierias, Cajetan, and Miltitz, A.D. 1518, 1519.=--Leo X. at first regarded the matter as an insignificant monkish squabble, and praised Brother Martin as a real genius. He gave no heed to Hoogstraten’s outcry of heresy, nor did he encourage the Dominican Prierias in his attack on Luther. The book of Prierias was a harmless affair. Luther gave it a short and crushing reply. Prierias answered in a second and third tract, which Luther simply republished with sarcastic and overwhelming prefaces. The pope then enjoined silence upon his luckless steward. In May, A.D. 1518, Luther wrote a humble epistle to the pope, and added a series of _Resolutiones_ in vindication of his theses. Staupitz is said to have revised both. Meanwhile it had been determined in Rome to deal with the Wittenberg business in earnest. The papal procurator made a complaint against Luther. A court was commissioned, which summoned him to appear in person at Rome to answer for himself. But, on the representations of the University of Wittenberg and the Elector Frederick the Wise, the pope charged Cardinal Cajetan, his legate at the Diet of Augsburg, to take up the consideration of the matter. Luther appeared, and made his appeal to the Bible. The legate however wished him to argue from the schoolmen, demanded an unconditional recantation, and at last haughtily dismissed “the beast with deep eyes and wonderful speculations in his head.” Luther made a formal appeal _a sanctissimo Domino Leone male informato ad melius informandum_, and quitted Augsburg in good spirits. The cardinal now sought to rouse Frederick against the refractory monk, but Luther’s buoyant and humble confidence won the noble elector’s heart. Cajetan continued a vigorous opponent of the reformed doctrine. But Luther’s superiority in Scripture knowledge had so impressed the cardinal, that he now applied himself closely to the study of the Bible in the original tongues; and thus, while firmly attached to the Romish system, he was led on many points, _e.g._ on Scripture and tradition, divorce, injunctions about meats, the use of the vernacular in public worship, the objectionableness of the allegorical interpretation, etc., to adopt more liberal views, so that he was denounced by some Roman Catholic controversialists as guilty of various heresies.--Luther had no reason in any case to look for any good from Rome. Hence he prepared beforehand an appeal for an œcumenical council, which the publisher, against Luther’s will, at once spread abroad. In Rome the cardinal’s pride was wounded by the failure of his undertaking. A papal bull defined the doctrine of indulgences, in order more exactly to guard against misrepresentations, and an accomplished courtier, the papal chamberlain, Carl von Miltitz, a Saxon, was sent to Saxony, in A.D. 1519, as papal nuncio, to convey to the elector the consecrated golden rose, and to secure a happy conclusion to the controversy. The envoy began by addressing a sharp admonition to Tetzel, and met Luther with hypocritical graciousness. Luther acknowledged that he had acted rashly, wrote a humble, submissive letter to the pope, and published “_An Instruction on some Articles ascribed to him by his Traducers_.” But after all the retractations which he made at the diet he still firmly maintained justification by faith, without merit of works. He promised the nuncio to abstain from all further polemic, on condition that his opponents also should be silent. But silent these would not be.

§ 122.4. =The Leipzig Disputation, A.D. 1519.=--John Eck of Ingolstadt had engaged in controversy with a zealous supporter and colleague of Luther, Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, professor and preacher at Wittenberg, and Luther himself took part in the discussion between the two. This disputation came off at Leipzig, and lasted from June 27th to July 16th. But Eck’s vanity led him not only to seek the greatest possible fame from his present disputation, but also to drag in Luther by challenging his theses. Eck disputed for eight days with Carlstadt about grace and free will, and with abundant eloquence, boldness, and learning vindicated Romish semi-Pelagianism. Then he disputed for fourteen days with Luther about the primacy of the pope, about repentance, indulgences, and purgatory, and pressed him hard about the Hussite heresy. But Luther sturdily opposed him on the grounds of Scripture, and confirmed himself in the conviction that even œcumenical councils might err, and that not all Hussite doctrines are heretical. Both parties claimed the victory. Luther continued the discussion in various controversial treatises, and Eck, too, was not silent. New combatants also, for and against, from all sides appeared upon the scene. The liberal humanists (§ 120, 2) had at first taken little notice of Luther’s contention. But the Leipzig Disputation led them to change their attitude. Luther seemed to them now a new Reuchlin, Eck another specimen of Ortuinus Gratius. A biting satire of Pirkheimer (§ 120, 3), “Der abgehobelte Eck,” appeared in the beginning of A.D. 1520, exceeding in Aristophanic wit any of the epistles of the Obscurantists. It was followed by several satires by Ulrich von Hutten, who received new inspiration from Luther’s appearance at Leipzig. Hutten and Sickingen, with their whole party, undertook to protect Luther with body and soul, with sword and pen. This was a covenant of some advantage to the Reformation in its early years; but had it not been again abrogated, it might have diverted the movement into an altogether wrong direction. From this time forth Duke George of Saxony, at whose castle and in whose presence the disputation had been conducted, became the irreconcilable enemy of Luther and his Reformation.

§ 122.5. =Philip Melanchthon.=--At the Leipzig Disputation there also appeared a man fated to become of supreme importance in the carrying out of the Reformation. Born on February 16th, A.D. 1497, at Bretten in the Palatinate, Philip Melanchthon entered the University of Heidelberg in his thirteenth year, and at the age of sixteen published a Greek grammar. He took the degree of master at seventeen, and at twenty-one, in A.D. 1518, on the recommendation of his grand-uncle Reuchlin, he was made Professor of Greek in Wittenberg. His fame soon spread over all Europe, and attracted to him thousands of hearers from all parts. Luther and Erasmus vied with one another in lauding his talents, his fine culture and learning, and his contemporaries have given him the honourable title of _Præceptor Germaniæ_. He was an Erasmus of nobler form and higher power, a thorough contrast to Luther. His whole being breathed modesty, mildness, and grace. With childlike simplicity he received the recognised truths of the gospel. He bowed humbly before the powerful, practical spirit of Luther, who also, on his part, acknowledged with profound thankfulness the priceless treasure God had sent to him and to his work in this fellow labourer. Melanchthon wrote to his friend Œcolampadius at Basel an account of the Leipzig Disputation, which by chance fell into Eck’s hands. This occasioned a literary controversy, in which Eck’s vain over-estimation of himself appears in very striking contrast to the noble modesty of Melanchthon. He took part in the Reformation first in February, A.D. 1521, by a pseudonymous apology for Luther.[361]

§ 122.6. =George Spalatin.=--In consequence of his influential position at the court of the elector, which he obtained on Mutian’s (§ 120, 2) recommendation, after completing his philosophical, legal, and theological studies at Erfurt, George Burkhardt, born in A.D. 1484 at Spalt, in the diocese of Eichstadt, and hence called Spalatinus, played an important part in the German Reformation. Frederick the Wise, who had, in A.D. 1509, entrusted him with the education of his nephew John Frederick, appointed him, in A.D. 1514, his court chaplain, librarian, and private secretary, in which capacity he accompanied the elector to all the diets, and was almost exclusively the channel for communicating to him tidings about Luther. John the Constant, in A.D. 1525, made him superintendent of Altenburg, and took him with him to the diets of Spires, in A.D. 1526, 1529, and of Augsburg in A.D. 1530. John Frederick the Magnanimous, his former pupil, employed him in A.D. 1537 on important negotiations at the conference of the princes at Schmalkald [Schmalcald] (§ 134, 1). From A.D. 1527 Spalatin was specially busy with the visitation and organization of the Saxon church (§ 127, 1), conducted, in the interests of the Reformation, an extensive correspondence, and composed several works on the history of his times and the history of the Reformation.

§ 123. LUTHER’S PERIOD OF CONFLICT, A.D. 1520, 1521.

The Leipzig Disputation had carried Luther to a more advanced standpoint. He came to see that he could not remain standing half way, that the carrying out of the Reformation principle, justification by faith, was incompatible with the hierarchical system of the papacy and its dogmatic foundation. But amid all the violence and subjective one-sidedness which he showed at the beginning of this period of conflict, he had sufficient control of himself to make clear the spiritual character of his reforming endeavours, and firmly to reject the carnal weapons which Ulrich von Hutten and his revolutionary companions wished him to take up, thankful as he was for their warm sympathy. His standpoint as a reformer is shown in the writings which he published during this period. The Romish bull of excommunication provoked him to strong words and extreme measures, and with heroic boldness he entered Worms to present to the emperor and diet an account of his doings. The papal ban was followed by the imperial decree of outlawry. But the Wartburg exile saved him from the hands of his enemies and--of his friends.

