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Title: Church History (Volumes 1-3)
Author: Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
Language: English
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The Foreign Biblical Library.
EDITED BY THE REV. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_12 Volumes. Large crown 8vo. Price 7s. 6d. each._
I. =Still Hours.=
By RICHARD ROTHE. Translated by JANE T. STODDART. With an
Introductory Essay by the Rev. JOHN MACPHERSON, M.A.
II. =Biblical Commentary on the Book of Psalms.=
By Professor FRANZ DELITZSCH, of Leipzig. From the latest
edition specially revised by the Author. Translated by the
Rev. DAVID EATON, M.A. In three Volumes.
III. =A Manual of Introduction to the New Testament.=
By BERNHARD WEISS. Translated by Miss DAVIDSON. _In 2 Vols._
IV. =Church History.=
By Professor KURTZ. Authorized Translation, from the latest
Revised Edition, by the Rev. J. MACPHERSON, M.A. _In 3 Vols._
V. =Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher.=
Translated by MARY F. WILSON.
VI. =A Commentary on the Book of Isaiah.=
By Professor FRANZ DELITZSCH. Translated by the Rev. JAMES
DENNEY, B.D. _In 2 Vols._
LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
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CHURCH HISTORY.
BY
PROFESSOR KURTZ.
_AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM LATEST REVISED EDITION BY THE_
REV. JOHN MACPHERSON, M.A.
THREE VOLUMES IN ONE.
_SECOND EDITION._
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXCI., MDCCCXCII., MDCCCXCIII.
BUTLER & TANNER,
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS,
FROME, AND LONDON.
PREFACE.
The English reader is here presented with a translation of the ninth
edition of a work which first appeared in 1849, and has obtained a most
distinguished place, it might be said almost a monopoly, as a text-book
of Church History in the German Universities. Since 1850, when the
second edition was issued, an English translation of which has been
widely used in Britain and America, Dr. Kurtz has given great attention
to the improvement of his book. The increase of size has not been caused
by wordy amplification, but by an urgent necessity felt by the author as
he used the vast materials that recent years have spread out before the
historical student. In 1870 Dr. Kurtz retired from his professorship,
and has conscientiously devoted himself to bring up each successive
edition of his text-book to the point reached by the very latest
scholarship of his own and other lands. In his Preface to the ninth
edition of 1885 he claims to have made very special improvements on
the presentation of the history of the first three centuries, where
ample use is made of the brilliant researches of Harnack and other
distinguished scholars of the day.
In the exercise of that discretion which has been allowed him, the
translator has ventured upon an innovation, which he trusts will be
generally recognised as a very important improvement. The German edition
has frequently pages devoted to the literature of the larger divisions,
and a considerable space is thus occupied at the beginning of most of
the ordinary sections, as well as at the close of many of the sub-
sections. The books named in these lists are almost exclusively German
works and articles that have appeared in German periodicals. Experience
has shown that the reproduction of such lists in an English edition is
utterly useless to the ordinary student and extremely repulsive to the
reader, as it seriously interferes with the continuity of the text. The
translator has therefore ventured wholly to cancel these lists,
substituting carefully selected standard English works known to himself
from which detailed information on the subjects treated of in the
several paragraphs may be obtained. These he has named in footnotes at
the places where such references seemed to be necessary and most likely
to be useful. Those students who know German so thoroughly as to be able
to refer to books and articles by German specialists will find no
difficulty in using the German edition of Kurtz, in which copious lists
of such literature are given.
The first English volume is a reproduction without retrenchment of the
original; but in the second volume an endeavour has been made to render
the text-book more convenient and serviceable to British and American
students by slightly abridging some of those paragraphs which give
minute details of the Reformation work in various German provinces.
But even there care has been taken not to omit any fact of interest or
importance. No pains have been spared to give the English edition a form
that may entitle it to occupy that front rank among students’ text-books
of Church History which the original undoubtedly holds in Germany.
JOHN MACPHERSON.
FINDHORN, _July, 1888_.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. IDEA AND TASK OF CHURCH HISTORY.
§ 2. DISTRIBUTION OF CHURCH HISTORY ACCORDING TO CONTENTS.
(1) The Various Branches Included in a Complete Course
of Church History.
(2) The Separate Branches of Church History.
§ 3. DISTRIBUTION OF CHURCH HISTORY ACCORDING TO PERIODS.
§ 4. SOURCES AND AUXILIARIES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
(1) Literature of the Sources.
(2) Literature of the Auxiliary Sciences.
§ 5. HISTORY OF GENERAL CHURCH HISTORY.
(1) Down to the Reformation.
(2) The 16th and 17th Centuries.
(3) The 18th Century.
(4) The 19th Century.
(5) The 19th Century--Continued.
(6) The 19th Century--Continued.
HISTORY OF THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY.
The pre-Christian World preparing the way
of the Christian Church.
§ 6. THE STANDPOINT OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY.
§ 7. HEATHENISM.
(1) The Religious Character of Heathenism.
(2) The Moral Character of Heathenism.
(3) The Intellectual Culture in Heathenism.
(4) The Hellenic Philosophy.
(5) The Heathen State.
§ 8. JUDAISM.
(1) Judaism under special Training of God through the
Law and Prophecy.
(2) Judaism after the Cessation of Prophecy.
(3) The Synagogues.
(4) Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.
§ 9. SAMARITANISM.
§ 10. INTERCOURSE BETWEEN JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.
(1) Influence of Heathenism upon Judaism.
(2) Influence of Judaism upon Heathenism.
§ 11. THE FULNESS OF TIME.
THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNINGS.
The Founding of the Church by Christ and His Apostles.
§ 12. CHARACTER OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNINGS.
I. THE LIFE OF JESUS.
§ 13. JESUS CHRIST, THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD.
(1) Year of Birth and Year of Death of Jesus.
(2) Earliest Non-Biblical Witnesses to Christ.
II. THE APOSTOLIC AGE.
A.D. 30-70.
§ 14. THE MINISTRY OF THE APOSTLES BEFORE PAUL.
Beginning and Close of Apostolic Age.
§ 15. THE MINISTRY OF THE APOSTLE PAUL.
Details of Paul’s Life.
§ 16. THE OTHER APOSTLES AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF THE APOSTLE PAUL.
(1) The Roman Episcopate of Peter.
(2) The Apostle John.
(3) James, the brother of the Lord.
(4) The Later Legends of the Apostles.
§ 17. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP, AND DISCIPLINE.
(1) The Charismata of the Apostolic Age.
(2) The Constitution of the Mother Church at Jerusalem.
(3) The Constitution of the Pauline Churches.
(4) The Church in the Pauline Epistles.
(5) Congregational and Spiritual Offices.
(6) The Question about the Original Position of the
Episcopate and Presbyterate.
(7) Christian Worship.
(8) Christian Life and Ecclesiastical Discipline.
§ 18. HERESIES IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.
(1) Jewish Christianity and the Council of Apostles.
(2) The Apostolic Basis of Doctrine.
(3) False Teachers.
FIRST DIVISION.
History of the Development of the Church during the
Græco-Roman and Græco-Byzantine Periods.
§ 19. CONTENT, DISTRIBUTION AND BOUNDARIES OF THOSE PERIODS.
FIRST SECTION.
History of the Græco-Roman Church during the
Second and Third Centuries (A.D. 70-323).
§ 20. CONTENT, DISTRIBUTION AND BOUNDARIES OF THIS PERIOD.
(1) The Post-Apostolic Age.
(2) The Age of the Old Catholic Church.
(3) The Point of Transition from the One Age to the Other.
I. THE RELATIONSHIP OF EXTRA-CHRISTIAN PAGANISM AND
JUDAISM TO THE CHURCH.
§ 21. THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.
§ 22. PERSECUTIONS OF THE CHRISTIANS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
(1) Claudius, Nero and Domitian.
(2) Trajan and Hadrian.
(3) Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.
(4) Septimius Severus and Maximinus Thrax.
(5) Decius, Gallus and Valerian.
(6) Diocletian and Galerius.
(7) Maximinus Daza, Maxentius and Licinius.
§ 23. CONTROVERSIAL WRITINGS OF PAGANISM.
(1) Lucian’s Satire _De Morte Peregrini_.
(2) Worshippers of an Ass.
(3) Polemic properly so-called.
§ 24. Attempted Reconstruction of Paganism.
(1) Apollonius of Tyana.
(2) Neo-platonism.
§ 25. Jewish and Samaritan Reaction.
(1) Disciples of John.
(2) The Samaritan Heresiarchs.
a. Dositheus.
b. Simon Magus.
c. Menander.
II. DANGER TO THE CHURCH FROM PAGAN AND JEWISH
ELEMENTS WITHIN ITS OWN PALE.
§ 26. GNOSTICISM IN GENERAL.
(1) Gnosticism.
(2) The Problems of Gnostic Speculation.
(3) Distribution.
(4) Sources of Information.
§ 27. THE GENTILE CHRISTIAN GNOSTICISM.
(1) Cerinthus.
(2) The Gnosticism of Basilides.
(3) Irenæus’ Sketch of Basilideanism.
(4) Valentinian Gnosticism.
(5) Two Divisions of the Valentinian School.
(6) The Ophites and related Sects.
(7) The Gnosis of the Ophites.
(8) Antinomian and Libertine Sects.
a. The Nicolaitans.
b. The Simonians.
c. The Carpocratians.
d. The Prodicians.
(9) Saturninus.
(10) Tatian and the Encratites.
(11) Marcion and the Marcionites.
(12) Marcion’s Disciples.
(13) Hermogenes.
§ 28. EBIONISM AND EBIONITIC GNOSTICISM.
(1) Nazareans and Ebionites.
(2) The Elkesaites.
(3) The Pseudo-Clementine Series of Writings.
a. Homiliæ XX Clementis.
b. Recognitiones Clementis.
c. Epitomæ.
(4) The Pseudo-Clementine Doctrinal System.
§ 29. MANICHÆISM.
(1) The Founder.
(2) The System.
(3) Constitution, Worship, and Missionarizing.
III. THE DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT AND APOLOGETICAL
ACTIVITY OF THE CHURCH.
§ 30. THE THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE OF THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE,
A.D. 70-170.
(1) The Beginnings of Patristic Literature.
(2) The Theology of the Post-Apostolic Age.
(3) The so-called Apostolic Fathers.
a. Clement of Rome.
(4) b. Barnabas.
c. Pastor Hermas.
(5) d. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch.
(6) e. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna.
f. Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis.
g. Epistle to Diognetus.
(7) The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.
(8) The Writings of the Earliest Christian Apologists.
(9) Extant Writings of Apologists of the
Post-Apostolic Age.
a. Justin Martyr.
(10) b. Tatian.
c. Athenagoras.
d. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch.
e. Hermias.
§ 31. THE THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC AGE,
A.D. 170-323.
(1) The Theological Schools and Tendencies.
1. CHURCH FATHERS WRITING IN GREEK.
(2) Church Teachers of the Asiatic Type.
a. Irenæus.
(3) b. Hippolytus.
(4) The Alexandrian Church Teachers.
a. Pantænus.
b. Titus Flavius Clement.
(5) c. Origen.
(6) d. Dionysius of Alexandria.
e. Gregory Thaumaturgus.
f. Pamphilus.
(7) Greek-speaking Church Teachers in other Quarters.
a. Hegesippus.
b. Caius of Rome.
(8) c. Sextus Julius Africanus.
(9) d. Methodius.
e. Lucian of Samosata.
2. CHURCH FATHERS WRITING IN LATIN.
(10) The Church Teachers of North Africa.
Tertullian.
(11) Cyprian.
(12) Various Ecclesiastical Writers using the Latin Tongue.
a. Minucius Felix.
b. Commodus.
c. Novatian.
d. Arnobius.
e. Victorinus of Pettau.
f. Lucius Lactantius.
§ 32. THE APOCRYPHAL AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHICAL LITERATURE.
(1) Professedly Old Heathen Prophecies.
(2) Old Testament Pseudepigraphs.
a. Book of Enoch.
b. Assumptio Mosis.
c. Fourth Book of Ezra.
d. Book of Jubilees.
(3) Pseudepigraphs of Christian Origin.
a. History of Assenath.
b. The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs.
c. _Ascensio Isaiæ_ and _Visio Isaiæ_.
d. _Spelunca thesaurorum._
(4) New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphs.
I. Apocryphal Gospels.
(5) II. Apocryphal Histories and Legends of the Apostles.
(6) ---- Apocryphal Monographs.
(7) III. Apostolic Epistles.
IV. Apocryphal Apocalypses.
V. Apostolical Constitutions.
(8) The Acts of the Martyrs.
§ 33. THE DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES OF THE OLD CATHOLIC AGE.
(1) The Trinitarian Questions.
(2) The Alogians.
(3) The Theodotians and Artemonites.
(4) Praxeas and Tertullian.
(5) The Noëtians and Hippolytus.
(6) Beryllus and Origen.
(7) Sabellius; Dionysius of Alexandria; Dionysius of Rome.
(8) Paul of Samosata.
(9) Chiliasm.
IV. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP, LIFE AND DISCIPLINE.
§ 34. THE INNER ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.
(1) The Continuation of Charismatic Endowments into
Post-Apostolic Times.
(2) The Development of the Episcopal Hierarchy.
(3) The Regular Ecclesiastical Offices of the Old
Catholic Age.
(4) Clergy and Laity.
(5) The Synods.
(6) Personal and Epistolary Intercourse.
(7) The Unity and Catholicity of the Church.
(8) The Roman Primacy.
§ 35. THE ADMINISTRATION OF BAPTISM.
(1) The Preparation for Receiving Baptism.
(2) The Baptismal Formula.
(3) The Administration of Baptism.
(4) The Doctrine of Baptism.
(5) The Controversy about Heretics’ Baptism.
§ 36. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND ITS VARIOUS PARTS.
(1) The Agape.
(2) The _Missa Catechumenorum_.
(3) The _Missa Fidelium_.
(4) The _Disciplina Arcani_.
(5) The Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.
(6) The Sacrificial Theory.
(7) The Use of Scripture.
(8) Formation of a New Testament Canon.
(9) The Doctrine of Inspiration.
(10) Hymnology.
§ 37. FEASTS AND FESTIVAL SEASONS.
(1) The Festivals of the Christian Year.
(2) The Paschal Controversies.
(3) The Ecclesiastical Institution of Fasting.
§ 38. THE CHURCH BUILDINGS AND THE CATACOMBS.
(1) The Catacombs.
(2) The Antiquities of the Catacombs.
(3) Pictorial Art and the Catacombs.
(4) Pictorial and Artistic Representations.
a. Significant Symbols.
b. Allegorical Figures.
c. Parabolic Figures.
d. Historical Pictures of O. T. Types.
e. Figures from the Gospel History.
f. Liturgical Figures.
§ 39. LIFE, MANNERS, AND DISCIPLINE.
(1) Christian Morals and Manners.
(2) The Penitential Discipline.
(3) Asceticism.
(4) Paul of Thebes.
(5) Beginning of Veneration of Martyrs.
(6) Superstition.
§ 40. THE MONTANIST REFORMATION.
(1) Montanism in Asia Minor.
(2) Montanism at Rome.
(3) Montanism in Proconsular Africa.
(4) The Fundamental Principle of Montanism.
(5) The Attitude of Montanism toward the Church.
§ 41. SCHISMATIC DIVISIONS IN THE CHURCH.
(1) The Schism of Hippolytus at Rome about A.D. 220.
(2) The Schism of Felicissimus at Carthage in A.D. 250.
(3) The Schism of the Presbyter Novatian at Rome in
A.D. 251.
(4) The Schism of Meletius in Egypt in A.D. 306.
SECOND SECTION.
The History of the Græco-Roman Church from
the 4th-7th centuries.
A.D. 323-692.
I. CHURCH AND STATE.
§ 42. THE OVERTHROW OF PAGANISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
(1) The Romish Legend of the Baptism of Constantine.
(2) Constantine the Great and his Sons.
(3) Julian the Apostate (A.D. 361-363).
(4) The Later Emperors.
(5) Heathen Polemics and Apologetics.
(6) The Religion of the Hypsistarians.
§ 43. THE CHRISTIAN EMPIRE AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL LAW.
(1) The _Jus Circa Sacra_.
(2) The Institution of Œcumenical Synods.
(3) Canonical Ordinances.
(4) Pseudepigraphic Church Ordinances.
(5) The Apostolic Church Ordinances.
II. MONASTICISM, CLERICALISM AND HIERARCHISM.
§ 44. MONASTICISM.
(1) The Biography of St. Anthony.
(2) The Origin of Christian Monasticism.
(3) Oriental Monasticism.
(4) Western Monasticism.
(5) Institution of Nunneries.
(6) Monastic Asceticism.
(7) Anti-Ecclesiastical and Heretical Monasticism.
§ 45. THE CLERGY.
(1) Training of the Clergy.
(2) The Injunction of Celibacy.
(3) Later Ecclesiastical Offices.
(4) Church Property.
§ 46A. THE PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION AND THE PRIMACY.
(1) The Patriarchal Constitution.
(2) The Rivalry between Rome and Byzantium.
§ 46B. HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CHAIR AND ITS CLAIMS TO THE PRIMACY.
(3) From Melchiades to Julius I., A.D. 310 to A.D. 352.
(4) From Liberius to Anastasius, A.D. 352 to A.D. 402.
(5) From Innocent I. to Zosimus, A.D. 402 to A.D. 418.
(6) From Boniface I. to Sixtus III., A.D. 419 to A.D. 440.
(7) From Leo the Great to Simplicius, A.D. 440 to A.D. 483.
(8) From Felix III. to Boniface II., A.D. 483 to A.D. 532.
(9) From John II. to Pelagius II., A.D. 532 to A.D. 590.
(10) From Gregory I. to Boniface V., A.D. 590 to A.D. 625.
(11) From Honorius I. to Gregory III., A.D. 625 to A.D. 741.
III. THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND LITERATURE.
§ 47. THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS AND THEIR MOST CELEBRATED
REPRESENTATIVES.
(1) The Theological Schools and Tendencies.
a. In the 4th and 5th centuries.
b. Of the 6th and 7th Centuries.
1. THE MOST IMPORTANT TEACHERS OF THE EASTERN CHURCH.
(2) The Most Celebrated Representative of the Old
Alexandrian School----Eusebius.
(3) Church Fathers of the New Alexandrian School.
a. Athanasius.
(4) ---- The Three Great Cappadocians.
b. Basil the Great.
c. Gregory Nazianzen.
d. Gregory of Nyssa.
(5) e. Apollinaris.
f. Didymus the Blind.
(6) g. Macarius Magnes.
h. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria.
i. Isidore of Pelusium.
(7) ---- Mystics and Philosophers.
k. Macarius the Great or the Elder.
l. Marcus Eremita.
m. Synesius of Cyrene.
n. Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa.
o. Æneas of Gaza.
(8) The Antiocheans.
a. Eusebius of Emesa.
b. Diodorus of Tarsus.
c. John of Antioch (Chrysostom).
(9) d. Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia.
e. Polychronius, Bishop of Apamea.
f. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus.
(10) Other Teachers of the Greek Church during the 4th
and 5th Centuries.
a. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem.
b. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis.
c. Palladius.
d. Nilus.
(11) Greek Church Fathers of the 6th and 7th Centuries.
a. Johannes Philoponus.
b. Dionysius the Areopagite.
(12) c. Leontius Byzantinus.
d. Maximus Confessor.
e. Johannes Climacus.
f. Johannes Moschus.
g. Anastasius Sinaita.
(13) Syrian Church Fathers.
a. Jacob of Nisibis.
b. Aphraates.
c. Ephraim the Syrian.
d. Ibas, Bishop of Edessa.
e. Jacob, Bishop of Edessa.
2. THE MOST IMPORTANT TEACHERS OF THE WESTERN CHURCH.
(14) f. During the Period of the Arian Controversy.
a. Jul. Firmicus Maternus.
b. Lucifer of Calaris.
c. Marius Victorinus.
d. Hilary of Poitiers.
e. Zeno, Bishop of Verona.
f. Philaster, Bishop of Brescia.
g. Martin of Tours.
(15) g. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.
h. Ambrosiaster.
i. Pacianus, Bishop of Barcelona.
(16) During the Period of Origenistic Controversy.
a. Jerome.
(17) b. Tyrannius Rufinus.
c. Sulpicius Severus.
d. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop of Ravenna.
(18) The Hero of the Soteriological Controversy--Augustine.
(19) Augustine’s Works.
a. Philosophical Treatises.
b. Dogmatic Treatises.
c. Controversial Treatises.
d. Apologetical Treatises.
e. Exegetical Works.
(20) Augustine’s Disciples and Friends.
a. Paulinus, Deacon of Milan.
b. Paul Orosius.
c. Marius Mercator.
d. Prosper Aquitanicus.
e. Cæsarius, Bishop of Arelate.
f. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe.
(21) Pelagians and semi-Pelagians.
I. Pelagius.
II. Semi-Pelagians or Massilians.
a. Johannes Cassianus.
b. Vincent Lerinensis.
c. Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons.
d. Salvianus, Presbyter at Marseilles.
e. Faustus of Rhegium.
f. Arnobius the Younger.
(22) The Most Important Church Teachers among the Roman Popes.
a. Leo the Great.
b. Gelasius I.
c. Gregory the Great.
(23) The Conservators and Continuators of Patristic Culture.
a. Boëthius.
b. Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus.
c. Dionysius Exiguus.
§ 48. BRANCHES OF THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN POETRY.
(1) Exegetical Theology.
(2) Historical Theology.
(3) Systematic Theology.
a. Apologetics.
b. Polemics.
c. Positive Dogmatics.
d. Morals.
(4) Practical Theology.
(5) Christian Poetry.
(6) Christian Latin Poetry.
(7) Poetry of National Syrian Church.
(8) The Legendary History of Cyprian.
IV. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES AND HERESIES.
§ 49. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE GENERALLY.
Heretical Developments.
§ 50. THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY, A.D. 318-381.
(1) Preliminary Victory of the Homoousia, A.D. 318-325.
(2) Victory of Eusebianism, A.D. 328-356.
(3) Victory of Homoiousianism, A.D. 357-361.
(4) Final Victory of the Nicene Creed, A.D. 361-381.
(5) The Pneumatomachians, A.D. 362-381.
(6) The Literature of the Controversy.
(7) Post-Nicene Development of the Dogma.
(8) Schisms in consequence of the Arian Controversy.
I. The Meletian Schism at Antioch.
II. The Schism of the Luciferians.
III. The Schism of Damasus and Ursacius at Rome.
§ 51. THE ORIGENIST CONTROVERSIES, A.D. 394-438.
(1) The Monks of the Scetic and Nitrian Deserts.
(2) The Controversy in Palestine and Italy, A.D. 394-399.
(3) The Controversy in Alexandria and Constantinople,
A.D. 399-438.
§ 52. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY.
(1) The Apollinarian Controversy, A.D. 362-381.
(2) Christology of the Opposing Theological Schools.
(3) The Dyoprosopic or Nestorian Controversy, A.D. 428-444.
(4) The Monophysite Controversy.
I. Eutychianism, A.D. 444-451.
(5) II. Imperial Attempts at Union, A.D. 451-519.
(6) III. Justinian’s Decrees, A.D. 527-553.
(7) IV. The Monophysite Churches.
(8) The Monothelite Controversy, A.D. 633-680.
(9) The Case of Honorius.
§ 53. THE SOTERIOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES, A.D. 412-529.
(1) Preliminary History.
(2) The Doctrine of Augustine.
(3) Pelagius and his Doctrine.
(4) The Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 411-431.
(5) The Semi-Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 427-529.
§ 54. REAPPEARANCE AND REMODELLING OF EARLIER HERETICAL SECTS.
(1) Manichæism.
(2) Priscillianism, A.D. 383-563.
V. WORSHIP, LIFE, DISCIPLINE AND MORALS.
§ 55. WORSHIP IN GENERAL.
The Age of Cyril of Alexandria.
§ 56. FESTIVALS AND SEASONS FOR PUBLIC WORSHIP.
(1) The Weekly Cycle.
(2) Hours and Quarterly Fasts.
(3) The Reckoning of Easter.
(4) The Easter Festivals.
(5) The Christmas Festivals.
(6) The Church Year.
(7) The Church Fasts.
§ 57. WORSHIP OF SAINTS, RELICS AND IMAGES.
(1) The Worship of Martyrs and Saints.
(2) The Worship of Mary and Anna.
(3) Worship of Angels.
(4) Worship of Images.
(5) Worship of Relics.
(6) The Making of Pilgrimages.
§ 58. THE DISPENSATION OF THE SACRAMENTS.
(1) Administration of Baptism.
(2) The Doctrine of the Supper.
(3) The Sacrifice of the Mass.
(4) The Administration of the Lord’s Supper.
§ 59. PUBLIC WORSHIP IN WORD AND SYMBOL.
(1) The Holy Scriptures.
(2) The Creeds of the Church.
I. The Nicæno-Constantinopolitan Creed.
II. The Apostles’ Creed.
III. The Athanasian Creed.
(3) Bible Reading in Church and Preaching.
(4) Hymnology.
(5) Psalmody and Hymn Music.
(6) The Liturgy.
(7) Liturgical Vestments.
(8) Symbolical Acts in Worship.
(9) Processions.
§ 60. PLACES OF PUBLIC WORSHIP, BUILDINGS AND WORKS OF ART.
(1) The Basilica.
(2) Secular Basilicas.
(3) The Cupola Style.
(4) Accessory and Special Buildings.
(5) Church furniture.
(6) The Graphic and Plastic Arts.
§ 61. LIFE, DISCIPLINE AND MORALS.
(1) Church Discipline.
(2) Christian Marriage.
(3) Sickness, Death and Burial.
(4) Purgatory and Masses for Souls.
§ 62. HERETICAL REFORMERS.
(1) Audians and Apostolics.
(2) Protests against Superstition and External Observances.
(3) Protests against the Over-Estimation of Doctrine.
§ 63. SCHISMS.
(1) The Donatist Schism, A.D. 311-415.
(2) The _Concilium Quinisextum_, A.D. 692.
VI. THE CHURCH OUTSIDE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
§ 64. MISSIONARY OPERATIONS IN THE EAST.
(1) The Ethiopic-Abyssinian Church.
(2) The Persian Church.
(3) The Armenian Church.
(4) The Iberians.
§ 65. THE COUNTER-MISSION OF THE MOHAMMEDANS.
(1) The Fundamental Principle of Islam.
(2) The Providential Place of Islam.
THIRD SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GRÆCO-BYZANTINE CHURCH
IN THE 8TH-15TH CENTURIES
(A.D. 692-1453).
I. Developments of the Greek Church in Combination
with the Western.
§ 66. ICONOCLASM OF THE BYZANTINE CHURCH (A.D. 726-842).
(1) Leo III., the Isaurian, A.D. 717-741.
(2) Constantine V. A.D. 741-775.
(3) Leo IV., Chazarus, A.D. 775-780.
(4) Leo V., the Armenian, A.D. 813-820.
§ 67. DIVISION BETWEEN GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES AND ATTEMPTS
AT UNION, A.D. 857-1453.
(1) Foundation of the Schism, A.D. 867.
(2) Leo VI., the Philosopher, A.D. 886-911.
(3) Completion of the Schism, A.D. 1054.
(4) Attempts at Reunion.
(5) Andronicus III. Palæologus and Barlaam.
(6) Council of Florence.
(7) Decay of Byzantine Empire.
II. Developments in the Eastern Church without the
Co-operation of the Western.
§ 68. THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND LITERATURE.
(1) Revival of Classical Studies.
(2) Aristotle and Plato.
(3) Scholasticism and Mysticism.
(4) The Branches of Theological Science.
(5) Distinguished Theologians.
(6) Barlaam and Josaphat.
§ 69. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE 12TH-14TH CENTURIES.
(1) Dogmatic Questions.
(2) The Hesychast Controversy, A.D. 1341-1351.
§ 70. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP AND LIFE.
(1) The Arsenian Schism, A.D. 1262-1312.
(2) Public Worship.
(3) Monasticism.
(4) Endeavours at Reformation.
§ 71. DUALISTIC HERETICS.
(1) The Paulicians.
(2) The Children of the Sun.
(3) The Euchites.
(4) The Bogomili.
§ 72. THE NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CHURCHES OF THE EAST.
(1) The Persian Nestorians.
(2) Monophysite Churches.
(3) The Maronites.
(4) The Legend of Prester John.
§ 73. THE SLAVONIC CHURCHES ADHERING TO THE ORTHODOX GREEK
CONFESSION.
(1) Slavs in the Greek Provinces.
(2) The Chazari.
(3) The Bulgarians.
(4) The Russian Church.
(5) Russian Sects.
(6) Romish Efforts at Union.
SECOND DIVISION.
THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN AND ROMAN CHURCH
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.
§ 74. CHARACTER AND DIVISIONS OF THIS PERIOD OF THE DEVELOPMENT.
(1) The Character of Mediæval History.
(2) Periods in the Church History of the German-Roman
Middle Ages.
FIRST SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GERMAN-ROMAN CHURCH FROM THE 4TH TO
THE 9TH CENTURY (DOWN TO A.D. 911).
I. Founding, Spread, and Limitation of the German Church.
§ 75. CHRISTIANITY AND THE GERMANS.
(1) The Predisposition of the Germans for Christianity.
(2) Unopposed Adoption of Christianity.
(3) Mode of Conversion in the Church of these Times.
§ 76. THE VICTORY OF CATHOLICISM OVER ARIANISM.
(1) The Goths in the lands of the Danube.
(2) The Visigoths in Gaul and Spain.
(3) The Vandals in Africa.
(4) The Suevi.
(5) The Burgundians.
(6) The Rugians.
(7) The Ostrogoths.
(8) The Longobards in Italy.
(9) The Franks in Gaul.
§ 77. VICTORY OF THE ROMISH OVER THE OLD BRITISH CHURCH.
(1) The Conversion of the Irish.
(2) The Mission to Scotland.
(3) The Peculiarities of the Celtic Church.
(4) The Romish Mission to the Anglo-Saxons.
(5) Celtic Missions among the Anglo-Saxons.
(6) The Celtic Element Driven out of the Anglo-Saxon
Church.
(7) Spread and Overthrow of the British Church on the
Continent.
(8) Overthrow of the Old British System in the
Iro-Scottish Church.
§ 78. THE CONVERSION AND ROMANIZING OF GERMANY.
(1) South-Western Germany.
(2) South-Eastern Germany.
(3) North-Western Germany.
(4) The Missionary Work of Boniface.
(5) The Organization Effected by Boniface.
(6) Heresies Confronted by Boniface.
(7) The End of Boniface.
(8) An Estimate of Boniface.
(9) The Conversion of the Saxons.
§ 79. THE SLAVS IN GERMAN COUNTRIES.
(1) The Carantanians and Avars.
(2) The Moravian Church.
(3) The Beginnings of Christianity in Bohemia.
§ 80. THE SCANDINAVIAN NATIONS.
(1) Ansgar.
(2) Ansgar’s Successor--Rimbert.
§ 81. CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM.
(1) Islam in Spain.
(2) Islam in Sicily.
II. THE HIERARCHY, THE CLERGY AND THE MONKS.
§ 82. THE PAPACY AND THE CAROLINGIANS.
(1) The Period of the Founding of the States of the Church.
(2) Stephen III., A.D. 768-772.
Hadrian I., A.D. 772-795.
(3) Charlemagne and Leo III., A.D. 795-816.
(4) Louis the Pious and the Popes of his Time.
(5) The Sons of Louis the Pious and the Popes of their Days.
(6) The Legend of the Female Pope Joanna.
(7) Nicholas I. and Hadrian II.
(8) John VIII. and his Successors.
(9) The Papacy and the Nationalities.
§ 83. THE RANK OF METROPOLITAN.
(1) The Position of Metropolitans in General.
(2) Hincmar of Rheims.
(3) Metropolitans in other lands.
§ 84. THE CLERGY IN GENERAL.
(1) The Superior Clergy.
(2) The Inferior Clergy.
(3) Compulsory Celibacy.
(4) Canonical life.
§ 85. MONASTICISM.
(1) Benedict of Nursia.
(2) Benedict of Aniane.
(3) Nunneries.
(4) The Greater Monasteries.
(5) Monastic Practices among the Clergy.
(6) The Stylites.
§ 86: THE PROPERTY OF CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES.
(1) The Revenues of Churches and Monasteries.
(2) The Benefice System.
§ 87. ECCLESIASTICAL LEGISLATION.
(1) Older Collections of Ecclesiastical Law.
(2) The Collection of Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore.
(3) Details of the History of the Forgery.
(4) The Edict and Donation of Constantine.
III. THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.
§ 88. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND ART.
(1) Liturgy and Preaching.
(2) Church Music.
(3) The Sacrifice of the Mass.
(4) The Worship of Saints.
(5) Times and Places for Public Worship.
(6) Ecclesiastical Architecture and Painting.
§ 89. NATIONAL CUSTOMS, SOCIAL LIFE AND CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
(1) Superstition.
(2) Popular Education.
(3) Christian Popular Poetry.
(4) Social Condition.
(5) Practice of Pubic Law.
(6) Church Discipline and Penitential Exercises.
IV. THEOLOGY AND ITS BATTLES.
§ 90. SCHOLARSHIP AND THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE.
(1) Rulers of the Carolingian Line.
Charlemagne, A.D. 768-814.
Louis the Pious, A.D. 814-840.
Charles the Bald, A.D. 840-877.
(2) The most distinguished Theologians of the
Pre-Carolingian Age.
1. Merovingian France.
2. South of the Pyrenees.
3. England.
(3) The most distinguished Theologians of the Age of
Charlemagne.
1. Alcuin.
2. Paulus Diaconus.
3. Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans.
4. Paulinus, Patriarch of Aquileia and
Bishop Leidrad of Lyons.
5. Hatto, Abbot of Reichenau.
(4) The most distinguished Theologians of the Age of
Louis the Pious.
1. Agobard of Lyons.
2. Claudius, Bishop of Turin.
3. Jonas of Orleans.
4. Amalarius of Metz.
5. Christian Druthmar.
6. Rabanus Magnentius Maurus.
7. Walafrid Strabo.
(5) The Most Distinguished Theologians of the Age of
Charles the Bald.
1. Hincmar of Rheims.
2. Paschasius Radbertus.
3. Ratramnus.
4. Florus Magister.
5. Haymo, Bishop of Halberstadt.
6. Servatus Lupus.
7. Remigius of Auxerre.
8. Regius of Prüm.
(6) 9. Anastasius Bibliothecarius.
10. Eulogius of Cordova.
(7) 11. Joannes Scotus Erigena.
(8) The Monastic and Cathedral Schools.
(9) Various Branches of Theological Science.
1. Exegesis.
2. Systematic Theology.
3. Practical Theology.
4. Historical Theology.
(10) Anglo-Saxon Culture under Alfred the Great,
A.D. 871-901.
§ 91. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES.
(1) The Adoptionist Controversy, A.D. 782-799.
(2) Controversy about the Procession of the Holy Spirit.
(3) The Eucharistic Controversy, A.D. 844.
(4) Controversy about the Conception of the Virgin.
(5) The Predestinarian Controversy A.D. 847-868.
(6) The Trinitarian Controversy, A.D. 857.
§ 92. ENDEAVOURS AFTER REFORMATION.
(1) The Carolingian Opposition to Image Worship,
A.D. 790-825.
(2) Agobard of Lyons and Claudius of Turin.
SECOND SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GERMANO-ROMANIC CHURCH,
FROM THE 10TH TO THE 13TH CENTURY.
A.D. 911-1294.
I. The Spread of Christianity.
§ 93. MISSIONARY ENTERPRISES.
(1) The Scandinavian Mission Field.
(2) Denmark.
(3) Sweden.
(4) The Norwegians.
(5) In the North-Western Group of Islands.
(6) The Slavo-Magyar Mission-field.
(7) The Poles.
(8) Hungary.
(9) The Wendish Races.
(10) Pomerania.
(11) Mission Work among the Finns and Lithuanians.
(12) Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland.
(13) The Prussians.
(14) Lithuania.
(15) The Mongolian Mission Field.
(16) The Mission Field of Islam.
§ 94. THE CRUSADES.
(1) The First Crusade, A.D. 1096.
(2) The Second Crusade, A.D. 1147.
(3) The Third Crusade, A.D. 1189.
(4) The Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1217.
(5) The Fifth Crusade, A.D. 1228.
(6) The Sixth, A.D. 1248, and Seventh, A.D. 1270, Crusades.
§ 95. ISLAM AND THE JEWS IN EUROPE.
(1) Islam in Sicily.
(2) Islam in Spain.
(3) The Jews in Europe.
II.--The Hierarchy, the Clergy, and the Monks.
§ 96. THE PAPACY AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE GERMAN
NATIONALITIES.
(1) The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I.,
† A.D. 973.
(2) The Times of Otto II., III., A.D. 973-1002.
(3) Otto III.; Pope Sylvester II.
(4) From Henry II. to the Synod at Sutri, A.D. 1002-1046.
(5) Henry III. and his German Popes, A.D. 1046-1057.
(6) The Papacy under the Control of Hildebrand,
A.D. 1057-1078.
(7) Gregory VII., A.D. 1073-1085.
(8) Gregory’s Contention with Henry IV.
(9) The Central Idea in Gregory’s Policy.
(10) Victor III. and Urban II., A.D. 1086-1099.
(11) Paschalis II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II.,
A.D. 1099-1124.
(12) English Investiture Controversy.
(13) The Times of Lothair III. and Conrad III.,
A.D. 1125-1152.
(14) The Times of Frederick I. and Henry VI.,
A.D. 1152-1190.
(15) Alexander III., A.D. 1159-1181.
(16) The Times of King Henry II. and Cœlestine III.,
A.D. 1154-1198.
(17) Innocent III., A.D. 1198-1216.
(18) ---- Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215.
(19) The Times of Frederick II. and his Successors,
A.D. 1215-1268.
(20) Innocent IV. and his Successors, A.D. 1243-1268.
(21) The Times of the House of Anjou down to Boniface VIII.,
A.D. 1288-1294.
(22) Nicholas III. to Cœlestine V., A.D. 1277-1294.
(23) Temporal Power of the Popes.
§ 97. THE CLERGY.
(1) The Roman College of Cardinals.
(2) The Political Importance of the Superior Clergy.
(3) The Bishops and the Cathedral Chapter.
(4) Endeavours to Reform the Clergy.
(5) The Pataria of Milan.
§ 98. MONASTIC ORDERS AND INSTITUTIONS.
(1) Offshoots of the Benedictines.
1. The Brethren of Clugny.
2. The Congregation of the Camaldolites.
3. The Order of Vallombrosa.
4. The Cistercians.
5. The Congregation of Scottish Monasteries.
(2) New Monkish Orders.
1. The Order of Grammont.
2. The Order of St. Anthony.
3. The Order of Fontevraux.
4. The Order of the Gilbertines.
5. The Carthusian Order.
6. The Premonstratensian Order.
7. The Trinitarian Order.
8. The Cœlestine Order.
(3) The Beginnings of the Franciscan Order down to A.D. 1219.
(4) The Franciscans from A.D. 1219 to A.D. 1223.
(5) The Franciscans from A.D. 1223.
(6) Party Divisions within the Franciscan Order.
(7) The Dominican or Preaching Order.
(8) The Dominican Constitutional Rules.
(9) The Female Orders.
1. Dominican Nuns.
2. Nuns of St. Clara.
(10) The other Mendicant Orders.
(11) Penitential Brotherhoods and Tertiaries of the
Mendicant Orders.
(12) Working Guilds of a Monkish Order.
(13) The Spiritual Order of Knights.
1. The Templars.
2. The Knights of St. John.
3. The Order of Teutonic Knights.
4. The Knights of the Cross.
(14) Bridge-Brothers and Mercedarians.
III. Theological Science and its Controversies.
§ 99. SCHOLASTICISM IN GENERAL.
(1) Dialectic and Mysticism.
(2) The Philosophical Basis of Dialectic Scholasticism.
(3) The Nurseries of Scholasticism.
(4) The Epochs of Scholasticism.
(5) The Canon Law.
(6) Historical Literature.
§ 100. THE _SÆCULUM OBSCURUM_: THE 10TH CENTURY.
(1) Classical Studies--Germany; England.
(2) ---- Italy; France.
§ 101. THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.
(1) The Most Celebrated Schoolmen of this Century.
1. Fulbert.
2. Berengar of Tours.
3. Lanfranc.
4. Hildebert of Tours.
5. Anselm of Canterbury.
6. Anselm of Laon.
7. William of Champeaux.
8. Guibert of Nogent.
(2) Berengar’s Eucharist Controversy, A.D. 1050-1079.
(3) Anselm’s Controversies.
§ 102. THE TWELFTH CENTURY.
(1) The Contest on French Soil.
I. The Dialectic Side of the Gulf--Peter Abælard.
(2) ---- Abælard’s Teachings.
(3) II. The Mystic Side of the Gulf--St. Bernard
of Clairvaux.
(4) III. Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Mysticism.
(5) IV. Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Dialectics.
(6) The Controversy on German Soil.
(7) Theologians of a Pre-eminently Biblical and
Ecclesiastico-Practical Tendency.
1. Alger of Liège.
2. Rupert of Deutz.
3. Hervæus.
(8) 4. John of Salisbury.
5. Walter of St. Victor.
6. Innocent III.
(9) Humanist Philosophers.
§ 103. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
(1) The Writings of Aristotle and his Arabic Interpreters.
(2) Theory of a twofold Truth.
(3) The Appearance of the Mendicant Orders.
(4) Distinguished Franciscan Schoolmen.
(5) Distinguished Dominican Schoolmen--Albert the Great.
(6) ---- Thomas Aquinas.
(7) Reformers of the Scholastic Method--Raimund Lull.
(8) ---- Roger Bacon.
(9) Theologians of a Biblical and Practical Tendency.
1. Cæsarius of Heisterbach.
2. William Peraldus.
3. Hugo of St. Caro.
4. Robert of Sorbon.
5. Raimund Martini.
(10) Precursors of the German Speculative Mystics.
IV. The Church and the People.
§ 104. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND ART.
(1) The Liturgy and the Sermon.
(2) Definition and Number of the Sacraments.
(3) The Sacrament of the Altar.
(4) Penance.
(5) Extreme Unction.
(6) The Sacrament of Marriage.
(7) New Festivals.
(8) The Veneration of Saints.
(9) St. Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins.
(10) Hymnology.
(11) Church Music.
(12) Ecclesiastical Architecture.
(13) Free Mason Lodges.
(14) Statuary and Painting.
§ 105. NATIONAL CUSTOMS AND THE NATIONAL LITERATURE.
(1) Knighthood and the Peace of God.
(2) Popular Customs.
(3) Two Royal Saints.
(4) Evidences of Sainthood.
1. Stigmatization.
2. Bilocation.
(5) Religious Culture of the People.
(6) The National Literature.
§ 106. CHURCH DISCIPLINE, INDULGENCES, AND ASCETICISM.
(1) Ban and Interdict.
(2) Indulgences.
(3) The Church Doctrine of the Hereafter.
(4) Flagellation.
§ 107. FEMALE MYSTICS.
(1) Two Rhenish Prophetesses of the 12th Century.
(2) Three Thuringian Prophetesses of the 13th Century.
V. Heretical Opposition to Ecclesiastical Authority.
§ 108. THE PROTESTERS AGAINST THE CHURCH.
(1) The Cathari.
(2) ---- Their Theological Systems.
(3) The Pasagians.
(4) Pantheistic Heretics.
1. Amalrich of Bena.
2. David of Dinant.
3. The Ortlibarians.
(5) Apocalyptic Heretics.
(6) Ghibelline Joachites.
(7) Revolutionary Reformers.
1. The Petrobrusians.
2. Arnold of Brescia.
(8) 3. The Pastorelles.
4. The Apostolic Brothers.
(9) Reforming Enthusiasts.
1. Tanchelm.
2. Eon de Stella.
(10) The Waldensians.
1. Their Origin.
(11) 2. Their Divisions.
(12) 3. Attempts at Catholicizing.
(13) 4. The French Societies.
(14) ---- An Alternate Origin.
(15) 5. The Lombard-German Branch.
(16) 6. Relations between the Waldensians and Older
and Contemporary Sects.
§ 109. THE CHURCH AGAINST THE PROTESTERS.
(1) The Albigensian Crusade, A.D. 1209-1229.
(2) The Inquisition.
(3) Conrad of Marburg and the Stedingers.
THIRD SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GERMANO-ROMANIC CHURCH IN THE
14TH AND 15TH CENTURIES (A.D. 1294-1517).
I. The Hierarchy, Clergy, and Monks.
§ 110. THE PAPACY.
(1) Boniface VIII. and Benedict XI., A.D. 1294-1304.
(2) The Papacy during the Babylonian Exile, A.D. 1305-1377.
(3) John XXII., A.D. 1316-1334.
(4) Benedict XII., A.D. 1334-1342.
(5) Innocent VI. to Gregory XI., A.D. 1352-1378.
(6) The Papal Schism and the Council of Pisa, A.D. 1378-1410.
(7) The Council of Constance and Martin V., A.D. 1410-1431.
(8) Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basel, A.D. 1431-1449.
(9) Pragmatic Sanction, A.D. 1438.
(10) Nicholas V. to Pius II., A.D. 1447-1464.
(11) Paul II., Sixtus IV. and Innocent VII., A.D. 1464-1492.
(12) Alexander VI., A.D. 1492-1503.
(13) Julius II., A.D. 1503-1513.
(14) Leo X., A.D. 1513-1521.
(15) Papal Claims to Sovereignty.
(16) The Papal Curia.
§ 111. THE CLERGY.
(1) The Moral Condition of the Clergy.
(2) Commendator Abbots.
§ 112. MONASTIC ORDERS AND SOCIETIES.
(1) The Benedictine Orders.
(2) The Franciscans.
(3) The Observants and Conventuals.
(4) The Dominicans.
(5) The Augustinians.
(6) John von Staupitz.
(7) Overthrow of the Templars.
(8) New Orders.
1. Hieronymites.
2. Jesuates.
3. Minimi.
4. Nuns of St. Bridget.
5. Annunciate Order.
(9) The Brothers of the Common Life.
II. Theological Science.
§ 113. SCHOLASTICISM AND ITS REFORMERS.
(1) John Duns Scotus.
(2) Thomists and Scotists.
(3) Nominalists and Realists.
(4) Casuistry.
(5) The Founder of Natural Theology--Raimund of Sabunde.
(6) Nicholas of Cusa.
(7) Biblical and Practical Theologians.
1. Nicholas of Lyra.
2. Antonine of Florence.
3. John Trithemius.
§ 114. THE GERMAN MYSTICS.
(1) Meister Eckhart.
(2) Mystics of Upper Germany after Eckhart.
(3) The Friend of God in the Uplands.
(4) Nicholas of Basel.
(5) Henry Suso.
(6) Henry of Nördlingen.
(7) Mystics of the Netherlands.
1. John of Ruysbroek.
2. Hendrik Mande.
3. Gerlach Peters.
4. Thomas à Kempis.
III. The Church and the People.
§ 115A. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.
(1) Fasts and Festivals.
(2) Preaching.
(3) The _Biblia Pauperum_.
(4) The Bible in the Vernacular.
(5) Catechisms and Prayer Books.
(6) The Dance of Death.
(7) Hymnology.
(8) Church Music.
(9) Legendary Relics.
§ 115B. NATIONAL LITERATURE AND ECCLESIASTICAL ART.
(10) The Italian National Literature.
(11) The German National Literature.
(12) The Sacred Drama.
(13) Architecture and Painting.
§ 116. POPULAR MOVEMENTS.
(1) Two National Saints.
(2) The Maid of Orleans, A.D. 1428-1431.
(3) Lollards, Flagellants, and Dancers.
(4) The Friends of God.
(5) Pantheistic Libertine Societies.
§ 117. CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
(1) Indulgences.
(2) The Inquisition.
(3) The Bull “_In Cœna Domini_.”
(4) Prosecution of Witches.
IV. Attempts at Reformation.
§ 118. ATTEMPTED REFORMS IN CHURCH POLITY.
(1) The Literary War between Imperialists and Curialists
in the 14th Century.
(2) ---- Continued.
(3) Reforming Councils of the 15th Century.
(4) Friends of Reform in France during the 15th Century.
1. Peter d’Ailly.
2. Jean Charlier (Gerson).
3. Nicholas of Clemanges.
4. Louis d’Aleman.
(5) Friends of Reform in Germany.
1. Henry of Langenstein.
2. Theodorich or Dietrich of Niem.
3. Gregory of Heimburg.
4. Jacob of Jüterboyk [Jüterbock].
5. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa.
6. Felix Hemmerlin.
7. The Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund.
(6) An Italian Apostate from the Basel Liberal
Party--Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini.
(7) Reforms in Church Policy in Spain.
§ 119. EVANGELICAL EFFORTS AT REFORM.
(1) Wiclif and the Wiclifites.
(2) Precursors of the Hussite Movement.
1. Conrad of Waldhausen.
2. John Milicz of Cremsier.
3. Matthias of Janow.
(3) John Huss of Hussinecz.
(4) ---- Rector of the University of Prague.
(5) ---- Council of Constance; Trial; Execution.
(6) ---- His Teachings.
(7) Calixtines and Taborites.
(8) The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren.
(9) The Waldensians.
1. Lombard-German Waldensians.
(9A) 2. French Waldensians.
(10) The Dutch Reformers.
1. John Pupper of Goch.
2. John Ruchrath of Wesel.
3. John Wessel.
4. Nicholas Russ.
(11) An Italian Reformer--Jerome Savonarola.
§ 120. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.
(1) Italian Humanists.
(2) German Humanism--University of Erfurt.
(3) ---- Other Schools.
(4) John Reuchlin.
(5) _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum._
(6) Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.
(7) Humanism in England.
(8) Humanism in France and Spain.
(9) Humanism and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century.
THIRD DIVISION.
History of the Development of the Church under
Modern European Forms of Civilization.
§ 121. CHARACTER AND DISTRIBUTION OF MODERN CHURCH HISTORY.
FIRST SECTION.
CHURCH HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
I. The Reformation.
§ 122. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE WITTENBERG REFORMATION.
(1) Luther’s Years of Preparation.
(2) Luther’s Theses of A.D. 1517.
(3) Prierias, Cajetan, and Miltitz, A.D. 1518, 1519.
(4) The Leipzig Disputation, A.D. 1519.
(5) Philip Melanchthon.
(6) George Spalatin.
§ 123. LUTHER’S PERIOD OF CONFLICT, A.D. 1520, 1521.
(1) Luther’s Three Chief Reformation Writings, A.D. 1520.
(2) The Papal Bull of Excommunication, A.D. 1520.
(3) Erasmus, A.D. 1520.
(4) Luther’s Controversy with Emser, A.D. 1519-1521.
(5) The Emperor Charles V.
(6) The Diet at Worms, A.D. 1521.
(7) Luther at Wittenberg after the Diet.
(8) The Wartburg Exile, A.D. 1521, 1522.
(9) The Attitude of Frederick the Wise to the Reformation.
§ 124. DETERIORATION AND PURIFICATION OF THE WITTENBERG
REFORMATION, A.D. 1522-1525.
(1) The Wittenberg Fanaticism, A.D. 1521, 1522.
(2) Franz von Sickingen, A.D. 1522, 1523.
(3) Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, A.D. 1524, 1525.
(4) Thomas Münzer, A.D. 1523, 1524.
(5) The Peasant War, A.D. 1524, 1525.
§ 125. FRIENDS AND FOES OF LUTHER’S DOCTRINE, A.D. 1522-1526.
(1) Spread of Evangelical Views.
(2) “The Sum of Holy Scripture” and its Author.
(3) Henry VIII. and Erasmus.
(4) Thomas Murner.
(5) “_Onus ecclesiæ._”
§ 126. DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMATION IN THE EMPIRE, A.D. 1522-1526.
(1) The Diet at Nuremberg, A.D. 1522, 1523.
(2) The Diet at Nuremberg, A.D. 1524.
(3) The Convention at Regensburg, A.D. 1524.
(4) The Evangelical Nobles, A.D. 1524.
(5) The Torgau League, A.D. 1526.
(6) The Diet of Spires, A.D. 1526.
§ 127. ORGANIZATION OF THE EVANGELICAL PROVINCIAL CHURCHES,
A.D. 1526-1529.
(1) The Organization of the Church of the Saxon
Electorate, A.D. 1527-1529.
(2) The Organization of the Hessian Churches,
A.D. 1526-1528.
(3) Organization of other German Provincial Churches,
A.D. 1528-1530.
(4) The Reformation in the Cities of Northern Germany,
A.D. 1524-1531.
§ 128. MARTYRS FOR EVANGELICAL TRUTH, A.D. 1521-1529.
§ 129. LUTHER’S PRIVATE AND PUBLIC LIFE, A.D. 1523-1529.
(1) Luther’s Literary Works.
(2) Döllinger’s View of Luther.
§ 130. THE REFORMATION IN GERMAN SWITZERLAND, A.D. 1519-1531.
(1) Ulrich Zwingli.
(2) The Reformation in Zürich, A.D. 1519-1525.
(3) Reformation in Basel, A.D. 1520-1525.
(4) The Reformation in the other Cantons, A.D. 1520-1525.
(5) Anabaptist Outbreak, A.D. 1525.
(6) Disputation at Baden, A.D. 1526.
(7) Disputation at Bern, A.D. 1528.
(8) Complete Victory of the Reformation at Basel,
St. Gall, and Schaffhausen, A.D. 1529.
(9) The first Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1529.
(10) The Second Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1531.
§ 131. THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSY, A.D. 1525-1529.
§ 132. THE PROTEST AND CONFESSION OF THE EVANGELICAL NOBLES,
A.D. 1527-1530.
(1) The Pack Incident, A.D. 1527, 1528.
(2) The Emperor’s Attitude, A.D. 1527-1529.
(3) The Diet at Spires, A.D. 1529.
(4) The Marburg Conference, A.D. 1529.
(5) The Convention of Schwabach and the Landgrave Philip.
(6) The Diet of Augsburg, A.D. 1530.
(7) The Augsburg Confession, 25th June, A.D. 1530.
(8) The Conclusions of the Diet of Augsburg.
§ 133. INCIDENTS OF THE YEARS A.D. 1531-1536.
(1) The Founding of the Schmalcald League,
A.D. 1530, 1531.
(2) The Peace of Nuremberg, A.D. 1532.
(3) The Evangelization of Württemberg,
A.D. 1534, 1535.
(4) The Reformation in Anhalt and Pomerania,
A.D. 1532-1534.
(5) The Reformation in Westphalia, A.D. 1532-1534.
(6) Disturbances at Münster, A.D. 1534, 1535.
(7) Extension of the Schmalcald league, A.D. 1536.
(8) The Wittenberg Concordat of A.D. 1536.
§ 134. INCIDENTS OF THE YEARS A.D. 1537-1539.
(1) The Schmalcald Articles, A.D. 1537.
(2) The League of Nuremberg, A.D. 1538.
(3) The Frankfort Interim, A.D. 1539.
(4) The Reformation in Albertine Saxony, A.D. 1539.
(5) The Reformation in Brandenburg and Neighbouring
States, A.D. 1539.
§ 135. UNION ATTEMPTS OF A.D. 1540-1546.
(1) The Double Marriage of the Landgrave, A.D. 1540.
(2) The Religious Conference at Worms, A.D. 1540.
(3) The Religious Conference at Regensburg, A.D. 1541.
(4) The Regensburg Declaration, A.D. 1541.
(5) The Naumburg Bishopric, A.D. 1541, 1542.
(6) The Reformation in Brunswick and the Palatinate,
A.D. 1542-1546.
(7) The Reformation in the Electorate of Cologne,
A.D. 1542-1544.
(8) The Emperor’s Difficulties, A.D. 1543, 1544.
(9) Diet at Spires, A.D. 1544.
(10) Differences between the Emperor and the Protestant
Nobles, A.D. 1545, 1546.
(11) Luther’s Death, A.D. 1546.
§ 136. THE SCHMALCALD WAR, THE INTERIM, AND THE COUNCIL,
A.D. 1546-1551.
(1) Preparations for the Schmalcald War, A.D. 1546.
(2) The Campaign on the Danube, A.D. 1546.
(3) The Campaign on the Elbe, A.D. 1547.
(4) The Council of Trent, A.D. 1545-1547.
(5) The Augsburg Interim, A.D. 1548.
(6) The Execution of the Interim.
(7) The Leipzig or Little Interim, A.D. 1549.
(8) The Council again at Trent, A.D. 1551.
§ 137A. MAURICE AND THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG A.D. 1550-1555.
(1) The State of Matters in A.D. 1550.
(2) The Elector Maurice, A.D. 1551.
(3) The Compact of Passau, A.D. 1552.
(4) Death of Maurice, A.D. 1553.
(5) The Religious Peace of Augsburg, A.D. 1555.
§ 137B. GERMANY AFTER THE RELIGIOUS PEACE.
(6) The Worms Consultation, A.D. 1557.
(7) Second Attempt at Reformation in the Electorate
of Cologne, A.D. 1582.
(8) The German Emperors, A.D. 1556-1612.
§ 138. THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
(1) Calvin’s Predecessors, A.D. 1526-1535.
(2) Calvin before his Genevan Ministry.
(3) Calvin’s First Ministry in Geneva, A.D. 1536-1538.
(4) Calvin’s Second Ministry in Geneva, A.D. 1541-1564.
(5) Calvin’s Writings.
(6) Calvin’s Doctrine.
(7) The Victory of Calvinism over Zwinglianism.
(8) Calvin’s Successor in Geneva.
§ 139. THE REFORMATION IN OTHER LANDS.
(1) Sweden.
(2) Denmark and Norway.
(3) Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia.
(4) England--Henry VIII.
(5) ---- Edward VI.
(6) ---- Elizabeth.
(7) Ireland.
(8) Scotland.
(9) ---- John Knox.
(10) ---- Queen Mary Stuart.
(11) ---- John Knox and Queen Mary Stuart.
(12) The Netherlands.
(13) France.
---- Francis I.
---- Henry II.
(14) ---- Huguenots.
---- Francis II.
---- Charles IX.
(15) ---- Persecution of the Huguenots.
(16) ---- The Bloody Marriage--Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
(17) ---- Henry III.
---- Henry IV.
---- Edict of Nantes.
(18) Poland.
(19) Bohemia and Moravia.
(20) Hungary and Transylvania.
(21) Spain.
(22) Italy.
(23) ---- Aonio Paleario.
(24) 1. Bernardino Ochino.
2. Peter Martyr Vermilius.
3. Peter Paul Vergerius.
4. Cœlius Secundus Curio.
5. Galeazzo Carraccioli.
6. Fulvia Olympia Morata.
(25) The Protestantizing of the Waldensians.
(26) Attempt at Protestantizing the Eastern Church.
II. The Churches of the Reformation.
§ 140. THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH.
§ 141. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH.
(1) The Antinomian Controversy, A.D. 1537-1541.
(2) The Osiander Controversy, A.D. 1549-1556.
(3) Æpinus Controversy; Kargian Controversy.
(4) The Philippists and their Opponents.
(5) The Adiaphorist Controversy, A.D. 1548-1555.
(6) The Majorist Controversy, A.D. 1551-1562.
(7) The Synergistic Controversy, A.D. 1555-1567.
(8) The Flacian Controversy about Original Sin,
A.D. 1560-1575.
(9) The Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.
(10) Cryptocalvinism in its First Stage, A.D. 1552-1574.
(11) The Frankfort Compact, A.D. 1558, and the Naumburg
Assembly of Princes, A.D. 1561.
(12) The Formula of Concord, A.D. 1577.
(13) Second Stage of Cryptocalvinism, A.D. 1586-1592.
(14) The Huber Controversy, A.D. 1588-1595.
(15) The Hofmann Controversy in Helmstadt, A.D. 1598.
§ 142. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP, LIFE, AND SCIENCE IN THE
LUTHERAN CHURCH.
(1) The Ecclesiastical Constitution.
(2) Public Worship and Art.
(3) Church Song--Luther and early Authors.
(4) ---- Later Authors.
(5) Chorale Singing.
(6) Theological Science.
(7) German National Literature.
(8) Missions to the Heathen.
§ 143. THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCH.
(1) The Ecclesiastical Constitution.
(2) Public Worship.
(3) The English Puritans.
(4) ---- The Brownists.
(5) Theological Science.
(6) Philosophy.
(7) A Missionary Enterprise.
§ 144. CALVINIZING OF GERMAN LUTHERAN NATIONAL CHURCHES.
(1) The Palatinate, A.D. 1560.
(2) Bremen, A.D. 1562.
(3) Anhalt, A.D. 1597.
III. THE DEFORMATION.
§ 145. CHARACTER OF THE DEFORMATION.
§ 146. MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM.
(1) Schwenkfeld and his Followers.
(2) Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Weigel.
(3) Franck, Thamer, and Bruno.
(4) The Pantheistic Libertine Sects of the Spirituals.
(5) The Familists.
§ 147. ANABAPTISM.
(1) The Anabaptist Movement in General.
(2) Keller’s View of Anabaptist History.
(3) The Swiss Anabaptists.
(4) The South German Anabaptists.
(5) The Moravian Anabaptists.
(6) The Venetian Anabaptists.
(7) The older Apostles of Anabaptism in the North-West
of Germany.
1. Melchior Hoffmann.
2. Melchior Ring.
(8) Jan Matthys of Haarlem.
(9) The Münster Catastrophe, A.D. 1534, 1535.
(10) Menno Simons and the Mennonites.
§ 148. ANTITRINITARIANS AND UNITARIANS.
(1) Anabaptist Antitrinitarians in Germany.
(2) Michael Servetus.
(3) Italian and other Antitrinitarians before Socinus.
(4) The Two Socini and the Socinians.
IV. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION.
§ 149. THE INTERNAL STRENGTHENING AND REVIVAL OF THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH.
(1) The Popes before the Council.
(2) The Popes of the Time of the Council.
(3) The Popes after the Council.
(4) Papal Infallibility.
(5) The Prophecy of St. Malachi.
(6) Reformation of Old Monkish Orders.
(7) New Orders for Home Missions.
(8) The Society of Jesus--Founding of the Order.
(9) ---- Constitution.
(10) ---- The Doctrinal and Moral System.
(11) Jesuit Influence upon Worship and Superstition.
(12) Educational Methods and Institutions of the Jesuits.
(13) Theological Controversies.
(14) Theological Literature.
(15) Art and Poetry.
(16) The Spanish Mystics.
(17) Practical Christian life.
§ 150. FOREIGN MISSIONS.
(1) Missions to the Heathen--East Indies and China.
(2) ---- Japan.
(3) ---- America.
(4) Schismatical Churches of the East.
§ 151. ATTEMPTED REGENERATION OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM.
(1) Attempts at Regeneration in Germany.
(2) Throughout Europe.
(3) Russia and the United Greeks.
SECOND SECTION.
CHURCH HISTORY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
I. Relations between the Different Churches.
§ 152. EAST AND WEST.
(1) Roman Catholic Hopes.
(2) Calvinistic Hopes.
(3) Orthodox Constancy.
§ 153. CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM.
(1) Conversions of Protestant Princes.
(2) The Restoration in Germany and the Neighbouring States.
(3) Livonia and Hungary.
(4) The Huguenots in France.
(5) The Waldensians in Piedmont.
(6) The Catholics in England and Ireland.
(7) Union Efforts.
(8) The Lehnin Prophecy.
§ 154. LUTHERANISM AND CALVINISM.
(1) Calvinizing of Hesse-Cassel, A.D. 1605-1646.
(2) Calvinizing of Lippe, A.D. 1602.
(3) The Elector of Brandenburg becomes Calvinist, A.D. 1613.
(4) Union Attempts.
§ 155. ANGLICANISM AND PURITANISM.
(1) The First Two Stuarts.
(2) The Commonwealth and the Protector.
(3) The Restoration and the Act of Toleration.
II. The Roman Catholic Church.
§ 156. THE PAPACY, MONKERY, AND FOREIGN MISSIONS.
(1) The Papacy.
(2) The Jesuits and the Republic of Venice.
(3) The Gallican Liberties.
(4) Galileo and the Inquisition.
(5) The Controversy on the Immaculate Conception.
(6) The Devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
(7) New Congregations and Orders.
1. Benedictine Congregation of St. Banne.
2. Benedictine Congregation of St. Maur.
3. The Fathers of the Oratory of Jesus.
4. The Piarists.
5. The Order of the Visitation of Mary.
(8) 6. The Priests of the Missions and Sisters
of Charity.
7. The Trappists.
8. The English Nuns.
(9) The Propaganda.
(10) Foreign Missions.
(11) In the East Indies.
(12) In China.
(13) Trade and Industry of the Jesuits.
(14) An Apostate to Judaism.
§ 157. QUIETISM AND JANSENISM.
(1) Francis de Sales and Madame Chantal.
(2) Michael Molinos.
(3) Madame Guyon and Fénelon.
(4) Mysticism Tinged with Theosophy and Pantheism.
(5) Jansenism in its first Stage.
§ 158. SCIENCE AND ART IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
(1) Theological Science.
(2) Church History.
(3) Art and Poetry.
III. The Lutheran Church.
§ 159. ORTHODOXY AND ITS BATTLES.
(1) Christological Controversies.
1. The Cryptist and Kenotist Controversy.
2. The Lütkemann Controversy.
(2) The Syncretist Controversy.
(3) The Pietist Controversy in its First Stage.
(4) Theological Literature.
(5) Dogmatics.
§ 160. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
(1) Mysticism and Asceticism.
(2) Mysticism and Theosophy.
(3) Sacred Song.
(4) ---- Its 17th Century Transition.
(5) Sacred Music.
(6) The Christian Life of the People.
(7) Missions.
IV. The Reformed Church.
§ 161. THEOLOGY AND ITS BATTLES.
(1) Preliminaries of the Arminian Controversy.
(2) The Arminian Controversy.
(3) Consequences of the Arminian Controversy.
(4) The Cocceian and Cartesian Controversies.
(5) ---- Continued.
(6) Theological Literature.
(7) Dogmatic Theology.
(8) The Apocrypha Controversy.
§ 162. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
(1) England and Scotland.
(2) ---- Political and Social Revolutionists.
(3) ---- Devotional Literature.
(4) The Netherlands.
(5) ---- Voetians and Cocceians.
(6) France, Germany, and Switzerland.
(7) Foreign Missions.
V. Anti- and Extra-Ecclesiastical Parties.
§ 163. SECTS AND FANATICS.
(1) The Socinians.
(2) The Baptists of the Continent.
1. The Dutch Baptists.
2. The Moravian Baptists.
(3) The English Baptists.
(4) The Quakers.
(5) ---- Continued.
(6) The Quaker Constitution.
(7) Labadie and the Labadists.
(8) ---- Continued.
(9) Fanatical Sects.
(10) Russian Sects.
§ 164. PHILOSOPHERS AND FREETHINKERS.
(1) Philosophy.
(2) ---- Continued.
(3) Freethinkers--England.
(4) ---- Germany and France.
THIRD SECTION.
CHURCH HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
I. The Catholic Church in East and West.
§ 165. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
(1) The Popes.
(2) Old and New Orders.
(3) Foreign Missions.
(4) The Counter-Reformation.
(5) In France.
(6) Conversions.
(7) The Second Stage of Jansenism.
(8) The Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands.
(9) Suppression of the Order of Jesuits, A.D. 1773.
(10) Anti-hierarchical Movements in Germany and Italy.
(11) Theological Literature.
(12) In Italy.
(13) The German-Catholic Contribution to the Illumination.
(14) The French Contribution to the Illumination.
(15) The French Revolution.
(16) The Pseudo-Catholics--The Abrahamites or
Bohemian Deists.
(17) ---- The Frankists.
§ 166. THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES.
(1) The Russian State Church.
(2) Russian Sects.
(3) The Abyssinian Church.
II. The Protestant Churches.
§ 167. THE LUTHERAN CHURCH BEFORE “THE ILLUMINATION.”
(1) The Pietist Controversies after the Founding of the
Halle University.
(2) ---- Controversial Doctrines.
(3) Theology.
(4) Unionist Efforts.
(5) Theories of Ecclesiastical Law.
(6) Church Song.
(7) Sacred Music.
(8) The Christian Life and Devotional Literature.
(9) Missions to the Heathen.
§ 168. THE CHURCH OF THE MORAVIAN BRETHREN.
(1) The Founder of the Moravian Brotherhood.
(2) The Founding of the Brotherhood.
(3) The Development of the Brotherhood down to
Zinzendorf’s Death, A.D. 1727-1760.
(4) Zinzendorf’s Plan and Work.
(5) Numerous Extravagances.
(6) Zinzendorf’s Greatness.
(7) The Brotherhood under Spangenberg’s Administration.
(8) The Doctrinal Peculiarities of the Brotherhood.
(9) The Peculiarities of Worship among the Brethren.
(10) Christian Life of the Brotherhood.
(11) Missions to the Heathen.
§ 169. THE REFORMED CHURCH BEFORE THE “ILLUMINATION.”
(1) The German Reformed Church.
(2) The Reformed Church in Switzerland.
(3) The Dutch Reformed Church.
(4) Methodism.
(5) ---- Continued.
(6) Theological Literature.
§ 170. NEW SECTS AND FANATICS.
(1) Fanatics and Separatists in Germany.
(2) The Inspired Societies in Wetterau.
(3) J. C. Dippel.
(4) Separatists of Immoral Tendency.
(5) Swedenborgianism.
(6) New Baptist Sects.
(7) New Quaker Sects.
(8) Predestinarian-Mystical Sects.
§ 171. RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND LITERATURE OF THE “ILLUMINATION.”
(1) Deism, Arianism, and Unitarianism in the English Church.
1. The Deists.
2. The So-called Arians.
3. The Later Unitarians.
(2) Freemasons.
(3) The German “Illumination.”
1. Its Precursors.
(4) 2. The Age of Frederick the Great.
(5) 3. The Wöllner Reaction.
(6) The Transition Theology.
(7) The Rationalistic Theology.
(8) Supernaturalism.
(9) Mysticism and Theosophy.
(10) The German Philosophy.
(11) The German National Literature.
(12) Pestalozzi.
§ 172. CHURCH LIFE IN THE PERIOD OF THE “ILLUMINATION.”
(1) The Hymnbook and Church Music.
(2) Religious Characters.
(3) Religious Sects.
(4) The Rationalistic “Illumination” outside of Germany.
(5) Missionary Societies and Missionary Enterprise.
FOURTH SECTION.
CHURCH HISTORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
I. General and Introductory.
§ 173. SURVEY OF RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY.
§ 174. NINETEENTH CENTURY CULTURE IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY
AND THE CHURCH.
(1) The German Philosophy.
(2) ---- Continued.
(3) The Sciences; Medicine.
(4) Jurists; Historians; Geography; Philology.
(5) National Literature--Germany.
(6) ---- Continued.
(7) ---- Other Countries.
(8) Popular Education.
(9) Art.
(10) Music and the Drama.
§ 175. INTERCOURSE AND NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE CHURCHES.
(1) Romanizing Tendencies among Protestants.
(2) The Attitude of Catholicism toward Protestantism.
(3) Romish Controversy.
(4) Roman Catholic Union Schemes.
(5) Greek Orthodox Union Schemes.
(6) Old Catholic Union Schemes.
(7) Conversions.
(8) ---- The Mortara Affair.
(9) ---- Other Conversions.
(10) The Luther Centenary, A.D. 1883.
II. Protestantism in General.
§ 176. RATIONALISM AND PIETISM.
(1) Rationalism.
(2) Pietism.
(3) The Königsberg Religious Movement, A.D. 1835-1842.
(4) The Bender Controversy.
§ 177. EVANGELICAL UNION AND LUTHERAN SEPARATION.
(1) The Evangelical Union.
(2) The Lutheran Separation.
(3) The Separation within the Separation.
§ 178. EVANGELICAL CONFEDERATION.
(1) The Gustavus Adolphus Society.
(2) The Eisenach Conference.
(3) The Evangelical Alliance.
(4) The Evangelical Church Alliance.
(5) The Evangelical League.
§ 179. LUTHERANISM, MELANCHTHONIANISM, AND CALVINISM.
(1) Lutheranism within the Union.
(2) Lutheranism outside of the Union.
(3) Melanchthonianism and Calvinism.
§ 180. THE “_PROTESTANTENVEREIN_.”
(1) The Protestant Assembly.
(2) The “_Protestantenverein_” Propaganda.
(3) Sufferings Endured.
(4) ---- In Berlin.
(5) ---- In Schleswig Holstein.
§ 181. DISPUTES ABOUT FORMS OF WORSHIP.
(1) The Hymnbook.
(2) The Book of Chorales.
(3) The Liturgy.
(4) The Holy Scriptures.
§ 182. PROTESTANT THEOLOGY IN GERMANY.
(1) Schleiermacher, A.D. 1768-1834.
(2) The Older Rationalistic Theology.
(3) Historico-Critical Rationalism.
(4) Supernaturalism.
(5) Rational Supernaturalism.
(6) Speculative Theology.
(7) The Tübingen School.
(8) Strauss.
(9) The Mediating Theology.
(10) Lutheran Theologians.
(11) Old Testament Exegetes.
(12) University Teachers.
(13) The Lutheran Confessional Theology.
(14) ---- Continued.
(15) ---- Continued.
(16) Reformed Confessionalism.
(17) The Free Protestant Theology.
(18) In the Old Testament Department.
(19) Dogmatists.
(20) Ritschl and his School.
(21) ---- Opponents.
(22) Writers on Constitutional Law and History.
§ 183. HOME MISSIONS.
(1) Institutions.
(2) The Order of St. John.
(3) The Itinerant Preacher Gustav Werner in Württemberg.
(4) Bible Societies.
§ 184. FOREIGN MISSIONS.
(1) Missionary Societies.
(2) Europe and America.
(3) Africa.
(4) ---- Livingstone and Stanley.
(5) Asia.
(6) China.
(7) Polynesia and Australia.
(8) Missions to the Jews.
(9) Missions among the Eastern Churches.
III. Catholicism in General.
§ 185. THE PAPACY AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH.
(1) The First Four Popes of the Century.
(2) Pius IX., A.D. 1846-1878.
(3) The Overthrow of the Papal States.
(4) The Prisoner of the Vatican, A.D. 1870-1878.
(5) Leo XIII.
§ 186. VARIOUS ORDERS AND ASSOCIATIONS.
(1) The Society of Jesus and Related Orders.
(2) Other Orders and Congregations.
(3) The Pius Verein.
(4) The Various German Unions.
(5) Omnipotence of Capital.
(6) The Catholic Missions.
(7) ---- Mission Societies.
§ 187. LIBERAL CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS.
(1) Mystical-Irenical Tendencies.
(2) Evangelical-Revival Tendencies.
(3) Liberal-Scientific Tendencies.
(4) Radical-Liberalistic Tendencies.
(5) Attempts at Reform in Church Government.
(6) Attempts to Found National Catholic Churches.
(7) National Italian Church.
(8) The Frenchman, Charles Loyson.
§ 188. CATHOLIC ULTRAMONTANISM.
(1) The Ultramontane Propaganda.
(2) Miracles.
(3) Stigmatizations.
(4) ---- Louise Lateau.
(5) Pseudo-Stigmatizations.
(6) Manifestations of the Mother of God in France.
(7) Manifestations of the Mother of God in Germany.
(8) Canonizations.
(9) Discoveries of Relics.
(10) The blood of St. Januarius.
(11) The Leaping Procession at Echternach.
(12) The Devotion of the Sacred Heart.
(13) Ultramontane Amulets.
(14) Ultramontane Pulpit Eloquence.
§ 189. THE VATICAN COUNCIL.
(1) Preliminary History of the Council.
(2) The Organization of the Council.
(3) The Proceedings of the Council.
(4) Acceptance of the Decrees of the Council.
§ 190. THE OLD CATHOLICS.
(1) Formation and Development of the Old Catholic Church
in the German Empire.
(2) ---- Continued.
(3) The Old Catholics in other Lands.
§ 191. CATHOLIC THEOLOGY, ESPECIALLY IN GERMANY.
(1) Hermes and his School.
(2) Baader and his School.
(3) Günther and his School.
(4) John Adam Möhler.
(5) John Jos. Ignat. von Döllinger.
(6) The Chief Representatives of Systematic Theology.
(7) The Chief Representatives of Historical Theology.
(8) The Chief Representatives of Exegetical Theology.
(9) The Chief Representatives of the New Scholasticism.
(10) The Munich Congress of Catholic Scholars, 1863.
(11) Theological Journals.
(12) The Popes and Theological Science.
IV. Relation of Church to the Empire and to the States.
§ 192. THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION.
(1) The Imperial Commission’s Decree, 1803.
(2) The Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine.
(3) The Vienna Congress and the Concordat.
(4) The Frankfort Parliament and the Würzburg Bishops’
Congress of 1848.
§ 193. PRUSSIA.
(1) The Catholic Church to the Close of the Cologne
Conflict.
(2) The Golden Age of Prussian Ultramontanism, 1841-1871.
(3) The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia down to 1848.
(4) The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia, 1848-1872.
(5) The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia, 1872-1880.
(6) ---- Continued.
(7) The Evangelical Church in the Annexed Provinces.
(8) ---- In Hanover.
(9) ---- In Hesse.
§ 194. THE NORTH GERMAN SMALLER STATES.
(1) The Kingdom of Saxony.
(2) The Saxon Duchies.
(3) The Kingdom of Hanover.
(4) Hesse.
(5) Brunswick, Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Lippe-Detmold.
(6) Mecklenburg.
§ 195. BAVARIA.
(1) The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under
Maximilian I., 1799-1825.
(2) The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under
Louis I., 1825-1848.
(3) The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under
Maximilian II., 1848-1864, and Louis II.
(4) Attempts at Reorganization of the Lutheran Church.
(5) The Church of the Union in the Palatine of the Rhine.
§ 196. THE SOUTH GERMAN SMALLER STATES AND RHENISH ALSACE
AND LORRAINE.
(1) The Upper Rhenish Church Province.
(2) The Catholic Troubles in Baden down to 1873.
(3) The Protestant Troubles in Baden.
(4) Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau.
(5) In Protestant Württemberg.
(6) The Catholic Church in Württemberg.
(7) The Imperial Territory of Alsace and Lorraine
since 1871.
§ 197. THE SO-CALLED KULTURKAMPF IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE.
(1) The Aggression of Ultramontanism.
(2) Conflicts Occasioned by Protection of the Old
Catholics, 1871-1872.
(3) Struggles over Educational Questions, 1872-1873.
(4) The Kanzelparagraph and the Jesuit law, 1871-1872.
(5) The Prussian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1873-1875.
(6) Opposition in the States to the Prussian May Laws.
(7) Share in the Conflict taken by the Pope.
(8) The Conflict about the Encyclical _Quod nunquam_
of 1875.
(9) Papal Overtures for Peace.
(10) Proof of the Prussian Government’s willingness
to be Reconciled, 1880-1881.
(11) Conciliatory Negotiations, 1882-1884.
(12) Resumption on both sides of Conciliatory Measures,
1885-1886.
(13) Definitive Conclusion of Peace, 1887.
(14) Independent Procedure of the other German Governments.
1. Bavaria.
2. Württemberg.
3. Baden.
(15) 4. Hesse-Darmstadt.
5. Saxony.
§ 198. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
(1) The Zillerthal Emigration.
(2) The Concordat.
(3) The Protestant Church in Cisleithan Austria.
(4) The Clerical Landtag Opposition in the Tyrol.
(5) The Austrian Universities.
(6) The Austrian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1874-1876.
(7) The Protestant Church in the Transleithan Provinces.
§ 199. SWITZERLAND.
(1) The Catholic Church in Switzerland till 1870.
(2) The Geneva Conflict, 1870-1883.
(3) Conflict in the Diocese of Basel-Soleure, 1870-1880.
(4) The Protestant Church in German Switzerland.
(5) The Protestant Church in French Switzerland.
§ 200. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.
(1) The United Netherlands.
(2) The Kingdom of Holland.
(3) ---- Continued.
(4) ---- Continued.
(5) The Kingdom of Belgium.
(6) ---- Continued.
(7) ---- Continued.
(8) The Protestant Church.
§ 201. THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES.
(1) Denmark.
(2) Sweden.
(3) Norway.
§ 202. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
(1) The Episcopal State Church.
(2) The Tractarians and Ritualists.
(3) ---- Continued.
(4) Liberalism in the Episcopal Church.
(5) Protestant Dissenters in England.
(6) Scotch Marriages in England.
(7) The Scottish State Church.
(8) Scottish Heresy Cases.
(9) The Catholic Church in Ireland.
(10) The Fenian Movement.
(11) The Catholic Church in England and Scotland.
(12) German Lutheran Congregations in Australia.
§ 203. FRANCE.
(1) The French Church under Napoleon I.
(2) The Restoration and the Citizen Kingdom.
(3) The Catholic Church under Napoleon III.
(4) The Protestant Churches under Napoleon III.
(5) The Catholic Church in the Third French Republic.
(6) The French “Kulturkampf,” 1880.
(7) ---- Continued.
(8) The Protestant Churches under the Third Republic.
§ 204. ITALY.
(1) The Kingdom of Sardinia.
(2) The Kingdom of Italy.
(3) The Evangelization of Italy.
(4) ---- Continued.
§ 205. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.
(1) Spain under Ferdinand VII. and Maria Christina.
(2) Spain under Isabella II., 1843-1865.
(3) Spain under Alphonso XII., 1875-1885.
(4) The Evangelization of Spain.
(5) The Church in Portugal.
§ 206. RUSSIA.
(1) The Orthodox National Church.
(2) The Catholic Church.
(3) The Evangelical Church.
§ 207. GREECE AND TURKEY.
(1) The Orthodox Church of Greece.
(2) Massacre of Syrian Christians, 1860.
(3) The Bulgarian Ecclesiastical Struggle.
(4) The Armenian Church.
(5) The Berlin Treaty, 1878.
§ 208. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
(1) English Protestant Denominations.
(2) The German Lutheran Denominations.
(3) ---- Continued.
(4) German-Reformed and other German-Protestant
Denominations.
(5) The Catholic Church.
§ 209. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC STATES OF SOUTH AMERICA.
(1) Mexico.
(2) In the Republics of Central and Southern America.
(3) Brazil.
V. Opponents of Church and of Christianity.
§ 210. SECTARIANS AND ENTHUSIASTS IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND
ORTHODOX RUSSIAN DOMAINS.
(1) Sects and Fanatics in the Roman Catholic Domain.
1. The Order of New Templars.
2. St. Simonians.
3. Aug. Comte.
(2) 4. Thomas Pöschl.
5. Antonians.
6. Adamites.
7. David Lazzaretti.
(3) Russian Sects and Fanatics.
(4) ---- Continued.
§ 211. SECTARIES AND ENTHUSIASTS IN THE PROTESTANT DOMAIN.
(1) The Methodist Propaganda.
(2) The Salvation Army.
(3) Baptists and Quakers.
(4) Swedenborgians and Unitarians.
(5) Extravagantly Fanatical Manifestations.
(6) Christian Communistic Sects.
1. Harmonites.
2. Bible Communists.
(7) Millenarian Exodus Communities.
1. Georgian Separatists.
2. Bavarian Chiliasts.
(8) 3. Amen Community.
4. German Temple Communities.
(9) The Community of “the New Israel.”
(10) The Catholic Apostolic Church of the Irvingites.
(11) The Darbyites and Adventists.
(12) The Mormons or Latter Day Saints.
(13) ---- Continued.
(14) ---- Continued.
(15) The Taepings in China.
(16) ---- Continued.
(17) The Spiritualists.
(18) Theosophism or Occultism.
§ 212. ANTICHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.
(1) The Beginnings of Modern Communism.
(2) St. Simonism.
(3) Owenists and Icarians.
(4) The International Working-Men’s Association.
(5) German Social Democracy.
(6) Russian Nihilism.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES.
INDEX.
NOTE BY TRANSLATOR.
While the translator was working from the ninth edition of 1885,
a tenth edition had appeared during 1887, to which unfortunately his
attention was not called until quite recently. The principal additions
and alterations affecting Vol. II. occur in §§ 98, 108, 119, and 147.
On the section dealing with Anabaptism, the important changes have been
made in the text, so that § 147 precisely corresponds to its latest
and most perfect form in the original. As the printing of the volume
was then far advanced, it was impossible thus to deal with the earlier
sections, but students will find references in the Table of Contents to
the full translation in the Appendix of those passages where material
alterations have been introduced.
JOHN MACPHERSON.
FINDHORN, _March, 1889_.
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. IDEA AND TASK OF CHURCH HISTORY.
The Christian Church is to be defined as the one, many-branched
communion, consisting of all those who confess that Jesus of Nazareth
is the Christ who in the fulness of time appeared as the Saviour of
the world. It is the Church’s special task to render the saving work of
Christ increasingly fruitful for all nations and individuals, under all
the varying conditions of life and stages of culture. It is the task
of Church History to describe the course of development through which
the Church as a whole, as well as its special departments and various
institutions, has passed, from the time of its foundation down to our
own day; to show what have been the Church’s advances and retrogressions,
how it has been furthered and hindered; and to tell the story of its
deterioration and renewal.
§ 2. DISTRIBUTION OF CHURCH HISTORY ACCORDING TO CONTENTS.
The treatment of Church History, on account of its manifold
ramifications, demands a distribution of its material, on the one hand,
according to definite periods, during which the end hitherto aimed at in
the whole course of development has been practically attained, so that
either entirely new phenomena gain prominence, or else the old go forth
in an altogether different direction; on the other hand, according to
the various phases of endeavour and development, which in respect of
time are evolved alongside of one another. When this last-mentioned
method of division is adopted, we may still choose between two different
modes of treatment. First, we may deal with national churches, in so
far as these are independent and have pursued some special direction;
or with particular churches, which have originated from the splitting
up of the church universal over some important difference in doctrine,
worship, and constitution. Secondly, we may group our material according
to the various departments of historical activity, which are essential
to the intellectual and spiritual life of all national churches and
denominations, and are thus common to all, although in different
churches in characteristic ways and varying degrees. It follows however
from the very idea of history, especially from that of the universal
history of the church, that the distribution according to periods must
be the leading feature of the entire exposition. At the same time,
whatever may now and again, in accordance with the other principles of
arrangement, be brought into prominence will be influenced materially
by the course of the history and formally by the facility afforded for
review by the mode of treatment pursued.
