Part 3
He was twice married. Both of his wives were Irish: the first was the daughter of the earl of Clanricarde; the second the daughter of a gentleman who had married one of the maids of honor of Queen Mary Beatrice. In his memoirs Berwick despatches his two wives in just ten lines, five to each. He does not even tell us their christian names. He was too busy fighting to think of the women.
He had an own brother, the offspring like himself, of James II. and Arabella Churchill, and bearing like him the surname of Fitzjames. This brother also rose to distinction: he took to the church and became bishop of Soissons. It was he who stood at the bedside of Louis XV. when the king was supposed to be dying, and refused him absolution and extreme unction till he would dismiss his favorite, Madame de Chateauroux. The king yielded; the favorite was sent away, and he was absolved and anointed for Heaven; but
The devil fell sick; the devil a saint would be. The devil got well, the devil a saint was he.
The king recovered and recalled Madame de Chateauroux.
* * * * *
Some time after my return from Europe in 1874, I read in the New York World a notice of the marriage in Paris of a Spanish nobleman with a Miss Stuart who the account said was a descendant of the duke of Berwick and of James II. It was added that the bride’s family were once known as the Fitzjameses, but that they had subsequently taken the name of Stuart as more indicative of their royal extraction.
So it seems the Berwick branch of the Churchills was extant twenty years ago, and we hope is extant still, though its existence may not be known to Lord Alfred.
The Captivity of Babylon
Petrarch who lived in the fourteenth century, gave the name of the Captivity of Babylon to the condition of the Church of Rome which was then in exile. No longer on the banks of the Tiber she held her seat, but on the banks of the Rhone; and Avignon not Rome was the assumed mistress of the world. Petrarch did not live to see the end, but in one respect the appellation was a prophecy: the Captivity lasted seventy-two years; and the name is often applied to that period, especially by Roman Catholic historians.
I shall endeavor to trace some of the causes of that singular revolution, and some of its results.
Towards the close of the thirteenth century, a poor hermit named Pietro da Morrone who had starved himself into the highest state of sanctity, was raised to the Apostolic throne with the title of Celestin V. One of the qualities which at that time recommended a candidate for the papacy, was that he should be moribund, that his days should be numbered; and this explains the rapidity with which the popes succeeded one another. During one year of that century, the year 1276, four successive pontiffs reigned.
Celestin V. knew nothing of the world nor of business; and it was thought that the cares of his high office, would soon finish him. But his anchorite life had agreed with his constitution; his diet of parched peas and pure water had left him with a sound digestion; and he showed no readiness to depart this life so that somebody else might be pope. It was necessary to hasten matters. How this was done is uncertain; but it is said that one of his cardinals scared the poor old hermit off his throne by telling him of imaginary plots for his assassination. Celestin abdicated, and the scaring cardinal, Benedetto Gaetano usurped his seat as Boniface VIII.; and when this lofty prelate rode to the Lateran, mother of churches, to celebrate his accession, two kings, James of Sicily and Andrew of Hungary walked like grooms at his horse’s head, and then waited on him at the table like common domestics. A pope in those days was a demi-god.
The Church at that time interfered with all the affairs of life. If a man had to sustain the validity of his father’s will or of his own marriage, he had to do it before ecclesiastical tribunals. If he died intestate the Church administered on his property. Even the calendar was ecclesiastical, and the year began not on the first of January or the first of any other month, but at Easter; so that portions of March and April belonged now to the old year and now to the new. In fine, canon, that is church law was the only law.
In contrast to this, was the trifling physical force the pontiffs could exercise. The States of the Church were small in extent; the battallions they could put in the field were few in number; and from time to time some impious prince instigated by the devil, would snap his fingers at this ghostly puissance; and then the world would be startled at the disparity between the real and the pretended power of Rome. But it was like a glimpse of the landscape a dark night by a flash of lightning: it hardly served as a land-mark; pope and prince would come to an understanding, and the spell remain unbroken.
Boniface who was perhaps the haughtiest of the successors of Saint Peter, was soon made to feel this instability. Albert son of Rudolph of Hapsburg, was elected to succeed his father on the imperial throne. Boniface was not satisfied. What did he know about these Hapsburgs? They were new, parvenu, and one was enough. He put forth a bull commanding Albert on pain of excommunication, to deliver up the imperial crown to Adolfus of Nassau.
A papal bull is a roll of parchment on which are inscribed in latin the behests of the pontiff, and to which is suspended by a ribbon, a globular leaden seal. It is this seal which gives it the name of bull, from the latin _bulla_, whence is also derived our word _bowl_.
Albert of Hapsburg had a priest read to him the document, for he could not read it himself, and after pondering, resolved to do differently--that is differently from what the bull required. He tied the parchment to his horse’s tail, and in that guise rode into the battle of Spires where he slew with his own right hand, his rival Adolfus of Nassau.