§ 123.1. =Luther’s Three Chief Reformation Writings, A.D. 1520.=--In the powerful treatise, “To His Imperial Majesty and the Christian Nobility of the German Nation on the Improvement of the Christian Condition,” which appeared in the beginning of August, A.D. 1520, Luther bombards first of all the three walls behind which the Romanists entrenched themselves, the superiority of the spiritual to the civil power, the sole right of the pope to interpret Scripture and to summon œcumenical councils. Then he commends to the laity, as consecrated by baptism to a spiritual priesthood, especially civil rulers ordained of God, the task of carrying out the reformation which God’s word requires, but the pope and clergy hinder; and then finally he makes a powerful appeal for carrying out this work in a practical way. He exposes the false pretensions of the papal curia, demands renunciation of annats and papal confirmation of newly elected bishops, complete abandonment of the interdict and the abuse of excommunication, the prohibition of pilgrimages and the begging of the monks, a limitation of holy days, reform of the universities, permission to the clergy to marry, reunion with the Bohemian Picards (§ 119, 8), etc.--The second work, “On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” is a dogmatic treatise, and is directed mainly against the misuse of the sacraments and the reckoning of them as seven, which have been made in the hands of the pope an instrument of tyranny over the church. Only three are recognised as founded on Scripture: baptism, penance, and the Lord’s Supper, with the remark that, strictly speaking, even penance, as wanting an outward sign, cannot be styled a sacrament. The doctrine of transubstantiation, the withholding of the cup from the laity, and the idea of a sacrifice in the mass are decidedly rejected. The third treatise, “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” enters the ethical domain. It represents the life of the Christian, rooted in justifying faith, as complete oneness with Christ. His relation therefore to the world around is set forth in two propositions: A Christian man is a free lord over all things, and subject to no one; and a Christian man is a ministering servant of all things, and subject to every one. On the one hand, he has the perfect freedom of a king and priest set over all outward things; but, on the other hand, he yields complete submission in love to his neighbour, which, as consideration of the weak, his very freedom demands.[362]

§ 123.2. =The Papal Bull of Excommunication, A.D. 1520.=--In order to reap the fruits of his pretended victory at Leipzig, Eck had gone to Rome, and was sent back triumphant as papal nuncio with the bull _Exsurge Domini_ of June 16th. It charged Luther with forty-one heresies, recommended the burning of his works, and threatened to put him and his followers, if they did not retract in sixty days, under the ban. Miltitz renewed his attempts at conciliation, which, however, led to no result, although Luther, to show at least his good will, attended the conference, and, as a basis for a mutual understanding, published his treatise, “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” in Oct., A.D. 1520. He accompanied this with a letter to the pope, in which he treated him with personal respect, as a sheep among wolves and as a Daniel sitting among lions; but there was in it no word of repentance or of any desire to retract. It could easily have been foreseen that these two documents would prove thoroughly distasteful to the Romish court. Meanwhile Eck had issued the bull. Luther published a scathing polemic against it, and renewed his appeal, made two years before, to an œcumenical council. In Saxony Eck gained only scorn and reproach with his bull; but in Lyons, Mainz, Cologne, etc., Luther’s works were actually burnt. It was then that Luther took the boldest step in his whole career. With a numerous retinue of doctors and students, whom he had invited by a notice posted up on the blackboard, on the 10th Dec., A.D. 1520, at the Elster gate of Wittenberg, he cast into the blazing pile the bull and the papal decretals with the words, “Because thou hast troubled the saints of the Lord, let eternal fire consume thee.” It was the utter renunciation of the pope and his church, and with it he cut away every possibility of a return.

§ 123.3. =Erasmus, A.D. 1520.=--Erasmus (§ 120, 6) had been hitherto on good terms with Luther. They entertained for one another a genuine regard. Diverse as their positive tendencies were, they were at one in contending against scholasticism and monkery. Erasmus was not sorry to see such heavy blows dealt to the detested monks, and constantly refused to write against Luther; he had also, he confessed, no wish to learn from his own experience the sharpness of Luther’s teeth. When the papal bull appeared, without hesitation he disapproved it, and indeed refused to believe in its genuineness. He, as the oracle of his age, was applied to by many for his opinion of the matter. His judgment was that not the papal decision in itself but its style and form should be disapproved. He desired a tribunal of learned, pious men and three princes (the emperor and the kings of England and Hungary), to whose verdict Luther would have to submit. When Frederick the Wise consulted him, he expressed the opinion that Luther had made two mistakes, in touching the crown of the pope and the belly of the monks; he regretted in Luther’s proceedings a want of moderation and discretion. Not without profit did the elector hear the oracle thus discourse.--Continuation § 125, 3.

§ 123.4. =Luther’s Controversy with Emser, A.D. 1519-1521.=--Emser, secretary and orator in the service of Duke George, after the Leipzig Disputation, which he had attended, sought by letter-writing to alienate the Bohemians (§ 139, 19) from Luther, representing him as having there spoken bitterly against them. This roused Luther to make a passionate reply. After several pamphlets of a violent character had been issued by both combatants, Emser issued his charge in a full and comprehensive treatise, to which Luther replied in his work, “The Answer of Martin Luther to the Unchristian, Ultra-ecclesiastical, and Over-ingenious Book of Emser at Leipzig.” They had also a sharp passage at arms with one another, in A.D. 1524, over the canonization of Bishop Benno of Meissen, in which Emser, by his duke’s order, took a zealous part (§ 129, 1). But all the later writings in this controversy Luther left unanswered. Emser, with great bitterness, assailed Luther’s translation of the Bible, in which he professed to have found 1,400 heretical falsifications and more than 1,000 lexical blunders. Luther was candid enough to acknowledge that several of his animadversions were not unfounded. On Emser’s own translation, which appeared shortly before his death in A.D. 1527, see § 149, 14.

§ 123.5. =The Emperor Charles V.=--The Emperor Maximilian had died on 12th Jan., A.D. 1519. The Elector of Saxony, as administrator of the empire, managed to determine the election, which took place on 28th June, A.D. 1519, against the French candidate, Francis I., who was supported by the pope, in favour of the young king of Spain, Charles I., grandson of Maximilian. Detained at home by Spanish affairs, it was 23rd Oct., A.D. 1520, before he was crowned at Aachen. All hopes were now directed toward the young emperor. It was expected that he would put himself at the head of the religious and national movement in Germany. But Charles, uninspired by German sentiment, and even ignorant of the German language, had other interests, which he was not inclined to subordinate to German politics. The German crown was with him only an integral part of his power. Its interests must accommodate themselves to the common interests of the whole dominions, upon which the sun never set. The German movement he regarded as one, indeed, of high importance, but he regarded it not so much from its religious as from its political side. It afforded him the means for keeping the pope in check and obliging him to sue for his favour. Two things required he of the pope as the price of suppressing the German movement: renunciation of the French alliance, and repeal of the papal brief by which a transformation had been recommended of the Spanish Inquisition, the main buttress of absolute monarchy in Spain. The pope granted both demands, and the hopes of the Germans in their new emperor, that he would finally free their nation from the galling yoke of Rome, were thus utterly blasted.

§ 123.6. =The Diet at Worms, A.D. 1521.=--Immediately after the arrival of the bull the emperor gave it the full force of law in the Netherlands, where he was then staying. He did not at once venture to make the same proclamation for Germany, specially from regard to Frederick the Wise, Luther’s own prince, who insisted that he should not be condemned unheard. Personal negotiations between Frederick and the emperor and his councillors at Cologne, in November, A.D. 1520, ended with a demand that the elector should bring Luther to the diet, summoned to meet at Worms, on 28th January, A.D. 1521; but at the desire of Aleander, the papal nuncio, who energetically protested against the proposal that civil judges should treat of matters of faith with an already condemned heretic, the emperor, in December, withdrew this summons. In the beginning of February there came a papal brief, in which he was urgently entreated to give effect to the bull throughout Germany. Aleander even sketched an imperial mandate for its execution, but was not able to prevent the emperor from laying it before his councillors for their opinion and approval. This was done in the middle of February. And now there arose a quite unexpected storm of opposition. The councillors demanded that Luther should be brought under an imperial safe conduct to Worms, there to answer for himself. His attacks on Romish abuses they would not and could not regard as crimes, for they themselves, with Duke George at their head, had presented to the pope a complaint containing 101 counts. On the other hand, they declared that if Luther would not retract his doctrinal vagaries, they would be prepared to carry out the edict. They persisted in this attitude when another scheme was proposed to them, which insisted on the burning of Luther’s writings. In the beginning of March a third proposal was made, which asked only for the temporary sequestration of his works. And to this they agreed. The emperor, though against his own will, submitted to their demand, and cited the reformer of Wittenberg to answer for himself at Worms. On 6th March he signed a summons, accompanied with a safe conduct, both intended, as Aleander said in writing to Rome, rather to frighten him from coming than with any desire for his presence. But the result was not as they desired. The courier appointed to deliver this citation was not sent, but instead of him, on the 12th, an imperial herald, who delivered to Luther a respectful invitation beginning with the address, “Noble, dear, and worshipful sir.” This herald was to bring him honourably and safely to Worms, and to conduct him back again in safety. All this was done behind the back of Aleander, who first came to know about it on the 15th, and certainly was not wrong in attributing the emperor’s change of mind to a suspicion of French political intrigues, in which Leo X., notwithstanding his negotiations for an alliance with the emperor, was understood to have had a share. Two weeks later, however, such suspicions were seen to be unfounded. Too late the sending of the herald was regretted, and an effort was made to conciliate the nuncio by the publication of the sequestrating mandate, which had been hitherto suppressed.