§ 2.1. =The Various Branches Included in a Complete Course of
Church History.=--The Christian Church has undertaken the task
of absorbing all peoples and tongues. Hence it is possessed of
an eager desire to enlarge its borders by the conversion of all
non-Christian races. The description of what helps or hinders
this endeavour, the history of the spread and limitation of
Christianity, is therefore an essential constituent of church
history. Since, further, the church, in order to secure its
continued existence and well-being, must strive after a legally
determined position outwardly, as well as a firm, harmonious
articulation, combination and order inwardly, it evidently also
belongs to our science to give the history of the ecclesiastical
constitution, both of the place which the church has in the state,
and the relation it bears to the state; and also of its own
internal arrangements by superordination, subordination, and
co-ordination, and by church discipline and legislation. Not
less essential, nay, even more important for the successful
development of the church, is the construction and establishment
of saving truth. In Holy Scripture the church indeed has
possession of the fountain and standard, as well as the
all-sufficient power and fulness, of all saving knowledge.
But the words of Scripture are spirit and life, living seeds of
knowledge, which, under the care of the same Spirit who sows them,
may and shall be developed so as to yield a harvest which becomes
ever more and more abundant; and therefore the fulness of the
truth which dwells in them comes to be known more simply, clearly,
fully, and becomes always more fruitful for all stages and
forms of culture, for faith, for science, and for life. Hence
church history is required to describe the construction of the
doctrine and science of the church, to follow its course and the
deviations from it into heresy, whenever these appear. The church
is, further, in need of a form of public worship as a necessary
expression of the feelings and emotions of believers toward
their Lord and God, as a means of edification and instruction.
The history of the worship of the church is therefore also an
essential constituent of church history. It is also the duty of
the church to introduce into the practical life and customs of
the people that new spiritual energy of which she is possessor.
And thus the history of the Christian life among the people comes
to be included in church history as a further constituent of the
science. Further, there is also included here, in consequence of
the nature and aim of Christianity as a leaven (Matt. xiii. 33),
an account of the effects produced upon it by the development of
art (of which various branches, architecture, sculpture, painting,
music, have a direct connexion with Christian worship), and
likewise upon national literature, philosophy, and secular
science generally; and also, conversely, an estimate of the
influence of these forms of secular culture upon the condition
of the church and religion must not be omitted. The order of
succession in the historical treatment of these phases under
which the life of the church is manifested, is not to be rigidly
determined in the same way for all ages after an abstract logical
scheme. For each period that order of succession should be
adopted which will most suitably give prominence to those matters
which have come to the front, and so call for early and detailed
treatment in the history of that age.
§ 2.2. =The Separate Branches of Church History.=--The
constituent parts of church history that have been already
enumerated are of such importance that they might also be treated
as independent sciences, and indeed for the most part they have
often been so treated. In this way, not only is a more exact
treatment of details rendered possible, but also, what is more
important, the particular science so limited can be construed in
a natural manner according to principles furnished by itself. The
history of the spread and limitation of Christianity then assumes
a separate form as the History of Missions. The separate history
of the ecclesiastical constitution, worship, and customs is
known by the name of Christian Archæology, which is indeed,
in respect of title and contents, an undefined conglomeration
of heterogeneous elements restricted in a purely arbitrary way
to the early ages. The treatment of this department therefore
requires that we should undertake the scientific task of
distinguishing these heterogeneous elements, and arranging them
apart for separate consideration; thus following the course of
their development down to the present day, as the history of the
constitution, of the worship, and of the culture of the church.
The history of the development of doctrine falls into four
divisions:
a. The History of Doctrines in the form of a regular historical
sketch of the doctrinal development of the church.
b. Symbolics, which gives a systematic representation of the
relatively final and concluded doctrine of the church as
determined in the public ecclesiastical confessions or
symbols for the church universal and for particular sects:
these again being compared together in Comparative Symbolics.
c. Patristics, which deals with the subjective development of
doctrine as carried out by the most distinguished teachers
of the church, who are usually designated church Fathers,
and confined to the first six or eight centuries.
d. And, finally, the History of Theology in general, or the
History of the particular Theological Sciences, which treats
of the scientific conception and treatment of theology
and its separate branches according to its historical
development; while the History of Theological Literature,
which when restricted to the age of the Fathers is called
Patrology, has to describe and estimate the whole literary
activity of the church according to the persons, motives,
and tendencies that are present in it.
As the conclusion and result of church history at particular
periods, we have the science of Ecclesiastical Statistics, which
describes the condition of the church in respect of all its
interests as it stands at some particular moment, “like a slice
cut cross-wise out of its history.” The most important works in
these departments are the following:
a. =History of Missions.=--
Brown, “Hist. of Propag. of Christ. among Heathen since
Reformation.” 3rd Ed., 3 vols., Edin., 1854.
Warneck, “Outlines of Hist. of Prot. Miss.” Edin., 1884.
Smith, “Short Hist. of Christ. Miss.” Edin., 1884.
b. =History of the Papacy.=--
Ranke, “History of Papacy in 16th and 17th Cent.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1855.
Platina (Lib. of Vatican), “Lives of Popes.” (1481). Trans.
by Rycaut, Lond., 1685.
Bower, “Hist. of Popes.” 7 vols., Lond., 1750.
Bryce, “Holy Rom. Empire.” Lond., 1866.
Creighton, “Hist. of Papacy during the Reformation.”
Vols. I.-IV., from A.D. 1378-1518, Lond., 1882-1886.
Janus, “Pope and the Council.” Lond., 1869.
Pennington, “Epochs of the Papacy.” Lond., 1882.
c. =History of Monasticism.=--
Hospinianus [Hospinian], “De Monachis.” Etc., Tigur., 1609.
Maitland, “The Dark Ages.” Lond., 1844.
d. =History of Councils.=--
Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” Vols. I.-III., to A.D. 451,
Edin., 1871-1883. (Original German work brought down
to the Council of Trent exclusive.)
e. =Church law.=--
Haddan and Stubbs, “Councils and Eccl. Documents illust.
Eccl. Hist. of Gr. Brit. and Ireland.” 3 vols.,
Lond., 1869 ff.
Phillimore, “Eccl. Law.” Lond., 1873.
f. =Archæology.=--
By Cath. Didron, “Christ. Iconography; or, Hist. of Christ.
Art in M. A.” Lond., 1886.
By Prot. Bingham, “Antiq. of Christ. Church.” 9 vols.,
Lond., 1845.
“Dictionary of Christ. Antiquities.” Ed. by Smith &
Cheetham, 2 vols., Lond., 1875 ff.
g. =History of Doctrines.=--
Neander, “Hist. of Christ. Doct.” 2 vols., Lond.
Hagenbach, “Hist. of Christ. Doctrines.” 3 vols.,
Edin., 1880 f.
Shedd, “Hist. of Christ. Doc.” 2 vols., Edin., 1869.
h. =Symbolics and Polemics.=--
Winer, “Confessions of Christendom.” Edin., 1873.
Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom.” 3 vols., Edin., 1877 ff.
Möhler, “Symbolism: an Expos. of the Doct. Differences
between Catholics and Protestants.” 2 vols., Lond.,
1843.
i. =Patrology and History of Theolog. Literature.=--
Dupin, “New History of Ecclesiastical Writers.”
Lond., 1696.
Cave, “Script. Eccl. Hist. Lit.” 2 vols., Lond., 1668.
Fabricii, “Biblioth. Græca.” 14 vols., Hamb., 1705;
“Biblioth. Mediæ et infinæ Latin.” 6 vols.,
Hamb., 1734.
Teuffel, “Hist. of Rom. Lit.” 2 vols., Lond., 1873.
k. =History of the Theological Sciences.=--
Buddæus, “Isagoge Hist. Theol. ad Theol. Univ.” Lps., 1727.
Räbiger, “Encyclopædia of Theology.” 2 vols., Edin., 1884.
Dorner, “Hist. of Prot. Theol.” 2 vols., Edin., 1871.
=History of Exegesis.=--
Davidson, “Sacred Hermeneutics; including Hist. of Biblical
Interpretation from earliest Fathers to Reformation.”
Edin., 1843.
Farrar, “Hist. of Interpretation.” Lond., 1886.
=History of Morals.=--
Wuttke’s “Christian Ethics.” Vol. I., “Hist. of Ethics.”
Edin., 1873.
l. =Biographies.=--
“Acta Sanctorum.” 63 vols. fol., Ant., 1643 ff.
Mabillon, “Acta Ss. ord. S. Bened.” 9 vols. fol.,
Par., 1666 ff.
Flaccius [Flacius], “Catalog. Testium Veritatis.” 1555.
Piper, “Lives of Leaders of Church Universal.” 2 vols.,
Edin.
Smith and Wace, “Dict. of Chr. Biog.” etc., 4 vols.,
Lond., 1877 ff.
§ 3. DISTRIBUTION OF CHURCH HISTORY ACCORDING TO PERIODS.
In the history of the world’s culture three historical stages
of universal development succeed each other: the Oriental, the
Franco-German, and the Teutono-Romanic. The kingdom of God had to enter
each of these and have in each a distinctive character, so that as
comprehensive a development as possible might be secured. The history
of the preparation for Christianity in the history of the Israelitish
theocracy moves along the lines of Oriental culture. The history of
the beginnings of Christianity embraces the history of the founding of
the church by Christ and His Apostles. These two together constitute
Biblical history, which, as an independent branch of study receiving
separate treatment, need be here treated merely in a brief, introductory
manner. This holds true also of the history of pagan culture alongside
of and subsequent to the founding of the church. Church history,
strictly so-called, the development of the already founded church,
begins therefore, according to our conception, with the Post-Apostolic
Age, and from that point pursues its course in three principal divisions.
The ancient church completes its task by thoroughly assimilating
the elements contributed by the Græco-Roman forms of civilization.
In the Teutono-Romanic Church of the middle ages the appropriation
and amalgamation of ancient classical modes of thought with modern
tendencies awakened by its immediate surroundings were carried out and
completed. On the other hand, the development of church history since
the Reformation has its impulse given it by that Teutono-Christian
culture which had maturity and an independent form secured to it by the
Reformation. This distribution in accordance with the various forms of
civilization seems to us so essential, that we propose to borrow from
it our principle for the arrangement of our church history.
The chronological distribution of the material may be represented in
the following outline:
I. =History of the Preparation for Christianity=: Preparation
for Redemption during the Hebraic-Oriental stage of
civilization, and the construction alongside of it in the
universalism of classical culture of forms that prepared the
way for the coming salvation.
II. =History of the Beginnings of Christianity=: a sketch of the
redemption by Christ and the founding of the Church through
the preaching of it by the Apostles.
III. =History of the Development of Christianity=, on the basis
of the sketch of the redemption given in the history of the
Beginnings:
A. =In the Græco-Roman and Græco-Byzantine Period, under
Ancient Classical Forms of Civilization.=
_First Section_, A.D. 70 to A.D. 323,--down to
the final victory of Christianity over the Græco-Roman
paganism; the Post-Apostolic and Old Catholic Ages.
_Second Section_, from A.D. 323 to A.D. 692,--down
to the final close of œcumenical development of doctrine
in A.D. 680, and the appearance of what proved a lasting
estrangement between the Eastern and the Western Churches
in A.D. 692, which was soon followed by the alliance of
the Papacy with the Frankish instead of the Byzantine
empire; the Œcumenico-Catholic Church, or the Church of
the Roman-Byzantine Empire.
_Third Section_, from A.D. 692 to A.D. 1453,--down
to the overthrow of Constantinople. Languishing and decay
of the old church life in the Byzantine Empire; complete
breach and futile attempts at union between East and West.
The Church of the Byzantine Empire.
B. =In the Mediæval Period, under Teutono-Romanic Forms of
Civilization.=
_First Section_, 4-9th cent.--from the first
beginnings of Teutonic church life down to the end of the
Carlovingian Age, A.D. 911. The Teutonic Age.
_Second Section_, 10-13th cent.--down to
Boniface VIII., A.D. 1294; rise of mediæval
institutions--the Papacy, Monasticism, Scholasticism;
Germany in the foreground of the ecclesiastico-political
movement.
_Third Section_, the 14-15th cent.--down to the
Reformation in A.D. 1517; deterioration and collapse of
mediæval institutions; France in the foreground of the
ecclesiastico-political movement.
C. =In the Modern Period, under the European Forms of
Civilization.=
_First Section_, the 16th cent. Age of
Evangelical-Protestant Reformation and Roman Catholic
Counter-Reformation.
_Second Section_, the 17th cent. Age of Orthodoxy
on the Protestant side and continued endeavours after
restoration on the side of Catholicism.
_Third Section_, the 18th cent. Age of advancing
Illuminism in both churches,--Deism, Naturalism,
Rationalism.
_Fourth Section_, the 19th cent. Age of re-awakened
Christian and Ecclesiastical life. Unionism,
Confessionalism, and Liberalism in conflict with
one another on the Protestant side; the revival of
Ultramontanism in conflict with the civil power on the
Catholic side. In opposition to both churches, widespread
pantheistic, materialistic, and communistic tendencies.
§ 4. SOURCES AND AUXILIARIES OF CHURCH HISTORY.[1]
=The sources of Church history= are partly original, in the shape of
inscriptions and early documents; partly derivative, in the shape of
traditions and researches in regard to primitive documents that have
meanwhile been lost. Of greater importance to church history than the
so-called dumb sources, _e.g._ church buildings, furniture, pictures,
are the inscriptions coming down from the earliest times; but of the
very highest importance are the extant official documents, _e.g._
acts and decisions of Church Councils, decrees and edicts of the
Popes,--decretals, bulls, briefs,--the pastoral letters of bishops,
civil enactments and decrees regarding ecclesiastical matters, the rules
of Spiritual Orders, monastic rules, liturgies, confessional writings,
the epistles of influential ecclesiastical and civil officers, reports
by eye witnesses, sermons and doctrinal treatises by Church teachers,
etc. In regard to matters not determined by any extant original
documents, earlier or later fixed traditions and historical researches
must take the place of those lost documents.--=Sciences Auxiliary
to Church History= are such as are indispensable for the critical
estimating and sifting, as well as for the comprehensive understanding
of the sources of church history. To this class the following branches
belong: _Diplomatics_, which teaches how to estimate the genuineness,
completeness, and credibility of the documents in question; _Philology_,
which enables us to understand the languages of the sources; _Geography
and Chronology_, which make us acquainted with the scenes and periods
where and when the incidents related in the original documents were
enacted. Among auxiliary sciences in the wider sense, the history of the
_State_, of _Law_, of _Culture_, of _Literature_, of _Philosophy_, and
of _Universal Religion_, may also be included as indispensable owing to
their intimate connection with ecclesiastical development.
§ 4.1. =Literature of the Sources.=--
a. =Inscriptions=:
de Rossi, “Inscriptt. chr. urbis Rom.” Vols. I. II.,
Rome, 1857.
b. =Collections of Councils=:
Harduin [Hardouin], “Conc. coll.” (to A.D. 1715),
12 vols., Par., 1715.
Mansi, “Conc. nova et ampl. coll.” 31 vols., Flor., 1759.
c. =Papal Acts=:
Jaffe, “Regesta pont. Rom.” (to A.D. 1198), 2 ed.,
Brl., 1881.
Potthast, “Regesta pont. Rom.” (A.D. 1198-1304), 2 Vols.,
Brl., 1873.
The Papal Decretals in “Corp. jur. Canonici.” ed.,
Friedberg, Lips., 1879.
“Bullarum, diplom. et privil. SS. rom. pont.” Taurenensis
editio, 24 vols., 1857 ff.
Nussi, “Conventiones de reb. eccl. inter s. sedem et civ.
pot. initæ.” Mogunt., 1870.
d. =Monastic Rules=:
Holstenii, “Cod. regul. mon. et. can.” 6 vols., 1759.
e. =Liturgies=:
Daniel, “Cod. liturg. eccl. univ.” 4 vols., Leipz.,
1847 ff.
Hammond, “Ancient Liturgies.” Oxf., 1878.
f. =Symbolics=:
Kimmel, “Ll. Symb. eccl. Orient.” Jena., 1843.
Danz, “Ll. Symb. eccl. Rom. Cath.” Weimar, 1835.
Hase, “Ll. Symb. eccl. evang.” Ed. iii., Leipz., 1840.
Niemeyer, “Coll. Conf. eccl. Ref.” Leipz., 1840.
Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom.” 3 vols., Lond., 1882.
g. =Martyrologies=:
Ruinart, “Acta prim. Mart.” 3 vols., 1802.
Assemanni [Assemani], “Acta SS. Mart. orient. et occid.”
2 vols., Rome, 1748.
h. =Greek and Latin Church Fathers and Teachers=:
Migne, “Patrologiæ currus completus.” Ser. I., Eccl. Græc.,
162 vols., Par., 1857 ff.; Ser. II., Eccl. Lat.,
221 vols., Par., 1844 ff.
Horoy, “Media ævi biblioth. patrist.” (from A.D. 1216 to
1564), Paris, 1879.
“Corpus Scriptorum eccl. lat.” Vindob., 1866 ff.
Grabe, “Spicilegium SS. Pp. et Hærett.” Sæc. I.-III.,
3 vols., Oxford, 1698.
Routh, “Reliquiæ sac.” 4 vols., Oxford, 1814 ff.
“Ante-Nicene Christian Library; a collection of all the
works of the Fathers of the Christian Church prior to
the Council of Nicæa.” 24 vols., Edin., 1867 ff.
i. =Ancient Writers of the East=:
Assemanus [Assemani], “Biblioth. orient.” 4 vols.,
Rome, 1719.
k. =Byzantine Writers=:
Niebuhr, “Corp. scr. hist. Byz.” 48 vols., Bonn, 1828 ff.
Sathas, “Biblioth. Græc. Med. ævi.” Vols. I.-VI., Athens,
1872 ff.
§ 4.2. =Literature of the Auxiliary Sciences.=--
a. =Diplomatics=:
Mabillon, “De re diplomatic.” Ed. ii., Par., 1709.
b. =Philology=:
Du Fresne (du Cange), “Glossarium ad scriptt. med. et
infim. Latin.” 6 vols., Par., 1733; New ed., Henschel
and Favre, in course of publication.
Du Fresne, “Glossarium, ad scriptt. med. et infim. Græc.”
2 vols., Leyden, 1688.
Suiceri, “Thesaurus ecclesiast. e patribus græcis.”
Ed. ii., 2 vols., Amst., 1728.
c. =Geography and Statistics=:
Mich. le Quien, “Oriens christianus in quatuor
patriarchatus digestus.” 3 vols., Par., 1704.
d. =Chronology=:
Nicolas, “The Chronology of History.” 2 ed., Lond., 1838.
“L’art de verifier les dates, by d’Antine.” Etc., ed. by
Courcelles, 19 vols., Par., 1821-1824.
§ 5. HISTORY OF GENERAL CHURCH HISTORY.
The earliest writer of church history properly so called is Eusebius,
Bishop of Cæsarea, † 340. During the fifth century certain members
of the Greek Church continued his work. The Western Church did not
so soon engage upon undertakings of that sort, and was contented with
translations and reproductions of the materials that had come down from
the Greeks instead of entering upon original investigations. During the
middle ages, in consequence of the close connection subsisting between
Church and State, the Greek _Scriptores historiæ Byzantinæ_, as well as
the Latin national histories, biographies, annals, and chronicles, are
of the very utmost importance as sources of information regarding the
church history of their times. It was the Reformation, however, that
first awakened and inspired the spirit of true critical research and
scientific treatment of church history, for the appeal of the Reformers
to the pure practices and institutions of the early days of the church
demanded an authoritative historical exposition of the founding of the
church, and this obliged the Catholic church to engage upon the studies
necessary for this end. The Lutheran as well as the Catholic Church,
however, down to the middle of the 17th century, were satisfied with
the voluminous productions of the two great pioneers in Church history,
Flacius and Baronius. Afterwards, however, emulation in the study of
church history was excited, which was undoubtedly, during the 17th
century, most successfully prosecuted in the Catholic Church. In
consequence of the greater freedom which prevailed in the Gallican
Church, these studies flourished conspicuously in France, and were
pursued with exceptional success by the Oratorians and the Order
of St. Maur. The Reformed theologians, especially in France and the
Netherlands, did not remain far behind them in the contest. Throughout
the 18th century, again, the performances of the Lutheran Church came to
the front, while a laudable rivalry leads the Reformed to emulate their
excellencies. In the case of the Catholics, on the other hand, that
zeal and capacity which, during the 17th century, had won new laurels in
the field of honour, were now sadly crippled. But as rationalism spread
in the domain of doctrine, pragmatism spread in the domain of church
history, which set for itself as the highest ideal of historical writing
the art of deducing everything in history, even what is highest and
most profound in it, from the co-operation of fortune and passion,
arbitrariness and calculation. It was only in the 19th century, when a
return was made to the careful investigation of original authorities,
and it came to be regarded as the task of the historian, to give a
conception and exposition of the science as objective as possible, that
this erroneous tendency was arrested.
§ 5.1. =Down to the Reformation.=--The church history of
=Eusebius=, which reaches down to A.D. 324, was to some extent
continued by his _Vita Constantini_, down to A.D. 337 (§ 47, 2).
The church history of =Philostorgius=, which reaches from
A.D. 318-423, coming down to us only in fragments quoted by
Photius, was an Arian party production of some importance.
During the 5th century, however, the church history of Eusebius
was continued down to A.D. 439 by the Catholic =Socrates=, an
advocate at Constantinople, written in a simple and impartial
style, yet not altogether uncritical, and with a certain measure
of liberality; and down to A.D. 423, by =Sozomen=, also an
advocate at Constantinople, who in large measure plagiarizes from
Socrates, and is, in what is his own, uncritical, credulous, and
fond of retailing anecdotes; and down to A.D. 428 by =Theodoret=,
Bishop of Cyrus in Syria, who produces much useful material in
the shape of original authorities, confining himself, however,
like both of his predecessors, almost exclusively to the affairs
of the Eastern Church. In the 6th century, =Theodorus=, reader at
Constantinople, made a collection of extracts from these works,
continuing the history down to his own time in A.D. 527. Of this
we have only fragments preserved by Nicephorus Callisti. The
continuation by =Evagrius= of Antioch, reaching from A.D. 431-594,
is characterized by carefulness, learning, and impartiality,
along with zealous orthodoxy, and an uncritical belief in the
marvellous. Collected editions of all these works have been
published by Valesius (Par., 1659), and Reading (Cantab., 1720),
in each case in 3 vols. folio.--In the Latin Church =Rufinus= of
Aquileia translated the work of Eusebius and enlarged it before
the continuations of the three Greek historians had appeared,
carrying it down to his own time in A.D. 395 in an utterly
uncritical fashion. =Sulpicius Severus=, a presbyter of Gaul,
wrote about the same time his _Historia Sacra_, in two books,
from the creation of the world down to A.D. 400. In the 6th
century, =Cassiodorus= fused together into one treatise in
12 books, by means of extracts, the works of the three Greek
continuators of Eusebius, under the title _Hist. ecclesiastica
tripartita_, which, combined with the history of Rufinus,
remained down to the Reformation in common use as a text-book.
A church history written in the 6th century in Syriac, by the
monophysite bishop, =John of Ephesus=, morbidly fond of the
miraculous, first became known to us in an abridged form of
the third part embracing the history of his own time. (Ed.
Cureton, Oxf., 1853. Transl. into Engl. by Payne Smith, Oxford,
1859.)--Belonging to the Latin church of the middle ages, =Haymo=
of Halberstadt deserves to be named as a writer of universal
history, about A.D. 850, leaning mainly upon Rufinus and
Cassiodorus. The same too may be said about the work entitled,
_Libri XIII. historiæ ecclesiasticæ_ written by the Abbot
=Odericus Vitalis= in Normandy, about A.D. 1150, which forms
upon the whole the most creditable production of the middle
ages. In the 24 books of the Church history of the Dominican and
Papal librarian, =Tolomeo of Lucca=, composed about A.D. 1315,
church history is conceived of as if it were simply a historical
commentary on the ecclesiastical laws and canons then in force,
as an attempt, that is, to incorporate in the history all the
fictions and falsifications, which Pseudo-Isidore in the 9th
century (§ 87, 2-4), Gratian in the 12th century, and Raimundus
[Raimund] de Penneforti [Pennaforte] in the 13th century
(§ 99, 5), had wrought into the Canon law. Toward the end of
the 15th century, under the influence of humanism there was an
awakening here and there to a sense of the need of a critical
procedure in the domain of church history, which had been
altogether wanting throughout the middle ages. In the Greek
Church again, during the 14th century, =Nicephorus Callisti=
of Constantinople, wrote a treatise on church history, reaching
down to A.D. 610, devoid of taste and without any indication of
critical power.
§ 5.2. =The 16th and 17th Centuries.=--About the middle of the
16th century the Lutheran Church produced a voluminous work in
church history, the so-called =Magdeburg Centuries=, composed
by a committee of Lutheran theologians, at the head of which was
=Matthias Flacius=, of Illyria in Magdeburg. This work consisted
of 13 folio vols., each of which embraced a century. (_Eccles.
Hist., integram eccl. ideam complectens, congesta per aliquot
studiosos et pios viros in urbe Magdb._ Bas., 1559-1574.) They
rest throughout on careful studies of original authorities,
produce many documents that were previously unknown, and, with
an unsparingly bitter polemic against the Romish doctrinal
degeneration, address themselves with special diligence to the
historical development of dogma. In answer to them the Romish
Oratorian, =Cæsar Baronius=, produced his _Annales ecclesiastici_,
in 12 vols. folio, reaching down to A.D. 1198 (Rome, 1588-1607).
This work moves entirely along Roman Catholic lines and is quite
prejudiced and partial, and seeks in a thoroughly uncritical
way, by every species of ingenuity, to justify Romish positions;
yet, as communicating many hitherto unknown, and to others
inaccessible documents, it must be regarded as an important
production. It secured for its author the cardinal’s hat,
and had wellnigh raised him to the chair of St. Peter. In the
interests of a scholarly and truth-loving research, it was
keenly criticised by the Franciscan Anthony Pagi (_Critica
hist-chronol._ 4 vols., Antw., 1705), carried down in the 17th
century from A.D. 1198-1565, in 9 vols. by Oderic. Raynaldi, in
the 18th century from A.D. 1566-1571, in 3 vols. by de Laderchi,
and in the 19th century down to A.D. 1585 in 3 vols. by August
Theiner. A new edition was published by Mansi (43 vols., 1738
ff.), with Raynaldi’s continuation and Pagi’s criticism.--During
the 17th century the French Catholic scholars bore the palm
as writers of Church history. The course was opened in general
church history by the Dominican =Natalis Alexander=, a learned
man, but writing a stiff scholastic style (_Selecta hist. eccl.
capita et diss. hist. chron. et dogm._ 24 vols., Par., 1676 ff.).
This first edition, on account of its Gallicanism was forbidden
at Rome; a later one by Roncaglia of Lucca, with corrective notes,
was allowed to pass. Sebast. le Nain de =Tillemont=, with the
conscientiousness of his Jansenist faith, gave an account of
early church history in a cleverly grouped series of carefully
selected authorities (_Memoires pour servir à l’hist. eccl. des
six premiers siècles, justifiés par les citations des auteurs
originaux._ 16 vols., Par., 1693 ff.). =Bossuet= wrote, for
the instruction of the Dauphin, what Hase has styled “an
ecclesiastical history of the world with eloquent dialectic
and with an insight into the ways of providence, as if the wise
Bishop of Meaux had been in the secrets not only of the king’s
but also of God’s councils” (_Discours sur l’hist. universelle
depuis le commencement du monde jusqu’à l’empire de Charles M._
Par., 1681). =Claude Fleury=, aiming at edification, proceeds in
flowing and diffuse periods (_Histoire ecclst._ 20 vols., Par.,
1691 ff.).--The history of the French Church (A.D. 1580) ascribed,
probably erroneously, to Theodore Beza, the successor of Calvin,
marks the beginning of the writing of ecclesiastical history
in the Reformed Church. During the 17th century it secured an
eminence in the department of church history, especially on
account of learned special researches (§ 160, 7), but also to
some extent in the domain of general church history. =J. H.
Hottinger= overloaded his _Hist. ecclst. N. T._ (9 vols., Fig.,
1651 ff.) by dragging in the history of Judaism, and Paganism,
and even of Mohammedanism, with much irrelevant matter of that
sort. Superior to it were the works of =Friedr. Spanheim= (_Summa
hist. eccl._ Leyd., 1689) =Jas. Basnage= (_Hist. de l’égl._
2 vols., Rotd., 1699). Most important of all were the keen
criticism of the Annals of Baronius by =Isaac Casaubon=
(_Exercitt. Baronianæ._ Lond., 1614), and by =Sam. Basnage=
(_Exercitt. hist. crit._ Traj., 1692; and _Annales polit. ecclst._
3 vols., Rotd., 1706).
§ 5.3. =The 18th Century.=--After the publication of the
Magdeburg _Opus palmare_ the study of church history fell
into the background in the Lutheran Church. It was George
Calixtus († A.D. 1658) and the syncretist controversies which
he occasioned that again awakened an interest in such pursuits.
=Gottfr. Arnold’s= colossal party-spirited treatise entitled
“Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie” (2 vols. fol., Frkf.,
1699), which scarcely recognised Christianity except in heresies
and fanatical sects, gave a powerful impulse to the spirit of
investigation and to the generous treatment of opponents. This
bore fruit in the irenical and conciliatory attempts of =Weismann=
of Tübingen (_Introd. in memorabilia ecclst._ 2 vols., Tüb.,
1718). The shining star, however, in the firmament of church
history during the 18th century was =J. Lor. v. Mosheim= in
Helmstedt [Helmstadt] and Göttingen, distinguished alike for
thorough investigation, with a divinatory power of insight, and
by a brilliant execution and an artistic facility in the use
of a noble Latin style (_Institutionum hist. ecclst. Libri IV._
Helmst., 1755; transl. into English by Murdock, ed. by Reid,
11th ed., Lond., 1880). =J. A. Cramer=, in Kiel, translated
Bossuet’s _Einl. in die Gesch. d. Welt u. d. Relig._, with a
continuation which gave a specially careful treatment of the
theology of the middle ages (7 vols., Leipz., 1757 ff.). =J. Sal.
Semler=, in Halle, shook, with a morbidly sceptical criticism,
many traditional views in Church history that had previously been
regarded as unassailable (_Hist. eccl. selecta capita._ 3 vols.,
Halle, 1767 ff.; _Versuch e. fruchtb. Auszugs d. K. Gesch._
3 vols., Halle, 1773 ff.). On the other hand, =Jon. Matt. Schröckh
of Wittenberg= produced a gigantic work on church history, which
is characterized by patient research, and gives, in so far as
the means within his reach allowed, a far-sighted, temperate, and
correct statement of facts (_Christl. K. G._ 45 vols., Leipz.,
1772 ff., the last two vols. by Tzschirner). The Würtemburg
[Württemberg] minister of state, Baron =von Spittler=, sketched
a _Grundriss der K. Gesch._, in short and smartly expressed
utterances, which in many cases were no better than caricatures
(5th ed. by Planck, Gött., 1812). In his footsteps =Henke=
of Helmstedt [Helmstadt], followed, who, while making full
acknowledgment of the moral blessing which had been brought by
true Christianity to mankind, nevertheless described the “_Allg.
Gesch. der Kirche_” as if it were a bedlam gallery of religious
and moral aberrations and strange developments (6 vols.,
Brsweig., 1788 ff.; 5th ed. revised and continued by =Vater= in
9 vols.).--In the Reformed Church, =Herm. Venema=, of Franeker,
the Mosheim of this church, distinguished himself by the thorough
documentary basis which he gave to his exposition, written in
a conciliatory spirit (_Institutt. hist. eccl. V. et N. T._
7 vols., Leyd., 1777 ff.). In the Catholic Church, =Royko= of
Prague, favoured by the reforming tendencies of the Emperor
Joseph II., was able with impunity to give expression to his
anti-hierarchical views in an almost cynically outspoken statement
(_Einl. in d. chr. Rel. u. K. G._ Prague, 1788).
§ 5.4. =The 19th Century.= In his _Handb. d. chr. K. G._, publ.
in 1801 (in 2nd ed. contin. by Rettberg, 7 vols., Giessen, 1834),
=Chr. Schmidt= of Giessen expressly maintained that the supreme
and indeed the only conditions of a correct treatment of history
consisted in the direct study of the original documents, and a
truly objective exhibition of the results derived therefrom. By
objectivity, however, he understood indifference and coolness
of the subject in reference to the object, which must inevitably
render the representation hard, colourless, and lifeless.
=Gieseler= of Göttingen, † 1854, commended this mode of treatment
by his excellent execution, and in his _Lehrbuch_ (5 vols., Bonn,
1824-1857; Engl. transl. “Compendium of Church History.” 5 vols.,
Edinb., 1846-1856), a master-piece of the first rank, which
supports, explains and amplifies the author’s own admirably
compressed exposition by skilfully chosen extracts from the
documents, together with original and thoughtful criticism under
the text. A temperate, objective, and documentary treatment of
church history is also given in the _Handbuch_ of =Engelhardt=
of Erlangen (5 vols., Erlang., 1832 ff.). Among the so-called
_Compendia_ the most popular was the _Universalgeschichte d. K._
by =Stäudlin=, of Göttingen (Hann., 1807; 5th ed. by Holzhausen,
1833). It was superseded by the _Lehrbuch_ of =Hase=, of Jena
(Leipz., 1834; 10th ed., 1877; Engl. transl. from 7th Germ. ed.,
New York, 1855), which is a generally pregnant and artistically
tasteful exposition with often excellent and striking features,
subtle perception, and with ample references to documentary
sources. The _Vorlesungen_ of =Schleiermacher=, † 1834, published
after his death by Bonell (Brl., 1840), assume acquaintance
with the usual materials, and present in a fragmentary manner
the general outlines of the church’s course of development.
=Niedner’s= _Lehrbuch_ (2nd ed., Brl., 1866), is distinguished by
a philosophical spirit, independent treatment, impartial judgment,
and wealth of contents with omission of customary matter, but
marred by the scholastic stiffness and awkwardness of its style.
=Gfrörer’s= († 1861) _Kirchengeschichte_ (7 vols. reaching down
to A.D. 1000, Stuttg., 1840) treats early Christianity as purely
a product of the culture of the age, and knows of no moving
principles in the historical development of the Christian church
but clerical self-seeking, political interests, machinations
and intrigues. Nevertheless the book, especially in the portion
treating of the middle ages, affords a fresh and lively account
of researches among original documents and of new results,
although even here the author does not altogether restrain his
undue fondness for over subtle combinations. After his entrance
into the Catholic Church his labours in the domain of church
history were limited to a voluminous history of Gregory VII.,
which may be regarded as a continuation of his church history,
the earlier work having only reached down to that point. =Baur=
of Tübingen began the publication of monographical treatises on
particular periods, reaching down to the Reformation (3 vols.,
2nd ed., Tüb., 1860 ff.), a continuation to the end of the 18th
cent. (published by his son F. Baur, 1863), and also a further
volume treating of the 19th cent. (publ. by his son-in-law Zeller,
2nd ed., 1877). These works of this unwearied investigator show
thorough mastery of the immense mass of material, with subtle
criticism and in many cases the first establishment of new views.
=Böhringer’s= massive production (_Die Kirche Christi und ihre
Zeugen, oder Kirchengeschichte in Biographien_. 24 vols., Zur.,
1842; 2nd ed., Zur., 1873), upon the basis of an independent
study of the several ages down to the Reformation, characterizes
by means of detailed portraiture the personalities prominent
during these periods. In the second edition, thoroughly recast
with the assistance of his two sons, there is evidence of a more
strictly critical research and a judicial frame of mind, so that
the predominantly panegyrical character of the first edition is
considerably modified. =Rothe’s= lectures, edited after his death,
with additions from his literary remains, by Weingarten (2 vols.,
Hdlb., 1875) are quite fragmentary because the usual historical
matter was often supplied from Gieseler, Neander, or Hase. The
work is of great value in the departments of the Constitution
and the Life of the Church, but in other respects does not at
all satisfy the expectations which one might entertain respecting
productions bearing such an honoured name; thoroughly solid and
scholarly, however, are the unfortunately only sparse and short
notes of the learned editor.
§ 5.5. Almost contemporaneously with Gieseler, =Aug. Neander=
of Berlin, † 1850, began the publication of his _Allg. Gesch. d.
chr. Kirche_ in xi. divisions down to A.D. 1416 (Ham., 1824-1852.
Engl. Transl. 9 vols., Edin., 1847-1855), by which ground
was broken in another direction. Powerfully influenced by the
religious movement, which since the wars of independence had
inspired the noblest spirits of Germany, and sympathizing with
Schleiermacher’s theology of feeling, he vindicated the rights of
subjective piety in the scientific treatment of church history,
and sought to make it fruitful for edification as a commentary
of vast proportions on the parable of the leaven. With special
delight he traces the developments of the inner life, shows what
is Christian in even misconceived and ecclesiastically condemned
manifestations, and feels for the most part repelled from
objective ecclesiasticism, as from an ossification of the
Christian life and the crystallization of dogma. In the same way
he undervalues the significance of the political co-efficients,
and has little appreciation of esthetic and artistic influences.
The exposition goes out too often into wearisome details and
grows somewhat monotonous, but is on every side lighted up by
first hand acquaintance with the original sources. His scholar,
=Hagenbach= of Basel, † 1874, put together in a collected form
his lectures delivered before a cultured public upon several
periods of church history, so as to furnish a treatise dealing
with the whole field (7 vols., Leipz., 1868). These lectures are
distinguished by an exposition luminous, interesting, sometimes
rather broad, but always inspired by a warm Christian spirit and
by circumspect judgment, inclining towards a mild confessional
latitudinarianism. What, even on the confessional and
ecclesiastical side, had been to some extent passed over by
Neander, in consequence of his tendency to that inwardness that
characterizes subjective and pectoral piety, has been enlarged
upon by =Guericke= of Halle, † 1878, another of Neander’s
scholars, in his _Handbuch_ (2 vols., Leipz., 1833; 9th ed.,
3 vols., 1866; Eng. transl. “Manual of Ch. Hist.” Edinb., 1857),
by the contribution of his own enthusiastic estimate of the
Lutheran Church in a strong but clumsy statement; beyond this,
however, the one-sidedness of Neander’s standpoint is not
overcome, and although, alongside of Neander’s exposition, the
materials and estimates of other standpoints are diligently used,
and often the very words incorporated, the general result is not
modified in any essential respect. Written with equal vigour,
and bearing the impress of a freer ecclesiastical spirit, the
_Handbuch_ of =Bruno Lindner= (3 vols., Leipzig, 1848 ff.)
pursues with special diligence the course of the historical
development of doctrine, and also emphasizes the influence
of political factors. This same end is attempted in detailed
treatment with ample production of authoritative documents in
the _Handbuch_ of the author of the present treatise (vol. I.
in three divisions, in a 2nd ed.; vol. II. 1, down to the end
of the Carlovingian Era. Mitau, 1858 ff.). =Milman= (1791-1868)
an English church historian of the first rank (“Hist. of Chr.
to Abolit. of Pag. in Rom. Emp.” 3 vols., London, 1840; “History
of Latin Christianity to the Pontificate of Nicholas V.” 3 vols.,
London, 1854), shows himself, especially in the latter work,
learned, liberal and eloquent, eminently successful in sketching
character and presenting vivid pictures of the general culture
and social conditions of the several periods with which he deals.
The _Vorlesungen_ of =R. Hasse [Hase]=, published after his death
by Köhler (2nd ed., Leipz., 1872), form an unassuming treatise,
which scarcely present any trace of the influence of Hegel’s
teaching upon their author. =Köllner= of Giessen writes an
_Ordnung und Uebersicht der Materien der chr. Kirchengeschichte_,
Giess., 1864, a diligent, well-arranged, and well packed, but
somewhat dry and formless work. =H. Schmid= of Erlangen has
enlarged his compendious _Lehrbuch_ (2nd ed., 1856), into a
_Handbuch_ of two bulky volumes (Erlang., 1880); and =O. Zöckler=
of Greifswald has contributed to the _Handbuch d. theolog.
Wissenschaften_ (Erlang., 1884; 2nd ed., 1885) edited by him an
excellent chronological summary of church history. =Ebrard’s=
_Handbuch_ (4 vols., Erlang., 1865 ff.) endeavours to give
adequate expression to this genuine spirit of the Reformed
conception of historical writing by bringing church history and
the history of doctrines into organic connection. The attempt is
there made, however, as Hase has expressed it, with a paradoxical
rather than an orthodox tendency. The spirit and mind of the
Reformed Church are presented to us in a more temperate, mild
and impartial form, inspired by the pectoralism of Neander, in
the _Handbuch_ of =J. J. Herzog= of Erlangen, † 1882 (3 vols.,
Erlang., 1876), which assumes the name of _Abriss_ or Compendium.
This work set for itself the somewhat too ambitious aim
of supplying the place of the productions of Gieseler and
Neander,--which, as too diffuse, have unfortunately repelled many
readers--by a new treatise which should set forth the important
advances in the treatment of church history since their time,
and give a more concise sketch of universal church history.
The _Histoire du Christianisme_ of Prof. =Chastel= of Geneva,
(5 vols., Par., 1881 ff.) in its earlier volumes occupies the
standpoint of Neander, and we often miss the careful estimation of
the more important results of later research. In regard to modern
church history, notwithstanding every effort after objectivity
and impartiality, theological sympathies are quite apparent. On
the other hand, in the comprehensive _History of the Christian
Church_ by =Philip Schaff= (in 8 vols., Edinb., 1885, reaching
down to Gregory VIII., A.D. 1073), the rich results of research
subsequent to the time of Neander are fully and circumspectly
wrought up in harmony with the general principles of Neander’s
view of history. Herzog’s _ Realencyclopædie für protest. Theol.
u. Kirche_, especially in its 2nd ed. by Herzog and Plitt, and
after the death of both, by Hauck (18 vols., Leipz., 1877 ff.),
has won peculiar distinction in the department of church history
from the contributions of new and powerful writers. Lichtenberger,
formerly Prof. of Theol. in Strassburg, now in Paris, in his
_Encyclopédie des sciences relig. _ has produced a French work
worthy of a place alongside that of Herzog. _The Dictionary of
Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines during
the first eight centuries_, edited with admirable circumspection
and care by Dr. Wm. Smith and Prof. Wace, combines with a
completeness and richness of contents never reached before,
a thoroughgoing examination of the original sources. (4 vols.,
Lond., 1877 ff.) =Weingarten’s= Chronological Tables for Church
History (_Zeittafeln z. K.G._ 2nd ed., Brl., 1874) are most
useful to students as the latest and best helps of that kind.
§ 5.6. In the Catholic Church of Germany too a great activity has
been displayed in the realm of church history. First of all in
general Church history we have the diffuse work of the convert
=von Stolberg= (_Gesch. d. Rel. Jesu_, 15 vols., down to A.D. 430,
Hamb., 1806 ff., continued by von Kerz, vols. 16-45, and by
Brischar, vols. 46-52, Mainz, 1825-1859), spreading out into
hortatory and uncritical details. The elegant work of =Katerkamp=
(_K.G._, 5 vols., down to 1153, Münst., 1819 ff.) followed it,
inspired by a like mild spirit, but conceived in a more strictly
scientific way. Liberal, so far as that could be without breaking
with the hierarchy, is the _Handbuch der K.G._ (3 vols., Bonn,
1826 ff.; 6th ed. by Ennen, 2 vols., 1862), by =I. Ign. Ritter=.
The ample and detailed _Gesch. d. Chr. Rel. u. d. K._ (8 vols.,
down to 1073, Ravensb., 1824 ff.) of =Locherer= reminds one of
Schröckh’s work in other respects than that of its voluminousness.
A decidedly ultramontane conception of church history, with
frequent flashes of sharp wit, first appears in =Hortig’s=
_Handbuch_ (2 vols., Landsh., 1826). =Döllinger= in 1828 publ. as
a 3rd vol. of this work a _Handbuch d. Neuern K.G._, which, with
a similar tendency, assumed a more earnest tone. This theologian
afterwards undertook a thoroughly new and independent work of a
wider range, which still remains incomplete (_Gesch. d. chr. K._,
I. 1, 2, partially down to A.D. 630, Landsh., 1833-1835). This
work with ostensible liberality exposed the notorious fables
of Romish historical literature; but, on the other hand, with
brilliant ingenuity, endeavoured carefully to preserve intact
everything which on ultramontane principles and views might seem
capable of even partial justification. His _Lehrbuch_ (I. II. 1.,
Rgsb., 1836 ff.), reaching down only to the Reformation, treats
the matter in a similar way, and confines itself to a simple
statement of acknowledged facts. In the meantime =J. A. Möhler=,
by his earlier monographical works, and still more decidedly
by his far-reaching influence as a Professor at Tübingen, gave
rise to an expectation of the opening up of a new epoch in the
treatment of Catholic church history. He represented himself
as in spiritual sympathy with the forms and means of Protestant
science, although in decided opposition and conflict with its
contents, maintaining his faithful adhesion to all elements
essential to Roman Catholicism. This master, however, was
prevented by his early death, † 1838, from issuing his complete
history. This was done almost thirty years after his death by
Gams, who published the work from his posthumous papers (_K. G._,
3 vols., Rgsb., 1867 ff.), with much ultramontane amendment. It
shows all the defects of such patchwork, with here and there,
but relatively, very few fruitful cases. Traces of his influence
still appear in the spirit which pervades the _Lehrbücher_
proceeding from his school, by Alzog († 1878) and Kraus. The
_Universalgeschichte d. K._, by =J. Alzog= (Mainz, 1841; 9th ed.,
2 vols., 1872; transl. into Engl., 3 vols., Lond., 1877), was,
in its earlier editions, closely associated with the lectures of
his teacher, not ashamed even to draw from Hase’s fresh-sparkling
fountains something at times for his own yet rather parched
meadows, but in his later editions he became ever more
independent, more thorough in his investigation, more fresh and
lively in his exposition, making at the same time a praiseworthy
endeavour at moderation and impartiality of judgment, although
his adhesion to the Catholic standpoint grows more and more
strict till it reaches its culmination in the acceptance of the
dogma of Papal Infallibility. The 10th ed. of his work appeared
in 1882 under the supervision of Kraus, who contributed much to
its correction and completion. The _Lehrbuch_ of =F. Xav. Kraus=
of Freiburg (2nd ed., Trier, 1882) is without doubt among all
the Roman Catholic handbooks of the present the most solid from
a scientific point of view, and while diplomatically reserved
and carefully balanced in its expression of opinions, one of
the most liberal, and it is distinguished by a clever as well as
instructive mode of treatment. On the other hand, the Würzburgian
theologian, =J. Hergenröther= (since 1879 Cardinal and Keeper of
the Papal Archives at Rome), who represents the normal attitude
of implicit trust in the Vatican, has published a _Handbuch_
(2 vols. in 4 parts, Freib., 1876 ff.; 2nd ed., 1879, with a
supplement: Sources, Literat., and Foundations). In this work
he draws upon the rich stores of his acknowledged scholarship,
which, however, often strangely forsakes him in treating of the
history of Protestant theology. It is a skilful and instructive
exposition, and may very fitly be represented as “a history of
the church, yea, of the whole world, viewed through correctly set
Romish spectacles.” Far beneath him in scientific importance, but
in obstinate ultramontanism far above him, stands the _Lehrbuch_
of =H. Bruck [Brück]= (2nd ed., Mainz, 1877). A far more solid
production is presented in the _Dissertatt. selectæ in hist.
ecclst._ of Prof. =B. Jungmann= of Louvain, which treat in
chronological succession of parties and controversies prominent
in church history, especially of the historical development of
doctrine, in a thorough manner and with reference to original
documents, not without a prepossession in favour of Vaticanism
(vols. i.-iii., Ratisb., 1880-1883, reaching down to the end
of the 9th cent.). The _Kirchenlexikon_ of Wetzer and Wette
(12 vols., Freib., 1847 ff.) gained a prominent place on account
of the articles on church history contributed by the most eminent
Catholic scholars, conceived for the most part in the scientific
spirit of Möhler. The very copious and of its kind admirably
executed 2nd ed. by Kaulen (Freib., 1880 ff.), under the
auspices of Card. Hergenröther, is conceived in a far more
decidedly Papistic-Vatican spirit, which often does not
shrink from maintaining and vindicating even the most glaring
productions of mediæval superstition, illusion and credulity,
as grounded in indubitable historical facts. Much more
important is the historical research in the _Hist. Jahrbuch
der Görres-Gesellschaft_, edited from 1880 by G. Hüffer, and
from 1883 by B. Gramich, which presents itself as “a means of
reconciliation for those historians with whom Christ is the
middle point of history and the Catholic Church the God-ordained
institution for the education of the human race.”--In the French
Church the following are the most important productions: the
_Hist. de l’égl._ of =Berault-Bercastel= (24 vols., Par., 1778
ff.), which have had many French continuators and also a German
translator (24 vols., Vienna, 1784 ff.); the _Hist. ecclst.
depuis la création_, etc., of =Baron Henrion=, ed. by Migne
(25 vols., Par., 1852 ff.); and the very diffuse compilation,
wholly devoted to the glorification of the Papacy and its
institutions, _Hist. universelle de l’égl. Cath._ of the Louvain
French Abbé Rohrbacher (29 vols., Par., 1842 ff.; of which an
English transl. is in course of publication). Finally, the
scientifically careful exposition of the Old Catholic =J. Rieks=,
_Gesch. d. chr. K. u. d. Papstthums_, Lahr., 1882, though in some
respects onesided, may be mentioned as deserving of notice for its
general impartiality and love of the truth.
HISTORY OF THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY.
The pre-Christian World preparing the way
of the Christian Church.
§ 6. THE STANDPOINT OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY.
The middle point of the epochs and developments of the human race is
the incarnation of God in Christ. With it begins, upon it rests, the
fulness of the time (Gal. iv. 4), and toward it the whole pre-Christian
history is directed as anticipatory or progressive. This preparation has
its beginning in the very cradle of humanity, and is soon parted in the
two directions of Heathenism and Judaism. In the former case we have the
development of merely human powers and capacities; in the latter case
this development is carried on by continuous divine revelation. Both
courses of development, distinguished not only by the means, but also by
the task undertaken and the end aimed at, run alongside of one another,
until in the fulness of the time they are united in Christianity and
contribute thereto the fruits and results of what was essential and
characteristic in their several separate developments.
§ 7. HEATHENISM.
The primitive race of man, surrounded by rich and luxuriant forms
of nature, put this abundance of primeval power in the place of the
personal and supramundane God. Surrounded by such an inexhaustible
fulness of life and pleasures, man came to look upon nature as more
worthy of sacrifice and reverence than a personal God removed far off
into supramundane heights. Thus arose heathenism as to its general
features: a self-absorption into the depths of the life of nature,
a deification of nature, a worshipping of nature (Rom. i. 21 ff.),
therefore, the religion of nature, in accordance with which, too,
its moral character is determined. Most conspicuously by means of its
intellectual culture has heathenism given preliminary aid to the church
for the performing of her intellectual task. And even the pagan empire,
with its striving after universal dominion, as well as the active
commercial intercourse in the old heathen world, contributed in
preparing the way of the church.
§ 7.1. =The Religious Character of Heathenism.=--The hidden
powers of the life of nature and the soul, not intellectually
apprehended in the form of abstract knowledge, but laid hold of
in immediate practice, and developed in speculation and mysticism,
in natural magic and soothsaying, and applied to all the
relations of human life, seemed revelations of the eternal spirit
of nature, and, mostly by means of the intervention of prominent
personalities and under the influence of various geographical
and ethnographical peculiarities, produced manifold systems of
the religion of nature. Common to all, and deeply rooted in the
nature of heathenism, is the distinction between the _esoteric_
religion of the priests, and the _exoteric_ religion of the
people. The former is essentially a speculative ideal pantheism;
the latter is for the most part a mythical and ceremonial
polytheism. The religious development of heathenism has
nevertheless been by no means stripped of all elements of truth.
Apart from casual remnants of the primitive divine revelation,
which, variously contorted on their transmission through heathen
channels, may lie at the foundation or be inwrought into its
religious systems, the hothouse-like development of the religion
of nature has anticipated many a religious truth which, in the
way of divine revelation, could only slowly and at a late period
come to maturity, but has perverted and distorted it to such a
degree that it was little better than a caricature. To this class
belong, for example, the pantheistic theories of the Trinity and
the Incarnation, the dualistic acknowledgment of the reality of
evil, etc. To this also especially belongs the offering of human
victims which has been practised in all religions of nature
without exception,--a terrible and to some extent prophetic cry
of agony from God-forsaken men, which is first toned down on
Golgotha into hymns of joy and thanksgiving. Witness is given to
the power and energy, with which the religions of nature in the
time of their bloom took possession of and ruled over the minds
and emotions of men, by the otherwise unexampled sacrifices
and self-inflictions, such as hecatombs, offerings of children,
mutilation, prostitution, etc., to which its votaries submitted,
and not less the almost irresistible charm which it exercised
again and again upon the people of Israel during the whole course
of their earlier history. It also follows from this that the
religion of heathenism does not consist in naked lies and pure
illusions. There are elements of truth in the lies, which gave
this power to the religion of nature. There are anticipations
of redemption, though these were demoniacally perverted, which
imparted to it this charm. There are mysterious phenomena of
natural magic and soothsaying which seemed to establish their
divine character. But the worship of nature had the fate of all
unnatural, precocious development. The truth was soon swallowed
up by the lies, the power of development and life, of which more
than could possibly be given was demanded, was soon consumed and
used up. The blossoms fell before the fruit had set. Mysteries
and oracles, magic and soothsaying, became empty forms, or organs
of intentional fraud and common roguery. And so it came to pass
that one harauspex could not look upon another without laughing.
Unbelief mocked everything, superstition assumed its most absurd
and utterly senseless forms, and religions of an irrational
mongrel type sought in vain to quicken again a nerveless and
soulless heathenism.
§ 7.2. =The Moral Character of Heathenism.=--Religious character
and moral character go always hand in hand. Thus, too, the moral
life among heathen peoples was earnest, powerful, and true,
or lax, defective, and perverse, in the same proportion as was
the religious life of that same period. The moral faults of
heathenism flow from its religious faults. It was a religion of
the present, to whose gods therefore were also unhesitatingly
ascribed all the imperfections of the present. In this way
religion lost all its power for raising men out of the mire and
dust surrounding them. The partly immoral myths sanctioned or
excused by the example of the gods the grossest immoralities. As
the type and pattern of reproductive power in the deified life
of nature, the gratification of lust was often made the central
and main point in divine service. The idea of pure humanity was
wholly wanting in heathenism. It could only reach the conception
of nationality, and its virtues were only the virtues of citizens.
In the East despotism crushed, and in the West fierce national
antipathies stifled the acknowledgment of, universal human rights
and the common rank of men, so that the foreigner and the slave
were not admitted to have any claims. As the worth of man was
measured only by his political position, the significance of
woman was wholly overlooked and repudiated. Her position was at
most only that of the maid of the man, and was degraded to the
lowest depths in the East by reason of the prevalent polygamy.
Notwithstanding all these great and far-reaching moral faults,
heathenism, in the days of its bloom and power, at least in those
departments of the moral life, such as politics and municipal
matters, in which pantheism and polytheism did not exert
their relaxing influence, had still preserved much high moral
earnestness and an astonishing energy. But when the religion of
their fathers, reduced to emptiness and powerlessness, ceased to
be the soul and bearer of those departments of life, all moral
power was also withdrawn from them. The moral deterioration
reached its culminating point in the dissolute age of the Roman
Emperors. In this indescribable state of moral degeneration, the
church found heathenism, when it began its spiritual regeneration
of the world.
§ 7.3. =The Intellectual Culture in Heathenism.=--The
intellectual culture of heathenism has won in regard to the
church a twofold significance. On the one hand it affords a
pattern, and on the other it presents a warning beacon. Pagan
science and art, in so far as they possess a generally culturing
influence and present to the Christian church a special type
for imitation, are but the ultimate results of the intellectual
activity which manifested itself among the Greeks and Romans
in philosophy, poetry and historical writing, which have in two
directions, as to form and as to contents, become the model for
the Christian church, preparing and breaking up its way. On the
one side they produced forms for the exercise of the intellectual
life, which by their exactness and clearness, by their variety
and many-sidedness, afforded to the new intellectual contents of
Christianity a means for its formal exposition and expression.
But, on the other side, they also produced, from profound
consideration of and research into nature and spirit, history
and life, ideas and reflections which variously formed an
anticipation of the ideas of redemption and prepared the soil
for their reception. The influence, however, on the other hand,
which oriental forms of culture had upon the development and
construction of the history of redemption, had already exhausted
itself upon Judaism. What the symbolism of orientalism had
contributed to Judaism, namely the form in which the divine
contents communicated by Old Testament prophesy should be
presented and unfolded, the dialectic of classical heathenism was
to Christianity, in which the symbolic covering of Judaism was to
be torn off and the thought of divine redemption to be manifested
and to be laid hold of in its purely intellectual form. The
influence of heathenism upon the advancing church in the other
direction as affording a picture of what was to be avoided, was
represented not less by Eastern culture than by the classical
culture of the Greeks and Romans. Here it was exclusively the
contents, and indeed the ungodly anti-Christian contents, the
specifically heathen substance of the pagan philosophy, theosophy,
and mysteriosophy, which by means of tolerated forms of culture
sought to penetrate and completely paganize Christianity. To
heathenism, highly cultured but pluming itself in the arrogance
of its sublime wisdom, Christianity, by whose suggestive
profundity it had been at first attracted, appeared altogether
too simple, unphilosophical, unspeculative, to satisfy the
supposed requirements of the culture of the age. There was needed,
it was thought, fructification and enriching by the collective
wisdom of the East and the West before religion could in truth
present itself as absolute and perfect.
§ 7.4. =The Hellenic Philosophy.=--What is true of Greek-Roman
culture generally on its material and formal sides, that it
powerfully influenced Christianity now budding into flower,
is preeminently true of the Greek Philosophy. Regarded as
a prefiguration of Christianity, Greek philosophy presents
a negative side in so far as it led to the dissolution of
heathenism, and a positive side in so far as it, by furnishing
form and contents, contributed to the construction of
Christianity. From its very origin Hellenic philosophy
contributed to the negative process by undermining the people’s
faith in heathenism, preparing for the overthrow of idolatry, and
leading heathenism to take a despondent view of its own future.
It is with =Socrates=, who died in B.C. 399, that the positive
prefiguring of Christianity on the part of Greek philosophy comes
first decidedly into view. His humble confession of ignorance,
his founding of the claim to wisdom on the Γνῶθι σεαυτόν,
the tracing of his deepest thoughts and yearnings back to
divine suggestions (his Δαιμόνιον), his grave resignation to
circumstances, and his joyful hope in a more blessed future,
may certainly be regarded as faint anticipations and prophetic
adumbrations of the phenomena of Christian faith and life.
=Plato=, who died B.C. 348, with independent speculative and
poetic power, wrought the scattered hints of his teacher’s wisdom
into an organically articulated theory of the universe, which
in its anticipatory profundity approached more nearly to the
Christian theory of the universe than any other outside the range
of revelation. His philosophy leads men to an appreciation of his
God-related nature, takes him past the visible and sensible to
the eternal prototypes of all beauty, truth and goodness, from
which he has fallen away, and awakens in him a profound longing
after his lost possessions. In regard to matter =Aristotle=, who
died B.C. 322, does not stand so closely related to Christianity
as Plato, but in regard to form, he has much more decidedly
influenced the logical thinking and systematizing of later
Christian sciences. In these two, however, are reached the
highest elevation of the philosophical thinking of the Greeks,
viewed in itself as well as in its positive and constructive
influence upon the church. As philosophy down to that time,
consciously or unconsciously, had wrought for the dissolution
of the religion of the people, it now proceeded to work its own
overthrow, and brought into ever deeper, fuller and clearer
consciousness the despairing estimate of the world regarding
itself. This is shown most significantly in the three schools
of philosophy which were most widely spread at the entrance of
the church into the Græco-Roman world, Epicureanism, Stoicism,
and Scepticism. =Epicurus=, who died B.C. 271, in his philosophy
seeks the highest good in pleasure, recognises in the world only
a play of fortune, regards the soul as mortal, and supposes that
the gods in their blissful retirement no longer take any thought
about the world. =Stoicism=, founded by Zeno, who died in B.C.
260, over against the Epicurean deism set up a hylozoistic
pantheism, made the development of the world dependent upon the
unalterable necessity of fate, which brings about a universal
conflagration, out of which again a new world springs to follow
a similar course. To look on pleasure with contempt, to scorn
pain, and in case of necessity to end a fruitless life by
suicide--these constitute the core of all wisdom. When he has
reached such a height in the mastery of self and of the world the
wise man is his own god, finding in himself all that he needs.
Finally, in conflict with Stoicism arose the =Scepticism= of the
_New Academy_, at the head of which were Arcesilaus who died B.C.
240 and Carneades who died B.C. 128. This school renounced all
knowledge of truth as something really unattainable, and in the
moderation (ἐποχή) of every opinion placed the sum of theoretic
wisdom, while it regarded the sum of all practical wisdom to
consist in the evidence of every passionate or exciting effort.
§ 7.5. =The Heathen State.=--In the grand endeavour of heathenism
to redeem itself by its own resources and according to its own
pleasure, the attempt was finally made by the concentration of
all forces into one colossal might. To gather into one point all
the mental and bodily powers of the whole human race, and through
them also all powers of nature and the products of all zones
and lands, and to put them under one will, and then in this
will to recognise the personal and visible representation of the
godhead--to this was heathenism driven by an inner necessity.
Hence arose a struggle, and in consequence of the pertinacity
with which it was carried on, one kingdom after another was
overthrown, until the climax was reached in the Roman empire.
Yet even this empire was broken and dissolved when opposed by the
spiritual power of the kingdom of God. Like all the endeavours
of heathenism, this struggle for =absolute sovereignty= had a
twofold aspect; there are thereby made prominent men’s own ways
and God’s ways, the undivine aims of men, and the blessed results
which God’s government of the world could secure for them. We
have here to do first of all simply with the Roman universal
empire, but the powers that rose in succession after it are only
rejuvenations and powerful continuations of the endeavour of the
earlier power, and so that is true of every state which is true
of the Roman. Its significance as a preparer of the way for the
church is just this, that in consequence of the articulation of
the world into one great state organisation, the various stages
and elements of culture found among the several civilized races
hitherto isolated, contributed now to one universal civilization,
and a rapid circulation of the new life-blood driven by the
church through the veins of the nations was made possible and
easy. With special power and universal success had the exploits
of Alexander the Great in this direction made a beginning, which
reached perfection under the Roman empire. The ever advancing
prevalence of one language, the Greek, which at the time of the
beginning of the church was spoken and understood in all quarters
of the Roman empire, which seemed, like a temporary suspension
of the doom of the confusion of languages which accompanied the
rise of heathenism (Gen. xi.), to celebrate its return to the
divine favour, belongs also pre-eminently to those preparatory
influences. And as the heathen state sought after the
concentration of all might, =Industry= and =Trade=, moved by
the same principle, sought after the concentration of wealth and
profit. But as worldly enterprise for its own ends made paths for
universal commerce over wastes and seas, and visited for purposes
of trade the remotest countries and climes, it served unwittingly
and unintentionally the higher purposes of divine grace by
opening a way for the spread of the message of the gospel.
§ 8. JUDAISM.
In a land which, like the people themselves, combined the character
of insular exclusiveness with that of a central position in the ancient
world, Israel, on account of the part which it was called to play in
universal history, had to be the receiver and communicator of God’s
revelations of His salvation, had to live quiet and apart, taking
little to do with the world’s business; having, on the other hand, the
assurance from God’s promise that disasters threatened by heathenish
love of conquest and oppression would be averted. This position and
this task were, indeed, only too often forgotten. Only too often did
the Israelites mix themselves up in worldly affairs, with which they
had no concern. Only too often by their departure from their God did
they make themselves like the heathen nations in religion, worship,
and conversation, so that for correction and punishment they had
often to be put under a heavy yoke. Yet the remnant of the holy seed
(Isa. iv. 3; vi. 13) which was never wholly wanting even in times of
general apostasy, as well as the long-suffering and faithfulness of
their God, ensured the complete realisation of Israel’s vocation, even
though the unspiritual mass of the people finally rejected the offered
redemption.
§ 8.1. =Judaism under special Training of God through the Law and
Prophecy.=--Abraham was chosen as a single individual (Isa. li. 2),
and, as the creator of something new, God called forth from an
unfruitful womb the seed of promise. As saviour and redeemer
from existing misery He delivered the people of promise from the
oppression of Egyptian slavery. In the Holy Land the family must
work out its own development, but in order that the family might
be able unrestrainedly to expand into a great nation, it was
necessary that it should first go down into Egypt. Moses led the
people thus disciplined out of the foreign land, and gave them
a theocratic constitution, law, and worship as means for the
accomplishment of their calling, as a model and a schoolmaster
leading on to future perfection (Gal. iii. 24; Heb. x. 1). The
going out of Egypt was the birth of the nation, the giving of
the law at Sinai was its consecration as a holy nation. Joshua
set forth the last condition for an independent people, the
possession of a country commensurate with the task of the nation,
a land of their own that would awaken patriotic feelings. Now the
theocracy under the form of a purely popular institution under
the fostering care of the priesthood could and should have borne
fruit, but the period of the Judges proves that those two factors
of development were not sufficient, and so now two new agencies
make their appearance; the Prophetic order as a distinct and
regular office, constituted for the purpose of being a mouth
to God and a conscience to the state, and the Kingly order for
the protecting of the theocracy against hurt from without and
for the establishment of peace within her borders. By David’s
successes the theocracy attained unto a high degree of political
significance, and by Solomon’s building of the temple the typical
form of worship reached the highest point of its development.
In spite, however, of prophecy and royalty, the people, ever
withdrawing themselves more and more from their true vocation,
were not able outwardly and inwardly to maintain the high level.
The division of the kingdom, internal feuds and conflicts,
their untheocratic entanglement in the affairs of the world, the
growing tendency to fall away from the worship of Jehovah and
to engage in the worship of high places, and calves, and nature,
called down incessantly the divine judgments, in consequence of
which they fell a prey to the heathen. Yet this discipline was
not in vain. Cyrus decreed their return and their independent
organization, and even prophecy was granted for a time to the
restored community for its establishment and consolidation. Under
these political developments has prophecy, in addition to its
immediate concern with its own times in respect of teaching,
discipline, and exhortation, given to the promise of future
salvation its fullest expression, bringing a bright ray of
comfort and hope to light up the darkness of a gloomy present.
The fading memories of the happy times of the brilliant victories
of David and the glorious peaceful reign of Solomon formed the
bases of the delineations of the future Messianic kingdom, while
the disasters, the suffering and the humiliation of the people
during the period of their decay gave an impulse to Messianic
longings for a Messiah suffering for the sins of the people
and taking on Himself all their misery. And now, after it
had effected its main purpose, prophecy was silenced, to be
reawakened only in a complete and final form when the fulness
of time had come.
§ 8.2. =Judaism after the Cessation of Prophecy.=--The time had
now come when the chosen people, emancipated from the immediate
discipline of divine revelation, but furnished with the results
and experiences of a rich course of instruction, and accompanied
by the law as a schoolmaster and by the light of the prophetic
word, should themselves work out the purpose of their calling.
The war of extermination which Antiochus Epiphanes in his heathen
fanaticism waged against Judaism, was happily and victoriously
repelled, and once more the nation won its political independence
under the Maccabees. At last, however, owing to the increasing
corruption of the ruling Maccabean family, they were ensnared by
the craft of the Roman empire. The Syrian religious persecution
and the subsequent oppression of the Romans roused the national
spirit and the attachment to the religion of their fathers to the
most extreme exclusiveness, fanatical hatred, and proud scorn of
everything foreign, and converted the Messianic hope into a mere
political and frantically carnal expectation. True piety more
and more disappeared in a punctilious legalism and ceremonialism,
in a conceited self-righteousness and boastful confidence in
their own good works. Priests and scribes were eagerly bent
on fostering this tendency and increasing the unsusceptibility
of the masses for the spirituality of the redemption that was
drawing nigh, by multiplying and exaggerating external rules
and by perverse interpretation of scripture. But in spite of all
these perverting and far-reaching tendencies, there was yet in
quiet obscurity a sacred plantation of the true Israel (John i. 47;
Luke i. 6; ii. 25, 38, etc.), as a garden of God for the first
reception of salvation in Christ.
§ 8.3. =The Synagogues.=--The institution of the =Synagogues=
was of the greatest importance for the spread and development of
post-exilian Judaism. They had their origin in the consciousness
that, besides the continuance of the symbolical worship of the
temple, a ministry of the word for edification by means of the
revelation of God in the law and the prophets was, after the
withdrawal of prophecy, all the more a pressing need and duty.
But they also afforded a nursery for the endeavour to widen and
contract the law of Moses by Rabbinical rules, for the tendency
to external legalism and hypocrisy, for the national arrogance
and the carnal Messianic expectations, which from them passed
over into the life of the people. On the other hand, the
synagogues, especially outside of Palestine, among the dispersion,
won a far-reaching significance for the church by reason of
their missionary tendency. For here where every Sabbath the holy
scripture of the Old Testament was read in the Greek translation
of the Septuagint and expounded, a convenient opportunity was
given to heathens longing for salvation to gain acquaintance with
the revelations and promises of God in the Old Covenant, and here
there was already a place for the first ministers of the gospel,
from which they could deliver their message to an assembled
multitude of people from among the Jews and Gentiles. (Schürer,
“Hist. of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ.” Div. ii.,
vol. 2., “The School and Synagogue.” pp. 44-89, Edin., 1885.)
§ 8.4. =Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.=--The strict,
traditionally legalistic, carnally particularistic tendency
of Post-Exilian Judaism had its representatives and supporters
in the sect of the =Pharisees= (פְרוּשִׁים, ἀφωρισμένοι), so called
because their main endeavour was to maintain the strictest
separation from everything heathenish, foreign, and ceremonially
unclean. By their ostentatious display of zeal for the law, their
contempt for everything not Jewish, their democratic principles
and their arrogant patriotism, they won most completely the
favour of the people; they shared the evil fortunes of the
Maccabean princes, and became the bitterest enemies of the
Herodians, and entertained a burning fanatical hatred to the
Romans. They held sway in the synagogues to such an extent
that the names Scribes and Pharisees were regarded as almost
synonymous, and even in the Sanhedrim they secured many seats.
In the times of Jesus the schools of Hillel and Shammai contended
with one another, the former pleading for somewhat lax views,
especially in reference to divorce and the obligation of oaths,
while the latter insisted upon the most rigorous interpretation
of the law. Both, however, were agreed in the recognition of oral
tradition, the παραδόσεις τῶν πατέρων, as a binding authority and
an essential supplement to the law of Moses. In direct opposition
to them stand the =Sadducees=, out of sympathy with the
aspirations of the people, and abandoning wholly the sacred
traditions, and joining themselves in league with the Herodians
and Romans. The name originally designated them as descendants of
the old temple aristocracy represented by the family of the high
priest Zadok, and, in consequence of the similarity in sound
between צַדּוּקיִם and צַדּיִקיִם, gave expression to their claim to be
regarded as essentially and truly righteous because of their
outward adherence to the Mosaic law. Proceeding on the principle
that virtue as a free act of man has in it its own worth and
reward, just as vice has in it its own punishment, they rejected
the doctrine of a future judgment, denied the doctrine of a
resurrection, the existence of angels and spirits, and the
doctrine of the divine foreknowledge.[2] The =Essenes=, not
mentioned in the Bible, but named by Philo, Josephus, and the
elder Pliny, form a third sect. Their name was probably derived
from חֲסֵא, pious. The original germ of their society is found
in distinct colonies on the banks of the Dead Sea, which kept
apart from the other Jews, and recognised even among themselves
four different grades of initiation, each order being strictly
separated from the others. A member was received only after
a three years’ novitiate, and undertook to keep secret the
mysteries of the order. Community of goods in the several
communities and clans, meals in common accompanied by religious
ceremonies, frequent prayers in the early morning with the face
directed to the rising sun, oft repeated washings and cleansings,
diligent application to agriculture and other peaceful
occupations, abstaining from the use of flesh and wine, from
trade and every warlike pursuit, from slavery and taking of
oaths, perhaps also abstinence from marriage in the higher orders,
were the main conditions of membership in their association.
The Sabbath was observed with great strictness, but sacrifices
of blood were abolished, and all anointing with oil was regarded
as polluting. They still, however, maintained connection with
Judaism by sending gifts to the temple. So far the order may
fairly be regarded, as it is by Ritschl, as a spiritualizing
exaggeration of the Mosaic idea of the priestly character that
had independently grown up on Jewish soil, and indeed especially
as an attempt to realize the calling set forth in Exod. xix. 5, 6,
and repudiated in Exod. xx. 19, 20, unto all Israelites to be a
spiritual priesthood. But when, on the other hand, the Essenes,
according to Josephus, considered the body as a prison in which
the soul falling from its ethereal existence is to be confined
until freed from its fetters by death it returns again to heaven,
this can scarcely be explained as originating from any other than
a heathen source, especially from the widely spread influences
of Neo-Pythagoreanism (§ 24). Lucius (1881) derives the name
and seeks their origin from the Asidæans, Chasidim, or Pious,
in 1 Macc. ii. 42; vii. 13; and 2 Macc. xiv. 6. Very striking
too is Hilgenfeld’s carefully weighed and ably sustained theory
(_Ketzergesch._, pp. 87-149), that their descent is to be traced
from the Kenite Rechabites (Jer. xxxv.; Judg. i. 16), and their
name from the city Gerasa, west of the Dead Sea, called in
Josephus also Essa, where the Rechabites, abandoning their tent
life, formed a settlement. In the time of Josephus the Essenes
numbered about four thousand. In consequence of the Jewish war,
which brought distress upon them, as well as upon the Christians,
they were led into friendly relations with Christianity; but even
when adopting the Christian doctrines, they still carried with
them many of their earlier tenets (§ 28, 2, 3).[3]
§ 9. SAMARITANISM.
The Samaritans, who came into existence at the time of the overthrow
of the kingdom of Israel, from the blending of Israelitish and
heathenish elements, desired fellowship with the Jewish colony that
returned from the Babylonish captivity, but were repelled on account
of their manifold compromises with pagan practice. And although an
expelled Jew named Manasseh purified their religion as far as possible
of heathenish elements, and gave them a temple and order of worship on
Mount Gerizim, this only increased the hatred of the Jews against them.
Holding fast to the Judaism taught them by Manasseh, the Samaritans
never adopted the refinements and perversions of later Judaism. Their
Messianic expectations remained purer, their particularism less severe.
While thus rendered capable of forming a more impartial estimate of
Christianity, they were also inclined upon the whole, because of the
hatred and contempt which they had to endure from Pharisaic Judaism,
to look with favour upon Christianity despised and persecuted as they
themselves had been (John iv. 41; Acts viii. 5 ff.). On the other hand,
the syncretic-heathen element, which still flourished in Samaritanism,
showed its opposition to Christianity by positive reactionary attempts
(§ 25, 2).[4]
§ 10. INTERCOURSE BETWEEN JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.
Alexander the Great’s conquest of the world brought into connection
with one another the most diverse elements of culture in antiquity.
Least of all could Judaism outside of Palestine, the _diaspora_, living
amid the influences of heathen or Hellenic culture and ways of viewing
things, withdraw itself from the syncretic current of the age. The Jews
of Eastern Asia maintained a closer connection and spiritual affinity
with the exclusive Palestinian Rabbinism, and the heathen element,
which here penetrated into their religious conceptions, became, chiefly
through the Talmud, the common property of post-Christian Judaism. But
heathenism also, contemptible as Judaism appeared to it, was susceptible
to Jewish influences, impressed by the deeper religious contents of
Judaism, and though only sporadic, instances of such influence were by
no means rare.
§ 10.1. =Influence of Heathenism upon Judaism.=--This reached
its greatest strength in Egypt, the special centre and source of
the syncretic tendencies of the age. Forming for itself by means
of the adoption of Greek culture and especially of the Platonic
philosophy a more universal basis of culture, Jewish Hellenism
flourished in Alexandria. After Aristobulus, who wrote Ἐξηγήσεις
τῆς Μωυσέως, about B.C. 170, now only found in a fragment
of doubtful authority, and the author of the Book of Wisdom,
the chief representative of this tendency was the Alexandrian
Jew Philo, a contemporary of Christ. His Platonism enriched
by elements drawn from Old Testament revelation and from
the doctrines of the Essenes has on many points carried its
speculation to the very borders of Christianity, and has formed
a scaffolding for the Christian philosophy of the Church Fathers.
He taught that all nations have received a share of divine truth,
but that the actual founder and father of all true philosophy
was Moses, whose legislation and teaching formed the source of
information for even the Greek Philosophy and Mysteriosophy.
But it is only by means of allegorical interpretation that such
depths can be discovered. God is τὸ ὄν, matter τὸ μὴ ὄν. An
intermediate world, corresponding to the Platonic world of ideas,
is the κόσμος νοητός, consisting of innumerable spirits and
powers, angels and souls of men, but bound together into a unity
in and issuing from the Word of God, who as the λόγος ἐνδιαθετός
was embraced in God from eternity, coming forth from God as the
λόγος προφορικός for the creation of the world (thought and word).
The visible world, on account of the physical impotence of matter,
is an imperfect representation of the κόσμος νοητός, etc. On the
ground of the writing _De vita contemplativa_ attributed to Philo,
the =Therapeutæ=, or worshippers of God, mentioned therein, had
been regarded as a contemplative ascetic sect related to the
Essenes, affected by an Alexandrian philosophical spirit, living
a sort of monastic life in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, until
Lucius (Strassb., 1879) withdrew them from the domain of history
to that of Utopian romance conceived in support of a special
theory. This scholar has proved that the writing referred to
cannot possibly be assigned to Philo, but must have been composed
about the end of the third century in the interest of Christian
monasticism, for which it presented an idealizing apology. This,
however, has been contested by Weingarten, in Herzog, x. 761, on
good grounds, and the origin of the book has been assigned to a
period soon after Philo, when Hellenistic Judaism was subjected
to a great variety of religious and philosophical influences.[5]
§ 10.2. =Influence of Judaism upon Heathenism.=--The heathen
state showed itself generally tolerant toward Judaism. Alexander
the Great and his successors, the Ptolemies, to some extent
also the Seleucidæ, allowed the Jews the free exercise of
their religion and various privileges, while the Romans allowed
Judaism to rank as a _religio licita_. Nevertheless the Jews were
universally despised and hated. Tacitus calls them _despectissima
pars servientium, teterrima gens_; and even the better class of
writers, such as Manetho, Justin, Tacitus, gave currency to the
most absurd stories and malicious calumnies against them. In
opposition to these the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus took
pains to overcome the prejudices of Greeks and Romans against
his nation, by presenting to them its history and institutions
in the most favourable light. But on the other side, the Greek
translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, as well
as the multitude of Jewish synagogues, which during the Roman
period were scattered over the whole world, afforded to every
heathen interested therein the opportunity of discovering by
personal examination and inquiry the characteristic principles
of Judaism. When, therefore, we consider the utterly corrupt
condition of heathenism, we cannot wonder that Judaism, in spite
of all the contempt that was thrown upon it, would attract,
by reason of its hoary antiquity and the sublime simplicity of
its creed, the significance of its worship, and its Messianic
promises, many of the better aspiring heathens, who were no
longer satisfied with their sorely degraded forms of religion.
And though indeed only a few enrolled themselves as “_Proselytes
of Righteousness_,” entering the Jewish community by submitting
to the rite of circumcision, the number of the “_Proselytes of
the Gate_” who without observing the whole of the ceremonial law
undertook to abandon their idols and to worship Jehovah, in all
ranks of society, mostly women, was very considerable, and it
was just among them that Christianity found the most hearty and
friendly acceptance.
§ 11. THE FULNESS OF TIME.
The fulness of the olden time had come when the dawn of a new era
burst forth over the mountains of Judea. All that Judaism and heathenism
had been able to do in preparing the way for this new era had now been
done. Heathenism was itself conscious of its impotence and unfitness
for satisfying the religious needs of the human spirit, and wherever it
had not fallen into dreary unbelief or wild superstition, it struggled
and agonized, aspiring after something better. In this way negatively
a path was prepared for the church. In science and art, as well as in
general intellectual culture, heathenism had produced something great
and imperishable; and ineffectual as these in themselves had proved to
restore again to man the peace which he had lost and now sought after,
they might become effectually helpful for such purposes when made
subservient to the true salvation. And so far heathenism was a positive
helper to the church. The impression that a crisis in the world’s
history was near at hand was universal among Jews and Gentiles. The
profound realization of the need was a presage of the time of fulfilment.
All true Israelites waited for the promised Messiah, and even in
heathenism the ancient hope of the return of the Golden Age was again
brought to the front, and had, from the sacred scriptures and synagogues
of the Jews, obtained a new holding ground and a definite direction.
The heathen state, too, made its own contribution toward preparing the
way of the church. One sceptre and one language united the whole world,
a universal peace prevailed, and the most widely extended commercial
intercourse gave opportunity for the easy and rapid spread of saving
truth.
THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNINGS.
The Founding of the Church by Christ and His Apostles.
§ 12. CHARACTER OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNINGS.
The propriety in a treatise on general church history of separating
the Times of Jesus and the Times of the Apostles, closely connected
therewith, from the History of the Development of the Church, and
giving to them a distinct place under the title of the History of the
Beginnings, rests on the fact that in those times we have the germs and
principles of all that follows. The unique capacity of the Apostles,
resulting from special enlightenment and endowment, makes that which
they have done of vital importance for all subsequent development. In
our estimation of each later form of the church’s existence we must
go back to the doctrine and practice of Christ and His Apostles as the
standard, not as to a finally completed form that has exhausted all
possibilities of development, and made all further advance and growth
impossible or useless, but rather as to the authentic fresh germs and
beginnings of the church, so that not only what in later development is
found to have existed in the same form in the beginning is recognised as
genuinely Christian, but also that which is seen to be a development and
growth of that primitive form.
I. THE LIFE OF JESUS.
§ 13. JESUS CHRIST, THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD.
“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son,
made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the
law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. iv. 4, 5). In
accordance with prophetic announcements, He was born in Bethlehem as the
Son of David, and, after John the Baptist, the last of the prophets of
the Old Covenant, had prepared His way by the preaching of repentance
and the baptism of repentance, He began in the thirtieth year of His age
His fulfilment by life and teaching of the law and the prophets. With
twelve chosen disciples He travelled up and down through the land of the
Jews, preaching the kingdom of God, helping and healing, and by miracles
and signs confirming His divine mission and doctrine. The Pharisees
contradicted and persecuted Him, the Sadducees disregarded Him, and
the people vacillated between acclamations and execrations. After
three years’ activity, amid the hosannas of the multitude, He made His
royal entry into the city of His kingly ancestors. But the same crowd,
disappointed in their political and carnal Messianic expectations, a
few days later raised the cry: Crucify Him, crucify Him! Thus then He
suffered according to the gracious good pleasure of the Father the death
of the cross for the sins of the world. The Prince of life, however,
could not be holden of death. He burst the gates of Hades, as well as
the barriers of the grave, and rose again the third day. For forty days
He lingered here below, promised His disciples the gift of His Holy
Spirit, and commissioned them to preach the gospel to all nations. Then
upon His ascension He assumed the divine form of which He had emptied
Himself during His incarnation, and sits now at the right hand of power
as the Head of His church and the Lord of all that is named in heaven
and on earth, until visibly and in glory, according to the promise, He
returns again at the restitution of all things.
§ 13.1. In regard to the =year of the birth= and the =year of the
death= of the Redeemer no absolutely certain result can now be
attained. The usual Christian chronology constructed by Dionysius
Exiguus in the sixth century, first employed by the Venerable
Bede, and brought into official use by Charlemagne, assumes the
year 754 A.U.C. as the date of Christ’s birth, which is evidently
wrong, since, in A.D. 750 or 751, Herod the Great was already
dead. Zumpt takes the seventh, others the third, fourth, or fifth
year before our era. The length of Christ’s public ministry was
fixed by many Church Fathers, in accordance with Isaiah lxi. 1, 2,
and Luke iv. 19, at one year, and it was consequently assumed
that Christ was crucified when thirty years of age (Luke iii. 21).
The synoptists indeed speak only of one passover, the last,
during Christ’s ministry; but John (ii. 13; vi. 4; xii. 1) speaks
of three, and also besides (v. 1) of a ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων.
§ 13.2. Among the non-biblical =witnesses to Christ= the earliest
is probably a Syrian Epistle of =Mara= to his son Serapion,
written, according to Cureton (“_Spicileg. Syriacum_.” Lond.,
1855), about A.D. 73. The father, highly cultured in Greek wisdom
but dissatisfied with it, writes from exile words of comfort
and exhortation to his son, in which he places Christ alongside
of Socrates and Pythagoras, and honours him as the wise King,
by whose death the Jews had brought upon themselves the swift
overthrow of their kingdom, who would, however, although slain,
live for ever in the new land which He has given. To this period
also belongs the witness of the Jewish historian =Josephus=,
which in its probably genuine portions praises Jesus as a worker
of miracles and teacher of wisdom, and testifies to His death on
the cross under Pilate, as well as the founding of the church in
His name. Distinctly and wholly spurious is the =Correspondence
of Christ with Abgar=, Prince of Edessa, who entreats Christ
to come to Edessa to heal him and is comforted of the Lord by
the sending of one of His disciples after His ascension. This
document was first communicated by Eusebius (_Hist. Eccl._, i. 13)
from the Archives of Edessa in a literal translation from the
Syriac, and is also to be found in the Syrian book _Doctrina
Addæi_ (§ 32, 6). Of a similar kind are the apocryphal =Acta
Pilati=, as well the heathen form which has perished (§ 22, 7),
as the Christian form which is still extant (§ 32, 4). An
=Epistle of Lentulus,= pretending to be from a Roman resident
in Palestine on terms of intimacy with Pilate, containing a
description of the appearance of Christ, is quoted, and even then
as a forgery, by Laurentius Valla in his writing on the _Donation
of Constantine_. Since in many particulars it agrees with the
description of the person of Christ given in the Church History
by Nicephorus Callisti (§ 5, 1), in accordance with the type then
prevailing among Byzantine painters, it may fairly be regarded
as an apocryphal Latin retouching of that description originating
in the fifteenth century. At Edessa a picture of Christ was known
to exist in the fourth century (according to the _Doctr. Addæi_),
which must have been brought thither by the messengers of Abgar,
who had picked it up in Jerusalem. During the fourth century
mention is made of a statue of Christ, first of all by Eusebius,
who himself had seen it. This was said to have been set up in
Paneas by the woman cured of the issue of blood (Matt. ix. 20).