Boniface after some bitter moments of reflection, did the wisest thing possible. He rescinded the bull and received Albert back into the bosom of the church. Indeed the return of the prodigal son was so welcome that some years later Boniface issued another bull giving to Albert the kingdom of France, without however showing him how he was to get it.
The power of the papacy had culminated in the hundred years between Innocent III. and Boniface VIII., and was now on the decline. To this downward tendency Boniface shut his eyes; but we can assure ourselves of that tendency by considering the different success of those two pontiffs Innocent at the beginning of the thirteenth century and Boniface at the end, in dealing with two able kings of France.
Philip II. called Philip Augustus, the rival of the English Richard-the-lion-hearted, was the cotemporary of Innocent III. Philip had married a Danish princess named Ingerburge. The chronicles say she was young and handsome; but Philip fell none the less in love with Agnes de Méranie the daughter of a Flemish nobleman.
He applied to the pope for a divorce so that he might marry Agnes. Innocent refused. Philip then took the matter into his own hands and decreed his own divorce. Innocent excommunicated him and laid his kingdom under interdict.
A dreadful word that of Interdict! No churches open, no bells rung, no mass, no confession, no marriages, no funerals, no religious rites whatever except baptism and extreme unction--the ushering in and the ushering out of life.
This deprivation settled down like a pall upon that ignorant and superstitious age, and the people would not endure it. They revolted and Philip succumbed: he sent away the beloved Agnes and took back the hated Ingerburge. Such was the fortune of Philip Augustus in measuring himself against the Church. We shall now see how his descendant another Philip, sped, a century later, in a contest with the same power. Philip IV. called Philip-the-fair, Philip-the-handsome, was grandson of Louis IX., Saint Louis, the Marcus Aurelius of the middle ages. Philip had inherited all the talents and none of the virtues of his grandfather: he was true to no obligation and troubled with no scruples. Boniface had become aware of the dangerous character of the French king, and he sought to propitiate him by canonising his grandfather who thus escaped from purgatory and became a saint in Heaven; and no king ever deserved the promotion better. But Philip was not to be bought by so unsubstantial a favor: he was much less sentimental than rapacious and he seized the papal revenues. The clergy from time immemorial had paid to the Holy See tithes and first fruits. Philip being in need of money, ordered that those stipends be paid to him, promising to account for them to Boniface. The pope rejected the arrangement with just indignation. High words followed, and he issued the bull _Clericos laicos_, forbidding the clergy in France and elsewhere to pay any taxes to the State, and commanding them to pour all their contributions directly into the Apostolic treasury. Philip resisted. Edward I. of England did the same; but Boniface did not take the same measures against Edward, that he did against Philip. Perhaps he feared the vigor and capacity of the English king, unconscious that the man he was defying was at least as able, and was the less scrupulous of the two.
Philip not only forbade his clergy to pay tithes and other taxes to the pope, but he prohibited the export of money from the kingdom for any purpose whatsoever. Boniface retaliated by excommunicating Philip and laying France under interdict. At the same time he declared that the kings of the earth were subject to him in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs. None of his predecessors had gone so far: not Gregory VII., not Innocent III. had risked so dangerous a piece of arrogance; and it proved the ruin of Boniface. Philip was too sagacious not to see the advantage this false step gave him. His kingdom under the ban of the Church, himself excommunicate, he resolved to make common cause with that people who, in a more benighted age, had fallen away from his ancestor. He convoked the STATES-GENERAL; and this is the first time that famous assembly was called together.
The States-General were the general estates, that is all the estates of the nation. They consisted of four elements: the crown, the nobility, the clergy and the common people. It is customary however to name only the last three. To Philip is also due the reorganisation of the French parliaments into the form they retained down to the revolution. The parliaments were at first the occasional conferences of the sovereign with his nobles; then they grew into some degree of permanence, and combined judicial functions with political. When Philip introduced the States-General, he deprived the parliaments of their legislative functions, and constituted them courts of law civil and criminal. To them however, and especially to the parliament of Paris, was left the prerogative of registering the royal edicts. This registry at first was solely to publish them; but it grew into a usage indispensable to their validity, and thus became a check upon the executive; so that the monarchy of the old régime was not quite an absolute one.
These first States-General met in the Church of Notre Dame; and the third estate, that is the common people, filled nearly half the building. The towns only were represented: they had become too wealthy to be longer overlooked. The country people came in at a later day.
Philip laid before this assembly two documents: one that the pope had discharged at him; the other a copy of the one he had flung back at the pope. They are so short and spirited that I venture to insert them: “Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Philip king of the Franks. Fear God and keep his commandments. Know that thou art subject to us as well in the temporal as in the spiritual; that the collation of benefices and prebends belongs not to thee; that if thou guardest the vacant benefices, it is to reserve the fruits for the successors; that if thou conferrest them upon any body, we declare the collation void; and we revoke it if executed, pronouncing all those who think otherwise heretics.”