§ 123.7. =Luther= was meanwhile not idle at Wittenberg, while waiting with heroic calm the issue of the Worms negotiations. He preached twice daily, delivered lectures at the university, taught and exhorted by books, letters, and conversations, fought with his opponents, especially Emser, etc. While Luther was engaged with these multifarious tasks the imperial herald arrived. He now set everything aside, and on 2nd April boldly and confidently obeyed the summons. The fears of his Wittenberg friends and the counsels to turn back which reached him on his way were rejected with a heroic consciousness that he was in the path of duty. He had written on 14th March to Spalatin, _Intrabimus Wormatiam invitis omnibus portis inferni et potentatibus aëris_; and again from Oppenheim he wrote him, that he would go to Worms even if there were as many devils there as tiles upon the roofs. Still another attempt was made upon him at Oppenheim. The emperor’s confessor, Glapio, a Franciscan, who was by no means a blind worshipper of the Roman curia, thought it possible that a good understanding might be reached. He was of opinion that if Luther would only withdraw the worst of his books, especially that on the Babylonish Captivity, and acknowledge the decisions of the Council of Constance, all might be agreeably settled. With this in his mind he applied to the Elector of Saxony, and when he received no encouragement there, to Franz von Sickingen, who invited Luther, on his arrival at Ebernburg, near Worms, to an interview with Glapio; but Luther declined the invitation.--His journey all through was like a triumphal march. On 16th April, amid a great concourse of people, he entered Worms, along with his friends Justus Jonas and Nic. Amsdorf, as well as his legal adviser Jerome Schurf. He was called to appear on the following day. He admitted that the books spread out before him were his, and when called on to retract desired one day’s adjournment. On the 18th the trial proper began. Luther distinguished three classes of his writings, systematic treatises, controversial tracts against the papacy and papal doctrine, and controversial tracts against private individuals, and did not know that he had said anything in them that he could retract. He was asked to give a direct answer. He then gave one “without horns or teeth,” saying that he could and would retract nothing unless proved false from Scripture, or on other good and clear grounds, and concluded with the words, “Here stand I; I can no otherwise! God help me, Amen.” Among the German knights and princes he had won many hearts, but had made no favourable impression on the emperor, who, when Luther denounced the absolute authority of councils, stopped proceedings and dismissed the heretical monk. On the following day, without consulting the opinion of the councillors, he passed sentence of unconditional condemnation. But the councillors would not have the matter settled in this fashion, and the emperor was obliged, on 24th April, to reopen negotiations before a select commission, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Treves. Of no avail was a private conference of the archbishop and Luther on the 25th, in which the prelate accompanied his exhortation to retract with the promise of a rich priorate in his neighbourhood under his own and the emperor’s protection and favour. Luther supported his refusal by confident reference to the words of Gamaliel, Acts v. 38. On 26th April he left Worms unhindered; for the emperor had decidedly refused to yield to the vile proposal that the safe conduct of a heretic should be violated.--In consequence of Luther’s persistent refusal to retract anything, the majority of the diet pronounced themselves ready to agree to the emperor’s judgment against him. The latter now assigned to Aleander the drawing up of a new mandate, which should in the severest terms proclaim the ban of the empire against Luther and all his friends. After it had been approved in an imperial cabinet council, and was ready for printing in its final form in Latin and German, with the date 8th May, it was laid before the emperor for signature, which, however, he put off doing from day to day, and finally, in spite of all the nuncio’s remonstrances, he decided that it must be produced before the diet. When it appeared that this must be done, the two nuncios were all impatient to have it passed soon. But it was only on the 25th May, after the close of the diet, and after several princes, especially the Electors of Saxony and the Palatinate, had gone, that Charles let them present the edict, to which all present agreed. On the 26th May, after Divine service in church, he solemnly signed the Latin and German forms, which were published with blast of trumpets on the following day, and on Wednesday the sequestrated books of Luther were burnt.--Undoubtedly political motives occasioned this long delay in signing the documents. Perhaps he suspected the pope of some new act of political treachery; probably also he wished to postpone the publication of the edict until the imperial councillors had promised to contribute to his proposed journey to Rome, and perhaps until the nobles dissenting from the proceedings against Luther had departed.

§ 123.8. =The Wartburg Exile, A.D. 1521, 1522.=--Some days after Luther had dismissed the imperial herald, his carriage was stopped in a wood near Eisenach by two disguised knights with some retainers. He was himself carried off with show of violence, and brought to the Wartburg, where he was to remain in knight’s dress under the name of Junker Georg without himself knowing anything more of the matter. It was indeed a contrivance of the wise elector, though probably he took no active share in the matter, so that he could declare at Worms that he knew nothing of the Saxon monk. The most contradictory reports were spread. Sometimes the Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (§ 122, 2) was thought of as the perpetrator of the act, sometimes Franz von Sickingen (§ 124, 2), sometimes a Franconian nobleman who was on intimate terms with Frederick. And as the news rapidly spread that Luther’s body, pierced with a sword, had been found in an old silver mine, the tumult in Worms became so great that Aleander had good cause to fear for his life.--From the Wartburg Luther maintained a lively correspondence with his friends, and even to the general public he proved, by edifying and stirring tracts, that he still lived, and was not inclined to be silenced or repressed. He completed the exposition of the _Magnificat_, wrought upon the Latin exposition of the Psalms, issued the first series of his “Church Postils,” wrote an “Instruction to Penitents,” a book “On Confession, whether the Pope have the Power to Enjoin it,” another “Against the Abuses of the Mass,” also “On Priestly and Monkish Vows,” etc. When Cardinal Albert, in September, A.D. 1521, proclaimed a pilgrimage with unlimited indulgence to the relic shrine at Halle (§ 115, 9), Luther wrote a scathing tract, “Against the New Idol at Halle.” And when Spalatin assured him that the elector would not suffer its being issued, he declined to withhold it, but sent him the little book, with imperative orders to give it over to Melanchthon for publication. While Spalatin still delayed its issue, Luther left his castle, pushed his way toward Wittenberg through the very heart of Duke George’s territories, and suddenly appeared among his friends in the dress of a knight, with long beard and hair. When he heard that the mere report of what he was proposing to do had led those in Halle to stop the traffic in indulgences, he decided not to proceed with the publication, but instead he addressed a letter to Albert, in which the archbishop had to read many a strong word about “the knavery of indulgences,” “the Pharaoh-like hardened condition of ecclesiastical tyrants,” etc. The prelate sent a most humble, apologetic, and gracious reply to the bold reformer. Luther then returned to his protective exile, as he had left it, unmolested. But the longer it continued the more insupportable did this electoral guardianship become. He would rather “burn on glowing coals than spend thus a half idle life.” But it was just this enforced exile that saved Luther and the Reformation from utter overthrow. Apart from the dangers of the ban of the empire, which would have perhaps obliged him to throw himself into the arms of Hutten and his companions, and thus have turned the Reformation into a revolution this confinement in the Wartburg was in various ways a blessing to Luther and his work. It was of importance that men should learn to distinguish between Luther’s work and Luther’s person, and of yet greater importance was the discipline of this exile upon Luther himself. He was in danger of being drawn out of the path of positive reformation into that of violent revolutionism. The leisure of the Wartburg gave him time for calm reflection on himself and his work, and the extravagances of the Wittenberg fanatics and the wild excuses of the prophets of Zwickau (§ 124, 1) could be estimated with a freedom from prejudice that would have been impossible to one living and moving in the midst of them. Besides, he had not reached that maturity of theological knowledge needed for the conduct of his great undertaking, and was in many ways fettered by a one-sided subjectivism. In his seclusion he could turn from merely destructive criticism to construction, and by undisturbed study of Scripture became able to enlarge, purify, and confirm his religious knowledge. But most important of all was the plan which he formed in the Wartburg, and so far as the New Testament is concerned carried out there, of translating the whole of the Scriptures.[363]

§ 123.9. =The Attitude of Frederick the Wise to the Reformation.=--Frederick the Wise, A.D. 1486-1525, has usually been styled “the Promoter of the Reformation.” Kolde, however, has sought to represent him as favouring Luther because of his interest in the University of Wittenberg founded by him, the success of which was largely owing to Luther, and because of his patriotic desire to have German questions settled at home rather than in Rome. This author supposes that after the Diet of Worms Frederick took no particular interest in the Reformation, beyond watching to see how things would turn out. To all this Köstlin has replied that Frederick’s whole attitude during the Diet of Worms betrayed a warm and hearty interest in evangelical truth; that his correspondence with Tucher of Nuremberg, A.D. 1518-1523, supports this view; that in one of these letters he addresses his correspondent with evident satisfaction as a good Lutheran; that in another he incloses a copy of Luther’s _Assertio omnium articulorum_; that at a later period he forwards him a copy of Luther’s New Testament, and expresses the hope that he will gain spiritual blessing from its perusal. He himself found it his greatest comfort in the hour of death, partook of the communion in both kinds after the reformed manner, which takes away all ground for the suspicion that he yielded only to the importunities of his brother John and his chaplain Spalatin. And even though Frederick, as late as A.D. 1522, continued to increase the rich collection of relics which he had previously made for his castle church, this only proves that not all at once but only bit by bit he was able to break away from his earlier religious tendencies and predilections.

§ 124. DETERIORATION AND PURIFICATION OF THE WITTENBERG REFORMATION, A.D. 1522-1525.

During Luther’s absence, the Reformation at Wittenberg advanced only too rapidly, and at last ran out into the wildest extravagances. But Luther hastened thither, regulated the movement, and guided it back into wise evangelical ways. This fanaticism arose in Wittenberg, but soon spread into other parts. The Reformation was at the same time threatened with danger from another quarter. The religious movement came into contact with the struggle of the German knights against the princes and that of the German peasants against the nobles, and was in danger of being identified with these revolutionary proceedings and sharing their fate. But Luther stood firm as a wall against all temptations, and thus these dangers were avoided.