It represents a woman entreating help, kneeling before the lofty
figure of a man who stretches out his hand to her, while at his
feet a healing herb springs up. In all probability, however,
it was simply a votive figure dedicated to the god of healing,
Æsculapius. The legend that has been current since the fifth
century of the sweat-marked handkerchief of =Veronica=--this name
being derived either from _vera icon_, the true likeness, or from
Bernice or Beronice, the name given in apocryphal legends to the
woman with the issue of blood,--on which the face of the Redeemer
which had been wiped by it was imprinted, probably arose through
the transferring to other incidents the legendary story of Edessa.
On the occurrence of similar transferences see § 57, 5.
II. THE APOSTOLIC AGE.
A.D. 30-70.
§ 14. THE MINISTRY OF THE APOSTLES BEFORE PAUL.
After the Apostolate had been again by means of the lot raised to the
significant number of twelve, amid miraculous manifestations, the Holy
Spirit was poured out on the waiting disciples as they were assembled
together on the day of Pentecost, ten days after the Ascension of the
Lord. It was the birthday of the church, and its first members were
won by the preaching of Peter to the wondering multitude. By means of
the ministry of the Apostles, who at first restricted themselves to
Jerusalem, the church grew daily. A keen persecution, however, on the
part of the Jews, beginning with the execution of the deacon Stephen,
scattered them apart, so that the knowledge of the gospel was carried
throughout all Palestine, and down into Phœnicia and Syria. Philip
preached with peculiarly happy results in Samaria. Peter soon began a
course of visitation through the land of Jews, and at Cæsarea received
into the church by baptism the first Gentile family, that of Cornelius,
having been prepared for this beforehand by a vision. At the same time
there arose independently at Antioch in Syria a Christian congregation,
composed of Jews and Gentiles, through the great eagerness of the
Gentiles for salvation. The Levite Barnabas, a man of strong faith, was
sent down from Jerusalem, took upon himself the care of this church, and
strengthened his own ministry by securing Paul, the converted Pharisee,
as his colleague. This great man, some years before, by the appearing of
Christ to him on the way to Damascus, had been changed from a fanatical
persecutor into a zealous friend and promoter of the interests of the
church. Thus it came about that the Apostolic mission broke up into
two different sections, one of which was purely Jewish and had for its
centre and starting point the mother church at Jerusalem, while the
other, issuing from Antioch, addressed itself to a mixed audience, and
preeminently to the Gentiles.
It is difficult to determine with chronological exactness
either the =beginning= (§ 13, 1) or the =close of the Apostolic
Age=. Still we cannot be far wrong in taking A.D. 30 as the
beginning and A.D. 70 as the close of that period. The last
perfectly certain and uncontested date of the Apostolic Age is
the martyrdom of the Apostle Paul in A.D. 64, or perhaps A.D. 67,
see § 15, 1. We have it on good evidence that James the elder
died about A.D. 44, and James the Just about A.D. 63 (§ 16, 3),
that Peter suffered martyrdom contemporaneously with Paul
(§ 16, 1), that about the same time or not long after the most of
the other Apostles had been in all probability already taken home,
at least in regard to their life and work after the days of Paul,
we have not the slightest information that can lay any claim
to be regarded as historical. The Apostle John forms the only
exception to this statement. According to important witnesses
from the middle and end of the second century (§ 16, 2), he
entered upon his special field of labour in Asia Minor after
the death of Paul, and continued to live and labour there, with
the temporary interruption of an exile in Patmos, down to the
time of Trajan, A.D. 98-117. But the insufficient data which
we possess regarding the nature, character, extent, success,
and consequences of his Apostolic activity there are partly,
if not in themselves altogether incredible, interesting only
as anecdotes, and partly wholly fabulous, and therefore little
fitted to justify us, simply on their account, in assigning the
end of the first or the beginning of the second century as the
close of the Apostolic Age. We are thus brought back again to
the year of Paul’s death as indicating approximately the close of
that period. But seeing that the precise year of this occurrence
is matter of discussion, the adoption of the round number 70 may
be recommended, all the more as with this year, in which the last
remnant of Jewish national independence was lost, the opposition
between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, which had prevailed
throughout the Apostolic Age, makes its appearance under a new
phase (§ 28).
§ 15. THE MINISTRY OF THE APOSTLE PAUL.
Set apart to the work by the church by prayer and laying on of hands,
Paul and Barnabas started from Antioch on their =first= missionary
journey to Asia Minor, A.D. 48-50. Notwithstanding much opposition
and actual persecution on the part of the enraged Jews, he founded
mixed churches, composed principally of Gentile Christians, comprising
congregations at Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. When
Paul undertook his =second= missionary journey, A.D. 52-55, Barnabas
separated himself from him because of his refusal to accept the company
of his nephew John Mark, who had deserted them during their first
journey, and along with Mark embarked upon an independent mission,
beginning with his native country Cyprus; of the success of this mission
nothing is known. Paul, on the other hand, accompanied by Silas and
Luke, with whom at a later period Timothy also was associated, passed
through Asia Minor, and would thereafter have returned to Antioch had
not a vision by night at Troas led him to take ship for Europe. There he
founded churches at Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and Corinth,
and then returned through Asia Minor to Syria. Without any lengthened
interval he entered upon his =third= missionary journey, A.D. 55-58,
accompanied by Luke, Titus, and Timothy. The centre of his ministerial
activity during this period was Ephesus, where he founded a church with
a large membership. His success was extraordinary, so that the very
existence of heathenism in Asia Minor was seriously imperilled. Driven
away by the uprising of a heathen mob, he travelled through Macedonia,
pressed on to Illyricum, visited the churches of Greece, and then went
to Jerusalem, for the performance of a vow. Here his life, threatened
by the excited Jews, was saved by his being put in prison by the Roman
captain, and then sent down to Cæsarea, A.D. 58. An appeal to Cæsar, to
which as a Roman citizen he was entitled, resulted in his being sent to
Rome, where he, beginning with the spring of A.D. 61, lived and preached
for several years, enduring a mild form of imprisonment. The further
course of his life and ministry remains singularly uncertain. Of the
later labours and fortunes of Paul’s fellow-workers we know absolutely
nothing.
It may be accepted as a well authenticated and incontestable
fact that =Paul= suffered =martyrdom= at Rome under Nero. This
is established by the testimony of Clement of Rome--μαρτυρήσας
ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων οὕτως ἀπηλλάγη τοῦ κοσμοῦ,--and is further
explained and confirmed by Dionysius of Corinth, quoted in
Eusebius, and by Irenæus, Tertullian, Caius of Rome (§ 16, 1). On
the other hand it is disputed whether it may have happened during
the imprisonment spoken about in the Acts of the Apostles, or
during a subsequent imprisonment. According to the tradition of
the church given currency to by Eusebius (_Hist. Eccl._, ii. 22),
which even in our own time has been maintained by many capable
scholars, Paul was released from his first Roman imprisonment
shortly before the outburst of Nero’s persecution of the
Christians in A.D. 64 (§ 22, 1), and made a fourth missionary
journey which was brought to a close by his being a second
time arrested and subsequently beheaded at Rome in A.D. 67. The
proofs, however, that are offered in support of this assertion
are of a very doubtful character. Paul certainly in A.D. 58
had the intention (Rom. xv. 24, 28) after a short visit to Rome
to proceed to Spain; and when from his prison in Rome he wrote
to Philemon (v. 22) and to the Philippians (i. 25; ii. 24), he
believed that his cherished hope of yet regaining his liberty
would be realised; but there is no further mention of a journey
into Spain, for apparently other altogether different plans of
travel are in his mind. And indeed circumstances may easily be
conceived as arising to blast such hopes and produce in him that
spirit of hopeless resignation, which he gives expression to
in 2 Tim. iv. 6 ff. But the words of Clement of Rome, chap. 5:
δικαιοσύνην διδάξας ὅλον τὸν κόσμον καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως
ἐλθών, etc., are too indefinite and rhetorical to be taken as
a certain testimony on behalf of a Spanish missionary journey.
The incomplete reference in the Muratorian Fragment (§ 36, 8)
to a _profectio Pauli ab Urbe ad Spaniam proficiscentis_ may
be thought to afford more direct testimony, but probably it is
nothing more than a reminiscence of Rom. xv. 24, 28. Much more
important, nay almost conclusive, in the opposite direction, is
the entire absence, not only from all the patristic, but also
from all the apocryphal, literature of the second and third
centuries, of any allusion to a fourth missionary journey or a
second imprisonment of the Apostle. The assertion of Eusebius
introduced by a vague λόγος ἔχει can scarcely be regarded as
outweighing this objection. Consequently the majority of modern
investigators have decided in favour of the theory of one
imprisonment. But then the important question arises as to
whether the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, claiming to be Pauline,
with the journeys referred to or presupposed in them, and the
residences of the Apostle and his two assistants, can find
a place in the framework of the narrative in the Acts of the
Apostles, and if so, what that place may be. In answering this
question those investigators take diverse views. Of those who
cannot surrender their conviction that the Pastoral Epistles
are genuine, some assign them to the Apostle’s residence of
almost three years in Ephesus, others to the imprisonment in
Cæsarea which lasted two years and a half, and others to the
Roman imprisonment of almost three years. Others again, looking
upon such expedients as inadmissible, deny the authenticity of
the Pastoral Epistles, these having appeared to them worthy of
suspicion on other grounds.
§ 16. THE OTHER APOSTLES AFTER THE APPEARANCE
OF THE APOSTLE PAUL.
Only in reference to the most distinguished of the Apostles have any
trustworthy accounts reached us. James the brother of John, at an early
period, in A.D. 44, suffered a martyr’s death at Jerusalem. Peter was
obliged by this persecution to quit Jerusalem for a time. Inclination
and his special calling marked him out as the Apostle of the Jews
(Gal. ii. 7-9). His ministry outside of Palestine was exercised,
according to 1 Pet. i. 1, in the countries round about the Black Sea,
and, according to chap. v. 13, extended to Babylon. The legend that,
contemporaneously with the beheading of Paul, he suffered death by
crucifixion under Nero at Rome (John xxi. 18, 19), is doubtful; and
it is also questionable whether he ever went to Rome, while the story
of his having down to the time of his death been Bishop of Rome for
twenty-five years is wholly fabulous. John, according to the tradition
of the church, took up Asia Minor as his special field of labour after
it had been deprived of its first Apostle by the martyr death of Paul,
fixing his residence at Ephesus. At the head of the mother church of
Jerusalem stood James the Just, the brother of the Lord. He seems never
to have left Jerusalem, and was stoned by the Jews between A.D. 63-69.
Regarding the rest of the Apostles and their fellow-workers we have only
legendary traditions of an extremely untrustworthy description, and even
these have come down to us in very imperfect and corrupt forms.
§ 16.1. =The Roman Episcopate of Peter.=--The tradition that
Peter, after having for some years held the office of bishop
at Antioch, became first Bishop of Rome, holding the office for
twenty-five years (A.D. 42-67), and suffered martyrdom at the
same time with Paul, had its origin in the series of heretical
apocryphal writings, out of which sprang, both the romance of the
Clementine Homilies and Recognitions (§ 28, 3), and the Ebionite
Acts of Peter; but it attained its complete form only at the end
of the fourth century, after it had been transplanted into the
soil of the church tradition through the _Acta Petri et Pauli_
(§ 32, 6). What chiefly secured currency and development to this
tradition was the endeavour, ever growing in strength in Rome,
to vindicate on behalf of the Roman Episcopate as the legitimate
successor and heir to all the prerogatives alleged to have been
conferred on Peter in Matt. xvi. 18, a title to primacy over all
the churches (§ 34, 8; 46, 3 ff.). But that Peter had not really
been in Rome as a preacher of the gospel previous to the year
A.D. 61, when Paul came to Rome as a prisoner, is evident from the
absence of any reference to the fact in the Epistle to the Romans,
written in A.D. 58, as well as in the concluding chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles. According to the Acts, Peter in A.D. 44
lay in prison at Jerusalem, and according to Gal. ii., he was
still there in A.D. 51. Besides, according to the unanimous
verdict of tradition, as expressed by Irenæus, Eusebius, Rufinus,
and the Apostolic Constitutions, not Peter, but Linus, was the
first Bishop of Rome, and it is only in regard to the order of
his successors, Anacletus and Clement, that any real uncertainty
or discrepancy occurs. This, indeed, by no means prevents us
from admitting an appearance of Peter at Rome resulting in his
martyrdom. But the testimonies in favour thereof are not of such
a kind as to render its historical reality unquestionable. That
Babylon is mentioned in 1 Pet. v. 13 as the place where this
Epistle was composed, can scarcely be used as a serious argument,
since the supposition that Babylon is a symbolical designation
of Rome as the centre of anti-Christian heathenism, though quite
conceivable and widely current in the early church, is not by any
means demonstrable. Toward the end of the first century, Clement
of Rome relates the martyrdom of Peter as well as of Paul, but
he does not even say that it took place at Rome. On the other
hand, clear and unmistakable statements are found in Dionysius
of Corinth, about A.D. 170, then in Caius of Rome, in Irenæus
and Tertullian, to the effect that Peter and Paul exercised
their ministry together and suffered martyrdom together at Rome.
These statements, however, are interwoven with obviously false
and fabulous dates to such a degree that their credibility is
rendered extremely doubtful. Nevertheless they prove this much,
that already about the end of the second century, the story
of the two Apostles suffering martyrdom together at Rome was
believed, and that some, of whom Caius tells us, professed to
know their graves and to have their bones in their possession.
§ 16.2. =The Apostle John.=--Soon after the death of Paul, the
Apostle John settled in Ephesus, and there, with the temporary
break caused by his exile to Patmos (Rev. i. 9), he continued
to preside over the church of Asia Minor down to his death in
the time of Trajan (A.D. 98-117). This rests upon the church
tradition which, according to Polycrates of Ephesus (Eus., _Hist.
Eccl._, v. 24) and Irenæus, a scholar of Polycarp’s (Eus., iv. 14),
was first set forth during the Easter controversies (§ 37, 2)
in the middle of the second century by Polycarp of Smyrna, and
has been accepted as unquestionable through all ages down to our
own. According to Irenæus (Eus., iii. 18), his exile occurred
under Domitian; the Syrian translation of the Apocalypse, which
was made in the sixth century, assigned it to the time of Nero.
But seeing that, except in Rev. i. 11, neither in the New
Testament scriptures, nor in the extant writings and fragments
of the Church Fathers of the second century before Irenæus, is
a residence of the Apostle John at Ephesus asserted or assumed,
whereas Papias (§ 30, 6), according to Georgius Hamartolus, a
chronicler of the 9th cent., who had read the now lost work of
Papias, expressly declares that the Apostle John was slain “by
Jews” (comp. Matt. xx. 23), which points to Palestine rather
than to Asia Minor, modern critics have denied the credibility
of that ecclesiastical tradition, and have attributed its origin
to a confusion between the Apostle John and a certain John the
Presbyter, with whom we first meet in the Papias-Fragment quoted
in Eusebius as μαθητὴς τοῦ κυρίου. Others again, while regarding
the residence of the Apostle at Ephesus as well established, have
sought, on account of differences in style standpoint and general
mode of thought in the Johannine Apocalypse on the one hand, and
the Johannine Gospel and Epistles on the other hand, to assign
them to two distinct μαθηταὶ τοῦ κυρίου of the same name, and
by assigning the Apocalypse to the Presbyter and the Gospel and
Epistles to the Apostle, they would in this way account for the
residence at Ephesus. This is the course generally taken by the
Mediation theologians of Schleiermacher’s school. The advanced
liberal critics of the school of Baur assign the Apocalypse to
the Apostle and the Gospel and Epistles to the Presbyter, or else
instead of the Apostle assume a third John otherwise unknown.
Conservative orthodox theology again maintains the unity of
authorship of all the Johannean writings, explains the diversity
of character discernible in the different works by a change on
the part of the Apostle from the early Judæo-Christian standpoint
(Gal. ii. 9), which is still maintained in the Apocalypse, to
the ideal universalistic standpoint assumed in the Gospel and
the Epistles, and is inclined to identify the Presbyter of Papias
with the Apostle. Even in Tertullian we meet with the tradition
that under Nero the Apostle had been thrown into a vat of boiling
oil, and in Augustine we are told how he emptied a poisoned cup
without suffering harm. It is a charming story at least that
Clement of Alexandria tells of the faithful pastoral care which
the aged Apostle took in a youth who had fallen so far as to
become a bandit chief. Of such a kind, too, is the story told of
the Apostle by Jerome, how in the extreme weakness of old age he
had to be carried into the assemblies of the congregation, and
with feeble accents could only whisper, Little children, love one
another. According to Irenæus, when by accident he met with the
heretic Cerinthus (§ 27, 1) in the bath, he immediately rushed
out to avoid any contact with him.
§ 16.3. =James, the brother of the Lord.=--The name of James was
borne by two of the twelve disciples of Jesus: James, the son of
Zebedee and brother of John, who was put to death by the command
of Herod Agrippa I. (Acts xii. 2) about A.D. 44, and James,
son of Alphæus, about whom we have no further information. A
third James, designated in Gal. i. 19 the brother of the Lord,
who according to Hegesippus (Euseb., _Hist. Eccl._, ii. 23) on
account of his scrupulous fulfilment of the law received the
title of the Just, is met with in Acts xii. 17; xv. 13; xxi. 18,
and is recognised by Paul (Gal. i. 19; ii. 9-12) as the President
of the church in Jerusalem. According to Hegesippus (§ 31, 7),
he was from his childhood a Nazirite, and shortly before the
destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews at the Passover having desired
of him a testimony against Christ, and he having instead given
a powerful testimony on His behalf, he was hurled down from a
pinnacle of the temple, stoned, and at last, while praying for
his enemies, slain by the blows of a fuller’s club. According
to Josephus, however, Ananus, the high priest, after the recall
of the Proconsul Festus and before the arrival of his successor
Albinus, along with other men hostile to James, hastily condemned
him and had him stoned, about A.D. 63. In regard to the person of
this last-named James three different theories have been proposed.
a. In the ancient church, the brothers of Jesus, of whom besides
James other three, Joses, Simon, and Judas, are named, were
regarded undoubtedly as step-brothers of Jesus, sons of
Joseph and Mary (Matt. i. 25), and even Tertullian argues
from the existence of brothers of the Redeemer according to
the flesh against the Docetism of the Gnostics.
b. Soon, however, it came to be felt that the idea that Joseph
had conjugal intercourse with Mary after the birth of Jesus
was in conflict with the ascetic tendency now rising into
favour, and so to help themselves out of this embarrassment,
it was assumed that the brothers of Jesus were sons of
Joseph by a former wife.
c. The want of biblical foundation for this view was the
occasion of its being abandoned in favour of a theory,
first hinted at by Jerome, according to which the expression
brothers of Jesus is to be taken in a wider sense as meaning
cousins, and in this way James the brother of the Lord was
identified with James the son of Alphæus, one of the twelve
disciples, and the four or five Jameses named in the New
Testament were reduced to two, James the son of Zebedee
and James son of Alphæus. It was specially urged from
John xix. 25 that James the son of Alphæus was the sister’s
son of Jesus’ mother. This was done by a purely arbitrary
identification of the name Clopas or Cleophas with the
Alphæus of the Synoptists, the rendering of the words Μαρία
τοῦ Κλωπᾶ by the wife of Clopas, and also the assumption,
which is scarcely conceivable, that the sister of the mother
of Jesus was also called Mary. We should therefore in this
passage regard the sister of the mother of Jesus and Mary
wife of Clopas as two distinct persons. In that case the
wife of Alphæus may have been called Mary and have had two
sons who, like two of the four brothers of Jesus, were named
James and Joses (Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; Luke xxiv. 10);
but even then, in the James here mentioned, we should meet
with another James otherwise unknown, different from the
James son of Alphæus in the list of the Apostles, whose name
occurs in Luke xv. 16 and Acts i. 13 in the phrase Judas of
James, where the genitive undoubtedly means brother of James
son of Alphæus. And though in Gal. i. 19, James the brother
of the Lord seems to be called an Apostle, when this is
compared with Acts xiv. 14, it affords no proof that he
belonged to the number of the twelve.
But the fact that the brothers of Jesus are all and always
expressly distinguished from His twelve Apostles, and form a
group outwardly and inwardly apart from them (Matt. xii. 46;
Mark iii. 31; Luke viii. 19; John ii. 12), tells decidedly against
that idea. In John vii. 3, 5, they are, at a time when James
son of Alphæus and Judas brother of James were already in the
Apostolate, described as unbelieving, and only subsequently to
the departure of the Lord, who after His resurrection appeared
to James (1 Cor. xv. 7), do we meet them, though even then
distinguished from the twelve, standing in the closest fellowship
with the Christian believing community (Acts i. 14; 1 Cor. ix. 5).
Besides, in accordance with Matt. xxviii. 19, none of the twelve
could assume the permanent presidency of the mother church, and
Hegesippus not only knows of πολλοὶ Ἰάκωβοι, and so surely of
more than two, but makes James enter upon his office in Jerusalem
first μετὰ τῶν ἀποστόλων.
§ 16.4. =The Later Legends of the Apostles.=--The tradition that
after the Lord’s ascension His disciples, their number having
been again made up to twelve (Acts i. 13), in fulfilment of
their Lord’s command (Matt. xxviii. 18), had a special region
for missionary labour assigned by lot to each, and also the other
tradition, according to which, before their final departure from
Jerusalem, after a stay there for seven or twelve years, they
drew up by common agreement rules for worship, discipline and
constitution suited to the requirements of universal Christendom,
took shape about the middle of the second century, and gave
occasion to the origin of many apocryphal histories of the
Apostles (§ 32, 5, 6), as well as apocryphal books of church
order (§ 43, 4, 5). Whether any portion at all, and if so, how
much, of the various contradictory statements of the apocryphal
histories and legends of the Apostles about their mission
fields and several fortunes can be regarded as genuine tradition
descending from the Apostolic Age, must be left undecided. In any
case, the legendary drapery and embellishment of casual genuine
reminiscences are in the highest degree fantastic and fabulous.
Ancient at least, according to Eusebius, are the traditions
of Thomas having preached in Parthia, Andrew in Scythia, and
Bartholomew in India; while in later traditions Thomas figures
as the Apostle of India (§ 32, 5). The statement by Eusebius,
supported from many ancient authorities, that the Apostle Philip
exercised his ministry from Hierapolis in Phrygia to Asia Minor,
originated perhaps from the confounding of the Apostle with the
Evangelist of the same name (Acts xxi. 8, 9). A history of the
Apostle Barnabas, attributed to John Mark, but in reality dating
only from the fifth century, attaching itself to Acts xv. 39,
tells how he conducted his mission and suffered martyrdom in his
native country of Cyprus; while another set of legends, probably
belonging to the same period, makes him the founder of the church
of Milan. John Mark, sister’s son of Barnabas, who appears in
Col. iv. 10; 2 Tim. iv. 11; and Philem. 24, as the fellow-labourer
of the Apostle Paul, in 1 Pet. v. 13 as companion of Peter at
Babylon, and, according to Papias, wrote his gospel at Rome as
the amanuensis of Peter, is honoured, according to another very
widely received tradition, quoted by Eusebius from a Chronicle
belonging to the end of the second century, from which also
Julius Africanus drew information, as the founder and first
bishop of the church of Alexandria, etc., etc.
§ 17. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP, AND DISCIPLINE.[6]
Bound under Christ its one head into an articulated whole, the church
ought by the co-operation of all its members conditioned and determined
by position, talent, and calling, to build itself up and grow (1 Cor.
xii. 12 ff.; Eph. i. 22 f.). Development will thus be secured to natural
talent and the spiritual calling through the bestowment of special gifts
of grace or charismata. The first form of Christian church fellowship,
in the Jewish as well as the Gentile Christian churches, was of a
thoroughly free character; modelled upon, and attached to, forms of
organization already existing and legitimized, or, at least, tolerated
by the state, but all the while inspired and leavened by a free
Christian spirit. Compelled by the necessity which is felt in all social
federations for the recognised ranking of superiority, inferiority, and
equality, in which his own proper sphere and task would be assigned to
each member, and encroachment and disorderliness prevented, a collegial
church council was soon formed by a free compact, the members of which,
all possessed of equal rights, were called πρεσβύτεροι in consideration
of their personal character, and ἐπίσκοποι in consideration of their
official duties. Upon them devolved especially attention and care in
regard to all outward things that might affect the common interests
of the church, management of the property which had to be realised
and spent on the religious services, and of the means required for the
support of the poor, as well as the administration of justice and of
discipline. But alongside of these were other more independent offices,
the holders of which did not go forth like the members of the eldership
as the choice of the churches, but rather had the spiritual edification
of the church assigned them as their life work by a special divine
call and a charismatic endowment of the gift of teaching. To this class
belong, besides Apostles and helpers of the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors,
and Teachers.
§ 17.1. =The Charismata= of the Apostolic Age are presented to us
in 1 Cor. xii. 4 ff. as signs (φανερώσεις, v. 7) of the presence
of the Spirit of God working in the church, which, attaching
themselves to natural endowment and implying a free personal
surrender to their influence, and manifesting themselves in
various degrees of intensity from the natural to the supernatural,
qualified certain members of the church with the powers necessary
and desirable for the upbuilding and extension of the Christian
community. In verses 8-11, the Charismata are arranged in three
classes by means of the twice-repeated ἑτέρω.
1. Gifts of Teaching, embracing the λόγος σοφίας and the λόγος
γνώσεως.
2. Completeness of Faith, or πίστις with the possession of
supernatural powers for healing the sick, working miracles,
and prophesying, and alongside of the latter, for sifting
and proving it, διάκρισις πνευμάτων.
3. Ecstatic speaking with tongues, γένη γλωσσῶν, γλώσσαις
λαλεῖν, alongside of which is placed the interpretation of
tongues necessary for the understanding thereof ἑρμενεία
γλωσσῶν.
In addition to these three are mentioned, in verse 28, ἀντιλήψεις,
care of the poor, the sick and strangers, and κυβερνήσεις, church
government. The essential distinction between speaking with
tongues and prophesying consists, according to 1 Cor. xiv. 1-18,
in this, that whereas the latter is represented as an inspiration
by the Spirit of God, acting upon the consciousness, the νοῦς of
the prophet, and therefore requiring no further explanation to
render it applicable for the edification of the congregation,
the former is represented as an ecstatic utterance, wholly
uncontrolled by the νοῦς of the human instrument, yet employing
the human organs of speech, γλῶσσαι, which leaves the assembled
congregation out of view and addresses itself directly to God,
so that in ver. 13-15 it is called a προσεύχεσθαι, being made
intelligible to the audience only by means of the charismatic
interpretation of men immediately acted upon for the purpose by
the Spirit of God. In Rom. xii. 6-8, although there the charisms
are enumerated in even greater details, so as to include even
the showing of mercy with cheerfulness, the γλώσσαις λαλεῖν is
wanting. It would thus seem that this sort of spiritual display,
if not exclusively (Acts ii. 4; x. 46; xix. 6; Mark xvi. 17), yet
with peculiar fondness, which was by no means commended by the
Apostle, was fostered in the church of Corinth. The thoroughly
unique speaking with tongues which took place on the first
Pentecost (Acts ii. 6, 11) is certainly not to be understood
as implying that the Apostles had been either temporarily
or permanently qualified to speak in the several languages
and dialects of those present from all the countries of the
dispersion. It probably means simply that the power was conferred
upon the speakers of speaking with tongues and that at the same
time an analogous endowment of the interpretation of tongues
was conferred upon those who heard (Comp., Acts ii. 12, 15, with
1 Cor. xiv. 22 f. ).
§ 17.2. =The Constitution of the Mother Church at
Jerusalem.=--The notion which gained currency through Vitringa’s
learned work “_De synagoga vetere_,” publ. 1696, that the
constitution of the Apostolic church was moulded upon the pattern
of the synagogues, is now no longer seriously entertained. Not
only in regard to the Pauline churches wholly or chiefly composed
of Gentile Christians, but also in regard to the Palestinian
churches of purely Jewish Christians, no evidence in support
of such a theory can be found. There is no sort of analogy
between any office bearers in the church and the ἀρχισυνάγωγοι
who were essentially characteristic of all the synagogues
both in Palestine and among the dispersion (Mark v. 22;
Luke viii. 41, 49; Acts xiii. 15; xviii. 8, 17), nor do we find
anything to correspond to the ὑπήρεται or inferior officers of
the synagogue (Luke iv. 20). On the other hand, the office bearers
of the Christian churches, who, consisting, according to Acts vi.,
of deacons, and also afterwards, according to Acts xi. 30, of
πρεσβύτεροι, or elders of the church at Jerusalem, occupied a
place alongside of the Apostles in the government of the church,
are without any analogy in the synagogues. The Jewish πρεσβύτεροι
τοῦ λαοῦ mentioned in Matt. xxi. 23; xxvi. 3; Acts iv. 5; xxii. 5,
etc., did not exercise a ministry of teaching and edification in
the numerous synagogues of Jerusalem, but a legislatory, judicial
and civil authority over the whole Jewish commonwealth as members
of the Sanhedrim, of chief priest, scribes and elders. Between
even these, however, and the elders of the Christian church a
far-reaching difference exists. The Jewish elders are indeed
representatives of the people, and have as such a seat and vote
in the supreme council, but no voice is allowed to the people
themselves. In the council of the Christian church, on the other
hand, with reference to all important questions, the membership
of all believers is called together for consultation and
deliverance (Acts vi. 2-6; xv. 4, 22). A complaint on the part
of the Hellenistic members of the church that their poor were
being neglected led to the election of seven men who should care
for the poor, not by the Apostles, but by the church. This is
commonly but erroneously regarded as the first institution of
the deaconship. To those then chosen, for whom the Acts (xxi. 8)
has no other designation than that of “the seven,” the διακονεῖν
τραπέζαις is certainly assigned: but they were not and were not
called Deacons in the official sense any more than the Apostles,
who still continued, according to v. 4, to exercise the διακονία
τοῦ λόγου. When the bitter persecution that followed the stoning
of Stephen had scattered the church abroad over the neighbouring
countries, they also departed at the same time from Jerusalem
(Acts viii. 1), and Philip, who was now the most notable of their
number, officiated henceforth only as an evangelist, that is, as
an itinerant preacher of the gospel, in the region about his own
house in Cæsarea (Acts viii. 5; xxi. 8; comp. Eph. iv. 11; 2 Tim.
iv. 5). Upon the reorganization of the church at Jerusalem, the
Apostles beginning more clearly to appreciate their own special
calling (Matt. xxviii. 19), gave themselves more and more to the
preaching of the gospel even outside of Jerusalem, and thus the
need became urgent of an authoritative court for the conducting
of the affairs of the church even during their absence. In these
circumstances it would seem, according to Acts xi. 30, that those
who ministered to the poor, chosen probably from among the most
honourable of the first believers (Acts ii. 41), passed over into
a self-constituted college of presbyters. At the head of this
college or board stood James, the brother of the Lord (Gal. i. 19;
ii. 9; Acts xii. 17; xv. 13; xxi. 15), and after his death,
according to Hegesippus, a near relation of the Lord, Simeon,
son of Clopas, as a descendant of David, was unanimously chosen
as his successor. The episcopal title, however, just like that of
Deacon, is first met with in the New Testament in the region of
the Pauline missions, and in the terminology of the Palestinian
churches we only hear of presbyters as officers of the church
(Acts xv. 4, 6, 22; xxi. 18; James v. 14). In 1 Peter v. 2,
however, although ἐπίσκοπος does not yet appear as an official
title, the official duty of the ἐπισκοπεῖν is assigned to
presbyters (see § 17, 6). It is Hegesippus, about A.D. 180, who
first gives the title Bishop of Jerusalem to James, after the
Clementines (§ 28, 3) had already ten years previously designated
him ἐπισκόπων ἐπίσκοπος.
§ 17.3. =The Constitution of the Pauline Churches.= Founding upon
the works of Mommsen and Foucart, first of all Heinrici and soon
afterwards the English theologian Hatch[7] has wrought out the
theory that the constitution of the churches that were wholly
or mainly composed of Gentile Christians was modelled on those
convenient, open or elastic rules of associations under which
the various Hellenistic guilds prospered so well (θίασοι,
ἔρανοι),--associations for the naturalization and fostering of
foreign, often oriental, modes of worship. In the same way, too,
the Christian church at Rome, for social and sacred purposes,
made use of the forms of association employed in the Collegia or
Sodalicia, which were found there in large numbers, especially
of the funeral societies in which both of those purposes were
combined (_collegia funeraticia_). In both these cases, then,
the church, by attaching itself to modes of association already
existing, acknowledged by the state, or tolerated as harmless,
assumed a form of existence which protected it from the suspicion
of the government, and at the same time afforded it space and
time for independent construction in accordance with its own
special character and spirit. As in those Hellenic associations
all ranks, even those which in civil society were separated from
one another by impassable barriers, found admission, and then,
in the framing of statutes, the reception of fellow members, the
exercise of discipline, possessed equal rights; as, further, the
full knowledge of their mysteries and sharing in their exercise
were open only to the initiated (μεμυημένοι), yet in the exercise
of exoteric worship the doors were hospitably flung open even to
the ἀμυήτοι; as upon certain days those belonging to the narrow
circle joining together in partaking of a common feast; so too
all this is found in the Corinthian church, naturally inspired
by a Christian spirit and enriched with Christian contents. The
church also has its religious common feast in its Agape, its
mystery in the Eucharist, its initiation in baptism, by the
administration of which the divine service is divided into two
parts, one esoteric, to be engaged in only by the baptized,
the other exoteric, a service that is open to those who are
not Christians. All ranks (Gal. iii. 28) have the same claim
to admission to baptism, all the baptized have equal rights in
the congregation (see § 17, 7). It is evident, however, that
the connection between the Christian churches and those heathen
associations is not so to be conceived as if, because in the one
case distinctions of rank were abolished, so also they were in
the other; or that, because in the one case religious festivals
were observed, this gave the first hint as to the observance of
the Christian Agape; or that, because and in the manner in which
there a mysterious service was celebrated from which all outside
were strictly excluded, so also here was introduced an exclusive
eucharistic service. These observances are rather to be regarded
as having grown up independently out of the inmost being of
Christianity; but the church having found certain institutions
existing inspired by a wholly different spirit, yet outwardly
analogous and sanctioned by the state, it appropriated, as far
as practicable, their forms of social organization, in order to
secure for itself the advantages of civil protection. That even
on the part of the pagans, down into the last half of the second
century, the Christian congregational fellowship was regarded as
a special kind of the mystery-communities, is shown by Lucian’s
satire, _De morte Peregrini_ (§ 23, 1), where the description
of Christian communities, in which its hero for a time played
a part, is full of technical terms which were current in
those associations. “It is also,” says Weingarten, “expressly
acknowledged in Tertullian’s _Apologeticus_, c. 38, 39, written
about A.D. 198, that even down to the close of the second century,
the Christian church was organized in accordance with the rules
of the _Collegia funeraticia_, so that it might claim from the
state the privileges of the _Factiones licitæ_. The arrangements
for burial and the Christian institutions connected therewith are
shown to have been carefully subsumed under forms that were
admitted to be legal.”
§ 17.4. Confining ourselves meantime to the oldest and
indisputably authentic epistles of the Apostle, we find that
the autonomy of the church in respect of organization, government,
discipline, and internal administration is made prominent as
the very basis of the constitution. He never interferes in those
matters, enjoining and prescribing by his own authority, but
always, whether personally or in spirit, only as associated with
their assemblies (1 Cor. v. 3), deliberating and deciding in
common with them. Thus his Apostolic importance shows itself not
in his assuming the attitude of a lord (2 Cor. i. 24), but that
of a father (1 Cor. iv. 14 f.), who seeks to lead his children
on to form for themselves independent and manly judgments (1 Cor.
x. 15; xi. 13). Regular and fixed church officers do not seem to
have existed in Corinth down to the time when the first Epistle
was written, about A.D. 57. A diversity of functions (διαιρέσεις
διακονιῶν, 1 Cor. xii. 4) is here, indeed, already found, but
not yet definitely attached to distinct and regular offices
(1 Cor. vi. 1-6). It is always yet a voluntary undertaking of such
ministries on the one hand, and the recognition of peculiar piety
and faithfulness, leading to willing submission on the other hand,
out of which the idea of office took its rise, and from which
it obtained its special character. This is especially true of
a peculiar kind of ministry (Rom. xvi. 1, 2) which must soon
have been developed as something indispensable to the Christian
churches throughout the Hellenic and Roman regions. We mean
the part played by the patron, which was so deeply grounded in
the social life of classical antiquity. Freedmen, foreigners,
proletarii, could not in themselves hold property and had no
claim on the protection of the laws, but had to be associated
as _Clientes_ with a _Patronus_ or _Patrona_ (προστάτης and
προστάτις) who in difficult circumstances would afford them
counsel, protection, support, and defence. As in the Greek and
Roman associations for worship this relationship had long before
taken root, and was one of the things that contributed most
materially to their prosperity, so also in the Christian churches
the need for recognising and giving effect to it became all the
more urgent in proportion as the number of members increasing
for whom such support was necessary (1 Cor. i. 26-29). Phœbe
is warmly recommended in Rom. xvi. 1, 2, as such a Christian
προστάτις, at Cenchrea, the port of Corinth, among whose numerous
clients the Apostle himself is mentioned. Many inscriptions in
the Roman catacombs testify to the deep impress which this social
scheme made upon the organization, especially of the Roman church,
down to the end of the first century, and to the help which it
gave in rendering that church permanent. All the more are we
justified in connecting therewith the προϊστάμενος ἐν σπουδῇ
(Rom. xii. 8), and in giving this passage in connection with the
preceding and succeeding context the meaning: whoever represents
any one as patron let him do it with diligence.--The gradual
development of stated or independent =congregational offices=,
after privileges and duties were distinguished from one another,
was thus brought about partly by the natural course of events,
and partly by the endeavour to make the church organization
correspond with the Greek and Roman religious associations
countenanced by the state by the employment in it of the same
or similar forms and names. In the older communities, especially
those in capital cities, like Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome, etc.,
the heads of the families of the first believers attained an
authoritative position altogether unique, as at Corinth those of
the household of Stephanas, who, according to 1 Cor. xvi. 15, as
the ἀπαρχὴ τῆς Ἀχαΐας εἰς διακονίαν τοῖς ἁγίοις ἔταξαν ἑαυτούς.
Such honour, too, was given to the most serviceable of the
chosen patrons and others, who evidently possessed the gifts of
κυβερνήσεις and ἀντιλήψεις, and those who first in an informal
way had discharged official duties had amends made them even
after death by a formal election. On the other hand, the
churches that sprang up at a later period were probably provided
immediately with such offices under the direction and with the
consent of the Apostle or his apostolic assistants (1 Tim. v. 9;
Tit. i. 5).
§ 17.5. =Congregational and Spiritual Offices.=--While then, down
to A.D. 57 no ecclesiastical offices properly so called as yet
existed at Corinth, and no injunctions are given by the Apostle
for their definite introduction, it is told us in Acts xiv. 23
that, so early as A.D. 50, when Paul was returning from his first
missionary journey he ordained with prayer and fasting elders
or presbyters in those churches of Asia Minor previously founded
by him. Now it is indeed quite conceivable that in these cases
he adhered more closely to the already existing presbyterial
constitution of the mother church at Jerusalem (Acts xi. 30),
than he did subsequently in founding and giving a constitution
to the churches of the European cities where perhaps the
circumstances and requirements were entirely different. But
be this as it may, it is quite certain that the Apostle on his
departure from lately formed churches took care to leave them
in an organized condition, and the author of the Acts has given
expression to the fact proleptically in terms with which he was
himself conversant and which were current in his time.--Among the
Pauline epistles which are scarcely, if at all, objected to by
modern criticism the first to give certain information regarding
distinct and independent congregational offices, together
with the names that had been then assigned to these offices,
is the Epistle to the Philippians, written during the Roman
imprisonment of the Apostle. In chap. i. 1, he sends his apostolic
greeting and blessing πᾶσι τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Φιλίπποις
σὺν ἐπισκόποις καὶ διακόνοις.[8] The =Episcopate= and the
=Diaconate= make their appearance here as the two categories
of congregational offices, of both of which there are several
representatives in each congregation. It is in the so-called
Pastoral Epistles that for the first time we find applied in
the Gentile Christian communities the title of =Presbyter= which
had been the usual designation of the president in the mother
church at Jerusalem. This title, just as in Acts xx. 17, 28, is
undoubtedly regarded as identical with that of bishop (ἐπίσκοπος)
and is used as an alternative (Tit. i. 5, 7; 1 Tim. iii. 1; iv. 14;
v. 17, 19). From the practical identity of the qualifications
of bishops (1 Tim. iii. 1) or of deacons (_v._ 12 f.), it follows
that their callings were essentially the same; and from the
etymological signification of their names, it would seem
that there was assigned to the bishops the duty of governing,
administrating and superintending, to the deacons that of serving,
assisting and carrying out details as subordinate auxiliaries. It
is shown by Rom. xvi. 1, that even so early as A.D. 58, the need
of a female order of helpers had been felt and was supplied. When
this order had at a later period assumed the rank of a regular
office, it became the rule that only widows above sixty years
of age should be chosen (1 Tim. v. 9).--We are introduced to
an altogether different order of ecclesiastical authorities in
Eph. iv. 11, where we have named in the first rank =Apostles=,
in the second =Prophets=, in the third =Evangelists=, and in the
fourth =Pastors= and =Teachers=. What is here meant by Apostles
and Prophets is quite evident (§ 34, 1). From 2 Tim. iv. 5 and
Acts xxi. 8 (viii. 5), it follows that Evangelists are itinerant
preachers of the gospel and assistants of the Apostles. It is
more difficult to determine exactly the functions of Pastors and
Teachers and their relation to the regular congregational offices.
Their introduction in Eph. iv. 11, as together constituting a
fourth class, as well as the absence of the term Pastor in the
parallel passage, 1 Cor. xii. 28, 29, presupposes such a close
connection of the two orders, the one having the care of souls,
the other the duties of preaching and catechizing, that we
unhesitatingly assume that both were, if not always, at least
generally, united in the same person. They have been usually
identified with the bishops or presbyters. In Acts xx. 17, 28,
and in 1 Pet. v. 2-4, presbyters are expressly called pastors.
The order of the ἡγούμενοι in Heb. xiii. 7, οἵτινες ἐλάλησαν ὑμῖν
τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, has also been regarded as identical with that
of bishops. In regard to the last named order a confusion already
appears in Acts xv., where men, who in _v._ 22 are expressly
distinguished from the elders (presbyters) and in _v._ 32 are
ranked as prophets, are yet called ἡγούμενοι. We should also
be led to conclude from 1 Cor. xii. 28, that those who had
the qualifications of ἀντιλήψεις and κυβερνήσεις, functions
certainly belonging to bishops or presbyters as administrative
and diocesan officers, are yet personally distinguished from
Apostles, Prophets, and Teachers. Now it is explicitly enjoined
in Tit. i. 9 that in the choice of bishops special care should be
taken to see that they have capacity for teaching. In 1 Tim. v. 17
double honour is demanded for the καλῶς προεστῶτες πρεσβύτεροι,
if they also labour ἐν λόγῳ καὶ διδασκαλίᾳ. This passage, however,
shows teaching did not always and in all circumstances, or even
_ex professo_ belong to the special functions of the president
of the congregation; that it was rather in special circumstances,
where perhaps these gifts were not at all or not in sufficient
abundance elsewhere to be found, that these duties of teaching
were undertaken in addition to their own proper official work of
presidency (προϊστάναι). The dividing line between the two orders,
bishops and deacons on the one hand, and pastors and teachers
on the other, consists in the fundamentally different nature of
their calling. The former were congregational offices, the latter,
like those of Apostles and Prophets, were spiritual offices. The
former were chosen by the congregation, the latter had, like the
Apostles and Prophets, a divine call, though according to James
iii. 1 not without the consenting will of the individual, and
the charismatic capacity for teaching, although not in the
same absolute measure. The former were attached to a particular
congregation, the latter were, like the Apostles and Prophets,
first of all itinerant teachers and had, like them, the task of
building up the churches (Eph. iv. 12, εἰς οἰκοδομὴν τοῦ σώματος
τοῦ Χριστοῦ). But, while the Apostles and Prophets laid the
foundation of this building on Christ, the chief corner stone,
preachers and teachers had to continue building on the foundation
thus laid (Eph. ii. 20). A place and importance are undoubtedly
secured for these three spiritual offices, in so far as continued
itinerant offices, by the example of the Lord in His preliminary
sending forth of the twelve in Matt. x., and of the seventy
disciples in Luke x.--Continuation, § 34, 1.
§ 17.6. =The question about the original position of the
Episcopate and Presbyterate=, as well as their relation to one
another, has received three different answers. According to
the =Roman Catholic= theory, which is also that of the Anglican
Episcopal Church, the clerical, hierarchical arrangement of the
third century, which gave to each of the larger communities a
bishop as its president with a number of presbyters and deacons
subject to him, existed as a divine institution from the
beginning. It is unequivocally testified by the New Testament,
and, as appears from the First Epistle of Clement of Rome (ch. 42,
44, 57), the fact had never been disputed down to the close of
the first century, that bishops and presbyters are identical.
The force of this objection, however, is sought to be obviated by
the subterfuge that while all bishops were indeed presbyters, all
presbyters were not bishops. The ineptitude of such an evasion
is apparent. In Phil. i. 1 the Apostle, referring to this one
particular church greeted not one but several bishops. According
to Acts xx. 17, 28, all the presbyters of the one Ephesian
community are made bishops by the Holy Ghost. Also, Tit. i. 5, 7
unconditionally excludes such a distinction; and according to
1 Pet. v. 2, all such presbyters should be ἐπισκοποῦντες.--In
opposition to this theory, which received the sanction of the
Council of Trent, the =Old Protestant= theologians maintained the
original identity of the two names and offices. In support of
this they could refer not only to the New Testament, but also to
Clement of Rome and the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (§ 34, 1),
where, just as in Phil. i. 1, only bishops and deacons are named
as congregational officers, and as appointed by the free choice
of the congregation. They can also point to the consensus of the
most respected church fathers and church teachers of later times.
Chrysostom (Hom. ix. in _Ep. ad Tim._) says: οἱ πρεσβύτεροι
τὸ παλαιὸν ἐκαλοῦντο ἐπίσκοποι καὶ διάκονοι Χριστοῦ, καὶ οἱ
ἐπίσκοποι πρεσβύτεροι. Jerome (_ad Tit._ i. 5) says: _Idem
est presbyter qui et episcopus et antequam diaboli instinctu
studia in religione fierent ... communi presbyterorum concilio
gubernantur ecclesiæ._ Augustine, and other church fathers of the
fourth and fifth centuries, as well as Urban II. in A.D. 1091,
Petrus [Peter] Lombardus and the Decree of Gratian, may all
be referred to as supporting the same view. After such an
identification of the person and office, the existence of the two
names must be explained from their meaning as words, by assuming
that the title ἐπίσκοπος, which arose among the Gentile-Christian
churches, pointed more to the duty officially required, while
the title πρεσβύτερος, which arose among the Jewish-Christian
churches, pointed more to the honourable character of the person
(1 Tim. v. 17, 19). The subsequent development of a monarchical
episcopacy is quite conceivable as having taken place in the
natural course of events (§ 34, 2).--A third theory is that
proposed by =Hatch=, of Oxford, in A.D. 1881, warmly approved of
and vigorously carried out by =Harnack=. According to this theory
the two names in question answer to a twofold distinction that
appears in the church courts: on the college of presbyters was
devolved the government of the community, with administration
of law and discipline; on the bishops and their assistants the
superintendence and management of the community in the widest
sense of the word, including its worship, and first of all and
chiefly the brotherly care of the poor, the sick and strangers,
together with the collecting, keeping, and dispensing of
money needful for those ends. In the course of time the two
organizations were combined into one, since the bishops, on
account of their eminently important place and work, obtained
in the presbytery not only a simple seat and vote, but by-and-by
the presidency and the casting vote. In establishing this theory
it is pointed out that in the government and management of
federations of that time for social and religious purposes
in country districts or in cities, in imitation of which the
organization of the Christian communities was formed, this
twofold distribution is also found, and that especially the
administrators of the finances in these societies had not only
the title of ἐπίσκοποι, but had also the president’s seat in
their assemblies (γερουσία, βουλή), which, however, is not
altogether conclusive, since it is demonstrable that this title
was also borne by judicial and political officials. It is also
pointed out on the other hand that, in accordance with the
modified view presented in the Pastoral Epistles, the Acts,
and the Epistle of Clement of Rome, the consciousness of the
original diversity of calling of the two offices were maintained
throughout the whole of the second century, inasmuch as often a
theoretical distinction between bishops and presbyters in the way
specified was asserted. Now, in the first place, it can scarcely
be matter of dispute as to whether the administration of property,
with the care of the poor (ἀντιλήψεις) as the principal task,
could actually have won a place so superior in respectability,
influence and significance to that of congregational government
(κυβερνήσεις), or whether the authority which embraced the
functions of a judicial bench, a court of discipline, and a court
of equity did not rather come to preponderate over that which was
occupied in the administration of property and the care of the
poor. But above all we shall have to examine the New Testament
writings, as the relatively oldest witnesses to the matter of
fact as well as to the usage of the language, and see what they
have to say on the subject. This must be done even by those who
would have the composition of the Pastoral Epistles and the Acts
removed out of the Apostolic Age. In these writings, however,
there is nowhere a firm and sure foundation afforded to that
theory. It has, indeed, been supposed that in Phil. i. 1 mention
is made only of bishops and deacons because by them the present
from the Philippians had been brought to the Apostle. But seeing
that, in the case of there actually existing in Philippi at this
time besides the bishops a college of presbyters, the omission
of these from the greeting in this epistle, the chief purpose
of which was to impart apostolic comfort and encouragement, and
which only refers gratefully at the close, ch. iv. 10, to the
contribution sent, would have been damaging to them, we must
assume that the bishops with their assistants the deacons were
the only office-bearers then existing in that community. Thus
this passage tells as much against as in favour of the limiting
of the episcopal office to economical administration. Often
as mention is made in the New Testament of an ἐπισκοπεῖν and
a διακονεῖν in and over the community, this never stands in
specific and exclusive relation to administration of property and
care of the poor. It is indeed assumed in Acts xi. 30 that care
of the poor is a duty of the presbyter; so also the charismatic
caring for the sick is required of presbyters in James v. 14;
and in 1 Pet. v. 2 presbyters are described as ἐπισκοποῦντες;
in 1 Pet. ii. 25 Christ is spoken of as ἐπίσκοπος τῶν ψυχῶν;
in Acts i. 20 the apostolic office is called ἐπισκοπή, while in
Acts i. 25 and often, especially in the Pauline epistles, it is
designated a διακονία.[9]--Continuation, § 34, 2.
§ 17.7. =Christian Worship.=--Even in Jerusalem, where the
temple ordinances were still observed, the religious needs of
the Christian community demanded that separate services of a
distinctly Christian character should be organized. But just
as the Jewish services of that day consisted of two parts--the
ministry of the word for purposes of instruction and edification
in the synagogues, and the symbolic service of a typical and
sacramental character in the temple,--the Christian service was
in like manner from the first divided into a homiletical-didactic
part, and a eucharistic-sacramental part.--=The Homiletical and
Didactic part=, on account of the presence of those who were
not Christians, must have had, just like the synagogue service,
alongside of its principal aim to instruct and edify the
congregation, a definite and deliberately planned missionary
tendency. The church in Jerusalem at the first held these
_morning_ services in one of the halls of the temple, where the
people were wont to assemble for prayer (Acts ii. 46; iii. 1, 11);
but at a later period they were held in private houses. In the
Gentile churches they seem from the first to have been held in
private houses or in halls rented for the purpose. The service
consisted in reading of portions of the Old Testament, and at a
later period, portions of the Apostolic Epistles and Gospels, and
in connection therewith, doctrinal and hortatory discourses, with
prayer and singing of psalms. It is more than probable that the
liberty of teaching, which had prevailed in the synagogues (Luke
ii. 46; iv. 16; Acts xiii. 15), was also permitted in the similar
assemblies of Jewish Christians (Acts viii. 4; xi. 19; James
iii. 1); and it may be concluded from 1 Cor. xiv. 34 that this
also was the practice in Gentile-Christian congregations. The
apparent contradiction of women as such being forbidden to
speak, while in 1 Cor. xi. 5 it seems to be allowed, can only be
explained by supposing that in the passage referred to the woman
spoken of as praying or prophesying is praying in an ecstasy,
that is, speaking with tongues (1 Cor. xiv. 13-15), or uttering
prophetic announcements, like the daughters of Philip (Acts
xxi. 9), and that the permission applies only to such cases, the
exceptional nature of which, as well as their temporary character,
as charismatic and miraculous gifts, would prevent their being
used as precedents for women engaging in regular public discourse
(1 Thess. v. 19). In 1 Cor. xiv. 24 the ἰδιῶται (synonymous with
the ἀμύητοι in the statutes of Hellenic religious associations)
are mentioned as admitted along with the ἀπίστοι to the didactic
services, and, according to _v._ 16, they had a place assigned
to them separate from the congregation proper. We are thus led to
see in them the uninitiated or not yet baptized believers, that
is, the _catechumens_.--=The Sacramental part of the service=,
the separation of which from the didactic part was rendered
necessary on account alike of its nature and purpose, and is
therefore found existing in the Pauline churches as well as
in the church of Jerusalem, was scrupulously restricted in its
observance, in Jewish and Gentile churches alike, to those who
were in the full communion of the Christian church (Acts ii. 46;
1 Cor. xi. 20-23). The celebration of the Lord’s Supper
(δεῖπνον κυριακόν, 1 Cor. xi. 21), after the pattern of the
meal of institution, consisting of a meal partaken of in common,
accompanied with prayer and the singing of a hymn, which at a
later period was named the Ἀγάπη, as the expression of brotherly
love (Jude _v._ 12), was the centre and end of these _evening_
services. The elements in the Lord’s Supper were consecrated to
their sacramental purpose by a prayer of praise and thanksgiving
(εὐχαριστία, 1 Cor. xi. 24; or εὐλογία, 1 Cor. x. 16), together
with a recital of the words of institution which contained
a proclamation of the death of Christ (1 Cor. xi. 26). This
prayer was followed by the kiss of brotherhood.[10] In the
service of song they used to all appearance besides the
psalms some Christian hymns and doxologies (Eph. v. 19;
Col. iii. 16).[11]--The homiletical as well as the eucharistic
services were at first held daily; at a later period at least
every Sunday.[12] For very soon, alongside of the Sabbath, and
among Gentile Christians, instead of it, the first day of the
week as the day of Christ’s resurrection began to be observed as
a festival.[13] But there is as yet no trace of the observance of
other festivals. It cannot be exactly proved that infant baptism
was an Apostolic practice, but it is not improbable that it
was so.[14] Baptism was administered by complete immersion
(Acts viii. 38) in the name of Christ or of the Trinity
(Matt. xxviii. 19). The charism of healing the sick was exercised
by prayer and anointing with oil (Jas. v. 14). On the other
hand, confession of sin even apart from the public service was
recommended (Jas. v. 16). Charismatic communication of the Spirit
and admission to office in the church[15] was accomplished by
prayer and laying on of hands.[16]
§ 17.8. =Christian Life and Ecclesiastical Discipline.=--In
accordance with the commandment of the Lord (John xiii. 34),
brotherly love in opposition to the selfishness of the natural
life, was the principle of the Christian life. The power of
youthful love, fostered by the prevalent expectation of the
speedy return of the Lord, endeavoured at first to find for
itself a fitting expression in the mother church of Jerusalem by
the voluntary determination to have their goods in common,--an
endeavour which without prejudice of its spiritual importance
soon proved to be impracticable. On the other hand the well-to-do
Gentile churches proved their brotherly love by collections for
those originally poor, and especially for the church at Jerusalem
which had suffered the special misfortune of famine. The three
inveterate moral plagues of the ancient world, contempt of
foreign nationalities, degradation of woman, and slavery, were
overcome, according to Gal. iii. 28, by gradual elevation of
inward feeling without any violent struggle against existing laws
and customs, and the consciousness of common membership in the
one head in heaven hallowed all the relationships of the earthly
life. Even in apostolic times the bright mirror of Christian
purity was no doubt dimmed by spots of rust. Hypocrisy (Acts v.)
and variance (Acts vi.) in single cases appeared very early in
the mother church; but the former was punished by a fearfully
severe judgment, the latter was overcome by love and sweet
reasonableness. In the rich Gentile churches, such as those
of Corinth and Thessalonica, a worldly spirit in the form of
voluptuousness, selfishness, pride, etc., made its appearance,
but was here also rooted out by apostolic exhortation and
discipline. If any one caused public scandal by serious departure
from true doctrine or Christian conduct, and in spite of pastoral
counsel persisted in his error, he was by the judgment of the
church cast out, but the penitent was received again after his
sincerity had been proved (1 Cor. v. 1; 2 Cor. ii. 5).
§ 18. HERESIES IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.[17]
When Christianity began its career of world conquest in the preaching
of the Apostle Paul, the representatives of the intellectual culture
of the ancient world assumed toward it an attitude, either of utter
indifference, or of keen hostility, or of readiness to accept Christian
elements, while retaining along with these many of their old notions.
From this mixing of heterogeneous elements a fermentation arose which
was the fruitful mother of numerous heresies.
§ 18.1. =Jewish Christianity and the Council of Apostles.=--The
Lord had commanded the disciples to preach the gospel to all
nations (Matt. xxviii. 19), and so they could not doubt that the
whole heathen world was called to receive the church’s heritage;
but feeling themselves bound by utterances of the Old Testament
regarding the eternal validity of the law of Moses, and having
not yet penetrated the full significance of the saying of Christ
(Mark v. 17), they thought that incorporation into Judaism by
circumcision was still an indispensable condition of reception
into the kingdom of Christ. The Hellenist Stephen represented a
more liberal tendency (Acts vi. 14); and Philip, also a Hellenist,
preached at least occasionally to the Samaritans, and the
Apostles recognised his work by sending down Peter and John
(Acts viii. 14). On the other hand, it needed an immediate
divine revelation to convince Peter that a Gentile thirsting for
salvation was just as such fit for the kingdom of God (Acts x.).
And even this revelation remained without any decisive influence
on actual missionary enterprise. They were Hellenistic Jews who
finally took the bold step of devoting themselves without reserve
to the conversion of the Gentiles at Antioch (Acts xi. 19). To
foster the movement there the Apostles sent Barnabas, who entered
into it with his whole soul, and in Paul associated with himself
a yet more capable worker. After the notable success of their
first missionary journey had vindicated their claim and calling
as Apostles of the Gentiles, the arrival of Jewish zealots in
the Antiochean church occasioned the sending of Paul and Barnabas
to Jerusalem, about A.D. 51, in order finally to settle this
important dispute. At a Council of the Apostles convened there
Peter and James the Just delivered the decision that Gentile
converts should only be required to observe certain legal
restrictions, and these, as it would seem from the conditions
laid down (Acts xv. 20), of a similar kind to those imposed
upon proselytes of the gate. An arrangement come to at this
time between the two Antiochean Apostles and Peter, James, and
John, led to the recognition of the former as Apostles of the
Gentiles and the latter as Apostles of the Jews (Gal. ii. 1-10).
Nevertheless during a visit to Antioch Peter laid himself open
to censure for practical inconsistency and weak connivance with
the fanaticism of certain Jewish Christians, and had to have
the truth respecting it very pointedly told him by Paul (Gal.
ii. 11-14). The destruction of the temple and the consequent
cessation of the entire Jewish worship led to the gradual
disappearance of non-sectarian Jewish Christianity and its
amalgamation with Gentile Christianity. The remnant of Jewish
Christianity which still in the altered condition of things
continued to cling to its principles and practice assumed ever
more and more the character of a sect, and drifted into open
heresy. (Comp. § 28).
§ 18.2. =The Apostolic Basis of Doctrine.=--The need of fixing
the apostolically accredited accounts of the life of the
Redeemer by written documents, led to the origin of the Gospels.
The continued connection of the missionary Apostles with the
churches founded by them, or even their authority of general
superintendence, called forth the apostolic doctrinal epistles.
A beginning of the collection and general circulation of the New
Testament writings was made at an early date by the communication
of these being made by one church to another (Col. iv. 16). There
was as yet no confession of faith as a standard of orthodoxy, but
the way was prepared by adopting Matt. xxviii. 19 as a confession
by candidates for baptism. Paul set up justification through
faith alone (Gal. i. 8, 9), and John, the incarnation of God in
Christ (1 John iv. 3), as indispensable elements in a Christian
confession.
§ 18.3. =False Teachers.=--The first enemy from within its own
borders which Christianity had to confront was the ordinary
Pharisaic Judaism with its stereotyped traditional doctrine, its
lifeless work-righteousness, its unreasonable national prejudices,
and its perversely carnal Messianic expectations. Its shibboleth
was the obligation of the Gentiles to observe the Mosaic
ceremonial law, the Sabbath, rules about meats, circumcision,
as an indispensable condition of salvation. This tendency had
its origin in the mother church of Jerusalem, but was there
at a very early date condemned by the Apostolic Council. This
party nevertheless pursued at all points the Apostle Paul with
bitter enmity and vile calumnies. Traces of a manifestation of a
Sadducean or sceptical spirit may perhaps already be found in the
denial of the resurrection which in 1 Cor. xv. Paul opposes. On
the other hand, at a very early period Greek philosophy got mixed
up with Christianity. Apollos, a philosophically cultured Jew
of Alexandria, had at first conceived of Christianity from the
speculative side, and had in this form preached it with eloquence
and success at Corinth. Paul did not contest the admissibility
of this mode of treatment. He left it to the verdict of history
(1 Cor. iii. 11-14), and warned against an over-estimation of
human wisdom (1 Cor. ii. 1-10). Among many of the seekers after
wisdom in Corinth, little as this was intended by Apollos, the
simple positive preaching of Paul lost on this account the favour
that it had enjoyed before. In this may be found perhaps the
first beginnings of that fourfold party faction which arose
in the Corinthian church (1 Cor. i.). The Judaists appealed to
the authority of the Apostle Peter (οἱ τοῦ Κηφᾶ); the Gentile
Christians were divided into the parties of Apollos and of Paul,
or by the assumption of the proud name οἱ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, sought to
free themselves from the recognition of any Apostolic authority.
Paul successfully opposes these divisions in his Epistle to
the Corinthians. Apprehension of a threatened growth of gnostic
teachers is first expressed in the Apostle Paul’s farewell
addresses to the elders of Asia Minor (Acts xx. 29); and in the
Epistle to the Colossians, as well as in the Pastoral Epistles,
this ψευδώνυμος γνῶσις is expressly opposed as manifesting itself
in the adoption of oriental theosophy, magic, and theurgy, in an
arbitrary asceticism that forbade marriage and restricted the use
of food, in an imaginary secret knowledge of the nature and order
of the heavenly powers and spirits, and idealistic volatilizing
of concrete Christian doctrines, such as that of the resurrection
(2 Tim. ii. 18). In the First Epistle of John, again, that
special form of Gnosis is pointed out which denied the
incarnation of God in Christ by means of docetic conceptions; and
in the Second Epistle of Peter, as well as in the Epistle of Jude,
we have attention called to antinomian excrescences, unbridled
immorality and wanton lust in the development of magical and
theurgical views. It should not, however, be left unmentioned,
that modern criticism has on many grounds contested the
authenticity of the New Testament writings just named, and
has assigned the first appearance of heretical gnosis to
the beginning of the second century. The Nicolaitans of the
Apocalypse (iii. 5, 14, 15, 20) appear to have been an antinomian
sect of Gentile Christian origin, spread more or less through the
churches of Asia Minor, perhaps without any gnostic background,
which in direct and intentional opposition to the decision of the
Apostolic Council (Acts xv. 29) took part in heathen sacrificial
feasts (comp. 1 Cor. x.), and justified or at least apologized
for fleshly impurity.
FIRST DIVISION.
History of the Development of the Church during the
Græco-Roman and Græco-Byzantine Periods.
§ 19. CONTENT, DISTRIBUTION AND BOUNDARIES
OF THOSE PERIODS.
At the very beginning of the Apostolic Age the universalistic
spirit of Christianity had already broken through the particularistic
limitations of Judaism. When once the substantial truth of divine
salvation had cast off the Judaistic husk in which the kernel had
ripened, those elements of culture which had come to maturity in the
Roman-Greek world were appropriated as means for giving to Christian
ideas a fuller and clearer expression. The task now to be undertaken was
the development of Christianity on the lines of Græco-Roman culture, or
the expansion of the church’s apostolicity into catholicity. The ancient
church of the Roman and Byzantine world fulfilled this task, but in
doing so the sound evangelical catholic development encountered at every
point elements of a false, because an unevangelical, Catholicism. The
centre, then, of all the movements of Church History is to be found
in the Teutono-Roman-Slavic empire. The Roman church preserved and
increased her importance by attaching herself to this new empire, and
undertaking its spiritual formation and education. The Byzantine church,
on the other hand, falling into a state of inward stagnation, and
pressed from without by the forces of Islam, passes into decay as
a national church.
The history of this first stage of the development of the church falls
into =three periods=. The first period reaches down to Constantine the
Great, who, in A.D. 323, secured to Christianity and the church a final
victory over Paganism. The second period brings us down to the close of
the universal catholic or œcumenical elaboration of doctrine attained by
the church under its old classical form of culture, that is, down to the
close of the Monothelite controversy (§ 52, 8), by the Sixth Œcumenical
Council at Constantinople in A.D. 680. But inasmuch as the _Concilium
quini-sextum_ in A.D. 692 undertook simply the completion of the work of
the two previous œcumenical synods with reference to church constitution
and worship, and as here the first grounds were laid for the great
partition of the church into Eastern and Western (§ 63, 2), we prefer
to make A.D. 692 the closing limit of the second period. The conclusion
of the third period, is found in the overthrow of Constantinople
by the Turks in A.D. 1453. The first two periods are most evidently
distinguished from one another in respect of the outward condition of
the church. Before the times of Constantine, it lives and develops its
strength amid the oppression and persecution of the pagan state; under
Constantine the state itself becomes Christian and the church enjoys all
the advantages, all the care and furtherance, that earthly protection
can afford. Along with all this worldly splendour, however, a worldly
disposition makes its way into the church, and in exchange for its
protection of the church the state assumes an autocratic lordship over
it. Even in the inner, and pre-eminently doctrinal, development of the
church the two periods of this age are essentially distinguished from
one another. While it was the church’s endeavour to adopt only the forms
of culture of ancient paganism, while rejecting its godless substance,
it too often happened that pagan ideas got mixed up with Christianity,
and it was threatened with a similar danger from the side of Judaism. It
was therefore the special task of the church during the first period to
resist the encroachment of anti-Christian Jewish and Pagan elements. In
the first period the perfecting of its own genuinely Christian doctrinal
content was still a purely subjective matter, resting only on the
personal authority of the particular church teachers. In the second
period, on the other hand, the church universal, as represented by
œcumenical synods with full power, proceeds to the laying down and
establishing of an objective-ecclesiastical, œcumenical-catholic system
of doctrine, constituting an all-sided development of the truth in
opposition to the one-sided development of subjective heretical teaching.
In doing so, however, the culture of the old Græco-Roman world exhausted
its powers. The measure of development which these were capable of
affording the church was now completed, and its future must be looked
for among the new nationalities of Teutonic, Romanic, and Slavic origin.
While the Byzantine empire, and with it the glory of the ancient church
of the East was pressed and threatened by Islam, a new empire arose
in the West in youthful vigour and became the organ of a new phase of
development in the history of the church; and while the church in the
West struggled after a new and higher point in her development, the
Eastern church sank ever deeper down under outward oppression and inward
weakness. The partition of the church into an Eastern and a Western
division, which became imminent at the close of the second period, and
was actually carried out during the third period, cut off the church of
the East from the influence of those new vital forces, political as well
as ecclesiastical, and which it might otherwise, perhaps, have shared
with the West. By the overthrow of the East-Roman empire the last
support of its splendour and even of its vital activity was taken away.
Here too ends the history of the church on the lines of purely antique
classical forms of culture. The remnants of the church of the East were
no longer capable of any living historical development under the
oppression of the Turkish rule.
FIRST SECTION.
History of the Græco-Roman Church during the
Second and Third Centuries (A.D. 70-323).[18]
§ 20. CONTENT, DISTRIBUTION AND BOUNDARIES
OF THIS PERIOD.[19]
As the history of the beginnings of the church has been treated by
us under two divisions, so also the first period of the history of
its development may be similarly divided into the =Post-Apostolic Age=,
which reaches down to the middle of the second century, and the =Age
of the Old Catholic Church=, which ends with the establishment of the
church under and by Constantine, and at that point passes over into the
Age of the œcumenical Catholic or Byzantine-Roman Imperial Church.--As
the Post-Apostolic Age was occupied with an endeavour to appropriate
and possess in a fuller and more vigorous manner the saving truths
transmitted by the Apostles, and presents as the result of its struggles,
errors, and victories, the Old Catholic Church as a unity, firmly bound
from within, strictly free of all compulsion from without, so on the
basis thus gained, the Old Catholic Church goes forward to new conflicts,
failures, and successes, by means of which the foundations are laid for
the future perfecting of it through its establishment by the state into
the Œcumenical Catholic Imperial Church.[20]
§ 20.1. =The Post-Apostolic Age.=--The peril to which the church
was exposed from the introduction of Judaistic and Pagan elements
with her new converts was much more serious not only than the
Jewish spirit of persecution, crushed as it was into impotence
through the overthrow of Jewish national independence, but also
than the persecution of anti-Christian paganism which at this
time was only engaged upon sporadically. All the more threatening
was this peril from the peculiar position of the church during
this age. Since the removal of the personal guidance of the
Apostles that control was wanting which only at a subsequent
period was won again by the establishment of a New Testament
canon and the laying down of a normative rule of faith, as well
as by the formation of a hierarchical-episcopal constitution. In
all the conflicts, then, that occupied this age, the first and
main point was to guard the integrity and purity of traditional
Apostolic Christianity against the anti-Christian Jewish and
Pagan ideas which new converts endeavoured to import into it from
their earlier religious life. Those Judaic ideas thus imported
gave rise to Ebionism; those Pagan ideas gave rise to Gnosticism
(§§ 26-28). And just as the Pauline Gentile Christianity, in so
far as it was embraced under this period (§ 30, 2), secured the
victory over the moderate and non-heretical Jewish Christianity,
this latter became more and more assimilated to the former, and
gradually passed over into it (§ 28, 1). Add to this the need,
ever more pressingly felt, of a sifting of the not yet uniformly
recognised early Christian literature that had passed into
ecclesiastical use (§ 36, 7, 8) by means of the establishment
of a New Testament =canon=; that is, the need of a collection of
writings admitted to be of Apostolic origin to occupy henceforth
the first rank as a standard and foundation for the purposes of
teaching and worship, and to form a bulwark against the flood
of heretical and non-heretical =Pseudepigraphs= that menaced the
purity of doctrine (§ 32). Further, the no less pressing need for
the construction of a universally valid =rule of faith= (§ 35, 2),
as an intellectual bond of union and mark of recognition for
all churches and believers scattered over the earth’s surface.
Then again, in the victory that was being secured by Episcopacy
over Presbyterianism, and in the introduction of a Synodal
constitution for counsel and resolution, the first stage
in the formation of a hierarchical organization was reached
(§ 34). Finally, the last dissolving action of this age was the
suppression of the fanatical prophetic and fanatical rigorist
spirit, which, reaching its climax in =Montanism=, directed
itself mainly against the tendency already appearing on many
sides to tone down the unflinching severity of ecclesiastical
discipline, to make modifications in constitution, life and
conversation in accordance with the social customs of the world,
and to settle down through disregard of the speedy return of
the Lord, so confidently expected by the early Christians, into
an easy satisfaction in the enjoyment of earthly possessions
(§ 40, 5).
§ 20.2. =The Age of the Old Catholic Church.=--The designation
of the universal Christian church as Catholic dates from the time
of Irenæus, that is, from the beginning of this second part of
our first period. This name characterizes the church as the one
universally (καθ’ ὅλου) spread and recognised from the time of
the Apostles, and so stigmatizes every opposition to the one
church that alone stands on the sure foundation of holy scripture
and pure apostolic tradition, as belonging to the manifold
particularistic heretical and schismatical sects. The church
of this particular age, however, has been designated the Old
Catholic Church as distinguished from the œcumenical Catholic
church of the following period, as well as from the Roman
Catholic and Greek Catholic churches, into which afterwards the
œcumenical Catholic church was divided.
At the beginning of this age, the heretical as well as the
non-heretical Ebionism may be regarded as virtually suppressed,
although some scanty remnants of it might yet be found. The most
brilliant period of Gnosticism, too, when the most serious danger
from Paganism within the Christian pale in the form of Hellenic
and Syro-Chaldaic Theosophy and Mysteriosophy threatened the
church, was already past. But in Manichæism (§ 29) there appeared,
during the second half of the third century, a new peril of a
no less threatening kind, inspired by Parseeism and Buddhism,
which, however, the church on the ground of the solid foundations
already laid was able to resist with powerful weapons. On the
other hand the Pagan element within the church asserted itself
more and more decidedly (§ 39, 6) by means of the intrusion of
magico-theurgical superstition into the catholic doctrine of
the efficacy of the church sacraments and sacramental acts
(§ 58). But now also, with Marcus Aurelius, Paganism outside
of Christianity as embodied in the Roman state, begins the
war of extermination against the church that was ever more and
more extending her boundaries. Such manifestation of hostility,
however, was not able to subdue the church, but rather led, under
and through Constantine the Great, to the Christianizing of the
state and the establishment of the church. During the same time
the episcopal and synodal-hierarchical organization of the church
was more fully developed by the introduction of an order of
Metropolitans, and then in the following period it reached its
climax in the oligarchical Pentarchy of Patriarchs (§ 46, 1),
and in the institution of œcumenical Synods (§ 43, 2). By the
condemnation and expulsion of Montanism, in which the inner
development of the Post-Apostolic Age reached its special and
distinctive conclusion, the endeavour to naturalize Christianity
among the social customs of the worldly life was certainly
legitimized by the church, and could now be unrestrictedly
carried out in a wider and more comprehensive way. In the
Trinitarian controversies, too, in which several prominent
theologians engaged, the first step was taken in that
œcumenical-ecclesiastical elaboration of doctrine which occupied
and dominated the whole of the following period (§§ 49-52).
§ 20.3. =The Point of Transition from the One Age to the Other=
may unhesitatingly be set down at A.D. 170. The following are the
most important data in regard thereto. The death about A.D. 165
of Justin Martyr, who marks the highest point reached in the
Post-Apostolic Age, and forms also the transition to the Old
Catholic Age; and Irenæus, flourishing somewhere about A.D. 170,
who was the real inaugurator of this latter age. Besides these
we come upon the beginnings of the Trinitarian controversies
about the year 170. Finally, the rejection of Montanism from the
universal Catholic church was effected about the year 170 by means
of the Synodal institution called into existence for that very
purpose.
I. THE RELATIONSHIP OF EXTRA-CHRISTIAN PAGANISM AND
JUDAISM TO THE CHURCH.[21]
§ 21. THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.
Amid all the persecutions which the church during this period had to
suffer it spread with rapid strides throughout the whole Roman empire,
and even far beyond its limits. Edessa, the capital of the kingdom of
Osrhoëne in Mesopotamia, had, as early as A.D. 170, a Christian prince,
named =Abgar Bar Maanu=, whose coins were the first to bear the sign
of the cross. We find Christianity gaining a footing contemporaneously
in Persia, Media, Bactria, and Parthia. In the third century we find
traces of its presence in Armenia. Paul himself made his way into
Arabia (Gal. i. 17). In the third century Origen received an invitation
from a ἡγούμενος τῆς Ἀραβίας, who wished to receive information about
Christianity. At another time he accepted a call from that country in
order to settle an ecclesiastical dispute (§ 33, 6). From Alexandria,
where Mark had exercised his ministry, the Christian faith spread out
into other portions of Africa, into Cyrene and among the Coptic races,
neighbouring upon the Egyptians properly so-called. The church of
proconsular Africa, with Carthage for its capital, stood in close
connection with Rome. Mauretania and Numidia had, even in the third
century, so many churches, that Cyprian could bring together at Carthage
a Synod of eighty-seven bishops. In Gaul there were several flourishing
churches composed of colonies and teachers from Asia Minor, such as
the churches of Lyons, Vienne, etc. At a later period seven missionary
teachers of the Christian faith came out of Italy into Gaul, among whom
was Dionysius, known as St. Denis, the founder of the church at Paris.
The Roman colonies in the provinces of the Rhine and the Danube had
several flourishing congregations as early as the third century.
The emptiness and corruption of paganism was the negative, the divine
power of the gospel was the positive, means of this wonderful extension.
This divine power was manifested in the zeal and self-denial of
Christian teachers and missionaries (§ 34, 1), in the life and
walk of Christians, in the brotherly love which they showed, in
the steadfastness and confidence of their faith, and above all in
the joyfulness with which they met the cruellest of deaths by martyrdom.
The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, and it was not
an unheard-of circumstance that the executioners of those Christian
witnesses became their successors in the noble army of confessors.
§ 22. PERSECUTIONS OF THE CHRISTIANS IN THE
ROMAN EMPIRE.[22]
The Law of the Twelve Tables had already forbidden the exercise
of foreign modes of worship within the Roman empire (_Religiones
peregrinæ_, _Collegia illicita_), for religion was exclusively an affair
of the state and entered most intimately into all civil and municipal
relations, and on this account whatever endangered the national religion
was regarded as necessarily imperilling the state itself. Political
considerations, however, led to the granting to conquered nations
the free use of their own forms of worship. This concession did not
materially help Christianity after it had ceased, in the time of Nero,
to be regularly confounded by the Roman authorities with Judaism,
as had been the case in the time of Claudius, and Judaism, after
the destruction of Jerusalem, had been sharply distinguished from
it. It publicly proclaimed its intention to completely dislodge all
other religions, and the rapidity with which it spread showed how
energetically its intentions were carried out. The close fellowship
and brotherliness that prevailed among Christians, as well as their
exclusive, and during times of persecution even secret assemblies,
aroused the suspicion that they had political tendencies. Their
withdrawal from civil and military services on account of the pagan
ceremonies connected with them, especially their refusal to burn incense
before the statues of the emperor, also the steadfastness of their
faith, which was proof against all violence and persuasion alike, their
retiredness from the world, etc., were regarded as evidence of their
indifference or hostility to the general well-being of the state, as
invincible stiff-neckedness, as contumacy, sedition, and high treason.
The heathen populace saw in the Christians the sacrilegious enemies and
despisers of their gods; and the Christian religion, which was without
temples, altars and sacrifices, seemed to them pure Atheism. The most
horrible calumnies, that in their assemblies (_Agapæ_) the vilest
immoralities were practised (_Concubitus Œdipodei_), children slain
and human flesh eaten (_Epulæ Thyesteæ_, comp. § 36, 5), were readily
believed. All public misfortunes were thus attributed to the wrath
of the gods against the Christians, who treated them with contempt.
_Non pluit Deus, duc ad Christianos!_ The heathen priests also, the
temple servants and the image makers were always ready in their own
common interests to stir up the suspicions of the people. Under such
circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the fire of persecution
on the part of the heathen people and the heathen state continued to
rage for centuries.
§ 22.1. =Claudius, Nero and Domitian.=--Regarding the Emperor
=Tiberius= (A.D. 14-37), we meet in Tertullian with the
undoubtedly baseless tradition, that, impressed by the story
told him by Pilate, he proposed to the Senate to introduce Christ
among the gods, and on the rejection of this proposal, threatened
the accusers of the Christians with punishment. The statement
in Acts xviii. 2, that the Emperor =Claudius= (A.D. 41-54)
expelled from Rome all Jews and with them many Christians also,
is illustrated in a very circumstantial manner by Suetonius:
_Claudius Judæos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma
expulit_. The tumults, therefore, between the Jews and the
Christians, occurring about the year 51 or 52, gave occasion to
this decree. The first persecution of the Christians proceeding
from a Roman ruler which was directed against the Christians as
such, was carried out by the Emperor =Nero= (A.D. 54-68) in the
year 64, in consequence of a nine days’ conflagration in Rome,
the origin of which was commonly ascribed by the people to the
Emperor himself. Nero, however, laid the blame upon the hated
Christians, and perpetrated upon them the most ingeniously
devised cruelties. Sewn up in skins of wild animals they were
cast out to be devoured of dogs; others were crucified, or wrapt
in tow and besmeared with pitch, they were fixed upon sharp
spikes in the imperial gardens where the people gathered to
behold gorgeous spectacles, and set on fire to lighten up
the night (Tac., _Ann._, xv. 44). After the death of Nero the
legend spread among the Christians, that he was not dead but had
withdrawn beyond the Euphrates, soon to return as Antichrist.
Nero’s persecution seems to have been limited to Rome, and to
have ended with his death.--It was under =Domitian= (A.D. 81-96)
that individual Christians were for the first time subjected
to confiscation of goods and banishment for godlessness or the
refusal to conform to the national religion. Probably also, the
execution of his own cousin, the Consul Flavius Clemens [Clement],
on account of his ἀθεότης and his ἐξοκέλλειν εἰς τὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων
ἔθη (Dio Cass., lxvii. 14), as well as the banishment of Clemens’
[Clement’s] wife, Flavia Domitilla (A.D. 93), was really on
account of their attachment to the Christian faith (§ 30, 3). The
latter at least is proved by two inscriptions in the catacombs to
have been undoubtedly a Christian. Domitian insisted upon having
information as to the political significance of the kingdom of
Christ, and brought from Palestine to Rome two relatives of Jesus,
grandsons of Jude, the brother of the Lord, but their hands horny
with labour satisfied him that his suspicions had been unfounded.
The philanthropic Emperor =Nerva= (A.D. 96-98) recalled the
exiles and did not listen to those who clamoured bitterly against
the Christians, but Christianity continued after as well as
before a _Religo illicita_, or rather was now reckoned such,
after it had been more distinctly separated from Judaism.[23]
§ 22.2. =Trajan and Hadrian.=--With =Trajan= (A.D. 98-117),
whom historians rightly describe as a just, earnest, and mild
ruler, the persecutions of the Christians enter upon a new
stage. He renewed the old strict prohibition of secret societies,
_hetæræ_, which could easily be made to apply to the Christians.
In consequence of this law the younger Pliny, as Governor
of Bithynia, punished with death those who were accused as
Christians, if they would not abjure Christianity. But his
doubts being awakened by the great number of every rank and age
and of both sexes against whom accusations were brought, and in
consequence of a careful examination, which showed the Christians
to be morally pure and politically undeserving of suspicion and
to be guilty only of stubborn attachment to their superstition,
he asked definite instructions from the Emperor. Trajan approved
of what he had done and what he proposed; the Christians were
not to be sought after and anonymous accusations were not to
be regarded, but those formally complained of and convicted, if
they stubbornly refused to sacrifice to the gods and burn incense
before the statues of the Emperor were to be punished with death
(A.D. 112). This imperial rescript continued for a long time
the legal standard for judicial procedure with reference to the
Christians. The persecution under Trajan extended even to Syria
and Palestine. In Jerusalem the aged bishop Simeon, the successor
of James, accused as a Christian and a descendant of David, after
being cruelly scourged, died a martyr’s death on the cross in
A.D. 107. The martyrdom, too, of the Antiochean bishop, Ignatius,
in all probability took place during the reign of Trajan (§ 30, 5).
An edict of toleration supposed to have been issued at a later
period by Trajan, a copy of which exists in Syriac and Armenian,
is now proved to be apocryphal.--During the reign of =Hadrian=
(A.D. 117-138), the people began to carry out in a tumultuous
way the execution of the Christians on the occasion of the
heathen festivals. On the representation of the proconsul of Asia,
Serenius Granianus, Hadrian issued a rescript addressed to his
successor, Minucius Fundanus, against such acts of violence, but
executions still continued carried out according to the forms of
law. The genuineness of the rescript, however, as given at the
close of the first Apology of Justin Martyr, has been recently
disputed by many. In Rome itself, between A.D. 135 and A.D. 137,
bishop Telesphorus, with many other Christians, fell as victims
of the persecution. The tradition of the fourth century, that
Hadrian wished to build a temple to Christ, is utterly without
historical foundation. His unfavourable disposition toward the
Christians clearly appears from this, that he caused a temple of
Venus to be built upon the spot where Christ was crucified, and a
statue of Jupiter to be erected on the rock of the sepulchre, in
order to pollute those places which Christians held most sacred.
§ 22.3. =Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.=--Under =Antoninus
Pius= (A.D.138-161), the tumultuous charges of the people against
the Christians, on account of visitations of pestilence in many
places, were renewed, but the mildly disposed emperor sought to
protect them as much as possible from violence. The rescript,
however, _Ad Commune Asiæ_, which bears his name is very probably
of Christian authorship.--The persecutions again took a new turn
under =Marcus Aurelius= (A.D. 161-180) who was, both as a man and
a ruler, one of the noblest figures of antiquity. In the pride
of his stoical wisdom, however, despising utterly the enthusiasm
of the Christians, he not only allowed free scope to the popular
hatred, but also introduced the system of espionage, giving to
informers the confiscated property of the Christians, and even
permitting the use of torture, in order to compel them to recant,
and thus gave occasion to unexampled triumphs of Christian
heroism. At Rome, the noble Apologist Justin Martyr, denounced
by his opponent the philosopher Crescens, after cruel and bloody
scourging, died under the executioner’s axe about A.D. 165
(§ 30, 9).--In regard to a very severe persecution endured by
the church of Smyrna, we possess an original report of it sent
from that church to one closely related to it, embellished
with legendary details or interpolated, which Eusebius has
incorporated in his Church History. The substance of it is a
description of the glorious martyr death of their aged bishop
Polycarp (§ 30, 6), who, because he refused to curse the Lord
whom he had served for eighty-six years, was made to mount the
funeral pile, and while rejoicing in the midst of the flames,
received the crown of martyrdom. According to the story the
flames gathered around him like a wind-filled sail, and when a
soldier pierced him with his sword, suddenly a white dove flew
up; moreover the glorified spirit also appeared to a member of
the church in a vision, clothed in a white garment. Eusebius
places the date of Polycarp’s death shortly before A.D. 166.