To him the King:--“Philip by the grace of God, king of the French, to Boniface who calls himself Pope, little or no salutation. May thy great fatuity know that we are subject to nobody for the temporal; that the collation of churches and prebends belongs to us by our royal right; that the fruits thereof are ours; that the collations made by us are valid; that we will maintain their possessors with all our power; and that we pronounce those who think otherwise fools and madmen.”
It is just to say that the authenticity of the missive of Boniface, is disputed, though Hallam considers it genuine. It set forth nothing more than the pope had already avowed. At all events it put the case clearly before the assembly. A committee of the Third Estate, after much pondering, came and knelt before the throne in the middle of the church, and rendered the following verdict in which you will observe they had caught the tone of their master:--“It is an abomination that Boniface like the blackguard that he is should interpret so ill the words of Scripture: what thou shall bind on earth, shall be bound in Heaven; as if it meant that if he put a man in prison in this world, God would put him in prison in the next.” Philip had this profound state paper turned into latin, and sent to the pope; and this document as well as Philip’s missive, is still in the archives of the Vatican.
The clergy alone hesitated to stand by the king. They asked time to deliberate. Philip would allow them not an hour. You are Frenchmen, cried he; from whom do you hold your benefices, from me your king, or from the Neapolitan Benedetto. They answered: from the king. They then begged leave to send a deputation to Rome to explain matters; and Philip refused. As for the excommunication and interdict, the king ordered them burnt by the common hangman; and woe to the priest who dared shut his church, or tie up his bell-rope, or stop marrying or confessing or saying mass! The days of Philip-the-handsome were not the days of Philip-the-august.
This triumph at home might well have satisfied Philip; but he still followed up Boniface in his own domain with pitiless energy. He accused him not only of having defrauded Celestin of his throne, but of having poisoned him, and what was still worse, of heresy; and he sent orders to his agent in Italy, William of Nogaret, to seize his sacred person.
Nogaret in conjunction with Sciarra Colonna the chief of the Ghibbeline faction, gathered together a few soldiers and surprised Boniface at his residence at Agnani. The pontiff supposed they intended to kill him. He put the dalmatica on his shoulders and the crown on his head, and sat like Papirius awaiting the blow. Colonna cried out to him to abdicate, as he had driven Celestin to abdicate. Betrayed like Jesus Christ, replied the old man, I will die his vicar![3]
But it was not their purpose to put him to death: no such merciful end was to be his. They held him three days a prisoner, treating him with a mockery of respect; and then the populace of Agnani, perceiving that the Ghibbelines were but a handful, rose and delivered him from his captors. But the unexampled outrage had overthrown his reason, and he died a maniac. The terrible Philip had hounded his enemy into his grave; but even there he did not leave him in peace, as we shall see.
The bishop of Ostia was chosen pope with the name of Benedict XI. Philip demanded that the bull of excommunication be annulled, and himself restored to full communion with the Church. Benedict complied; and thus was completed this first triumph of the temporal over the spiritual. Philip still claimed to be a true son of the Church; but he had shaken off her authority and he now proceeded to put his foot on her neck. It is to this degenerate grandson of a sainted king, that the Church of Rome owes that day of humiliation which forms the title of this paper.
Benedict XI. was as moribund as usage required; and in less than a year he laid down his pontificate and his life together. There now dawned upon Philip a scheme no less bold and sacriligious than that of owning and possessing both pope and papacy. He interfered to prevent an election till his own man could come to the fore; and for more than a year the Church was without a head. Then having by bribery and intimidation, obtained control of the sacred college, he made them choose Bertrand de Goth, bishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V. Popes, you observe, change their names when they put on the tiara. This custom though ancient has not always existed: Saint Peter for example did not change his.[4]
There was a secret bargain between Clement and Philip by which the former was to pay the price of his elevation. There is discussion whether it related to the removal of the Holy See or to the destruction of the Templars. As Philip needed the pope’s aid in both these enormities which have cast such a lurid glory or glare on his reign, perhaps he bargained for both.
Clement V. after having been crowned at Lyons, established his seat at Avignon on the left bank of the Rhone, and thus began the CAPTIVITY. As it was followed by the _Great Schism_ or _Schism of the West_, more than a century was to pass before the Church, always called Catholic, Apostolic and _Roman_, was to be wholly reinstated in the Eternal City.