§ 124.1. =The Wittenberg Fanaticism, A.D. 1521, 1522.=--In A.D. 1521 an Augustinian, Gabriel Didymus or Zwilling, preached a violent tirade against vows and private masses. In consequence of this sermon, thirteen of the brethren of his order at once withdrew. Two priests in the neighbourhood married. Carlstadt wrote against celibacy and followed their example. At the Wittenberg convent, secessions from the order were allowed at pleasure, and mendicancy, as well as the sacrifice of the mass, was abolished. But matters did not stop there. Didymus, and still more Carlstadt, spread a fanatical spirit among the people and the students, who were encouraged in the wildest acts of violence. The public services were disturbed in order to stop the idolatry of the mass, images were thrown out of the churches, altars were torn down, and a desire evinced to put an end to theological science as well as to clerical orders. A fanatical spirit began now also to spread at Zwickau. At the head of this movement stood the tailor Nicolas Storch and a literate Marcus Stübner, who boasted of Divine revelations; while Thomas Münzer, with fervid eloquence, proclaimed the new gospel from the pulpit. Restrained by energetic measures taken against them, the Zwickau prophets wandered abroad. Münzer went to Bohemia, Storch and Stübner to Wittenberg. There they told of their revelations and inveighed against infant baptism as a work of Satan. The excitement in Wittenberg became greater day by day. The enemies of the Reformation rejoiced; Melanchthon could give no counsel, and the elector was confounded. Then could Luther no longer contain himself. Against the elector’s express command he left the Wartburg on 3rd March, A.D. 1522, wrote him a noble letter, availed himself of his knight’s incognito on the way, and appeared publicly at Wittenberg. For a week he preached daily against fanaticism, and got complete control of the wild revolutionary elements. The prophets of Zwickau left Wittenberg. Carlstadt remained, but for a couple of years held his peace. Luther and Melanchthon now laboured to secure a positive basis for the Reformation. Melanchthon had already made a beginning in A.D. 1521 by the publication of his _Loci communes rerum theologicarum_. Luther now, in A.D. 1522, against the decided wish of his friend, published his _Annotationes in epist. t. Pauli ad Rom. et Cor._ In Sept. of the same year appeared Luther’s translation of the N.T. Besides these he also issued several treatises in defence of the Reformation.

§ 124.2. =Franz von Sickingen, A.D. 1522, 1523.=--A private feud led Franz von Sickingen to attack the Elector and Archbishop of Treves in A.D. 1522, but soon other interests were involved, and he was joined by the whole party of the knights. Sickingen’s opponent was a prelate and a pronounced enemy of the Reformation, and he was also a prince and a peer of the empire. In both characters he was opposed by Sickingen, who called for support in the name of religion and freedom. The knights, discontented with the imperial government and bureaucracy, with princes and prelates, crowded to his standard. Sickingen would also have gladly secured the monk of Wittenberg as an ally, but Luther was not to be won. Sickingen’s enterprise failed. The Elector of the Palatinate and the young Landgrave of Hesse hasted to the help of their beleaguered neighbours. The knights were overthrown one after another; Sickingen died of mortal wounds in May, A.D. 1523, immediately after the taking of the shattered Ebernburg. The power of the knights was utterly broken. The Reformation thus lost indeed brave and noble protectors, but it was itself saved.

§ 124.3. =Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, A.D. 1524, 1525.=--Even after the suppression of the Wittenberg fanaticism, Carlstadt continued to entertain his revolutionary views, and it was only with difficulty that he restrained himself for a few years. In A.D. 1524 he left Wittenberg and went to Orlamünde. With bitter invectives against Luther’s popism, he there resumed his iconoclasm, and brought forward his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, in which the real presence of the body and blood of Christ was absolutely denied (§ 131, 1). In order to prevent disturbance, Luther, by the order of the elector, went to Jena, and there in Carlstadt’s presence preached most emphatically against image breakers and sacramentarians. This roused Carlstadt’s indignation. When Luther visited Orlamünde, he was received with stone throwing and curses. Carlstadt was now banished from his territories by the elector. He then went to Strassburg, where he sought to win over the two evangelical pastors, Bucer and Capito. Luther issued a letter of warning, “To the Christians of Strassburg.” Carlstadt went to Basel, and published violent tracts against Luther’s “unspiritual and irrational theology.” Luther replied in A.D. 1525, earnestly, thoroughly, and firmly in his treatise, “Against the Heavenly Prophets, or Images and the Sacraments.” Carlstadt had secured the support of the Swiss reformers, who continued the controversy with Luther. He involved himself in the Peasants’ War, and afterwards, by Luther’s intercession with the elector, obtained leave to return to Saxony. He retracted his errors, but soon again renewed his old disorderly practices; and, after a singularly eventful career, died as professor and preacher at Basel during the plague of A.D. 1541.

§ 124.4. =Thomas Münzer, A.D. 1523, 1524.=--The prophets when expelled from Wittenberg did not remain idle, but set themselves to produce all sort of disorders in church and state. At the head of these disturbers stood Thomas Münzer. After his expulsion from Zwickau, he had gone to Bohemia, and was there received as an apostle of the Taborite doctrine (§ 119, 7). In A.D. 1523 he returned to Saxony, and settled at Allstadt [Allstädt] in Thuringia, and when driven out by the elector he went to Mühlhausen. In both places he soon obtained a large following. The Wittenberg Reformation was condemned no less than the papacy. Not the word of Scripture but the Spirit was to be the principle of the Reformation; not only everything ecclesiastical but also everything civil was to be spiritualized and reorganized. The doctrine of the evangelical freedom of the Christian was grossly misconceived, the sacraments despised, infant baptism denounced, and sole weight laid on the baptism of the Spirit. Princes should be driven from their thrones, the enemies of the gospel destroyed by the sword, and all goods be held in common. When Luther wrote a letter of warning on these subjects to the church at Mühlhausen, Münzer issued an abusive rejoinder, in which he speaks contemptuously of Luther’s “honey-sweet Christ,” and “cunningly devised gospel.” From Mühlhausen, Münzer went forth on a proselytising crusade in A.D. 1524, to Nuremberg, and then to Basel, but found little response in either city. His revolutionary extravagances were more successful among the peasants of Southern Germany.

§ 124.5. =The Peasant War, A.D. 1524, 1525.=--The peasants of the empire had long groaned under their heavy burdens. Twice already, in A.D. 1502, 1514, had they risen in revolt, with little advantage to themselves. When Luther’s ideas of the freedom of a Christian man reached them, they hastily drew conclusions in accordance with their own desires. Münzer’s fanatical preaching led to the adoption of still more decidedly communistic theories. In August, A.D. 1524, in the Black Forest, a rebellion broke out, which was, however, quickly suppressed. In the beginning of A.D. 1525 troubles burst forth afresh. The peasants stated their demands in twelve articles, which they insisted upon princes, nobles, and prelates accepting. All Franconia and Swabia were soon under their power, and even many cities made common cause with them. Münzer, however, was not satisfied with this success. The twelve articles were too moderate for him, and still more distasteful to him were the terms that had been made with the nobles and clergy. He returned to Thuringia and settled again at Mühlhausen. From thence he spread his fanaticism through the whole land and organized a general revolt. With merciless cruelty thousands were massacred, all cloisters, castles, and palaces were ruthlessly destroyed. Boldly as Luther had attacked the existing ecclesiastical tyranny, he resolutely left civil matters alone. He preached that the gospel makes the soul free, but not the body or property. He had profound sympathy for the sorely oppressed peasants, and so long as their demands did not go beyond the twelve articles, he hoped to be able to regulate the movement by the power of the word. The revolutionists had themselves in their twelfth article offered to abandon any of their claims that might be found to have no countenance from the word of God. When Münzer’s disorders began in Thuringia, Luther visited the cities most threatened and exhorted them to quiet and obedience. But the death of the elector on 5th May called him back to Wittenberg. From thence he now published his “Exhortations to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants,” in which he speaks pointedly to the consciences of the nobles no less than of the peasants. But when the agitation continued to spread, and one enormity after another was perpetrated, he gave vent to his wrath in no measured terms in his book, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Peasants.” He there, with burning words, called upon the princes vigorously to stamp out the fanatical rebellion. Philip of Hesse was the first to take the field. He was joined by the new Elector of Saxony, Frederick’s brother, =John the Constant=, A.D. 1525-1532, as well as by George of Saxony and Henry of Brunswick. On 15th May, A.D. 1525, the rebels were annihilated after a severe struggle at Frankenhausen. Münzer was taken prisoner and beheaded. Even in Southern Germany the princes were soon in all parts masters of the situation. In this war 100,000 men had lost their lives and the most fertile districts had been turned into barren wastes.

§ 125. FRIENDS AND FOES OF LUTHER’S DOCTRINE, A.D. 1522-1526.

Luther’s fellow labourers in the work of the gospel increased from day to day, and so too the number of the cities in Northern and Southern Germany in which pure doctrine was preached. But Wittenberg was the heart and centre of the whole movement, the muster-ground for all who were persecuted and exiled for the sake of the gospel, the gathering point and nursery of new preachers. Among the theological opponents of Luther’s doctrine appears a crowned head, Henry VIII. of England, and also “the king of literature,” Erasmus of Rotterdam, entered the lists against him. But neither the one nor the other, to say nothing of the rude invectives of Thomas Murner, was able to shake the bold reformer and check the rapid spread of his opinions.