But since it has been shown by Waddington, on the basis of
an examination of recently discovered inscriptions, that the
proconsul of Asia, Statius Quadratus, mentioned in the report
of the church of Smyrna, did not hold that office in A.D. 166,
but in A.D. 155-156, the most important authorities have come to
regard either A.D. 155 or A.D. 156 as the date of his martyrdom.
Still some whose opinions are worthy of respect refuse to
accept this view, pointing out the absence of that chronological
statement from the report in Eusebius and to its irreconcilability
with the otherwise well-supported facts, that Polycarp was on
a visit to Rome in A.D. 155 (§ 37, 2), and that the reckoning
of the day of his death in the report as ὄντος σαββάτου μεγάλου
would suit indeed the Easter of A.D. 155, as well as that of
A.D. 166, but not that of A.D. 156. [24] The legend of the _Legio
fulminatrix_, that in the war against the Marcomanni in A.D. 174
the prayers of the Christian soldiers of this legion called forth
rain and thunder, and thus saved the Emperor and his army from
the danger of perishing by thirst, whereupon this modified law
against the accusers of the Christians was issued, has, so far
as the first part is concerned, its foundation in history, only
that the heathen on the other hand ascribed the miracle to their
prayer to _Jupiter Pluvius_. [25]--Regarding the persecution
at Lyons and Vienne in A.D. 177, we also possess a contemporary
report from the Christian church of these places (§ 32, 8).
Bishop Pothinus, in his ninetieth year, sank under the effects
of tortures continued during many days in a loathsome prison.
The young and tender slave-girl Blandina was scourged, her
body scorched upon a red-hot iron chair, her limbs torn by wild
beasts and at last her life taken; but under all her tortures she
continued to repeat her joyful confession: “I am a Christian and
nothing wicked is tolerated among us.” Under similar agonies the
boy Ponticus, in his fifteenth year, showed similar heroism. The
dead bodies of the martyrs were laid in heaps upon the streets,
until at last they were burnt and their ashes strewn upon the
Rhone. =Commodus= (A.D. 180-192), the son of Marcus Aurelius, who
in every other respect was utterly disreputable, influenced by
his mistress Marcia, showed himself inclined, by the exercise
of his clemency, to remit the sentences of the Christians. The
persecution at Scillita in North Africa, during the first year
of the reign of Commodus, in which the martyr Speratus suffered,
together with eleven companions, was carried out in accordance
with the edict of Marcus Aurelius.
§ 22.4. =Septimius Severus and Maximinus Thrax.=--=Septimius
Severus= (A.D. 193-211), whom a Christian slave, Proculus,
had healed of a sickness by anointing with oil, was at first
decidedly favourable to the Christians. Even in A.D. 197, after
his triumphal entrance into Rome, he took them under his personal
protection when the popular clamour, which such a celebration
was fitted to excite, was raised against them. The judicial
persecution, too, which some years later, A.D. 200, his deputy
in North Africa carried on against the Christians on the basis
of existing laws because they refused to sacrifice to the genius
of the Emperor, he may not have been able to prevent. On the
other hand, he did himself, in A.D. 202, issue an edict which
forbade conversions to Judaism and Christianity. The storm of
persecution thereby excited was directed therefore first of all
and especially against the catechumens and the neophytes, but
frequently also, overstepping the letter of the edict, it was
turned against the older Christians. The persecution seems
to have been limited to Egypt and North Africa. At Alexandria
Leonidas, the father of Origen, was beheaded. The female slave,
Potamiæna, celebrated as much for her moral purity as for her
beauty, was accused by her master, whose evil passions she had
refused to gratify, as a Christian, and was given over to the
gladiators to be abused. She succeeded, however, in defending
herself from pollution, and was then, along with her mother
Marcella, slowly dipped into boiling pitch. The soldier,
Basilides by name, who should have executed the sentence himself
embraced Christianity, and was beheaded. The persecution raged
with equal violence and cruelty in Carthage. A young woman of
a noble family, Perpetua, in her twenty-second year, in spite
of imprisonment and torture, and though the infant in her arms
and her weeping pagan father appealed to her heart’s affections,
continued true to her faith, and was thrown to be tossed on the
horns of a wild cow, and to die from the dagger of a gladiator.
The slave girl Felicitas who, in the same prison, became a mother,
showed similar courage amid similar sufferings. Persecution
smouldered on throughout the reign of Septimius, showing itself
in separate sporadic outbursts, but was not renewed under his son
and successor =Caracalla= (A.D. 211-217), who in other respects
during his reign stained with manifold cruelties, did little to
the honour of those Christian influences by which in his earliest
youth he had been surrounded (“_lacte Christiano educatus_,”
Tert.).--That Christianity should have a place given it among the
senseless religions favoured by =Elagabalus= or =Heliogabalus=
(A.D. 218-222), was an absurdity which nevertheless secured for
it toleration and quiet. His second wife, Severina or Severa, to
whom Hippolytus dedicated his treatise Περὶ ἀναστάσεως, was the
first empress friendly to the Christians. =Alexander Severus=
(A.D. 222-235), embracing a noble eclecticism, placed among his
household gods the image of Christ, along with those of Abraham,
Orpheus, and Apollonius of Tyana, and showed himself well
disposed toward the Christians; while at the same time his mother,
Julia Mammæa, encouraged and furthered the scholarly studies of
Origen. The golden saying of Christ, Luke vi. 31, was inscribed
upon the gateway of his palace. His murderer, =Maximinus Thrax=
(A.D. 235-238), from very opposition to his predecessor, became
at once the enemy of the Christians. Clearly perceiving the
high importance of the clergy for the continued existence of the
church, his persecuting edict was directed solely against them.
The imperial position which he had usurped, however, was not
sufficiently secure to allow him to carry out his intentions
to extremities. Under =Gordianus= the Christians had rest, and
=Philip the Arabian= (A.D. 244-249) favoured them so openly and
decidedly, that it came to be thought that he himself had been a
Christian.
§ 22.5. =Decius, Gallus and Valerianus [Valerian].=--Soon after
the accession of =Decius= (A.D. 249-251), in the year 250, a new
persecution broke out that lasted without interruption for ten
years. This was the first general persecution and was directed at
first against the recognised heads of the churches, but by-and-by
was extended more widely to all ranks, and exceeded all previous
persecutions by its extent, the deliberateness of its plan,
the rigid determination with which it was conducted, and the
cruelties of its execution. Decius was a prudent ruler, an
earnest man of the old school, endued with an indomitable
will. But it was just this that drove him to the conclusion
that Christianity, as a godless system and one opposed to
the interests of the state, must be summarily suppressed. All
possible means, such as confiscation of goods, banishment, severe
tortures, or death, were tried in order to induce the Christians
to yield. Very many spoiled by the long peace that they had
enjoyed gave way, but on the other hand crowds of Christians,
impelled by a yearning after the crown of martyrdom, gave
themselves up joyfully to the prison and the stake. Those who
fell away, the _lapsi_, were classified as the _Thurificati_
or _Sacrificati_, who to save their lives had burnt incense or
sacrificed to the gods, and _Libellatici_, who without doing
this had purchased a certificate from the magistrates that they
had done so, and _Acta facientes_, who had issued documents
giving false statements regarding their Christianity. Those were
called _Confessores_ who publicly professed Christ and remained
steadfast under persecution, but escaped with their lives; those
were called _Martyrs_ who witnessing with their blood, suffered
death for the faith they professed. The Roman church could
boast of a whole series of bishops who fell victims to the storm
of persecution: Fabianus [Fabian] in A.D. 250, and Cornelius
in A.D. 253, probably also Lucius in A.D. 254, and Stephanus in
A.D. 257. And as in Rome, so also in the provinces, whole troops
of confessors and martyrs met a joyful death, not only from
among the clergy, but also from among the general members of
the church.--Then again, under =Gallus= (A.D. 251-253), the
persecution continued, excited anew by plagues and famine,
but was in many ways restricted by political embarrassment.
=Valerianus= [Valerian] (A.D. 253-260), from being a favourer of
the Christians, began from A.D. 257, under the influence of his
favourite Macrianus, to show himself a determined persecutor. The
Christian pastors were at first banished, and since this had not
the desired effect, they were afterwards punished with death. At
this time, too, the bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, who under Decius
had for a short season withdrawn by flight into the wilderness,
won for himself the martyr’s crown. So, likewise, in A.D. 258,
suffered Sixtus II. of Rome. The Roman bishop was soon followed
by his deacon Laurentius, a hero among Christian martyrs, who
pointed the avaricious governor to the sick, the poor and the
orphans of the congregation as the treasures of the church, and
was then burnt alive on a fire of glowing coal. But Valerian’s
son, =Gallienus= (A.D. 260-268), by an edict addressed to the
bishops, abolished the special persecuting statutes issued by his
father, without, however, as he is often erroneously said to have
done, formally recognising Christianity as a _Religio licita_.
The Christians after this enjoyed a forty years’ rest; for
the commonly reported cruel persecution of Christians under
=Claudius II.=, (A.D. 268-270) has been proved to be a pure
fable of apocryphal Acts of the Martyrs; and also the persecution
planned by =Aurelian= (A.D. 270-275), toward the close of his
reign, was prevented by his assassination committed by a pagan
officer.
§ 22.6. =Diocletian and Galerius.=--When =Diocletian=
(A.D. 284-305) was proclaimed Emperor by the army in Chalcedon, he
chose Nicomedia in Bithynia as his residence, and transferred the
conduct of the war to the general Maximianus [Maximian] Herculius
with the title of Cæsar, who, after the campaign had been closed
successfully in A.D. 286, was raised to the rank of Augustus or
joint-Emperor. New harassments from within and from without led
the two Emperors in A.D. 286 to name two Cæsars, or sub-Emperors,
who by their being adopted were assured of succession to imperial
rank. Diocletian assumed the administration of the East, and
gave up Illyricum as far as Pontus to his Cæsar and son-in-law
Galerius. Maximian undertook the government of the West, and
surrendered Gaul, Spain and Britain to his Cæsar, Constantius
Chlorus. According to Martyrologies, there was a whole legion,
called =Legio Thebaica=, that consisted of Christian soldiers.
This legion was originally stationed in the East, but was sent
into the war against the Gauls, because its members refused to
take part in the persecution of their brethren. After suffering
decimation twice over without any result, it is said that
=Maximian= left this legion, consisting of 6,600 men, along
with its commander St. Maurice, to be hewn down in the pass of
Agaunum, now called St. Moritz, in the Canton Valais. According to
Rettberg,[26] the historical germ of this consists in a tradition
reported by Theodoret as originating during the fifth or sixth
century, in a letter of Eucherius bishop of Lyons, about the
martyrdom of St. Maurice, who as _Tribunus Militum_ was executed
at Apamea along with seventy soldiers, by the orders of Maximian.
=Diocletian=, as the elder and supreme Emperor, was an active,
benevolent, clear-sighted statesman and ruler, but also a zealous
adherent of the old religion as regenerated by Neo-platonic
influences (§ 24, 2), and as such was inclined to hold
Christianity responsible for many of the internal troubles
of his kingdom. He was restrained from interfering with the
Christians, however, by the policy of toleration which had
prevailed since the time of Gallienus, as well as by his
own benevolent disposition, and not least by the political
consideration of the vast numbers of the Christian population.
His own wife Prisca and his daughter Valeria had themselves
embraced Christianity, as well as very many, and these the truest
and most trustworthy, of the members of his household. Yet the
incessant importunities and whispered suspicions of Galerius were
not without success. In A.D. 298 he issued the decree, that all
soldiers should take part in the sacrificial rites, and thus
obliged all Christian soldiers to withdraw from the army. During
a long sojourn in Nicomedia he finally prevailed upon the Emperor
to order a second general persecution; yet even then Diocletian
persisted, that in it no blood should be shed. This persecution
opened in A.D. 303 with the imperial command to destroy the
stately church of Nicomedia. Soon after an edict was issued
forbidding all Christian assemblies, ordering the destruction of
the churches, the burning of the sacred scriptures, and depriving
Christians of their offices and of their civil rights. A
Christian tore up the edict and was executed. Fire broke out
in the imperial palace and Galerius blamed the Christians for
the fire, and also charged them with a conspiracy against the
life of the Emperor. A persecution then began to rage throughout
the whole Roman empire, Gaul, Spain and Britain alone entirely
escaping owing to the favour of Constantius Chlorus who governed
these regions. All conceivable tortures and modes of death were
practised, and new and more horrible devices were invented from
day to day. Diocletian, who survived to A.D. 313, and Maximian,
abdicated the imperial rank which they had jointly held in
A.D. 305. Their places were filled by those who had been
previously their Cæsars, and Galerius as now the chief Augustus
proclaimed as Cæsars, =Severus= and =Maximinus Daza=, the most
furious enemies of the Christians that could be found, so that the
storm of persecution which had already begun in some measure to
abate, was again revived in Italy by Severus and in the East by
Maximinus. Then in order to bring all Christians into inevitable
contact with idolatrous rites, Galerius in A.D. 308 had all
victuals in the markets sprinkled with wine or water that
had been offered to idols. Seized with a terrible illness,
mortification beginning in his living body, he finally admitted
the uselessness of all his efforts to root out Christianity, and
shortly before his death, in common with his colleague, he issued
in A.D. 311, a formal =edict of toleration=, which permitted to
all Christians the free exercise of their religion and claimed in
return their intercession for the emperor and the empire.--During
this persecution of unexampled cruelty, lasting without
intermission for eight years, many noble proofs were given of
Christian heroism and of the joyousness that martyrdom inspired.
The number of the _Lapsi_, though still considerable, was in
proportion very much less than under the Decian persecution. How
much truth, if any, there may have been in the later assertion of
the Donatists (§ 63, 1), that even the Roman bishop, Marcellinus
[Marcellus] (A.D. 296-304), and his presbyters, Melchiades,
Marcellus and Sylvester, who were also his successors in the
bishopric, had denied Christ and sacrificed to idols, cannot
now be ascertained. Augustine denies the charge, but even
the Felician Catalogue of the Popes reports that Marcellinus
[Marcellus] during the persecution became a _Thurificatus_,
adding, however, the extenuation, that he soon thereafter, seized
with deep penitence, suffered martyrdom. The command to deliver
up the sacred writings gave rise to a new order of apostates,
the so-called _Traditores_. Many had recourse to a subterfuge by
surrendering heretical writings instead of the sacred books and
as such, but the earnest spirit of the age treated these as no
better than _traditors_.[27]
§ 22.7. =Maximinus Daza, Maxentius and Licinius.=--After the
death of Galerius his place was taken by the Dacian Licinius,
who shared with Maximinus the government of the East, the former
taking the European, the latter the Asiatic part along with
Egypt. Constantius Chlorus had died in A.D. 306, and Galerius
had given to the Cæsar Severus the empire of the West. But the
army proclaimed Constantine, son of Constantius, as Emperor.
He also established himself in Gaul, Spain and Britain. Then
also Maxentius, son of the abdicated emperor Maximian, claimed
the Western Empire, was proclaimed Augustus by the Prætorians,
recognised by the Roman senate, and after the overthrow of
Severus, ruled in Italy and Africa.--The pagan fanaticism of
=Maximinus= prevailed against the toleration edict of Galerian.
He heartily supported the attempted expulsion of Christians on
the part of several prominent cities, and commended the measure
on brazen tablets. He forbade the building of churches, punished
many with fines and dishonour, inflicted in some cases bodily
pains and even death, and gave official sanction to perpetrating
upon them all sorts of scandalous enormities. The _Acta Pilati_,
a pagan pseudepigraph filled with the grossest slanders about the
passion of Christ, was widely circulated by him and introduced as
a reading-book for the young in the public schools. =Constantine=,
who had inherited from his father along with his Neo-platonic
eclecticism his toleration of the Christians, secured to the
professors of the Christian faith in his realm the most perfect
quiet. =Maxentius=, too, at first let them alone; but the rivalry
and enmity that was daily increasing between him and Constantine,
the favourer of the Christians, drew him into close connection
with the pagan party, and into sympathy with their persecuting
spirit. In A.D. 312 Constantine led his army over the Alps.
Maxentius opposed him with an army drawn up in three divisions;
but Constantine pressed on victoriously, and shattered his
opponent’s forces before the gates of Rome. Betaking himself to
flight, Maxentius was drowned in the Tiber, and Constantine was
then sole ruler over the entire Western Empire. At Milan he had a
conference with Licinius, to whom he gave in marriage his sister
Constantia. They jointly issued an edict in A.D. 313, which
gave toleration to all forms of worship throughout the empire,
expressly permitting conversion to Christianity, and ordering the
restoration to the Christians of all the churches that had been
taken from them. Soon thereafter a decisive battle was fought
between Maximinus and Licinius. The former was defeated and took
to flight. The friendly relations that had subsisted between
=Constantine= and =Licinius= gave way gradually to estrangement
and were at last succeeded by open hostility. Licinius by
manifesting zeal as a persecutor identified himself with the
pagan party, and Constantine threw in his lot with the Christians.
In A.D. 323 a war broke out between these two, like a struggle
for life and death between Paganism and Christianity. Licinius
was overthrown and Constantine was master of the whole empire
(§ 42, 2). Eusebius in his _Vita Constantini_ reports, on the
basis probably of a sworn statement of the emperor, that during
the expedition against Maxentius in A.D. 312, after praying for
the aid of the higher powers, when the sun was going down, he saw
in heaven a shining cross in the sun with a bright inscription:
τούτῳ νίκα. During the night Christ appeared to him in a dream,
and commanded him to take the cross as his standard in battle
and with it to go into battle confident of victory. In his Church
History, Eusebius makes no mention of this tradition of the
vision. On the other hand there is here the fact, contested
indeed by critics, that after the victory over Maxentius the
emperor had erected his statue in the Roman Forum, with the
cross in his hand, and bearing the inscription: “By this sign of
salvation have I delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant.
” This only is certain, that the imperial standard, which had the
unexplained name Labarum, bore the sign of the cross with the
monogram of the name of Christ.
§ 23. CONTROVERSIAL WRITINGS OF PAGANISM.
Pagan writers in their published works passed spiteful and
contemptuous judgments upon Christians and Christianity (Tacitus, Pliny,
Marcus Aurelius, and the physician Galen), or, like the rhetorician
Fronto, argued against them with violent invective; while popular wit
ran riot in representing Christianity by word and picture as the devout
worship of an ass. But even the talented satirist Lucian of Samosata was
satisfied with ridiculing the Christians as senseless fools. The first
and also the most important of all really pagan advocates was Celsus,
who in the second century, with brilliant subtlety and scathing sarcasm
sought to prove that the religion of the Christians was the very climax
of unreason. In respect of ability, keenness and bitterness of polemic
he is closely followed by the Neo-platonist Porphyry. Far beneath both
stands Hierocles, governor of Bithynia. Against such attacks the most
famous Christian teachers took the field as Apologists. They disproved
the calumnies and charges of the pagans, demanded fair play for the
Christians, vindicated Christianity by the demonstration of its inner
truth, the witness borne to it by the life and walk of Christians,
its establishment by miracles and prophecies, its agreement with the
utterances and longings of the most profound philosophers, whose wisdom
they traced mediately or immediately from the Old Testament, and on the
other hand, they sought to show the nothingness of the heathen gods, and
the religious as well as moral perversity of paganism.
§ 23.1. =Lucian’s Satire _De Morte Peregrini_= takes the form
of an account given by Lucian to his friend Cronius of the Cynic
Peregrinus Proteus’ burning of himself during the Olympic games
of A.D. 165, of which he himself was a witness. Peregrinus is
described as a low, contemptible man, a parricide and guilty
of adultery, unnatural vice and drunkenness, who having fled
from his home in Palestine joined the Christians, learnt their
θαυμαστὴ σοφία, became their prophet (§ 34, 1), Thiasarch (§ 17, 3)
and Synagogeus, and as such expounded their sacred writings,
even himself composed and addressed to the most celebrated Greek
cities many epistles containing new ordinances and laws. When
cast into prison he was the subject of the most extravagant
attentions on the part of the Christians. Their γραΐδια and χῆραι
(deaconesses) nursed him most carefully, δεῖπνα ποικίλα and λόγοι
ἱεροί (Agapæ) were celebrated in his prison, they loaded him with
presents, etc. Nevertheless on leaving prison, on account of his
having eaten a forbidden kind of meat (flesh offered to idols)
he was expelled by them. He now cast himself into the arms of
the Cynics, travelled as the apostle of their views through the
whole world, and ended his life in his mad thirst for fame by
voluntarily casting himself upon the funeral pile. Lucian tells
with scornful sneer how the superstitious people supposed that
there had been an earthquake and that an eagle flew up from
his ashes crying out: The earth I have lost, to Olympus I fly.
This fable was believed, and even yet it is said that sometimes
Peregrinus will be seen in a white garment as a spirit.--It is
undoubtedly recorded by Aulus Gellius that a Cynic Peregrinus
lived at this time whom he describes as _vir gravis et constans_.
This too is told by the Apologist Tatian, who in him mocks at the
pretension on the part of heathen philosophers to emancipation
from all wants. But neither of them knows anything about his
Christianity or his death by fire. It is nevertheless conceivable
that Peregrinus had for some time connection with Christianity;
but without this assumption it seems likely that Lucian in a
satire which, under the combined influence of personal and class
antipathies, aimed first and chiefly at stigmatizing Cynicism
in the person of Peregrinus, should place Christianity alongside
of it as what seemed to him with its contempt of the world and
self-denial to be a new, perhaps a nobler, but still nothing more
than a species of Cynicism. Many features in the caricature which
he gives of the life, doings and death of Peregrinus seem to have
been derived by him from the life of the Apostle Paul as well as
from the account of the martyrdom of Ignatius, and especially
from that of Polycarp (§ 22, 3).[28]
§ 23.2. =Worshippers of an Ass= (Asinarii) was a term of
reproach that was originally and from early times applied to the
Jews. They now sought to have it transferred to the Christians.
Tertullian tells of a picture publicly exhibited in Carthage
which represented a man clothed in a toga, with the ears and hoof
of an ass, holding a book in his hand, and had this inscription:
_Deus Christianorum Onochoetes_. This name is variously read. If
read as ὄνου χοητής it means _asini sacerdos_. Alongside of this
we may place the picture, belonging probably to the third century,
discovered in A.D. 1858 scratched on a wall among the ruins
of a school for the imperial slaves, that were then excavated.
It represents a man with an ass’s head hanging on a cross, and
beneath it the caricature of a worshipper with the words written
in a schoolboy’s hand; Alexamenos worships God (A. σεβετε θεον);
evidently the derision of a Christian youth by a pagan companion.
The scratching on another wall gives us probably the answer of
the Christian: _Alexamenos fidelis_.
§ 23.3. =Polemic properly so-called.=--
(a) The Λόγος ἀληθής of =Celsus= is in great part preserved in
the answer of Origen (§ 31, 5). He identifies the author
with that Celsus to whom Lucian dedicated the little work
_Alexander or Pseudomantis_ in which he so extols the
philosophy of Epicurus that it seems he must be regarded as
an Epicurean. Since, however, the philosophical standpoint
of our Celsus is that of a Platonist the assumption of the
identity of the two has been regarded as untenable. But
even our Celsus does not seem to have been a pure Platonist
but an Eclectic, and as such might also show a certain
measure of favour to the philosophy of Epicurus. Their
age is at least the same. Lucian wrote that treatise soon
after A.D. 180, and according to Keim, the Λόγος ἀληθής was
probably composed about A.D. 178. Almost everything that
modern opponents down to our own day have advanced against
the gospel history and doctrine is found here wrought out
with original force and subtlety, inspired with burning
hatred and bitter irony, and highly spiced with invective,
mockery, and wit. First of all the author introduces
a Jew who repeats the slanders current among the Jews,
representing Jesus as a vagabond impostor, His mother
as an adulteress, His miracles and resurrection as lying
fables; then enters a heathen philosopher who proves that
both Judaism and Christianity are absurd; and finally, the
conditions are set forth under which alone the Christians
might claim indulgence: the abandonment of their exclusive
attitude toward the national religion and the recognition
of it by their taking part in the sacrifices appointed by
the state.[29]
(b) The Neo-platonist Porphyry, about A.D. 270, as reported by
Jerome, in the XV. Book of his Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν points to a
number of supposed contradictions in holy scripture, calls
attention to the conflict between Paul and Peter (Gal. ii.),
explains Daniel’s prophecies as _Vaticinia post eventum_,
and censures the allegorical interpretation of the
Christians. Although even among the Christians themselves
Porphyry as a philosopher was highly esteemed, and
notwithstanding contact at certain points between his
ethical and religious view of the world and that of the
Christians, perhaps just because of this, he is the worst
and most dangerous of all their pagan assailants. Against
his controversial writings, therefore, the edict of
Theodosius II. ordering them to be burnt was directed
in A.D. 448 (§ 42, 4), and owing to the zeal with which
his works were destroyed the greater part of the treatises
which quoted from it for purposes of controversy also
perished with it--the writings of Methodius of Tyre
(§ 31, 9), Eusebius of Cæsarea (§ 47, 2), Philostorgius
(§ 5, 1) and Apollinaris the younger (§ 47, 5). Of these
according to Jerome those of the last named were the
most important. In the recently discovered controversial
treatise of Macarius Magnes (§ 47, 6) an unnamed pagan
philosopher is combated whose attacks, chiefly directed
against the Gospels, to all appearance verbally agree with
the treatise of Porphyry, or rather, perhaps, with that of
his plagiarist Hierocles.
(c) =Hierocles= who as governor of Bithynia took an active
part in the persecution of Galerius, wrote two books
Λόγοι φιλαλήθεις against the Christians, about A.D. 305,
which have also perished. Eusebius’ reply refers only
to his repudiation of the equality assigned to Christ
and Apollonius of Tyana (§ 24, 1). While the title of
his treatise is borrowed from that of Celsus, he has also
according to the testimony of Eusebius in great part copied
the very words of both of his predecessors.
§ 24. Attempted Reconstruction of Paganism.
All its own more thoughtful adherents had long acknowledged that
paganism must undergo a thorough reform and reconstruction if it were to
continue any longer in existence. In the Augustan Age an effort was made
to bolster up Neopythagoreanism by means of theurgy and magic. The chief
representative of this movement was Apollonius of Tyana. In the second
century an attempt was made to revivify the secret rites of the ancient
mysteries, of Dea Syra, and Mithras. Yet all this was not enough. What
was needed was the setting up of a pagan system which would meet the
religious cravings of men in the same measure as Christianity with its
supernaturalism, monotheism and universalism had done, and would have
the absurdities and impurities that had disfigured the popular religion
stripped off. Such a regeneration of paganism was undertaken in the
beginning of the third century by Neoplatonism. But even this was no
more able than pagan polemics had been to check the victorious career
of Christianity.
§ 24.1. =Apollonius of Tyana= in Cappadocia, a contemporary of
Christ and the Apostles, was a philosopher, ascetic and magician
esteemed among the people as a worker of miracles. As an earnest
adherent of the doctrine of Pythagoras, whom he also imitated
in his dress and manner of life, claiming the possession of the
gifts of prophecy and miracle working, he assumed the role of a
moral and religious reformer of the pagan religion of his fathers.
Accompanied by numerous scholars, teaching and working miracles,
he travelled through the whole of the then known world until
he reached the wonderland of India. He settled down at last in
Ephesus where he died at an advanced age, having at least passed
his ninety-sixth year. At the wish of the Empress Julia, wife
of Septimius Severus, in the third century, Philostratus the
elder composed in the form of a romance in eight books based upon
written and oral sources, a biography of Apollonius, in which
he is represented as a heathen counterpart of Christ, who is
otherwise completely ignored, excelling Him in completeness of
life, doctrine and miraculous powers.[30]
§ 24.2. In =Neo-platonism=, by the combination of all that was
noblest and best in the exoteric and esoteric religion, in the
philosophy, theosophy and theurgy of earlier and later times
in East and West, we are presented with a universal religion
in which faith and knowledge, philosophy and theology, theory
and practice, were so perfectly united and reconciled, and all
religious needs so fully met, that in comparison with its wealth
and fulness, the gnosis as well as the faith, the worship and
the mysteries of the Christians must have seemed one-sided,
commonplace and incomplete. The first to introduce and commend
this tendency, which was carried out in three successive schools
of philosophy, the Alexandrian-Roman, the Syrian and the Athenian,
was the Alexandrian =Ammonius Saccas=,--this surname being
derived from his occupation as a porter. He lived and taught in
Alexandria till about A.D. 250. He sought to combine in a higher
unity the Platonic and the Aristotelian philosophies, giving
to the former a normative authority, and he did not hesitate to
enrich his system by the incorporation of Christian ideas. His
knowledge of Christianity came from Clement of Alexandria and
from Origen, whose teacher in philosophy he had been. Porphyry
indeed affirms that he had previously been himself a Christian,
but had at a later period of life returned to paganism.--The most
distinguished of his scholars, and also the most talented and
profound of all the Neo-platonists, was =Plotinus=, who was in
A.D. 254 a teacher of philosophy at Rome, and died in A.D. 270.
His philosophico-theological system in its characteristic features
is a combination of the Platonic antithesis of the finite world
of sense and the eternal world of ideas with the stoical doctrine
of the world soul. The eternal ground of all being is the one
supramundane, unintelligible and indescribable good (τὸ ἕν, τὸ
ἀγαθόν), from which all stages of being are radiated forth; first;
spirit or the world of ideas (νοῦς, κόσμος νοητός), the eternal
type of all being; and then, from this the world soul (ψυχή);
and from this, finally, the world of phenomena. The outermost
fringe of this evolution, the forms of which the further they are
removed from the original ground become more and more imperfect,
is matter, just as the shadow is the outermost fringe of the
light. It is conceived of as the finite, the fleeting, even as
evil in itself. But imperfect as the world of sense is, it is
nevertheless the vehicle of the ideal world and in many ways
penetrated by the ideas, and the lighting up imparted by the
ideas affords it its beauty. In consequence of those rays shining
in from the realm of ideas, a whole vast hierarchy of divine
forms has arisen, with countless dæmons good and bad, which give
room for the incorporation of all the divine beings of the Greek
and oriental mythologies. In this way myths that were partly
immoral and partly fantastic can be rehabilitated as symbolical
coverings of speculative ideas. The souls of men, too, originate
from the eternal world soul. By their transition, however, into
the world of sense they are hampered and fettered by corporeity.
They themselves complete their redemption through emancipation
from the bonds of sense by means of asceticism and the practice
of virtue. In this way they secure a return into the ideal world
and the vision of the highest good, sometimes as moments of
ecstatic mystical union with that world, even during this earthly
life, but an eternally unbroken continuance thereof is only
attained unto after complete emancipation from all the bonds of
matter.[31]--Plotinus’ most celebrated scholar, who also wrote
his life, and collected and arranged his literary remains, was
=Porphyry=. He also taught in Rome and died there in A.D. 304.
His ἐκ τῶν λογίων φιλοσοφία, a collection of oracular utterances,
was a positive supplement to his polemic against Christianity
(§ 23, 3), and afforded to paganism a book of revelation, a
heathen bible, as Philostratus had before sought to portray a
heathen saviour. Of greater importance for the development of
mediæval scholasticism was his Commentary on the logical works
of Aristotle, published in several editions of the Aristotelian
Organon.--His scholar =Iamblichus= of Chalcis in Cœle-Syria,
who died A.D. 333, was the founder of the Syrian school. The
development which he gave to the Neo-platonic doctrine consisted
chiefly in the incorporation of a fantastic oriental mythology
and theurgy. This also brought him the reputation of being a
magician.--Finally, the Athenian school had in =Proclus=, who
died in A.D. 485, its most distinguished representative. While
on the one hand, he proceeded along the path opened by Iamblichus
to develop vagaries about dæmons and theurgical fancies, on the
other hand, he gave to his school an impulse in the direction of
scholarly and encyclopædic culture.--The Neo-platonic speculation
exercised no small influence on the development of Christian
philosophy. The philosophizing church fathers, whose darling
was Plato, got acquaintance with his philosophical views from
its relatively pure reproduction met with in the works of the
older Neo-platonists. The influence of their mystico-theosophic
doctrine, especially as conveyed in the writings of the
Pseudo-Dionysius (§ 47, 11), is particularly discernible in
the Christian mysticism of the middle ages, and has been thence
transmitted to modern times.[32]
§ 25. Jewish and Samaritan Reaction.
The Judaism of the Apostolic Age in its most characteristic form was
thoroughly hostile to Christianity. The Pharisees and the mass of the
people with their expectation of a political Messiah, took offence at a
Messiah crucified by the Gentiles (1 Cor. i. 13); their national pride
was wounded by the granting of equality to Samaritans and heathens,
while their legal righteousness and sham piety were exposed and censured
by the teachings of Christianity. On the other side, the Sadducees felt
no less called upon to fight to the death against Christianity with its
doctrine of the resurrection (Acts iv. 2; xxiii. 6). The same hostile
feeling generally prevailed among the dispersion. The Jewish community
at Berea (Acts xvii. 2) is praised as a pleasing exception to the
general rule. Finally, in A.D. 70 destruction fell upon the covenant
people and the holy city. The Christian church of Jerusalem, acting upon
a warning uttered by the Lord (Matt. xxiv. 16), found a place of refuge
in the mountain city of Pella, on the other side of Jordan. But when
the Pseudo-Messiah, Bar-Cochba (Son of a Star, Num. xxiv. 17), roused
all Palestine against the Roman rule, in A.D. 132, the Palestinian
Christians who refused to assist or recognise the false Messiah,
had again to endure a bloody persecution. Bar-Cochba was defeated in
A.D. 135. Hadrian now commanded that upon pain of death no Jew should
enter Ælia Capitolina, the Roman colony founded by him on the ruins
of Jerusalem. From that time they were deprived of all power and
opportunity for direct persecution of the Christians. All the greater
was their pleasure at the persecutions by the heathens and their zeal
in urging the pagans to extreme measures. In their seminaries they gave
currency to the most horrible lies and calumnies about Christ and the
Christians, which also issued thence among the heathens. On the other
hand, however, they intensified their own anti-Christian attitude
and sought protection against the advancing tide of Christianity
by strangling all spiritual movement under a mass of traditional
interpretations and judgments of men. The Schools of Tiberias and
Babylon were the nurseries of this movement, and the _Talmud_, the first
part of which, the _Mishna_, had its origin during this period, marks
the completion of this anti-Christian self-petrifaction of Judaism. The
disciples of John, too, assumed a hostile attitude toward Christianity,
and formed a distinct set under the name of Hemerobaptists.
Contemporaneously with the first successes of the Apostolic mission, a
current set in among the Samaritans calculated to checkmate Christianity
by the setting up of new religions. Dositheus, Simon Magus and Menander
here made their appearance with claims to the Messiahship, and were at a
later period designated heresiarchs by the church fathers, who believed
that in them they found the germs of the Gnostic heresy (§§ 26 ff.).
§ 25.1. =Disciples of John.=--Even after their master had been
beheaded the disciples of John the Baptist maintained a separate
society of their own, and reproached the disciples of Jesus
because of their want of strict ascetic discipline (Matt. ix. 14,
etc.). The disciples of John in the Acts (xviii. 25; xix. 1-7)
were probably Hellenist Jews, who on their visits to the feasts
had been pointed by John to Christ, announced by him as Messiah,
without having any information as to the further developments of
the Christian community. About the middle of the second century,
however, the Clementine Homilies (§ 28, 3), in which John the
Baptist is designated a ἡμεροβαπτίστης, speaks of gnosticizing
disciples of John, who may be identical with the =Hemerobaptists=,
that is, those who practise baptism daily, of Eusebius (_Hist.
Eccl._, iv. 22). They originated probably from a coalition of
Essenes (§ 8, 4) and disciples of the Baptist who when orphaned
by the death of John persistently refused to join the disciples
of Christ.--We hear no more of them till the Carmelite missionary
John a Jesu in Persia came upon a sect erroneously called
Christians of St. John or Nazoreans.[33] Authentic information
about the doctrine, worship and constitution of this sect that
still numbers some hundred families, was first obtained in the
19th century by an examination of their very comprehensive sacred
literature, written in an Aramaic dialect very similar to that of
the Babylonian Talmud. The most important of those writings the
so-called Great Book (_Sidra rabba_), also called _Ginza_, that
is, thesaurus, has been faithfully reproduced by Petermann under
the title _Thesaurus s. Liber magnus_, etc., 2 vols., Berl.,
1867.--Among themselves the adherents of this sect were styled
=Mandæans=, after one of their numerous divine beings or æons,
_Manda de chaje_, meaning γνῶσις τῆς ζωῆς. In their extremely
complicated religious system, resembling in many respects the
Ophite Gnosis (§ 27, 6) and Manicheism (§ 29), this Æon takes the
place of the heavenly mediator in the salvation of the earthly
world. Among those without, however, they called themselves
Subba, =Sabeans= from צבא or צבע to baptize. Although they
cannot be identified right off with the Disciples of John and
Hemerobaptists, a historical connection between them, carrying
with it gnostic and oriental-heathen influences, is highly
probable. The name Sabean itself suggests this, but still more
the position they assign to John the Baptist as the only true
prophet over against Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. As
adherents of John the Baptist rejected by the Jews the old
Disciples of John had an anti-Jewish character, and by their
own rejection of Christ an anti-Christian character. By shifting
their residence to Babylon, however, they became so dependent
on the Syro-Chaldean mythology, theosophy and theurgy, that they
sank completely into paganism, and so their opposition to Judaism
and Christianity increased into fanatical hatred and horrid
calumniation.[34]
§ 25.2. =The Samaritan Heresiarchs.=
(a) =Dositheus= was according to Origen a contemporary of
Jesus and the Apostles, and gave himself out as the
prophet promised in Deut. xviii. 18. He insisted upon a
curiously strict observance of the Sabbath, and according
to Epiphanius he perished miserably in a cave in consequence
of an ostentatiously prolonged fast. Purely fabulous are
the stories of the Pseudo-Clementine writings (§ 28, 3)
which bring him into contact with John the Baptist as his
scholar and successor, and with Simon Magus as his defeated
rival. More credible is the account of an Arabic-Samaritan
Chronicle,[35] according to which the sect of the
Dostanians at the time of Simon Maccabæus traced their
descent from a Samaritan tribe, while also the Catholic
heresiologies (§ 26, 4) reckon the Dositheans among the
pre-Christian sects. According to a statement of Eulogius
of Alexandria recorded by Photius, the Dositheans and
Samaritans in Egypt in A.D. 588 disputed as to the meaning
of Deut. xviii. 18.
(b) =Simon Magus=, born, according to Justin Martyr, at Gitta
in Samaria, appeared in his native country as a soothsayer
with such success that the infatuated people hailed him as
the δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ καλουμένη μεγάλη. When Philip the
Deacon preached the gospel in Samaria, Simon also received
baptism from him, but was sternly denounced by Peter from
whom he wished to buy the gift of communicating the Spirit
(Acts viii). As to the identity of this man with Simon
the Magician, according to Josephus hailing from Cyprus,
who induced the Herodian Drusilla to quit her husband and
become the wife of the Governor Felix (Acts xxiv. 24), it
can scarcely claim to be more than a probability. A vast
collection of fabulous legends soon grew up around the
name of Simon Magus, not only from the Gentile-Christian
and Catholic side, but also from the Jewish-Christian and
heretical side; the latter to be still met with in the
_Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions_, while in the
_Acta Petri et Pauli_, we have the Catholic revision and
reproduction of the no longer extant Ebionistic _Acts of
Peter_ (§ 32, 6). These Judaizing heretics particularly
amused themselves by making a very slightly veiled
vile caricature of the great Apostle of the Gentiles by
transferring to the name of the magician many distorted
representations of occurrences in the life and works of the
Apostle Paul. This representation, however, was recognised
in the Acts above referred to and by the church fathers
as originally descriptive of Simon Magus. On the basis of
this legendary conglomerate Irenæus, after the example of
Justin, describes him as _Magister ac progenitor omnium
hæreticorum_. From a house of ill fame in Tyre he bought
a slave girl Helena, to whom he assigned the role of the
world creating Ἔννοια of God. The angels born of her for
the purpose of creating the world had rebelled against her;
she was enslaved, and was imprisoned, sometimes in this,
sometimes in that, human body; at one time in the body of
Helen of Troy, and at last in that of the Tyrian prostitute.
In order to redeem her and with her the world enslaved by
the rebel angels, the supreme God (ὁ ἐστώς) Himself came
down and assumed the form of man, was born unbegotten of
man, suffered in appearance in Judea, and reveals Himself
to the Samaritans as Father, to the Jews as Son, and to the
Gentiles as the Holy Spirit. The salvation of man consists
simply in acknowledging Simon and his Helena as the supreme
gods. By faith only, not by works, is man justified. The
law originated with the evil angels and was devised by them
merely to keep men in bondage under them. This last point
is evidently transferred to the magician partly from the
Apostle Paul, partly from Marcion (§ 27, 11), and is copied
from Ebionite sources. The Simon myth is specially rich in
legends about the magician’s residence in Rome, to which
place he had betaken himself after being often defeated
in disputation by the Apostle Peter, and where he was so
successful that the Romans erected a column in his honour
on an island in the Tiber, which Justin Martyr himself is
said to have seen, bearing the inscription: _Simoni sancto
Deo_. The discovery in A.D. 1574 of the column dedicated
to the Sabine god of oaths, inscribed “_Semoni Sanco Deo
Fidio_,” explains how such a legend may have arisen out
of a misunderstanding. Although by a successful piece of
jugglery--decapitation and rising again the third day,
having substituted for himself a goat whom he had bewitched
to assume his appearance, whose head was cut off--he won
the special favour of Nero, he was thereafter in public
disputation before the emperor unmasked by Peter. In order
to rehabilitate himself he offered to prove his divine
power by ascending up into heaven. For this purpose he
mounted a high tower. Peter adjured the angel of Satan,
which carried him through the air, and the magician
fell with a crash to the ground. Probably there is here
transferred to one magician what is told by Suetonius
(_Nero_, xii.) and Juvenal (_Sat._ iii. 79 ff.) as
happening to a soothsayer in Nero’s time who made an
attempt to fly. The school of Baur (§ 182, 7), after Baur
himself had discovered in the Simon Magus of the Clementine
Homilies a caricature of the Apostle Paul, has come to
question the existence of the magician altogether, and
has attempted to account for the myth as originating from
the hatred of the Jewish Christians to the Apostle of the
Gentiles. Support for this view is sought from Acts viii.,
the offering of money by the magician being regarded as a
maliciously distorted account of the contribution conveyed
by Paul to the church at Jerusalem.[36] Recently, however,
Hilgenfeld, who previously maintained this view, has again
recognised as well grounded the tradition of the Church
Fathers, that Simon was the real author of the ψευδώνυμος
γνῶσις, and has carried out this idea in his
“Ketzergeschichte.”
(c) =Menander= was, according to Justin Martyr, a disciple of
Simon. Subsequently he undertook to play the part of the
Saviour of the world. In doing so, however, he was always,
as Irenæus remarks, modest enough not to give himself out
as the supreme god, but only as the Messiah sent by Him.
He taught, however, that any one who should receive his
baptism would never become old or die.[37]
II. DANGER TO THE CHURCH FROM PAGAN AND JEWISH
ELEMENTS WITHIN ITS OWN PALE.
§ 26. GNOSTICISM IN GENERAL.[38]
The Judaism and paganism imported into the church proved more
dangerous to it than the storm of persecution raging against it from
without. Ebionism (§ 28) was the result of the attempt to incorporate
into Christianity the narrow particularism of Judaism; Heretical Gnosis
or Gnosticism was the result of the attempt to blend with Christianity
the religious notions of pagan mythology, mysteriology, theosophy and
philosophy. These two tendencies, moreover, were combined in a Gnostic
Ebionism, in the direction of which Essenism may be regarded as a
transitional stage (§ 8, 4). In many respects Manichæism (§ 29), which
sprang up at a later period, is related to the Gnosticism of Gentile
Christianity, but also in character and tendency widely different from
it. The church had to employ all her powers to preserve herself from
this medley of religious fancies and to purify her fields from the
weeds that were being sown on every side. In regard to Ebionism and
its gnosticizing developments this was a comparatively easy task. The
Gnosticism of Gentile Christianity was much more difficult to deal with,
and although the church succeeded in overcoming the weed in her fields,
yet many of its seeds continued hidden for centuries, from which sprouts
grew up now and again quite unexpectedly (§§ 54, 71, 108). This struggle
has nevertheless led to the furtherance of the church in many ways,
awakening in it a sense of scientific requirements, stirring it up
to more vigorous battling for the truth, and endowing it with a more
generous and liberal spirit. It had learnt to put a Christian gnosis in
the place of the heretical, a right and wholesome use of speculation and
philosophy, of poetry and art, in place of their misuse, and thus
enabled Christianity to realise its universal destination.
§ 26.1. =Gnosticism= was deeply rooted in a powerful and
characteristic intellectual tendency of the first century. A
persistent conviction that the ancient world had exhausted itself
and was no longer able to resist its threatened overthrow, now
prevailed and drove the deepest thinkers to adopt the boldest and
grandest Syncretism the world has ever beheld, in the blending of
all the previously isolated and heterogeneous elements of culture
as a final attempt at the rejuvenating of that which had become
old (§ 25). Even within the borders of the church this Syncretism
favoured by the prevailing spirit of the age influenced those of
superior culture, to whom the church doctrine of that age did not
seem to make enough of theosophical principles and speculative
thought, while the worship of the church seemed dry and barren.
Out of the fusing of cosmological myths and philosophemes of
oriental and Greek paganism with Christian historical elements in
the crucible of its own speculation, there arose numerous systems
of a higher fantastic sort of religious philosophy, which were
included under the common name of Gnosticism. The pagan element
is upon the whole the prevailing one, inasmuch as in most Gnostic
systems Christianity is not represented as the conclusion and
completion of the development of salvation given in the Old
Testament, but often merely as the continuation and climax of
the pagan religion of nature and the pagan mystery worship.
The attitude of this heretical gnosis toward holy scripture was
various. By means of allegorical interpretation some endeavoured
to prove their system from it; others preferred to depreciate the
Apostles as falsifiers of the original purely gnostic doctrine
of Christ, or to remodel the apostolic writings in accordance
with their own views, or even to produce a bible of their own
after the principles of their own schools in the form of gnostic
pseudepigraphs. With them, however, for the most part the
tradition of ancient wisdom as the communicated secret doctrine
stood higher than holy scripture. Over against the heretical
gnosis, an ecclesiastical gnosis was developed, especially in the
Alexandrian school of theology (Clement and Origen, § 31, 4, 5),
which, according to 1 Cor. xii. 8, 9; xiii. 2, was esteemed
and striven after as, in contradistinction to faith, a higher
stage in the development of the religious consciousness. The
essential distinction between the two consisted in this, that
the latter was determined, inspired and governed by the believing
consciousness of the universal church, as gradually formulated in
the church confession, whereas the former, completely emancipated
therefrom, disported itself in the unrestricted arbitrariness of
fantastic speculation.
§ 26.2. =The Problems of Gnostic Speculation= are: the origin
of the world and of evil, as well as the task, means and end of
the world’s development. In solving these problems the Gnostics
borrowed mostly from paganism the theory of the world’s origin,
and from Christianity the idea of redemption. At the basis
of almost all Gnostic systems there lies the dualism of God
and matter (ὕλη); only that matter is regarded sometimes in a
Platonic sense as non-essential and non-substantial (=μὴ ὄν)
and hence without hostile opposition to the godhead, sometimes
more in the Parsee sense as inspired and dominated by an evil
principle, and hence in violent opposition to the good God.
In working out the theosophical and cosmological process it is
mainly the idea of emanation (προβολή) that is called into play,
whereby from the hidden God is derived a long series of divine
essences (αἰῶνες), whose inherent divine power diminishes in
proportion as they are removed to a distance from the original
source of being. These æons then make their appearance as
intermediaries in the creation, development and redemption of the
world. The substratum out of which the world is created consists
in a mixture of the elements of the world of light (πλήρωμα)
with the elements of matter (κένωμα) by means of nature, chance
or conflict. One of the least and weakest of the æons, who is
usually designated Δημιουργός, after the example of Plato in
the _Timæus_, is brought forward as the creator of the world.
Creation is the first step toward redemption. But the Demiurge
cannot or will not carry it out, and so finally there appears in
the fulness of the times one of the highest æons as redeemer, in
order to secure perfect emancipation to the imprisoned elements
of light by the communication of the γνῶσις. Seeing that matter
is derived from the evil, he appears in a seeming body or at
baptism identifies himself with the psychical Messiah sent by
the Demiurge. The death on the cross is either only an optical
illusion, or the heavenly Christ, returning to the pleroma,
quits the man Jesus, or gives His form to some other man
(Simon of Cyrene, Matt. xxvii. 32) so that he is crucified
instead of Him (Docetism). The souls of men, according as the
pleromatic or hylic predominates in them, are in their nature,
either _Pneumatic_, which alone are capable of the γνῶσις, or
_Psychical_, which can only aspire to πίστις, or finally, _Hylic_
(χοϊκοί, σαρκικοί), to which class the great majority belongs,
which, subject to Satanic influences, serve only their lower
desires. Redemption consists in the conquest and exclusion
of matter, and is accomplished through knowledge (γνῶσις) and
asceticism. It is therefore a chemical, rather than an ethical
process. Seeing that the original seat of evil is in matter,
sanctification is driven from the ethical domain into the
physical, and consists in battling with matter and withholding
from material enjoyments. The Gnostics were thus originally very
strict in their moral discipline, but often they rushed to the
other extreme, to libertinism and antinomianism, in consequence
partly of the depreciation of the law of the Demiurge, partly
of the tendency to rebound from one extreme to the other, and
justified their conduct on the ground of παραχρῆσθαι τῇ σαρκί.
§ 26.3. =Distribution.=--_Gieseler_ groups the Gentile Christian
Gnostics according to their native countries into Egyptian or
Alexandrian, whose emanationist and dualistic theories were
coloured by Platonism, and the Syrian, whose views were affected
by Parseeism.--_Neander_ divides Gnostic systems into Judaistic
and Anti-Jewish, subdividing the latter into such as incline to
Paganism, and such as strive to apprehend Christianity in its
purity and simplicity.--_Hase_ arranges them as Oriental, Greek
and Christian.--_Baur_ classifies the Gnostic systems as those
which endeavour to combine Judaism and paganism with Christianity,
and those which oppose Christianity to these.--_Lipsius_ marks
three stages in the development of Gnosticism: the blending
of Asiatic myths with a Jewish and Christian basis which took
place in Syria; the further addition to this of Greek philosophy
either Stoicism or Platonism which was carried out in Egypt;
and recurrence to the ethical principles of Christianity, the
elevation of πίστις above γνῶσις.--_Hilgenfeld_ arranges his
discussion of these systems in accordance with their place in
the early heresiologies.--But none of these arrangements can
be regarded as in every respect satisfactory, and indeed it
may be impossible to lay down any principle of distribution of
such a kind. There are so many fundamental elements and these
of so diverse a character, that no one scheme of division
may suffice for an adequate classification of all Gnostic
systems. The difficulty was further enhanced by the contradiction,
approximation, and confusion of systems, and by their
construction and reconstruction, of which Rome as the capital
of the world was the great centre.
§ 26.4. =Sources of Information.=--Abundant as the literary
productions were which assumed the name or else without the name
developed the principles of Gnosticism, comparatively little of
this literature has been preserved. We are thus mainly dependent
upon the representations of its catholic opponents, and to them
also we owe the preservation of many authentic fragments. The
first church teacher who _ex professo_ deals with Gnosticism is
Justin Martyr (§ 30, 9), whose controversial treatise, however,
as well as that of Hegesippus (§ 31, 7), has been lost. The most
important of extant treatises of this kind are those of Irenæus
in five books _Adv. hæreses_, and of Hippolytus Ἔλεγχος κατὰ
πασῶν αἱρέσεων, the so-called _Philosophoumena_ (§ 31, 3). The
Σύνταγμα κ. π. αἱρ. of Hippolytus is no longer extant in the
original; a Latin translation of it apparently exists in the
_Libellus adv. omnes hæreses_, which has been attributed to
Tertullian. Together with the work of Irenæus, it formed a
query for the later heresiologists, Epiphanius and Philaster
(§ 47, 10, 14), who were apparently unacquainted with the later
written but more important and complete _Elenchus_. Besides these
should be mentioned the writings of Tertullian (§ 31, 10) and
Theodoret (§ 47, 9) referring to this controversy, the _Stromata_
of Clement of Alexandria, and the published discussions of Origen
(§ 31, 4, 5), especially in his Commentary on John, also the five
Dialogues of the Pseudo-Origen (Adamantius) against the Gnostics
from the beginning of the fourth century;[39] and finally many
notices in the Church History of Eusebius. The still extant
fragments of the Gnostic Apocryphal historian of the Apostles
afford information about the teaching and forms of worship of
the later syncretic vulgar Gnosticism, and also from the very
defective representations of them in the works of their Catholic
opponents.
§ 27. THE GENTILE CHRISTIAN GNOSTICISM.
In the older heretical Gnosticism (§ 18, 3), Jewish, pagan,
and Christian elements are found, which are kept distinct, or are
amalgamated or after examination are rejected, what remains being
developed, consolidated and distributed, but in a confused blending.
This is the case with Cerinthus. In Basilides again, who attaches
himself to the doctrines of Stoicism, we have Gnosticism developed under
the influence of Alexandrian culture; and soon thereafter in Valentinus,
who builds on Plato’s philosophy, it attains its richest, most profound
and noblest expression. From the blending of Syro-Chaldæan mythology
with Greek and Hellenistic-Gnostic theories issue the divers Ophite
systems. Antinomian Gnosticism with loose practical morality was an
outgrowth from the contempt shown to the Jewish God that created the
world and gave the law. The genuinely Syrian Gnosticism with its
Parseeist-dualistic ruggedness was most purely represented by Saturninus,
while in Marcion and his scholars the exaggeration of the Pauline
opposition of law and grace led to a dualistic contrast of the God of
the Old Testament and of the New. From the middle of the second century
onwards there appears in the historical development of Gnosticism an
ever-increasing tendency to come to terms with the doctrine of the
church. This is shown by the founders of new sects, Marcion, Tatian,
Hermogenes; and also by many elaborators of early systems, by Heracleon,
Ptolomæus and Bardesanes who developed the Valentinian system, in the
so-called Pistis Sophia, as the exposition of the Ophite system. This
tendency to seek reconciliation with the church is also shown in a
kind of syncretic popular or vulgar Gnosticism which sought to attach
itself more closely to the church by the composition of apocryphal
and pseudepigraphic Gospels and Acts of Apostles under biblical names
and dates (§ 32, 4-6).--The most brilliant period in the history of
Gnosticism was the second century, commencing with the age of Hadrian.
At the beginning of the third century there was scarcely one of the
more cultured congregations throughout the whole of the Roman empire and
beyond this as far as Edessa, that was not affected by it. Yet we never
find the numbers of regular Gnostic congregations exceeding that of the
Catholic. Soon thereafter the season of decay set in. Its productive
power was exhausted, and while, on the one side, it was driven back by
the Catholic ecclesiastical reaction, on the other hand, in respect of
congregational organization it was outrun and outbidden by Manichæism,
and also by Marcionism.
§ 27.1. =Cerinthus=, as Irenæus says, resting on the testimony
of Polycarp, was a younger contemporary of the Apostle John in
Asia Minor; the Apostle meeting the heretic in a bath hastened
out lest the building should fall upon the enemy of the truth.
In his Gnosticism, resting according to Hippolytus on a basis
of Alexandrian-Greek culture, we have the transition from the
Jewish-Christian to a more Gentile than Jewish-Christian Gnostic
standpoint. The continued hold of the former is seen according
to Epiphanius in the maintaining of the necessity of circumcision
and of the observances by Christians of the law given by
disposition of angels, as also, according to Caius of Rome, who
regards him as the author of the New Testament Apocalypse, in
chiliastic expectations. Both of these, however, were probably
intended only in the allegorical and spiritual sense. At the
same time, according to Irenæus and Theodoret, the essentially
Gnostic figure of the Demiurge already appears in his writings,
who without knowing the supreme God is yet useful to Him as
the creator of the world. Even Jesus, the son of Joseph and
Mary, knew him not, until the ἄνω Χριστός descended upon him at
his baptism. Before the crucifixion, which was a merely human
mischance without any redemptive significance, the Christ had
again withdrawn from him.
§ 27.2. =The Gnosticism of Basilides.=--=Basilides= (Βασιλείδης)
was a teacher in Alexandria about A.D. 120-130. He pretends to
derive the gnostic system from the notes of the esoteric teaching
of Christ taken down by the Apostle Matthew and an amanuensis
of Peter called Glaucias. He also made use of John’s Gospel and
Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians and Ephesians. He
himself left behind 24 books Ἐξηγητικά and his equally talented
son Isidorus has left a treatise under the title Ἠθικά. Fragments
of both are found in Clement of Alexandria, two passages from
the first are given also in the “Acts of Disputation,” by
Archelaus of Cascar (§ 29, 1). Irenæus, i. 24, who refers to him
as a disciple of Menander (§ 25, 2), and the Pseudo-Tertullian,
c. 41, Epiphanius, 21, and Theodoret, i. 4, describe his system
as grossly dualistic and decidedly emanationist. Hippolytus,
vii. 14 ff., on the other hand, with whom Clement seems
to agree, describes it as a thoroughly monistic system, in
which the theogony is developed not by emanation from above
downwards but by evolution from below upwards. This latter view
which undoubtedly presents this system in a more favourable
light,--according to Baur, Uhlhorn, Jacobi, Möller, Funk, etc.,
its original form: according to Hilgenfeld, Lipsius, Volkmar,
etc., a later form influenced by later interpolations of Greek
pantheistic ideas,--makes the development of God and the world
begin with pure nothing: ἦν ὅτε ἦν οὐδέν. The principle of all
development is ὁ οὐκ ὢν θεός, who out of Himself (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων)
calls chaos into being. This chaos was still itself an οὐκ ὄν,
but yet also the πανσπερμία τοῦ κόσμου upon which now the οὐκ ὢν
θεός as ἀκίνητος κινητής operated attractively by his beauty. The
pneumatic element in the newly created chaos is represented in a
threefold sonship (υἱότης τριμερής) of which the first and most
perfect immediately after creation with the swiftness of thought
takes its flight to the happy realm of non-existence, the Pleroma.
The second less perfect sonship struggles after the first (hence
called, μιμητική), but must, on reaching the borders of the
happy realm, cast aside the less perfect part of its being, which
now as the Holy Spirit (μεθόριον πνεῦμα) forms the vestibule
(στερέωμα) or boundary line between the Pleroma (τὰ ὑπερκόσμια)
and the cosmos, and although severed from the sonship, still,
like a vessel out of which sweet ointment has been taken, it
bears to this lower world some of the perfume adhering to it.
The third sonship being in need of purifying must still remain in
the Panspermia, and is as such the subject of future redemption.
On the other hand, the greatest archon as the most complete
concentration of all wisdom, might and glory which was found
in the psychical elements of chaos, flew up to the firmament as
ἀῤῥητῶν ἀῤῥητότερος. He now fancied himself to be the Supreme God
and ruler of all things, and begot a son, who according to the
predetermination of the non-existing excelled him in insight and
wisdom. For himself and Son, having with them besides six other
unnamed principalities, he founded the higher heavens, the so-
called Ogdoas. After him there arose of chaos a second inferior
Archon with the predicate ἄῤῥητος, who likewise begat a son
mightier than himself, and founded a lower heavenly realm,
the so-called Hebdomas, the planetary heavens. The rest of the
Panspermia was the developed κατὰ φύσιν, that is, in accordance
with the natural principle implanted in it by the non-existent
“at our stage” (τὸ διάστημα τὸ καθ’ ἡμᾶς). As the time drew near
for the manifestation of the children of God, that is, of men
whose pneumatical endowment was derived from the third sonship,
the son of the great Archon through the mediation of the μεθόριον
πνεῦμα first devised the saving plan of the Pleroma. With fear
and trembling now the great Archon too acknowledged his error,
repented of this self-exaltation and with the whole Ogdoas
rejoiced in the scheme of salvation. Through him also the son of
the second Archon is enlightened, and he instructs his father,
who now as the God of the Old Testament prepares the way for the
development of salvation by the law and prophecy. The beginning
is made by Jesus, son of the virgin Mary, who first himself
absorbed the ray of the higher light, and as “the firstborn
of the children of God” became also the Saviour (σωτήρ) of
his brethren. His sufferings were necessary for removing the
psychical and somatical elements of the Panspermia adhering to
him. They were therefore actual, not mere seeming sufferings. His
bodily part returned to the formlessness out of which it sprang;
his psychical part arose from the grave, but in his ascension
returned into the Hebdomas, while his pneumatic being belonging
to the third sonship went up to the happy seat of the οὐκ ὢν θεός.
And as he, the firstborn, so also all the children of God, have
afterwards to perform their task of securing the highest possible
development and perfection of the groaning creation (Rom. viii.
19), that is, of all souls which by their nature are eternally
bound “to our stage.” Then finally, God will pour over all
ranks of being beginning from the lowest the great ignorance
(τὴν μεγάλην ἄγνοιαν) so that no one may be disturbed in their
blessedness by the knowledge of a higher. Thus the restitution of
all things is accomplished.--The mild spirit which pervades this
dogmatic system preserved from extravagances of a rigoristic or
libertine sort the ethical system resulting from it. Marriage was
honoured and regarded as holy, though celibacy was admitted to be
helpful in freeing the soul from the thraldom of fleshly lusts.
§ 27.3. The system set forth by Irenæus and others, as that of
Basilides, represents the Supreme God as _Pater innatus_ or θεὸς
ἄῤῥητος. From him emanates the Νοῦς, from this again the Λόγος,
from this the Φρόνησις, who brings forth Σοφία and Δύναμις. From
the two last named spring the Ἀρχαί, Ἐξουσίαι and Ἄγγελοι, who
with number seven of the higher gods, the primal father, at their
head, constitute the highest heaven. From this as its ἀντίτυπος
radiates forth a second spiritual world, and the emanation
continues in this way, until it is completed and exhausts itself
in the number of 365 spiritual worlds or heavens under the mystic
name Ἀβραξάς or Ἀβρασάξ which has in its letters the numerical
value referred to. This last and most imperfect of these
spiritual worlds with its seven planet spirits forms the heaven
visible to us. Through this three hundred and sixty-five times
repeated emanation the Pleroma approaches the borders of the hyle,
a seething mass of forces wildly tossing against one another.
These rush wildly against it, snatch from it fragments of light
and imprison them in matter. From this mixture the Archon of the
lowest heaven in fellowship with his companions creates the earth,
and to each of them apportions by lot a nation, reserving to
himself the Jewish nation which he seeks to raise above all other
nations, and so introduces envy and ambition into heaven, and
war and bloodshed upon earth. Finally, the Supreme God sends his
First-born, the Νοῦς, in order to deliver men from the power of
the angel that created the world. He assumes the appearance of a
body, and does many miracles. The Jews determined upon his death;
nevertheless they crucified instead of him Simon the Cyrenian,
who assumed his shape. He himself returned to his Father. By
means of the Gnosis which he taught men’s souls are redeemed,
while their bodies perish.--The development of one of these
systems into the other might be most simply explained by assuming
that the one described in the _Elenchus_ of Hippolytus is the
original and that its reconstruction was brought about by the
overpowering intrusion of current dualistic, emanationistic,
and docetic ideas. All that had there been said about the great
Archon must now be attributed to the Supreme God, the _Pater
innatus_, while the inferior archon might keep his place as ruler
of the lowest planetary heaven. The 365 spiritual worlds had
perhaps in the other system a place between the two Archons, for
even Hippolytus, vii. 26, mentions in addition the 365 heavens
to which also he gives the name of the great Archon Abrasax.--It
is a fact of special importance that even Irenæus and Epiphanius
distinguish from the genuine disciples of Basilides the so-called
=Pseudo-Basilideans= as representing a later development, easily
deducible from the second but hardly traceable from the first
account of the system. That with their Gnosis they blended magic,
witchcraft and fantastic superstition appears from the importance
which they attached to mystic numbers and letters. Their
libertine practice can be derived from their antinomian contempt
of Judaism as well as from the theory that their bodies are
doomed to perish. So, too, their axiom that to suffer martyrdom
for the crucified, who was not indeed the real Christ, is foolish,
may be deduced from the Docetism of their system. Abrasax gems
which are still to be met with in great numbers and in great
variety are to be attributed to these Basilideans; but these
found favour and were used as talismans not only among other
Gnostic sects but also among the Alchymists of the Middle Ages.
§ 27.4. =Valentinian Gnosticism.=--=Valentinus=, the most
profound, talented and imaginative of all the Gnostics, was
educated in Alexandria, and went to Rome about A.D. 140, where,
during a residence of more than twenty years, he presided over an
influential school, and exercised also a powerful influence upon
other systems. He drew the materials for his system partly from
holy scripture, especially from the Gospel of John, partly from
the esoteric doctrine of a pretended disciple of Paul, Theodades.
Of his own voluminous writings, in the form of discourses,
epistles and poems, only a few fragments are extant. The
reporters of his teaching, Irenæus, Hippolytus, Tertullian,
Epiphanius, differ greatly from one another in details, and leave
us in doubt as to what really belongs to his own doctrine and
what to its development by his disciples--The fundamental idea of
his system rests on the notion that according to a law founded in
the depths of the divine nature the æons by emanation come into
being as pairs, male and female. The pairing of these æons in
a holy marriage is called a Syzygy. With this is joined another
characteristic notion, that in the historical development of
the Pleroma the original types of the three great crises of the
earthly history, Creation, the Fall, and Redemption, are met with.
On the basis of this he develops the most magnificently poetic
epic of a Christian mythological Theogony and Cosmogony. From the
Βυθός or Αὐτοπάτωρ and its Ἔννοια or Σιγή, evolving his thought
hitherto only in silent contemplation of his own perfection,
emanates the first and highest pair of æons, the Νοῦς or
Μονογενής who alone of all æons can bear to look into the depths
of the perfection of the Father of all, and beside him his bride
Ἀλήθεια. From them spring the Λόγος and Ζωή as the second pair,
and from this pair again Ἄνθρωπος and Ἐκκλησία as the third pair.
The Αὐτοπάτωρ and his Ennoia, with the first and highest pair
of æons emanating for them, and these together with the second
Tetras, form the Ogdoas. The Logos then begets a further removed
circle of five pairs, the Decas, and finally the Anthropos begets
the last series of six pairs, the Dodecas. Therewith the =Pleroma=
attains a preliminary completion. A final boundary is fixed for
it by the Ὅρος emanating from the Father of all, who, being alone
raised above the operation of the law of the Syzygy, is endowed
with a twofold ἐνεργεία, an ἐνεργεία διοριστική, by means of
which he wards off all from without that would hurt, and an
ἐνεργεία ἑδραστική, the symbol of which is the cross, with which
he maintains inward harmony and order. How necessary this was is
soon made apparent. For the Σοφία, the last and least member of
the fourteen æon pairs, impelled by burning desire, tears herself
away from her partner, and seeks to plunge into the Bythos
in order to embrace the Father of All himself. She is indeed
prevented from this by the Horos; but the breach in the Pleroma
has been made. In order to restore the harmony that has thus been
broken, the Monogenes begets with Aletheia a new æon pair, the
Ἄνω Χριστός and the Πνεῦμα ἅγιον which emancipates the Sophia
from her disorderly, passionate nature (Ἐνθύμησις), cuts out this
latter from the Pleroma, but unites again the purified Sophia
with her husband, and teaches all the æons about the Father’s
unapproachable and incomprehensible essence, and about the reason
and end of the Syzygies. Then they all, amid hymns of praise
and thanksgiving, present an offering to the Father, each one of
the best that he has, and form thereof an indescribably glorious
æon-being, the Ἄνω Σωτήρ, and for his service myriads of august
angels, who bow in worship before him.--The basis for the
origination of the =sensible world=, the Ὑστέρημα, consist of
the Enthymesis ejected from the Pleroma into the desert, void
and substanceless Kenoma, which is by it for the first time
filled and vitalized. It is an ἔκτρωμα, an abortion, which however
retains still the æon nature of its divine present, and as such
bears the name of Ἔξω (κάτω) Σοφία or Ἀχαμώθ (הַחָכְמוֹת). Hence even
the blessed spirits of the Pleroma can never forsake her. They
all suffer with the unfortunate, until she who had sprung from
the Pleroma is restored to it purified and matured. Hence they
espouse her, the Ektroma of the last and least of the æons, to
the Ano-Soter, the noblest, most glorious and most perfect being
in the æon-heaven, as her redeemer and future husband. He begins
by comforting the despondent and casting out from her the baser
affections. Among the worst, fear, sorrow, doubt, etc., is found
the basis of the hylic stage of existence; among the better,
repentance, desire, hope, etc., that of the psychic stage of
existence (φύσεις). Over the beings issuing forth from the former
presides Satan; over the psychical forms of being, as their
highest development, presides the Demiurge, who prepares as
his dwelling-place the seven lower heavens, the Hebdomas.
But Achamoth had retired with the pneumatic substratum still
remaining in her into the Τόπος τῆς μεσότητος, between the
Pleroma and the lower world, whence she, inspired by the
Ano-Soter, operates upon the Demiurge, who, knowing nothing of
her existence, has no anticipation thereof. From the dust of the
earth and pneumatic seed, which unobserved she conveys into it,
he formed man, breathed into him his own psychical breath of
life, and set him in paradise, that is, in the third of his seven
heavens, but banished him to earth, when he disobeyed his command,
and instead of his first ethereal garment clothed him in a
material body. When men had spread upon the earth, they developed
these different natures: _Pneumatical_, which free from the
bondage of every outward law and not subject to the impulses of
the senses, a law unto themselves, travel toward the Pleroma;
next, the _Hylic_, which, hostile to all spirit and law, and
the sport of all lusts and passions, are doomed to irremediable
destruction; and finally, the _Psychical_, which under the
discipline of outward law attain not indeed to a perfect divine
life, but yet to outward righteousness, while on the other hand
they may sink down to the rank and condition of the Hylic natures.
The _Psychical_ natures were particularly numerous among the
Jews. Therefore the Demiurge chose them as his own, and gave
them a strict law and through his prophets promised them a
future Messiah. The _Hylic_ natures which were found mostly among
the heathens, were utterly hateful to him. The _Pneumatical_
natures with their innate longing after the Pleroma, he did not
understand and therefore disregarded; but yet, without knowing
or designing it, he chose many of them for kings, priests, and
prophets of his people, and to his amazement heard from their
lips prophecies of a higher soul, which originated from Achamoth,
and which he did not understand. When the time was fulfilled,
he sent his Messiah in the person of Jesus. When he was baptized
by John, the heaven opened over him and the Ano-Soter descended
upon him. The Demiurge saw it and was astonished, but submitted
himself awe-stricken to the will of the superior deities. The
Soter remained then a year upon the earth. The Jews, refusing to
receive him, nailed his organ, the psychical Messiah, to a cross;
but his sufferings were only apparent sufferings, since the
Demiurge had supplied him in his origin with an ethereal and
only seemingly material body. In consequence of the work of the
Ano-Soter the Pneumatical natures by means of the Gnosis taught
by him, but the Psychical natures by means of Pistis, attain unto
perfection after their kind. When once everything pneumatical and
psychical which was bound up in matter, has been freed from it,
the course of the world has reached its end and the longed-for
time of Achamoth’s marriage will have come. Accompanied by
myriads of his angels, the Soter leads the noble sufferer into
the Pleroma. The pneumatical natures follow her, and as the
Soter is married to Achamoth, the angels are married to them. The
Demiurge goes with his tried and redeemed saints into the Τόπος
τῆς μεσότητος. But from the depths of the Hyle breaks forth a
hidden fire which utterly consumes the Hylic natures and the Hyle
itself.[40]
§ 27.5. According to Hippolytus the Valentinian school split
up into two parties--an Italian party, the leaders of which,
Heracleon and Ptolemæus [Ptolemy], were at Rome, and an Eastern
party to which Axionicus and Bardesanes belonged. =Heracleon= of
Alexandria was a man of a profoundly religious temperament, who
in his speculation inclined considerably toward the doctrine of
the church, and even wrote the first commentary on the Gospel
of John, of which many fragments are preserved in Origen’s
commentary on that gospel. =Ptolemæus= [Ptolemy] drew even
closer than his master to the church doctrine. Epiphanius quotes
a letter of his to his pupil Flora in which, after Marcion’s
example (see § 27, 11), the distinction of the divine and the
demiurgical in the Old Testament, and the relation of the Old
Testament to the New, are discussed. A position midway between
that of the West and of the East is apparently represented
by Marcus and his school. He combined with the doctrine of
Valentinus the Pythagorean and cabbalistic mysticism of numbers
and letters, and joined thereto magical and soothsaying arts.
His followers, the Marcosians, had a form of worship full of
ceremonial observances, with a twofold baptism, a psychical
one in the Kato-Christus for the forgiveness of sins, and a
pneumatical one for affiance with the future heavenly syzygy.
Of the Antiochean Axionicus we know nothing but the name. Of far
greater importance was =Bardesanes=, who flourished according
to Eusebius in the time of Marcus Aurelius, but is assigned by
authentic Syrian documents to the beginning of the third century.
The chief sources of information about his doctrine are the
56 rhyming discourses of Ephraem [Ephraim] against the heretics.
Living at the court and enjoying the favour of the king of Edessa,
he never attacked in his sermons the doctrinal system of the
church, but spread his Gnostic views built upon a Valentinian
basis in lofty hymns of which, besides numerous fragments in
Ephraem [Ephraim], some are preserved in the apocryphal _Acta
Thomae_ (§ 32, 6). Among his voluminous writings there was a
controversial treatise against the Marcionites (see § 27, 11).
In a Dialogue, Περὶ εἱμαρμένης, attributed to him, but probably
belonging to one of his disciples named Philippus, from which
Eusebius (_Præp. Ev._ vi. 10) quotes a passage, the Syrian
original of which, “The Book of the Laws of the Land,” was only
recently discovered,[41] astrology and fatalism are combated
from a Christian standpoint, although the author is still himself
dominated by many Zoroastrian ideas. Harmonius, the highly gifted
son of Bardesanes, distinguished himself by the composition of
hymns in a similar spirit.
§ 27.6. =The Ophites and related Sects.=--The multiform Ophite
Gnosis is in general characterized by fantastic combinations of
Syro-Chaldaic myths and Biblical history with Greek mythology,
philosophy and mysteriosophy. In all its forms the serpent (ὄφις,
נָחָשׁ) plays an important part, sometimes as Kakodemon, sometimes
as Agathodemon. This arose from the place that the serpent
had in the Egyptian and Asiatic cosmology as well as in the
early biblical history. One of the oldest forms of Ophitism is
described by Hippolytus, who gives to its representatives the
name of =Naassenes=, from נָחָשׁ. The formless original essence, ὁ
προών, revealed himself in the first men, Ἀδάμας, Adam, Cadmon,
in whom the pneumatic, psychical and hylic principles were still
present together. As the instrument in creation he is called
Logos or Hermes. The serpent is revered as Agathodemon; it
proceeds from the Logos, transmitting the stream of life to all
creatures. Christ, the redeemer, is the earthly representative of
the first man, and brings peace to all the three stages of life,
because he, by his teaching, directs every one to a mode of life
in accordance with his nature.--The =Sethites=, according to
Hippolytus, taught that there were two principles: an upper one,
τὸ φῶς, an under one, τὸ σκότος, and between these τὸ πνεῦμα, the
atmosphere that moves and causes motion. From a blending of light
with darkness arose chaos, in which the pneuma awakened life.
Then from chaos sprang the soul of the world as a serpent, which
became the Demiurge. Man had a threefold development: hylic or
material in Cain, psychical in Abel, and pneumatical in Seth, who
was the first Gnostic.--The founders of the =Perates=, who were
already known to Clement of Alexandria, are called by Hippolytus
Euphrates and Celbes. Their name implies that they withdrew from
the world of sense in order to secure eternal life here below,
περᾶν τὴν φθοράν. The original divine unity, they taught, had
developed into a Trinity: τὸ ἀγέννητον, ἀυτογενές and γεννητόν,
the Father, the Son, and the Hyle. The Son is the world serpent
that moves and quickens all things (καθολικός ὄφις). It is his
task to restore everything that has sunk down from the two higher
worlds into the lower, and is held fast by its Archon. Sometimes
he turns himself serpent-like to his Father and assumes his
divine attributes, sometimes to the lower world to communicate
them to it. In the shape of a serpent he delivers Eve from the
law of the Archon. All who are outlawed by this Archon, Cain,
Nimrod, etc., belong to him. Moses, too, is an adherent of his,
who erected in the wilderness the healing brazen serpent to
represent him, while the fiery biting serpent of the desert
represent the demons of the Archon. The =Cainites=, spoken of by
Irenæus and Epiphanius, were closely connected with the Perates.
All the men characterized in the Old Testament as godless are
esteemed by them genuine pneumatical beings and martyrs for the
truth. The first who distinguished himself in conflict with the
God of the Jews was Cain; the last who led the struggle on to
victory, by bringing the psychical Messiah through his profound
sagacity to the cross, was Judas Iscariot. The Gnostic =Justin=
is known to us only through Hippolytus, who draws his information
from a _Book of Baruch_. He taught that from the original essence,
ὁ Ἀγαθός or Κύριος, יְהוָֹה, emanated a male principle, Ἐλωείμ, אֱלֹהִים,
which had a pneumatical nature, and a female principle, Ἐδέμ, עֵדֶן,
which was above man (psychical) and below the serpent (hylic).
From the union of this pair sprang twelve ἄγγελοι πατρικοί, who
had in them the father’s nature, and twelve ἄγγελοι μητρικοί,
on whom the mother’s nature was impressed. Together they formed
Paradise, in which Baruch, an angel of Elohim, represented the
tree of life, and Naas, an Edem-angel, represented the tree
of knowledge. The Elohim-angel formed man out of the dust
of Paradise; Edem gave him a soul, Elohim gave him a spirit.
Pressing upward by means of his pneumatical nature Elohim raised
himself to the borders of the realms of light. The Agathos took
him and set him at his right hand. The forsaken Edem avenged
himself by giving power to Naas to grieve the spirit of Elohim
in man. He tempted Eve to commit adultery with him, and got Adam
to commit unnatural vice with him. In order to show the grieved
spirit of man the way to heaven, Elohim sent Baruch first to
Moses and afterwards to other Prophets of the Old Testament;
but Naas frustrated all his efforts. Even from among the heathen
Elohim raised up prophets, such as Hercules whom he sent to fight
against the twelve Edem-angels (his twelve labours), but one of
them named Babel or Aphrodite robbed even this divine hero of his
power (a reminiscence of the story of Omphale). Finally, Elohim
sent Baruch to the peasant boy Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary.
He resisted all the temptations of Naas, who therefore got him
nailed upon the cross. Jesus commended his spirit into the hands
of the Father, into whose heaven he ascended, leaving his body
and soul with Edem. So, after his example, do all the pious.
§ 27.7. The Gnosis of the =Ophites=, described by Irenæus, etc.,
is distinguished from that of the earlier Naasenes [Naassenes]
by its incorporation of Valentinian and dualistic or Saturninian
(see § 27, 9) ideas. From the Bythos who, as the primary being,
is also called the first man, Adam Cadmon, emanates the thought,
ἔννοια, of himself as the second man or son of man, and from
him the Holy Spirit or the Ano-Sophia, who in turn bears the
Ano-Christus and Achamoth. The latter, an imperfect being of
light, who is also called Προύνικος, which according to Epiphanius
means πόρνη, drives about through the dark ocean of chaos, over
which the productive mother, the Holy Spirit, broods, in order
to found for himself in it an independent world of his own. There
dense matter unites with the element of light and darkens it to
such a degree that even the consciousness of its own divine origin
begins to fade away from it. In this condition of estrangement
from God she produces the Demiurge, Jaldabaoth, יַלְדָּא בָּהוּת, son
of chaos; and he, a wicked as well as limited being, full of
arrogance and pride, determines that he himself alone will be
lord and master in the world which he creates. This brings
Achamoth to penitent deliberation. By the vigorous exercise of
all the powers of light dwelling in her, and strengthened by a
gleam of light from above, she succeeds in raising herself from
the realm of chaos into the Τόπος τῆς μεσότητος. Nevertheless
Jaldabaoth brought forth six star spirits or planets after his
own image, and placed himself as the seventh at their head. But
they too think of rebelling. Enraged at this Jaldabaoth glances
wildly upon the deep-lying slime of the Hyle; his frightfully
distorted countenance is mirrored in this refuse of chaos; the
image there comes to life and forms Ophiomorphus or Satan. By
order of Jaldabaoth the star spirits make man; but they produce
only an awkward spiritless being that creeps along the ground. In
order to quicken it and make it stand erect the Demiurge breathes
into it his own breath, but thereby deprives himself of a great
part of that pneumatical element which he had from his mother.
The so-called fall, in which Ophiomorphus or the serpent was only
the unconscious instrument of Achamoth, is in truth the beginning
of the redemption of man, the advance to self-consciousness
and moral freedom. But as a punishment for his disobedience
Jaldabaoth drove him out of the higher material world, Paradise,
into the lower, where he was exposed to the annoyances of
Ophiomorphus, who also brought the majority of mankind, the
heathens, under his authority, while the Jews served Jaldabaoth,
and only a small number of pneumatical natures by the help
of Achamoth kept themselves free from both. The prophets whom
Jaldabaoth sent to his people, were at the same time unconscious
organs of Achamoth, who also sent down the Ano-Christus from the
Pleroma upon the Messiah, whose kingdom is yet to spread among
all nations. Jaldabaoth now let his own Messiah be crucified,
but the Ano-Christus was already withdrawn from him and had
set himself unseen at the right hand of the Demiurge, where he
deprives him and his angels of all the light element which they
still had in them, and gathers round himself the pneumatical
from among mankind, in order to lead them into the Pleroma.--The
latest and at the same time the noblest product of Ophite
Gnosticism is the =Pistis Sophia=,[42] appearing in the middle
of the third century, with a strong tincture of Valentinianism.
It treats mainly of the fall, repentance, and complaint of
Sophia, and of the mysteries that purify for redemption, often
approaching very closely the doctrine of the church.
§ 27.8. =Antinomian and Libertine Sects.=--The later
representatives of Alexandrian Gnosticism on account of the
antinomian tendency of their system fell for the most part into
gross immorality, which excused itself on the ground that the
pneumatical men must throw contempt upon the law of the Demiurge,
ἀντιτάσσεσθαι, (whence they were also called Antitactes), and
that by the practice of fleshly lusts one must weaken and slay
the flesh, παραχρῆσθαι τῇ σαρκί, so as to overcome the powers
of the Hyle. The four following sects may be mentioned as those
which maintained such views.--
a. =The Nicolaitans=, who in order to give themselves the
sanction of primitive Christianity sought to trace their
descent from Nicolaus [Nicolas] the Deacon (Acts vi. 5). But
while they have really no connection with him, they are just
as little to be identified with the Nicolaitans of the
Apocalypse (§ 18, 3).
b. In a similar way the =Simonians= sought to attach themselves
to Simon Magus (§ 25, 2). They gave to the fables associated
with the name of Simon a speculative basis borrowed from
the central idea of the philosophy of Heraclitus, that
the principle of all things (ἡ ἀπέραντος δύναμις) is fire.
From it in three syzygies, νοῦς and ἐπίνοια, φωνή and
ὄνομα, λογισμός and ἐνθύμησις, proceed the six roots of
the supersensible world, and subsequently the corresponding
six roots of the sensible world, Heaven and earth, Sun and
moon, Air and water, in which unlimited force is present
as ὁ ἐστώς, στάς, and στησόμενος. Justin Martyr was already
acquainted with this sect, and also Hippolytus, who quotes
many passages from their chief treatise, entitled, Ἀπόφασις
μεγάλη and reports scandalous things about their foul
worship.
c. =The Carpocratians.= In the system of their founder
Carpocrates, who lived at Alexandria in the first half of
the second century, God is the eternal Mould, the unity
without distinctions, from whom all being flows and to whom
all returns again. From Him the ἄγγελοι κοσμοποιοί revolted.
By the creation of the world they established a distinct
order of existence apart from God and consolidated it by the
law issuing from them and the national religions of Jews and
Gentiles founded by them. Thus true religion or the way of
return for the human spirit into the One and All consists
theoretically in Gnosis, practically in emancipation from
the commands of the Demiurge and in a life κατὰ φύσιν. The
distinction of good and bad actions rests merely on human
opinions. Man is redeemed by faith and love. In order to be
able to overcome the powers that created the world, he is
in need of magic which is intimately connected with Gnosis.
Every human spirit who has not fully attained to this end of
all religious endeavour, is subjected, until he reaches it,
to the assumption of one bodily form after another. Among
the heroes of humanity who with special energy and success
have assailed the kingdom of the Demiurge by contempt
of his law and spread of the true Gnosis, a particularly
conspicuous place is assigned to Jesus, the son of Joseph.
What he was for the Jews, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, etc.,
were for the Gentiles. To the talented son of Carpocrates,
named Epiphanes, who died in his seventeenth year, after
impressing upon his father’s Gnostic system a boundless
communistic and libertine tendency with community of goods
and wives, his followers erected a temple at Cephalonia, in
which they set up for divine honours the statues of Christ
and the Greek philosophers. At the close of their Agapæ,
they indulged in _Concubitus promiscuus_.
d. =The Prodicians= flourished about the time of Clement of
Alexandria, and were connected, perhaps, through their
founder Prodicus, with the Carpocratians. In order to prove
their dominion over the sensible world they were wont to
appear in their assemblies naked, and hence are also called
=Adamites=. So soon as they succeeded in thus reaching
the state of innocence that had preceded the fall, they
maintained that as pneumatical king’s sons they were raised
above all law and entitled to indulge in unbridled lust.