Philip’s old enemy had died demented, and in that collapse of intellect, the last rites of the Church either had not been administered or had proved fruitless. He had gone where Hamlet’s father went, unhouseled unaneled, till his sins could be burned and purged away; and a smart anathema in due form from that Church which rules the dead and the living, might send him prone to the pit. Boniface had canonised Philip’s grandfather, and that soul in purgatory had thus become a saint in Heaven; and now Philip was invoking a rescript of different import, to despatch his grandfather’s benefactor in the other direction. Such are the possible vicissitudes of another life.
Philip instituted regular proceedings against the dead pope, accusing him of every manner of impiety and wickedness, and Clement was forced to give ear to it, but though Philip’s creature, he remembered the throne he sat upon, and was loath to dishonor it by blasting the memory of one of his predecessors; so he gained time: he heard testimony and took counsel; and then he heard more testimony and took more counsel. He whispered to Philip that if Boniface was the unhallowed wretch they supposed, he was already damned, and they were losing their time; and Philip finally let the matter drop.
It were well for the memory of these two potentates if the attempt to dislodge Boniface from purgatory, were the greatest wrong they undertook. We now come to one of the foulest crimes in history: one in which the king was principal and the pope accessory.
In Paris, but in a quarter no longer fashionable and which therefore you have not visited, is a congeries of shops where everything is sold by the penny worth. It is called the Temple from the building that once stood there. In the last century it served as a prison. Louis XVI. was kept there before his execution. In London there is a Temple church; and we hear of lawyers of the middle and inner temple. All these sites take their name from having been occupied by the commanderies or convents of the Knights-Templar an order of fighting monks founded in the twelfth century at Jerusalem, to guard the Holy Sepulchre. As monks they made vows of chastity and poverty; as soldiers, never to decline combat at whatever odds. But as years rolled on they forgot one of their vows: they became rich and riches made them haughty without however letting down at all their soldierly discipline and valour. They were respected and feared throughout Europe. The head of the order called the Grand-master was, according to Voltaire, equal in dignity to a king. Their chief commandery was the one in Paris on the spot where needles are now sold by the paper, and thread by the skein; and it formed a kind of imperium in imperio little to the taste of Philip IV. But a still graver fault was their wealth. Philip had begun the quarrel with Boniface by pocketing his tithes, and he sought an issue of the same character with the knights. But in order to get their money it was necessary to destroy them, or at least to destroy their organisation: they were the best soldiers in France; and desperately would they defend their persons and their pockets if the chance were afforded them. So Philip used craft, the only weapon he wielded better than they. He invited the Grand-master, Jacques Molay, to be god-father to one of his children, and treated him as an equal. Never did the standing of the order seem higher.
Suddenly at the dead of night, a band of Philip’s ruffians in numbers to defy resistance, burst into the Temple, captured the knights and threw them into prison; and Clement issued a bull abolishing the order. But he was not allowed to stop there: Philip obliged him to appoint an ecclesiastical commission to try the Templars. He accused them of spitting upon the Cross, which was blasphemy, and of a still darker crime, one so dark that he could name it only in a whisper, namely _baphometry_. And what, you ask, is baphometry? The word had a dreadful sound. The people were horror-stricken when told that the knights were guilty of baphometry, and cried out away with them! Philip when asked to explain, crossed himself and said that baphometry was the worship of graven images, of horrid idols sculptured by the devil’s own hand; and he produced those idols in evidence; and those idols are still to be seen in European museums. Whether the devil was really the artist has not been ascertained; the idols themselves are hideous enough to justify the worst; but to the mere lay understanding they seem to be nothing more than odd and ugly bits of bric-a-brac which the knights may have kept as curiosities. They denied having committed either blasphemy or baphometry, and were put to torture. Some of them suffered in obdurate silence; others among whom was the Grand Master himself, to win a respite from torment, confessed having worshipped bric-a-brac. But a short relief brought back their fortitude: they retracted their confession and defied the tyrant. But it was all the same whether they confessed or denied: the putting in of the idols themselves as testimony was conclusive and the knights were condemned.
The Church of Rome has always professed great horror of shedding human blood; so the Templars were sentenced not to the block and the axe, but to the stake, and fifty-nine of them were burned alive near the gate of Saint Antoine: the rest were banished.
It is said that as the flames gathered around the Grand Master he summoned the pope to meet him at the bar of God in forty days, and the king in one year. They both came to time.
There is a mystery about the death of Philip. Some say his horse ran away with him hunting, and crushed him against a tree; others that when the year had rolled round, the spirit of Jacques Molay beckoned to him, and he came.
In point of talents, Philip-the-fair was one of the greatest of monarchs: the reconstruction of the parliaments, the States-General, the removal of the Holy See, the destruction of the Templars, were the work, good or bad, of no common head or hand.
Edward II. of England married Philip’s daughter, and Philip’s ability and rapacity seemed to descend less to his three sons who succeeded him one after the other on the throne of France, than to his English grandson Edward III.