§ 125.1. =Spread of Evangelical Views.=--The most powerful heralds of the Reformation were the monkish orders. Cloister life had become so utterly corrupt that the more virtuous of the brethren could no longer endure it. Anxious to breathe a healthier atmosphere, evangelists inspired by a purer doctrine arose in all parts of Germany, first and most of all among the Augustinian order (§ 112, 6), which almost to a man went over to the Reformation and had the glory of providing its first martyr (§ 128, 1). The order regarded Luther’s honour as its own. Next to them came the Franciscans, prominent during the Middle Ages as a fanatical opposition (§ 98, 4; 108, 5; 112, 2), of whom many had the courage to free themselves of their shackles. From their cloisters proceeded, _e.g._, the two famous popular preachers, Eberlin of Günzburg and Henry of Kettenbach in Ulm, the Hamburg reformer Stephen Kempen, the fervent Lambert reformer of Hesse, Luther’s friend Myconius of Gotha, and many more. Other orders too supplied their contingent, even the Dominicans, to whom Martin Bucer, the Strassburg reformer, belonged. Blaurer of Württemberg was a Benedictine, Rhegius a Carmelite, Bugenhagen a Premonstratensian, etc. At least one of the German bishops, George Polenz of Samland, openly joined the movement, preached the gospel in Königsberg, and inspired the priests of his diocese with the same views. Other bishops, such as those of Augsburg, Basel, Bamberg, Merseburg, sympathised with the movement or at least put no hindrance in its way. But the secular clergy gave crowds of witnesses. In all the larger and even in some of the smaller towns of Germany Luther’s doctrines were preached from the pulpits with the approval of the magistrates, and where these were refused the preachers took to the market-places and fields. Where ministers were wanting, artisans and knights, wives and maidens, carried on the work.--One of the first cities which opened its gates freely to the gospel was Strassburg. Nowhere were Luther’s writings more zealously read, discussed, printed, and circulated than in that city. Shortly before Geiler of Kaisersberg (§ 115, 11) had prepared the soil for receiving the first seed of the Reformation. From A.D. 1518 Matthew Zell had wrought as pastor at St. Laurence in Münster. When the chapter forbade him the use of the stone pulpit erected for Geiler, the joiners’ guild soon made him a wooden pulpit, which was carried in solemn procession to Münster, and set up beside the one that had been closed against him. Zell was soon assisted by Capito, Bucer, Hedio, and others.

§ 125.2. =“The Sum of Holy Scripture” and its Author.=--This work, called also _Deutsche Theologie_, appeared anonymously at Leyden in A.D. 1523, and was confiscated in March, A.D. 1524. In various Dutch editions and in French, Italian, and English translations, it was soon widely spread over Europe; but so vigorously was it suppressed, that by the middle of the century it had disappeared and was forgotten. In A.D. 1877 the Waldensian Comba discovered and published an old Italian version, and Benrath translated into German in A.D. 1880 an old Dutch edition of A.D. 1526, and succeeded in unravelling for the most part its interesting history. He found that it was composed in Latin, and on the entreaty of the author’s friends rendered into Dutch. This led to the discovery, in the possession of Prof. Toorenenberger of Amsterdam, of the Latin original, which had appeared anonymously at Strassburg in A.D. 1527 with the title, _Æconomica christiana_. Benrath has also discovered the author to be Hendrik van Bommel, who was in the first half of A.D. 1520 priest and rector of a sisterhood at Utrecht, expelled in A.D. 1536 from Cleves, from A.D. 1542 to 1560 evangelical teacher and preacher at Wesel, dying in A.D. 1570 as pastor at Duisburg. The “Sum” is evidently influenced by those works of Luther which appeared up to A.D. 1523, its thoroughly popular, edifying, and positive contents are based upon a careful study of Scripture, and it is throughout inspired by the one grand idea, that the salvation of sinful men rests solely on the grace of God in Christ appropriated by faith.

§ 125.3. =Henry VIII. and Erasmus.=--Henry VIII. of England, as a second son, had been originally destined for the church. Hence he retained a certain predilection for theological studies and was anxious to be regarded as a learned theologian. In A.D. 1522 he appeared as the champion of the Romish doctrine of the seven sacraments in opposition to Luther’s book on the “Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” treating the peasant’s son with lordly contempt. Luther paid him in the same coin, and treated his royal opponent with less consideration than he had shown to Emser and Eck. The king obtained what he desired, the papal honorary title of _Defensor fidei_, but Luther’s crushing reply kept him from attempting to continue the controversy. He complained to the elector, who consoled him by reference to a general council (comp. § 129, 1). The pretty tolerable relations between Erasmus and Luther now suffered a severe shock. Erasmus, indebted to the English king for many favours, was roused to great bitterness by Luther’s unmeasured severity. He had hitherto refused all calls to write against Luther. Many pulpits charged him with having a secret understanding with the heretic; others thought he was afraid of him. All this tended to drive Erasmus into open hostility to the reformer. He now diligently studied Luther’s writings, for which he obtained the pope’s permission, and seized upon a doctrine which would not oblige him to appear as defender of Romish abuses, though to gauge and estimate it in its full meaning he was quite incompetent. Luther’s life experiences, joined with the study of Paul’s epistles and Augustine’s writings, had wrought in him the conviction that man is by nature incapable of doing any good, that his will is unfree, and that he is saved without any well doing of his own by God’s free grace in Christ. With Luther, as with Augustine, this conviction found expression in the doctrine of absolute predestination. Melanchthon had also formulated the doctrine in the first edition of his _Loci communes_. This fundamental doctrine of Luther was now laid hold upon by Erasmus in A.D. 1524 in his treatise, Διατριβή _de libra arbitrio_, pronounced dangerous and unbiblical, while his own semi-Pelagianism was set over against it. After the lapse of a year, Luther replied in his treatise, _De servo arbitrio_, with all the power and confidence of personal, experimental conviction. Erasmus answered in his _Hyperaspistes diatribes adv. Lutheri servum arbitrium_ of A.D. 1526, in which he gave free vent to his passion, but did not advance the argument in the least. Luther therefore saw no need to continue the discussion.[364]

§ 125.4. =Thomas Murner.=--The Franciscan, Thomas Murner of Strassburg, had published in A.D. 1509 his “Fools’ Exorcism” and other pieces, which gave him a high place among German satirists. He spared no class, not even the clergy and the monks, took Reuchlin’s part against the men of Cologne (§ 120, 4), but passionately opposed Luther’s movement. His most successful satire against Luther is entitled, “On the Great Lutheran Fool as Exorcised by Dr. Murner, A.D. 1522.” It does not touch upon the spiritual aspect of the Reformation, but lashes with biting wit the revolutionary, fanatical, and rhetorical extravagances which were often closely associated with it. Luther did not venture into the lists with the savagely sarcastic monk, but the humanists poured upon him a flood of scurrilous replies.

§ 125.5. A notable Catholic witness on behalf of the Reformation is the “=Onus ecclesiæ=,” an anonymous tract of A.D. 1524, written by Bishop Berthold Pirstinger of Chiemsee. In apocalyptic phraseology it describes the corruption of the church and calls for reformation. The author however denounces Luther as a sectary and revolutionist, though he distinctly accepts his views of indulgences. He would reform the church from within. Four years after, the same divine wrote a “_Tewtsche Theologey_,” in which, with the exception of the doctrine of indulgence, the whole Romish system is vindicated and the corruptions of the church are ignored.

§ 126. DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMATION IN THE EMPIRE, A.D. 1522-1526.

In consequence of the terms of his election, Charles V. had, at the Diet of Worms, to agree to the erection of a standing imperial government at Nuremberg, which in his absence would have the supreme direction of imperial affairs. Within this commission, though presided over by Archduke Ferdinand, the emperor’s brother, a majority was soon found which openly favoured the new religion. Thus protected by the highest imperial judicature, the Reformation was able for a long time to spread unhindered and so made rapid progress (§ 125, 1). The Nuremberg court succumbed indeed to the united efforts of its political opponents, among whom were many nobles of an evangelical spirit, but all the more energetically did these press the interests of the Reformation. And their endeavours were so successful, that it was determined that matters should be settled without reference to pope and council at a general German national assembly. But the papal legate Campegius formed at Regensberg [Regensburg], in A.D. 1524, a league of the Catholic nobles for enforcing the edict of Worms, against which the evangelical nobles established a defensive league at Torgau, in A.D. 1526. The general national assembly was vetoed by the emperor, but the decision of the Diet of Spires of A.D. 1526 gave to all nobles the right of determining the religious matters of their provinces after their own views.

§ 126.1. =The Diet at Nuremberg, A.D. 1522, 1523.=--The imperial court held its first diet in the end of A.D. 1522. Leo X. had died in Dec., A.D. 1521, and Hadrian VI. (§ 149, 1), strictly conservative in doctrine and worship, a reformer of discipline and hierarchical abuses, had succeeded with the determination “to restore the deformed bride of Christ to her pristine purity,” but vigorously to suppress the Lutheran heresy. His legate presented to the diet a letter confessing abuses and promising reforms, but insisting on the execution of the edict of Worms. The diet declared that in consequence of the admitted corruptions of the church, the present execution of the Worms edict was not to be thought of. Until a general council in a German city, with guaranteed freedom of discussion, had been called, discussion should be avoided, and the word of God, with true Christian and evangelical explanation, should be taught.