§ 27.9. =Saturninus=, or Satornilus of Antioch, according to
Irenæus, a disciple of Menander, was one of the oldest Syrian
Gnostics, during the age of Hadrian, and the one in whose system
of Dualism the most decided traces of Parsee colouring is found.
From the θεὸς ἄγνωστος the spirit world of the kingdom of light
emanates in successive stages. On the lowest stage stand the
seven planet spirits, ἄγγελοι κοσμοκράτορες, at their head the
creator of the world and the god of the Jews. But from eternity
over against the realm of light stands the Hyle in violent
opposition under the rule of Satanas. The seven star spirits
think to found therein a kingdom free and independent of the
Pleroma, and for this purpose make an inroad upon the kingdom
of the Hyle, and seize upon a part of it. Therefore they form
the sensible world and create man as keeper thereof after a fair
model sent by the good God of which they had a dim vision. But
they could not give him the upright form. The supreme God then
takes pity upon the wretched creature. He sends down a spark
of light σπινθήρ into it which fills it with pneumatical life
and makes it stand up. But Satanas set a hylic race of men
over against this pneumatical race, and persecuted the latter
incessantly by demons. The Jewish god then plans to redeem the
persecuted by a Messiah, and inspires prophets to announce his
coming. But Satan, too, has his prophets, and the Jewish god is
not powerful enough to make his views prevail over his enemy’s.
Finally the good God sends to the earth the Aeon [Æon] Νοῦς, in
what has the appearance of a body, in order that he as σωτήρ may
teach the pneumatical how to escape, by Gnosis and asceticism,
abstaining from marriage and the eating of flesh, not only the
attacks of Satan, but also the dominion of the Jewish god and his
star spirits, how to emancipate themselves from all connection
with matter, and to raise themselves into the realm of light.
§ 27.10. =Tatian and the Encratites.=--The Assyrian Tatian,
converted to Christianity at Rome by Justin Martyr, makes his
appearance as a zealous apologist of the faith (§ 30, 10). In
his later years, however, just as in the case of Marcion, in
consequence of his exaggeration of the Pauline antithesis of
flesh and spirit, law and grace, he was led to propound a theory
of the dualistic opposition between the god of the law, the
Demiurge, and the god of the gospel, which found expression
in a Gnostic-ascetic system, completely breaking away from the
Catholic church, and reaching its conclusion in the hyperascetic
sect of the Encratites that arose in Rome about A.D. 172. He now
became head and leader of this sect, which, with its fanatical
demand of complete abstinence from marriage, from all eating of
flesh and all spirituous liquors, won his approval, and perhaps
from him received its first dogmatic Gnostic impress. Of Tatian’s
Gnostic writings, Προβλήματα and Περὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὸν σωτῆρα
καταρτισμοῦ, only some fragments, with scanty notices of his
Gnostic system, are preserved. His dualistic opposition of the
god of the Old Testament and the god of the New Testament cannot
have meant a thorough hostility, for he makes the Demiurge
sitting in darkness address himself to the supreme God in
the language of prayer, “Let there be light.” He declares,
however, that Adam, as the author of the fall, is incapable
of redemption.--His followers were also called Ὑδροπαραστάται,
Aquarii, because at the Supper they used water instead of wine.
See Lit. at § 30, 10.
§ 27.11. =Marcion and the Marcionites.=--Marcion of Sinope in
Pontus, who died about A.D. 170, was, according to Tertullian,
a rich shipmaster who, on his arrival in Rome, in his early
enthusiasm for the faith, bestowed upon the Church there a rich
present, but was afterwards excommunicated by it as a heretic.
According to the Pseudo-Tertullian and others he was the son of a
bishop who excommunicated him for incontinence with one under the
vow of virginity. The story may possibly be based upon a later
misunderstanding of the charge of corrupting the church as the
pure bride of Christ. He was a man of a fiery and energetic
character, but also rough and eccentric, of a thoroughly
practical tendency and with little speculative talent. He was
probably driven by the hard inward struggles of his spiritual
life, somewhat similar to those through which Paul had passed, to
a full and hearty conception of the free grace of God in Christ;
but conceived of the opposition between law and gospel, which the
Apostle brought into harmony by his theory of the pædogogical
office of the law, as purely hostile and irreconcileable.
At Rome in A.D. 140, the Syrian Gnostic =Cerdo=, who already
distinguished between the “good” God of Christianity and
the “just” God of Judaism, gained an influence over him.
He consequently developed for himself a Gnostic system, the
dominating idea of which was the irreconcilable opposition of
righteousness and grace, law and gospel, Judaism and Christianity.
He repudiated the whole of the Old Testament, and set forth
the opposition between the two Testaments in a special treatise
entitled _Antitheses_. He acknowledged only Paul as an Apostle,
since all the rest had fallen back into Judaism, and of the whole
New Testament he admitted only ten Pauline epistles, excluding
the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistles to the Hebrews, and
admitting the Gospel of Luke only in a mutilated form.[43]
Marcion would know nothing of a secret doctrine and tradition
and rejected the allegorical interpretation so much favoured
by the Gnostics, as well as the theory of emanation and the
subordination of Pistis under Gnosis. While other Gnostics
formed not churches but only schools of select bands of
thinkers, or at most only small gatherings, Marcion, after
vainly trying to reform the Catholic church in accordance with
his exaggerated Paulinism, set himself to establish a well
organised ecclesiastical system, the members of which were
arranged as _Perfecti_ or _Electi_ and _Catechumeni_. Of the
former he required a strict asceticism, abstinence from marriage,
and restriction in food to the simplest and least possible. He
allowed the Catechumens, however, in opposition to the Catholic
practice (§ 35, 1), to take part in all the services, which were
conducted in the simplest possible forms. The moral earnestness
and the practical tendency of his movement secured him many
adherents, of whom many congregations maintained their existence
for a much longer time than the members of other Gnostic sects,
even down to the seventh century. None of the founders of the old
Gnostic sects were more closely connected in life and doctrine
to the Catholic Church than Marcion, and yet, or perhaps just for
that reason, none of them were opposed by it so often, so eagerly
and so bitterly. Even Polycarp, on his arrival in Rome (§ 37, 2),
in reply to Marcion’s question whether he knew him, said:
Ἐπιγνώσκω τὸν πρωτότοκον τοῦ Σατανᾶ.--The general scope and
character of =the System of Marcion= have been variously
estimated. All older ecclesiastical controversialists, Justin,
Rhodon in Eusebius, Tertullian and Irenæus, in their description
and refutation of it seem to recognise only two principles
(ἀρχαί), which stand in opposition to one another, as θεὸς ἀγαθός
and θεὸς δίκαιος. The latter appears as creator of the world,
or Demiurge, the god of the Jews, the giver of the law, unable,
however, by his law to save the Jews and deter them from breaking
it, or to lead back the Gentiles to the observance of it. Then
of his free grace the “good” God, previously quite unknown,
determined to redeem men from the power of the Demiurge. For this
purpose he sends his Logos into the world with the semblance of a
body. By way of accommodation he gives himself out as the Messiah
of the Jewish god, proclaims the forgiveness of sins through free
grace, communicates to all who believe the powers of the divine
life, is at the instigation of the angry Demiurge nailed to the
cross to suffer death in appearance only, preaches to Gentiles
imprisoned in Hades, banishes the Demiurge to Hades, and
ordains the Apostle Paul as teacher of believers.--The later
heresiologists, however, Hippolytus, in his Elenchus, Epiphanius,
Theodoret, and especially the Armenian Esnig (§ 64, 3), are
equally agreed in saying that Marcion recognised three principles
(ἀρχαί); that besides the good God and the righteous God he
admitted an evil principle, the Hyle concentrated in Satan, so
that even the pre-Christian development of the world was viewed
from the standpoint of a dualistic conflict between divine powers.
The righteous God and the Hyle, as a _quasi_ female principle,
united with one another in creating the world, and when the
former saw how fair the earth was, he resolved to people it with
men created of his own likeness. For this purpose the Hyle at his
request afforded him dust, from which he created man, inspiring
him with his own spirit. Both divine powers rejoiced over man as
parents over a child, and shared in his worship. But the Demiurge
sought to gain undivided authority over man, and so commanded
Adam, under pain of death, to worship him alone, and the Hyle
avenged himself by producing a multitude of idols to whom the
majority of Adam’s descendants, falling away from the God of
the law, gave reverence.--The harmonizing of these two accounts
may be accomplished by assuming that the older Church Fathers,
in their conflict with Marcion had willingly restricted
themselves to the most important point in the Marcionite system,
its characteristic opposition of the Gods of the Old and New
Testaments, passing over the points in which it agreed more
or less with other Gnostic systems; or by assuming that later
Marcionites, such as Prepon (§ 27, 12), in consequence of the
palpable defectiveness and inadequacy of the original system of
two principles, were led to give it the further development that
has been described.[44]
§ 27.12. The speculative weakness and imperfection of his system
led =Marcion’s Disciples= to expand and remodel it in many ways.
Two of these, Lucanus and Marcus, are pre-eminent as remodellers
of the system, into which they imported various elements from
that of Saturninus. The Assyrian =Prepon= placed the “righteous”
Logos as third principle between the “good” God and the “evil”
Demiurge. Of all the more nameful Marcionites, =Apelles=, who
died about A.D. 180, inclined most nearly to the church doctrine.
Eusebius tells about a Disputation which took place in Rome
between him and Rhodon, a disciple of Tatian. At the head of his
essentially monistic system Apelles places the ἀγέννητος θεός
as the μία ἀρχή. This God, besides a higher heavenly world, had
created an order of angels, of whom the first and most eminent,
the so-called _Angelus inclytus_ or _gloriosus_ as Demiurge made
the earthly world after the image and to the glory of the supreme
God. But another angel, the ἄγγελος πυρετός, corrupted his
creation, which was already in itself imperfect, by bringing
forth the σὰρξ ἁμαρτίας, with which he clothed the souls enticed
down from the upper world. It was he, too, who spoke to Moses out
of the burning bush, and as the god of the Jews gave the law from
Sinai. The Demiurge soon repented of his ill-fated performance,
and prayed the supreme God to send his Son as redeemer. Christ
appeared, lived, wrought and suffered in a real body. It was not,
however, the σὰρξ ἁμαρτίας that he assumed, but a sinless body
composed out of the four elements which he gave back to the
elements on his ascension to heaven. Towards the close of his
life Apelles seems, under the influence of the mystic revelations
of a prophetess, Philoumena, whose φανερώσεις he published, to
have more and more renounced his Gnostic views. He had already
admitted in his Disputation with Rhodon, that even on the
Catholic platform one may be saved, for the main thing is faith
in the crucified Christ and the doing of his works. He would even
have been prepared to subscribe to the Monotheism of the church,
had he not been hindered by the opposition between the Old
Testament and the New.
§ 27.13. The painter =Hermogenes= in North Africa, about A.D. 200,
whom Tertullian opposed, took offence at the Catholic doctrine of
creation as well as at the Gnostic theory of emanation, because
it made God the author of evil. He therefore assumed an eternal
chaos, from whose striving against the creative and formative
influence of God he explained the origin of everything evil and
vile.
§ 28. EBIONISM AND EBIONITIC GNOSTICISM.[45]
The Jewish-Christianity that maintained separation from
Gentile-Christianity even after the overthrow of the Holy City and its
temple, assumed partly a merely separatist, partly a decidedly heretical
character. Both tendencies had in common the assertion of the continued
obligation to observe the whole of the Mosaic law. But while the former
limited this obligation to the Christians of Jewish descent as the
peculiar stem and kernel of the new Messianic community, and allowed the
Gentile Christians as Proselytes of the Gate to omit those observances,
the latter would tolerate no such concession and outran the Old
Testament monotheism by a barren monarchianism that denied the
divinity of Christ (§ 33, 1). At a later period the two parties were
distinguished as Nazareans and Ebionites. On the other hand, in the
Ebionites described to us by Epiphanius we have a form of Jewish
Christianity permeated by Gnostic elements. These Ebionites, settling
along with the Essenes (§ 8, 4) on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea,
came to be known under the name of Elkesaites. In the Pseudo-Clementine
scheme of doctrine, this Ebionitic Gnosis was carried out in detail and
wrought up into a comprehensive and richly developed system.
§ 28.1. =Nazareans and Ebionites.=--Tertullian and with him most
of the later Church Fathers derive the name Ebionite from Ebion,
a founder of the sect. Since the time of Gieseler, however, the
name has generally been referred to the Hebrew word אֶבְיוֹן meaning
poor, in allusion partly to the actual poverty of the church of
Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 10), partly to the association of the terms
poor and pious in the Psalms and Prophets (comp. Matt. v. 3).
Minucius Felix, c. xxxvi. testifies that the Gentile Christians
were also so designated by those without: _Ceterum quod plerique
“Pauperes” dicimur, non est infamia nostra, sed gloria_. Recently,
however, Hilgenfeld has recurred to the patristic derivation of
the name.--In Irenæus the name Ebionæi makes its first appearance
in literature, and that as a designation of Jewish Christians
as heretics who admitted only a Gospel according to Matthew,
probably the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews (§ 32, 4),
branded the Apostle Paul as an apostate, insisted upon the
strict observance of the Jewish law, and taught on Christological
questions “_consimiliter ut Cerinthus et Carpocrates_”
(§ 27, 1, 8), while they denied that Christ was born of a virgin,
and regarded Him as a mere man. Origen († A.D. 243) embraced all
Jewish Christians under the name Ἐβιωναῖοι but did not deny the
existence of two very different parties among them (διττοὶ and
ἀμφότεροι Ἐβιωναῖοι). Eusebius does the same. Jerome again is
the first to distinguish the more moderate party by the name
Nazareans (Acts xxiv. 5) from the more extreme who are designated
Ebionites. This too is the practice of Augustine and Theodoret.
The former party acknowledged the virgin birth of Christ and
so His divine origin, assigned to Paul his place as Apostle
to the Gentiles, and made no demand of Gentile Christians that
they should observe the ceremonial law of Moses, although they
believed that they themselves were bound thereby. The latter
again regarded it as absolutely necessary to salvation, and also
held that Christ was the Messiah, but only a man, son of Joseph
by Mary, endowed with divine powers in His baptism. His Messianic
work, according to them, consisted in His fulfilling by His
teaching the Mosaic law. His death was an offence to them, but
they took comfort from the promise of His coming again, when they
looked for the setting up of an earthly Messianic kingdom. Paul
was depreciated by them and made of little account. Ebionites
of both parties continued to exist in small numbers down to the
fifth century, especially in Palestine and Syria. Both however
had sunk by the middle of the second century into almost utter
insignificance. The scanty remains of writings issuing from the
party prove that especially the non-heretical Jewish Christianity
before the close of this century had in great part abandoned its
national Jewish character, and therewith its separate position
as a religious sect, and by adopting the views of the Pauline
Gentile Christianity (§ 30, 2) became gradually amalgamated
with it.[46]
§ 28.2. =The Elkesaites.=--Independent accounts of this sect in
substantial agreement with one another are given by Hippolytus
in his _Elenchus_, by Origen as quoted in Eusebius, and by
Epiphanius. Their designation has also led the Church Fathers
to assume a sect founder of the name of Elxai or Elchasai,
who is said to have lived in the time of Hadrian. The members
of the sect themselves derived their name from חֵיל כְּסָי, δύναμις
κεκαλυμμένη, the hidden power of God operating in them, that is,
the Holy Spirit, the δύναμις ἄσαρκος of the Clementine Homilies.
Probably it was the title of a book setting forth their esoteric
doctrine, which circulated only among those bound under oath to
secrecy. Origen says that the book was supposed to have fallen
down from heaven; Hippolytus says that it was held to have been
revealed by an angel who was the Son of God himself. Elxai
obtained it from the Serians in Parthia and communicated it to
the Sobiai, probably from שֹׁבְעַ; then the Syrian Alcibiades brought
it from Apamea to Rome in the third century. The doctrinal
system of the Elkesaites was very variable, and is represented
by the Church Fathers referred to as a confused mixture of
Christian elements with the legalism of Judaism, the asceticism
of Essenism, and the naturalism of paganism, and exhibiting a
special predilection for astrological and magical fancies. The
law was regarded as binding, especially the precepts concerning
the Sabbath and circumcision, but the sacrificial worship was
abandoned, and the portions of the Old Testament referring to
it as well as other parts. Their doctrine of baptism varied from
that of baptism once administered to that of a baptism by oft
repeated washings on days especially indicated by astrological
signs. Baptism was for the forgiveness of sins and also for the
magical cure of the sick. It was administered in the name of the
Father and the Son, and in addition there were seven witnesses
called, the five elements, together with oil and salt, the latter
as representative of the Lord’s Supper, which was celebrated
with salt and bread without wine. Eating of flesh was forbidden,
but marriage was allowed and highly esteemed. Their Christology
presented the appearance of unsettled fermentation. On the one
hand Christ was regarded as an angel, and indeed as the μέγας
βασιλεύς, of gigantic size, 96 miles high, and 24 miles broad;
but on the other hand, they taught also a repeated incarnation of
Christ as the Son of God, the final One being the Christ born of
the virgin. He represents the male principle, and by his side, as
the female principle, stands the Holy Spirit. Denial of Christ in
times of persecution seemed to them quite allowable. At the time
of Epiphanius,--who identifies them with the _Sampseans_, whose
name was derived from שֶׁמֶשׁ the sun, because in prayer they turned
to the sun, called also Ἡλιακοί,--they had for the most part
their residence round about the Dead Sea, where they got mixed
up with the Essenes of that region.--More recently the Elkesaites
have been brought into connection with the still extant sect
of the Sabeans or Mandeans (§ 25, 1). These Sabeans, from צבע
meaning טבע, βαπτίζειν, are designated by the mediæval Arabic
writers _Mogtasilah_, those who wash themselves, and _Elchasaich_
is named as their founder, and as teaching the existence of two
principles a male and a female. [47]
§ 28.3. =The Pseudo-Clementine Series of Writings= forms a
literature of a romantic historico-didactic description which
originated between A.D. 160 and 170.
a. The so-called =Homiliæ XX Clementis=[48] were prefaced by
two letters to the Apostle James at Jerusalem. The first
of these is from Peter enjoining secrecy in regard to the
“Kerugma” sent therewith. The second is from Clement of Rome
after the death of Peter, telling how he as the founder and
first bishop of the church of Rome had ordained Clement as
his successor, and had charged him to draw up those accounts
of his own career and of the addresses and disputations
of Peter which he had heard while the Apostle pursued and
contended with Simon Magus, and to send them to James as
head of the church, “bishop of bishops, who ruled the church
of Jerusalem and all the churches,” that they might be
certified by him. The historical framework of the book
represents a distinguished Roman of philosophical culture
and of noble birth, named Clement, as receiving his first
acquaintance with Christianity at Rome, and then as going
forth on his travels to Judea as an eager seeker after the
truth. At Alexandria (§ 16, 4) Barnabas convinces him of the
truth of Christianity, and Clement follows him to Cæsarea
where he listens to a great debate between Peter and Simon
Magus (§ 25, 2). Simon defeated betakes himself to flight,
but Peter follows him, accompanied by Clement and two who
had been disciples of the magician, Niceta and Aquila.
Though he goes after him from place to place, Peter does not
get hold of Simon, but founds churches all along his route.
On the way Clement tells him how long before his mother,
Mattidia, and his two brothers had gone on a journey to
Athens, and how his father, Faustus, had gone in search of
them, and no trace of any of them had ever been found. Soon
thereafter the mother is met with, and then it is discovered
that Niceta and Aquila are the lost brothers Faustinus and
Faustinianus. At the baptism of the mother the father also
is restored. Finally at Laodicea Peter and Simon engage a
second time in a four-days’ disputation which ends as the
first. The story concludes with Peter’s arrival at Antioch.
b. The ten books of the so-called =Recognitiones Clementis=,[49]
present us again with the Clement of the historical romance,
the historical here overshadowing the didactic, and a closer
connection with church doctrine being here maintained.
Critical examinations of the relations between the two sets
of writings have more and more established the view that
an older Jewish-Christian Gnostic work lay at the basis
of both. This original document seems to have been used
contemporaneously, but in a perfectly independent manner in
the composition of both; the Homilies using the materials
in an anti-Marcionite interest (§ 27, 11), the Recognitions
using them in such a way as to give as little offence as
possible to their Catholic readers. Still it is questionable
whether this original document, which probably bore the
title of Κηρύγματα Πέτρου, embraced in its earliest form
the domestic romance of Clement, or only treated of the
disputation of Peter with Simon at Cæsarea, and was first
enlarged by addition of the Ἀναγνωρισμοί Κλήμεντος giving
the story of Peter’s travels (Περίοδοι).
c. Finally, extracts from the Homilies, worthless and of
no independent significance, are extant in the form of
two Greek =Epitomæ= (ed. Dressel, Lps., 1859). Equally
unimportant is the Syrian Epitome, edited by Lagarde, Lps.,
1861, a compilation from the Recognitions and the Homilies.
All the three writers of the Epitomes had an interest only
in the romantic narrative.
§ 28.4. =The Pseudo-Clementine Doctrinal System= is represented
in the most complete and most original manner in the Homilies.
In the conversations, addresses, and debates there reported the
author develops his own religious views, and by putting them
in the mouth of the Apostle Peter seeks to get them recognised
as genuine unadulterated primitive Christianity, while all the
doctrines of Catholic Paulinism which he objects to, as well
as those of heretical Gnosticism and especially of Marcionism,
are put into the mouth of Simon Magus, the primitive heretic;
and then an attempt is made at a certain reconciliation and
combination of all these views, the evil being indeed contended
against, but an element of truth being recognised in them all. He
directs his Polemics against the polytheism of vulgar paganism,
the allegorical interpretation by philosophers of pagan myths,
the doctrine of the creation of the world out of nothing and
the sacrificial worship of Judaism, against the hypostatic
Trinity of Catholicism, the chiliasm of the Ebionites, the pagan
naturalistic element in Elkesaism, the dualism, the doctrine
of the Demiurge, the Docetism and Antinomianism of the Gentile
Christian Gnostics. He attempts in his Ironies to point out the
Ebionitic identity of genuine Christianity with genuine Judaism,
emphasizes the Essenic-Elkesaitic demand to abstain from eating
flesh, to observe frequent fasts, divers washings and voluntary
poverty (through a recommendation of early marriages), as well
as the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of baptism for the
forgiveness of sins, and justifies the Gnostic tendency of his
times by setting up a system of doctrine of which the central
idea is the connection of Stoical Pantheism with Jewish Theism,
and is itself thoroughly dualistic: God the eternal pure Being
was originally a unity of πνεῦμα and σῶμα, and his life consisted
in extension and contraction, ἔκτασις and συστολή, the symbol
of which the human heart was a later copy. The result of such
an ἔκτασις was the separation of πνεῦμα and σῶμα, wherewith a
beginning of the development of the world was made. The πνεῦμα is
thus represented as Υἱός, also called Σοφία or Ἄρχων τοῦ αἰῶνος
τοῦ μέλλοντος; the Σῶμα is represented as Οὐσία or Ὕλη which four
times parts asunder in twofold opposition of the elements. Satan
springs from the mixing of these elements, and is the universal
soul of the Ἄρχων τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου. The Σῶμα has thereby become
ἔμψυχον and ζῶον. Thus the Monas has unfolded itself into a Dyas,
as the first link of a long chain of contrasted pairs or Syzygies,
in the first series of which the large and male stands opposite
the small and female, heaven and earth, day and night, etc. The
last Syzygy of this series is Adam as the true male, and Eve as
the false female prophet. In the second series that relation had
come to be just reversed, Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, etc.
In the protoplasts this opposition of truth and falsehood, of
good and evil, was still a physical and necessary one; but in
their descendants, because both elements of their parents are
mixed up in them, it becomes an ethical one, conditioning and
requiring freedom of self-determination. Meanwhile Satan tempted
men to error and sin; but the true prophet (ὁ ἀληθὴς προφήτης) in
whom the divine Πνεῦμα dwelt as ἔμφυτον and ἀένναον, always leads
them back again into the true way of Gnosis and the fulfilment of
the law. In Adam, the original prophet, who had taught whole and
full truth, he had at first appeared, returning again after every
new obscuration and disfigurement of his doctrine under varying
names and forms, but always anew proclaiming the same truth. His
special manifestations were in Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses, and finally, in Christ. Alongside of them all, however,
stand false prophets inspired by the spirit of lies, to whom even
John the Baptist belongs, and in the Old Testament many of their
doctrines and prophecies have slipped in along with the true
prophecy. The transition from the original pantheistic to the
subsequent theistic standpoint, in which God is represented as
personal creator of the world, lawgiver, and governor, seems
to have been introduced by means of the primitive partition of
the divine being into Πνεῦμα and Σῶμα. In vain, however, do we
seek an explanation of the contradiction that, on the one hand,
the end of the development of the world is represented as the
separation of the evil from the good for the eternal punishment
of the former, but on the other hand, as a return, through the
purification of the one and the destruction of the other, of all
into the divine being, the ἀνάπαυσις. Equally irreconcilable is
the assertion of the unconditional necessity of Christian baptism
with the assertion of the equality of all stages of revelation.
§ 29. MANICHÆISM.
Manichæism makes its appearance in Persia about the middle of the
third century, independently of the Gentile-Christian Gnosticism of the
Roman empire, which was more or less under the influence of the Greek
philosophy of the second century, but bearing undoubted connection with
Mandæism (§ 25, 1), and Elkesaism (§ 28, 2). In principle and tendency,
it was at various points, as _e.g._ in its theory of emanation, its
doceticism, etc., connected with Gnosticism, but was distinguished
therefrom pre-eminently by using Christian soteriological ideas
and modes of thought as a mere varnish for oriental pagan or
Babylonian-Chaldaic theosophy, putting this in place of Platonic or
Stoical notions which are quite foreign to it, basing the system on
Persian dualism and impregnating it with elements from Buddhist ethics.
Another point in which it is distinguished from Gnosticism is that it
does not present itself as an esoteric form of religion meant only for
the few specially gifted spirits, but distinctly endeavours to build up
a community of its own with a regularly articulated constitution and a
well organized ritual.
§ 29.1. =The Founder.=--What the Greek and Latin Fathers (Titus
of Bostra, Epiphanius, Augustine, etc.) say about the person and
history of the founder of this sect is derived mainly from an
account of a disputation which a bishop Archelaus of Cascar in
Mesopotamia is said to have held with Manes or Manichæus. This
document is written in Syriac and dates about A.D. 320, but it
is simply a polemical work under the guise of a debate between
men with historical names. These “Acts” have come down to us in
a very corrupt Latin version, and contain, especially in their
historical allusions, much that is incredible and legendary,
while in their representation of the doctrine of Manes they are
much more deserving of confidence. According to them the origin
of Manichæism is to be attributed to a far travelled Saracen
craftsman, named Scythianus, who lived in the age of the Apostles.
His disciple, Terebinthus, who subsequently in Babylon took
the name Buddas, and affirmed that he had been born of a
virgin, wrote at the master’s dictation four books, _Mysteria_,
_Capitula_, _Evangelium_, _Thesaurus_, which after his death
came into the possession of a freed slave, Cubricus or Corbicus.
This man made the wisdom taught therein his own, developed it
more fully, appeared in Persia as the founder of a new religion,
and called himself Manes. He was even received at court, but
his failure to heal a prince was used by the jealous magicians
to secure his overthrow. He escaped, however, from prison,
and found a safe hiding place in Arabion, an old castle in
Mesopotamia. Meanwhile he had got access to the sacred writings
of the Christians and borrowed much from them for the further
development of his system. He now gave himself out as the
Paraclete promised by Christ, and by means of letters and
messengers developed a great activity in the dissemination of his
views, especially among Christians. This led to the disputation
of Archelaus above referred to, in which Manes suffered utter
defeat. He was soon thereafter seized by order of the Persian
king, flayed alive, and his stuffed skin publicly exhibited as
a warning.
The reports in Persian documents of the ninth and tenth centuries
though later seem much more credible, and the dates derivable
from Manes’ own writings and those of his disciples quoted in
Arabic documents of the tenth and eleventh centuries, are quite
worthy of acceptance.[50] According to them Fatak the father
of Manes, called Πατέκιος in a Greek oath formula still extant,
was descended from a noble Persian family in Hamadan or Ecbatana,
married a princess of the Parthian Asarcidae, not long before
this, in A.D. 226, driven out by the Persian Sassanidæ, and
settled down with her at Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital. Here
he met with the Mogtasilah, Mandeans or Elkesaites (§ 28, 2),
then removed to Southern Chaldea, and trained his son, born in
A.D. 216, with great care in this faith. But even in his twelfth
year Manes received a divine revelation, which ordained him to
be the founder of a new religion, and in his twenty-fourth year
he was commissioned to preach this religion publicly. On his first
appearance in Persia, on the coronation day of king Sapor I.,
in A.D. 242, he met with so little support that he found it
necessary to keep away from the Persian empire for several
decades, which he spent in foreign lands developing his system
and successfully prosecuting missionary work. It was only about
the end of Sapor’s reign († A.D. 272) that he ventured again to
return. He won over to his views the king’s brother Peroz and
through him found favour temporarily with Sapor, which, however,
soon again turned into dislike. Sapor’s successor, Hormuz or
Hormisdas I., seemed inclined to be tolerant toward him. For
this very reason Bahram or Baranes I. showed himself all the more
hostile, and had him crucified in A.D. 276, his body flayed, and
the skin stuffed with straw thrown out at the gate of the city.
The two accounts may, according to Kessler, be brought into
harmony thus. The name Scythianus was given to Fatak as coming
from Parthia or Scythia. Terebinthus, a corruption of the Aramaic
_tarbitha_, sapling, was given originally as _Nomen appell._ to
the son of Fatak, and was afterwards misunderstood and regarded
as _Nomen propr._ of an additional member of the family,
intermediate between Fatak and Manes. In the Latin Cubricus,
however, we meet with a scornful rendering of his original name,
which he, on his entering independently on his work, exchanged
for the name Manes.[51] The name Buddas seems to indicate some
sort of connection with Buddhism. We also meet with the four
Terebinthus books among the seven chief works of Manes catalogued
in the Fihrist. According to a Persian document the _Evangelium_
bore the title _Ertenki Mani_, was composed by Manes in a cave
in Turkestan, in which he stayed for a long time during his
banishment, and was adorned with beautiful illustrations, and
passed for a book sent down to him direct from heaven.
§ 29.2. =The System.=--The different sets of documents give very
different accounts of the religious system of Manichæism. This is
not occasioned so much by erroneous tradition or misconception as
by the varying stages through which the doctrine of Manes passed.
In Western and Christian lands it took on a richer Christian
colouring than in Eastern and pagan countries. In all its forms,
however, we meet with a groundwork of magical dualism. As in
Parseeism, Ahriman and his Devas stand opposed to Ormuzd and
his Ameshaspentas and Izeds, so also here from all eternity a
luminous ether surrounding the realm of light, the _Terra lucida_,
of the good God, with his twelve æons and countless beings
of light, stands opposed to the realm of darkness, the _Terra
pestifera_, with Satan and his demons. Each of the two kingdoms
consists of five elements: the former of bright light, quickening
fire, clear water, hot air, soft wind; the latter of lurid flame,
scorching fire, grimy slime, dark clouds, raging tempest. In
the one, perfect concord, goodness, happiness, and splendour
prevail; in the other, wild, chaotic and destructive waves dash
confusedly about. Clothing himself in a borrowed ray of light,
Satan prepared himself for a robber campaign in the realm of
light. In order to keep him off the Father of Lights caused to
emanate from him the “Mother of Life,” and placed her as a watcher
on the borders of his realm. She brought forth the first man
(ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος), who armed with the five pure elements engaged
in battle with the demons. When he sank before their furious
onslaught, God sent a newly emanated æon for his deliverance, the
“living spirit” (ζῶον πνεῦμα), who freed him and vanquished the
demons. But a portion of the ethereal substance of the first man,
his armour of light, had been already devoured by the demoniac
Hyle, and as the _Jesus patibilis_, υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἐμπαθής,
remains imprisoned in it. Out of the elements of light which he
saved the living Spirit now forms the Sun and Moon, and settles
there the first man as _Jesus impatibilis_, υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἀπαθής,
while out of the Hyle impregnated with elements of light he
constructs the present earthly world, in order gradually to
deliver the fragments of light bound up in it, the _Jesus
patibilis_ or the soul of the world, and to fit them for
restoration to their eternal home. The first man dwelling in
the sun and the Holy Spirit enthroned in the luminous ether have
to further and direct this process of purification. The sun and
moon are the two light-ships, _lucidæ naves_, which the light
particles wrenched out of the world further increase. The zodiac
with its twelve signs operates in this direction like a revolving
wheel with twelve buckets, while the smaller ship, as new moon,
receives them, and as full moon empties them again into the sun,
which introduces them into the realm of light. In order to check
this process of purification Satan, out of the Hyle and the
imprisoned particles of light, of which he still had possession,
made Adam and Eve after his own image and that of the first man,
and incited them to fleshly lusts and carnal intercourse, so
that the light of their soul became dim and weak, and more and
more the body became its gloomy prison. His demons, moreover,
were continually busying themselves in fastening the chains of
darkness more tightly about their descendants by means of the
false religions of Judaism and paganism. Therefore at last the
_Jesus impatibilis_, clothed with the appearance of a body,
descended from the sun to the earth, to instruct men about their
souls and the means and end of their redemption. The sufferings
and death inflicted upon him by the Prince of Darkness were only
in appearance. The death of the cross and the resurrection were
only sensible representations of the overthrow and final victory
of the _Jesus patibilis_. As in the macrocosm of the earthly
world there is set forth the emancipation of this suffering
Christ from the bonds of hylic matter, so also in the microcosm
represented in each individual man, we have the dominion of the
spirit over the flesh, the redemption of the soul of light from
the prison of the body, and its return to the realm of light,
conceived of as the end and aim of all endeavour. The method
for attaining this consists in the greatest possible abstinence
from all connection and intercourse with the world of sense; the
_Signaculum oris_ in particular demands absolute abstinence from
all animal food and restriction in the use even of vegetable food,
for in the slaughtering of the animal all elements of light are
with the life withdrawn from its flesh, and only hylic elements
remain, whereas in vegetable fare the substances of light there
present contribute to the strengthening of the light in the man’s
own soul. Wine and all intoxicating drinks as “Satan’s gall”
are strictly forbidden, as well as animal food. The _Signaculum
manuum_ prohibits all injuring of animal or plant life, all
avoidable contact with or work upon matter, because the material
is thereby strengthened. The _Signaculum sinus_ forbids all
sensual pleasure and carnal intercourse. The souls of those men
who have perfectly satisfied the threefold injunction, return at
death immediately into the blessed home of light. Those who only
partially observe them must, by transmigration of the soul into
other bodies, of animals, plants or men, in proportion to the
degree of purification attained unto, that is, by metempsychosis,
have the purifying process carried to perfection. But all who
have not entered upon the way of sanctification, are finally
delivered over unreservedly to Satan and hell. The Apostles
greatly misunderstood and falsified this doctrine of Christ;
but in the person of Manes the promised Paraclete appeared, who
taught it again in its original purity. For the most part Manes
accepted the Pauline epistles in which the doctrines of the
groaning creation and the opposition of flesh and spirit must
have been peculiarly acceptable to him; all the more decidedly
did he reject the Acts of the Apostles, and vigorously did
he oppose the account which it gave of the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit as in conflict with his doctrine of the Paraclete.
According to the Fihrist, Manes distinguished from the _Jesus
impatibilis_ who as true redeemer descended to earth in the
appearance of a body, the historical Jesus as prophet of the
Devil, and the false Messiah who for the punishment of his
wickedness suffered actual death on the cross instead of the
true Jesus. The Old Testament he wholly rejected. The god of the
Jews was with him the Prince of Darkness; the prophets with Moses
at their head were the messengers of the Devil. As his own true
precursors--the precursors of the Paraclete--he named Adam, Seth,
Noah, Abraham, Buddha, and Zoroaster.
§ 29.3. =Constitution, Worship, and Missionarizing.=--Manes was
still regarded after his death as the invisibly present head
(_Princeps_) of the church. At the head of the hierarchical order
as his visible representative stood an Imam or Pope, who resided
at Babylon. The first of these, appointed by Manes himself before
his death, was named Sis or Sisinius. The Manichæan ministry
was distributed under him into twelve _Magistri_ and seventy-two
_Bishops_, with presbyters and deacons in numbers as required.
The congregations consisted of Catechumens (_Auditores_) and
Elect (_Electi_, _Perfecti_). The latter were strictly bound
to observe the threefold _Signaculum_. The _Auditores_ brought
them the food necessary for the support of their life and out
of the abundance of their holiness they procured pardon to
these imperfect ones for their unavoidable violation of mineral
and vegetable life in making this provision. The _Auditores_
were also allowed to marry and even to eat animal food; but
by voluntary renunciation of this permission they could secure
entrance into the ranks of the _Electi_. The worship of the
Manichæans was simple, but orderly. They addressed their prayers
to the sun and moon. The Sunday was hallowed by absolute fasting,
and the day of common worship was dedicated to the honour of
the spirit of the sun; but on Monday the _Electi_ by themselves
celebrated a secret service. At their annual chief festival,
that of the Pulpit (βῆμα), on the day of their founder’s death,
they threw themselves down upon the ground in oriental fashion
before a beautifully adorned chair of state, the symbol of their
departed master. The five steps leading up to it represented
the five hierarchical decrees of the _Electi_, _Diaconi_,
_Presbyteri_, _Episcopi_ and _Magistri_. Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper, the former with oil, the latter with bread without wine,
belonged to the secret worship of the Perfect. Oil and bread were
regarded as the most luminous bearers of the universal soul in
the vegetable world.--Notwithstanding the violent persecution
which after the execution of Manes was raised against the
adherents of his doctrine throughout the whole Persian empire,
their number increased rapidly in all quarters, especially in
the East, but also in the West, in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, etc.
Proconsular Africa became the centre of its Western propaganda;
and thence it spread into Italy and Spain. In A.D. 290 Diocletian
issued an edict by which the Proconsul of Africa was required to
burn the leaders of this sect, doubly dangerous as springing from
the hostile Persian empire, along with their books, to execute
with the sword its persistent adherents, or send them to work in
the quarries, and confiscate their goods.--Continuation at § 54, 1.
III. THE DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT AND APOLOGETICAL
ACTIVITY OF THE CHURCH.[52]
§ 30. THE THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE OF THE POST-APOSTOLIC
AGE, A.D. 70-170.[53]
The literary remains of the so-called Apostolic Fathers constitute the
first fruits of Patristic-Christian literature. These are in respect of
number and scope insignificant, and, inasmuch as they had their origin,
from the special individual circumstances of their writers, they were
composed for the most part in the form of epistles. The old traditional
view that the authors of these treatises had enjoyed the immediate
fellowship and instruction of the Apostles is at once too narrow
and too wide. Among these writings must be included first of all the
recently discovered “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” About A.D. 130,
when Christianity was making its way among the ranks of the cultured,
Christian writers began to feel themselves called upon to engage with
paganism in a literary warfare defensive and offensive, in order to
repel the charges and calumnies raised against their religion and to
demonstrate its inner worth in opposition to the moral and religious
degradation of heathenism. These writings had a more theological and
scientific character than those of the Apostolic Fathers, which had more
of a practical and hortatory tendency. The works of these Apologists
still extant afford interesting and significant glimpses of the life,
doctrine, and thinking of the Christians of that age, which but for
these writings would have been almost unknown.
§ 30.1. =The Beginnings of Patristic Literature.=--According to
the established rule of the church we have to distinguish between
New Testament and Patristic literature in this way: to the former
belongs those writings to which, as composed by Apostles or at
least under Apostolic authority, the ancient church assigned
an objectively fundamental and regulative significance for
further ecclesiastical development; while in the latter we have
represented the subjective conception and estimation which the
Church Fathers made of the Christian message of salvation and
the structure they reared upon this foundation. The so-called
Apostolic Fathers may be regarded as occupying a position
midway between the two and forming a transition from the one
to the other, or as themselves constituting the first fruits
of Patristic literature. Indeed as regards the New Testament
writings themselves the ancient church was long uncertain and
undecided as to the selection of them from the multitude of
contemporary writings;[54] and Eusebius still designated several
of the books that were subsequently definitely recognised
ἀντιλεγόμενα; while modern criticism has not only repeated such
doubts as to the genuineness of these writings but has extended
these doubts to other books of the New Testament. But even this
criticism cannot deny the historical significance assigned above
to those New Testament books contested by it, even though it may
feel obliged to reject the account of them given by the ancient
church, and to assign their composition to the Post-Apostolic
Age.--When we turn to the so-called Apostolic Fathers, on closer
examination the usual designation as well as the customary
enumeration of seven names as belonging to the group will be
found too narrow because excluding the New Testament writings
composed by disciples of the Apostles, and too wide because
including names which have no claim to be regarded as disciples
or contemporaries of the Apostles, and embracing writings of
which the authenticity is in some cases clearly disproved, in
other cases doubtful or at least only problematical. We come upon
firm ground when we proceed to deal with the Apologists of the
age of Hadrian. It was not, however, till the period of the Old
Catholic Church, about A.D. 170, that the literary compositions
of the Christians became broadened, deepened and universalized
by a fuller appropriation and appreciation of the elements
of Græco-Latin culture, so as to form an all-sided universal
Christian literature representative of Christianity as a universal
religion.
§ 30.2. =The Theology of the Post-Apostolic Age.=--By far the
greater number of the ecclesiastical writers of this period
belong to the Gentile Christian party. Hence we might suppose
that it would reflect the Pauline type of doctrine, if not in its
full depth and completeness, yet at least in its more significant
and characteristic features. This expectation, however, is not
altogether realised. Among the Church Fathers of this age we
rather find an unconscious deterioration of the original doctrine
of Paul revealing itself as a smoothing down and belittling or
as an ignoring of the genuine Paulinism, which, therefore, as
the result of the struggle against the Gnostic tendency, only in
part overcome, was for the first time fully recognised and proved
finally victorious in the Reformation of the 16th century. On the
one hand, we see that these writers, if they do not completely
ignore the position and task assigned to Israel as the chosen
people of God, minimise their importance and often fail to
appreciate the pædagogical significance of the Mosaic law
(Gal. iii. 24), so that its ceremonial parts are referred to
misunderstanding, want of sense, and folly, or are attributed
even to demoniacal suggestion. But on the other hand, even
the gospel itself is regarded again as a new and higher law,
purified from that ceremonial taint, and hence the task of the
ante-mundane Son of God, begotten for the purpose of creating the
world, but now also manifest in the flesh, from whose influence
upon Old Testament prophets as well as upon the sages of paganism
all revelations of pre-Christian Judaism as well as all σπέρματα
of true knowledge in paganism have sprung, is pre-eminently
conceived of as that of a divine teacher and lawgiver. In this
way there was impressed upon the Old Catholic Church as it
grew up out of Pauline Gentile Christianity a legalistic moral
tendency that was quite foreign to the original Paulinism, and
the righteousness of faith taught by the Apostle when represented
as obedience to the “new law” passed over again unobserved into a
righteousness of works. Redemption and reconciliation are indeed
still always admitted to be conditioned by the death of Christ
and their appropriation to be by the faith of the individual;
but this faith is at bottom nothing more than the conviction
of the divinity of the person and doctrine of the new lawgiver
evidencing itself in repentance and rendering of practical
obedience, and in confident expectation of the second coming
of Christ, and in a sure confidence of a share in the life
everlasting.--The introduction of this legalistic tendency into
the Gentile Christian Church was not occasioned by the influence
of Jewish Christian legalism, nor can it be explained as
the result of a compromise effected between Jewish Christian
Petrinism and Gentile Christian Paulinism, which were supposed
by Baur, Schwegler, etc., to have been, during the Apostolic
Age, irreconcilably hostile to one another. This has been already
proved by Ritschl, who charges its intrusion rather upon the
inability of Gentile Christianity fully to understand the Old
Testament bases of the Pauline doctrine. By means of a careful
analysis of the undisputed writings of Justin Martyr and
by a comparison of these with the writings of the Apostolic
Fathers, Engelhardt has proved that anything extra-, un-, or
anti-Pauline in the Christianity of these Fathers has not so much
an Ebionitic-Jewish Christian, but rather a pagan-philosophic,
source. He shows that the prevalent religio-moral mode of thought
of the cultured paganism of that age reappears in that form
of Christianity not only as an inability to reach a profound
understanding of the Old Testament, but also just as much
as a minimising and depreciating, or disdaining of so many
characteristic features of the Pauline doctrinal resting on Old
Testament foundations.
§ 30.3. =The so-called Apostolic Fathers.=[55]--
a. =Clement of Rome= was one of the first Roman bishops,
probably the third (§ 16, 1). The opinion that he is to
be identified with the Clement named in Phil. iv. 3 is
absolutely unsupported. The sameness of age and residence
in some small measure favours the identifying him with
Tit. Flav. Clemens [Clement], the consul, and cousin of the
Emperor, who on account of his Christianity (?) was executed
in A.D. 95 (§ 22, 1). Besides a multitude of other writings
which subsequently assumed his well-known name (§ 28, 3;
43, 4), there are ascribed to him two so-called Epistles
to the Corinthians, of which however, the second certainly
is not his. The First Epistle which in the ancient church
was considered worthy to be used in public worship, was
afterwards lost, but fragments of it were recovered in
A.D. 1628 in the so-called _Codex Alexandrinus_ (§ 152, 2),
together with a portion of the so-called “Second Epistle.”
Recently however both writings were found in a complete
form by Bryennius, Metropolitan of Serrä in Macedonia, in
a Jerusalem Codex of A.D. 1056 discovered at Constantinople
and published by him.[56] In the following year a Codex
of the Syrian New Testament at Cambridge was more closely
examined,[57] and in it there was found a complete Syriac
translation of both writings inserted between the Catholic
and the Pauline Epistles, while in _Codex Alexandrinus_ they
are placed after the Apocalypse. =The “First” Epistle=, the
date of which is generally given as A.D. 93-95, does not
give the author’s name, but is assigned to Clement of Rome
by Dionysius of Corinth in A.D. 170, as quoted in Eusebius,
and by Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, and
described as written from Rome in name of the church of that
place to the church of Corinth, counselling peace and unity.
In the passage c. 58-63, formerly wanting but now restored,
the exhortation passes into a long prayer with intercessions
for those in authority and for the church according to what
was perhaps already the customary form of public prayer in
Rome. Both churches, those of Rome and Corinth, are admitted
without dispute to have been Gentile Christian churches,
which had accepted the Pauline type of doctrine, without
however fully fathoming or understanding it. But Peter also
occupies a position of equal honour alongside of Paul, and
nowhere does any trace appear of a consciousness of any
opposition between the two apostles. The divine sonship
of the Redeemer and His consequent universal sovereignty
are the basis of the Christian confession, but no sort
of developed doctrine of the divinity of Christ is here
found, and even His pre-existence is affirmed only as the
presupposition of the view that He was already operative in
the prophets by His spirit. The Old Testament, allegorically
and typically interpreted, is therefore the source and
proof of Christian doctrine. Of a particular election of
Israel the author knows nothing. Christians as such, whether
descended from Gentiles or from Jews, are the chosen people
of God; Abraham by reason of his faith is their father; and
it is only by faith in the Almighty God that men of all ages
have been justified before God.--In the so-called =Second
“Epistle”= the completed form of the second half proves
what the less complete form rendered probable, that it is
no Epistle but a sermon, and indeed the oldest specimen of
a sermon, that we here possess. The author, who delivered it
somewhere about A.D. 144-150, wrote it out first for his own
use, and then for the church. As it has in its theological
views many points of contact with the _Shepherd of Hermas_
(§ 30, 4), Harnack thinks it probable that a younger
Clement of Rome mentioned by Hermas may be the author;
while Hilgenfeld is inclined to regard it as a youthful
work of Clement of Alexandria (§ 31, 4). It contains a
forcible exhortation to thorough repentance and conversion
in accordance with the command of Christ, with a reference
to the judgment and the future glory. This shows in a
remarkable way what rapid progress had been made from the
religio-moral mode of thought of cultured paganism toward
moralizing legalism, and the smoothing down of Christianity
thereby introduced into the Gentile-Christian Catholic
Church, during the half century between the composition of
the Epistle of Clement and this Clementine discourse. For in
the latter already the gospel is represented as a new law, a
higher divine doctrine of virtue and reward, in which alms,
fasts, and prayer appear as specially meritorious works. The
righteousness that avails with God is still indeed derived
from faith, but this faith is reduced to a belief in the
future recompense of eternal life. Christ as Son of God is
conceived of by the author as a pneumatical heavenly being,
created before the world, who, sent by God into the world
for man’s redemption, took upon Him human σάρξ. But besides
Him, he also knows a second pneumatical hypostasis created
before the world, “before sun and moon,” the ἐκκλησία ζῶσα,
which, as the heavenly body of Christ, is at the same time
the presupposition for the making of the world restored by
His work of salvation. For the creation of this divine pair
of æons, that is, of Christ as the ἄνθρωπος ἐπουράνιος and
of the church as His heavenly σύζυγος, the author refers
to the account of the creation in Gen. i. 27. Of passages
quoted as sayings of Christ several are not to be found in
our Gospels.
§ 30.4.
b. The Epistle known by the name of Paul’s travelling companion
=Barnabas= (Acts iv. 36) was first recovered in the 17th
century. The first 4½ chapters were added from an old Latin
translation, till in the 19th century the _Codex Sinaiticus_
of the New Testament, and recently also the Jerusalem
Codex of Bryennius above referred to, supplied the complete
Greek text.[58] The date of the epistle has been variously
assigned to the age of Domitian, to that of Nerva, to that
of Hadrian; and is placed by Harnack between A.D. 96 and
A.D. 125. Its extravagant allegorical interpretation of
the Old Testament betrays its Alexandrian origin, and in
Gentile-Christian depreciation of the ceremonial law of the
Old Testament it goes so far as to attribute the conception
and actual composition of its books to diabolical inspiration.
It admits indeed a covenant engagement between God and
Israel, but maintains that this was immediately terminated
by Moses’ breaking of the tables of the law. All things
considered the composition of this Epistle by Barnabas is
scarcely conceivable. This was acknowledged by Eusebius
who counted it among the νόθοι, and by Jerome, who placed
it among the Apocrypha. For the rest, however, its type
of doctrine is in essential agreement with that of Paul,
though it fails to penetrate the depths of apostolic
truth. It is at least decidedly free from any taint of
that legalistic-moral conception of Christianity which is
so strongly masked in the discourse of Clement. The divine
sonship, pre-existence, and world-creating activity of Christ
is expressly acknowledged and taught, though there is yet no
reference to the doctrine of the Logos.
c. The prophetical writing known to us as =Pastor Hermæ
[Hermas]=,[59] which was first erroneously attributed by
Origen to Hermas the scholar of Paul at Rome (Rom. xvi. 14),
was so highly esteemed in the ancient church that it was
used in public like the canonical books of the New Testament.
Irenæus quotes it as holy scripture; Clement and Origen
regarded it as inspired, and the African church of the 3rd
century included it in the New Testament canon. On the other
hand, the Muratorian canon (§ 36, 8) had already ranked it
among the Apocrypha that might be used in private but not in
public worship. The book owes its title to the circumstance
that in it an angel appears in the form of a shepherd
instructing Hermas. It contains four visions, in which the
church, which πάντων πρώτη ἐκτίσθη, appears to the author
as an old woman giving instruction (πρεσβυτέρα); it contains
also twelve _Mandata_ of the angel, and finally, ten
_Similitudines_ or parables. The Gentile-Christian origin of
the author is shown by the position which he assigns to the
church as coeval with the creation of the world and as at
first embracing all mankind. The sending of the Son of God
into the world has for its end not the founding but only the
renewing and perfecting of the church, and the twelve tribes
to which the Apostles were to preach the gospel are “the
twelve peoples who dwell on the whole earth” (comp. Deut.
xxxii. 8). In all the three parts the book takes the form of
a continuous earnest call to repentance in view of the early
coming again of Christ, dominated throughout by that same
legalistic conception of the Gospel that we meet with in the
discourse of Clement. Indeed this is more fully carried
out, for it teaches that the true penitent is able not
only to live a perfectly righteous life, but also in good
works, such as fasts, alms, etc., to do more than fulfil the
commands of God, and in this way to win for himself a higher
measure of the divine favour and eternal blessedness. In
Hermas we find no trace of any application of the doctrine
of the Logos to the person of Christ, and the ideas of the
Son of God and the Holy Spirit are confused with one another.
The Son of God as the Holy Spirit is προγενέστερος πάσης
τῆς κτίσεως; at His suggestion and by His means God created
the world; through Him He bears, sustains, and upholds it;
and by Him He redeems it by means of His incarnation, for
the Son of God as the Holy Spirit descends upon the man
Jesus in His baptism. From its prophetical utterances,
its eager expectation of the early return of the Lord,
and its promises of a new outpouring of the Spirit for the
quickening of the church already become too worldly, the
book may be characterized as a precursor of the Montanist
movement (§ 40), although on questions of practical morality,
such as second marriages, martyrdom, fasting, etc., it
exhibits a milder tendency than that of Montanistic rigorism,
and in reference to penitential discipline (§ 39, 2), while
acknowledging the inadmissibility of absolution for a mortal
sin committed after baptism, it nevertheless, owing to
the nearness of the second coming, allows to be proclaimed
by the angel a repeated, though only short, space for
repentance. The date of the composition of this book is
still matter of controversy. Since Hermas is commanded in
the second vision to send a copy of his book to “Clement” in
order to secure its further circulation, most of the earlier
scholars, and among the moderns specially Zahn, identifying
this Clement with the celebrated Roman Presbyter-Bishop
of that name, fix its date at somewhere about A.D. 100.
Recently, however, Harnack, v. Gebhardt, and others have
rightly assigned much greater importance to the testimony
of the Muratorian canon, according to which it was written
somewhere between A.D. 130-160, “_nuperrime temporibus
nostris in urbe Roma_,” by Hermas, the brother of the Roman
bishop Pius (A.D. 139-154).
§ 30.5.
d. =Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch=, is said to have been a
pupil of the Apostle John, though no evidence of this can
be produced from the Epistles ascribed to him. The _Acta
martyrii sancti Ignatii_, extant in five parts, are purely
legendary and full of contradictory statements. According
to a later document, that of the Byzantine chronographer
Joh. Malalas, at the time of the Parthian war during the
visit of Trajan to Antioch in A.D. 115, soon after an
earthquake had been experienced there, he was torn asunder
by lions in the circus as a despiser of the gods. According
to the martyrologies he was transported to Rome and suffered
this fate there, as usually supposed in A.D. 115, in the
opinion of Wieseler and others in A.D. 107 (Lightfoot says
between A.D. 100-118), according to Harnack soon after
A.D. 130.[60] The epistles to various churches and one
to Polycarp ascribed to him have come down to us in three
recensions differing from one another in extent, number and
character. There is a shorter Greek recension containing
seven, a larger Greek form, with expansions introduced for a
purpose, containing thirteen epistles, twelve by and one to
Ignatius, and the shortest of all in a Syriac translation
containing three epistles, those to the Romans, to the
Ephesians, and to Polycarp.[61] According to the first-named
recension, Ignatius is represented as writing all his
epistles during his martyr journey to Rome, but no reference
to this is made in the Syrian recension. Vigorous polemic
against Judaistic and Docetic heresy, undaunted confession
of the divinity of Christ, and unwearied exhortation to
recognise the bishop as the representative of Christ,
while the presbyters are described as the successors of the
Apostles, distinguish these epistles from all other writings
of this age, especially in the two Greek recensions, and
have led many critics to question their genuineness. Bunsen,
Lipsius, Ritschl, etc., regarded the Syrian recension, in
which the hierarchical tendency was more in the background,
as the original and authentic form. Uhlhorn, Düsterdieck,
Zahn, Funk, Lightfoot, Harnack, etc., prefer the shorter
Greek recension, and view the Syrian form as abbreviated
perhaps for liturgical purposes, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar,
etc., deny the genuineness of all three. But even on this
assumption, in determining the date of the composition of
the two shorter recensions, to whichever of them we may
ascribe priority and originality, we cannot on internal
grounds put them later than the middle of the second century,
whereas the larger Greek recension paraphrased and expanded
into thirteen epistles belongs certainly to a much later
date (§ 43, 4).[62]
§ 30.6.
e. =Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna=, had also been according to
Irenæus ordained to this office by the Apostle John. He
died at the stake under Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus Pius?)
in A.D. 166 (or A.D. 155) at an extreme old age (§ 22, 3).
We possess an epistle of his to the Philippians of
practical contents important on account of its New Testament
quotations. Its genuineness, however, has been contested
by modern criticism. It stands and falls with the seven
Ignatian epistles, as it occupies common ground with them.
We have a legendary biography of Polycarp by Pionius dating
from the 4th century, which is reproduced in Lightfoot’s
work.
f. =Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis= in Galatia, was also,
according to Irenæus, a pupil of the Apostle John. This
statement, however, in the opinion of Eusebius and many
moderns, rests upon a confusion between the Apostle and
another John, whom Papias himself distinguishes by the title
πρεσβύτερος (§ 16, 2). He is said to have suffered death
as a martyr under Marcus Aurelius, about A.D. 163. With
great diligence he collected mediately and immediately
from the mouths of the πρεσβύτεροι, that is, from such as
had intercourse with the Apostles, or had been, like the
above-mentioned John the Presbyter, μαθηταὶ τοῦ κυρίου, oral
traditions about the discourses of the Lord, and set down
the results of his inquiries in a writing entitled Λογίων
κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις. A passage quoted by Eusebius in his
_Ch. Hist._, iii. 29, from the preface of this treatise has
given rise to a lively controversy as to whether Papias was a
pupil of the Apostle John and was acquainted with the fourth
Gospel. Another fragment on the history of the origin of
the Gospels of Matthew and Mark has occasioned a dispute
as to whether only these two Gospels were known to him.
Finally, there is preserved in Irenæus a passage giving a
reputed saying of Christ regarding the fantastically rich
fruitfulness of the earth during the thousand years’ reign
(§ 33, 9). He so revels in fantastic and sensuous chiliastic
dreams that Eusebius, who had previously spoken of him as
a learned and well-read man, is driven to pass upon him the
harsh judgment: σφόδρα γάρ τοι σμικρὸς ὢν τὸν νοῦν.[63]
g. Finally, we must here include an epistle to a certain
=Diognetus= by an unknown writer, who has described himself
as μαθητὴς τῶν ἀποστόλων. Justin Martyr, among whose
writings this epistle got inserted, cannot possibly have
been the author, as both his style and his point of view
are different. The epistle controverts in a spirited manner
the objections of Diognetus to Christianity, views the
pagan deities not, like the other Church Fathers, as demons,
but as unsubstantial phantoms, explains the Old Testament
institutions as human, and so in part foolish enactments,
and maintains keenly and determinedly the opinion that
God for the first time revealed Himself to man in Christ.
He thus, as Dräseke thinks, to some extent favours the
Marcionite view of the Old Testament, so that he regards
it as not improbable that our epistle was composed by a
disciple of Marcion, one perhaps like Apelles, who in the
course of the later development of the school had rejected
many of his master’s crudities (§ 27, 12). He addresses
his discourse to Diognetus, the stoical philosopher who
boasts of Marcus Aurelius as his master. On the other hand,
Overbeck assigns its composition to the Post-Constantine
Age, and the French scholar Doulcet, setting it down to the
age of Hadrian, thinks he has discovered the author to be
the Athenian philosopher Aristides. This idea has been more
fully carried out by Kihn, who endeavours to make out not
only the identity of the author, but that of him to whom the
epistle is addressed: Κράτιστε Διόγνητε, “Almighty son of
Zeus,” that is, Hadrian.
§ 30.7. =The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.=--The
celebrated little treatise bearing the title Διδαχὴ κυρίου διὰ
τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων τοῖς ἔθνεσιν was discovered by Bryennius
(then metropolitan of Serrä, now of Nicomedia) in the Jerusalem
Codex, to which we also owe the perfect text of the two so-called
Epistles of Clement, and it was edited by this scholar with
prolegomena and notes in Greek, at Constantinople in 1883. It at
once set in motion many learned pens in Germany, France, Holland,
England, and North America.--Eusebius, who first expressly names
it in his list of New Testament writings as τῶν ἀποστόλων αἱ
λεγόμεναι διδαχαί, which Rufinus renders by _Doctrina quæ dicitur
App._, places it in the closest connection with the Epistle of
Barnabas among the ἀντιλεγόμενα νόθα (§ 36, 8). Four years later
Athanasius ranks it as διδαχὴ καλουμένη τῶν ἀπ. along with the
Shepherd of Hermas, giving it the first place, as a New Testament
supplement corresponding to the Old Testament ἀναγινωσκόμενα
(§ 59, 1). Clement of Alexandria quoting a passage from it uses
the formula, ὑπὸ τῆς γραφῆς εἴρηται, and thus treats it as holy
scripture. In Origen again no sort of reference to it has as
yet been found. From the 39th Festival Epistle of Athanasius,
A.D. 367, which ranks it, as we have just seen, as a New Testament
supplement like the Old Testament Anaginoskomena, we know that
it like these were used at Alexandria παρὰ τῶν πατέρων in the
instruction of catechumens. In the East, according to Rufinus,
when enumerating in his _Expos. Symb. Ap._ the Athanasian
Anaginoskomena, we find alongside of Hermas, instead of
the Didache, the “Two Ways,” _Duæ viæ vel Judicium secundum
Petrum_. Jerome, too, in his _De vir. ill._, mentions among the
pseudo-Petrine writings a _Judicium Petri_. We have here no doubt
a Latin translation or recension of the first six chapters of
the Didache beginning with the words: Ὅδοι δύο εἰσι, these two
ways being the way of life and the way of death. The second title
instead of the twelve Apostles names their spokesman Peter as the
reputed author of the treatise. Soon after the time of Athanasius
our tract passed out of the view of the Church Fathers, but it
reappears in the Ecclesiastical Constitutions of the 4th century
(§ 43, 4, 5), of which it formed the root and stem. The Didache
itself, however, should not be ranked among the pseudepigraphs,
for it never claims to have been written by the twelve Apostles
or by their spokesman Peter.--Bryennius and others, from the
intentional prominence given to the twelve Apostles in the
title and from the legalistic moralizing spirit that pervades
the book, felt themselves justified in seeking its origin in
Jewish-Christian circles. But this moralizing character it shares
with the other Gentile-Christian writings of the Post-Apostolic
Age (§ 30, 2), and the restriction of the term “Apostles” by the
word “twelve” was occasioned by this, that the itinerant preachers
of the gospel of that time, who in the New Testament are called
Evangelists (§ 17, 5) were now called Apostles as continuators of
the Apostles’ missionary labours, and also the exclusion of the
Apostle Paul is to be explained by the consideration that the
book is founded upon the sayings of the Lord, the tradition
of which has come to us only through the twelve. It has been
rightly maintained on the other hand by Harnack, that the author
must rather have belonged to Gentile-Christian circles which
repudiated all communion with the Jews even in matters of mere
form; for in chap. viii. 1, 2, resting upon Matt. vi. 5, 16,
he forbids fasting with the hypocrites, “the Jews,” or perhaps
in the sense of Gal. ii. 13, the Jewish-Christians, on Monday
and Thursday, instead of Wednesday and Friday according to the
Christian custom (§ 37, 3), and using Jewish prayers instead
of the Lord’s Prayer. The address of the title: τοῖς ἔθνεσιν
is to be understood according to the analogy of Rom. xi. 13;
Gal. ii. 12-14; and Eph. iii. 1. The author wishes in as brief,
lucid, easily comprehended, and easily remembered form as
possible, to gather together for Christians converted from
heathenism the most important rules for their moral, religious
and congregational life in accordance with the precepts of
the Lord as communicated by the twelve Apostles, and in doing
so furnishes us with a valuable “commentary on the earliest
witnesses for the life, type of doctrine, interests and
ordinances of the Gentile-Christian churches in the pre-Catholic
age.” As to the date of its composition, its connection with
the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas indicates the
period within which it must fall, for the connection is so close
that it must have employed them or they must have employed it.
However, not only is the age of the Epistle of Barnabas, as well
as that of the Shepherd of Hermas, still undetermined, but it is
also disputed whether one or other of these two or the Didache
has priority and originality. On the other hand, the Didache
itself in almost all its data and presuppositions bears so
distinct an impress of an archaic character that one feels
obliged to assign its date as near the Apostolic Age as possible.
Harnack who feels compelled to ascribe priority not only to the
Pseudo-Barnabas, but also to the Shepherd of Hermas, fixes its
date between A.D. 140-165, after Hermas and before Marcion. On
the other hand, Zahn and Funk, Lechler, Taylor, etc., give the
Didache priority even over the Epistle of Barnabas. The place
as well as the time of the composition of this work is matter
of dispute. Those who maintain its Jewish-Christian origin think
of the southern lands to the east or west of the Jordan; others
think of Syria. On account of its connection with the Epistle
of Barnabas, and with reference to Clement and Athanasius (see
above), Harnack has decided for Egypt, and, on account of its
agreement with the Sahidic translation of the New Testament in
omitting the doxology from Matt. v. 13, he fixes more exactly upon
Upper Egypt. The objection that the designation of the grain of
which the bread for the Lord’s Supper is made in the eucharistic
prayer given in chap. ix. 4 as ἐπάνω τῶν ὀρέων, does not
correspond with that grown there, is sought to be set aside
with the scarcely satisfactory remark that “the origin of the
eucharistic prayer does not decide the origin of the whole
treatise.” That the book, however, does not bear in itself
any specifically Alexandrian impress, such as, _e.g._, is
undeniably met with in the Epistle of Barnabas, has been admitted
by Harnack.[64]
§ 30.8. =The Writings of the Earliest Christian Apologists=[65]
are lost. At the head of this band stood =Quadratus= of Athens,
who addressed a treatise in defence of the faith to Hadrian, in
which among other things he shows that he himself was acquainted
with some whom Jesus had cured or raised from the dead. No trace
of this work can be found after the 7th century. His contemporary,
=Aristides= the philosopher, in Athens after his conversion
addressed to the same emperor an Apology that has been praised by
Jerome. A fragment of an Armenian translation of this treatise,
which according to its superscription belongs to the 5th century,
was found in a codex of the 10th century by the Mechitarists at
S. Lazzaro, and was edited by them along with a Latin translation.
This fragment treats of the nature of God as the eternal creator
and ruler of all things, of the four classes of men,--barbarians
who are sprung from Belos, Chronos, etc., Greeks from Zeus,
Danaus, Hellenos, etc., Jews from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and Christians from Christ,--and of Jesus Christ as the Son of
God born of a Jewish virgin, who sent His twelve Apostles into
all the world to teach the nations wisdom. This probably formed
the beginning of the Apology. The antique character of its point
of view and the complete absence of any reference to the Logos
doctrine or to any heretical teaching, lends great probability
to the authenticity of this fragment, although the designation
of the mother of Jesus as the “bearer of God” must be a
later interpolation (comp. § 52, 3). The genuineness of the
second piece, however, taken from another Armenian Codex,--an
anti-docetic homily, _De Latronis clamore et Crucifixi
responsione_ (Luke xxiii. 42), which from the words of Christ
and those crucified with Him proves His divinity--is both on
external and on internal grounds extremely doubtful. According
to the Armenian editor this Codex has the title: By the Athenian
philosopher Aristeas. This is explained as a corruption of the
name Aristides, but recently another Catholic scholar, Dr. Vetter,
on close examination found that the name was really that of
Aristides.--To a period not much later must be assigned the
apologetic dialogue between the Jewish Christian Jason and the
Alexandrian Jew Papiscus, in which the proof from prophecy was
specially emphasized, and the _in principio_ of Gen. i. 1 was
interpreted as meaning _in filio_. The pagan controversialist
Celsus is the first to mention this treatise. He considers it, on
account of its allegorical fancies, not so much fitted to cause
laughter as pity and contempt, and so regards it as unworthy of
any serious reply. Origen, too, esteemed it of little consequence.
Subsequently, however, in the 5th century, it obtained high
repute and was deemed worthy of a Latin translation by the
African bishop Celsus. The controversialist Celsus, and also
Origen, Jerome, and the Latin translator, do not name the writer.
His name is first given by Maximus Confessor as =Ariston of
Pella=. Harnack has rendered it extremely probable that in the
“_Altercatio Simonis Judæi et Theophili Christiani_” discovered
in the 18th century, reported on by Gennadius (§ 47, 16), and
ascribed by him to a certain Evagrius, we have a substantially
correct Latin reproduction of the old Greek dialogue, in which
everything that is told us about the earlier document is met
with, and which, though written in the 5th century, in its ways
of looking at things and its methods of proof moves within the
circle of the Apologists of the 2nd century. In it, just as in
those early treatises the method of proof is wholly in accordance
with the Old Testament; by it every answer of the Christian
to the Jew is supported; at last the Jew is converted and asks
for baptism, while he regards the Christians as _lator salutis_
and _ægrotorum bone medice_ with a play probably upon the word
Ἰάσων=ἰατρός and from this it is conceivable how Clement of
Alexandria supposed Luke, the physician, to be the author of
the treatise. Harnack’s conclusion is significant inasmuch as
it lends a new confirmation to the fact that the non-heretical
Jewish Christianity of the middle of the second century had
already completely adopted the dogmatic views of Gentile
Christianity. =Claudius Apollinaris=, bishop of Hierapolis,
and the rhetorician =Miltiades of Athens= addressed very famous
apologies to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. =Melito of Sardis= was
also a highly esteemed apologist, and a voluminous writer in many
other departments of theological literature.[66] The elaborate
introduction to the mystical interpretation of scripture by
investigating the mystical meaning of biblical names and words
published in Pitra’s “Spicileg. Solesm.” II. III., as “_Clavis
Melitonis_,” belongs to the later period of the middle ages.
Melito’s six books of Eclogues deal with the Old Testament as a
witness for Christ and Christianity, where he takes as his basis
not the LXX. but the Hebrew canon (§ 36, 1).[67]
§ 30.9. =Extant Writings of Apologists of the Post-Apostolic Age.=
a. The earliest and most celebrated of these is =Justin
Martyr=.[68] Born at Shechem (Flavia Neapolis) of Greek
parents, he was drawn to the Platonic doctrine of God and to
the Stoical theory of ethics, more than to any of the other
philosophical systems to which, as a pagan, he turned in
the search after truth. But full satisfaction he first found
in the prophets and apostles, to whom he was directed by an
unknown venerable old man, whom he once met by the sea-side.
He now in his thirtieth year cast off his philosopher’s
cloak and adopted Christianity, of which he became a
zealous defender, but thereby called down upon himself
the passionate hatred of the pagan sages. His bitterest
enemy was the Cynic Crescens in Rome, who after a public
disputation with him, did all he could to compass his
destruction. In A.D. 165, under Marcus Aurelius, Justin
was condemned at Rome to be scourged and beheaded.--His two
Apologies, addressed to Antoninus Pius and his son Marcus
Aurelius are certainly genuine. Of these, however, the
shorter one, the so-called second Apology is probably only
a sort of appendix to the first. His _Dialogus cum Tryphone
Judæo_ is probably a free rendering of a disputation which
actually occurred. Except a few fragments, his Σύνταγμα κατὰ
Μαρκίωνος have been lost. It is disputed whether that was an
integral part of the Σύνταγμα κατὰ πασῶν αἱρέσεων of which
he himself makes mention, or a later independent work. The
following are of more than doubtful authenticity: the Λόγος
παραινετικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας (_Cohortatio ad Græcos_), which
seeks to prove that not by the poets nor by the philosophers,
but only by Moses and the prophets can the true knowledge
of God be found, and that whatever truth is spoken by
the former, they had borrowed from the latter; also, the
shorter Λόγος πρὸς Ἕλληνας (_Oratio ad Græcos_), on the
irrationality and immorality of the pagan mythology; further,
the short treatise Περὶ μοναρχίας, which proves the vanity
of polytheism from the admissions of heathen poets and
philosophers; and a fragment Περὶ ἀναστάσεως.--Justin’s
theology is of the Gentile Christian type, quite free from
any Ebionitic taint, inclining rather to the speculation and
ethics of Greek philosophy and to an Alexandrian-Hellenistic
conception and exposition of scripture. To these sources
everything may be traced in which he unconsciously departs
from biblical Paulinism and Catholic orthodoxy. Then in
his idea of God and creation, he has not quite overcome the
partly pantheistic, partly dualistic, principles derived
from the Platonic philosophy. He shows traces of Alexandrian
influences in his conception of the person and work of
Christ, to whom he assigns merely the role of a divine
teacher, who has made known the true idea of God the Creator,
of righteousness, and of eternal life, and has won power by
death, resurrection and ascension, and will give evidence
of it by His coming again to reward the righteousness
of the saints with immortal blessedness. He was also led
into doctrinal aberrations in the anthropological domain,
because his idea of freedom and virtue borrowed from Greek
philosophy prevented him from fully grasping the Pauline
doctrine of sin. His theory of morals, with its legalistic
tendency and its righteousness of works, was grounded
not in Judaism but in Stoicism. His chiliasm, too, is not
Ebionitic but is immediately derived from scripture, and
has less significance for his speculation than the other
eschatological principles of Resurrection, Judgment, and
Recompence. His Christianity consists essentially of only
three elements: Worship of the true God, a virtuous life
according to the commandments of Christ, and belief in
rewards and punishments hereafter. Over against the pagan
philosophy it represents itself as the true philosophy,
and over against the Mosaic law as the new law freed from
the fetters of ceremonialism. Even in the natural man, in
consequence of the divine reason that is innate in him,
there dwells the power of living as a Christian: Abraham
and Elias, Socrates and Heraclitus, etc., have to such a
degree lived according to reason that they must be called
Christians. But even they possessed only σπέρματα Λόγου,
only a μέρος Λόγου; for the divine reason dwells in men
only as Λόγος σπερματικός; in Christ alone as the incarnate
Logos it dwells as ὁ πᾶς Λόγος or τὸ Λογικὸν τὸ ὅλον. He is
the only true Son of God, pre-mundane but not eternal, the
πρῶτον γέννημα τοῦ θεοῦ, or the πρωτότοκος τοῦ θεοῦ, by whom
God in the beginning created all things. The Father alone is
ὄντως θεός, and the Logos only a divine being of the second
rank, a ἕτερος θεὸς παρὰ τὸν ποιητὴν τῶν ὅλων, to whom,
however, as such, worship should be rendered. In Justin’s
theological speculation the Holy Spirit stands quite in
the background, though the baptismal and congregational
Trinitarian confession obliged him to assign to the Spirit
the rank of an independent divine being, whom the Logos had
used for the enlightening of His prophets. Justin too knows
nothing of a particular election of Israel as the people of
God; with him the Christians as such are the true Israel,
the people of God, the children of the faith of Abraham.
From the Old Testament he proves the divinity of the person
and doctrine of Christ, and from the Ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν
ἀποστόλων (§ 36, 7) he derives his information about the
historical life, teaching, and works of Jesus. The Gospel
of John, although never mentioned, was not unknown to him,
but it appeared to him more as a doctrinal and hortatory
treatise than as a historical document, and undoubtedly
his Logos doctrine is connected with that of John. He shows
himself familiar with the Epistles of Paul, although he
never expressly quotes from them.
§ 30.10.
b. =Tatian=, a Greek born in Assyria (according to Zahn, a
Semite) while engaged as a rhetorician at Rome, was won to
Christianity by Justin Martyr, according to Harnack about
A.D. 150. As the fruit of youthful zeal, he published an
Apologetical Λόγος πρὸς Ἕλληνας, in which he treats the
Greek paganism and its culture with withering scorn for
even its noblest manifestations, and shared with his teacher
the hatred and persecution of the philosopher Crescens.
His later written Εὐαγγέλιον διὰ τεσσάρων (§ 36, 7) was a
Gospel harmony, in which the removal of all reference to
the descent of Jesus from the seed of David, according
to the flesh, objected to by Theodoret, was occasioned
perhaps more by antipathy to Ebionism than by any sympathy
with Gnosticism. Zahn affirms, while Harnack decidedly
denies, that this work was originally composed in Syriac. The
exclusive use by the Syrians of the Greek name _Diatessaron_
seems to afford a strong argument for a Greek original.
Its general agreement with the readings of the so-called
Itala (§ 36, 8) witnesses to the West as the place of its
composition. The introduction of a Syriac translation of it
into church use in the East is to be explained by a longer
residence of the author in his eastern home; and its neglect
on the part of many of the Greek and Latin Church Fathers,
and even their complete ignorance of it, may be accounted
for by the fact that, while in the far East it was
unsuspected, elsewhere it came to be branded as heretical
(§ 27, 10).[69]
c. =Athenagoras=, about whose life we have no authentic
information, in A.D. 177 addressed his Πρεσβεία
(_Intercessio_) περὶ Χριστιανῶν to Marcus Aurelius, in
which he clearly and convincingly disproves the hideous
calumnies of Atheism, Ædipodean atrocities, Thyestean feasts
(§ 22), and extols the excellence of Christianity in life and
doctrine. In the treatise Περὶ ἀναστάσεως νέκρων he proves,
from the general philosophical rather than distinctively
Christian standpoint, the necessity of resurrection from the
vocation of man in connection with the wisdom, omnipotence
and righteousness of God.
d. =Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch= († after A.D. 180), was
by birth a pagan. His writing Πρὸς Αὐτόλυκον περὶ τῆς τῶν
Χριστιανῶν πίστεως is one of the most excellent apologetical
treatises of this period. Autolycus was one of his heathen
acquaintances. His commentaries and controversial works have
been lost. Zahn, indeed, has sought to prove that an extant
Latin Commentary on selected passages from the four Gospels
in the allegorical style belonging to the first half of the
3rd century, and bearing the name of Theophilus of Antioch,
is a substantially faithful translation of the authentic
Greek original of A.D. 170. He has also called attention
to the great importance of this commentary, not only for
the oldest history of the Canon, Text and Exposition,
but also for that of the church life, the development of
doctrine and the ecclesiastical constitution, especially of
the monasticism already appearing in those early times. But
while Zahn reached those wonderful results from a conviction
that the verbal coincidences of the Latin Church Fathers of
the 3rd to the 5th centuries with the supposed Theophilus
commentary were examples of their borrowing from it, Harnack
has convincingly proved that this so-called commentary is
rather to be regarded as a compilation from these same Latin
Church Fathers made at the earliest during the second half
of the 5th century.
e. Finally, an otherwise unknown author =Hermias= wrote under
the title Διασυρμὸς τῶν ἔξω φιλοσόφων (_Irrisio gentilium
philos._) a short abusive treatise, in a witty but
superficial style, of which the fundamental principle is
to be found in 1 Cor. iii. 19.
§ 31. THE THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC AGE,
A.D. 170-323.
From about A.D. 170, during the Old Catholic Age, scientific theology
in conflict with Judaizing, paganizing and monarchianistic heretics
progressed in a more vigorous and comprehensive manner than in the
apologetical and polemical attempt at self-defence of Post-Apostolic
Times. Throughout this period, however, the zeal for apologetics
continued unabated, but also in other directions, especially in
the department of dogmatics, important contributions were made to
theological science. While these developments were in progress, there
arose within the Catholic church three different theological schools,
each with some special characteristic of its own, the Asiatic, the
Alexandrian, and the North African.
§ 31.1. =The Theological Schools and Tendencies.=--=The School
of Asia Minor= was the outcome of John’s ministry there, and
was distinguished by firm grasp of scripture, solid faith,
conciliatory treatment of those within and energetic polemic
against heretics. Its numerous teachers, highly esteemed in the
ancient church, are known to us only by name, and in many cases
even the name has perished. Only two of their disciples resident
in the West--Irenæus and Hippolytus--are more fully known. A
yet greater influence, more widely felt and more enduring, was
that of the =Alexandrian School=.[70] Most of its teachers were
distinguished by classical culture, a philosophical spirit,
daring speculativeness and creative power. Their special task
was the construction of a true ecclesiastical gnosis over against
the false heretical gnosis, and so the most celebrated teachers
of this school have not escaped the charge of unevangelical
speculative tendencies. The nursery of this theological tendency
was especially this Catechetical School of Alexandria which from
an institution for the training of educated Catechumens had grown
up into a theological seminary. =The North African School= by
its realism, a thoroughly practical tendency, formed the direct
antithesis of the idealism and speculative endeavours of the
Alexandrian. It repudiated classical science and philosophy
as fitted to lead into error, but laid special stress upon the
purity of Apostolic tradition, and insisted with all emphasis
upon holiness of life and strict asceticism.--Finally, our period
also embraces the first beginnings of the =Antiochean School=,
whose founders were the two presbyters Dorotheus and Lucian.
The latter especially gave to the school in its earlier days
the tendency to critical and grammatico-historical examination
of scripture. At =Edessa=, too, as early as the end of the 2nd
century, we find a Christian school existing.
1. CHURCH FATHERS WRITING IN GREEK.
§ 31.2. =Church Teachers of the Asiatic Type.=
a. =Irenæus=, a pupil of Polycarp, was a native of Asia Minor.
According to the _Vita Polycarpi_ of Pionius he lived in
Rome at the time of Polycarp’s death as a teacher, and it
is not improbable that he had gone there in company with
his master (§ 37, 2). Subsequently he settled in Gaul, and
held the office of presbyter at Lyons. During his absence at
Rome as the bearer of a tract by the imprisoned confessors
of Lyons on the Montanist controversy to the Roman bishop
Eleutherus, Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons, fell a
victim to the dreadful persecution of Marcus Aurelius which
raged in Gaul. Irenæus succeeded him as bishop in A.D. 178.
About the time and manner of his death nothing certain is
known. Jerome, indeed, once quite casually designates him
a martyr, but since none of the earlier Church Fathers, who
speak of him, know anything of this, it cannot be maintained
with any confidence. Gentleness and moderation, combined
with earnestness and decision, as well as the most lively
interest in the catholicity of the church and the purity of
its doctrine according to scripture and tradition, were the
qualities that make him the most important and trustworthy
witness to his own age, and led to his being recognised in
all times as one of the ablest and most influential teachers
of the church and a most successful opponent of heretical
Gnosticism. His chief work against the Gnostics: Ἔλεγχος καὶ
ἀνατροπὴ τῆς ψευδονύμου γνώσεως (_Adv. hæreses_) in 5 books,
is mainly an _ex professo_ directed against the Valentinians
and the schools of Ptolemy and Marcus There is appended to
it, beyond what had been proposed at the beginning, a short
discussion of the views of other Gnostics, the basis of
which may be found in an older treatise, perhaps in the
Syntagma of Justin. The last four books give the express
scripture proofs to sustain the general confutation, without
doing this, however, in a complete manner; at the same time
there is rapid movement amid many digressions and excursuses.
This work has come down to us in a complete form only
in an old translation literally rendered in barbarous
Latin, even to the reproduction of misunderstood words,
which was used as early as by Tertullian in his treatise
against the Valentinians. We are indebted to the writings
of the heresiologists Hippolytus and Epiphanius for the
preservation of many remarkable fragments of the original,
with or without the author’s name. Of his other writings
we have only a few faint reminiscences. Two epistles
addressed to the Roman presbyter Florinus combat the
Valentinian heresy to which Florinus was inclined. During the
controversy about Easter (§ 37, 2) he wrote several epistles
of a conciliatory character, especially one to Blastus in
Rome, an adherent of the Asiatic practice, and in the name
of the whole Gallic church, he addressed a letter to the
Roman bishop, Victor, and afterwards a second letter in his
own name.[71]
§ 31.3.
b. =Hippolytus=, a presbyter and afterwards schismatical bishop
at Rome, though scarcely to be designated of Asia Minor, but
rather a Lyonese, if not a Roman pupil of Irenæus, belonged
to the same theological school. He was celebrated for his
comprehensive learning and literary attainments, and yet
his career until quite recently was involved in the greatest
obscurity. Eusebius, who is the first to refer to him,
places him in the age of Alex. Severus (A.D. 222-235),
calls him a bishop, without, however, naming his supposed
oriental diocese, which even Jerome was unable to determine.
The Liberian list of Popes of A.D. 354, describes him
as _Yppolytus presbyter_ who was burnt in Sardinia about
A.D. 235 along with the Roman bishop, Pontianus (§ 41, 1).
In the fifth century, the Roman church gave him honour as a
martyr. The poet Prudentius († A.D. 413) who himself saw the
crypt in which his bones were laid and which in the book of
his martyrdom was pictorially represented, celebrated his
career in song. According to him Hippolytus was an adherent
of the Novatian schism (§ 41, 3), but returned to the
Catholic church and suffered martyrdom at Portus near Rome.