§ 126.2. =The Diet at Nuremberg, A.D. 1524.=--A new diet was held at Nuremberg on 14th Jan., A.D. 1524. It dealt first of all with the question of the existence of the imperial court. The reformatory tendencies of the government showed that what was vital to this court was so also to the Reformation. This party had important supporters in the arch-catholic Ferdinand, who hoped thus to strengthen himself in his endeavour to obtain the Roman crown, in the Elector of Mainz, the prime mover in the traffic in indulgences, who had personal antipathies to the foes of the court, in the elector of Saxony, its proper creator, and in the princes of Brandenburg. But there were powerful opponents: the Swabian league, the princes of Treves, the Palatinate and Hesse, who had been successful in opposition to Sickingen, and the imperial cities, which, though at one with the court in favouring the Reformation, were embittered against it because of its financial projects. The papal legate Campegius also joined the opposition. Hadrian VI. had died in A.D. 1523, and was succeeded by =Clement VII.=, A.D. 1523-1534. A skilful politician with no religious convictions, he determined to strengthen in every possible way the temporal power of the papal see. His legate was a man after his own mind. The opposition prevailed, and even Ferdinand after a struggle gave in. The newly organized governing body was only a shadow of the old, without power, influence, or independence. Thus a second (§ 124, 2) powerful support was lost to the Reformation, and the legate again pressed for the execution of the edict of Worms. But the evangelicals mustering all their forces, especially in the cities, secured a majority. They were indeed obliged to admit the legality of the edict; they even promised to carry it out, but with the saving clause “as far as possible.” A council in the sense of the former diet was demanded, and it was resolved to call a general national assembly at Spires, to be wholly devoted to religious and ecclesiastical questions. In the meantime the word of God in its simplicity was to be preached.

§ 126.3. =The Convention at Regensburg, A.D. 1524.=--While the evangelical nobles, by their theologians and diplomatists, were eagerly preparing for Spires, an assembly of the supporters of the old views met at Regensburg, June and July, A.D. 1524. Ignoring the previous arrangement, they proceeded to treat of the religious and ecclesiastical questions which had been reserved for the Spires Diet. This was the result of the machinations of Campegius. The Archduke Ferdinand, the Bavarian dukes, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and most of the South German bishops, joined the legate at Regensburg in insisting upon the edict of Worms. Luther’s writings were anew forbidden, their subjects were strictly enjoined not to attend the University of Wittenberg; several external abuses were condemned, ecclesiastical burdens on the people lightened, the number of festivals reduced, the four Latin Fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, set up as the standard of faith and doctrine, while it was commanded that the services should be conducted unchanged after the manner of these Fathers. Thus was produced that rent in the unity of the empire which never again was healed.--The imperial and the papal policies were so bound up with one another, that the proceedings of the Nuremberg diets, with their national tendencies, were distasteful to the emperor; and so in the end of July there came an imperial rescript, making attendance at the national assembly a _crimen læsæ majestatis_, punishable with ban and double-ban. The nobles obeyed, and the assembly was not held. With it Germany’s hopes of a peaceful development were shattered.

§ 126.4. =The Evangelical Nobles, A.D. 1524.=--Several nobles hitherto indifferent became now supporters of the Reformation. Philip of Hesse, moved by an interview with Melanchthon, gave himself enthusiastically to the cause of evangelical truth. Also the Margrave Casimir, George of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Duke Ernest of Lüneburg, the Elector Louis of the Palatinate, and Frederick I. of Denmark, as Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, did more or less in their several countries for the furtherance of the Reformation cause. The grand-master of the Teutonic order, Albert of Prussia, returned from the Diet of Nuremberg, where he had heard Osiander preach, doubtful of the scripturalness of the rule of his order. He therefore visited Wittenberg to consult Luther, who advised him to renounce the rule, to marry, and obtain heirs to his Prussian dukedom (§ 127, 3). The cities took up a most decided position. At two great city diets at Spires and Ulm in A.D. 1524, it was resolved to allow the preaching of a pure gospel and to assist in preventing the execution of the edict of Worms in their jurisdiction.

§ 126.5. =The Torgau League, A.D. 1526.=--Friends and foes of the Reformation had joined in putting down the peasant revolt. Their religious divergences however immediately after broke out afresh. George consulted at Dessau in July, A.D. 1525, with several Catholic princes as to means for preventing a renewal of the outbreak, and they unanimously decided that the condemned Lutheran sect must be rooted out as the source of all confusion. Soon afterwards two Leipzig citizens, who were found to have Lutheran books in their possession, were put to death. But Elector John of Saxony had a conference at Saalfeld with Casimir of Brandenburg, at which it was agreed at all hazards to stand by the word of God; and at Friedewald in November Hesse and the elector pledged themselves to stand true to the gospel. A diet at Augsburg in December, for want of a quorum, had reached no conclusion. A new diet was therefore summoned to meet at Spires, and all the princes were cited to appear personally. Duke George meanwhile gathered the Catholic princes at Halle and Leipzig, and they resolved to send Henry of Brunswick to Spain to the emperor. Shortly before his arrival, the emperor had concluded a peace at Madrid with the king of France, who had been taken prisoner in the battle of Pavia. Francis I., feeling he could not help himself, had agreed to all the terms, including an undertaking to join in suppressing the heretics. Charles therefore fully believed that he had a free hand, and determined to root out heresy in Germany. Henry of Brandenburg brought to the German princes an extremely firm reply, in which this view was expressed. But before its arrival the elector and the landgrave had met at Gotha, and had subsequently at Torgau, the residence of the elector, renewed the league to stand together with all their might in defence of the gospel. Philip undertook to gain over the nobles of the uplands. But the fear of the empire hindered his success. The elector was more fortunate among the lowland nobles. On 9th June the princes of Saxony, Lüneberg [Lüneburg], Grubenhagen, Anhalt, and Mansfeld met at Magdeburg, and subscribed the Torgau League. Also the city of Magdeburg, emancipated since A.D. 1524 from the jurisdiction of its archbishop, Albert of Mainz, and accepting the Lutheran confession, now joined the league.

§ 126.6. =The Diet of Spires, A.D. 1526.=--The diet met on 25th June, A.D. 1526. The evangelical princes were confident; on their armour was the motto, _Verbum Dei manet in æternum_. In spite of all the prelates’ opposition, three commissions were approved to consider abuses. When the debates were about to begin, the imperial commissioners tabled an instruction which forbade them to make any change upon the old doctrines and usages, and finally insisted upon the execution of the edict of Worms. The evangelicals however took comfort from the date affixed to the document. They knew that since its issue the relation of pope and emperor had become strained. Francis I. had been relieved by the pope from the obligation of his oath, and the pope had joined with Francis in a league at Cognac, to which also Henry VIII. of England adhered. All Western Europe had combined to break the supremacy gained by the Burgundian-Spanish dynasty at Pavia, and the duped emperor found himself in straits. Would he now be inclined to stand by his instruction? The commissioners, apparently at Ferdinand’s wish, had kept back the document till the affairs of the Catholics became desperate. The evangelical nobles felt encouraged to send an embassy to the emperor, but before it started the emperor realized their wishes. In a letter to his brother he communicated a scheme for abolishing the penalties of the edict of Worms and referring religious questions to a council. At the same time he called for help against his Italian enemies. Seeing then that in present circumstances it did not seem advisable to revoke, still less to carry out the edict, the only plan was to give to each prince discretionary power in his own territory. This was the birthday of the territorial constitution on a formally legitimate basis.

§ 127. ORGANIZATION OF THE EVANGELICAL PROVINCIAL CHURCHES, A.D. 1526-1529.

The nobles had now not only the right but also had it enjoined on them as a duty to establish church arrangements in their territories as they thought best. The three following years therefore marked the period of the founding and organizing of the evangelical provincial churches. The electorate of Saxony came first with a good example. After this pattern the churches of Hesse, Franconia, Lüneburg, East Friesland, Schleswig and Holstein, Silesia, Prussia, and a whole group of Low German states modelled their constitution and worship.

§ 127.1. =The Organization of the Church of the Saxon Electorate, A.D. 1527-1529.=--Luther wrote in A.D. 1528 an instruction to visitors of pastors in the electorate, which showed what and how ministers were to preach, indicated the reforms to be made in worship, protested against abuse of the doctrine of justification by urging the necessity of preaching the law, etc. The whole territory was divided under four commissions, comprising lay and clerical members. Ignorant and incompetent religious teachers were to be removed, but to be provided for. Teachers were to be settled over churches and schools, and superintendents over them were to inspect their work periodically, and to these last the performance of marriages was assigned. Vacant benefices were to be applied to the improvement of churches and schools; and those not vacant were to be taxed for maintenance of hospitals, support of the poor, founding of new schools, etc. The dangers occasioned by the often incredible ignorance of the people and their teachers led to Luther’s composing his two catechisms in A.D. 1529.

§ 127.2. =The Organization of the Hessian Churches, A.D. 1526-1528.=--Philip of Hesse had assembled the peers temporal and spiritual of his dominions in Oct., A.D. 1526, at Homberg, to discuss the question of church reform. A reactionary attempt failed through the fervid eloquence of the Franciscan Lambert of Avignon, a notable man, who, awakened in his cloister at Avignon by Luther’s writings, but not thoroughly satisfied, set out for Wittenberg, engaged on the way at Zürich in public disputation against Zwingli’s reforms, but left converted by his opponent, and then passed through Luther’s school at Wittenberg. There he married in A.D. 1523, and after a long unofficial and laborious stay at Strassburg, found at last, in A.D. 1526, a permanent residence in Hesse. He died in A.D. 1530.--Lambert’s personality dominated the Homberg synod. He sketched an organization of the church according to his ideal as a communion of saints with a democratic basis, and a strict discipline administered by the community itself. But the impracticability of the scheme soon became evident, and in A.D. 1528 the Hessian church adopted the principles of the Saxon church visitation. Out of vacant church revenues the University of Marburg was founded in A.D. 1527 as a second training school in reformed theology. Lambert was one of its first teachers.

§ 127.3. =Organization of other German Provincial Churches, A.D. 1528-1530.=--George of =Franconian-Brandenburg=, after his brother Casimir’s death, organized his church at the assembly of Anspach after the Saxon model. =Nuremberg=, under the guidance of its able secretary of council, Lazarus Spengler, united in carrying out a joint organization. In =Brunswick-Lüneburg=, Duke Ernest, powerfully impressed by the preaching of Rhegius at Augsburg, introduced the evangelical church organization into his dominions. In =East Friesland=, where the reigning prince did not interest himself in the matter, the development of the church was attended to by the young nobleman Ulrich of Dornum. In =Schleswig= and =Holstein= the prelates offered no opposition to reorganization, and the civil authorities carried out the work. In =Silesia= the princes were favourable, Breslau had been long on the side of the Reformation, and even the grand-duke who, as king of Bohemia, was suzerain of Silesia, felt obliged to allow Silesian nobles the privileges provided by the Diet of Spires. In =Prussia= (§ 126, 4), Albert of Brandenburg, hereditary duke of these parts, with the hearty assistance of his two bishops, provided for his subjects an evangelical constitution.

§ 127.4. =The Reformation in the Cities of Northern Germany, A.D. 1524-1531.=--In these cities the Reformation spread rapidly after their emancipation from episcopal control. It was organized in =Magdeburg= as early as A.D. 1524 by Nic. Amsdorf, sent for the purpose by Luther (§ 126, 5). In =Brunswick= the church was organized in A.D. 1528 by Bugenhagen of Wittenberg. In =Bremen= in A.D. 1525 all churches except the cathedral were in the hands of the Lutherans; in A.D. 1527 the cloisters were turned into schools and hospitals, and then the cathedral was taken from the Catholics. At =Lübeck=, nobles, councillors, and clergy had oppressed and driven away the evangelical pastors; but the councillors in their financial straits became indebted to sixty-four citizens, who stipulated that the pastors must be restored, the Catholics expelled, the cloisters turned into hospitals and schools, and finally Bugenhagen was called in to prepare for their church a Lutheran constitution.

§ 128. MARTYRS FOR EVANGELICAL TRUTH, A.D. 1521-1529.

On the publication of the edict of Worms several Catholic princes, most conspicuously Duke George of Saxony, began the persecution. Luther’s followers were at first imprisoned, scourged, and banished, and in A.D. 1521 a bookseller who sold Luther’s books was beheaded. The persecution was most severe in the Netherlands, a heritage of the emperor independent of the empire. Also in Austria, Bavaria, and Swabia many evangelical confessors were put to death by the sword and at the stake. The peasant revolt of A.D. 1525 increased the violence of the persecution. On the pretence of punishing rebels, those who took part in the Regensburg Convention (§ 126, 3) were expelled the country, thousands of them with no other fault than their attachment to the gospel. The conclusion of the Diet of Spires in A.D. 1526 (§ 126, 6) added new fuel to the flames. While the evangelical nobles, taking advantage of that decision, proceeded vigorously to the planting and organizing of the reformed church, the enemies of the Reformation exercised the power given them in cruel persecutions of their evangelical subjects. The vagaries of Pack (§ 132, 1) led to a revival and intensification of the spirit of persecution. In Austria, during A.D. 1527, 1528, a church visitation had been arranged very much in the style of that of Saxony, but with the object of tracking out and punishing heretics. In Bavaria the highways were watched, to prevent pilgrims going to preaching over the borders. Those caught were at first fined, but later on they were drowned or burned.

=The first martyrs for evangelical truth= were two young Augustinian monks of Antwerp, Henry Voes and John Esch, who died at the stake in A.D. 1523, and their heroism was celebrated by Luther in a beautiful hymn. They were succeeded by the prior of the cloister, Lampert Thorn, who was strangled in prison. The Swabian League, which was renewed after the rising of the Diet of Spires, with the avowed purpose of rooting out the Anabaptists, directed its cruel measures against all evangelicals. The Bishop of Constance in A.D. 1527 had John Hüglin burnt as an opposer of the holy mother church. The Elector of Mainz cited the court preacher, George Winkler, of Halle, for dispensing the sacrament in both kinds at Ascheffenburg [Aschaffenburg]. Winkler defended himself, and was acquitted, but was murdered on the way. Luther then wrote his tract, “Comfort to the Christians of Halle on the Death of their Pastor.” In North Germany there was no bloodshedding, but Duke George had those who confessed their faith scourged by the gaoler and driven from the country. The Elector Joachim of Brandenburg with his nobles resolved in A.D. 1527 to give vigorous support to the old religion. But the gospel took deep root in his land, and his own wife Elizabeth read Luther’s writings, and had the sacrament administered after the Lutheran form. But the secret was revealed, and the elector stormed and threatened. She then escaped, dressed as a peasant woman, to her cousin the Elector of Saxony.

§ 129. LUTHER’S PRIVATE AND PUBLIC LIFE, A.D. 1523-1529.

Only in December, A.D. 1524, did Luther leave the cloister, the last of its inhabitants but the prior, and on 13th June, A.D. 1525, married Catherine Bora, of the convent of Nimptschen, of whom he afterwards boasted that he prized her more highly than the kingdom of France and the governorship of Venice. Though often depressed with sickness, almost crushed under the weight of business, and harassed even to the end by the threats of his enemies against his life, he maintained a bright, joyous temper, enjoyed himself during leisure hours among his friends with simple entertainments of song, music, intellectual conversation, and harmless, though often sharp and pungent, interchange of wit. Thus he proved a genuine comfort and help in all kinds of trouble. By constant writing, by personal intercourse with students and foreigners who crowded into Wittenberg, by an extensive correspondence, he won and maintained a mighty influence in spreading and establishing the Reformation. By Scripture translation and Scripture exposition, by sermons and doctrinal treatises, he impressed upon the people his own evangelical views. A peculiarly powerful factor in the Reformation was that treasury of sacred song (§ 142, 3) which Luther gave his people, partly in translations of old, partly in the composition of new hymns, which he set to bright and pleasing melodies. He was also most diligent in promoting education in churches and schools, in securing the erection of new elementary and secondary schools, and laid special stress on the importance of linguistic studies in a church that prized the pure word of God.

§ 129.1. =Luther’s Literary Works.=--In A.D. 1524 appeared the first collection of spiritual songs and psalms, eight in number, with a preface by Luther. His reforms of worship were extremely moderate. In A.D. 1523 he published little tracts on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, repudiating the idea of a sacrifice in the mass, and insisting on communion in both kinds. In A.D. 1527 he wrote his “German Mass and Order of Public Worship” (§ 127, 1) which was introduced generally throughout the elector’s dominions. He wrote an address to burgomasters and councillors about the improvement of education in the cities. Besides his polemic against Erasmus and Carlstadt, against Münzer and the rebellious peasants, as well as against the Sacramentarians (§ 131), he engaged at this time in controversy with Cochlæus. A papal bull for the canonization of Bishop Benno of Meissen (§ 93, 9) called forth in A.D. 1524 Luther’s tract, “Against the new God and the old Devil being set up at Meissen.” He was persuaded by Christian II. of Denmark to write, in A.D. 1526, a very humble letter to Henry VIII. of England (§ 125, 3), which was answered in an extremely venomous and bitter style. When his enemies triumphantly declared that he had retracted, Luther answered, in A.D. 1527, with his book, “Against the Abusive Writing of the King of England,” in which he resumed the bold and confident tone of his earlier polemic. A humble, conciliatory epistle sent in A.D. 1526 to Duke George was no more successful. He now unweariedly continued his Bible translation. The first edition of the whole Bible was published by Hans Lufft in Wittenberg, in A.D. 1534. A collection of sayings of Luther collected by Lauterbach, a deacon of Wittenberg, in A.D. 1538, formed the basis of later and fuller editions of “Luther’s Table Talk.” A chronologically arranged collection was made ten years later, and was published in A.D. 1872 from a MS. in the Royal Library at Dresden. Aurifaber in his collection did not follow the chronological order, but grouped the utterances according to their subjects, but with many arbitrary alterations and modifications. The saying falsely attributed to Luther, “Who loves not wine, women, and song?” etc., is assigned by Luther himself to his Erfurt landlady, but has been recently traced to an Italian source.

§ 129.2. The famous Catholic Church historian Döllinger, who in his history of the Reformation had with ultramontane bitterness defamed Luther and his work, twenty years later could not forbear celebrating Luther in a public lecture as “the most powerful patriot and the most popular character that Germany possessed.” In A.D. 1871 he wrote as follows: “It was Luther’s supreme intellectual ability and wonderful versatility that made him the man of his age and of his nation. There has never been a German who so thoroughly understood his fellow countrymen and was understood by them as this Augustinian monk of Wittenberg. The whole intellectual and spiritual making of the Germans was in his hands as clay in the hands of the potter. He has given more to his nation than any one man has ever done: language, popular education, Bible, sacred song; and all that his opponents could say against him and alongside of him seemed insipid, weak, and colourless compared with his overmastering eloquence. They stammered, he spoke. It was he who put a stamp upon the German language as well as upon the German character. And even those Germans who heartily abhor him as the great heretic and betrayer of religion cannot help speaking his words and thinking his thoughts.”

§ 130. THE REFORMATION IN GERMAN SWITZERLAND, A.D. 1519-1531.