According to his own statement quoted by Photius he was
a hearer of the doctrinal discourses of Irenæus. A statue
representing him in a sitting posture which was exhumed at
Rome in A.D. 1551, has on the back of the seat a list of
his writings along with an Easter cycle of sixteen years
drawn up by him (§ 56, 3). Finally, there was found among
the works of Origen a treatise on the various philosophical
systems entitled _Philosophoumena_, which professes to be
the first book of a writing in ten books found in Greece in
A.D. 1842, Κατὰ πασῶν αἱρέσεων ἔλεγχος. Starting from the
position, and seeking to establish it, that the heretics
have got their doctrines not from holy scripture, but from
astrology, pagan mysteries and the Greek philosophers, this
treatise is generally of great importance not only for the
history of the heresies of the Gnostics and Monarchians,
but also for the history of philosophy. The English editor,
E. Miller (Oxon., 1851), attributed the authorship of the
whole to Origen, which, however, from the complete difference
of style, point of view and position was soon proved to be
untenable. Since the writer admits that he was himself the
author of a book Περὶ τῆς τοῦ πάντος οὐσίας, and Photius
ascribes a book with the same title to the Roman Caius
(§ 31, 7), Baur attributes to the latter the composition of
the Elenchus. Photius, however, founds his opinion simply
upon an apocryphal note on the margin of his copy of the
book. Incomparably more important are the evidences for
the Hippolytus authorship, which is now almost universally
admitted. The Elenchus is not, indeed, enumerated in
the list of works on the statue. The book Περὶ τῆς τοῦ
πάντος οὐσίας, however, appears there, and it contains
the statement that its author also wrote the Elenchus. The
author of the Elenchus also states that he had previously
written a similar work in a shorter form, and Photius
describes such a shorter writing of Hippolytus, dating
from the time of his intercourse with Irenæus, under the
title Σύνταγμα κατὰ πασῶν αἱρέσεων. Lipsius has made it
appear extremely probable that in the _Libellus adv. omnes
hæreticos_ appended to Tertullian’s _De præscriptione
hæreticorum_, and so usually styled a treatise of the
Pseudo-Tertullian, we have an abbreviated Latin reproduction
of that work; for this one as well as the other begins
with Dositheus and ends with Noëtus, and both deal with
thirty-two heresies. Epiphanius and Philastrius [Philaster]
have used it largely in their heresiological works. The
discussion in the Elenchus agrees therewith in many passages
but also in many is essentially different, which, however,
when we consider the much later date of the first named
treatise affords no convincing evidence against the theory
that both are by one author. The Elenchus thereby wins a
high importance as giving information about the condition of
the Roman church during the first decades of the 3rd century,
about the position of the author who describes himself in
his treatise as a pupil of Irenæus, about his own and his
opponents’ way of viewing things, and about his conflict
with them leading to schism, though all is told from
the standpoint of an interested party (§§ 33, 5; 41, 1).
A considerable fragment directed against the errors of
Noëtus (§ 33, 5) was perhaps originally a part of his
Syntagma,--though not perhaps of the anonymous, so-called
Little Labyrinth against the Artemonites (§ 33, 3) or
probably against the Monarchians generally, from which
Eusebius makes extensive quotations, especially about the
Theodotians. This work is ascribed by Photius to the Roman
Caius, but without doubt wrongly. Great probability has been
given to the recently advanced idea that this book too may
have been written by Hippolytus.[72]
§ 31.4. =The Alexandrian Church Teachers.=
a. The first of the teachers of the catechetical school at
Alexandria known by name was =Pantænus=, who had formerly
been a Stoic philosopher. About A.D. 190 he undertook
a missionary journey into Southern Arabia or India, and
died in A.D. 202 after a most successful and useful life.
Jerome says of him: _Hujus multi quidem in s. Scri. exstant
Commentarii, sed Magis viva voce ecclesiis profuit_. Of his
writings none are preserved.
b. =Titus Flavius Clemens [Clement]= was the pupil of Pantænus
and his successor at the catechetical school in Alexandria.
On his travels undertaken in the search for knowledge he
came to Alexandria as a learned pagan philosopher, where
probably Pantænus gained an influence over him and was
the means of his conversion. During the persecution under
Septimius Severus in A.D. 202 he sought in flight to escape
the rage of the heathens, in accordance with Matt. x. 23.
But he continued unweariedly by writing and discourse
to promote the interests of the church till his death in
A.D. 220. The most important and most comprehensive of his
writings is the work in three parts of which the first part
entitled Λόγος προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας (_Cohortatio ad
Græcos_) with great expenditure of learning seeks to prepare
the minds of the heathen for Christianity by proving the
vanity of heathenism; the second part, Ὁ παιδαγωγός in
three books, with a _Hymnus in Salvatorem_ attached, gives
an introduction to the Christian life; and the third part,
Στρωματείς (_Stromata_), that is, patchwork, so-called from
the aphoristic style and the variety of its contents, in
eight books, setting forth the deep things of Christian
gnosis, but in the form rather of a collection of materials
than a carefully elaborated treatise. The little tractate
Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος (_Quis dives salvetur_) shows how
even wealth may be made contributory to salvation. Among
his lost treatises the most important was the Ὑποτυπώσεις
in eight books, an expository review of the contents of holy
scripture.[73]
§ 31.5.
c. Great as was the reputation of Clement, he was far
outstripped by his pupil and successor =Origen=,
acknowledged by pagan and Christian contemporaries to be
a miracle of scholarship. On account of his indomitable
diligence, he was named Ἀδαμάντιος. Celebrated as a
philosopher, philologist, critic, exegete, dogmatist,
apologist, polemist, etc., posterity has with equal right
honoured him as the actual founder of an ecclesiastical and
scientific theology, and reproached him as the originator
of many heretical opinions (§§ 51; 52, 6). He was born of
Christian parents at Alexandria about A.D. 185, was educated
under his father Leonidas, Pantænus and Clement, while still
a boy encouraged his father when he suffered as a martyr
under Septimius Severus in A.D. 202, became the support
of his helpless mother and his six orphaned sisters, and
was called in A.D. 203 by bishop Demetrius to be teacher
of the catechetical school. In order to qualify himself
for the duties of his new calling, he engaged eagerly in
the study of philosophy under the Neo-Platonist Ammonius
Saccas. His mode of life was extremely simple and from
his youth he was a strict ascetic. In his eager striving
after Christian perfection he had himself emasculated,
from a misunderstanding of Matt. xix. 12, but afterwards
he admitted that that was a wrong step. His fame advanced
from day to day. About A.D. 211 he visited Rome. Accepting
an honourable invitation in A.D. 215 he wrought for a long
time as a missionary in Arabia, he was then appointed by the
celebrated Julia Mammæa (§ 22, 4) to Antioch in A.D. 218;
and in A.D. 230 undertook in the interest of the church
a journey to Greece through Palestine, where the bishops
of Cæsarea and Jerusalem admitted him to the rank of a
presbyter. His own bishop, Demetrius, jealous of the daily
increasing fame of Origen and feeling that his episcopal
rights had been infringed upon, recalled him, and had him
at two Alexandrian Synods, in A.D. 231 and 232, arraigned
and excommunicated for heresy, self-mutilation and contempt
of the ecclesiastical laws of his office. Origen now
went to Cæsarea, and there, honoured and protected by the
Emperor, Philip the Arabian, opened a theological school.
His literary activity here reached its climax. But under
Decius he was cast into prison at Tyre, in A.D. 254,
and died in consequence of terrible tortures which he
endured heroically.--Of his numerous writings[74] only a
comparatively small number, but those of great value, are
preserved; some in the original, others only in a Latin
translation.
1. To the department of =Biblical Criticism= belongs the
fruit of twenty-seven years’ labour, the so-called
Hexapla, that is, a placing side by side the Hebrew text
of the O.T. (first in Hebr. and then in the Gr. letters)
and the existing Greek translations of the LXX., Aquila,
Symmachus and Theodotion; by the addition in some
books of other anonymous translations, it came to be
an Octopla or Enneapla. By critical marks on the margin
all variations were carefully indicated. The enormous
bulk of fifty volumes hindered its circulation by means
of transcripts; but the original lay in the library
at Cæsarea open to the inspection of all, until lost,
probably in the sack of the city by the Arabians in
A.D. 653.[75]
2. His =Exegetical works= consist of Σημειώσεις or
short scholia on separate difficult passages, Τόμοι
or complete commentaries on whole books of the bible,
and Ὁμιλίαι or practical expository lectures. Origen,
after the example of the Rabbinists and Hellenists,
gave a decided preference to the allegorical method
of interpretation. In every scripture passage he
distinguished a threefold sense, as σῶμα, ψυχή, πνεῦμα,
first a literal, and then a twofold higher sense, the
tropical or moral, and the pneumatical or mystical.
He was not just a despiser of the literal sense, but
the unfolding of the mystical sense seemed to him
of infinitely greater importance. All history in the
bible is a picture of things in the higher world. Most
incidents occurred as they are told; but some, the
literal conception of which would be unworthy or
irrational, are merely typical, without any outward
historical reality. The Old Testament language is
typical in a twofold sense: for the New Testament
history and for the heavenly realities. The New
Testament language is typical only of the latter.
He regarded the whole bible as inspired, with the
exception of the books added by the LXX., but the New
Testament in a higher degree than the Old. But even the
New Testament had defects which will only be overcome
by the revelation of eternity.
3. To the department of =Dogmatics= belongs his four books
Περὶ ἀρχῶν (_De Principiis_), which have come down to
us in a Latin translation of Rufinus with arbitrary
interpolations. His Στρωματεῖς in ten books which
sought to harmonize the Christian doctrine with Greek
philosophy is lost, and also his numerous writings
against the heretics. His comprehensive apologetical
work in eight books, _Contra Celsum_ (§ 23, 3), has
come down to us complete.[76] Gregory of Nazianzus
[Nazianzen] and Basil the Great made a book entirely
from his writings under the title Φιλοκαλία, which
contains many passages from lost treatises, and a
valuable original fragment from his Περὶ ἀρχῶν. His
principal doctrinal characteristics are the following:
There is a twofold revelation, the primitive revelation
in conscience to which the heathen owe their σπέρματα
ἀληθείας, and the historical revelation in holy
scripture; there are three degrees of religious
knowledge, that of the ψιλὴ πίστις, an unreasoned
acceptance of the truth, wrought by God immediately in
the heart of men, that of γνῶσις or ἐπιστήμη to which
the reasoning mind of man can reach by the speculative
development of scripture revelation in his life, and
finally, that of σοφία or θεωρία, the vision of God,
the full enjoyment of which is attained unto only
hereafter. For his doctrine of the Trinity, see § 33, 6.
His cosmological, angelological and anthropological
views represent a mixture of Platonic, Gnostic
and spiritualistic ideas, and run out into various
heterodoxies; thus, he believes in timeless or eternal
creation, an ante-temporal fall of human souls,
their imprisonment in earthly bodies, he denies the
resurrection of the body, he believed in the animation
and the need and capacity of redemption of the stars
and star-spirits, in the restoration of all spirits to
their original, ante-temporal blessedness and holiness,
ἀποκατάστασις τῶν πάντων.
4. Of his =Ascetical Works=, the treatise Περὶ εὐχῆς with
an admirable exposition of the Lord’s prayer, and a
Λόγος προτρεπικὸς εἰς μαρτύριον have been preserved.
Of his numerous epistles, the _Epistola ad Julium
Africanum_ defends against his correspondent the
genuineness of the history of Susannah.
§ 31.6.
d. Among the successors of Origen in the school of Alexandria
the most celebrated, from about A.D. 232, was =Dionysius
Alexandrinus= [of Alexandria]. He was raised to the rank
of bishop in A.D. 247, and died in A.D. 265. In speculative
power he was inferior to his teacher Origen. His special
gift was that of κυβέρνησις. He was honoured by his own
contemporaries with the title of The Great. During the
Decian persecution he manifested wisdom and good sense
as well as courage and steadfastness. The ecclesiastical
conflicts of his age afforded abundant opportunities for
testing his noble and gentle character, as well as his
faithful attachment to the church and zeal for the purity of
its doctrine, and on all hands his self-denying amiability
wrought in the interests of peace. Of his much-praised
writings, exegetical, ascetical, polemical (Περὶ ἐπαγγελιῶν
§ 33, 9), apologetical (Περὶ φύσεως against the Atomism
of Democritus and Epicurus), and dogmatical (§ 33, 7),
only fragments are preserved, mostly from his Epistles
in quotations by Eusebius. We have, however, one short
tract complete addressed to Novatian at Rome (§ 31, 12),
containing an earnest entreaty that he should abandon his
schismatic rigorism.
e. =Gregory Thaumaturgus= was one of Origen’s pupils at Cæsarea.
Origen was the means of converting the truth-seeking heathen
youth to Christianity, and Gregory clung to his teacher with
the warmest affection. He subsequently became bishop of his
native city of Neo-Cæsarea, and was able on his death-bed
in A.D. 270 to comfort himself with the reflection that he
left to his successor no more unbelievers in the city than
his predecessor had left him of believers (their number was
seventeen). He was called the second Moses and the power of
working miracles was ascribed to him. We have from his pen
a panegyric on Origen, an Epistle on Church Discipline, a
Μετάφρασις εἰς Ἐκκλησιάστην, a Confession of Faith important
for the history of the Ante-Nicene period (§ 50, 1): Ἔκθεσις
πίστεως. Two other tracts in a Syrian translation are
ascribed to him: To Philagrius on Consubstantiality, and
To Theopompus on the Passibility of God. Dräseke, however,
identifies the first-named with Oratio 45 of Gregory
Nazianzus [Nazianzen] and assigns to him the authorship.[77]
f. The learned presbyter =Pamphilus= of Cæsarea, the friend
of Eusebius (§ 47, 2) and founder of a theological seminary
and the celebrated library of Cæsarea, who died as a martyr
under Maximinus, belongs to this group. His Old Testament
Commentaries have been lost. In prison he finished his work
in five books which he undertook jointly with Eusebius, the
Apology for Origen, to which Eusebius independently added a
sixth book. Only the first book is preserved in Rufinus’
Latin translation.
§ 31.7. =Greek-speaking Church Teachers in other Quarters.=
a. =Hegesippus= wrote his five books Ὑπομνήματα, about A.D. 180,
during the age of the Roman bishop Eleutherus. From his
knowledge of the Hebrew language, literature and traditions
Eusebius concludes that he was a Jew by birth. He himself
says distinctly that in A.D. 155 during the time of bishop
Anicetus he was staying in Rome, and that on his way thither
he visited Corinth. The opinion formerly current that
his Hypomnemata consisted of a collection of historical
traditions from the time of the Apostles down to the age of
the writer, and so might be called a sort of Church History,
arose from the historical character of the contents of eight
quotations made from this treatise by Eusebius in his own
Church History. It is, however, not borne out by the fact
that what Hegesippus tells in his detailed narrative of the
end of James the Just (§ 16, 3) occurs, not in the first
or second but in the fifth and last book of his treatise.
Moreover, among writers against the heretics or Gnostics,
Eusebius enumerates in the first place one Hegesippus,
having it would seem his Hypomnemata in view. From this
circumstance, in conjunction with everything else quoted
from and told about him by Eusebius, we may with great
probability conclude that the purpose of his writing was
to confute the heresies of his age. In doing so he traces
them partly to Gentile sources, but partly and mainly to
pre-Christian Jewish heresies, seven of which are enumerated.
He treats in the first three books of the so-called Gnostics
and their relations to heathenism and false Judaism. Then in
the fourth book he discusses the heretical Apocrypha and, as
contrasted with them, the orthodox ecclesiastical writings,
mentioning among them expressly the Epistle of Clemens
[Clement] Romanus [of Rome] to the Corinthians. Finally,
in the fifth book, he proves from the Apostolic succession
of the leaders of the church, the unity and truth of
ecclesiastically transmitted doctrine. The historical value
of his writing, owing to the confusion and want of critical
power shown in the instances referred to, cannot be placed
very high. The school of Baur, more particularly Schwegler
(see § 20), attached greater importance to him as a supposed
representative of the anti-Pauline Judaism of his time.
The value of his testimony in this direction, however, is
reduced by his acknowledgment of the Epistle of Clement that
accords so high a place to the Apostle Paul. His relations
to Rome and Corinth, with his judgment on the general unity
of faith in the church of his age, prove that he would be by
no means disposed to repudiate the Apostle Paul in favour of
any Ebionitic tendency.
b. =Caius of Rome=, a contemporary of bishop Zephyrinus
about A.D. 210, was one of the most conspicuous opponents
of Montanism. Eusebius who characterizes him as ἀνὴρ
ἐκκλησιαστικός and λογιώτατος, quotes four times from
his now lost controversial tract in dialogue form against
Proclus the Roman Montanist leader.
§ 31.8.
c. =Sextus Julius Africanus=, according to Suidas a native of
Libya, took part, as he says himself in his Κεστοῖς, in the
campaign of Septimius Severus against Osrhoëne in A.D. 195,
became intimate with the Christian king Maanu VIII. of
Edessa, whom in his Chronographies he calls ἱερὸς ἀνὴρ,
and was often companion in hunting to his son and successor
Maanu IX. About A.D. 220 we find him, according to Eusebius
and others, in Rome at the head of an embassy from Nicopolis
or Emmaus in Palestine petitioning for the restoration of
that city. In consequence of Origen addressing him about
A.D. 227 as ἀγαπητὸς ἀδελφός it has been rashly concluded
that he was then a presbyter or at least of clerical rank.
The five books, Χρονογραφίαι, were his first and most
important work. This work which was known partly in the
original, partly in the citations from it in the Eusebian
Chronicle (§ 47, 2), together with its Latin continuation
by Jerome proved a main source of information in general
history during the Byzantine period and the Latin Middle
Age. Beginning with the creation of the world and fixing
the whole course of the world’s development at 6,000 years,
he set the middle point of this period to the age of Peleg
(Gen. x. 25), and in accordance with the chronology of the
LXX. and reckoning by Olympiads, proceeded to synchronize
biblical and profane history. He assigned the birth of
Christ to the middle of the sixth of the thousand year
periods, at the close of which he probably expected the
beginning of the millennium. From the fragments preserved
by later Byzantine chroniclers, Gelzer has attempted to
reproduce as far as possible the original work, carefully
indicating its sources and authorities. Of the other works
of Africanus we have in a complete form only an Epistle
to Origen, “a real gem of brilliant criticism spiced with
a gentle touch of fine irony” (Gelzer), which combats the
authenticity and credibility of the Pseudo-Daniel’s history
of Susannah. We have also a fragment quoted in Eusebius
from an Epistle to a certain Aristides, which attempts
a reconciliation of the genealogies in Matt. and Luke by
distinguishing παῖδες νόμῳ and παῖδες φύσει with reference
to Deut. xxv. 5. According to Eusebius “the chronologist
Julius Africanus,” according to Suidas “Origen’s friend
Africanus with the prænomen Sextus,” is also the author of
the so called Κεστοί (_embroidery_), a great comprehensive
work of which only fragments have been preserved, in which
all manner of wonderful things from the life of nature and
men, about agriculture, cattle breeding, warfare, etc.,
were recorded, so that it had the secondary title Παράδοξα.
The excessive details of pagan superstition here reported,
much of which, such as that relating to the secret worship
of Venus, was distinctly immoral, and its dependence on
the secret writings of the Egyptians seem now as hard to
reconcile with the standpoint of a believing Christian, as
with the sharpness of intellect shown in his criticism of
the letter of Susannah. It has therefore been assumed that
alongside of the Christian chronologist Julius Africanus
there was a pagan Julius Africanus who wrote the Κεστοί,--or,
seeing the identity of the two is strongly evidenced both
on internal and external grounds, the composition of the
Κεστοί is assigned to a period when the author was still a
heathen. The facts, however, that the Chronicles close with
A.D. 221 and that the Κεστοί is dedicated to Alex. Severus
(A.D. 222-235), seem to guarantee the earlier composition
of the Chronicles. The author of the Κεστοί, too, by his
quotation of Ps. xxxiv. 9 with the formula θεία ῥήματα,
shows himself a Christian, and on the other hand, the author
of the Chronicles says that at great cost he had made himself
acquainted in Egypt with a celebrated secret book.
§ 31.9.
d. =Methodius= bishop of Olympus in Lycia, subsequently at
Tyre, a man highly esteemed in his day, died as a martyr
in A.D. 311. He was a decided opponent of the spiritualism
prevailing in the school of Origen. His Συμπόσιον τῶν δέκα
παρθένων is a dialogue between several virgins regarding
the excellence of virginity written in eloquent and glowing
language (transl. in Ante-Nicene Lib., Edin., 1870). Of his
other works only outlines and fragments are preserved by
Epiphanius and Photius. To these belong Περὶ αὐτεξουσίου καὶ
ποθὲν κακά, a polemic against the Platonic-Gnostic doctrine
of the eternity of matter as the ultimate ground and cause
of sin, which are to be sought rather in the misuse of
human freedom; the dialogues Περὶ ἀναστάσεως and Περὶ τῶν
γεννητῶν, the former of which combats Origen’s doctrine of
the resurrection, and the latter his doctrine of creation.
His controversial treatise against Porphyry (§ 23, 3) has
been completely lost.
e. The martyr =Lucian of Samosata=, born and brought up in
Edessa, was presbyter of Antioch and co-founder of the
theological school there that became so famous (§ 47, 1),
where he, deposed by a Syrian Synod of A.D. 269, and
persecuted by the Emperor Aurelian in A.D. 272, as supporter
of bishop Paul of Samosata (§ 33, 8), maintained his
position under the three following bishops (till A.D. 303)
apart from the official church, and died a painful martyr’s
death under the Emperor Maximinus in A.D. 312. That
secession, however, was occasioned less perhaps through
doctrinal and ecclesiastical, than through national and
political, anti-Roman and Syrian sympathies with his
heretical countrymen of Samosata. For though in the Arian
controversy (§ 50, 1) Lucian undoubtedly appears as the
father of that Trinitarian-Christological view first
recognised and combated as heretical in his pupil Arius in
A.D. 318, this was certainly essentially different from the
doctrine of the Samosatian. About Lucian’s literary activity
only the scantiest information has come down to us. His most
famous work was his critical revision of the Text of the Old
and New Testaments, which according to Jerome was officially
sanctioned in the dioceses of the Patriarchs of Antioch
and Constantinople, and thus probably lies at the basis of
Theodoret’s and Chrysostom’s exegetical writings. Rufinus’
Latin translation of Eusebius’ Church History gives an
extract from the “Apologetical Discourse” in which he seems
to have openly confessed and vindicated his Christian faith
before his heathen judge.
2. CHURCH FATHERS WRITING IN LATIN.
§ 31.10. =The Church Teachers of North Africa.=--=Quintus
Septimius Florens Tertullianus [Tertullian]= was the son of a
heathen centurion of Carthage, distinguished as an advocate and
rhetorician, converted somewhat late in life, about A.D. 190,
and, after a long residence in Rome, made presbyter at Carthage
in A.D. 220. He was of a fiery and energetic character, in his
writings as well as in his life pre-eminently a man of force,
with burning enthusiasm for the truth of the gospel, unsparingly
rigorous toward himself and others. His “Punic style” is terse,
pictorial and rhetorical, his thoughts are original, brilliant
and profound, his eloquence transporting, his dialectic clear
and convincing, his polemic crushing, enlivened with sharp wit
and biting sarcasm. He shows himself the thoroughly accomplished
jurist in his use of legal terminology and also in the acuteness
of his deductions and demonstrations. Fanatically opposed to
heathen philosophy, though himself trained in the knowledge of it,
a zealous opponent of Gnosticism, in favour of strict asceticism
and hostile to every form of worldliness, he finally attached
himself, about A.D. 220, to the party of the Montanists (§ 40, 3).
Here he found the form of religion in which his whole manner of
thought and feeling, the energy of his will, the warmth of his
emotions, his strong and forceful imagination, his inclination to
rigorous asceticism, his love of bald realism, could be developed
in all power and fulness, without let or hindrance. If amid
all his enthusiasm for Montanism he kept clear of many of its
absurdities, he had for this to thank his own strong common sense,
and also, much as he affected to despise it, his early scientific
training. He at first wrote his compositions in Greek, but
afterwards exclusively in Latin, into which he also translated
the most important of his earlier writings. He is perhaps not
the first who treated of the Christian truth in this language
(§ 31, 12a), but he has been rightly recognised as the actual
creator of ecclesiastical Latin. His writings may be divided into
three groups.
a. =Apologetical and Controversial Treatises against Jews and
Pagans=, which belong to his pre-Montanist period. The most
important and instructive of these is the _Apologeticus adv.
Gentes_, addressed to the Roman governor. A reproduction of
this work intended for the general public, less learned, but
more vigorous, scathing and uncompromising, is the treatise
in two books entitled _Ad Nationes_. In the work _Ad
Scapulam_, who as Proconsul of Africa under Septimius
Severus had persecuted the Christians with unsparing cruelty,
he calls him to account for this with all earnestness and
plainness of speech. In the book, _De testimonio animæ_
he carries out more fully the thought already expressed in
the _Apologeticus c. 17_ of the _Anima humana naturaliter
christiana_, and proves in an ingenious manner that
Christianity alone meets the religious needs of humanity.
The book _Adv. Judæos_ had its origin ostensibly in a public
disputation with the Jews, in which the interruptions of his
audience interferes with the flow of his discourse.
b. =Controversial Treatises against the Heretics.= In the tract
_De præscriptione hæreticorum_ he proves that the Catholic
church, because in prescriptive possession of the field
since the time of the Apostles, is entitled on the legal
ground of _præscriptio_ to be relieved of the task of
advancing proof of her claims, while the heretics on the
other hand are bound to establish their pretensions. A
heresiological appendix to this book has been erroneously
attributed to Tertullian (see § 31, 3). He combats the
Gnostics in the writings: _De baptismo_ (against the Gnostic
rejection of water baptism); _Adv. Hermogenem_; _Adv.
Valentinianos_; _De anima_ (an Anti-Gnostic treatise,
which maintains the creatureliness, yea, the materiality of
the soul, traces its origin to sexual intercourse, and its
mortality to Adam’s sin); _De carne Christi_ (Anti-Docetic):
_De resurrectione carnis Scorpiace_ (an antidote to the
scorpion-poison of the Gnostic heresy); finally, the five
books, _Adv. Marcionem_. The book _Adv. Praxeam_ is directed
against the Patripassians (§ 33, 4). In this work his
realism reaches its climax at c. 7 in the statement: “_Quis
enim negabit, Deum corpus esse, etsi Deus spiritus est?
Spiritus enim corpus sui generis in sua effigie_,”--where,
however, he is careful to state that with him _corpus_ and
_substantia_ are identical ideas, so that he can also say in
c. 10 _de carne Christi_: “_Omne quod est, corpus est sui
generis. Nihil est incorporate nisi quod non est._”
c. =Practical and Ascetical Treatises.= His pre-Montanist
writings are characterized by moderation as compared with
the fanatical rigorism and scornful bitterness against the
Psychical, _i.e._ the Catholics, displayed in those of the
Montanist period. To the former class belong: _De oratione_
(exposition of the Lord’s Prayer); _De baptismo_ (necessity
of water baptism, disapproval of infant baptism); _De
pœnitentia_; _De idolatria_; _Ad Martyres_; _De spectaculis_;
_De cultu feminarum_ (against feminine love of dress); _De
patientia_; _Ad uxorem_ (a sort of testament for his wife,
with the exhortation after his death not to marry again,
but at least in no case to marry an unbeliever). To the
Montanist period belong: _De virginibus velandis_; _De
corona militis_ (defending a Christian soldier who suffered
imprisonment for refusing to wear the soldier’s crown);
_De fuga in persecutione_ (which with fanatical decision
is declared to be a renunciation of Christianity); _De
exhortatione castitatis_ and _De monogamia_ (both against
second marriages which are treated as fornication and
adultery); _De pudicitia_ (recalling his milder opinion
given in his earlier treatise _De pœnitentia_, that
every mortal sin is left to the judgment of God, with the
possibility of reconciliation); _De jejuniis adv. Psychicos_
(vindication of the fasting discipline of the Montanists,
§ 40, 4); _De pallio_ (an essay full of wit and humour
in answer to the taunts of his fellow-citizens about his
throwing off the toga and donning the philosopher’s mantle,
_i.e._ the Pallium, which even the Ascetics might wear).[78]
§ 31.11. =Thascius Cæcilius Cyprianus= [Cyprian], descended from
a celebrated pagan family in Carthage, was at first a teacher
of rhetoric, then, after his conversion in A.D. 245, a presbyter
and from A.D. 248 bishop in his native city. During the Decian
persecution the hatred of the heathen mob expressed itself in
the cry _Cyprianum ad leonem_; but he withdrew himself for a
time in flight into the desert in A.D. 250, from whence he guided
the affairs of the church by his Epistles, and returned in the
following year when respite had been given. The disturbances that
had meanwhile arisen afforded him abundant opportunity for the
exercise of that wisdom and gentleness which characterized him,
and the earnestness, energy and moderation of his nature, as well
as his Christian tact and prudence all stood him in good stead in
dealing, on the one hand, with the fallen who sought restoration,
and on the other, the rigorous schismatics who opposed them
(§ 41, 2). When persecution again broke out under Valerian in
A.D. 257 he was banished to the desert Curubis, and when he
returned to his oppressed people in A.D. 258, he was beheaded.
His epoch-making significance lies not so much in his theological
productions as in his energetic and successful struggle for the
unity of the church as represented by the monarchical position
of the episcopate, and in his making salvation absolutely
dependent upon submission to episcopal authority, as well
as in the powerful impetus given by him to the tendency to
view ecclesiastical piety as an _opus operatum_ (§ 39). As a
theologian and writer he mainly attaches himself to the giant
Tertullian, whose thoughts he reproduces in his works, with
the excision, however, of their Montanist extravagances. Jerome
relates that no day passed in which he did not call to his
amanuensis: _Da magistrum_! In originality, profundity, force
and fulness of thought, as well as in speculative and dialectic
gifts, he stands indeed far below Tertullian, but in lucidity and
easy flow of language and pleasant exposition he far surpasses
him. His eighty-one Epistles are of supreme importance for the
Ch. Hist. of his times, and next to them in value is the treatise
“De unitate ecclesiæ” (§ 34, 7). His _Liber ad Donatum s. de
gratia Dei_, the first writing produced after his conversion,
contains treatises on the leadings of God’s grace and the
blessedness of the Christian life as contrasted with the
blackness of the life of the pagan world. The Apologetical
writings _De idolorum vanitate_ and _Testimonia adv. Judæos_,
II. iii., have no claims to independence and originality. This
applies also more or less to his ascetical tracts: _De habitu
virginum_, _De mortalitate_, _De exhortatione martyrii_,
_De lapsis_, _De oratione dominica_, _De bono patientiæ_,
_De zelo et livore_, etc. His work _De opere et eleemosynis_
specially contributed to the spread of the doctrine of the merit
of works.[79]
§ 31.12. =Various Ecclesiastical Writers using the Latin Tongue.=
a. The Roman attorney =Minucius Felix=, probably of Cirta in
Africa, wrote under the title of _Octavius_ a brilliant
Apology, expressed in a fine Latin diction, in the form of a
conversation between his two friends the Christian Octavius
and the heathen Cæcilius, which resulted in the conversion
of the latter. It is matter of dispute whether it was
composed before or after Tertullian’s Apologeticus, and
to which of the two the origin of thoughts and expressions
common to both is to be assigned. Recently Ebert has
maintained the opinion that Minucius is the older, and
this view has obtained many adherents; whereas the contrary
theory of Schultze has reached its climax in assigning the
composition of the _Octavius_ to A.D. 300-303, so that he is
obliged to ascribe the Octavius as well as the Apologeticus
to a compiler of the fourth or fifth century, plagiarizing
from Cyprian’s treatise _De idolorum vanitate_!
b. =Commodianus= [Commodus], born at Gaza, was won to
Christianity by reading holy scripture, and wrote about
A.D. 250 his _Instructiones adv. Gentium Deos_, consisting
of eighty acrostic poems in rhyming hexameters and scarcely
intelligible, barbarous Latin. His _Carmen apologeticum adv.
Jud. et Gent._ was first published in 1852.
c. The writings of his contemporary the schismatical =Novatian=
of Rome (§ 41, 3) show him to have been a man of no ordinary
dogmatical and exegetical ability. His _Liber de Trinitate
s. de Regula fidei_ is directed in a subordinationist
sense against the Monarchians (§ 33). The _Epistola de
cibis Judaici_ repudiates any obligation on the part of
Christians to observe the Old Testament laws about food;
and the _Epistola Cleri Romani_ advocates milder measures
in the penitential discipline.
d. =Arnobius= was born at Sicca in Africa, where he was engaged
as a teacher of eloquence about A.D. 300. For a long time he
was hostilely inclined toward Christianity, but underwent a
change of mind by means of a vision in a dream. The bishop
distrusted him and had misgivings about admitting him
to baptism, but he convinced him of the honesty of his
intentions by composing the seven books of _Disputationes
adv. Gentes_. This treatise betrays everywhere defective
understanding of the Christian truth; but he is more
successful in combating the old religion than in defending
the new.
e. The bishop =Victorinus of Pettau= (Petavium in Styria), who
died a martyr during the Diocletian persecution in A.D. 303,
wrote commentaries on the Old and New Testament books that
are no longer extant. Only a fragment _De fabrica mundi_ on
Gen. i. and Scholia on the Apocalypse have been preserved.
f. =Lucius Cœlius Firmianus Lactantius= († about A.D. 330),
probably of Italian descent, but a pupil of Arnobius
in Africa, was appointed by Diocletian teacher of Latin
eloquence at Nicomedia. At that place about A.D. 301 he
was converted to Christianity and resigned his office
on the outbreak of the persecution. Constantine the Great
subsequently committed to him the education of his son
Crispus, who, at his father’s command, was executed in
A.D. 326. From his writings he seems to have been amiable
and unassuming, a man of wide reading, liberal culture
and a warm heart. The purity of his Latin style and the
eloquence of his composition, in which he excels all the
Church Fathers, has won for him the honourable name of the
Christian Cicero. We often miss in his writings grip, depth
and acuteness of thinking; especially in their theological
sections we meet with many imperfections and mistakes.
He was not only carried away by a fanatical chiliasm,
but adopted also many opinions of a Manichæan sort. The
_Institutiones divinæ_ in seven bks., a complete exposition
and defence of the Christian faith, is his principal work.
The _Epitome div. inst._ is an abstract of the larger works
prepared by himself with the addition of many new thoughts.
His book _De mortibus persecutorum_ (Engl. trans. by
Dr. Burnett, “Relation of the Death of the Primitive
Persecutors.” Amsterdam, 1687), contains a rhetorically
coloured description of the earlier persecutions as well
as of those witnessed by himself during his residence in
Nicomedia. It is of great importance for the history of the
period but must be carefully sifted owing to its strongly
partisan character. Not only the joy of the martyrs but
also the proof of a divine Nemesis in the lives of the
persecutors are regarded as demonstrating the truth of
Christianity. The tract _De ira Dei_ seeks to prove the
failure of Greek philosophy to combine the ideas of justice
and goodness in its conception of God. The book _De opificio
Dei_ proves from the wonderful structure of the human body
the wisdom of divine providence. Jerome praises him as a
poet; but of the poems ascribed to him only one on the bird
phœnix, which, as it rises into life out of its own ashes
is regarded as a symbol of immortality and the resurrection,
can lay any claim to authenticity.
§ 32. THE APOCRYPHAL AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHICAL LITERATURE.[80]
The practice, so widely spread in pre-Christian times among pagans
and Jews, of publishing treatises as original and primitive divine
revelations which had no claim to such a title found favour among
Christians of the first centuries, and was continued far down into the
Greek and Latin Middle Ages. The majority of the apocryphal or anonymous
and pseudepigraphic writings were issued in support of heresies Ebionite
or Gnostic. Many, however, were free from heretical taint and were
simply undertaken for the purpose of glorifying Christianity by what
was then regarded as a harmless _pia fraus_ through a _vaticinia post
eventum_, or of filling up blanks in the early history with myths and
fables already existing or else devised for the occasion. They took the
subjects of their romances partly from the field of the Old Testament,
and partly from the field of the New Testament in the form of Gospels,
Acts, Apostolic Epistles and Apocalypses. A number of them are
professedly drawn from the prophecies of old heathen seers. Of greater
importance, especially for the history of the constitution, worship and
discipline of the church are the Eccles. Constitutions put forth under
the names of Apostles. Numerous apocryphal Acts of Martyrs are for the
most part utterly useless as historical sources.
§ 32.1. =Professedly Old Heathen Prophecies.=--Of these the
=Sibylline Writings= occupy the most conspicuous place. The
Græco-Roman legend of the Sibyls, σιοῦ βούλη (Æol. for θεοῦ
βούλη), _i.e._ prophetesses of pagan antiquity, was wrought up
at a very early period in the interests of Judaism and afterwards
of Christianity, especially of Ebionite heresy. The extant
collection of such oracles in fourteen books were compiled in the
5th or 6th century. It contains in Greek verses prophecies partly
purely Jewish, partly Jewish wrought up by a Christian hand,
partly originally Christian, about the history of the world, the
life and sufferings of Christ, the persecutions of His disciples
and the stages in the final development of His kingdom. The
Christian participation in the composition of the Sibylline
oracles began in the first century, soon after the irruption of
Vesuvius in A.D. 79, and continued down to the 5th century. The
Apologists, especially Lactantius, made such abundant use of
these prophecies that the heathens nicknamed them Sibyllists.--Of
the prophecies about the coming of Christ ascribed to an ancient
Persian seer, =Hystaspes=, none have been preserved.
§ 32.2. =Old Testament Pseudepigraphs.=[81]--These are mostly of
=Jewish Origin=, of which, however, many were held by the early
Christians in high esteem.
a. To this class belongs pre-eminently the =Book of Enoch=,
written originally in Hebrew in the last century before
Christ, quoted in the Epistle of Jude, and recovered only in
an Ethiopic translation in A.D. 1821. In its present form in
which a great number of older writings about Enoch and Noah
have been wrought up, the book embraces accounts of the fall
of a certain part of the angels (Gen. vi. 1-4; Jude 6; and
2 Pet. ii. 4), also statements of the holy angels about the
mysteries of heaven and hell, the earth and paradise, about
the coming of the Messiah, etc.
b. The =Assumptio Mosis= (ἀνάληψις), from which, according to
Origen, the reference to the dispute between Michael and
Satan about the body of Moses in the Epistle of Jude is
taken, was discovered by the librarian Ceriani at Milan.
He found the first part of this book in an old Latin
translation and published it in A.D. 1860. In the exercise
of his official gift Moses prophesies to Joshua about the
future fortunes of his nation down to the appearing of the
Messiah. The second part, which is wanting, dealt with the
translation of Moses. The exact date of its composition is
not determined, but it may be perhaps assigned to the first
Christian century.
c. The so-called =Fourth Book of Ezra= is first referred to by
Clement of Alexandria. It is an Apocalypse after the manner
of the Book of Daniel. It was probably written originally in
Greek but we possess only translations: a Latin one and four
oriental ones--Ethiopic, Arabic, Syriac and Armenian. From
these oriental translations the blanks in the Latin version
have been supplied, and its later Christian interpolations
have been detected. The angel Uriel in seven visions makes
known to the weeping Ezra the signs of the approaching
destruction of Jerusalem, the decay of the Roman empire,
the founding of the Messianic kingdom, etc. The fifth vision
of the eagle with twelve wings and three heads seems to fix
the date of its composition to the time of Domitian.
d. In the year 1843 the missionary Krapff sent to Tübingen
the title of an Ethiopic Codex, in which Ewald recognised
the writing referred to frequently by the Church Fathers as
the =Book of Jubilees= (Ἰωβελαῖα) or the =Little Genesis=
(Λεπτογένεσις). This book, written probably about A.D. 50
or 60, is a complete summary of the Jewish legendary matter
about the early biblical history from the creation down to
the entrance into Canaan, divided into fifty jubilee periods.
The name _Little Genesis_ was given it, notwithstanding
its large dimensions, as indicating a Genesis of the second
rank.[82]
§ 32.3. The following Pseudepigraphs are of =Christian Origin=.
a. The short romantic =History of Assenath=, daughter of
Potiphar and wife of Joseph (Gen. xli. 45). Its main point
is the conversion of Assenath by an angel.
b. =The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs=, after the style of
Gen. xlix., written in Greek in the 2nd cent., and quoted
by Origen. As in the chapter of Gen. referred to parting
counsels are put in the mouth of Jacob, they are here
ascribed to his twelve sons. These discourses embrace
prophecies of the coming of Christ and His atoning
sufferings and death, statements about baptism and the
Lord’s supper, about the great Apostle of the Gentiles,
the rejection of the O.T. covenant people and the election
of the Gentiles, the destruction of Jerusalem and the
final completion of the kingdom of God. The book is thus a
cleverly compiled and comprehensive handbook of Christian
faith, life and hope.
c. Of the =Ascensio Isaiæ= (Ἀναβατικόν) and the =Visio Isaiæ=
(Ὅρασις) traces are to be found as early as in Justin
Martyr and Tertullian. The Greek original is lost. Dillmann
published an old Ethiopic version (Lps., 1877), and Gieseler
an old Lat. text (Gött., 1832). Its Cabbalistic colouring
commended it to the Gnostics. In its first part, borrowed
from an old Jewish document, it tells about the martyrdom of
Isaiah who was sawn asunder by King Manasseh; in its second
part, entitled _Visio Isaiæ_ it is told how the prophet in
an ecstasy was led by an angel through the seven heavens and
had revealed to him the secrets of the divine counsels
regarding the incarnation of Christ.
d. A collection in Syriac belonging perhaps to the 5th or 6th
century in which other legends about early ages are kept
together, is called =Spelunca thesaurorum=. We are here
told about the sepulchre of the patriarch Lamech and the
treasures preserved there from which the wise men obtained
the gifts which they presented to the infant Saviour. The
Ethiopic _Vita Adami_ is an expansion of the book just
referred to. This book is manifestly a legendary account of
the changes wrought upon all relations of life in our first
parents by means of the fall (hence the title: “Conflict
of Adam and Eve”), and Golgotha is named as Adam’s burying
place. A second and shorter part treats of the Sethite
patriarchs down to Noah. The still shorter third part
relates the post-diluvian history down to the time of
Christ.[83]
§ 32.4. =New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphs.=--The
Gnostics especially produced these in great abundance. Epiphanius
speaks of them as numbering thousands. But the Catholics, too,
were unable to resist the temptation to build up the truth by
these doubtful means.
I. =Apocryphal Gospels.=
1. =Complete Gospels= existed in considerable numbers,
_i.e._ embracing the period of Christ’s earthly
labours, more or less corrupted in the interests of
Gnostic or Ebionitic heresy, or independently composed
Gospels; but only of a few of these do we possess any
knowledge.[84] The most important of these are the
following: _The Gosp. of the Egyptians_, esteemed by
the Encratites, according to Origen one of the writings
referred to in Luke i. 1; also _the Gosp. of the XII.
Apostles_, generally called by the Fathers Εὐαγγ. καθ’
Ἑβραίους originally written in Aramaic; and finally,
_the Gosp. of Marcion_ (§ 27, 11). The most important
of these is the Gospel of the Hebrews, on account of
its relation to our canonical Gospel of Matthew, which
is generally supposed to have been written originally
in Aramaic.[85] Jerome who translated the Hebrew Gospel
says of it: _Vocatur a plerisque Matthæi authenticum_;
but this is not his own opinion, nor was it that of
Origen and Eusebius. The extant fragments show many
divergences as well as many similarities, partly in
the form of apocryphal amplifications, partly of changes
made for dogmatic reasons.
2. Gospels dealing with particular Periods--referring to
the days preceding the birth of Jesus and the period of
the infancy or to the closing days of His life, where
the heretical elements are wanting or are subordinated
to the general interests of Christianity. Of these
there was a large number and much of their legendary or
fabulous material, especially about the family history
of the mother of Jesus (§ 57, 2), has passed over into
the tradition of the Catholic Church. Among them may be
mentioned;
a. _The Protevangel. Jacobi minoris_, perhaps the
oldest, certainly the most esteemed and most widely
spread, written in Greek, beginning with the story
of Mary’s birth and reaching down to the death of
the children of Bethlehem;
b. The _Ev. Pseudo Matthæi_, similar in its contents,
but continued down to the period of Jesus’ youth,
and now existing only in a Lat. translation;
c. The _Ev. de nativitate Mariæ_, only in Lat.,
containing the history of Mary down to the birth of
Jesus;
d. The _Hist. Josephi fabri lignarii_ down to his death,
dating probably from the 4th cent., only now in an
Arabic version;
e. The _Ev. Infantiæ Salvatoris_, only in Arabic, a
compilation with no particular dogmatic tendency;
f. Also the so-called _Ascension of Mary_ (§ 57, 2)
soon became the subject of apocryphal treatment,
for which John was claimed as the authority (John
xix. 26), and is preserved in several Greek, Syriac,
Arabic and Latin manuscripts;
g. The _Ev. Nicodemi_ (John xix. 39) in Greek and Lat.
contains two Jewish writings of the 2nd century.
The first part consists of the _Gesta_ or _Acta
Pilati_. There can be no doubt of its identity with
the _Acta Pilati_ quoted by Justin, Tert., Euseb.,
Epiph. It contains the stories of the canonical
Gospels variously amplified and an account of
the judicial proceedings evidently intended to
demonstrate Jesus’ innocence of the charges brought
against Him by His enemies. The second part,
bearing the title _Descensus Christi ad inferos_,
is of much later origin, telling of the descent
of Christ into Hades along with two of the saints
who rose with him (Matt. xxvii. 52), Leucius and
Carinus, sons of Simeon (Luke ii. 25).[86]
§ 32.5.
II. The numerous =Apocryphal Histories and Legends of the
Apostles= were partly of heretical, and partly of Catholic,
origin. While the former have in view the establishing of
their heretical doctrines and peculiar forms of worship,
constitution and life by representing them as Apostolic
institutions, the latter arose mostly out of a local
patriotic intention to secure to particular churches the
glory of being founded by an Apostle. Those inspired by
Gnostic influences far exceed in importance and number
not only the Ebionitic but also the genuinely Catholic.
The Manichæans especially produced many and succeeded in
circulating them widely. The more their historico-romantic
contents pandered to the taste of that age for fantastic
tales of miracles and visions the surer were they to find
access among Catholic circles.--A collection of such
histories under the title of Περίοδοι τῶν ἀποστόλων was
received as canonical by Gnostics and Manichæans, and even
by many of the Church Fathers. Augustine first named as
its supposed author one Leucius. We find this name some
decades later in Epiphanius as that of a pupil of John and
opponent of the Ebionite Christology, and also in Pacianus
of Barcelona as that of one falsely claimed as an authority
by the Montanists. According to Photius this collection
embraced the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas and Paul,
and the author’s full name was Leucius Carinus, who also
appears in the second part of the _Acta Pilati_, but in
quite other circumstances and surroundings. That all the
five books were composed by one author is not probable;
perhaps originally only the Acts of John bore the name of
Leucius, which was subsequently transferred to the whole.
Zahn’s view, on the other hand, is, that the Περίοδοι τῶν
ἀποστόλων, especially the _Acts of John_, was written under
the falsely assumed name of John’s pupil Leucius, about
A.D. 130, at a time when the Gnostics had not yet been
separated from the Church as a heretical sect, was even at
a later period accepted as genuine by the Catholic church
teachers notwithstanding the objectionable character of much
of its contents, its modal docetic Christology and encratite
Ethics with contempt of marriage, rejection of animal food
and the use of wine and the demand of voluntary poverty, and
held in high esteem as a source of the second rank for the
Apostolic history. Lipsius considers that it was composed in
the interests of the vulgar Gnosticism (§ 27) in the second
half of the 2nd, or first half of the 3rd cent., and proves
that from Eusebius down to Photius, who brands it as πασῆς
αἱρέσεως πηγὴν καὶ μητέρα, the Catholic church teachers
without exception speak of it as heretical and godless,
and that the frequent patristic references to the _Historiæ
ecclesiasticiæ_ do not apply to it but to Catholic
modifications of it, which were regarded as the genuine
and generally credible original writing of Leucius which
were wickedly falsified by the Manichæans.--Catholic
modifications of particular Gnostic Περίοδοι, as well as
independent Catholic writings of this sort in Greek are
still preserved in MS. in great numbers and have for the
most part been printed. The _Hist. certaminis apostolici_ in
ten books, which the supposed pupil of the Apostles Abdias,
first bishop of Babylon, wrote in Hebrew, was translated by
his pupil Eutropius into Greek and by Julius Africanus into
Latin.[87]--They are all useless for determining the history
of the Apostolic Age, although abundantly so used in the
Catholic church tradition. For the history of doctrines and
sects, the history of the canon, worship, ecclesiastical
customs and modes of thought during the 2nd-4th cents., they
are of the utmost importance.
§ 32.6.
From the many apocryphal monographs still preserved on the
life, works and martyrdom of the biblical Apostles and their
coadjutors, in addition to the Pseudo-Clementines already
discussed in § 28, 3, the following are the most important.
a. The Greek =Acta Petri et Pauli=. These describe the
journeys of Paul to Rome, the disputation of the
two Apostles at Rome with Simon Magus, and the Roman
martyrdom of both, and constitute the source of the
traditions regarding Peter and Paul which are at the
present day regarded in the Roman Catholic Church as
historical. These Acts, however, as Lipsius has shown,
are not an original work, but date from about A.D. 160,
and consist of a Catholic reproduction of Ebionite
or Anti-Pauline, _Acts of Peter_, with additions from
Gentile-Christian traditions of Paul. The _Acts of Peter_
take up the story where the Pseudo-Clementines end, as
may be seen even from their Catholic reproduction, for
they make Simon Magus, followed everywhere and overcome
by the Apostle Peter, at last seek refuge in Rome,
where, again unmasked by Peter, he met a miserable end
(§ 25, 2). As the Κηρύγματα Πέτρου which formed the
basis of the Pseudo-Clementine writings combats the
specifically Pauline doctrines as derived from Simon
Magus (§ 28, 4), so the Acts of Peter identify him
even personally with Paul, for they maliciously and
spitefully assign well-known facts from the Apostle’s
life to Simon Magus, which are _bona fide_ in the
Catholic reproduction assumed to be genuine works
of Simon.--The Gnostic _Acts of Peter_ and _Acts
of Paul_ had wrought up the current Ebionite and
Catholic traditions about the doings and martyr deaths
of the two Apostles with fanciful adornments and
embellishments after the style and in the interests of
Gnosticism. A considerable fragment of these, purified
indeed by Catholic hands, is preserved to us in
the _Passio Petri et Pauli_, to which is attached
the name of Linus, the pretended successor of
Peter. The fortunes of the two Apostles are related
quite independently of one another: Paul makes his
appearance at Rome only after the death of Peter. Of the
_non-heretical Acts of Paul_ which according to Eusebius
were in earlier times received in many churches as holy
scripture (§ 36, 8), no trace has as yet been discovered.
b. Among the Greek =Acts of John=, the remnants of the
Leucian Περίοδοι Ἰωάννου preserved in their original
form deserve to be first mentioned. According to
Zahn, they are one of the earliest witnesses for
the genuineness of the Gospel of John, and give the
deathblow to the theory that with and after the Apostle
John, there was in Ephesus another John the Presbyter
distinct from him (§ 16, 2). Lipsius, on the other
hand, places their composition in the second half of
the 2nd cent., and deprives them of that significance
for the life of the Apostle, but admits their great value
for a knowledge of doctrines, principles and forms of
worship of the vulgar Gnosticism then widely spread. The
Πράξεις Ἰωάννου, greatly esteemed in the Greek church,
and often translated into other languages, written
in the 5th cent. by a Catholic hand and ascribed to
Prochoros [Prochorus] the deacon of Jerusalem (Acts
vi. 5), is a poetic romance with numerous raisings from
the dead, exorcisms, etc., almost wholly the creation
of the writer’s own imagination, without a trace of any
encratite tendency like the Leucian Περίοδοι and without
any particular doctrinal significance.
c. To the same age and the same Gnostic party as the Leucian
Acts of John, belong the =Acts of Andrew= preserved
in many fragments and circulated in various Catholic
reproductions. Of these latter the most esteemed were
the _Acts of Andrew and Matthew_ in the city of the
cannibals.
d. The Catholic reproductions in Greek and Syriac that
have come down to us of the Leucian =Acts of Thomas= are
of special value because of the many Gnostic elements
which, particularly in the Greek, have been allowed to
remain unchanged in the very imperfectly purified text.
The scene of the Apostle’s activity is said to be India.
The central point in his preaching to sinners is the
doctrine that only by complete abstinence from marriage
and concubinage can we become at last the partner of
the heavenly bridegroom (§ 27, 4). A highly poetical
hymn on the marriage of Sophia (Achamoth) is left
in the Greek text unaltered, while the Syriac text
puts the church in place of Sophia. Then we have two
poetical consecration prayers for baptism and the
eucharist, in which the Syriac substituted Christ
for Achamoth. But besides, even in the Syriac text,
a grandly swelling hymn, which is wanting in the Greek
text, romances about the fortunes of the soul, which,
sent from heaven to earth to fetch a pearl watched by
the serpent forgets its heavenly origin and calling,
and only remembers this after repeated reminders from
heaven, etc. Gutschmied has shown it to be probable
that the history groundwork of the Acts of Thomas is
borrowed from older Buddhist legends (§ 68, 6).
e. =The Acta Pauli et Thecla=, according to Tertullian and
Jerome, were composed by a presbyter of Asia Minor who,
carried away by the mania for literary forging, excused
himself by saying that he had written _Pauli amore_,
but was for this nevertheless deprived of his office.
According to these Acts Thecla, the betrothed bride
of a young man of importance at Iconium, was won to
Christianity by a sermon of Paul on continence as a
condition of a future glorious resurrection, forsook
her bridegroom, devoted herself to perpetual virginity,
and attached herself forthwith to the Apostle whose
bodily presence is described as contemptible,--little,
bald-headed, large nose, and bandy legs,--but lighted
up with heavenly grace. Led twice to martyrdom she was
saved by miraculous divine interposition, first from
the flames of the pile, then, after having baptized
herself in the name of Christ by plunging into a pit
full of water, from the rage of devouring animals;
whereupon Paul, recognising that sort of baptism in an
emergency as valid, sent her forth with the commission:
Go hence and teach the word of God! After converting
and instructing many, she died in peace in Seleucia.
Although Jerome treats our book as apocryphal, the
legends of Thecla as given in it were regarded in the
West as genuine, and St. Thecla was honoured throughout
the whole of the Latin middle ages next to the mother
of Jesus as the most perfect pattern of virginity.
In the Greek church where we meet with the name first
in the Symposium of Methodius, the book remained
unsuspected and its heroine, as ἡ ἀπόστολος and ἡ
πρωτομάρτυς, was honoured still more enthusiastically
than in the West.
f. The Syriac =Doctrina Addæi Apost.= was according to
its own statement deposited in the library of Edessa,
but allusions to later persons and circumstances show
that it could not have been written before A.D. 280
(according to Zahn about A.D. 270-290; acc. to Lipsius
not before A.D. 360). It assigns the founding of the
church of Edessa, which is proved to have been not
earlier than A.D. 170, according to local tradition
to the Apostle Addai [Addæi] (in Euseb. and elsewhere,
Thaddeus: comp. Matt. x. 3; Mark iii. 18), whom it
represents as one of the seventy disciples and as
having been sent by Thomas to Abgar Uchomo in accordance
with Christ’s promise (§ 13, 2).[88]
§ 32.7.
III. =Apostolic Epistles.= The apocryphal _Epistle of Paul to
the Laodiceans_ (Col. iv. 16), and that to the _Corinthians_
suggested by the statement in 1 Cor. v. 9, are spiritless
compilations from the canonical Epistles. From the
_Correspondence of Paul with Seneca_, quotations are made by
Jerome and Augustine. It embraces fourteen short epistles.
The idea of friendly relations between these two men
suggested by Acts xviii. 12, Gallio being Seneca’s brother,
forms the motive for the fiction.
IV. =The apocryphal Apocalypses= that have been preserved are of
little value. An _Apocalypsis Petri_ was known to Clement of
Alexandria. The _Apoc. Pauli_ is based on 2 Cor. xii. 2.
V. =Apostolical Constitutions=, comp. § 43, 4, 5.[89]
§ 32.8. =The Acts of the Martyrs.=--Of the numerous professedly
contemporary accounts of celebrated martyrs of the 2nd and 3rd
cents., those adopted by Eusebius in his Church History may be
accepted as genuine; especially the _Epistle of the Church of
Smyrna to the Church at Philomelium_ about the persecution which
it suffered (§ 22, 3); also the _Report of the Church at Lyons
and Vienne_ to the Christians in Asia and Phrygia about the
persecution under Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 177 (§ 22, 3); and an
_Epistle of Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria_ to Fabian of Antioch
about the Alexandrian martyrs and confessors during the Decian
persecution. The Acts of the Martyrs of Scillita are also genuine
(§ 22, 3); so too the Montanistic History of the sufferings of
Perpetua, Felicitas, and their companions (§§ 22, 4; 40, 3); as
well as the _Acta s. Cypriani_. The main part of the _Martyrdom
of Justin Martyr_ by Simeon Metaphr. (§ 68, 4) belongs
probably to the 2nd cent. The _Martyrdom of Ignatius_ (§ 30, 5)
professedly by his companions in his last journey to Rome, and
the _Martyrdom of Sympherosa_ in the Tiber, who was put to death
with her seven sons under Hadrian, as well as all other Acts of
the Martyrs professedly belonging to the first four centuries,
are of more than doubtful authenticity.
§ 33. THE DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES OF THE
OLD CATHOLIC AGE.[90]
The development of the system of Christian doctrine must become a
necessity when Christianity meeting with pagan culture in the form of
science is called upon to defend her claim to be the universal religion.
In the first three centuries, however, there was as yet no official
construction and establishment of ecclesiastical doctrine. There
must first be a certain measure of free subjective development and
wrestling with antagonistic views. A universally acknowledged organ is
wanting, such as that subsequently found in the Œcumenical Councils.
The persecutions allowed no time and peace for this; and the church had
enough to do in maintaining what is specifically Christian in opposition
to the intrusion of such anti-Christian, Jewish and Pagan elements
as sought to gain a footing in Ebionism and Gnosticism. On the other
hand, friction and controversy within the church had already begun
as a preparation for the construction of the ecclesiastical system of
doctrine. The _Trinitarian_ controversy was by far the most important,
while the _Chiliastic_ discussions were of significance for Eschatology.
§ 33.1. =The Trinitarian Questions.=--The discussion was mainly
about the relation of the divine μοναρχία (the unity of God) to
the οἰκονομία (the Trinitarian being and movement of God). Then
the relation of the Son or Logos to the Father came decidedly
to the front. From the time when the more exact determination of
this relationship came to be discussed, toward the end of the 2nd
cent., the most eminent teachers of the Catholic church maintained
stoutly the personal independence of the Logos--=Hypostasianism=.
But the necessity for keeping this view in harmony with the
monotheistic doctrine of Christianity led to many errors and
vacillations. Adopting Philo’s distinction of λόγος ἐνδιάθετος
and λόγος προφορικός (§ 10, 1), they for the most part regarded
the hypostasizing as conditioned first by the creating of the
world and as coming forth not as a necessary and eternal element
in the very life of God but as a free and temporal act of the
divine will. The proper essence of the Godhead was identified
rather with the Father, and all attributes of the Godhead were
ascribed to the Son not in a wholly equal measure as to the
Father, for the word of Christ: “the Father is greater than I”
(John xiv. 28), was applied even to the pre-existent state of
Christ. Still greater was the uncertainty regarding the Holy
Spirit. The idea of His personality and independence was far less
securely established; He was much more decidedly subordinated,
and the functions of inspiration and sanctification proper to
Him were ascribed to Christ, or He was simply identified with
the Son of God. The result, however, of such _subordinationist
hypostasianism_ was that, on the one hand, many church teachers
laid undue stress on the fundamental anti-pagan doctrine of the
unity of God, just as on the other hand, many had indulged in
exaggerated statements about the divinity of Christ. It seemed
therefore desirable to set aside altogether the question of the
personal distinction of the Son and Spirit from the Father. This
happened either in the way clearly favoured by the Ebionites who
regarded Christ as a mere man, who, like the prophets, though
in a much higher measure, had been endued with divine wisdom and
power (_dynamic_ =Monarchianism=), or in a way more accordant
with the Christian mode of thought, admitting that the fulness
of the Godhead dwelt in Christ, and either identifying the
Logos with the Father (_Patripassianism_), or seeing in Him
only a mode of the activity of the Father (_modal Monarchianism_).
Monarchianism in all these forms was pronounced heretical by all
the most illustrious fathers of the 3rd cent., and hypostasianism
was declared orthodox. But even under hypostasianism an
element of error crept in at a later period in the form of
subordinationism, and modal Monarchianism approached nearer
to the church doctrine by adopting the doctrine of sameness
of essence (ὁμοουσία) in Son and Father. The orthodox combination
of the two opposites was reached in the 3rd cent, in _homoousian
hypostasianism_, but only in the 4th cent. attained universal
acceptance (§ 50).
§ 33.2. =The Alogians.=--Soon after A.D. 170 in Asia Minor we
meet with the Alogians as the first decided opponents from within
the church of Logos doctrine laid down in the Gospel by John
and the writings of the Apologists. They started in diametrical
opposition to the chiliasm of the Montanists and their claims
to prophetic gifts, and were thus led not only to repudiate the
Apocalypse but also the Gospel of John; the former on account of
its chiliast-prophetic contents which embraced so much that was
unintelligible, yea absurd and untrue; the latter, first of all
on account of the use the Montanists made of its doctrine of the
Paraclete in support of their prophetic claims (§ 40, 1), but
also on account of its seeming contradictions of and departures
from the narratives of the Synoptists, and finally, on account
of its Logos doctrine in which the immediate transition from the
incarnation of the Logos to the active life of Christ probably
seemed to them too closely resembling docetic Gnosticism. They
therefore attributed to the Gnosticizing Judaist, Cerinthus, the
authorship both of the Fourth Gospel and of the Apocalypse. Of
their own Christological theories we have no exact information.
Irenæus and Hippolytus deal mildly with them and recognise
them as members of the Catholic church. It is Epiphanius who
first gives them the equivocal designation of Alogians (which
may either be “deniers of the Logos” or “the irrational”),
denouncing them as heretical rejecters of the Logos doctrine
and the Logos-Gospel. This is the first instance which we have of
historical criticism being exercised in the Church with reference
to the biblical books.
§ 33.3. =The Theodotians and Artemonites.=--Epiphanius describes
the sect of the Theodotians at Rome as an ἀπόσπασμα τῆς ἀλόγου
αἱρέσεως. The main source of information about them is the Little
Labyrinth (§ 31, 3), and next to it Hippolytus in his Syntagma,
quoted by the Pseudo-Tertullian and Epiphanius, and in his
Elenchus. The founder of this sect, =Theodotus= ὁ σκυτεύς, _the
Tanner_, a man well trained in Greek culture, came A.D. 190 to
Byzantium where, during the persecution, he denied Christ, and
on this account changed his residence to Rome and devoted himself
here to the spread of his dynamic Monarchianism. He maintained
ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶναι τὸν Χριστόν,--_Spiritu quidem sancto
natum ex virgine, sed hominem nudum nulla alia præ cæteris nisi
sola justitæ auctoritate_. He sought to justify his views by
a one-sided interpretation of scripture passages referring to
the human nature of Christ.[91] But since he acknowledged the
supernatural birth of Christ as well as the genuineness of the
Gospel of John, and in other respects agreed with his opponents,
he could still represent himself as standing on the basis of
the Old Catholic _Regula fidei_ (§ 35, 2). Nevertheless the
Roman bishop Victor (A.D. 189-199) excommunicated him and his
followers. The most distinguished among his disciples was a
_second_ =Theodotus= ὁ τραπεζίτης, the _Money-changer_. By an
exegesis of Heb. v. 6, 10; vi. 20; vii. 3, 17, he sought to prove
that Melchisedec was δύναμις τίς μεγίστη and more glorious than
Christ; the former was the original type, the latter only the
copy; the former was intercessor before God for the angels,
the latter only for men; the origin of the former is secret,
because truly heavenly, that of Christ open, because born of
Mary. The later heresiologists therefore designate his followers
Melchisedecians. Laying hold upon the theory φύσει τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ
θεοῦ ἐν ἰδέᾳ ἀνθρώπου τότε τῷ Ἀβραὰμ πεφηνέναι which, according
to Epiphanius, was held even by Catholics, and also, like the
Shepherd of Hermas, identifying the Son of God with the Holy
Spirit that descended in baptism on the man Jesus, Theodotus
seems from those two points of view to have proceeded to
teach, that the historical Christ, because operated upon only
dynamically by the Holy Spirit or the Son of God, was inferior to
the purely heavenly Melchisedec who was himself the very eternal
Son of God. The reproaches directed against the Theodotians by
their opponents were mainly these: that instead of the usual
allegorical exegesis they used only a literal and grammatical,
that they practised an arbitrary system of Textual criticism, and
that instead of holding to the philosophy of the divine Plato,
they took their wisdom from the empiricists (Aristotle, Euclid,
Galen, etc.), and sought by such objectionable means to support
their heretical views. We have thus probably to see in them a
group of Roman theologians, who, towards the close of the 2nd
cent. and the beginning of the 3rd cent. maintained exegetical
and critical principles essentially the same as those which the
Antiochean school with greater clearness and definiteness set
forth toward the end of the 3rd cent. (§§ 31, 1; 47, 1). The
attempt, however, which they made to found an independent sect
in Rome about A.D. 210 was an utter failure. According to the
report of the Little Labyrinth, they succeeded in getting for
their bishop a weak-minded confessor called Natalius. Haunted
by visions of judgment and beaten sore one night by good angels
till in a miserable plight, he hasted on the following morning
to cast himself at the feet of bishop Zephyrinus (A.D. 199-217),
successor of Victor, and showing his stripes he begged for
mercy and restoration.--The last of the representatives of the
Theodotians in Rome, and that too under this same Zephyrinus, was
a certain =Artemon= or Artemas. He and his followers maintained
that their own doctrine (which cannot be very exactly determined
but was also of the dynamic order) had been recognised in Rome
as orthodox from the time of the Apostles down to that of bishop
Victor, and was first condemned by his successor Zephyrinus. This
assertion cannot be said to be altogether without foundation in
view, on the one hand, of the agreement above referred to between
Theodotus the younger and the Roman Hermas, and on the other hand,
of the fact that the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus had
passed over to Noëtian _Modalism_. Artemon must have lived at
least until A.D. 260, when Paul of Samosata (§ 33, 8), who also
maintained fellowship with the excommunicated Artemonites in
Rome, conducted a correspondence with him.
§ 33.4. =Praxeas and Tertullian.=--Patripassianism, which
represented the Father Himself as becoming man and suffering in
Christ, may be characterized as the precursor and first crude
form of Modalism. It also had its origin during the 2nd cent.,
in that same intellectually active church of Asia Minor, and
from thence the movement spread to Rome, where after a long and
bitter struggle it secured a footing in the 3rd cent.--=Praxeas=,
a confessor of Asia Minor and opponent of Montanism, was its first
representative at Rome, where unopposed he expounded his views
about A.D. 190. As he supported the Roman bishop Victor in his
condemnation of Montanism (§ 40, 2), so he seems to have won
the bishop’s approval for his Christological theory.[92] Perhaps
also the excommunication which was at this time uttered against
the dynamic Monarchian, Theodotus the Elder, was the result of
the bishop’s change of views. From Rome Praxeas betook himself,
mainly in the interest of his Anti-Montanist crusade, to Carthage,
and there also won adherents to his Christology. Meanwhile,
however, Tertullian returned to Carthage, and as a convert
to Montanism, hurled against Praxeas and his followers a
controversial treatise, in which he laid bare with acute
dialectic the weaknesses and inconsistencies, as well as the
dangerous consequences of their theory. Just like the Alogians,
Praxeas and his adherents refused to admit the doctrine of the
Logos into their Christology, and feared that it in connection
with the doctrine of the hypostasis would give an advantage to
Gnosticism. In the interests of monotheism, as well as of the
worship of Christ, they maintained the perfect identity of Father
and Son. God became the Son by the assumption of the flesh;
under the concept of the Father therefore falls the divinity,
the spirit; under that of the Son, the humanity, the flesh of
the Redeemer.--=Tertullian= himself in his Hypostasianism had not
wholly got beyond the idea of subordinationism, but he made an
important advance in this direction by assuming three stages in
the hypostasizing of the Son (_Filiatio_). The first stage is
the eternal immanent state of being of the Son in the Father; the
second is the forthcoming of the Son alongside of the Father for
the purpose of creating the world; and the third is the going
forth of the Son into the world by means of the incarnation.
§ 33.5. =The Noëtians and Hippolytus.=--The Patripassian
standpoint was maintained also by =Noëtus= of Smyrna, who summed
up his Christological views in the sentence: the Son of God is
His own, and not another’s Son. One of his pupils, _Epigonus_,
in the time of bishop Zephyrinus brought this doctrine to Rome,
where a Noëtian sect was formed with Cleomenes at its head.
Sabellius too, who in A.D. 215 came to Rome from Ptolemais in
Egypt, attached himself to it, but afterwards constructed an
independent system of doctrine in the form of a more speculative
Modalism. The most vigorous opponent of the Noëtians was the
celebrated presbyter =Hippolytus= (§ 31, 3). He strongly insisted
upon the hypostasis of the Son and of the Spirit, and claimed
for them divine worship. But inasmuch as he maintained in all
its strictness the unity of God, he too was unable to avoid
subordinating the Son under the Father. The Son, he taught, owed
His hypostasizing to the will of the Father; the Father commands
and the Son obeys; the perfect Logos was the Son from eternity,
but οὐ λόγος ὡς φωνὴ, ἀλλ’ ἐνδιάθετος τοῦ πάντος λογισμός,
therefore in a hypostasis, which He became only at the creation
of the world, so that He became perfect Son first in the
incarnation. Bishop Zephyrinus, on the other hand, was not
inclined to bear hard upon the Noëtians, but sought in the
interests of peace some meeting-point for the two parties. The
conflagration fairly broke out under his successor, Callistus
(A.D. 217-222; comp. § 41, 1). Believing that truth and error
were to be found on both sides he defined his own position thus:
God is a spirit without parts, filling all things, giving life
to all, who as such is called Logos, and only in respect of name
is distinguished as Father and Son. The Pneuma become incarnate
in the Virgin is personally and essentially identical with the
Father. That which has thereby become manifest, the man Jesus,
is the Son. It therefore cannot be said that the Father as such
has suffered, but rather that the Father has suffered in and
with the Son. Decidedly Monarchian as this formula of compromise
undoubtedly is, it seems to have afforded the bridge upon which
the official Roman theology crossed over to the homoousian
Hypostasianism which forty years later won the day (§ 33, 7).
Among the opposing parties it found no acceptance. Hippolytus
denounced the bishop as a Noëtian, while the Noëtians nicknamed
him a Dytheist. The result was that the two party leaders,
Sabellius and Hippolytus, were excommunicated. The latter formed
the company of his adherents in Rome into a schismatic sect.
§ 33.6. =Beryllus and Origen.=--=Beryllus of Bostra=[93] in
Arabia also belonged to the Patripassians; but he marks the
transition to a nobler Modalism, for though he refuses to the
deity of Christ the ἰδία θεότης, he designates it πατρικὴ θεότης,
and sees in it a new form of the manifestation (πρόσωπον) of
God. In regard to him an Arabian Synod was held in A.D. 244,
to which =Origen= was invited. Convinced by him of his error,
Beryll [Beryllus] retracted.--All previous representatives of
the hypostasis of the Logos had understood his hypostatizing
as happening in time for the purpose of the creation and the
incarnation. =Origen= removed this restriction when he enunciated
the proposition: The Son is from eternity begotten of the Father
and so from eternity an hypostasis. The generation of the Son
took not place simply as the condition of creation, but as of
itself necessary, for where there is light there must be the
shedding forth of rays. But because the life of God is bound
to no time, the objectivizing of His life in the Son must also
lie outside of all time. It is not therefore an act of God
accomplished once and for ever, but an eternally continued
exercise of living power (ἀεὶ γεννᾲ τὸν υἱόν). Origen did not
indeed get beyond subordinationism, but he restricted it within
the narrowest possible limits. He condemns the expression that
the Son is ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός, but only in opposition
to the Gnostic theories of emanation. He maintained a ἑτερότης
τῆς οὐσίας, but only in opposition to the ὁμοούσιος in the
Patripassian sense. He teaches a generation of the Son ἐκ τοῦ
θελήματος θεοῦ, but only because he sees in Him the objectified
divine will. He calls Him a κτίσμα, but only in so far as He is
θεοποιούμενος, not αὐτόθεος, though indeed the Son is αὐτοσοφία,
αὐτοαλήθεια, δεύτερος θεός. Thus what he teaches is not a
subordination of essence or nature, but only of existence or
origin.
§ 33.7. =Sabellius and Dionysius of Alex. and Dionysius of
Rome.=--We have already seen that =Sabellius= had founded in
Rome a speculative Manichæan system, which found much favour
among the bishops of his native region. His assigning an essential
and necessary place in his system to the Holy Spirit indicates
an important advance. God is a unity (μονάς) admitting of no
distinctions, resting in Himself as θεὸς σιωπών coming forth
out of Himself (for the purpose of creation) as θεὸς λαλῶν. In
the course of the world’s development the Monas for the sake of
redemption assumes necessarily three different forms of being
(ὀνόματα πρόσωπα), each of which embraces in it the complete
fulness of the Monas. They are not ὑποστάσεις, but πρόσωπα, masks,
we might say roles, which the God who manifests Himself in the
world assumes in succession. After the _prosopon_ of the Father
accomplished its work in the giving of the law, it fell back into
its original condition; advancing again through the incarnation
as Son, it returns by the ascension into the absolute being of
the Monas; it reveals itself finally as the Holy Spirit to return
again, after securing the perfect sanctification of the church,
into the Monas that knows no distinctions, there to abide through
all eternity. This process is characterized by Sabellius as
an expansion (ἔκτασις) and contraction (συστολή). By way of
illustration he uses the figure of the sun ὄντος μὲν ἐν μίᾳ
ὑποστάσει, τρεῖς δὲ ἔχοντος τὰς ἐνεργείας, namely τὸ τῆς
περιφερείας σχῆμα, τὸ φωτιστικὸν καὶ τὸ θάλπον.--At a Synod of
Alexandria in A.D. 261 =Dionysius the Great= (§ 31, 6) entered
the lists against the Sabellianism of the Egyptian bishops, and
with well-intentioned zeal employed subordinationist expressions
in a highly offensive way (ξένον κατ’ οὐσίαν αὐτὸν εἶναι τοῦ
Πατρὸς ὥσπερ ἐστὶν ὁ γεωργὸς πρὸς τὴν ἄμπελον καὶ ὁ ναυπηγὸς πρὸς
τὸ σκάφος,--ὡς ποίημα ὢν οὐκ ἦν πρὶν γέννηται). When bishop
=Dionysius of Rome= (A.D. 259-268) was informed of these
proceedings he condemned his Alexandrian colleague’s modes of
expression at a Synod at Rome in A.D. 262, and issued a tract
(Ἀνατροπή), in which against Sabellius he affirmed hypostasianism
and against the Alexandrians, notwithstanding the suspicion of
Manichæanism that hung about it, the doctrine of the ὁμοουσία
and the eternal generation of the Son. With a beautiful modesty
Dionysius of Alexandria retracted his unhappily chosen phrases
and declared himself in thorough agreement with the Roman
exposition of doctrine.
§ 33.8. =Paul of Samosata.=--In Rome and throughout the West
general dynamical Monarchianism expired with Artemon and his
party. In the East, however, it was revived by Paul of Samosata,
in A.D. 260 bishop of the Græco-Syrian capital Antioch, which,
however, was then under the rule of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra.
Attaching himself to the other dynamists, especially the
Theodotians and Artemonites, he went in many respects beyond them.
Maintaining as they did the unipersonality of God (ἓν πρόσωπον),
he yet admitted a distinction of Father, Son (λόγος) and Spirit
(σοφία) the two last, however, being essentially identical
attributes of the first, and also the distinction of the
λόγος προφορικός from the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the one being the
ἐπιστήμη ἀνυπόστατος operative in the prophets, the other the
ἐπ. ἀνυπ. latent in God. Further, while placing like the dynamists
the personality of Christ in His humanity and acknowledging
His supernatural birth from the Holy Spirit by the Virgin, he
conceived of Him, like the modern Socinians, as working the
way upward, ἐκ προκοπῆς τεθεοποιῆσθαι, _i.e._ by reason of His
unique excellence to divine rank and the obtaining of the divine
name.--Between A.D. 264-269 the Syrian bishops held three large
Synods in regard to him at Antioch, to which also many other
famous bishops of the East were invited. The first two were
without result, for he knew how to conceal the heterodox character
of his views. It was only at the third that the presbyter Malchion,
a practised dialectician and formerly a rhetorician, succeeded
in unmasking him at a public disputation. The Synod now declared
him excommunicated and deprived him of his office, and also
transmitted to all the catholic churches, first of all to Rome
and Alexandria, the records of the disputation together with
a complete report in which he was described as a proud, vain,
pompous, covetous and even immoral man (§ 39, 3). Nevertheless
by the favour of the Queen he kept possession of his bishopric,
and holding a high office at the court he exercised not only
spiritual functions but also great civil authority. But when
Zenobia was overcome by Aurelian in A.D. 272, the rest of the
bishops accused him before the pagan emperor, who decided that
the ecclesiastical buildings should be made over to that one
of the contending bishops whom the Christian bishops of Rome
and Italy should recognise. In these conflicts undoubtedly a
national and political antagonism lay behind the dogmatic and
ecclesiastical dispute (§ 31, 9 e).--At the Synod of A.D. 269
the expression ὁμοούσιος, which since it had been first used by
Sabellius was always regarded with suspicion in church circles,
was dragged into the debate and expressly condemned; and so it is
doubtful whether Paul himself had employed it, or whether, on the
contrary, he wished to charge his opponents with heresy as being
wont to use this term.
§ 33.9. =Chiliasm= or the doctrine of an earthly reign of the
Messiah in the last times full of splendour and glory for His
people arose out of the literal and realistic conception of the
Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The adoption of the
period of a thousand years for its duration rested on the idea
that as the world had been created in six days, so, according
to Ps. xc. 4 and 2 Pet. iii. 8, its history would be completed
in six thousand years. Under the oppression of the Roman rule
this notion came to be regarded as a fundamental doctrine of
Jewish faith and hope (Matt. xx. 21; Acts i. 6). The Apocalypse
of St. John was chiefly influential in elaborating the Christian
chiliastic theory. In chap. xx. under the guise of vision the
doctrine is set forth that after the finally victorious conflict
of the present age there will be a first and partial resurrection,
the risen saints shall reign with Christ a thousand years, and
then after another revolt of Satan that is soon suppressed the
present age will be closed in the second universal resurrection,
the judgment of the world and the creation of new heavens and a
new earth. What fantastic notions of the glory of the thousand
years’ reign might be developed from such passages, is seen in
the traditional saying of the Lord given by Papias (_Iren._,
v. 33) about the wonderful fruitfulness of the earth during the
millennium: one vine-stock will bear 10,000 stems (palmites),
each stem will have 10,000 branches (bracchia), each branch
10,000 twigs (flagella), each twig 10,000 clusters (botrus), each
cluster 10,000 grapes, and every grape will yield 25 measures
of wine; “_et quum eorum apprehenderit aliquis Sanctorum,
alius clamabit: Botrus ego melior sum, me sume, per me Dominum
benedic_!” After the time of Papias Chiliasm became the favourite
doctrine of the Christians who under the severe pressure of
pagan persecution longed for the early return of the Lord. The
Apologists of the 2nd century do indeed pass it over in silence,
but only perhaps because it seemed to them impolitic to give
it a marked prominence in works directly addressed to the pagan
rulers; at least Justin Martyr does not scruple in the _Dialog.
c. Tryph._ addressed to another class of readers to characterize
it as a genuinely orthodox doctrine. Asia Minor was the chief
seat of these views, where, as we have seen (§ 40), Montanism
also in its most fanatical and exaggerated form was elevated
into a fundamental article of the Christian faith. Irenæus
enthusiastically adopted chiliastic views and gave a full though
fairly moderate exposition of them in his great work against the
Gnostics (v. 24-36). Tertullian also championed these notions,
at the same time rejecting many outgrowths of a grossly carnal
nature (_Adv. Marc._, iii. 24, and in a work no longer extant,
_De spe fidelium_). The most vigorous opposition is shown to
Chiliasm by the Alogians, Praxeas the Patripassian and Caius
of Rome, who were also the determined opponents of Montanism.
The last named indeed went so far in his controversial writing
against Proclus the Montanist, as to ascribe the authorship of
the Johannine Apocalypse to the heretic Cerinthus (§ 27, 1).
The Alexandrian spiritualists too, especially Origen (_De Prin._,
ii. 11), were decided opponents of every form of Chiliasm and
explained away the Scripture passages on which it was built by
means of allegorical interpretation. Nevertheless even in Egypt
it had numerous adherents. At their head about the middle of
the 3rd cent. stood the learned bishop Nepos of Arsinoe, whose
Ἔλεγχος τῶν ἀλληγοριστῶν directed against the Alexandrians is no
longer extant. After his death his party under the leadership of
the presbyter Coracion separated from the church of Alexandria,
the bishop Dionysius the Great going down himself expressly
to Arsinoe in order to heal the breach. In a conference of the
leaders of the parties continued for three days he secured the
sincere respect of the dissentients by his counsels, and even
Coracion was induced to make a formal recantation. Dionysius
then wrote for the confirmation of the converts his book: Περὶ
ἐπαγγελιῶν. But not long after, opposition to the spiritualism of
the school of Origen made Methodius, the bishop of Olympus, play
the part of a new herald of Chiliasm, and in the West, Commodian,
Victor of Poitiers, and especially Lactantius, became its zealous
advocates in a particularly materialistic form. Its day, however,
was already past. What tended most to work its complete overthrow
was the course of events under Constantine. Amid the rejoicings
of the national church as a present reality, interest in the
expectation of a future thousand years’ reign was lost. Among
post-Constantine church teachers only Apollinaris the Younger
favoured Chiliasm (§ 47, 5). Jerome indeed, in deference to the
cloud of witnesses from the ancient church, does not venture to
pronounce it heretical, but treats it with scornful ridicule;
and Augustine (_De civ. Dei_), though at an earlier period not
unfavourable to it, sets it aside by showing that the scriptural
representations of the thousand years’ reign are to be understood
as referring to the church obtaining dominion through the
overthrow of the pagan Roman empire, the thousand years being a
period of indefinite duration, and the first resurrection being
interpreted of the reception of saints and martyrs into heaven
as sharers in the glory of Christ.--See Candlish, “The Kingdom of
God.” Edin., 1884. Especially pp. 409-415, “Augustine on the City
of God.”
IV. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP, LIFE AND DISCIPLINE.[94]
§ 34. THE INNER ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.[95]
From the beginning of the 2nd cent. the episcopal constitution
was gradually built up, and the superiority of one bishop over the
whole body of the other presbyters (§ 17, 6) won by degrees universal
acceptance. The hierarchical tendency inherent in it gained fresh
impetus from two causes: (1) from the gradual disappearance of the
charismatic endowments which had been continued from the Apostolic
Age far down into post-Apostolic times, and the disposition of
ecclesiastical leaders more and more to monopolise the function
of teaching; and (2) from the reassertion of the idea of a special
priesthood as a divine institution and the adoption of Old Testament
conceptions of church officers. The antithesis of _Ordo_ or κλῆρος
(sc. τοῦ θεοῦ) and _Plebs_ or λαός (λαϊκοί) when once expression had
been given to it, tended to become even more marked and exclusive. In
consequence of the successful extension of the churches the functions,
rights and duties of the existing spiritual offices came to be more
precisely determined and for the discharge of lower ecclesiastical
service new offices were created. Thus arose the partition of the
clergy into _Ordines majores_ and _Ordines minores_. As it was in the
provincial capital that common councils were held, which were convened,
at first in consequence of the requirements of the hour, afterwards as
regular institutions (Provincial Synods), the bishop of the particular
capital assumed the president’s chair. Among the metropolitans
pre-eminence was claimed by churches founded by Apostles (_sedes
apostolicæ_), especially those of Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria,
Ephesus and Corinth. To the idea of the =unity and catholicity of
the church=, which was maintained and set forth with ever increasing
decision, was added the idea of the Apostle Peter being the single
individual representative of the church. This latter notion was founded
on the misunderstood word of the Lord, Matt. xvi. 18, 19. Rome, as the
capital of the world, where Peter and Paul suffered death as martyrs
(§ 16, 1), arrogated to itself the name of _Chair_ (Cathedra) _of Peter_
and transferred the idea of the individual representation of the church
to its bishops as the supposed successors of Peter.
§ 34.1. =The Continuation of Charismatic Endowments into
Post-Apostolic Times= has, by means of the Apostolic Didache
recently rendered accessible to us (§ 30, 7), not only received
new confirmation, but their place in the church and their relation
to it has been put in a far clearer light. In essential agreement
with 1 Cor. xii. 28, and Eph. iv. 11 (§ 17, 5), it presents to
us the three offices of Apostle, Prophet and Teacher. The Pastors
and Teachers of the Epistle to the Ephesians, as well as of
the passage from Corinthians, are grouped together in one; and
the Evangelists, that is, helpers of the Apostles, appear now
after the decease of the original Apostles, as their successors
and heirs of their missionary calling under the same title of
Apostles. Hermas indeed speaks only of Apostles and Teachers;
but he himself appears as a Prophet and so witnesses to the
continuance of that office. The place and task of the three
offices are still the same as described in § 17, 5 from Eph.
iv. 11, 12 and ii. 20. These three were not chosen like the
bishops and deacons by the congregations, but appointment and
qualifications for office were dependent on a divine call,
somewhat like that of Acts xiii. 2-4, or on a charism that had
evidently and admittedly been bestowed on them. They are further
not permanent officials in particular congregations but travel
about in the exercise of their teaching function from church to
church. Prophets and Teachers, however, but not Apostles, might
settle down permanently in a particular church.--In reference
exclusively to the =Apostles= the Didache teaches as follows:
In the case of their visiting an already constituted church
they should stay there at furthest only two days and should
accept provision only for one day’s journey but upon no account
any money (Matt. x. 9, 10). Eusebius too, in his Ch. Hist.,
iii. 37, tells that after the death of the twelve the gospel was
successfully spread abroad in all lands by means of itinerating
Apostolic men, whom he designates, however, by the old name of
evangelists, and praises them for having according to the command
of the Lord (Matt. x. and Luke x.) parted their possessions among
the poor, and having adhered strictly to the rule of everywhere
laying only the foundations of the faith and leaving the further
care of what they had planted to the settled pastors.--The
Didache assigns the second place to the =Prophets=: they too,
inasmuch as like the Apostles they are itinerants, are without
a fixed residence; but they are distinguished from the latter by
having their teaching functions directed not to the founding of
a church but only to its edification, and in this respect they
are related to the Teachers. Their distinguishing characteristic,
however, is the possession of the charism of prophesying in the
wider sense, whereas the Teachers’ charism consisted in the λόγος
σοφίας and the λόγος γνώσεως (§ 17, 1). When they enter into a
church as ἐν πνεύματι λαλοῦντες, that church may not, according
to the Didache, in direct opposition to 1 Thess. v. 21; 1 Cor.
xii. 10; xiv. 29; 1 John iv. 1, exercise the right of trying
their doctrine, for that would be to commit the sin against the
Holy Ghost who speaks through them, but the church may inquire
of their life, and thus distinguish true prophets from the
false. If they wish to settle down in a particular church, that
church should make provision for their adequate maintenance by
surrendering to them, after the pattern of the Mosaic law, all
firstlings of cattle, and first fruits of grain and oil and wine,
and also the first portion of their other possessions, “for they
are your high priests.” This phrase means either, that for them
they are with their prophetic gift what the high priests of the
old covenant with their Urim and Thummim were to ancient Israel,
or, as Harnack understands it on the basis of chap. x. 7: τοῖς
προφήταις ἐπιτρέπετε εὐχαριστεῖν ὅσα θέλουσιν, while ordinary
ministers had to confine themselves to the usual formularies,
that they were pre-eminently entrusted with the administration of
the Lord’s Supper which was the crowning part of the worship. If,
however, there were no Prophets present, these first fruits were
to be distributed among the poor.--The rank also of =Teachers=
(διδάσκαλοι, Doctores) is still essentially the same as described
in § 17, 5. As their constant association with the Apostles
and Prophets would lead us to expect, they also were properly
itinerant teachers, who like the Prophets had to minister to
the establishment of existing churches in the Christian life,
in faith and in hope. But when they settled down in a particular
church, whether in consequence of that church’s special needs, or
with its approval in accordance with their own wish, that church
had to provide for their maintenance according to the principle
that the labourer is worthy of his reward. The author of the
Didache, as appears from the whole tenor of his book, was himself
such a teacher. Hermas, who at the same time makes no mention of
the Prophets, speaks only twice and that quite incidentally of
the Teachers, without indicating particularly their duties and
privileges.--The continuance of those three extraordinary offices
down to the end of the 2nd cent. was of the utmost importance.
The numerous churches scattered throughout all lands had not
as yet a firmly established New Testament Canon nor any one
general symbol in the form of a confession of faith, and so
were without any outward bond of union: but these Teachers, by
means of their itinerant mode of life and their authoritative
position, which was for the first time clearly demonstrated by
Harnack, contributed powerfully to the development of the idea
of ecclesiastical unity. According to Harnack, the composition
of the so-called Catholic Epistles and similar early Christian
literature is to be assigned to them, and in this way he would
account for the Apostolic features which are discoverable
in these writings. He would not, however, attribute to them
the fiction of claiming for their works an Apostolic origin,
but supposes that the subsequently added superscriptions
and the author’s name in the address rest upon an erroneous
tradition.--The gradual disappearance of charismatic offices was
mainly the result of the endeavour, that became more and more
marked during the 2nd cent., after the adoption of current social
usages and institutions, which necessarily led to a repression
of the enthusiastic spirit out of which those offices had sprung
and which could scarcely reconcile itself with what seemed
to it worldly compromises and concessions. The fanatical and
eccentric pretension to prophetic gifts in Montanism, with its
uncompromising rigour (§ 40) and its withdrawal from church
fellowship, gave to these charismatic offices their deadly blow.
A further cause of their gradual decay may certainly be found in
their relation to the growing episcopal hierarchy. At the time of
the Didache, which knows nothing of a subordination of presbyters
under the bishop (indeed like Phil. i. 1, it makes no mention
of presbyters), this relation was one of thoroughly harmonious
co-ordination and co-operation. In the 13th chap. the exhortation
is given to choose only faithful and approved men as bishops
and deacons, “for they too discharge for you τὴν λειτουργίαν τῶν
προφητῶν καὶ διδασκάλων and so they represent along with those
the τετιμημένοι among you.” The service of prophets, according
to the Didache, was pre-eminently that of the ἀρχιερεῖς and so
there was entrusted to them the consecration of the elements
in the Lord’s Supper. This service the bishops and deacons
discharged, inasmuch as, in addition to their own special duties
as presidents of the congregation charged with its administration
and discipline, they were required in the absence of prophets
to conduct the worship. Then also they had to officiate as
Teachers (1 Tim. v. 17) when occasion required and the necessary
qualifications were possessed. But this peaceful co-operating
of the two orders undoubtedly soon and often gave place to
unseemly rivalry, and the hierarchical spirit obtruding itself
in the _Protepiscopate_ (§ 17, 6), which first of all reduced
its colleagues from their original equality to a position of
subordination soon asserted itself over against the extraordinary
offices which had held a place co-ordinate with and in the
department of doctrine and worship even more authoritative and
important than that of the bishops themselves. They were only too
readily successful in having their usurpation of their offices
recognised as bearing the authority of a divine appointment.
These soon completed the theory of the hierarchical and
monarchical rank of the clergy and the absurd pretension to
having obtained from God the absolute fulness of His Spirit and
absolute sovereign power.
§ 34.2. =The Development of the Episcopal Hierarchy= was the
result of an evolution which in existing circumstances was not
only natural but almost necessary. In the deliberations and
consultations of the college of presbyters constituting the
ecclesiastical court, just as in every other such assembly, it
must have been the invariable custom to confer upon one of their
number, generally the eldest, or at least the one among them most
highly esteemed, the presidency, committing to him the duty of
the orderly conduct of the debates, as well as the formulating,
publishing and enforcing of their decrees. This president must
soon have won the pre-eminent authority of a _primus inter pares_,
and have come to be regarded as an ἐπίσκοπος of higher rank.
From such a primacy to supremacy, and from that to a monarchical
position, the progress was natural and easy. In proportion as the
official authority, the ἐπισκοπή, concentrated itself more and
more in the president, the official title, ἐπίσκοπος, at first by
way of eminence, then absolutely, was appropriated to him. This
would be all the more easily effected since, owing to the twofold
function of the office (§ 17, 5, 6), he who presided in the
administrative council still bore the title of πρεσβύτερος. It
was not accomplished, however, without a long continued struggle
on the part of the presbyters who were relegated to a subordinate
rank, which occasioned keen party contentions and divisions
lasting down even into the 3rd century (§ 41). But the need of
the churches to have in each one man to direct and control was
mightier than this opposition. That need was most keenly felt
when the church was threatened with division and dissolution
by the spread of heretical and separatist tendencies. The need
of a single president in the local churches was specially felt
in times of violent persecution, and still more just after the
persecution had ceased when multitudes who had fallen away during
the days of trial sought to be again restored to the membership
of the church (§ 39, 2), in order to secure the reorganization
of the institution which, by violence from without and weakness
within, had been so sorely rent. Both in the Old and in the New
Testament there seemed ground for regarding the order of things
that had grown up in the course of time as _jure divino_ and
as existing from the beginning. After the idea of a distinct
sacerdotal class had again found favour, the distribution of
the clergy in the Old Testament into High priest, priests and
Levites was supposed to afford an exact analogy to that of
the episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate. To effect this the
charismatic offices of teaching had to be ignored and their
divinely ordained functions had to be set aside. It was even
supposed that the relative ranks in the offices of the Christian
church must be determined by the corresponding orders in the Old
Testament. Then in the gospels, it seemed as if the relations of
Christ to His disciples corresponded to that of the bishop to the
presbyters; and from the Acts of the Apostles the preponderating
authority of James at the head of the Jerusalem presbytery or
eldership (§ 17, 2) might be used as a witness for the supremacy
of the bishop. The oldest and most important contender for the
monarchical rank of the bishop is the author of the _Ignatian
Epistles_ (§ 30, 5). In every bishop he sees the representative
of Christ, and in the college of presbyters the representatives
of the Apostles. In the _Clementines_ too the bishop appears
as ἐπὶ τῆς Χριστοῦ καθέδρας καθεσθείς. This view also finds
expression in the _Apostolic Constitutions_ (2, 26), and even in
the writings of _Dionysius the Areopagite_ (§ 47, 11). Another
theory, according to which the bishops are successors of the
Apostles and as such heirs of the absolute dominion conferred in
Matt. xiv. 18, 19 upon Peter and through him on all the Apostles,
sprang up in the West and gained currency by means of Cyprian’s
eloquent enunciation of it (§ 34, 7).
§ 34.3. =The Regular Ecclesiastical Offices of the Old Catholic
Age.= The =Ordines Majores= embraced the Bishops, Presbyters
and Deacons. Upon the =Bishop=, elected by the people and the
clergy in common, there devolved in his monarchical position the
supreme conduct of all the affairs of the church. The exclusively
episcopal privileges were these: the ordination of presbyters
and deacons, the absolving of the penitent, according to strict
rule also the consecration of the eucharistic elements, in later
times also the right of speaking at Synods, and in the West also
the confirmation of the baptised. In large cities where a single
church was no longer sufficient daughter churches were instituted.
Country churches founded outside of the cities were supplied
with presbyters and deacons from the city. If they increased
in importance, they chose for themselves their own bishop, who
remained, however, as Χωρεπίσκοπος dependent upon the city bishop.
Thus distinctly official episcopal dioceses came to be formed.
And just as the city bishops had a pre-eminence over the country
bishops, so also the bishops of the chief cities of provinces
soon came as metropolitans to have a pre-eminence over those
of other cities. To them was granted the right of calling and
presiding at the Synods, and of appointing and ordaining the
bishops of their province. The name Metropolitan, however, was
first used in the Acts of the Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325.--The
=Presbyters= were now only the advisers and assistants of the
bishop, whose counsel and help he accepted just in such ways and
at such times as seemed to him good. They were employed in the
directing of the affairs of the church, in the administration of
the sacrament, in preaching and in pastoral work, but only at the
bidding or with the express permission of the bishop. During the
following period for the first time, when demands had multiplied,
and the episcopal authority was no longer in need of being
jealously guarded, were their functions enlarged to embrace
an independent pastoral care, preaching and dispensation of the
sacraments for which they were personally responsible.--In regard
to official position the =Deacons= had a career just the converse
of this; for their importance increased just as the range
of their official functions was enlarged. Seeing that in the
earliest times they had occupied a position subordinate to the
presbyter-bishops, they could not be regarded in this way as
their rivals; and the development of the proto-presbyterate into
a monarchical episcopate was too evidently in their own interests
to awaken any opposition on their part. They therefore stood in a
far closer relation to the bishops than did the presbyters. They
were his confidants, his companions in travel, often also his
deputies and representatives at the Synods. To them he committed
the distribution of the church’s alms, for which their original
charge of the poor qualified them. To these duties were added
also many of the parts of divine service; they baptised under the
commission of the bishop, obtained and prepared the sacramental
elements, handed round the cup, at the close of the service
carried to the sick and imprisoned the body and blood of the Lord,
intimated the beginning and the close of the various parts of
divine service, recited the public prayers, read the gospels, and
kept order during worship. Often, too, they preached the sermon.
In consequence of the preponderating position given to the Old
Testament idea of the priesthood the bishop was compared to the
high priest, the presbyters to the priests, and the deacons to
the Levites, and so too did they already assume the name, from
which the German word “Priester,” English “Priest,” French
“Prêtre,” Italian “Prête,” is derived.
Among the =Ordines Minores= the oldest was the office of =Reader=,
Ἀναγνώστης. In the time of Cyprian this place was heartily
accorded to the Confessors. In later times it was usual to begin
the clerical career with service in the readership. The duties
of this office were the public reading of the longer scripture
portions and the custody of the sacred books. Somewhat later than
the readership the office of the =Subdiaconi=, ὑποδιάκονοι was
instituted. They were assistants to the Deacons, and as such
took first rank among the _Ordines Minores_, and of these were
alone regarded as worthy of ordination. Toward the end of the 3rd
century the office of the =Cantores=, ψαλταί, was instituted for
the conducting of the public service of praise. The =Acolytes=,
who are met with in Rome first about the middle of the 3rd
century, were those who accompanied the bishop as his servants.
The =Exorcists= discharged the spiritual function of dealing with
those possessed of evil spirits, ἐνεργούμενοι, δαιμονιζόμενοι,
over whom they had to repeat the public prayers and the formula
of exorcism. As there was also an exorcism associated with
baptism, the official functions of the exorcists extended to
the catechumens. The =Ostiarii= or =Janitores=, θυρωροί, πυλωροί,
occupied the lowest position.--In the larger churches for the
instruction of the catechumens there were special =Catechists=
appointed, _Doctores audientium_, and where the need was
felt, especially in the churches of North Africa speaking
the Punic tongue, there were also =Interpreters= whose duty
it was to translate and interpret the scripture lessons. To
the =Deaconesses=, for the most part widows or virgins, was
committed the care of the poor and sick, the counselling of
inexperienced women and maidens, the general oversight of
the female catechumens. They had no clerical character.--The
=Ordination= of the clergy was performed by the laying on
of hands. Those were disqualified who had just recently been
baptised or had received baptism only during severe illness
(_Neophyti_, _Clinici_), also all who had been excommunicated
and those who had mutilated themselves.--Continuation, § 45, 3.
§ 34.4. =Clergy and Laity.=--The idea that a priestly mediation
between sinful men and a gracious deity was necessary had been so
deeply implanted in the religious consciousness of pre-Christian
antiquity, pagan as well as Jewish, that a form of public worship
without a priesthood seemed almost as inconceivable as a religion
without a god. And even though the inspired writings of the New
Testament decidedly and expressly taught that the pre-Christian
or Old Testament institution of a special human priesthood
had been abolished and merged in the one eternal mediation
of the exalted Son of God and Son of man, and that there was
now a universal spiritual priesthood of all Christians with
the right and privilege of drawing near even to the heavenly
throne of grace (Heb. iv. 16; 1 Pet. ii. 5, 9; Rev. i. 6), yet,
in consequence of the idea of the permanence of Old Testament
institutions which prevailed, even in the Post-Apostolic Age,
the sacerdotal theory came more and more into favour. This
relapse to the Old Testament standpoint was moreover rendered
almost inevitable by the contemporary metamorphosis of the
ecclesiastical office which existed as the necessary basis of
human organisation (§ 17, 4) into a hierarchical organisation
resting upon an assumed divine institution. For clericalism,
with its claims to be the sole divinely authorised channel for
the communication of God’s grace, was the correlate and the
indispensable support of hierarchism, with its exclusive claims
to legislative, judicial, disciplinary and administrative
precedence in the affairs of the church. The reaction which
Montanism (§ 40) initiated in the interests of the Christian
people against the hierarchical and clerical tendencies spreading
throughout the church, was without result owing to its extreme
extravagance. Tertullian emphasised indeed very strongly the
Apostolic idea of the universal priesthood of all Christians, but
in Cyprian this is allowed to fall quite behind the priesthood
of the clergy and ultimately came to be quite forgotten.--The Old
Catholic Age, however, shows many reminiscences of the original
relation of the congregation to the ecclesiastical officers,
or as it would now be called, of the laity to the clergy. That
the official teaching of religion and preaching in the public
assemblies of the church, although as a rule undertaken by the
_Ordines majores_, might even then in special circumstances and
with due authorisation be discharged by laymen, was shown by
the Catechetical institution at Alexandria and by the case
of Origen who when only a Catechist often preached in the
church. The Apostolic Constitutions, too, 8, 31, supported the
view that laymen, if only they were skilful in the word and of
irreproachable lives, should preach by a reference to the promise:
“They shall be all taught of God.” The repeated expressions of
disapproval of the administration of the eucharist by laymen
in the Ignatian Epistles presupposes the frequent occurrence
of the practice; Tertullian would allow it in case of necessity,
for “_Ubi tres, ecclesia est, licet laici_.” Likewise in
reference to the administration of baptism he teaches that under
ordinary circumstances _propter ecclesiæ honorem_ it should be
administered only by the bishop and the clergy appointed by him
to the work, _alioquin_ (_e.g._ in times of persecution) _etiam
laicis jus est_. This, too, is the decision of the Council
of Elvira in A.D. 306. The report which Cyprian gives of his
procedure in regard to the vast number of the _Lapsi_ of his time
(§ 39, 2; 41, 2) affords evidence that at least in extraordinary
and specially difficult cases of discipline the whole church was
consulted. The people’s right to take part in the choice of their
minister had not yet been questioned, and their assistance at
least in the Synods was never refused.
§ 34.5. =The Synods.=--The Council of Apostles at Jerusalem
(Acts xv.) furnished an example of Synodal deliberation and
issuing of decrees. But even in the pagan world such institutions
had existed. The old religio-political confederacies in Greece
and Asia Minor had indeed since the time of the Roman conquest
lost their political significance; but their long accustomed
assemblies (κοιναὶ σύνοδοι, _Concilia_) continued to meet in
the capitals of the provinces under the presidency of the Roman
governor. The fact that the same nomenclature was adopted seems
to show that they were not without formal influence on the
origin of the institution of the church synod. The first occasion
for such meetings was given by the Montanist movements in Asia
Minor (§ 40, 1); and soon thereafter by the controversies about
the observance of Easter (§ 37, 2). In the beginning of the 3rd
century the Provincial Synods had already assumed the position
of fixed and regularly recurring institutions. In the time of
Cyprian, the presbyters and deacons took an active part in the
Synods alongside of the bishops, and the people generally were
not prevented from attending. No decision could be arrived at
without the knowledge and the acquiescence of the members of the
church. From the time of the Nicene Council, in A.D. 325, the
bishops alone had a vote and the presence of the laity was more
and more restricted. The decrees of Synods were communicated
to distant churches by means of Synodal rescripts, and even
in the 3rd century the claim was made in these, in accordance
with Acts xv., to the immediate enlightenment of the Holy
Spirit.--Continuation, § 43, 2.
§ 34.6. =Personal and Epistolary Intercourse.=--From the very
earliest times the Christian churches of all lands maintained
a regular communication with one another through messengers
or itinerating brethren. The _Teaching of the XII. Apostles_
furnishes the earliest account of this: Any one who comes from
another place in the name of the Lord shall be received as a
brother; one who is on his journey, however, shall not accept the
hospitality of the church for more than two, or at furthest than
three days; but if he chooses to remain in the place, he must
engage in work for his own support, in which matter the church
will help him; if he will not so conduct himself he is to be sent
back as a χριστέμπορος, who has been seeking to make profit out
of his profession of Christ. The Didache knows nothing as yet of
the letters of authentication among the earlier messengers of the
church which soon became necessary and customary. As a guarantee
against the abuse of this custom such συστατικαὶ ἐπιστολαί (2 Cor.
iii. 1) had come into use even in Tertullian’s time, who speaks
of a _Contesseratio hospitalitatis_, in such a form that they
were understood only by the initiated as recognisable tokens of
genuineness, and were hence called _Litteræ formatæ_, or γράμματα
τετυπωμένα. The same care was also taken in respect of important
epistolary communications from one church to another or to other
churches. Among these were included, _e.g._ the Synodal rescripts,
the so-called γράμματα ἐνθρονιστικά by which the newly-chosen
bishops intimated their entrance upon office to the other bishops
of their district, the _Epistolæ festales_ (paschales) regarding
the celebration of a festival, especially the Easter festival
(§ 56, 3), communications about important church occurrences,
especially about martyrdoms (§ 32, 8), etc. According to Optatus
of Mileve (§ 63, 1): “_Totus orbis_” could boast of “_comnmercio
formatarum in una communionis societate concordat_.”
§ 34.7. =The Unity and Catholicity of the Church.=--The fact
that Christianity was destined to be a religion for the world,
which should embrace all peoples and tongues, and should permeate
them all with one spirit and unite them under one heavenly
head, rested upon the presupposition that the church was one and
universal or catholic. The inward unity of the spirit demanded
also a corresponding unity in manifestation. It is specially
evident from the _Teaching of the XII. Apostles_ that the
consciousness of the unity of the church had deeply rooted itself
even in the Post-Apostolic Age (§ 20, 1). “The points which
according to it prove the unity of Christendom are the following:
firstly, the _disciplina_ in accordance with the ethical
requirements of the Lord, secondly, baptism in the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thirdly, the order of fasting and
prayer, especially the regular use of the Lord’s Prayer, and
fourthly and lastly, the eucharist, _i.e._ the sacred meal in
partaking of which the church gives thanks to God, the creator of
all things, for the revelation imparted to it through Jesus, for
faith and knowledge and immortality, and implores the fulfilment
of its hope, the overthrow of this world, the coming again of
Christ, and reception into the kingdom of God. He who has this
doctrine and acts in accordance with it is a ‘Christian,’ belongs
to ‘the saints,’ is a ‘brother,’ and ought to be received even
as the Lord” (Harnack). The struggle against the Gnostics had
the effect of transforming this primitive Christian idea of
unity into a consciousness of the necessity of adopting a common
doctrinal formula, which again this controversy rendered much
more definite and precise, to which a concise popular expression
was given in one common _Regula fidei_ (§ 35, 2), and by
means of which the specific idea of catholicity was developed
(§ 20, 2).--The misleading and dangerous thing about this
construction and consolidation of one great Catholic church was
that every deviation from external forms in the constitution and
worship as well as erroneous doctrine, immorality and apostasy,
was regarded as a departing from the one Catholic church, the
body of Christ, and consequently, since not only the body was
put upon the same level with the head, but even the garment of
the body was identified with the body itself, as a separating
from the communion of Christ, involving the loss of salvation
and eternal blessedness. This notion received a powerful
impulse during the 2nd century when the unity of the church
was threatened by heresies, sects and divisions. It reached
its consummation and won the _Magna Charta_ of its perfect
enunciation in Cyprian’s book _De Unitate Ecclesiæ_. In
the monarchical rank of the bishop of each church, as the
representative of Christ, over the college of presbyters, as
representatives of the Apostles, Ignatius of Antioch sees the
guarantee of the church’s unity. According to Cyprian, this unity
has its expression in the Apostolate; in the Episcopate it has
its support. The promise of Christ, Matt. xvi. 18, is given to
Peter, not as the head but as the single representative of the
Apostles (John xx. 21). The Apostolic office, with the promise
attached to it, passed from the Apostles by means of ordination
to the bishops. These, through their monarchical rank, represent
continuously for the several churches (_Ecclesia est in episcopo_),
and through their combined action, for the whole of Christendom,
the unity of the church; _Episcopatus unus est, cujus a singulus
in solidum, pars tenetur_. All the bishops, just as all the
Apostles, have perfect parity with one another; _pares consortio,
jure et honore_. Each of them is a successor of Peter and heir
of the promise given first to Peter but for all.--He who cuts
himself off from the bishops, cuts himself off from the church.
_Habere non potest Deum patrem, qui ecclesiam non habet matrem....
Extra ecclesiam nulla spes salutis._ Alongside of the Apostolic
writings, the tradition which prevailed among the Apostolic
churches (_Sedes apostolicæ_) was regarded as a standard of
catholicity in constitution, worship and doctrine; indeed, it
must even have ranked above the Apostolic writings themselves
in settling the question of the New Testament Canon (§ 36, 8),
until these had secured general circulation and acceptance.
§ 34.8. =The Roman Primacy.=--The claims of the Roman bishopric
to the primacy over the whole church, which reached its fuller
development in the 4th and 5th centuries (§ 46, 7), were founded
originally and chiefly on the assertion that the promise of
Matt. xvi. 18, 19, was given only and exclusively to the Apostle
Peter as the Primate of the Apostles and the head of the church.
This assumption overlooked the fact that in Matt. xviii. 18 and
John xx. 21 ff., this promise was given with reference to all
the Apostles. These claims were further supposed to be supported
by the words addressed to Peter, “strengthen thy brethren”
(Luke xxii. 31), which seemed to accord to Peter a primacy
over his fellow Apostles; and also by the interpretation given
of John xxi. 15 ff., where “lambs” were understood of laymen
and “sheep” of the Apostles. It was likewise assumed that
the bishop of Rome was the successor of Peter, and so the
legitimate and only heir of all his prerogatives. The fable of
the Roman bishopric of Peter (§ 16, 1) was at an early period
unhesitatingly adopted, all the more because no one expected the
results which in later times were deduced from a quite different
understanding of Matt. xvi. 18. During this whole period such
consequences were never dreamt of either by a Roman bishop or by
anybody else. Only this was readily admitted at least by the West
that Rome was the foremost of all the Apostolic churches, that
there the Apostolic tradition had been preserved in its purest
form, and that, therefore, its bishops should have a particularly
influential voice in all questions that were to be judged of
by the whole episcopate, and the Roman bishops were previously
content with taking advantage of this concession in the largest
measure possible.[96]
§ 35. THE ADMINISTRATION OF BAPTISM.[97]
As an indispensable means to participation in salvation and as
a condition of reception into the communion of the church, baptism
was practised from the earliest times. Infant baptism, though not
universally adopted, was yet in theory almost universally admitted to
be proper. Tertullian alone is found opposing it. All adults who desired
baptism had, as Catechumens, to pass through a course of training under
a Christian teacher. Many, however, voluntarily and purposely postponed
their baptism, frequently even to a deathbed, in order that all the
sins of their lives might be certainly removed by baptismal grace. After
a full course of instruction had been passed through, the Catechumens
prepared themselves for baptism by prayer and fasting, and before the
administration of the sacred ordinance they were required to renounce
the devil and all his works (_Abrenuntiare diabolo et pompæ et angelis
ejus_) and to recite a confession of their faith. The controversy as to
whether baptism administered by heretics should be regarded as valid was
conducted with great bitterness during the 3rd century.
§ 35.1. =The Preparation for Receiving Baptism.=--After a
complete exposition of the evangelical moral code in chap. 1-6,
the _Teaching of the XII. Apostles_ proceeds thus: Ταῦτα πάντα
προειπόντες βαπτίσατε εἰς τὸ ὄνομα, etc. At this time, therefore,
besides the necessarily presupposed acquaintance with the chief
points in the gospel history, the initiation into the moral
doctrine of the gospel of the person receiving baptism was
regarded as most essential in the baptismal instruction. In this
passage there is no mention of a doctrinal course of teaching
based upon a symbol. But what here is still wanting is given in
a summary way in chaps. 7 ff. in the instructions about baptism
and the Lord’s supper attached to the baptismal formula and the
eucharistic prayers. This therefore was reserved for that worship
from which the candidates for baptism and the newly baptized had
to gather their faith and hope as to the future completion of the
kingdom of God. First the struggle against Gnosticism obliged the
church to put more to the front the doctrines of faith which were
thereby more fully developed, and to concern itself with these
questions even in the instruction of the Catechumens. The custom,
which the Didache and Justin Martyr show to have been prevalent
in post-Apostolic times, of the baptiser together with others
voluntarily offering themselves taking part with the candidate
for baptism in completing the preparation for the holy ordinance
by observing a two days’ fast, seems soon, so far as the baptiser
and the others were concerned, to have fallen into desuetude,
and is never again mentioned.--Since the development of the
Old Catholic church the preparation of candidates for baptism
has been divided into two portions of very unequal duration,
namely, that of instruction, for which on an average a period
of two years was required, and that of immediate preparation by
prayer and fasting after the instructions had been completed.
During the former period the aspirants were called κατηχοῦμενοι,
_Catechumeni_; during the latter, φωτιζόμενοι, _Competentes_.
As to their participation in the public divine service, the
Catechumens were first of all as ἀκροώμενοι admitted only to the
hearing of the sermon, and had thus no essential privileges over
the unbelievers. They first came into closer connection with
the church only when it was permitted them to take part in
the devotional exercises, yet only in those portions which had
reference to themselves, kneeling as γονυκλίνοντες, while also
the congregation prayed kneeling. Only in cases of dangerous
illness could baptism be given before the Catechumen had
completed his full course (_Baptismus Clinicorum_). The Council
of Neo-Cæsarea soon after A.D. 314 ordained that a Catechumen
who as a γονυκλίνων had been guilty of an open sin, should be
put back to the first stage of the Catechumenate, namely, to that
of the ἀκροᾶσθαι, and if he then again sinned he should be cast
off altogether; and the Œcumenical Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325
demanded that offending (παραπέσοντες) Catechumens should remain
ἀκροώμενοι for three years and only then should be allowed to
take part in the devotional service of the church.[98]
§ 35.2. =The Baptismal Formula.=--In close connection with the
words of institution of baptism (Matt. xxviii. 19) and hence in
a trinitarian framework, an outline of the doctrine common to all
the churches, introduced first of all as a confession of faith
professed by candidates for baptism, obtained currency at a very
early date. Only a few unimportant modifications were afterwards
made upon it, and amid all the varieties of provincial and local
conditions, the formula remained essentially the same. Hence it
could always be properly characterized with Irenæus as ἀκλινής,
and with Tertullian as _immobilis et irreformabilis_. As a token
of membership in the Catholic church it is called the Baptismal
Formula or =Symbolum=. After the introduction of the _Disciplina
arcani_ (§ 36, 4) it was included in that, and hence was kept
secret from heathens and even from catechumens, and first
communicated to the _competentes_. As the “unalterable and
inflexible” test and standard of the faith and doctrine, as
well as an intellectual bond of union between churches scattered
over all the earth, it was called =Regula fidei= and Κανὼν τῆς
ἀληθείας. That we never find it quoted in the Old Catholic Age,
is to be explained from its inclusion in the _disciplina arcani_
and by this also, that the ancient church in common with Jeremiah
(xxxi. 33), laid great stress upon its being engraven not with
pen and ink on paper, but with the pen of the Holy Spirit on the
hearts of believers. Instead then of literal quotation we find
among the fathers of the Old Catholic Age (Irenæus, Tertullian,
Origen, Novatian, etc.) only paraphrastic and explanatory
references to it which, seeing that no sort of official sanction
was accorded them in the church, are erroneously spoken of
as _Regulæ fidei_. These paraphrases, however, are valuable
as affording information about the creed of the early church,
because what is found the same in them all must be regarded as an
integral part of the original document. In harmony with this is
the testimony of Rufinus, about A.D. 390, who in his _Expositio
Symb. apost._ produces three different recensions, namely, the
Roman, the Aquileian and the Oriental. The oldest and simplest
was that used in Rome, traces of which may be found as early
as the middle of the 2nd century. In the time of Rufinus there
was a tradition that this Roman creed had been composed by the
XII. Apostles in Jerusalem at the time of their scattering, as
a universal rule of faith, and had been brought to Rome by Peter.
It is not quite the same as that known among us as the =Apostles’
Creed=. It wants the phrases “Creator of heaven and earth,”
“suffered, dead, descended into hell,” “catholic, communion of
saints, eternal life.” The creed of Aquileia adopted the clause
“_Descendit ad infera_,” and intensified the clause _Carnis
resurrectio_ by the addition of “_hujus_” and the phrase _Deus
pater omnipotens_ by the addition of the anti-Patripassian
predicate (§ 33, 4) _invisibilis et impassibilis_.
§ 35.3. =The Administration of Baptism.=--According to the
showing of the _Teaching of the XII. Apostles_ baptism was
ordinarily administered by a thrice-repeated immersion in flowing
water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
If there be no flowing water at hand, any other kind, even warm
water, may be used, and in case of necessity sprinkling may be
substituted for the thrice-repeated immersion. At a later time
sprinkling was limited to the baptism of the sick, _Baptismus
clinicorum_. We hear nothing of a consecration of the water to
its holy use, nor is there any mention of the renunciation and
exorcism which became customary first in the 3rd century through
the use of a form of adjuration previously employed only in cases
of possession. Upon immersion followed an anointing, χρίσμα
(still unknown to the Didache), as a symbol of consecration to a
spiritual priesthood (1 Pet. ii. 9), and then, in accordance with
Acts viii. 16 f., the laying on of hands as the vehicle for the
communication of the Holy Spirit. Soon the immersion came to be
regarded as the negative part of the ordinance, the putting away
of sin, and the anointing with the laying on of hands as the
positive part, the communication of the Spirit. In the Eastern
church presbyters and deacons were permitted to dispense baptism
including also the anointing. Both, therefore, continued there
unseparated. In the West, however, the bishops claimed the laying
on of hands as their exclusive right, referring in support of
their claim to Acts viii. Where then the bishop did not himself
dispense the baptism, the laying on of hands as well as the
chrismatic anointing was given separately and in addition by him
as =Confirmation=, _Confirmatio_, _Consignatio_, which separation,
even when the baptism was administered by a bishop, soon became
the usual and legal practice. Nevertheless even in the Roman
church there was at the baptism an anointing with oil which had
canonical sanction and was designated _chrism_, without prejudice
to confirmation as an independent act at a later time. The usual
seasons for administering baptism were Easter, especially the
Sabbath of Passion week, baptism into the death of Christ,
Rom. vi. 3, and Pentecost, and in the East also the Epiphany.
The place for the administration of baptism was regarded as
immaterial. With infant baptism was introduced the custom of
having sponsors, ἀνάδοχοι, _sponsores_, who as sureties repeated
the confession of faith in the name of the unconscious infant
receiving the baptism.--Continuation, § 58, 1.
§ 35.4. =The Doctrine of Baptism.=--The Epistle of Barnabas says:
Ἀναβαίνομεν καρποφοροῦντες ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ. Hermas says: _Ascendunt
vitæ assignati_. With Justin the water of baptism is a ὕδωρ τῆς
ζωῆς, ἐξ οὗ ἀναγεννήθημεν, According to Irenæus it effects a
ἕνωσις πρὸς ἀφθαρσίαν. Tertullian says: _Supervenit spiritus de
cœlis,--caro spiritualiter mundatur_. Cyprian speaks of an _unda
genitalis_, of a _nativitas secunda in novum hominem_. Firmilian
says: _Nativitas, quæ est in baptismo, filios Dei generat_.
Origen calls baptism χαρισμάτων θείων ἀρχὴν καὶ πηγήν.--Of the
bloody baptism of martyrdom Tertullian exclaims: _Lavacrum non
acceptum repræsentat et perditum reddit_. Hermes and Clement of
Alexandria maintain that there will be in Hades a preaching and
a baptism for the sake of pious Gentiles and Jews.
§ 35.5. =The Controversy about Heretics’ Baptism.=--The church of
Asia Minor and Africa denied the validity of baptism administered
by heretics; but the Roman church received heretics returning to
the fold of the Catholic church, if only they had been baptized
in the name of Christ or of the Holy Trinity, without a second
baptism, simply laying on the hands as in the case of penitents.
Stephen of Rome would tolerate no other than the Roman custom and
hastened to break off church fellowship with those of Asia Minor
(A.D. 253). Cyprian of Carthage whose ideal of the unity of that
church in which alone salvation was to be obtained seemed to be
overthrown by the Roman practice, and Firmilian of Cæsarea in
Cappadocia, were the most vigorous supporters of the view
condemned by Rome. Three Carthaginian Synods, the last and most
important in A.D. 256, decided unequivocally in their favour.
Dionysius of Alexandria sought to effect a reconciliation by
writing a tenderly affectionate address to Stephen. To this end
even more effectively wrought the Valerian persecution, which
soon afterwards broke out, during which Stephen himself suffered
martyrdom (A.D. 257). Thus the controversy reached no conclusion.
The Roman practice, however, continued to receive more and more
acceptance, and was confirmed by the first Œcumenical Council at
Nicæa in A.D. 325, with the exclusion only of the Samosatians (§
33, 8); likewise also at the Council at Constantinople in A.D.
381, with the exclusion of the Montanists (§ 40, 1), the
Eunomians (§ 50, 3) and the Sabellians (§ 33, 7). These
exceptions, therefore, referred mostly to the Unitarian heretics,
the Montanists being excluded on account of their doctrine of the
Paraclete. Augustine’s successful polemic against the Donatists
(§ 63, 1), in his treatise in seven books _De baptismo_ first
overcame all objections hitherto waged against the validity of
baptism administered by heretics derived from the objectivity of
the sacrament, and henceforth all that was required was that it
should be given in the name of the three-one God.
§ 36. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND ITS VARIOUS PARTS.[99]
There was a tendency from the 2nd century onwards more and more to
dissolve the connection of the Lord’s Supper with the evening _Agape_
(§ 17, 7). Trajan’s strict prohibition of secret societies, _hetæræ_
(§ 22, 2) seems to have given the first occasion for the separation
of these two and for the temporary suppression of the love-feasts.
The Lord’s Supper was now observed during the Sunday forenoon service
and the mode of its observance is described even by Justin Martyr. In
consideration of the requirements of the Catechumens the service was
divided into two parts, a _homiletical_ and a _sacramental_, and from
the latter all unbaptized persons, as well as all under discipline
and those possessed of evil spirits, were excluded. Each part of the
service was regularly closed by a concluding benediction, and in the
West bore the designations respectively of _Missa catechumenorum_
and _Missa fidelium_, while in the East they were distinguished as
λειτουργία τῶν κατηχουμένων and λειτουργία τῶν πιστῶν. In connection
with this there grew up a notion that the sacramental action had
a mysterious character, _Disciplina arcani_. Owing to the original
connection of the Supper with the Agape it became customary to
provide the elements used in the ordinance from the voluntary gifts
brought by the members of the church, which were called _Oblationes_,
προσφοραί,--a designation which helped to associate the idea of
sacrifice with the observance of the Lord’s Supper.
§ 36.1. =The Agape.=--That in consequence of the imperial
edict against secret societies, at least in Asia Minor, the
much suspected and greatly maligned love-feasts (§ 22) were
temporarily abandoned, appears from the report of Pliny to
the Emperor, according to which the Christians of whom he made
inquiries assured him that they had given up the _mos coeundi
ad capiendum cibum promiscuum_. But in Africa they were still
in use or had been revived in the time of Tertullian, who in his
_Apology_ makes mention very approvingly of them, although at
a later period, after he had joined the Montanists, he lashes
them in his book _De Jejuniis_ with the most stinging sarcasm.
Clement of Alexandria too is aware of flagrant abuses committed
in connection with those feasts. They continued longest to be
observed in connection with the services in commemoration of
the dead and on the festivals of martyrs. The Council of Laodicæa,
about the middle of the 4th century, forbade the holding of these
in the churches and the Second Trullan Council in A.D. 692 renewed
this prohibition. After this we find no further mention of them.
§ 36.2. =The Missa Catechumenorum.=--The reading of scripture
(ἀνάγνωσις, _Lectio_,--comp. § 36, 7) formed the chief exercise
during this part of the service. There was unrestricted liberty
as to the choice of the portions to be read. It was the duty of
the Readers, Ἀναγνώσται, to perform this part of the worship,
but frequently Evangelists on the invitation of the Deacons
would read, and the whole congregation showed their reverence
by standing up. At the close of the reading an expository and
practical address (ὁμιλία, λόγος, _Sermo_, _Tractatus_) was given
by the bishop or in his absence by a presbyter or deacon, or even
by a Catechist, as in the case of Origen, and soon, especially in
the Greek church, this assumed the form of an artistic, rhetorical
discourse. The reading and exposition of God’s word were followed
by the prayers, to which the people gave responses. These were
uttered partly by the bishop, partly by the deacons, and were
extemporary utterances of the heart, though very soon they
assumed a stereotyped form. The congregation responded to each
short sentence of the prayer with Κύριε ἐλέησον. In the fully
developed order of public worship of the 3rd century the prayers
were arranged to correspond to the different parts of the service,
for Catechumens, energumens (possessed), and penitents. After
all these came the common prayer of the church for all sorts of
callings, conditions, and needs in the life of the brethren.
§ 36.3. =The _Missa Fidelium_.=--The centre of this part of the
service was the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In the time of
Justin Martyr the liturgy connected therewith was very simple. The
brotherly kiss followed the common prayer, then the sacramental
elements were brought in to the ministrant who consecrated
them by the prayer of praise and thanksgiving (εὐχαριστία). The
people answered Amen, and thereupon the consecrated elements
were distributed to all those present. From that prayer the whole
ordinance received the name εὐχαριστία, because its consecrating
influence made common bread into the bread of the Supper. Much
more elaborate is the liturgy in the 8th Book of the _Apostolic
Constitutions_ (§ 43, 4), which may be regarded as a fair sample
of the worship of the church toward the end of the 3rd century.
At the close of the sermon during the prayers connected with
that part of the service began the withdrawal successively of
the Catechumens, the energumens and the penitents. Then the _Missa
fidelium_ was commenced with the common intercessory prayer of
the church. After various collects and responses there followed
the brotherly kiss, exhortation against participation in unworthy
pleasures, preparation of the sacramental elements, the sign of
the cross, the consecration prayer, the words of institution, the
elevation of the consecrated elements, all accompanied by suitable
prayers, hymns, doxologies and responses. The bishop or presbyter
distributed the bread with the words, Σῶμα Χριστοῦ; the deacon
passed round the cup with the words, Αἷμα Χριστοῦ, ποτήριον ζωῆς.
Finally the congregation kneeling received the blessing of the
bishop, and the deacon dismissed them with the words, Ἀπολύεσθε
ἐν εἰρήνῃ.--The bread was that commonly used, _i.e._, leavened
bread (κοινὸς ἄρτος); the wine also was, according to the custom
of time, mixed with water (κρᾶμα), in which Cyprian already
fancied a symbol of the union of Christ and the church. In the
African and Eastern churches, founding on John vi. 53, children,
of course, those who had already been baptised, were allowed to
partake of the communion. At the close of the service the deacons
carried the consecrated sacramental elements to the sick and
imprisoned. In many places a portion of the consecrated bread
was taken home, that the family might use it at morning prayer
for the consecration of the new day. No formal act of confession
preceded the communion. The need of such an act in consequence
of the existing disciplinary and liturgical ordinance had not yet
made itself felt.
§ 36.4. =The Disciplina Arcani.=--The notion that the
sacramental part of the divine service, including in this
the prayers and hymns connected therewith, the Lord’s prayer,
administration of baptism and the baptismal formula, as well as
the anointing and the consecration of the priest, was a _mystery_
(μυστικὴ λατρεία, τελετή) which was to be kept secret from all
unbaptised persons (ἀμύητοι) and only to be practised in presence
of the baptised (συμμύσται), is quite unknown to Justin Martyr
and also to Irenæus. Justin accordingly describes in his Apology,
expressly intended for the heathen, in full detail and without
hesitation, all the parts of the eucharistic service. It was in
Tertullian’s time that this notion originated, and it had its
roots in the catechumenate and the consequent partition of the
service into two parts, from the second of which the unbaptised
were excluded. The official Roman Catholic theology, on the other
hand, regards the _disciplina arcani_ as an institution existing
from the times of the Apostles, and from it accounts for the want
of patristic support to certain specifically Roman Catholic dogmas
and forms of worship, in order that they may, in spite of the
want of such support, maintain that these had a place in primitive
Christianity.
§ 36.5. =The Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.=--Though the idea
was not sharply and clearly defined, there was yet a widespread
and profound conviction that the Lord’s Supper was a supremely
holy mystery, spiritual food indispensable to eternal life,
that the body and blood of the Lord entered into some mystical
connection with the bread and wine, and placed the believing
partaker of them in true and essential fellowship with Christ.
It was in consequence of the adoption of such modes of expression
that the pagan calumnies about _Thyestian feasts_ (§ 22) first
gained currency. Ignatius calls the Lord’s Supper a φάρμακον
ἀθανασίας, the cup a ποτήριον εἰς ἕνωσιν τοῦ αἵματος Χριστοῦ,
and professes εὐχαριστίαν σάρκα εἶναι τοῦ σωτῆρος. Justin Martyr
says: σάρκα καὶ αἷμα ἐδιδάχθημεν εἶναι. According to Irenæus,
it is not _communis panis, sed eucharistia ex duabus rebus
constans, terrena et cœlesti_, and our bodies by means of its
use become _jam non corruptibilia, spem resurrectionis habentia_.
Tertullian and Cyprian, too, stoutly maintain this doctrine, but
incline sometimes to a more symbolical interpretation of it. The
spiritualistic Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, consider that
the feeding of the soul with the divine word is the purpose of
the Lord’s Supper.[100]--Continuation § 58, 2.
§ 36.6. =The Sacrificial Theory.=--When once the sacerdotal
theory had gained the ascendancy (§ 34, 4) the correlated notion
of a sacrifice could not much longer be kept in the background.
And it was just in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper that the
most specious grounds for such a theory were to be found. First
of all the prayer, which formed so important a part of this
celebration that the whole service came to be called from it the
Eucharist, might be regarded as a spiritual sacrifice. Then again
the gifts brought by the congregation for the dispensation of the
sacrament were called προσφοραί, _Oblationes_, names which were
already in familiar use in connection with sacrificial worship.
And just as the congregation offered their contributions to the
Supper, so also the priests offered them anew in the sacramental
action, and also to this priestly act was given the name
προσφέρειν, ἀναφέρειν. Then again, not only the prayer but the
Supper itself was designated a θυσία, _Sacrificium_, though at
first indeed in a non-literal, figurative sense.--Continuation
§ 58, 3.
§ 36.7. =The Use of Scripture.=--In consequence of their
possessing but few portions of Scripture, the references of the
Apostolic Fathers to the New Testament books must necessarily be
only occasional. The synoptic gospels are most frequently quoted,
though these are referred to only as a whole under the name τὸ
εὐαγγέλιον. In Justin Martyr the references become more frequent,
yet even here there are no express citation of passages; only
once, in the Dialogue, is the Revelation of John named. He
mentions as his special source for the life and works of Jesus
the Ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων. What he borrows from this
source is for the most part to be found in our Synoptic Gospels;
but we have not in this sufficient ground for identifying the one
with the other. On the contrary, we find that the citations of our
Lord’s words do not correspond to the text of our gospels, but are
sometimes rather in verbal agreement with the Apocryphal writings,
and still further, that he adopts Apocryphal accounts of the life
of Jesus, _e.g._, the birth of Christ in a cave, the coming of
the Magi from Arabia, the legend that Jesus as a carpenter made
ploughs and yokes, etc., borrowing them from the Ἀπομνημονεύματα
τῶν ἀποστόλων. If one further considers Justin’s account of the
Sunday service as consisting of the reading of the Ἀπομνημονεύματα
or the writings of the Prophets, and thereafter closed by the
expository and hortatory address of the president (προεστώς), he
will be led to the conclusion that his “Apostolic Memoirs” must
have been a Gospel Harmony for church use, probably on the basis
of Matthew’s Gospel drawn from our Synoptic Gospels, with the
addition of some apocryphal and traditional elements. The author
of the Didache too does not construct his “commands of the Lord
communicated by the Apostles” directly from our Synoptic Gospels,
but from a εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ κυρίου which presented a text of
Matthew enriched by additions from Luke. The Diatessaron of
Tatian (§ 30, 10) shows that soon after this the gospel of John,
which was not regarded by Justin or the author of the Didache
as a source for the evangelical history, although there are not
wanting in both manifold references to it, came to be regarded
as a work to be read in combination with these. It was only after
a New Testament Canon had been in the Old Catholic Age gradually
established, and from the vast multitude of books on gospel
history, which even Luke had found existing (i. 1) and which
had been multiplied to an almost incalculable extent both in the
interests of heresy and of church doctrine, our four gospels were
universally recognised as alone affording authentic information
of the life and doctrines of the Lord, that the eclectic gospels
hitherto in use had more and more withdrawn from them the favour
of the church. =Tatian’s Diatessaron= maintained its place longest
in the Syrian Church. Theodoret, † A.D. 457, testifies that in his
diocese he had found and caused to be put away about two hundred
copies. Aphraates (about A.D. 340, § 47, 13) still used it as the
text of his homilies. At the time of publication of the _Doctrina
Addæi_ (§ 32, 6) it was still used in the church of Edessa, and
Ephraim Syrus in A.D. 360 refers to a commentary in the form of
scholia on it in an Armenian translation, in which the passages
commented on are literally reproduced, Theodoret’s charge against
it of cutting out passages referring to the descent of Christ
after the flesh from David, especially the genealogies of Matthew
and Luke, is confirmed by these portions thus preserved. Otherwise
however, it is free from heretical alterations, though not wholly
without apocryphal additions. All the four gospels are in brief
summary so skilfully wrought into one another that no joining
is ever visible. What cannot be incorporated is simply left out,
and the whole historical and doctrinal material is distributed
over the one working year of the synoptists.
§ 36.8. =Formation of a New Testament Canon.=--The oldest
collection of a New Testament Canon known to us was made by the
Gnostic _Marcion_ (§ 27, 11) about A.D. 150. Some twenty years
later in the so-called _Muratorian Canon_, a fragment found by
Muratori in the 18th century with a catalogue in corrupt Latin
justifying the reception of the New Testament writings received
in the Roman church. For later times the chief witnesses are
Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Eusebius.
The Muratorian Canon and Eusebius are witnesses for the fact that
in the 2nd century, besides the Gospels, the Apostolic Epistles
and the Revelation of John, other so-called Apostolic Epistles
were read at worship in the churches, for instance, the _1st
Ep. of Clement of Rome_, _the Ep. of Barnabas_, _the Shepherd
of Hermas_, in some churches also the apocryphal _Apocalypse
of Peter_ and _Acts of Paul_, in Corinth, an Ep. of the Roman
bishop Soter (A.D. 166-174) to that church, and also _Acts of the
Martyrs_. Montanist as well as Gnostic excesses gave occasion for
the definite fixing of the New Testament Canon by the Catholic
church (§ 40). Since the time of Irenæus, the four Gospels, the
Acts, the 13 Epp. of Paul, the Ep. to the Hebrews (which some
in the West did not regard as Pauline), 1st Peter, and 1st John,
along with the Revelation of John, were universally acknowledged.
Eusebius therefore calls these ὁμολογούμενα. There was still some
uncertainty as to the Ep. of James, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John
and Jude (ἀντιλεγόμενα). The antilegomena of a second class,
which have no claim to canonicity, although in earlier times they
were much used in churches just like the canonical scriptures,
were called by him νόθα, viz. the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of
Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Ep. of Barnabas, and the
Didache. He would also very willingly have included among these
the Revelation of John (§ 33, 9), although he acknowledged
that elsewhere that is included in the Homologoumena.--=The Old
Testament Canon= was naturally regarded as already completed. But
since the Old Testament had come to the Greek and Latin Church
Teachers in the expanded form of the LXX., they had unhesitatingly
assumed that its added books were quite as sacred and as fully
inspired as those of the Hebrew Canon. Melito of Sardis, however,
about A.D. 170, found it desirable to make a journey of research
through Palestine in order to determine the limits of the Jewish
Canon, and then to draw up a list of the Holy Scriptures of the
Old Testament essentially corresponding therewith. Origen too
informs us that the Jews, according to the number of letters in
their alphabet acknowledged only 22 books, which, however, does
not lead him to condemn this reception of the additional books of
the church. From the end of the 2nd century, the Western church
had =Latin Translations= of the biblical books, the origin of
which is to be sought in North Africa, where in consequence
of prevailing ignorance of the Greek language the need of
such translations was most deeply felt. Even so early as the
beginning of the 5th century we find Jerome († 420) complaining
of _varietas_ and _vitiositas_ of the _Codices latini_, and
declaring: _Tot sunt exemplaria_ (=forms of the text) _paene
quot codices_. Augustine[101] gives preference to the _Itala_
over all others. The name =Itala= is now loosely given to all
fragments of Latin translations previous to that of Jerome.--The
Syriac translation, =the Peshito=, plain or simple (so-called
because it exactly and without paraphrasing renders the words
of the Hebrew and Greek originals) belongs to the 3rd century,
although first expressly referred to by Ephraim. In it 2 Peter,
2 and 3 John and Jude are not found.
§ 36.9. =The Doctrine of Inspiration.=--In earlier times it
was usual, after the example of Philo, to regard the prophetic
inspiration of the sacred writers as purely passive, as ἔκστασις.
Athenagoras compares the soul of the prophet while prophesying
to a flute; Justin Martyr in his _Cohort. ad Græc._ to a lyre,
struck by the Holy Spirit as the _plectrum_, etc. The Montanist
prophets first brought this theory into disrepute. The Apologist
Miltiades of Asia Minor was the first Church Teacher who
vindicated over against the Montanists the proposition: προφήτην
μὴ δεῖν ἐν ἐκστάσει λαλεῖν. The Alexandrians who even admitted
an operation of the Holy Spirit upon the nobler intellects of
paganism, greatly modified the previously accepted doctrine
of inspiration. Origen, for example, teaches a gradual rising
or falling in the measure of inspiration even in the bible,
and determines this according to the more or less prominence
secured by the human individuality of the writers of scripture.
§ 36.10. =Hymnology.=--The _Carmen Christo quasi Deo dicere
secum invicem_ in the report of Pliny (§ 22, 2), may be classed
with the antiphonal responsive hymns of the church. Tertullian
bears witness to a rich use of song in family as well as
congregational worship. So too does Origen. In the composition
of church hymns the heretics seem for a long while to have kept
abreast of the Catholics (Bardesanes and Harmonius, § 27, 5),
but the latter were thereby stirred up to greater exertions.
The Martyr Athenogenes and the Egyptian bishop Nepos are named
as authors of church hymns. We have still a hymn εἰς Σωτῆρα by
Clement of Alexandria. Socrates ascribes to Ignatius, bishop
of Antioch, the introduction of the alternate-song (between
different congregational choirs). More credible is Theodoret’s
statement that the Antiochean monks Flavian and Diodorus had
imported it, about A.D. 260, from the National Syrian into the
Greek-Syrian church.--Continuation § 59, 4, 5.
§ 37. FEASTS AND FESTIVAL SEASONS.[102]
Sunday as a day of joy was distinguished by standing at prayer,
instead of kneeling as at other times, and also by the prohibition
of fasting. Of the other days of the week, Wednesday, the day on
which the Jewish Council decided to put Jesus to death and Judas had
betrayed him, and Friday, as the day of his death, were consecrated
to the memory of Christ’s suffering; hence the _Feria quarta et sexta_
were celebrated as watch days, _dies stationum_, after the symbolism
of the _Militia christiana_ (Eph. vi. 10-17), by public meetings
of the congregation. As days of the Passion, penitence and fasting
they formed a striking contrast to the Sunday. The chief days of the
Christian festival calendar, which afterwards found richer and more
complete expression in the cycle of the Christian year, were thus
at first associated with the weekly cycle. A long continued and wide
spread controversy as to the proper time for celebrating Easter arose
during the 2nd century.
§ 37.1. =The Festivals of the Christian Year.=--The thought
of Christ’s suffering and death was so powerful and engrossing
that even in the weekly cycle one day had not been sufficient.
Still less could one festal day in the yearly cycle satisfy
the hearts of believers. Hence a long preparation for the
festival was arranged, which was finally fixed at forty days,
and was designated the season _Quadragesima_ (τεσσαρακοστή). Its
conclusion and acme was the so-called Great Week, beginning with
the Sunday of the entrance into Jerusalem, culminating in the day
of the crucifixion, Good Friday, and closing with the day of rest
in the tomb. This Great Week or Passion Week was regarded as the
antitype of the Old Testament Passover feast. The Old Catholic
church did not, however, transfer this name to the festival
of the resurrection (§ 56, 4). The day of the resurrection
was rather regarded as the beginning of a new festival cycle
consecrated to the glorification of the redeemer, viz. the season
of _Quinquagesima_ (πεντηκοστή), concluding with the festival
of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the anniversary of the
founding of the Christian church, which has now come to be known
_par excellence_ as _Pentecost_. The fifty intervening days were
simply days of joy. There was daily communion, no fasting, only
standing and not kneeling at prayer. The fortieth day, the day
of the _Ascension_, had a special pre-eminence as a day of festal
celebrations. The festival of Epiphany on 6th January originated
in the East to celebrate the baptism of Christ in Jordan, as the
manifestation of his Messianic rank. As yet there is nowhere any
trace of the Christmas festival.--Continuation, § 56.
§ 37.2. =The Paschal Controversies.=--During the 2nd century,
there were three different practices prevalent in regard to the
observance of the Paschal festival. The Ebionite Jewish Christians
(§ 28, 1) held the Paschal feast on the 14th Nisan according to
the strict literal interpretation of the Old Testament precepts,
maintaining also that Christ, who according to the synoptists
died on the 15th, observed the Passover with his disciples on
the 14th. Then again the church of Asia Minor followed another
practice which was traced back to the Apostle John. Those of Asia
Minor attached themselves indeed in respect of date to the Jewish
festival, but gave it a Christian meaning. They let the passover
alone, and pronounced the memorial of Christ’s death to be the
principal thing in the festival. According to their view, based
upon the fourth Gospel, Christ died upon the 14th Nisan, so that
He had not during the last year of His life observed a regular
Passover. On the 14th Nisan, therefore, they celebrated their
Paschal festival, ending their fast at the moment of Christ’s
death, three o’clock in the afternoon, and then, instead of the
Jewish Passover, having an Agape with the Lord’s Supper. Those who
adopted either of those two forms were at a later period called
_Quartodecimans_ or _Tessareskaidekatites_. Different from both
of these was a third practice followed in all the West, as also
in Egypt, Palestine, Pontus and Greece, which detached itself
still further from the Jewish Passover. This Western usage
disregarded the day of the month in order to secure the observance
of the great resurrection festival on the first day of the week.
The πάσχα σταυρώσιμον, then, if the 14th did not happen to be a
Friday, was always celebrated on the first Friday after the 14th,
and the Easter festival with the observance of the Lord’s Supper
on the immediately following Sunday. The Westerns regarded the
day of Christ’s death as properly a day of mourning, and only
at the end of the pre-Easter fast on the day of the Resurrection
introduced the celebration of the Agape and the Lord’s Supper.
These divergent practices first awakened attention on the
appearing of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna at Rome in A.D. 155.
The Roman bishop Anicetus referred to the tradition of the Roman
Church; Polycarp laid stress upon the fact that he himself had
celebrated the Paschal festival after the manner followed in
Asia Minor along with the Apostle John. No common agreement was
reached at this time; but, in token of their undisturbed church
fellowship, Anicetus allowed Polycarp to dispense the communion
in his church. Some fifteen years later a party, not distinctly
particularised, obtained at Laodicea in Phrygia sanction for
the Ebionite practice with strict observance of the time of
the Passover, and awakened thereby a lively controversy in the
church of Asia Minor, in which opposite sides were taken by the
Apologists, Apollinaris and Melito (§ 30, 7). The dispute assumed
more serious dimensions about A.D. 196 through the passionate
proceedings of the Roman bishop Victor. Roused probably by the
agitation of a Quartodeciman named Blastus then in Rome, he urged
upon the most distinguished bishops of the East and West the
need of holding a Synod to secure the unequivocal vindication
of the Roman practice. On this account many Synods were held,
which almost invariably gave a favourable verdict. Only those
of Asia Minor with Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus at their head,
entered a vigorous protest against the pretensions of Rome, and
notwithstanding all the Roman threatenings determined to stand
by their own well established custom. Victor now went the length
of breaking off church fellowship with them, but this extreme
procedure met with little favour. Even Irenæus expressed himself
to the Gallican bishops as opposed to it.--Continuation § 56, 3.
§ 37.3. =The Ecclesiastical Institution of Fasting.=--The
Didache gives evidence that even at so early a date, the regular
fasts were religiously observed on the _Dies stationum_ by
expressly forbidding fasting “with hypocrites” (Jews and Jewish
Christians, Luke xviii. 12) on Monday and Thursday, instead of
the Christian practice of so observing Wednesday and Friday. The
usual fast continued as a rule only till three o’clock in the
afternoon (Semijejunia, Acts x. 9, 30; iii. 1). In Passion week
the Saturday night, which, at other times, just like the Sunday,
was excluded from the fasting period, as part of the day during
which Christ lay buried, was included in the forty-hours’ fast,
representing the period during which Christ lay in the grave.
This was afterwards gradually lengthened out into the forty-days’
fast of Lent (Exod. xxxiv. 28; 1 Kings xix. 8; Matt. iv. 2), in
which, however, the _jejunium_ proper was limited to the _Dies
Stationum_, and for the rest of the days only the ξηροφαγίαι,
first forbidden by the Montanists (§ 40, 4), _i.e._ all fattening
foods, such as flesh, eggs, butter, cheese, milk, etc., were
abstained from.--On fasting preparatory to baptism, see § 35, 1.
The Didache, c. i. 3, adds to the gospel injunction that we should
pray for our persecutors (Matt. v. 44) the further counsel that
we should fast for them. The meaning of the writer seems to be
that we should strengthen our prayers for persecutors by fasting.
Hermas, on the other hand, recommends fasting in order that we may
thereby spare something for the poor; and Origen says that he read
_in quodam libello_ as _ab apostolis dictum: Beatus est, qui etiam
jejunat pro eo ut alat pauperem_.
§ 38. THE CHURCH BUILDINGS AND THE CATACOMBS.
The earliest certain traces of special buildings for divine worship
which had been held previously in private houses of Christians are met
with in Tertullian about the end of the 2nd century. In Diocletian’s
time Nicomedia became a royal residence and hard by the emperor’s
palace a beautiful church proudly reared its head (§ 22, 6), and even
in the beginning of the 3rd century Rome had forty churches. We know
little about the form and arrangement of these churches. Tertullian
and Cyprian speak of an altar or table for the preparation of the
Lord’s supper and a desk for the reading, and in the _Apostolic
Constitutions_ it is required that the building should be oblong in
shape. The wide-spread tradition that in times of sore persecution
the worshippers betook themselves to the Catacombs is evidently
inconsistent with the limited space which these afforded. On the
other hand, the painter whose works, by a decree of a Spanish Council
in A.D. 306, were banished from the churches, found here a suitable
place for the practice of sacred art.
§ 38.1. =The Catacombs.=--The Christian burying places were
generally called κοιμητήρια, _Dormitoria_. They were laid out
sometimes in the open fields (_Areæ_), sometimes, where the
district was suitable for that, hewn out in the rock (κρύπται,
crypts). This latter term was, by the middle of the 4th century,
quite interchangeable with the name _Catacumbæ_, (κατὰ κύμβας=in
the caves). The custom of laying the dead in natural or rock-hewn
caves was familiar to pagan antiquity, especially in the East.
But the recesses used for this purpose were only private or family
vaults. Their growth into catacombs or subterranean necropolises
for larger companies bound together by their one religion without
distinctions of rank (Gal. iii. 28), first arose on Christian
soil from a consciousness that their fellowship transcended death
and the grave. For the accomplishment of this difficult and costly
undertaking, Christian burial societies were formed after the
pattern of similar institutions of paganism (§ 17, 3). Specially
numerous and extensive necropolises have been found laid out in
the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. But also in Malta, in Naples,
Syracuse, Palermo, and other cities, this mode of sepulchre
found favour. The Roman catacombs, of which in the hilly district
round about the eternal city fifty-eight have been counted in
fourteen different highways, are almost all laid out in the white
porous tufa stone which is there so abundant, and useful neither
for building nor for mortar. It is thus apparent that these are
neither wrought-out quarries nor gravel pits (_Arenariæ_), but
were set in order from the first as cemeteries. A few _Arenariæ_
may indeed have been used as catacombs, but then the sides with
the burial niches consist of regularly built walls. The Roman
Catacombs in the tufa stone form labyrinthine, twisting, steep
galleries only 3 or 4 feet broad, with rectangular corners caused
by countless intersections. Their perpendicular sides varied
greatly in height and in them the burial niches, _Loculi_, were
hewn out one above the other, and on the reception of the body
were built up or hermetically sealed with a stone slab bearing
an inscription and a Christian symbol. The wealthy laid their
dead in costly marble sarcophagi or stone coffins ornamented with
bas-reliefs. The walls too and the low-arched roofs were adorned
with symbols and pictures of scripture scenes. From the principal
passages many side paths branched off to so-called burial
chambers, _Cubicula_, which were furnished with shafts opening
up to the surface and affording air and light, _Luminaria_. In
many of these chambers, sometimes even in the passages, instead
of simple _Loculi_ we meet with the so-called _Arcosolium_ as the
more usual form; one or more coffin-shaped grooves hewn out in the
rocky wall are covered with an altar-shaped marble plate, and over
this plate, _Mensa_, is a semicircular niche hewn out spreading
over it in its whole extent. These chambers are often held
in reverence as “catacomb churches,” but they are so small in
size that they could only accommodate a very limited number,
such as might gather perhaps at the commemoration of a martyr or
the members of a single family. And even where two or three such
chambers adjoin one another, connected together by doors and
having a common lighting shaft, accommodating at furthest about
twenty people, they could not be regarded as meeting-places for
public congregations properly so called.--Where the deposit of
tufa stone was sufficiently large, there were several stories
(_Piani_), as many as four or five connected by stairs, laid
out one above the other in galleries and chambers. According to
_de Rossi’s_[103] moderate calculation there have been opened
altogether up to this time so many passages in the catacombs
that if they were put in a line they would form a street of
120 geographical miles. Their oldest inscriptions or epitaphs date
from the first years of the second century. After the destruction
of Rome by the hordes of Alaric in A.D. 410, the custom of burying
in them almost entirely ceased. Thereafter they were used only
as places of pilgrimage and spots where martyr’s relics were
worshipped. From this time the most of the so-called _Graffiti_,
_i.e._ scribblings of visitors on the walls, consisting of pious
wishes and prayers, had their origin. The marauding expedition of
the Longobard Aistulf into Roman territory in A.D. 756, in which
even the catacombs were stripped of their treasures, led Pope
Paul I. to transfer the relics of all notable martyrs to their
Roman churches and cloisters. Then pilgrimages to the catacombs
ceased, their entrances got blocked up, and the few which in later
times were still accessible, were only sought out by a few novelty
hunting strangers. Thus the whole affair was nigh forgotten until
in A.D. 1578 a new and lively interest was awakened by the chance
opening up again of one of those closed passages. Ant. Bosio from
A.D. 1593 till his death in A.D. 1629, often at the risk of his
life, devoted all his time and energies to their exploration. But
great as his discoveries were, they have been completely outdone
by the researches of the Roman nobleman, Giov. Battista de Rossi,
who, working unweariedly at his task since A.D. 1849 till the
present time, is recognised as the great master of the subject,
although even his investigations are often too much dominated
by Roman Catholic prejudices and by undue regard for traditional
views.[104]
§ 38.2. =The Antiquities of the Catacombs.=--The custom widely
spread in ancient times and originating in piety or superstition
of placing in the tombs the utensils that had been used by
the deceased during life was continued, as the contents of
many burial niches show among the early Christians. Children’s
toys were placed beside them in the grave, and the clothes,
jewels, ornaments, amulets, etc., of grown up people. Quite a
special interest attaches to the so-called Blood Vases, _Phiolæ
rubricatæ_, which have been found in or near many of these niches,
_i.e._ crystal, rarely earthenware, vessels with Christian symbols
figured on a red ground. The _Congregation of rites and relics_
in A.D. 1668, asserted that they were blood-vessels, in which the
blood of the martyrs had been preserved and stood alongside of
their bones; and the existence of such jars, as well as every
pictorial representation of the palm branch (Rev. vii. 9),
was supposed to afford an indubitable proof that the niches
in question contained the bones of martyrs. But the Reformed
theologian Basnage shows that this assumption is quite untenable,
and he has explained the red ground from the dregs of the red
sacramental wine which may have been placed in the burial niches
as a protection against demoniacal intrusion. Even many good
Roman Catholic archæologists, Mabillon, Papebroch, Tillemont,
Muratori, etc., contest or express doubts as to the decree of the
_Congregation_. At the instigation probably of the Belgian Jesuit
Vict. de Buck, Pius IX. in A.D. 1863 confirmed and renewed the
old decree, and among others, Xav. Kraus has appeared as its
defender. But a great multitude of unquestionable facts contradict
the official decree of the church; _e.g._ the total absence
of any support to this view in tradition, the silence of such
inscriptions as relate to the martyrs, above all the immense
number of these jars, their being found frequently alongside the
bones of children of seven years old, the remarkable frequency
of them in the times of Constantine and his successors which were
free from persecution, the absence of the red dregs in many jars,
etc. Since dregs of wine, owing to their having the vegetable
property of combinableness could scarcely be discernible down
to the present day, it has recently been suggested that the red
colour may have been produced by a mineral-chemical process as
oxide of iron.
§ 38.3. =Pictorial Art and the Catacombs.=--Many of the earliest
Christians may have inherited a certain dislike of the pictorial
arts from Judaism, and may have been confirmed therein by their
abhorrence of the frivolous and godless abuse of art in heathenism.
But this aversion which in a Tertullian grew from a Montanistic
rigorism into a fanatical hatred of art, is never met with as a
constituent characteristic of Christianity. Much rather the great
abundance of paintings on the walls of the Roman and Neapolitan
catacombs, of which many, and these not the meanest, belong
to the 2nd century, some indeed perhaps to the last decades of
the 1st century, serves to show how general and lively was the
artistic sense among the earliest Christians at least in the
larger and wealthier communities. Yet from its circumstances the
Christian church in its appreciation of art was almost necessarily
limited on two sides; for, on the one hand, no paintings were
tolerated in the churches, and on the other hand, even in private
houses and catacombs they were restricted almost exclusively to
symbolico-allegorical or typical representations. The 36th Canon
of the Council of Elvira in A.D. 306 is a witness for the first
statement when it says: _Placuit picturas in ecclesia non esse
debere, ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur_.
The plain words of the Canon forbid any other interpretation
than this: From the churches, as places where public worship is
regularly held, all pictorial representations must be banished,
in order to make certain that in and under them there might not
creep in those images, forbidden in the decalogue, of Him who
is the object of worship and adoration. The Council thus assumed
practically the same standpoint as the Reformed church in the
16th century did in opposition to the practice of the Roman
Catholic and Lutheran churches. It cannot, however, be maintained
that the Canon of this rigorous Council (§ 45, 2) found general
acceptance and enforcement outside of Spain--Proof of the
second limitation is as convincingly afforded by what we find
in the catacombs. On the positive side, it has its roots in the
fondness which prevailed during these times for the mystical and
allegorical interpretation of scripture; and on the negative side,
in the endeavour, partly in respect for the prohibition of images
contained in the decalogue, partly, and perhaps mainly, in the
interests of the so-called _Disciplina arcani_, fostered under
pressure of persecution, to represent everything that pertained
to the mysteries of the Christian faith as a matter which only
Christians have a right fully to understand. From the prominence
given to the point last referred to it may be explained how
amid the revolution that took place under Constantine the age of
Symbolism and Allegory in the history of Christian art also passed
away, and henceforth painters applied themselves pre-eminently to
realistic historical representations.
§ 38.4. The pictorial and artistic representations of
the pre-Constantine age may be divided into the six following
groups:--
a. =Significant Symbols.=--To these belong especially _the
cross_,[105] though, for fear of the reproaches of Jews
and heathens (§ 23, 2), not yet in its own proper form but
only in a form that indicated what was meant, namely in
the form of the Greek Τ, very frequently in later times in
the monogram of the name of Christ, _i.e._ in a variously
constructed combination of its first two letters Χ and Ρ,
while the Χ, as _crux dissimulatæ_, has very often on
either side the letters α and ω.
b. =Allegorical Figures.=--In the 4th century a particularly
favourite figure was that of the _Fish_, the name of
which, ἰχθύς, formed a highly significant monogrammatic
representation of the sentence, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς
Σωτήρ, and which pointed strikingly to the new birth from
the water of baptism. Then there is the _lamb_ or _sheep_,
as symbol of the soul, which still in this life seeks
after spiritual pastures; and the _dove_ as symbol of
the pious believing soul passing into eternal rest, often
with an _olive branch_ in its mouth (Gen. viii. 11), as
symbol of the eternal peace won. Also we have the _hart_
(Ps. xlii. 1), the _eagle_ (Ps. ciii. 5), the _chicken_,
symbol of Christian growth, the _peacock_, symbol of
the resurrection on account of the annual renewal of its
beautiful plumage, the _dolphin_, symbol of hastiness
or eagerness in the appropriation of salvation, _the
horse_, symbol of the race unto the goal of eternal life,
_the hare_, as symbol of the Christian working out his
salvation with fear and trembling, _the ship_, with
reference to Noah’s ark as a figure of the church, _the
anchor_ (Heb. vi. 19), _the lyre_ (Eph. v. 19), _the palm
branch_ (Rev. vii. 9), _the garland_ (or crown of life,
Rev. ii. 9), _the lily_ (Matt. vi. 28), _the balances_,
symbol of divine righteousness, _fishes and bread_,
symbol of spiritual nourishment with reference to Christ’s
miracle of feeding in the wilderness, etc.
c. =Parabolic Figures.=--These are illustrations borrowed from
the parables of the Gospels. To these belong conspicuously
the figure of the _Good Shepherd_, who bears on His
shoulder the lost sheep that He had found (Luke xv. 5),
the _Vine Stock_ (John xv.), the _Sower_ (Matt. xiii. 3),
the _Marriage Feast_ (Matt. xxii.), the _Ten Virgins_
(Matt. xxv.), etc.
d. =Historical Pictures of O. T. Types.=--Among these we
have Adam and Eve, the Rivers of Paradise (as types of
the four evangelists), Abel and Cain, Noah in the Ark, the
Sacrifice of Isaac, Scenes from Joseph’s History, Moses at
the Burning Bush, the Passage of the Red Sea, the Falling
of the Manna, the Water out of the Rock, History of Job,
Samson with the Gates of Gaza (the gates of Hell), David’s
Victory over Goliath, Elijah’s Ascension, Scenes from the
History of Jonah and Tobit, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, the
Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, etc. Also typical
material from heathen mythology had a place assigned them,
such as the legends of Hercules, Theseus, and especially
of Orpheus who by his music bewitched the raging elements
and tamed the wild beasts, descended into the lower world
and met his death through the infuriated women of his own
race.
e. =Figures from the Gospel History.=--These, _e.g._ the
Visit of the Wise Men from the East, and the Resurrection
of Lazarus, are throughout this period still exceedingly
rare. We do not find a single representation of the
Passion of our Lord, nor any of the sufferings of Christian
martyrs. Pictorial representations of the person of Christ,
as a beardless youth with a friendly mild expression,
are met with in the catacombs from the first half of the
2nd century, but without any claim to supply the likeness
of a portrait, such as might be claimed for the figures of
Christ in the temple of the Carpocratians (§ 27, 8) and in
the Lararium of the Emperor Alexander Severus (§ 22, 4).
Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, in accordance with
the literal interpretation of Isa. liii. 2, 3, thought
that Christ had an unattractive face; the post-Constantine
fathers, on the contrary, resting upon Ps. xlv. 3 and
John i. 14, thought of Him as beautiful and gracious.
f. =Liturgical Figures.=--These were connected only with the
ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
§ 39. LIFE, MANNERS, AND DISCIPLINE.[106]
When the chaff had been so relentlessly severed from the wheat
by the persecutions of that age, a moral earnestness and a power of
denying the world and self must have been developed, sustained by
the divine power of the gospel and furthered by a strict and rigorous
application of church discipline to the Christian life, such as the
world had never seen before. What most excited and deserved wonder
in the sphere of heathendom, hitherto accustomed only to the reign
of selfishness, was the brotherly love of the Christians, their
systematic care of the poor and sick, the widespread hospitality,
the sanctity of marriage, the delight in martyrdom, etc. Marriages
with Jews, heathens and heretics were disapproved, frequently even the
celebration of a second marriage after the death of the first wife was
disallowed. Public amusements, dances, and theatres were avoided by
Christians as _Pompa diaboli_. They thought of the Christian life,
in accordance with Eph. vi. 10 ff., as _Militia Christi_. But even
in the Post-Apostolic Age we come upon indications of a tendency to
turn from the evangelical spirituality, freedom and simplicity of the
Apostolic Age toward a pseudo-catholic externalism and legalism in the
fundamental views taken of ethical problems, and at the same time and
in the same way in the departments of the church constitution (§ 34),
worship (§ 36) and exposition of doctrine (§ 30, 2). The teachers of
the church do still indeed maintain the necessity of a disposition
corresponding to the outward works, but by an over-estimation of
these they already prepare the way for the doctrine of merit and the
_opus operatum_, _i.e._ the meritoriousness of works in themselves.
Even the _Epistle of Barnabas_ and the _Didache_ reckon almsgiving
as an atonement for sins. Still more conspicuously is this tendency
exhibited by _Cyprian_ (_De Opere et eleemosynis_) and even in
the _Shepherd of Hermas_ (§ 30, 4) we find the beginnings of the
later distinction, based upon 1 Cor. vii. 25, 26; Matt. xxv. 21, and
Luke xviii. 10, between the divine commands, _Mandata_ or _Præcepta_,
which are binding upon all Christians, and the evangelical counsels,
_Consilia evangelica_, the non-performance of which is no sin, but the
doing of which secures a claim to merit and more full divine approval.
Among the Alexandrian theologians, too, under the influence of the
Greek philosophy a very similar idea was developed in the distinction
between higher and lower morality, after the former of which the
Christian sage (ὁ γνωστικός) is required to shine, while the ordinary
Christian may rest satisfied with the latter. On such a basis a
special order of Ascetics very early made its appearance in the
churches. Those who went the length of renouncing the world and
going out into the wilderness were called Anchorets. This order
first assumed considerable dimensions in the 4th century (§ 44).
§ 39.1. =Christian Morals and Manners.=--The Christian spirit
pervaded the domestic and civil life and here formed for itself
a code of Christian morals. It expressed itself in the family
devotions and family communions (§ 36, 3), in putting the sign
of the cross upon all callings in life, in the Christian symbols
(§ 38, 3) with which dwellings, garments, walls, lamps, cups,
glasses, rings, etc. were adorned. As to private worship the
Didache requires without fixing the hours that the head of the
household shall have prayers three times a day (Dan. vi. 30),
meaning probably, as with Origen, morning, noon, and night.
Tertullian specifies the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours as the hours
of prayer, and distinctly demands a separate morning and evening
prayer.--The concluding of marriage according to the then existing
Roman law had to be formally carried through by the expressed
agreement of the parties in the presence of witnesses, and this
on the part of the church was regarded as valid. The Christian
custom required that there should be a previous making of it
known, _Professio_, to the bishop, and a subsequent going to the
church of the newly married pair in order that, amid the church’s
intercessions and the priestly benediction, a religious sanction
might be given to their marriage covenant, by the oblation
and common participation of the Lord’s Supper at the close of
the public services. Tertullian’s Montanistic rigorism shows
itself in regarding marriages where these are omitted, _occultæ
conjunctiones_, as no better than _mœchia_ and _fornicatio_. The
crowning of the two betrothed ones and the veiling of the bride
were still disallowed as heathenish practices; but the use of the
wedding ring was sanctioned at an early date and had a Christian
significance attached to it. The burning of dead bodies prevalent
among the heathens reminded them of hell fire; the Christians
therefore preferred the Jewish custom of burial and referred in
support to 1 Cor. xv. 36. The day of the deaths of their deceased
members were celebrated in the Christian families by prayer and
oblations in testimony of their fellowship remaining unbroken by
death and the grave.--Continuation § 61, 2, 3.
§ 39.2. =The Penitential Discipline.=--According to the
Apostolic ordinance (§ 17, 8) notorious sinners were excluded
from the fellowship of the church, _Excommunicatio_, and only
after prolonged trial of their penitence, _Exomologesis_,
were they received back again, _Reconciliatio_. In the time
of Cyprian, about A.D. 250, there was already a well defined
order of procedure in this matter of restoring the lapsed which
continued in force until the 5th century. Penance, _Pœnitentia_,
must extend through four stages, each of which according to
circumstances might require one or more years. During the first
stage, the πρόσκλαυσις, _Fletio_, the penitents, standing at
the church doors in mourning dress, made supplication to the
clergy and the congregation for restoration; in the second,
the ἀκρόασις, _Auditio_, they were admitted again to the reading
of the scriptures and the sermon, but still kept in a separate
place; in the third, ὑπόπτωσις, _Substratio_, they were allowed
to kneel at prayer; and finally, in the fourth, σύστασις,
_Consistentia_, they took part again in the whole of the public
services, with the exception of the communion which they were
only allowed to look at standing. Then they received Absolution
and Reconciliation (=_pacem dare_) in presence of the assembled
and acquiescing congregation by the imposition of the hands
of the bishop and the whole of the clergy, together with
the brotherly kiss and the partaking of the communion. This
procedure was directed against open and demonstrable sins
of a serious nature against the two tables of the decalogue,
against so called _deadly sins_, _Peccata_ or _crimina mortalia_,
1 John v. 16. Excommunication was called forth, on the one
side, against idolatry, blasphemy, apostasy from the faith and
abjuration thereof; on the other, against murder, adultery and
fornication, theft and lying, perfidy and false swearing. Whether
reconciliation was permissible in the case of any mortal sin at
all, and if so, what particular sins might thus be treated, were
questions upon which teachers of the church were much divided
during the 3rd century. But only the Montanists and Novatians
(§§ 40, 41) denied the permissibility utterly and that in
opposition to the prevailing practice of the church, which
refused reconciliation absolutely only in cases of idolatry
and murder, and sometimes also in the case of adultery.
Even Cyprian at first held firmly by the principle that all
mortal sins committed “against God” must be wholly excluded
from the range of penitential discipline, but amid the horrors
of the Decian persecution, which left behind it whole crowds
of fallen ones, _Lapsi_ (§ 22, 5), he was induced by the
passionate entreaties of the church to make the concession that
reconciliation should be granted to the _Libellatici_ after a
full penitential course, but to the _Sacrificati_ only when in
danger of death. All the teachers of the church, however, agree
in holding that it can be granted only once in this life, and
those who again fall away are cut off absolutely. But excessive
strictness in the treatment of the penitents called forth the
contrary extreme of undue laxity (§ 41, 2). The _Confessors_
frequently used their right of demanding the restoration of the
fallen by means of letters of recommendation, _Libelli pacis_,
to such an extent as to seriously interfere with a wholesome
discipline.[107]--Continuation § 61, 1.
§ 39.3. =Asceticism.=--The Ascetism (_Continentia_, ἐγκρατεία)
of heathenism and Judaism, of Pythagoreanism and Essenism,
resting on dualistic and pseudo-spiritualistic views, is
confronted in Christianity with the proposition: Πάντα ὑμῶν
ἐστιν (1 Cor. iii. 21; vi. 12). Christianity, however, also
recognised the ethical value and relative wholesomeness of a
moderate asceticism in proportion to individual temperament,
needs and circumstances (Matt. ix. 12; 1 Cor. vii. 5-7), without
demanding it or regarding it as something meritorious. This
evangelical moderation we also find still in the 2nd century,
_e.g._ in Ignatius. But very soon a gradual exaggeration becomes
apparent and an ever-advancing over estimation of asceticism as a
higher degree of morality with claims to be considered peculiarly
meritorious. The negative requirements of asceticism are directed
first of all to frequent and rigid fasts and to celibacy or
abstinence from marital intercourse; its positive requirements,
to the exercise of the spiritual life in prayer and meditation.
The most of the =Ascetics=, too, in accordance with Luke xviii. 24,
voluntarily divested themselves of their possessions. The number
of them, men and women, increased, and even in the first half
of the 2nd century, they formed a distinct order in the church,
though they were not yet bound to observe this mode of life by any
irrevocable vows. The idea that the clergy were in a special sense
called to an ascetic life resulted in their being designated the
κλῆρος Θεοῦ. Owing to the interpretation given to 1 Tim. iii. 2,
second marriages were in the 2nd century prohibited among the
clergy, and in the 3rd century it was regarded as improper for
them after ordination to continue marital intercourse. But it was
first at the Council of Elvira, in A.D. 306, that this opinion was
elevated into a law, though it could not even then be rigorously
enforced (§ 45, 2).--The immoral practice of ascetics or clerics
having with them virgins devoted to God’s service as _Sorores_,
ἀδελφαί on the ground of 1 Cor. ix. 5, with whom they were united
in spiritual love, in order to show their superiority to the
temptations of the flesh, seems to have been introduced as early
as the 2nd century. In the middle of the 3rd century it was
already widespread. Cyprian repeatedly inveighs against it.
We learn from him that the so-called _Sorores_ slept with the
Ascetics in one bed and surrendered themselves to the tenderest
caresses. For proof of the purity of their relations they referred
to the examinations of midwives. Among bishops, Paul of Samosata
in Antioch (§ 33, 8) seems to have been the first who favoured
this evil custom by his own example. The popular wit of the
Antiochenes [Antiocheans] invented for the more than doubtful
relationship the name of the γυναίκες συνεισάκτοι, _Subintroductæ_,
_Agapetæ_, _Extreneæ_. Bishops and Councils sent forth strict
decrees against the practice.--The most remarkable among the
celebrated ascetics of the age was =Hieracas=, who lived at
Leontopolis in Egypt toward the end of the 3rd and beginning of
the 4th century and died there when ninety years old. A pupil
of Origen, he was distinguished for great learning, favoured
the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, a spiritualistic
dogmatics and strict asceticism. Besides this he was a physician,
astronomer and writer of hymns, could repeat by heart almost all
the Old and New Testaments, wrote commentaries in Greek and Coptic,
and gathered round him a numerous society of men and women, who
accepted his ascetical principles and heterodox views. Founding
upon Matt. xix. 12; 1 Cor. vii. and Heb. xii. 14, he maintained
that celibacy was the only perfectly sure way to blessedness
and commended this doctrine as the essential advance from the
Old Testament to the New Testament morality. He even denied
salvation to Christian children dying in infancy because they had
not yet fought against sensuality, referring to 2 Tim. ii. 5. Of
a sensible paradise he would hear nothing, and just as little of
a bodily resurrection; for the one he interprets allegorically
and the other spiritually. Epiphanius, to whom we owe any precise
information that we have about him, is the first to assign him
and his followers a place in the list of heretics.
§ 39.4. =Paul of Thebes.=--The withdrawal of particular
ascetics from ascetical motives into the wilderness, which was
a favourite craze for a while, may have been suggested by Old
and New Testament examples, _e.g._ 1 Kings xvii. 3; xix. 4;
Luke i. 80; iv. 1; but it was more frequently the result of sore
persecution. Of a regular professional institution of anchorets
with life-long vows there does not yet appear any authentic trace.