While Luther’s Reformation spread in Germany, a similar movement sprang up in the neighbouring provinces of German Switzerland. Its earliest beginnings date back as far as A.D. 1516. The personal characteristics of its first promoter, and the political democratic movement in which it had its rise, gave it a complexion entirely different from that of the Lutheran Reformation. The most conspicuous divergence occurred in the doctrine of the supper (§ 131), and since the Swiss views on this point were generally accepted in the cities of the uplands, the controversy passed over into the German Reformed Church and hindered common action, notwithstanding common interests and common dangers.

§ 130.1. =Ulrich Zwingli.=--Zwingli, born at Wildhaus in Toggenburg on January 1st, A.D. 1484, a scholar of the famous humanist Thomas Wyttenbach at Basel, was, after ten years’ service as pastor at Glarus, made pastor of Maria-Einsiedeln in A.D. 1516. The crowding of pilgrims to the famous shrine of Mary at that place led him to preach against superstitious notions of meritorious performances. But far more decisive in determining his attitude toward the Reformation was his appointment on January 1st, A.D. 1519, as Lent priest at Zürich, where he first became acquainted with Luther’s works, and took sides with him against the Romish court party. Zwingli soon took up a distinctive position of his own. He would be not only a religious, but also a political reformer. For several years he had vigorously opposed the sending of Swiss youths as mercenaries into the armies of foreign princes. His political opponents, the oligarchs, whose incomes depended on this traffic, opposed also his religious reforms, so that his support was wholly from the democracy. Another important distinction between the Swiss and German movements was this, that Zwingli had grown into a reformer not through deep conviction of sin and spiritual conflicts, but through classical and biblical study. The writings of Pico of Mirandola (§ 120, 1), too, were not without influence upon him. To him, therefore, justification by faith was not in the same degree as to Luther the guiding star of his life and action. He began the work of the Reformation not so much with purifying the doctrine, as with improving the worship, the constitution, the ecclesiastical and moral life. His theological standpoint is set forth in these works: _Comment. de vera et falsa relig._, A.D. 1525; _Fidei ratio ad Car. Imp._, A.D. 1530; _Christian. fidei brevis at clara expos._, ed. Bullinger, A.D. 1536; _De providentia Dei_; and _Apologeticus_. Of the two principles of the anti-Romish Reformation (§ 121) the Wittenberg reformer placed the material, the Zürich reformer the formal, in the foreground. The former only rejected what was not reconcilable with Scripture; the latter repudiated all that was not expressly enjoined in Scripture. The former was cautious and moderate in dealing with forms of worship and mere externals; the latter was extreme, immoderate, and violent. Luther retained pictures, altars, the ornaments of churches, and the priestly character of the service, purifying it simply from unevangelical corruptions; Zwingli denounced all these things as idolatry, and burnt even organ pipes and clock bells. Luther recognised no action of the Holy Spirit apart from the word and sacrament; Zwingli separated it from these, and identified it with mere subjective feeling. The sacraments were with him mere memorial signs; justification solely by the merits of Christ as a joyous assurance of salvation had for him a negative rather than a positive significance, _i.e._ opposition to the Romish doctrine of merits; original sin was for him only hereditary moral sickness, a _naturalis defectus_, which is not itself sin, and virtuous heathens, like Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, and Cato were admitted as such into the society of the blessed, without apparently sharing in the redemption of Christ. His speculations, which led on one side almost to pantheism, favoured a theory of predestination, according to which the moral will has no freedom over against Providence.[365]

§ 130.2. =The Reformation in Zürich, A.D. 1519-1525.=--In A.D. 1518 a trafficker in indulgences, the Franciscan Bernard Samson, of Milan, carried on his disreputable business in Switzerland. At Zwingli’s desire Zürich’s gates were closed against him. In A.D. 1520 the council gave permission to priests and preachers in the city and canton to preach only from the O. and N.T. All this happened under the eyes of the two papal nuncios staying in Zürich; but they did not interfere, because the curia was extremely anxious to get auxiliaries for the papal army for an attack on Milan. Zwingli was promised a rich living if he would no more preach against the pope. He refused the bait, and went on his way as a reformer. The continued indulgence of the curia allowed the Reformation to take even firmer root. Zwingli published, in A.D. 1522, his first work, “Of Election, and Freedom in Use of Food,” and the Zürichers ate flesh and eggs during Lent of A.D. 1522. He also claimed liberty to marry for the clergy. At this time Lambert came from Avignon to Zürich (§ 127, 2). He preached against the new views, disputed in July with Zwingli, and confessed himself defeated and convinced. Zwingli’s opponents had placed great hopes in Lambert’s eloquence and dialectic skill. All the greater was the effect of the unexpected result of the disputation. The council, now impressed, commanded that the word of God should be preached without human additions. But when the adherents of the Romish party protested, it arranged a public disputation on 29th Jan., A.D. 1523, on sixty-seven theses or _conclusiones_ drawn up by Zwingli: “All who say, The gospel is nothing without the guarantee of the Church, blaspheme God;--Christ is the one way to salvation;--Our righteousness and our works are good so far as they are Christ’s, neither right nor good so far as they are our own,” etc. A former friend of Zwingli, John Faber, but quite changed since he had made a visit to Rome, and now vicar-general of the Bishop of Constance, undertook to support the old doctrines and customs against Zwingli. Being restricted to Scripture proof he was forced to yield. The cloisters were forsaken, violent polemics were published against the canon of the mass and the worship of saints and images. The council resolved to decide the question of the mass and images by a second disputation in October, A.D. 1523. Leo Judä, Lent priest at St. Peter’s in Zürich, contended against image worship, Zwingli against the mass. Scarcely any opposition was offered to either of them. At Pentecost, A.D. 1524, the council had all images withdrawn from the churches, the frescoes cut down, and the walls whitewashed. Organ playing and bell ringing were forbidden as superstitious. A new simple biblical formula of baptism was introduced, and the abolition of the mass, in A.D. 1525, completed the work. At Easter of this year Zwingli celebrated a lovefeast, at which bread was carried in wooden trenchers, and wine drunk from wooden cups. Thus he thought the genuine Christian apostolic rite was restored. In A.D. 1522 he had married a widow of forty-three years of age, but he publicly acknowledged it only in A.D. 1524. He penitently confesses that his pre-Reformation celibate life, like that of most priests of his age, had not been blameless; but the moral purity of his later life is beyond suspicion.

§ 130.3. =Reformation in Basel, A.D. 1520-1525.=--In Basel, at an early period, Capito and Hedio wrought as biblical preachers. But so soon as they had laid a good foundation they accepted a call to Mainz, in A.D. 1520, which they soon again quitted for Strassburg, where they carried on the work of the Reformation along with Bucer. Their work at Basel was zealously and successfully continued by Röublin. He preached against the mass, purgatory, and saint worship, often to 4,000 hearers. On the day of Corpus Christi he produced a Bible instead of the usual relics, which he scornfully called dead bones. He was banished, and afterwards joined the Anabaptists. A new epoch began in Basel in A.D. 1523. =Œcolampadius= or John Hausschein, born at Weinsberg in A.D. 1482, Zwingli’s Melanchthon, was preacher in Basel in A.D. 1516, and was on intimate terms there with Erasmus. He accepted a call in A.D. 1518 to the cathedral of Augsburg, but a year after withdrew into an Augsburg convent of St. Bridget. There he studied Luther’s writings, and, in A.D. 1522, found shelter from persecution in Sickingen’s castle, where he officiated for some months as chaplain. He then returned to Basel, became preacher at St. Martin’s, and was soon made, along with Conrad Pellican (§ 120, 4, footnote), professor in the university. Around these two a group of younger men soon gathered, who energetically supported the evangelical movement. They dispensed baptism in the German language, administered the communion in both kinds, and were indefatigable in preaching. In A.D. 1524 the council allowed monks and nuns, if they so wished, to leave their cloisters. Of special importance for the progress of the Reformation in Basel was the arrival in A.D. 1524 of William Farel from Dauphiné (§ 138, 1). He had been obliged to fly from France, and was kindly received by Œcolampadius, with whom he stayed for some months. In February he had a public disputation with the opponents of the Reformation. University and bishop had interdicted it, but all the more decided was the council that it should come off. Its result was a great impulse to the Reformation, though Farel in this same year, probably at the suggestion of Erasmus, whom he had described as a new Balaam, was banished by the council (§ 138, 1).[366]

§ 130.4. =The Reformation in the other Cantons, A.D. 1520-1525.=--In =Bern=, from A.D. 1518 Haller, Kolb, and Mayer carried on the work of the Reformation as political and religious reformers after the style of Zwingli. Nic. Manuel, poet, satirist, and painter, supported their preaching by his satirical writings against pope, priests, and superstition generally. Also in his Dance of Death, which he painted on the walls of a cloister at Bern, he covered the clergy with ridicule. In A.D. 1523 the council allowed departures from the convents, and several monks and nuns withdrew and married. The opposition called in the Dominican John Haim, as their spokesman, in A.D. 1524. Between him and the Franciscan Mayer there arose a passionate discussion, and the council exiled both. But Haller continued his work, and the Reformation took firmer root from day to day.--In =Muhlhausen [Mühlhausen]=, where Ulr. von Hutten spent his last days, the council issued a mandate in A.D. 1524 which gave free course to the Reformation. At =Biel=, too, it was allowed unrestricted freedom. In East Switzerland, =St. Gall= was specially prominent under its burgomaster Joachim