According to Jerome’s _Vita Pauli monachi_ a certain =Paul of
Thebes= in Egypt, about A.D. 250, during the Decian persecution,
betook himself, when sixteen years old, to the wilderness, and
there forgotten by all the world but daily fed by a raven with
half a loaf (1 Kings xvii. 4), he lived for ninety-seven years
in a cave in a rock, until St. Anthony (§ 44, 1), directed
to him by divine revelation and led to him first by a centaur,
half man, half horse, then by a fawn, and finally by a she-wolf,
came upon him happily just when the raven had brought him as
it never did before a whole loaf. He was just in time to be
an eye-witness, not indeed of his death, but rather of his
subsequent ascension into heaven, accompanied by angels, prophets
and apostles, and to arrange for the burial of his mortal remains,
for the reception of which two lions, uttering heart-breaking
groans, dug a grave with their claws. These lions after earnestly
seeking and obtaining a blessing from St. Anthony, returned back
to their lair.--Contemporaries of the author, as indeed he himself
tells, declared that the whole story was a tissue of lies. Church
history, however, until quite recently, has invariably maintained
that there must have been some historical foundation, though it
might be very slight, for such a superstructure. But seeing that
no single writer before Jerome seems to know even the name of Paul
of Thebes and also that the _Vita Antonii_ ascribed to Athanasius
knows nothing at all of such a wonderful expedition of the saint,
Weingarten (§ 44) has denied that there ever existed such a man
as this Paul, and has pronounced the story of Jerome to be a
monkish Robinson Crusoe, such as the popular taste then favoured,
which the author put forth as true history _ad majorem monachatus
gloriam_. We may simply apply to this book itself what Jerome
at a later period confessed about his epistles of that same
date _ad Heliodorum:--sed in illo opere pio ætate tunc lusimus
et celentibus adhuc Rhetorum studiis atque doctrinis quædam
scholastico flore depinximus_.
§ 39.5. =Beginning of Veneration of Martyrs.=--In very early
times a martyr death was prized as a sin-atoning _Lavacrum
sanguinis_, which might even abundantly compensate for the want
of water baptism. The day of the martyr’s death which was
regarded as the day of his birth into a higher life, γενέθλια,
_Natalitia martyrum_, was celebrated at his grave by prayers,
oblations and administration of the Lord’s Supper as a testimony
to the continuance of that fellowship with them in the Lord that
had been begun here below. Their bones were therefore gathered
with the greatest care and solemnly buried; so _e.g._ Polycarp’s
bones at Smyrna (§ 22, 2), as τιμιώτερα λίθων πολυτελῶν καὶ
δωκιμώτερα ὑπὲρ χρυσίον, so that at the spot where they were
laid the brethren might be able to celebrate his γενέθλιον ἐν
ἀγαλλιάσει καὶ χαρᾷ, εἴς τε τῶν προηθληκότων μνήμην καὶ τῶν
μελλόντων τε καὶ ἑτοιμασίαν. Of miracles wrought by means of
the relics, however, we as yet find no mention. The _Graffiti_
on the walls of the catacombs seem to represent the beginning
of the invocation of martyrs. In these the pious visitors seek
for themselves and those belonging to them an interest in the
martyr’s intercessions. Some of those scribblings may belong
to the end of our period; at least the expression “_Otia petite
pro_,” etc. in one of them seem to point to a time when they
were still undergoing persecution. The greatest reverence, too,
was shown to the _Confessors_ all through their lives, and great
influence was assigned them in regard to all church affairs,
_e.g._ in the election of bishops, the restoration of the fallen,
etc.--Continuation, § 57.
§ 39.6. =Superstition.=--Just as in later times every great
Christian missionary enterprise has seen religious ideas
transferred from the old heathenism into the young Christianity,
and, consciously or unconsciously, secretly or openly, acquiesced
in or contended against, securing for themselves a footing, so
also the Church of the first centuries did not succeed in keeping
itself free from such intrusions. A superstition forcing its
entrance in this way can either be taken over _nude crude_ in its
genuinely pagan form and, in spite of its palpable inconsistency
with the Christian faith, may nevertheless assert itself side
by side with it, or it may divest itself of that old pagan form,
and so unobserved and uncontested gain an entrance with its not
altogether extinguished heathenish spirit into new Christian
views and institutions and thus all the more dangerously make its
way among them. It is especially the magico-theurgical element
present in all heathen religions, which even at this early period
stole into the Christian life and the services of the church
and especially into the sacraments and things pertaining thereto
(§ 58), while it assumed new forms in the veneration of martyrs
and the worship of relics. One can scarcely indeed accept as a
convincing proof of this the statement of the Emperor Hadrian
in his correspondence regarding the religious condition of
Alexandria as given by the historian Vopiscus: _Illic qui
Serāpem colunt Christiani sunt, et devoti sunt Serapi qui se
Christi episcopos dicunt; nemo illic archisynagogus Judæorum,
nemo Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter non mathematicus,
non haruspex, non aliptes_. This statement bears on its face
too evidently the character of superficial observation, of vague
hearsay and confused massing together of sundry reports. What
he says of the worship of Serapis, may have had some support
from the conduct of many Christians in the ascetic order, the
designating of their presbyters _aliptæ_ may have been suggested
by the chrism in baptism and the anointing at the consecration
of the clergy, perhaps also in the anointing of the sick
(Matt. vi. 13; Jas. v. 14); so too the characterizing of them
as _mathematici_ may have arisen from their determining the date
of Easter by means of astronomical observations (§ 37, 2; 56, 3),
though it could not be specially wonderful if there actually
were Christian scholars among the Alexandrian clergy skilled
in astronomy, notwithstanding the frequent alliance of this
science with astrology. But much more significant is the gross
superstition which in many ways shows itself in so highly
cultured a Christian as Julius Africanus in his _Cestæ_ (§ 31, 8).
In criticising it, however, we should bear in mind that this book
was written in the age of Alexander Severus, in which, on the one
hand, a wonderful mixture of religion and theurgical superstition
had a wonderful fascination for men, while on the Christian side
the whirlwind of persecution had not for a long time blown its
purifying breeze. The catacombs, too, afford some evidences of a
mode of respect for the departed that was borrowed from heathen
practices, but these on the whole are wonderfully free from
traces of superstition.
§ 40. THE MONTANIST REFORMATION.[108]
Earnest and strict as the moral, religious and ascetical requirements
of the church of the 2nd and 3rd centuries generally were in regard
to the life and morals of its members, and rigidly as these principles
were carried out in its penitential discipline, there yet appeared
even at this early date, in consequence of various instances of the
relaxation of such strictness, certain eager spirits who clamoured
for a restoration or even an intensification of the earlier rules of
discipline. Such a movement secured for itself a footing about the
middle of the 2nd century in Montanism, a growth of Phrygian soil, which
without traversing in any way the doctrine of the church, undertook
a thorough reformation of the ecclesiastical constitution on the
practical side. Montanism, in opposition to the eclecticism of heretical
Gnosticism, showed the attitude of Christianity to heathenism to be
exclusive; against the spiritualizing and allegorizing tendencies of the
church Gnosticism it opposed the realism and literalism of the doctrines
and facts of the scripture revelation; against what seemed the excessive
secularization of the church it presented a model of church discipline
such as the nearness of the Lord’s coming demanded; against hierarchical
tendencies that were always being more and more emphasized it maintained
the rights of the laity and the membership of the church; while in order
to secure the establishment of all these reforms it proclaimed that a
prophetically inspired spiritual church had succeeded to Apostolic
Christianity.
§ 40.1. =Montanism in Asia Minor.=--According to Epiphanius as
early as A.D. 156, according to Eusebius in A.D. 172, according
to Jerome in A.D. 171, a certain Montanus appeared as a prophet
and church reformer at Pepuza in Phrygia. He was formerly a
heathen priest and was only shortly before known as a Christian.
He had visions, preached while unconscious in ecstasy of the
immediate coming again of Christ (_Parousia_), fulminated against
the advancing secularisation of the church, and, as the supposed
organ of the _Paraclete_ promised by Christ (John xiv. 16)
presented in their most vigorous form the church’s demands in
respect of morals and discipline. A couple of excited women
_Prisca_ and _Maximilla_ were affected by the same extravagant
spirit by which he was animated, fell into a somnambulistic
condition and prophesied as he had done. On the death of
Maximilla about A.D. 180, Montanus and Prisca having died
before this, the supposed prophetic gift among them seems to
have been quenched. At least an anonymous writer quoted in
Eusebius (according to Jerome it was Rhodon, § 27, 12), in
his controversial treatise published thirteen years afterwards,
states that the voices of the prophets were then silent. So
indeed she herself had declared: Μεθ’ ἐμὲ προφῆτης οὐκέτι ἔσται,
ἀλλὰ συντέλεια. The Montanist prophecies occasioned a mighty
commotion in the whole church of Asia Minor. Many earnest
Christians threw themselves eagerly into the movement. Even
among the bishops they found here and there favour or else mild
criticism, while others combated them passionately, some going
so far as to regard the prophesying women as possessed ones and
calling exorcism to their aid. By the end of the year 170 several
synods, the first synods regularly convened, had been held
against them, the final result of which was their exclusion from
the catholic church. Montanus now organized his followers into an
independent community. After his death, his most zealous follower,
Alcibiades, undertook its direction. It was also not without
literary defenders. Themison, Alcibiades’ successor, issued “in
imitation of the Apostle” (John?) a Καθολικὴ ἐπιστολή, and the
utterances of the prophets were collected and circulated as
holy scripture. On the other hand during this same year 170 they
were attacked by the eminent apologists Claudius Apollinaris
and Miltiades (§ 36, 9) probably also by Melito. Their radical
opponents were the so-called _Alogi_ (§ 33, 2). Among their later
antagonists, who assumed more and more a passionately embittered
tone, the most important according to Eusebius were one
Apollinaris, whom Tertullian combats in the VII. Bk. of his
work, _De ecstasi_, and Serapion. At a Synod at Iconium about
the middle of the 3rd century at which also Firmilian of Cæsarea
(§ 35, 5) was present and voted, the baptism of the Montanists,
although their trinitarian orthodoxy could not be questioned,
was pronounced to be like heretical baptism null, because
administered _extra ecclesiam_, and a second baptism declared
necessary on admission to the Catholic church. And although at the
Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325 and of Constantinople in A.D. 381,
the validity of heretics’ baptism was admitted if given orderly
in the name of the Holy Trinity, the baptism of the Montanists was
excluded because it was thought that the Paraclete of Montanism
could not be recognised as the Holy Spirit of the church.--Already
in the time of Constantine the Great the Montanists were spreading
out from Phrygia over all the neighbouring provinces, and were
called from the place where they originated Κατάφρυγες and
Pepuziani. The Emperor now forbade them holding any public
assemblies for worship and ordered that all places for public
service should be taken from them and given over to the Catholic
church. Far stricter laws than even these were enforced against
them by later emperors down to the 5th century, _e.g._ prohibition
of all Montanist writings, deprivation of almost all civil rights,
banishment of their clergy to the mines, etc. Thus they could only
prolong a miserable existence in secret, and by the beginning of
the sixth century every trace of them had disappeared.
§ 40.2. =Montanism at Rome.=--The movement called forth by
Montanism in the East spread by and by also into the West. When
the first news reached Gaul of the synodal proceedings in Asia
Minor that had rent the church, the Confessors imprisoned at
Lyons and Vienne during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, of
whom more than one belonged to a colony that had emigrated from
Phrygia to Gaul, were displeased, and, along with their report
of the persecution they had endured (§ 32, 8), addressed a letter
to those of Asia Minor, not given by Eusebius, but reckoned pious
and orthodox, exhorting to peace and the preservation of unity.
At the same time (A.D. 177) they sent the Presbyter Irenæus to
Rome in order to win from Bishop Eleutherus (A.D. 174-189), who
was opposed to Montanism, a mild and pacific sentence. Owing,
however, to the arrival of Praxeas, a Confessor of Asia Minor and
a bitter opponent of Montanism, a formal condemnation was at last
obtained (§ 33, 4). Tertullian relates that the Roman bishop, at
the instigation of Praxeas, revoked the letters of peace which
had been already prepared in opposition to his predecessors.
It is matter of controversy whether by this unnamed bishop
Eleutherus is meant, who then was first inclined to a peaceable
decision by Irenæus and thereafter by the picture of Montanist
extravagances given by Praxeas was led again to form another
opinion; or that it was, what seems from the chronological
references most probable, his successor Victor (A.D. 189-199), in
which case Eleutherus is represented as having hardened himself
against Montanism in spite of the entreaties of Irenæus, while
Victor was the first who for a season had been brought to think
otherwise.--Yet even after their condemnation a small body of
Montanists continued to exist in Rome, whose mouthpiece during
the time of bishop Zephyrinus (A.D. 199-217) was Proclus, whom
the Roman Caius (§ 31, 7) opposed by word and writing.
§ 40.3. =Montanism in Proconsular Africa.=--When and how
Montanism gained a footing in North Africa is unknown, but
very probably it spread thither from Rome. The movement issuing
therefrom first attracted attention when Tertullian, about
A.D. 201 or 202, returned from Rome to Carthage, and with the
whole energy of his character decided in its favour, and devoted
his rich intellectual gifts to its advocacy. That the Montanist
party in Africa at that time still continued in connection with
the Catholic church is witnessed to by the Acts of the Martyrs
Perpetua and Felicitas (§ 32, 8), composed some time after this,
which bear upon them almost all the characteristic marks of
Montanism, while a vision communicated there shows that division
was already threatened. The bishop and clergy together with the
majority of the membership were decided opponents of the new
ecstatic-visionary prophecy already under ecclesiastical ban in
Asia Minor. They had not yet, however, come to an open breach
with it, which was probably brought about in A.D. 206 when quiet
had been again restored after the cessation of the persecution
begun about A.D. 202 by Septimius Severus. Tertullian had stood
at the head of the sundered party as leader of their sectarian
services, and defended their prophesyings and rigorism in
numerous apologetico-polemical writings with excessive bitterness
and passion, applying them with consistent stringency to all the
relations of life, especially on the ethical side. From the high
esteem in which, notwithstanding his Montanist eccentricities,
Tertullian’s writings continued to be held in Africa, _e.g._
by Cyprian (§ 31, 11), and generally throughout the West, the
tendency defended by him was not regarded in the church there as
in the East as thoroughly heretical, but only as a separatistic
overstraining of views allowed by the church. This mild estimate
could all the easier win favour, since to all appearance the
extravagant visionary prophesying, which caused most offence, had
been in these parts very soon extinguished.--Augustine reports
that a small body of “Tertullianists” continued in Carthage
down to his time († 430), and had by him been induced to return
to the Catholic church; and besides this, he also tells us
that Tertullian had subsequently separated himself from the
“Cataphrygians,” _i.e._ from the communion of the Montanists of
Asia Minor, whose excesses were only then perhaps made known to
him.
§ 40.4. =The Fundamental Principle of Montanism.=--Montanism
arose out of a theory of a divinely educative revelation
proceeding by advancing stages, not finding its conclusion in
Christ and the Apostles, but in the age of the Paraclete which
began with Montanus and in him reached its highest development.
The times of the law and the prophets in the Old Covenant is
the childhood of the kingdom of God; in the gospel it appears in
its youth; and by the Montanist shedding forth of the Spirit it
reaches the maturity of manhood. Its absolute perfection will be
attained in the millennium introduced by the approaching Parousia
and the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem at Pepuza (Rev. xx. 21).
The Montanist prophecy did not enrich or expand but only
maintained and established against the heretics, the system of
Christian doctrine already exclusively revealed in the times of
Christ. Montanism regarded as its special task a reformation of
Christian life and Church discipline highly necessary in view of
the approaching Parousia. The defects that had been borne with
during the earlier stages of revelation were to be repaired or
removed by the _Mandata_ of the Paraclete. The following are some
of the chief of these prescriptions: Second marriage is adultery;
Fasting must be practised with greater strictness; On _dies
stationum_ (§ 37, 3) nothing should be eaten until evening, and
twice a year for a whole week only water and bread (ξηροφαγίαι);
The excommunicated must remain their whole lifetime in _status
pœnitentiæ_; Martyrdom should be courted, to withdraw in any way
from persecution is apostasy and denial of the faith; Virgins
should take part in the worship of God only when veiled; Women
generally must put away all finery and ornaments; secular science
and art, all worldly enjoyments, even those that seem innocent,
are only snares of the devil, etc. An anti-hierarchical tendency
early showed itself in Montanism from the circumstance that
it arrogated to itself a new and high authority to which
the hierarchical organs of the church refused to submit
themselves. Yet even Montanism, after repudiating it, for its
own self-preservation was obliged to give itself an official
congregational organization, which, according to Jerome, had
as its head a patriarch resident at Pepuza, and, according to
Epiphanius, founding on Gal. iii. 28, gave even women admission
into ecclesiastical offices. Its worship was distinguished
only by the space given to the prophesyings of its prophets and
prophetesses. Epiphanius notes this as a special characteristic
of the sect, that often in their assemblies seven white-robed
virgins with torches made their appearance prophesying; evidently,
as the number seven itself shows, as representatives of the seven
spirits of God (Rev. iv. 5, etc.), and not of the ten virgins
who wait for the coming of the Lord. According to Philaster they
allowed even unbaptized persons to attend all their services and
were in the habit of baptizing even the dead, as is elsewhere
told also of certain Gnostic sects. Epiphanius too speaks of a
Montanist party which celebrated the Lord’s Supper with bread and
cheese, _Artotyrites_, according to Augustine, because the first
men had presented offerings of the fruits of the earth and sheep.
§ 40.5. =The Attitude of Montanism toward the Church.=--The
derivation of Montanism from Ebionism, contended for by Schwegler,
has nothing in its favour and much against it. To disprove this
notion it is enough to refer to the Montanist fundamental idea
of a higher stage of revelation above Moses and the prophets as
well as above the Messiah and His Apostles. Neither can we agree
with Neander in regarding the peculiar character of the Phrygian
people, as exhibited in their extravagant and fanatical worship
of Cybele, as affording a starting point for the Montanist
movement, but at most as a predisposition which rendered the
inhabitants of this province peculiarly susceptible in presence
of such a movement. The origin of Montanism is rather to be
sought purely among the specifically Catholic conditions and
conflicts within the church of Asia which at that time was
pre-eminently gifted and active. In regard to dogma Montanism
occupied precisely the same ground as the Catholic church;
even upon the trinitarian controversies of the age it took up
no sectarian position but went with the stream of the general
development. Not on the dogmatical but purely on the practical
side, namely, on that of the Christian life and ecclesiastical
constitution, discipline and morals, lay the problems which by
the action of the Montanists were brought into conflict. But
even upon this side Montanism, with all its eccentricities, did
not assume the attitude of an isolated separatistic sect, but
rather as a quickening and intensifying of views and principles
which from of old had obtained the recognition and sanction of
the church,--views which on the wider spread of Christianity
had already begun to be in every respect toned down or even
obliterated, and just in this way called forth that reaction of
enthusiasm which we meet with in Montanism. From the Apostles’
time the expectation of the early return of the Lord had stood
in the foreground of Christian faith, hope and yearning, and
this expectation continued still to be heartily entertained.
Nevertheless the fulfilment had now been so long delayed that men
were beginning to put this coming into an indefinitely distant
future (2 Pet. iii. 4). Hence it happened that even the leaders
of the church, in building up its hierarchical constitution and
adjusting it to the social circumstances and conditions of life
by which they were surrounded, made their arrangements more and
more deliberately in view of a longer continuance of the present
state of things, and thus the primitive Christian hope of an
early Parousia, though not expressly denied, seemed practically
to have been set aside. Hence the Montanist revivalists
proclaimed this hope as most certain, giving a guarantee for it
by means of a new divine revelation. Similarly too the moral,
ascetic and disciplinary rigorism of the Montanist prophecy is
to be estimated as a vigorous reaction against the mild practice
prevailing in the church with its tendency to make concessions
to human weakness, in favour of the strict exercise of church
discipline in view of the nearness of the Parousia. Montanism
could also justify the reappearance of prophetic gifts among
its founders by referring to the historical tradition which from
the Apostolic Age (Acts xi. 27 f.; xxi. 9) presented to view a
series of famous prophets and prophetesses, endowed with ecstatic
visionary powers. The exclusion of Montanism from the Catholic
Church could not, therefore, have been occasioned either by its
proclaiming an early Parousia or by its rigorism, or finally,
even by its prophetic claims, but purely by its doctrine of the
Paraclete. Under the pretence of instituting a new and higher
stage of revelation, it had really undertaken to correct the
moral and religious doctrines of Christ and the Apostles as
defective and incomplete, and had thereby proved itself to the
representatives of the church to be undoubtedly a pseudo-prophecy.
The spiritual pride with which the Montanists proclaimed
themselves to be the privileged people of the Holy Spirit,
Πνευματικοὶ, _Spirituales_ and characterized the Catholics as,
on the contrary, Ψυχικοὶ, _Carnales_, as also the assumption
that chose their own obscure Pepuza for the site of the heavenly
Jerusalem, and the manifold extravagances committed by their
prophets and prophetesses in their ecstatic trances, must
have greatly tended to create an aversion to every form of
spiritualistic manifestation. The origin of Montanism, the
contesting of it and its final expulsion, constitute indeed a
highly significant crisis in the historical development of the
church, conditioned not so much by a separatistic sectarian
tendency, but rather by the struggle of two tendencies existing
within the church, in which the tendency represented by Montanism
and honestly endeavouring the salvation of the church, went
under, while that which was victorious would have put an end
to all enthusiasm. The expulsion of Montanism from the church
contributed greatly to freeing the church from the reproach
so often advanced against it of being a narrow sect, made its
consenting to the terms, demands and conditions of everyday
life in the world easier, gave a freer course and more powerful
impulse to its development in constitution and worship dependent
upon these, as well as in the further building up of its
practical and scientific endeavours, and generally advanced
greatly its expansion and transformation from a sectarian close
association into a universal church opening itself up more and
more to embrace all the interests of the culture of the age;--a
transformation which indeed in many respects involved a
secularizing of the church and imparted to its spiritual
functions too much of an official and superficial character.
§ 41. SCHISMATIC DIVISIONS IN THE CHURCH.
Even after the ecclesiastical sentence had gone forth against
Montanism, the rigoristic penitential discipline in a form more or less
severe still found its representatives within the Catholic church. As
compared with the advocates of a milder procedure these were indeed
generally in the minority, but this made them all the more zealously
contend for their opinions and endeavour to secure for them universal
recognition. Out of the contentions occasioned thereby, augmented by
the rivalry of presbyter and episcopus, or episcopus and metropolitan,
several ecclesiastical divisions originated which, in spite of the
pressing need of the time for ecclesiastical unity, were long continued
by ambitious churchmen in order to serve their own selfish ends.
§ 41.1. =The Schism of Hippolytus at Rome about A.D. 220.=--On
what seems to have been the oldest attempt to form a sect at Rome
over a purely doctrinal question, namely that of the Theodotians,
about A.D. 210, see § 33, 3.--Much more serious was the schism of
Hippolytus, which broke out ten years later. In A.D. 217, after
an eventful and adventurous life, a freedman Callistus was raised
to the bishopric of Rome, but not without strong opposition on
the part of the rigorists, at whose head stood the celebrated
presbyter Hippolytus. They charged the bishop with scoffing at
all Christian earnestness, conniving at the loosening of all
church discipline toward the fallen and sinners of all kinds, and
denounced him especially as a supporter of the Noetian [Noëtian]
heresy (§ 33, 5). They took great offence also at his previous
life which his opponent Hippolytus (_Elench._, ix. 11 ff.) thus
describes: When the slave of a Christian member of the imperial
household, Callistus with the help of his lord established
a bank; he failed, took to flight, was brought back, sprang into
the sea, was taken out again and sent to the treadmill. At the
intercession of Christian friends he was set free, but failing to
satisfy his urgent creditors, he despairingly sought a martyr’s
death, for this end wantonly disturbed the Jewish worship, and
was on that account scourged and banished to the Sardinian mines.
At the request of bishop Victor the imperial concubine Marcia
(§ 22, 3) obtained the freedom of the exiled Christian confessors
among whom Callistus, although his name had been intentionally
omitted from the list presented by Victor, was included. After
Victor’s death he wormed himself into the favour of his weak
successor Zephyrinus, who placed him at the head of his clergy,
in consequence of which he was able by intrigues and craft
to secure for himself the succession to the bishopric.--An
opportunity of reconciliation was first given, it would seem,
under Pontianus, the second successor of Callistus, by banishing
the two rival chiefs to Sardinia. Both parties then united in
making a unanimous choice in A.D. 235.[109]
§ 41.2. =The Schism of Felicissimus at Carthage in
A.D. 250.=--Several presbyters in Carthage were dissatisfied with
the choice of Cyprian as bishop in A.D. 248 and sought to assert
their independence. At their head stood Novatus. Taking the
law into their own hands they chose Felicissimus, the next
head of the party, as a deacon. When Cyprian during the Decian
persecution withdrew for a time from Carthage, they charged him
with dereliction of duty and faint-heartedness. Cyprian, however,
soon returned, A.D. 251, and now they used his strictness toward
the _Lapsi_ as a means of creating a feeling against him. He
expressed himself very decidedly as to the recklessness with
which many confessors gave without examination _Libelli pacis_
to the fallen, and called upon these to commit their case to a
Synod that should be convened after the persecution. A church
visitation completed the schism; the discontented presbyters
without more ado received all the fallen and, notwithstanding
that Cyprian himself on the return of persecution introduced
a milder practice, they severed themselves from him under an
opposition bishop Fortunatus. Only by the unwearied exercise of
wisdom and firmness did Cyprian succeed in putting down the
schism.[110]
§ 41.3. =The Schism of the Presbyter Novatian at Rome in
A.D. 251.=--In this case the rigorist and presbyterial interests
coincide. After the martyrdom of bishop Fabian under Decian in
A.D. 250, the Roman bishopric remained vacant for more than a
year. His successor Cornelius (A.D. 251-253) was an advocate
of the milder practice. At the head of his rigorist opponents
stood his unsuccessful rival, Novatian, a learned but ambitious
presbyter (§ 31, 12). Meanwhile Novatus, excommunicated by Cyprian
at Carthage, had also made his way to Rome. Notwithstanding his
having previously maintained contrary principles in the matter
of church discipline, he attached himself to the party of the
purists and urged them into schism. They now chose Novatian as
bishop. Both parties sought to obtain the recognition of the most
celebrated churches. In doing so Cornelius described his opponent
in the most violent and bitter manner as a mere intriguer,
against whose reception into the number of presbyters as one
who had received clinical baptism (§ 35, 3) and especially
as an energoumenon under the care of the exorcists, he had
already protested; further as having extorted a sham episcopal
consecration from three simple Italian bishops, after he had
attached them to himself by pretending to be a peacemaker, then
locking them up and making them drunk, etc. Cyprian, as well as
Dionysius of Alexandria, expressed himself against Novatian, and
attacked the principles of his party, namely, that the church has
no right to give assurance of forgiveness to the fallen or such
as have broken their baptismal vows by grievous sin (although
the possibility of finding forgiveness through the mercy of
God was indeed admitted), and that the church as a communion of
thoroughly pure members should never endure any impure ones in
its bosom, nor receive back any excommunicated ones, even after
a full ecclesiastical course of penitence. The Novatianists had
therefore called themselves the Καθαροί. The moral earnestness of
their fundamental principles secured for them even from bishops
of contrary views an indulgent verdict, and Novatianist churches
sprang up over almost all the Roman empire. The Œcumenical
Council at Nicæa in A.D. 325 maintained an attitude toward them
upon the whole friendly, and in the Arian controversy (§ 50) they
stood faithfully side by side with their ecclesiastical opponents
in the defence of Nicene orthodoxy, and with them suffered
persecution from the Arians. Later on, however, the Catholic
church without more ado treated them as heretics. Theodosius
the Great sympathizing with them because of such unfair treatment,
took them under his protection; but Honorius soon again withdrew
these privileges from them. Remnants of the party continued
nevertheless to exist down to the 6th century.[111]
§ 41.4. =The Schism of Meletius in Egypt in A.D. 306.=--Meletius,
bishop of Lycopolis in the Thebaid, a representative of the
rigorist party, during the Diocletian persecution claimed to
confer ordinations and otherwise infringed upon the metropolitan
rights of Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a supporter of the
milder practice who for the time being lived in retirement. All
warnings and admonitions were in vain. An Egyptian Synod under
the presidency of Peter issued a decree of excommunication and
deposition against him. Then arose the schism, A.D. 306, which
won the whole of Egypt. The General Synod at Nicæa in A.D. 325
confirmed the Alexandrian bishop in his rights of supremacy
(§ 46, 3) and offered to all the Meletian bishops an amnesty
and confirmation in the succession on the death of the catholic
anti-bishop of their respective dioceses. Many availed themselves
of this concession, but others persisted in their schismatical
course and finally attached themselves to the Arian party
(§ 50, 2).
SECOND SECTION.
The History of the Græco-Roman Church from
the 4th-7th centuries.
A.D. 323-692.
I. CHURCH AND STATE.
§ 42. THE OVERTHROW OF PAGANISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.[112]
After the overthrow of Licinius (§ 22, 7) Constantine identified
himself unreservedly with Christianity, but accepted baptism only
shortly before his death in A.D. 337. He was tolerant toward paganism,
though encouraging its abandonment in all possible ways. His sons,
however, began to put it down by violence. Julian’s short reign was
a historical anomaly which only proved that paganism did not die a
violent death, but rather gradually succumbed to a _Marasmus senilis_.
Succeeding emperors reverted to the policy of persecution and
extermination.--Neoplatonism, notwithstanding the patronage of
Julian and the brilliant reputation of its leading representatives,
could not reach the goal arrived at, but from the ethereal heights of
philosophical speculation sank ever further and further into the misty
region of fantastic superstition (§ 24, 2). The attempts at regeneration
made by the _Hypsistarians_, _Euphemites_, _Cœlicolæ_, in which paganism
strove after a revival by means of a barren Jewish monotheism or an
effete Sabaism, proved miserable failures. The literary conflict between
Christianity and paganism had almost completely altered its tone.
§ 42.1. =The Romish Legend of the Baptism of Constantine.=--That
Constantine the Great only accepted baptism shortly before his
death in Nicomedia, from Eusebius, bishop of that place, and a
well-known leader of the Arian party (§ 50, 1, 2), is put beyond
question by the evidence of his contemporary Eusebius of Cæsarea
in his _Vita Const._, of Ambrose, of Jerome in his Chronicle,
etc. About the end of the 5th century, however, a tradition,
connecting itself with the fact that a Roman baptistery bore
the name of Constantine, gained currency in Rome, to the effect
that Constantine had been baptised at this baptistery more than
twenty years before his death by Pope Sylvester (A.D. 314-335).
According to this purely fabulous legend Constantine, who
had up to that time been a bitter enemy and persecutor of the
Christians, became affected with leprosy, for the cure of which
he was recommended to bathe in a tub filled with the blood
of an innocent child. Moved by the tears of the mother the
emperor rejected this means of cure, and under the direction of
a heavenly vision applied to the Pope, who by Christian baptism
delivered him from his malady, whereupon all the members of the
Roman senate still heathens, and all the people were straightway
converted to Christ, etc. This legend is told in the so-called
_Decretum Gelasii_ (§ 47, 22), but is first vindicated as
historically true in the _Liber pontificalis_ (§ 90, 6), and
next in A.D. 729, in Bede’s Chronicle (§ 90, 2). In the notorious
_Donatio Constantini_ (§ 87, 4) it is unhesitatingly accepted.
Since then, at first with some exceptions but soon without
exceptions, all chroniclers of the Middle Ages and likewise since
the 9th century the _Scriptores hist. Byzant._, have adopted
it. And although in the 15th century Æneas Sylvius and Nicolaus
[Nicolas] of Cusa admitted that the legend was without foundation,
yet in the 16th century in Baronius and Bellarmine, and in
the 17th in Schelstraate, it found earnest defenders. The
learned French Benedictines of the 17th century were the first
to render it utterly incredible even in the Roman Catholic
church.[113]
§ 42.2. =Constantine the Great and his Sons.=--Constantine’s
profession of Christianity was not wholly the result of political
craft, though his use of the name _Pontifex Maximus_ and in
this capacity the continued exercise of certain pagan practices,
gave some colour to such an opinion. Outbursts of passion,
impulsiveness exhibited in deeds of violence and cruelty, as in
the order for the execution of his eldest son Crispus in A.D. 326
and his second wife Fausta, are met with even in his later years.
Soon after receiving baptism he died without having ever attended
a complete divine service. His toleration of paganism must be
regarded purely as a piece of statecraft. He only prohibited
impure rites and assigned to the Christians but a few of the
temples that had actually been in use. Aversion to the paganism
still prevalent among the principal families in Rome may partly
have led him to transfer his residence to Byzantium, since called
Constantinople, in A.D. 330. His three sons divided the Empire
among them. Constantius (A.D. 337-361) retained the East, and
became, after the death of Constantine II. in A.D. 340 and of
Constans in A.D. 350, sole ruler. All the three sought to put
down paganism by force. Constantius closed the heathen temples
and forbade all sacrifices on pain of death. Multitudes of
heathens went over to Christianity, few probably from conviction.
Among the nobler pagans there was thus awakened a strong
aversion to Christianity. Patriotism and manly spirit came to
be identified with the maintenance of the old religion.[114]
§ 42.3. =Julian the Apostate (A.D. 361-363).=--The sons of
Constantine the Great began their reign in A.D. 337 with the
murder of their male relatives. The brothers Julian and Gallus,
nephews of Constantine, alone were spared; but in A.D. 345 they
were banished to a Cappadocian castle where Julian officiated for
a while as reader in the village church. Having at last obtained
leave to study in Nicomedia, then in Ephesus, and finally in
Athens, the chief representatives of paganism fostered in him the
conviction that he was specially raised up by the gods to restore
again the old religion of his fathers. As early as A.D. 351
in Nicomedia he formally though still secretly returned to
paganism, and at Athens in A.D. 355 he took part in the Eleusinian
mysteries. Soon thereafter Constantius, harassed by foreign wars,
assigned to him the command of the army against the Germans. By
affability, personal courage and high military talent, he soon
won to himself the enthusiastic attachment of the soldiers.
Constantius thought to weaken the evident power of his cousin
which seemed to threaten his authority, by recalling the best
of the legions, but the legions refused obedience and proclaimed
Julian emperor. Then the emperor refused to ratify the election
and treated Julian himself as a rebel. The latter advanced at
the head of his army by forced marches upon the capital, but
ere he reached the city, he received the tidings of the opposing
emperor’s death. Acknowledged now as emperor throughout the
whole empire without any opposition, Julian proceeded with zeal,
enthusiasm and vigour to accomplish his long-cherished wish, the
restoring of the glory of the old national religion. He used no
violent measures for the subversion and overthrow of Christianity,
nor did he punish Christian obstinacy with death, except where it
seemed to him the maintenance of his supremacy required it. But
he demanded that temples which had been converted into churches
should be restored to the heathen worship, those destroyed should
be restored at the cost of the church exchequer and the money for
the state that had been applied to ecclesiastical purposes had to
be repaid. He scornfully referred the clergy thus robbed of their
revenues to the blessedness of evangelical poverty. He also
fomented as much as possible dissension in the church, favoured
all sectaries and heretics, excluded Christians from all the
higher, and afterwards from all the lower, civil and military
offices, and loaded them on every occasion with reproach and
shame, and by these means he actually induced many to apostatise.
In order to discredit Christ’s prophecy in Matt. xxiv. 2, he
resolved on the restoration of the Jewish temple at Jerusalem,
but after having been begun it was destroyed by an earthquake. He
excluded all Christian teachers from the public schools, and also
forbade them in their own schools from explaining the classical
writers who were objected to and contested by them only as
godless; so that Christian boys and youths could obtain a higher
classical education only in the pagan schools. By petty artifices
he endeavoured to get Christian soldiers to take part, if
only even seemingly, in the heathen sacrifices. Indeed at a
later period in Antioch he was not ashamed to stoop to the mean
artifice of Galerian (§ 22, 6) of sprinkling with sacrificial
water the necessaries of life exposed in the public market, etc.
On the other hand, he strove in every way to elevate and ennoble
paganism. From Christianity he borrowed Benevolent Institutions,
Church Discipline, Preaching, Public Service of Song, etc.; he
gave many distinctions to the heathen priesthood, but required
of them a strict discipline. He himself sacrificed and preached
as _Pontifex Maximus_, and led a strictly ascetic, almost a
cynically simple life. The ineffectiveness of his attempts and
the daring, often even contemptuous, resistance of many Christian
zealots embittered him more and more, so that there was now
danger of bloody persecution when, after a reign of twenty
months, he was killed from a javelin blow in a battle against the
Persians in A.D. 363. Shortly before in answer to the scornful
question of a heathen, “What is your Carpenter’s Son doing now?”
it had been answered, “He is making a coffin for your emperor.”
At a later period the story became current that Julian himself,
when he received the deadly stroke, exclaimed, _Tandem vicisti
Galilæe_! His military talents and military virtues had shed a
glory around the throne of the Cæsars such as it had not known
since the days of Marcus Aurelius, and yet his whole life’s
struggle was and remained utterly fruitless and vain.[115]
§ 42.4. =The Later Emperors.=--After Julian’s death, Jovian,
and then on his death in A.D. 364, Valentinian I. († 375),
were chosen emperors by the army. The latter resigned to his
brother Valens the empire of the East (A.D. 364-378). His son and
successor Gratian (A.D. 375-383) at the wish of the army adopted
his eldest half-brother of four years old, Valentinian II., as
colleague in the empire of the West, and upon the death of Valens
resigned the government of the West to the Spaniard Theodosius I.,
or the Great (A.D. 379-395), who, after the assassination of
Valentinian II. in A.D. 392, became sole ruler. After his death
his sons again divided the empire among them: Honorius († 423)
took the West, Arcadius († 408) the East, and now the partitioned
empire continued in this condition until the incursions of the
barbarians had broken up the whole West Roman division (A.D. 476).
Belisarius and Narses, the victorious generals of Justinian I.,
were the first to succeed, between A.D. 533-553, in conquering
again North Africa and all Italy along with its islands. But in
Italy the Byzantine empire from A.D. 569 was reduced in size from
time to time by the Longobards, and in Africa from A.D. 665 by
the Saracens, while even earlier, about A.D. 633, the Saracens
had secured to themselves Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.--Julian’s
immediate successors tolerated paganism for a time. It was,
however, a very temporary respite. No sooner had =Theodosius I.=
quieted in some measure political disorders, than he proceeded
in A.D. 382 to accomplish the utter overthrow of paganism.
The populace and the monks combined in destroying the temples.
The rhetorician Libanius († 395) then addressed his celebrated
discourse Περὶ τῶν ἱερῶν to the emperor; but the remaining
temples were closed and the people were prohibited from visiting
them. In Alexandria, under the powerful bishop Theophilus, there
were bloody conflicts, in consequence of which the Christians
destroyed the beautiful Serapeion in A.D. 391. In vain did
the pagans look for the falling down of the heavens and the
destruction of the earth; even the Nile would not once by causing
blight and barrenness take vengeance on the impious. In the West,
=Gratian= was the first of the emperors who declined the rank of
_pontifex maximus_; he also deprived the heathen priests of their
privileges, removed the foundations of the temple of Fiscus,
and commanded that the altar of Victory should be taken away
from the hall of the Senate in Rome. In vain did Symmachus,
_præfectus urbi_, entreat for its restoration, if not “_numinis_”
yet “_nominis causa_.” =Valentinian II.=, urged on by Ambrose,
sent back four times unheard the deputation that came about this
matter. So soon as =Theodosius I.= became sole ruler the edicts
were made more severe. On his entrance into Rome in A.D. 394 he
addressed to the Roman Senate a severe lecture and called them
to repentance. His sons, Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the
East, followed the example of their father. Under the successor
of the latter, =Theodosius II.= (A.D. 408-450), monks with
imperial authority for the suppression of heathenism traversed
the provinces, and in A.D. 448, in common with =Valentinian III.=
(A.D. 425-455), the western emperor, he issued an edict
which strictly enjoined the burning of all pagan polemical
writings against Christianity, especially those of Porphyry “the
crack-brained,” wherever they might be found. This period is
also marked by deeds of bloody violence. The most horrible of
these was the murder of the noble pagan philosopher Hypatia,
the learned daughter of Theon the mathematician, at Alexandria
in A.D. 415. Officially paganism may be regarded as no longer
existent. Branded long even before this as the religion of the
peasants (such is the derivation of the word paganism), it was
now almost wholly confined to remote rural districts. Its latest
and solitary stronghold was the University of Athens raised to
the summit of its fame under Proclus (§ 24, 2). =Justinian I.=
(A.D. 527-565) decreed the suppression of this school in
A.D. 529. Its teachers fled into Persia, and there laid the
first foundations of the later literary period of Islam under the
ruling family of the Abassidæ at Bagdad (§ 65, 2). This was the
death hour of heathenism in the Roman empire. The Mainottæ in the
mountains of the Peloponnesus still maintained their political
independence and the heathen religion of their fathers down
to the 9th century. In the Italian islands, too, of Sardinia,
Corsica, and Sicily, there were still many heathens even in the
time of Gregory the Great († 604).[116]
§ 42.5. =Heathen Polemics and Apologetics.=--=Julian’s=
controversial treatise Κατὰ Γαλιλαίων λόγοι, in 3 bks. according
to Cyril, in 7 bks. according to Jerome, is known only from the
reply of Cyril of Alexandria (§ 47, 6) which follows it section
by section, the rest of the answers to it having been entirely
lost. Of Cyril’s book only the first ten λόγοι have come down to
us in a complete state, and from these we are able almost wholly
to restore the first book of Julian’s treatise. Only fragments
of the second decade of Cyril’s work are extant, and not even
so much of the third, so that of Julian’s third book we may be
said to know nothing.[117] Julian represented Christianity as a
deteriorated Judaism, but Christolatry and the worship of martyrs
as later falsifications of the doctrine of Christ.--The later
advocates of heathenism, Libanius and Symmachus, were content
with claiming toleration and religious freedom. But when from
the 5th century, under the influence of the barbarians, signs of
the speedy overthrow of the Roman empire multiplied, the heathen
polemics assumed a bolder attitude, declaring that this was
the punishment of heaven for the contempt of the old national
religion, under which the empire had flourished. Such is the
standpoint especially of the historians Eunapius and Zosimus. But
history itself refuted them more successfully than the Christian
apologists; for even these barbarous peoples passed over in
due course to Christianity, and vied with the Roman emperors in
their endeavours to extirpate heathenism. In the 5th century,
the celebrated Neo-Platonist Proclus wrote “eighteen arguments
(ἐπιχειρήματα) against the Christians” in vindication of the
Platonic doctrine of the eternity of the world and in refutation
of the Christian doctrine of creation. The Christian grammarian
John Philoponus (§ 47, 11) answered them in an exhaustive and
elaborate treatise, which again was replied to by the philosopher
=Simplicius=, one of the best teachers in the pagan University
of Athens.--The dialogue =Philopatris=, “the Patriot,” included
among the works of Lucian of Samosata, but certainly not composed
by him, is a feeble imitation of the famous scoffer, in which the
writer declares that he can no longer fitly swear at the Olympic
gods with their many unsavoury loves and objectionable doings,
and with a satirical reference to Acts xvii. 23 recommends
for this purpose “the unknown God at Athens,” whom he further
scurrilously characterizes as ὑψιμέδων θεὸς, υἵος πατρὸς, πνεῦμα
ἐκ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον ἓν ἐκ τριῶν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς τρία (§ 50, 1, 7).
Finally he tells of some closely shaven men (§ 45, 1) who were
treated as liars, because, having in consequence of a ten days’
fast and singing had a vision foreboding ill to their fatherland,
their prophecy was utterly discredited by the arrival of an
account of the emperor’s successes in the war against the
Persians. The impudence with which the orthodox Christianity
and the Nicene orthodox formula are sneered at, as well as the
allusions to the spread of monasticism and a victorious war
against the Persians, fix the date of the dialogue in the reign
of Julian, or rather, since the writer would scarcely have had
Julian’s approval in his scoffing at the gods of Olympus, in
the time of the Arian Valens (§ 50, 4). But since the overthrow
of Egypt and Crete is spoken of in this treatise, Niebuhr has
put its date down to the time of the Emperor Nicephoras Phocas
(A.D. 963-969), understanding by Persians the Saracens and by
Scythians the Bulgarians.
§ 42.6. The religion of the =Hypsistarians= in Cappadocia was,
according to Gregory Nazianzen, whose father had belonged to the
sect, a blending of Greek paganism with bald Jewish monotheism,
together with the oriental worship of fire and the heavenly
bodies, with express opposition to the Christian doctrine
of the trinity. Of a similar nature were the vagaries of the
=Euphemites=, “Praise singers,” in Asia, who were also called
_Messalians_, “Petitioners,” or _Euchites_, and in Africa bore
the name of =Cœlicolæ=.
§ 43. THE CHRISTIAN EMPIRE AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL LAW.
As in earlier times the supreme direction of all religious matters
belonged to the Roman Emperor as Pontifex Maximus, so now that
Christianity had become the state religion he claimed for himself
the same position in relation to the church. Even Constantine the
Great regarded himself as ἐπίσκοπος τῶν ἔξω τῆς ἐκκλησίας, and all his
successors exercised the _Jus circa sacra_ as their unquestioned right.
Only the Donatists (§ 63, 1) denied to the state all and any right
over the church. There was no clear consciousness of the limits of this
jurisdiction, but this at least in theory was firmly maintained, that
in all ecclesiastical matters, in worship, discipline and doctrine, the
emperors were not of themselves entitled to issue conclusive decisions.
For this purpose they called Œcumenical Synods, the decrees of which
had legal validity throughout the empire when ratified by the emperor.
But the more the Byzantine empire degenerated and became a centre of
intrigues, the more hurtful did contact with the court become, and
more than once the most glaring heresy for a time prevailed by means
of personal passion, unworthy tricks and open violence, until at last
orthodoxy again secured the ascendency.--From the ordinances issued by
the recognised ecclesiastical and civil authorities upon ecclesiastical
rights, duties and conditions, as well as from the pseudo-epigraphic
apostolic writings already being secretly introduced in this department,
there sprang up during this period a rich and varied literature on canon
law.
§ 43.1. The =Jus circa sacra= gave to the =Emperors= the right of
legally determining all the relations between church and state,
but assigned to them also the duty of caring for the preservation
or restoration of peace and of unity in the church, guarding
orthodoxy with a strong arm, looking after the interests of
the church and the clergy, and maintaining the authority of
ecclesiastical law. Even Constantine the Great excluded all
heretics from the privileges which he accorded to the church,
and regarded it as a duty forcibly to prevent their spread.
The destruction or closing of their churches, prohibition of
public meetings, banishment of their leaders, afterwards seizure
of their possessions, were the punishments which the state
invariably used for their destruction. The first death sentence
on a heretic was issued and executed so early as A.D. 385 by
the usurper Maximus (§ 54, 2), but this example was not imitated
during this period. Constans II. in A.D. 654 gave the first
example of scourging to the effusion of blood and barbarous
mutilation upon a persistent opponent of his union system of
doctrine (§ 52, 8). The fathers of the 4th century were decidedly
opposed to all compulsion in matters of faith (comp. however
§ 63, 1). The right of determining by imperial edict what was
to be believed and taught in the empire was first asserted by
the usurper Basilicus in A.D. 476 (§ 52, 5). The later emperors
followed this example; most decidedly Justinian I. (§ 52, 6)
and the court theologians justified such assumptions from
the emperor’s sacerdotal rank, which was the antitype of that
of Melchizedec [Melchisedec]. The emperor exercised a direct
influence upon the choice of bishops especially in the capital
cities; at a later period the emperor quite arbitrarily appointed
these and set them aside. The church’s power to afford protection
secured for it generally a multitude of outward privileges and
advantages. The state undertook the support of the church partly
by rich gifts and endowments from state funds, partly by the
making over of temples and their revenues to the church, and
Constantine conferred upon the church the right of receiving
bequests of all kinds. The churches and their officers were
expressly exempted from all public burdens. The distinct
judicial authority of the bishops recognised of old was
formally legitimized by Constantine under the name of _Audentia
episcopalis_. The clergy themselves were exempted from the
jurisdiction of civil tribunals and were made subject to an
ecclesiastical court. The right of asylum was taken from the
heathen temples and conferred upon the Christian churches. With
this was connected also the right of episcopal intercession or
of interference with regard to decisions already come to by the
civil courts which were thus in some measure subject to clerical
control.
§ 43.2. =The Institution of Œcumenical Synods.=--The σύνοδοι
οἰκουμενικαί, _Concilia universalia s. generalia_, owe their
origin to Constantine the Great (§ 50, 1). The calling of
councils was an unquestioned right of the crown. A prelate
chosen by the emperor or the council presided; the presence
of the imperial commissioner, who opened the Synod by reading
the imperial edict, was a guarantee for the preservation of
the rights of the state. The treasury bore the expense of
board and travelling. The decisions generally were called ὅροι,
_Definitiones_; if they were resolutions regarding matters of
faith, δόγματα; if in the form of a confession, σύμβολα; if they
bore upon the constitution, worship and discipline, κανόνες. On
doctrinal questions there had to be unanimity; on constitutional
questions a majority sufficed. Only the bishops had the right
of voting, but they allowed themselves to be influenced by the
views of the subordinate clergy. As a sort of substitute for
the œcumenical councils which could not be suddenly or easily
convened we have the σύνοδοι ἐνδημοῦσα at Constantinople, which
were composed of all the bishops who might at the time be present
in the district. At Alexandria, too, these _endemic_ Synods
were held. The _Provincial Synods_ were convened twice a year
under the presidency of the metropolitan; as courts of higher
instances we have the _Patriarchal_ or _Diocesan Synods_ (comp.
§ 46, 1).[118]
§ 43.3. =Canonical Ordinances.=--As canonical decrees
acknowledged throughout the whole of the Catholic national
church or at least throughout the more important ecclesiastical
districts the following may be named.
1. The Canons of the Œcumenical Councils.
2. The Decrees of several important Particular Synods.
3. The _Epistolæ canonicæ_ of distinguished bishops, especially
those of the _Sedes apostolicæ_, § 34, preeminently of Rome
and Alexandria, pertaining to questions which have had a
determining influence on church practice, which were at a
later time called at Rome _Epistt. decretales_.
4. The canonical laws of the emperors, νόμοι (Codex
Theodosianus in A.D. 440, Codex Justinianæus in A.D. 534,
Novellæ Justiniani).
The first systematically arranged collection of the Greek church
known to us was made by Johannes Scholasticus, then presbyter
at Antioch, afterwards Patriarch at Constantinople († 578). A
second collection, also ascribed to him, to which were added
the canonical νόμοι of Justinian, received the name of the
_Nomocanon_. In the West all earlier collections were put out
of sight by the _Codex canonum_ of the Roman abbot Dionysius the
Little (§ 47, 23), to which were also added the extant _Decretal
Epistles_ about A.D. 520.
§ 43.4. =Pseudepigraphic Church Ordinances.=--Even so early
as the 2nd and 3rd centuries there sprang up no inconsiderable
number of writings upon church law, with directions about ethical,
liturgical and constitutional matters for the instruction of the
church members as well as the clergy, the moral precepts of which
are of importance in church procedure as affording a standard
for discipline. The oldest probably of these has lately been
made again accessible to us in the Teaching of the XII. Apostles,
the Didache (§ 30, 7). It designates its contents, even where
these are taken not from the Old Testament or the “Gospel,” but
from the so-called church practice, as apostolic, with the honest
conviction that by means of oral apostolic tradition it may be
traced back to the immediate appointment of the Lord, without,
however, pseudepigraphically claiming to have been written by
the Apostles. Many treatises of the immediately following period,
no longer known to us or known only by fragments, occupied the
same standpoint. But even so early as the end of the 3rd century
pseudepigraphic apostolic fiction makes its appearance in
the so-called _Apostolic Didascalia_, and some sixty years
later, it reached its climax in the eight bks. of the so-called
=Constitutiones Apostolicæ=, Διαταγαὶ τῶν ἀπ. διὰ Κλήμεντος. The
first six bks. correspond to the previously named _Didascalia_
expanded and variously altered.[119] It assumes the form of a
prolix epistolary discourse of the Apostle, communicated through
Clement of Rome, about everything pertaining to the Christian
life, the Catholic system of doctrine, liturgical practice and
hierarchical constitution which may be necessary and useful for
the laity as well as the clergy to know, with the exclusion,
however, of everything which belonged to the department of what
was then regarded as the _Disciplina arcani_ (§ 36, 4). Of older
writings, so far as known, those principally used are the seven
Ignatian Epistles (§ 30, 5). It is post-Novatianist (§ 41, 3)
and belongs to a time pre-Constantine but free from persecution
(§ 22, 6), and may therefore be placed somewhere between A.D. 260
and A.D. 302. It was written probably in Syria.--While the first
six bks. of the Apostolic Constitutions may be compared to the
Syrian recension as a contemporary rendition of the Didascalia,
the =seventh book= from an examination of the Didache seems
a rendition of that little work, in which the assumption of
apostolic authorship is made, and from which everything offensive
to the forger and his age is cut out, the old text being
otherwise literally reproduced, while into it is cleverly
smuggled from his own resources whatever would contribute to
the support of his own peculiar views as well as the prevailing
practice of the church. The Eusebian symbol, which is given in
the 41st chap., is an anti-Nicene, anti-Marcellianist, Arianizing
formula, fixing the date of the forgery at the period of the
Arian controversy, somewhere between A.D. 340 and A.D. 350
(§ 50, 2).--The =eighth book= is in great part an unmistakeable
forgery compiled from older sources belonging to the 3rd century,
some of which are still to be found, and forms a handbook for
the discharge of clerical, especially episcopal, duties in
the conducting of worship and other clerical functions, _e.g._
ordination, baptism, etc., together with the relative liturgical
formularies, drawn up in a thoroughly legal-like style, in
which the Apostles one by one give their contribution with the
formula Διατάσσομαι. The composition is probably ante-Nicene,
but the date of its incorporation with the other seven books
is uncertain.--In most, though not in all, MSS. the =Canones
Apostolorum=, sometimes 50, sometimes 85, in number, are appended
to the eighth book as its last chapter. Their standpoint is that
common to the canons of the early councils from which they are
chiefly borrowed. In respect of contents they treat mainly of
the moral behaviour and official functions of the clergy. The
85th contains a Scripture canon of the Old and New Testaments,
including the two Epp. of the Roman Clement (§ 30, 3), as well
as the Apost. Constitutions, but omitting the Apocalypse of John
(comp. § 33, 9). The collection of the apostolic canon cannot
have been made before the beginning of the 5th century, and most
likely in Syria. Dionysius the Little admitted only the first 50
as _Canones qui dicuntur Apostolorum_, but Johannes Scholasticus
quite unhesitatingly ascribes all the 85 to Clement of Rome. The
Second Trullan Council in A.D. 692 (§ 63, 2) acknowledged the
genuineness of the 85, but rejected the Apostolic Constitutions
as a heretical forgery which had found no general acceptance in
the West.--While hitherto it has been surmised that the 7th bk.
of the Apost. Constit., as an independent and original work,
should be assigned to another and a much later author than the
first six bks., Harnack, founding upon his study of the Didache,
has come to a clear understanding of their mutual relations. He
shows that the original documents lying at the basis respectively
of the Didache and the Didascalia are fundamentally distinct in
respect of composition and character, but the two in the form in
which they lie before us in the Apost. Constit. are undoubtedly
the work of one and the same interpolator. We further obtain
the equally convincing and surprising result that the author of
this forgery is also identical with the author of the =thirteen
Pseudo-Ignatian Epistles= (§ 30, 5), and had in the one case and
in the other the same object in view. Finally, he characterizes
him as a Syrian cleric well versed in Scripture, especially
the Old Testament, but also a shrewd worldly politician,
opposed to all strict asceticism, who sought by his forgeries
to win apostolic sanction and justification not only for the
constitutional and liturgical institutions of the church, as well
as the milder practice of his age, but also for his own semi-Arian
doctrinal views.
§ 43.5. =The Apostolic Church Ordinances=[120] are, according
to Harnack’s careful analysis, a compilation executed in a most
scholarly fashion of extracts from four old writings: the Didache,
the Ep. of Barnabas, from which the moral precepts are taken,
a κατάστασις τοῦ κλήρου from the beginning of the 3rd century,
and a κατάστασις τῆς ἐκκλησίας from the end of the 2nd century,
with many clumsy alterations and excursuses after the style of
the church tradition of its own period, the beginning of the
4th century. Its introduction consists of a formula of greeting
modelled upon the Ep. of Barnabas from the twelve Apostles who
are designated by name. The list, which begins with the name of
John, wants one of the two Jameses and the late chosen Matthias,
and the number of twelve is made up by the addition of the name
of Nathanael and that of Cephas in addition to that of Peter.
Then the Apostles tell that Christ had commanded them to divide
among them by lot the Eparchies, Episcopates, Presbyterates,
Diaconates, etc., of all lands, and to send forth οἱ λόγοι into
the whole οἰκουμένη; then follow these λόγοι, first the moral
rules, then the constitutional enactments, both being divided
among the several Apostles (Ἰωάννης εἶπεν, Ματθαίος εἶπεν,
etc.). The compilation had its origin in Egypt, not, however,
at Alexandria, where Athanasius was still unacquainted with it,
or at least did not think it worthy of being mentioned among the
church manuals (§ 59, 1), while at a later period it was held in
the highest esteem by the Copts, Ethiopians, Arabians, etc., and
took the first rank among their books on ecclesiastical procedure.
II. MONASTICISM, CLERICALISM AND HIERARCHISM.
§ 44. MONASTICISM.[121]
Disgusted with worldly pursuits and following an impulse of the
oriental character in favour of the contemplative life, many ascetics
withdrew into deserts and solitudes, there as Anchorets (ἐρεμίται,
μοναχοί, μονάζοντες), amid prayer and labour, privation and self-denial,
wringing out of the wilderness their scanty support, they strove after
holiness of life which they thought they could reach only by forsaking
the accursed world. The place where this extravagant extreme of the
old ascetism arose was the Thebaid in Upper Egypt (§ 39, 3). The first,
and for a long time isolated, examples of such professional abandonment
of the world may be traced back to the 3rd century; but they had wider
spread first in the post-Constantine Age. The example of St. Anthony was
specially influential in leading a number of like-minded men to betake
themselves to isolated dwellings, λαῦραι, in his neighbourhood and to
place themselves under his spiritual direction. In this we have already
the transition from a solitary anchoret life to a communal cœnobite
life (κοινὸς βίος), and this reached maturity when Anthony’s disciple
Pachomius gathered the scattered residents in his district into one
common dwelling, _Claustrum_, _Cœnobium_, _Monasterium_, _Mandra_=fold,
and bound them under a common system of ascetic practice in prayer and
labour, especially basket making and carpet weaving. This arrangement,
without, however, any tendency to displace the anchoret life properly
so-called, won great favour, and this went on for some decades until
first of all in the East, then also in the West about A.D. 370, the land
was covered over with monasteries. The monastic life under its twofold
aspect was now esteemed as βὶος ἀγγελικός (Matt. xxii. 30), φιλοσοφία
ὑψηλή, _melior vita_. Yet even here corruption soon spread. Not merely
the feeling of spiritual need, but ambition, vanity, slothfulness
and especially the desire to avoid military service and villainage,
taxes and imposts, induced men to enter the monasteries. The Emperor
Valens therefore issued an order in A.D. 365 that such men should be
dragged out by force from their retreats. Spiritual vices too were not
wanting--extravagance and fanaticism, spiritual pride, etc. All the
more did the most distinguished bishops, _e.g._ Basil the Great, feel
it their duty to take the monasteries under their special supervision
and care. Under such direction, besides serving their own special
purpose, they became extremely important and beneficial as places of
refuge for the oppressed and persecuted, and as benevolent institutions
for the sick and the poor. Sometimes also by the introduction of
theological studies as seminaries to prepare candidates for the higher
ecclesiastical offices. Other prelates, however, preferred to use their
monks as a trusty horde for the accomplishment of their own ambitious
party ends. The monks were always reckoned among laymen, but were
distinguished from the _Seculares_ as _Religiosi_ or _Conversi_.
§ 44.1. =The Biography of St. Anthony.=--According to the _Vita
s. Antonii_ ascribed to Athanasius, Anthony was sprung from a
wealthy Coptic family of the country town of Coma in Upper Egypt,
and was born in A.D. 251. At the age of eighteen he lost his
parents, and, being powerfully affected by hearing the story of
the rich young ruler in the gospel read in church, he gave away
all his goods to the poor and withdrew into the desert (A.D. 285).
Amid terrible inward struggles, which took the form of daily
conflicts with demons, who sprang upon him from the sides of his
cave in the shape of all sort of beasts and strange creatures,
he spent a long time in a horrible tomb, then twenty years in the
crumbling ruins of a castle, and finally he chose as his constant
abode a barren mountain, afterwards called Anthony’s Mount,
where a well and some date palms afforded him the absolutely
indispensable support. His clothing, a sheep’s skin and a hairy
cloak, was on his body day and night, nor did he ever wash
himself. The fame of his holiness attracted a multitude of
like-minded ascetics who settled in his neighbourhood and
put themselves under his spiritual direction. But also men of
the world of all ranks made pilgrimages to him, seeking and
finding comfort. Even Constantine and his sons testified in
correspondence with him their veneration, and he answered “like
a Christian Diogenes to the Christian Alexander.” Pointing to
Christ as the only miracle worker, he healed by his prayers
bodily maladies and by his conversations afflictions of the soul.
Amid the distress of the persecution of Maximian in A.D. 311 he
went to Alexandria, but found not the martyrdom which he courted.
Again, in A.D. 351, during the bitter Arian controversy (§ 50),
he appeared suddenly in the great capital, this time gazed at
by Christians and pagans as a divine wonder, and converting
crowds of the heathen. In his last days he resigned the further
direction of the society of hermits gathered about him to his
disciple Pachomius, himself withdrawing along with two companions
into an unknown solitude, where he, bequeathing to the author his
sheepskin, died in A.D. 356, in his 105th year, after exacting a
promise that no one should know the place of his burial.--Until
the appearance of this book, which was very soon translated into
Latin by a certain Evagrius, no single writer, neither Lactantius,
nor Eusebius, nor even Athanasius in any of his other undoubtedly
genuine writings, mentions the name of this patriarchal monk
afterwards so highly esteemed, and all later writers draw only
from this one source. Weingarten has now not only proved that
this _Vita s. Ant._ is not a biography in the proper sense, but
a romance with a purpose which was intended “to represent the
ideal of a monkish life dovetailed into the ecclesiastical system
and raised notwithstanding all popular and vital elements into
a spiritual atmosphere,” but has also disproved the Athanasian
authorship of the book, without, however, seeking to deny the
historical existence of St. Anthony and his importance in the
establishment of monasticism, as this is already vouched for
by the fact that even in the 4th century in the days of Rufinus
pilgrimages were made to _Mons Antonii_.--The most important
witness for the Athanasian authorship is Gregory Nazianzen, who
begins his panegyric on Athanasius delivered in Constantinople
only a few years after that father’s death, which occurred in
A.D. 373, with the wish that he could describe brilliantly the
life of the highly revered man, as he himself had portrayed the
ideal of monasticism in the person of St. Anthony. But, on the
other hand, Jerome in his _Vita Pauli_ and Rufinus in his _Hist.
eremit._ seem not yet to have known the author of the book,
and the former, first in his _De scriptoribus ecclst._, written
twenty years later, knows that Athanasius was the author. Internal
reasons, too, seem with no small weight to tell against the
authenticity of the book, the biographical contents of which are
largely intermixed with fabulous and legendary elements.
§ 44.2. =The Origin of Christian Monasticism.=--From the fact
that not only Lactantius, but also Eusebius, whose history
reaches down to A.D. 324, have nothing to say of a monasticism
already developed or then first in process of development, it
may perhaps be concluded that although in a general way such
an institution was already in existence, it had not yet become
known beyond the bounds of the Thebaid where it originated.
But from the fact that Eusebius, who died in A.D. 340, in his
_Vita Constantini_ reaching down to A.D. 337, never makes any
mention of monasticism, we cannot with like probability infer
a continuance of such ignorance down to the above-mentioned
year, but must attribute it to the limited range of the book
in question. In his commentary on Ps. lxviii. 7 and lxxxiv. 4
he distinctly speaks of a Christian monasticism. The fugitive
Athanasius, too, so early as A.D. 356 betakes himself to the
monks of the Thebaid, and stays for a year with them (§ 50, 2, 4),
which presupposes a certain measure of organization and celebrity
on the part of the community of that region. In his _Hist.
Arianorum ad monachos_, written about A.D. 360, he declares that
already monasticism had spread through all the τόποι or districts
of Egypt. Of a monasticism outside of Egypt, however, even this
writing still knows nothing. We shall not, therefore, greatly
err if we assume that the latter years of Constantine’s reign
are to be taken as the period of the essential origin of Egyptian
monasticism; though from this it is not to be concluded that
the first isolated beginnings of it, which had not yet won
any special recognition, are not to be assigned to a very much
earlier period. Even the Old and New Testaments, in the persons
of Elijah, John the Baptist, and our Lord Himself, tell of
temporary withdrawals, from religious and ascetical motives, into
the wilderness. But even the life-long professional anchoretism
and cœnobitism had their precursors in the Indian _gymnosophists_,
in the East-Asiatic Buddhism and the Egyptian Serapis worship,
and to a certain extent also in the Essenism of Palestine
(§ 8, 4). From the place of its origin and the character of
its development, however, Christian monasticism can have been
influenced only by the Egyptian Serapis worship, and that in
a very general sort of way. That this actually was the case,
Weingarten especially has sought to prove from various analogies
based upon the learned researches of French Academicians.
§ 44.3. =Oriental Monasticism.=--For centuries Egypt continued
the central seat and training school of Christian monasticism
both for the East and for the West. The most celebrated of all
the Egyptian hermit colonies was that founded by Pachomius,
formerly perhaps a monk of Serapis, († 348), at Tabennæ, an
island of the Nile. To the mother monastery were soon attached
numerous daughter monasteries. Each of these institutions was
under the direction of a president called the abbot, _Abbas_,
_i.e._ “father,” or Archimandrite; while all of them together
were under the superior of the parent monastery. Similar unions
were established by Ammonius among the Nitrian mountains, and by
Macarius the Elder (§ 47, 7) in the Scetic desert. Hilarion, a
disciple of St. Anthony († 371), is celebrated by Jerome as the
founder of Palestinian monasticism. The _Vita Hilarionis_ of
the latter, richly adorned with records of adventurous travels
and wonderful events, most extravagant wonders and demoniacal
apparitions, like the life of Paul of Thebes (§ 39, 4), has
been recently shown to be a romance built upon certain genuine
reminiscences. Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen with
youthful enthusiasm sought to introduce monasticism into their
native Asia Minor, while Eustathius, Bishop of Sebaste († 380),
carried it still further east. But though among the Syrian
discourses of Aphraates (§ 47, 13) there is found one on
monasticism, which thus would seem to have been introduced into
Mesopotamia by A.D. 340, this is in contradiction to all other
witnesses and awakens a suspicion of the ungenuineness of the
discourse, which is further confirmed by its being wanting
in the Armenian translation, as well as in the enumeration
of Gennadius.--The zeal especially of Basil was successful in
ennobling monasticism and making it fruitful. The monastic rules
drawn up by him superseded all others in the East, and are to
this day alone recognised in the orthodox Greek Church. According
to these every monastery had one or more clerics for conducting
worship and administering the sacrament. Basil also advanced
the development and influence of monasticism by setting down
the monasteries in the neighbourhood of the cities. In the
5th century two of the noblest, most sensible and talented
representatives of ancient monasticism did much for its elevation
and ennobling; namely, Isidore, who died about A.D. 450,
abbot and priest of a cloister at Pelusium in Egypt, and his
contemporary Nilus, who lived among the monks of Sinai. The not
inconsiderable remnants of their numerous letters still extant
testify to their far-reaching influence, as well as to the noble
and liberal spirit which they manifested (§ 47, 6, 10).[122] A
peculiar kind of cœnobite life is found amongst the =Acoimetæ=,
for whom the Roman Studius founded about A.D. 46O the afterwards
very celebrated monastery _Studion_ at Constantinople, in which
as many as a thousand monks are said to have lived together
at one time. They took their name from the divine service
uninterruptedly continued in their cloister night and day. From
the 5th century the legislative Synods undertook the care of the
monasteries. The Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 put them under
the jurisdiction of the bishop. Returning to the world was at
first freely permitted, but was always regarded as discreditable
and demanding submission to penance. From the 6th century,
however, monastic vows were regarded as of life-long obligation,
and therefore a regular canonical age was fixed and a long
novitiate prescribed as a time of testing and consideration.
About this time, too, besides the _propria professio_, the
_paterna devotio_ was also regarded as binding in accordance
with the example of 1 Sam. i. 11.
§ 44.4. =Western Monasticism.=--The West did not at first take
kindly to the monastic idea, and only the combined exhortations
of the most respected bishops and teachers of the Church, with
Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine at their head, secured for it
acceptance there. The idea that already the universally revered
Athanasius who from A.D. 341 resided a long time in Rome (§ 50, 2),
had brought hither the knowledge of Egyptian monasticism and
first awakened on behalf of it the sympathies of the Westerns,
is devoid of any sure foundation. Owing, however, to the free
intercourse which even on the side of the Church existed between
East and West, it is on the other hand scarcely conceivable that
the first knowledge of Eastern monasticism should have reached
Italy through Jerome on his return in A.D. 373 from his Eastern
travels. But it is certain that Jerome from that time most
zealously endeavoured to obtain recruits for it in the West,
applying himself specially to conspicuous pious ladies of Rome
and earning for this scant thanks from their families. The
people’s aversion, too, against monasticism was so great that
even in A.D. 384, when a young female ascetic called Blasilla,
the daughter of St. Paula, died in Rome as some supposed from
excessive fasting, an uproar was raised in which the indignant
populace, as Jerome himself relates, cried out, _Quousque genus
detestabile monachorum non urbe pellitur? Non lapidibus obruitur?
non præcipitatur in fluctus?_ But twenty years later Jerome could
say with exultation, _Crebra virginum monasteria, monachorum,
innumerabilis multitudo, ut ... quod prius ignominiæ fuerat,
esset postea gloriæ_. Popular opposition to the monks was longest
and most virulently shown in North Africa. Even so late as
about A.D. 450, Salvianus reports the expressions of such hate:
_Ridebant, ... maledicebant ... insectabantur ... detestabantur
... omnia in monacho pœne fecerunt quæ in Salvatorem nostrum
Judæorum impietas_, etc. Nevertheless monasticism continued
to spread and therewith also the institution grew in popular
esteem in the West. Martin of Tours (§ 47, 14) established it
in Northern Gaul in A.D. 370; and in Southern Gaul, Honoratus
[Honorius] about A.D. 400 founded the celebrated monastery of
Serinum, on the uninhabited island of Lerina, and John Cassianus
(§ 47, 21), the still more celebrated one at Massilia, now
Marseilles. The inroads of the invaders well nigh extinguished
Western monachism. It was Benedict of Nursia who first, in
A.D. 529, gave to it unity, order, and a settled constitution,
and made it for many centuries the pioneer of agricultural
improvement and literary culture throughout the Western empire
that had been hurled into confusion by the wars of the barbarians
(§ 85).
§ 44.5. =Institution of Nunneries.=--Virgins devoted to God, who
repudiated marriage, are spoken of as early as the 2nd century.
The limitations of their sex forbade them entering on the life
of anchorets, but all the more heartily did they adopt the idea
of the cloister life. St. Anthony himself is said to have laid
its first foundations when he was hastening away into solitude,
by establishing at Coma for the sake of his sister whom he
was leaving behind, an association of virgins consecrated unto
God. Pachomius founded the first female cloister with definite
rules, the superior of which was his own sister. From that time
there sprang up a host of women’s cœnobite unions. The lady
superior was called _Ammas_, “mother;” the members, μοναχαί,
_sanctimoniales_, _nonnæ_, which was a Coptic word meaning chaste.
The patroness of female monachism in the West was St. Paula
of Rome, who was the scholar and friend of Jerome. Accompanied
by her daughter Eustochium, she followed him to Palestine, and
founded three nunneries at Bethlehem.
§ 44.6. =Monastic Asceticism.=--Although the founders of the
Eastern monastic rules subjected themselves to the strictest
asceticism and performed them to a remarkable extent, especially
in fasting and enduring privations, yet the degree of asceticism
which they enjoined upon their monks in fasting, watching, prayer
and labour, was in general moderate and sensible. Valorous acts
of self mortification, so very congenial to the oriental spirit,
are thus met with in the proper monastic life seldomer than among
ascetics living after their own fancy in deserts and solitudes.
This accounts for the rare appearance of the =Stylites= or pillar
saints, by whom expression was given in an outward way to the
idea of elevation above the earthly and of struggle toward heaven.
The most celebrated of these was _Simeon Stylites_, who lived in
the neighbourhood of Antioch for thirty years on a pillar seventy
feet high, and preached repentance to the people who flocked to
him from every side. Thousands of Saracens who roamed through
those regions sought baptism, overcome, according to the legend,
by the power of his discourse. He died A.D. 459. After him the
most celebrated pillar saints were one _Daniel_ who died at
Constantinople in A.D. 489, and a younger _Simeon_ who died at
Antioch in A.D. 596.
§ 44.7. =Anti-Ecclesiastical and Heretical Monasticism.=--Even
after the regulating of monachism by Pachomius and Basil, there
were still isolated hermit societies which would be bound by no
rules. Such were the =Sarabaites= in Egypt and the =Remoboth=
in Syria. Crowds of monks, too, under no rule swarmed about,
called Βοσκοί, _Pabulatores_ or Grazers, because they supported
themselves only on herbs and roots. In Italy and Africa from
the 5th century we hear of so-called =Gyrovagi=, who under the
pretence of monachism led a useless vagabond life. Monasticism
assumed a decidedly heretical and schismatical character among
the Euchites and Eustathianists in the second half of the 4th
century. The =Euchites=, called also from their mystic dances
_Messalians or Chorentes_, not to be confounded with the pagan
Euchites (§ 42, 6), thought that they had reached the ideal of
perfection, and were therefore raised above observance of the law.
Under pretext of engaging in constant prayer and being favoured
with divine visions, they went about begging, because work was
not seemly for perfect saints. Every man they taught, by reason
of his descent from Adam, brings with him into the world an
evil demon who can be overcome only by prayer, and thus evil
can be torn out by the roots. Then man is in need neither of the
law, nor of holy scripture, nor of the sacraments, and may be
unconditionally left to himself, and may even do that which to
a legal man would be sinful. The mystic union of God and man they
represented by lascivious acts of sensual love. They understood
the gospel history only as an allegory and considered fire the
creative light of the universe. By craft and espionage Bishop
Flavian of Antioch, in A.D. 381, came to know their secret
principles and proceedings. But notwithstanding the persecution
now directed against them, they continued in existence till the
6th century. The =Eustathianists= took their name from Eustathius,
Bishop of Sebaste, the founder of monasticism in the eastern
provinces of the empire. Their fanatical contempt of marriage
went so far that they regarded fellowship with the married impure
and held divine service by themselves alone. They repudiated the
Church fasts and instead ordained fasts on Sundays and festival
days, and wholly abstained from eating flesh. The women dressed
in men’s clothes. From the rich they demanded the surrender of
all their goods. Servants forsook their masters, wives their
husbands, in order to attach themselves to the associations
of these saints. But the resolute interference of the Synod of
Gangra in Paphlagonia, between A.D. 360 and A.D. 370, checked
their further spread.--More closely related to the old ascetic
order than to the newly organized monasticism was a sect which,
according to Augustine, had gained special acceptance among the
country people round about Hippo. In accordance with the example
of Abel, who in the Old Testament history is without children,
its members, the so-called =Abelites=, indeed married, but
restrained themselves from marital intercourse, in order that
they might not by begetting children contribute to the spread of
original sin, and maintained their existence by the adoption of
strange children, one boy and one girl being received into each
family.
§ 45. THE CLERGY.
The distinction between clergy and laity was ever becoming more
and more clearly marked and in the higher church offices there grew
up a spiritual aristocracy alongside of the secular aristocracy. The
priesthood arrogated a position high above the laity just as the soul
is higher than the body. There was consequently such a thronging into
the clerical ranks that a restriction had to be put upon it by the
civil laws. The choice of the clergy was made by the bishops with the
formal consent of the members of the church. In the East the election
of bishops lay ordinarily with the episcopal board of the province
concerned though under the presidency of the metropolitan, whose duty
it was to ordain the individual so elected. The episcopal chair of the
imperial capital, however, was generally under the patronage of the
court. In the West on the other hand the old practice was continued,
according to which bishops, clergy and members of the church together
made the election. At Rome, however, the emperor maintained the right
of confirming the appointment of the new bishop. The exchange of one
bishopric for another was forbidden by the Nicene Council as spiritual
adultery (Eph. v. 33 ff.), but was nevertheless frequently practised.
The monarchical rank of the bishop among the clergy was undisputed. The
_Chorepiscopi_ (§ 34, 3) had their episcopal privileges and authority
always more and more restricted, were made subordinate to the city
bishops, and finally, about A.D. 360, were quite set aside. To the
Presbyters, on the other hand, in consequence of the success of the
anti-episcopal reaction, especially among the daughter and country
churches, complete independence was granted in regard to the ministry
of the word and dispensation of sacraments, with the exception of the
ordination of the clergy, and in the West also the confirmation of the
baptism, which the bishop alone was allowed to perform.
§ 45.1. =Training of the Clergy.=--The few theological seminaries
of Alexandria, Cæsarea, Antioch, Edessa and Nisibis could not
satisfy the need of clerical training, and even these for the
most part disappeared amid the political and ecclesiastical
upheavals of the 5th and 6th centuries. The West was entirely
without such institutions. So long as pagan schools of learning
flourished at Athens, Alexandria, Nicomedia, etc., many Christian
youths sought their scientific preparation for the service of
the church in them, and added to this on the Christian side by
asceticism and theological study among the anchorets or monks.
Others despised classical culture and were satisfied with what
the monasteries could give. Others again began their clerical
career even in boyhood as readers or episcopal secretaries,
and grew up under the oversight and direction of the bishop or
experienced clergymen. Augustine organized his clergy into a
monastic association, _Monasterium Clericorum_, and gave it the
character of a clerical seminary. This useful institution found
much favour and was introduced into Sicily and Sardinia by the
bishops driven out by the Vandals. The _Regula Augustini_, so
often referred to the Latin Middle Ages, is of later and
uncertain origin, but is based upon two discourses of Augustine,
“_De Moribus Clericorum_” and an Epistle to the Nuns at
Hippo.--The age of thirty was fixed upon as the canonical age
for entering the order of presbyter or priest; twenty-five for
that of deacon. Neophytes, those who had been baptized on a
sickbed (_Clinici_), penitents and energoumeni, _Bigenie_, the
mutilated, eunuchs, slaves, actors, comedians, dancers, soldiers,
etc., were excluded from the clerical office. The African church
even in the 4th century prescribed a strict examination of
candidates as to their attainments and orthodoxy. Justinian
at least insisted upon a guarantee of orthodoxy by means of
episcopal examination.--=Ordination=[123] made its appearance
as an appendage to the baptismal anointing as a sacramental
ordinance. The one was consecration to the priesthood in the
special sense: the other in the general sense; both bore a
_character indelibilis_. Their efficacy was generally regarded
as of a magical kind. The imparting of ordination was exclusively
an episcopal privilege; but presbyters could assist at the
consecration of those of their own order. The proposition:
_Ne quis vage ordinatur_, was of universal application; the
missionary office was the only exception. The anniversaries of
episcopal ordinations, _Natales episcoporum_, were frequently
observed as festivals. Legally no one could be ordained to a
higher ecclesiastical office, who had not passed through all the
lower offices from that of subdeacon. In earlier times ordination
consisted only in imposition of hands; but subsequently, after
the pattern of baptism there was added an anointing with _Chrism_,
_i.e._ oil with balsam. The Lord’s Supper was partaken of
before ordination, the candidate having previously observed a
fast.--From the 5th century it was made imperative that the party
ordained should adopt the =Tonsure=.[124] It had been introduced
first in connection with the penitents, then as a symbol of
humility it found favour among the monks, and from these it
passed over to the clergy. Originally the whole head was shaved
bare. At a later period the Greek tonsure, _Tonsura Pauli_, which
merely shaved the forehead, was distinguished from the Romish,
_Tonsura Petri_, which left a circle of hair round about the
crown of the head, as a memorial of Christ’s crown of thorns or
as the symbol of the royal priesthood, _Corona sacerdotalis_.
The shaving of the beard, as an effeminate foppish custom, seemed
to the ancient church to detract from the sternness and dignity
of the clerical rank. In all Eastern churches the full beard was
retained, and the wearing of it by-and-by made obligatory, as it
is to this day. In the West, however, perhaps to mark a contrast
to the bearded clergy of the Arian Germans, shaving became
general among the Catholic clergy, and by papal and synodal
ordinances became almost universally prevalent. The adoption
of the custom was also perhaps furthered by a desire to
give symbolic expression by the removal of the beard to the
renunciation of the claims of the male sex on the part of a
celibate clergy.--A solemn =Investiture= with the insignia of
office (§ 59, 7) was gradually introduced, and was that which
marked distinctions between the consecrations to the various
ranks of clerical offices.
§ 45.2. =The Injunction of Celibacy.=--In accordance with a hint
given by the Spanish Provincial Synod of Elvira in A.D. 306 in
its 32nd canon, the Œcumenical Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325 was
inclined to make the obligation of celibacy at least for the
_Ordines Majores_ a binding law over the whole church. But on the
other hand the Egyptian bishop Paphnutius, a confessor and from
his youth an ascetic, stoutly maintained that the fellowship of
married persons too is chastity. His powerful voice decided the
matter. The usual practice, however, was that bishops, presbyters
and deacons should not contract a second marriage (1 Tim. iii. 2),
after ordination should contract no marriage at all, and if
previously married, should continue to live with their wives
or not as they themselves should find most fit. The Easterns
maintained this free standpoint and at the Synod of Gangra in
A.D. 360 contended against the Eustathianists (§ 44, 7) for
the holiness of marriage and the legitimacy of married priests;
and in the 5th Apost. Canon there was an express injunction:
_Episcopus vel presbyter, vel diaconus uxorem suam non rejiciat
religionis prætexti; sin autem rejecerit segregetur, et si
perseveret deponatur_. Examples of married bishops are not
rare in the 4th and 5th centuries; _e.g._ the father of Gregory
Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Synesius of Ptolemais, etc.
Justinian I. forbade the election of a married man as bishop.
The second Trullan Council in A.D. 692 (§ 63, 2) confirmed this
decree, interdicted second marriages to all the clergy, but, with
an express protest against the unnatural hardness of the Roman
church, allowed to presbyters a single marriage with all its
privileges which, however, must have been entered upon before
consecration, and during the period of service at the altar all
marital intercourse had to be discontinued. In Rome, however, the
Spanish principles were strictly maintained. A decretal of the
Roman bishop, Siricius, in A.D. 385, with semi-Manichæan abuse
of marriage, insisted on the celibacy of all bishops, presbyters
and deacons, and Leo the Great included even subdeacons under
this obligation. All the more distinguished Latin church
teachers contended zealously for the universal application of
the injunction of clerical celibacy. Yet there were numerous
instances of the contravention of the order in Italy, in Gaul,
and in Spain itself, and conformity could not be secured even by
the most emphatic re-issue of the injunction by successive Synods.
In the British and Iro-Scottish church the right of the clergy
and even of bishops to marry was insisted upon (§ 77, 3).[125]
§ 45.3. =Later Ecclesiastical Offices.=--In addition to the
older church offices we now meet with attendants on the sick or
=Parabolani=, from παραβάλλεσθαι τὴν ζωήν, and grave-diggers,
κοπιαταί, _Fossarii_, whose number in the capital cities rose to
an almost incredible extent. They formed a bodyguard ever ready
to gratify episcopal love of pomp. Theodosius II. in A.D. 418
restricted the number of the Parabolani of Alexandria to six
hundred and the number of the Copiati of Constantinople to nine
hundred and fifty. For the administration of Church property
there were οἰκόνομοι; for the administration of the laws of the
church there were advocates, ἔνδικοι, σύνδικοι, _Defensores_; for
drawing up legal documents in regard to church affairs there were
_Notarii_, ταχύγραφοι, besides, Keepers of Archives, χαρτοφύλακες,
Librarians, _Thesaurarii_, σκευοφύλακες, etc. None of these as
such had clerical consecration. But also within the ranks of the
_Ordines Majores_ new offices sprang up. In the 4th century we
meet with an =Archdeacon= at the head of the deacons. He was the
right hand of the bishop, his representative and plenipotentiary
in the administration and government of the diocese, frequently
also his successor in office. The college of presbyters, too, had
as its head the =Arch-Presbyter= who represented and supported
the bishop in all acts of public worship. A city presbyter
was entrusted with the supervision of the country churches
as =Visitor=. The African _Seniores plebis_ were mere lay
elders without clerical ordination. The office of =Deaconess=
more or less lost its significance and gradually fell into
disuse.--Justinian I. restricted the number of ecclesiastical
officers in the four great churches of Constantinople to 525;
namely, in addition to the bishop, 60 presbyters, 100 deacons,
40 deaconesses, 90 subdeacons, 110 readers, 24 singers, and
100 doorkeepers.
§ 45.4. =Church Property.=--The possessions of the church
regularly increased by presents and bequests was regarded
down to the 5th century generally as the property of the poor,
_Patrimonium pauperum_, while the cost of maintaining public
worship and supplying the clergy with the means of livelihood
were defrayed by the voluntary contributions, _Oblationes_,
of the church members. But the growing demands of the clergy,
especially of the bishops, for an income corresponding to their
official rank and the increasing magnificence of the service, led,
first of all in Rome, to the apportioning of the whole sum into
four parts; for the bishops, for the subordinate clergy, for the
expenses of public worship (buildings, vestments, etc.), and for
the needs of the poor. With the introduction of the Old Testament
idea of priesthood the thought gradually gained ground that the
laity were under obligation, at first regarded simply as a moral
obligation, to surrender a tenth of all their possessions to the
church, and at a very early date this, in the form of freewill
offerings, was often realised. But the Council at Macon in
A.D. 585, demanded these tithes as a right of the church resting
on divine institution, without, however, being thereby able to
effect what first was secured by the Carolingian legislation
(§ 86, 1). The demand that all property which a cleric earned in
the service of the church, should revert to the church after his
death, was given effect to in a Council at Carthage in A.D. 397.
§ 46A. THE PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION AND THE PRIMACY.[126]
A hierarchical distinction of ranks among the bishops had already
made its appearance even in the previous period by the elevation of
the metropolitan see and the yet more marked precedency given to the
so-called _Sedes apostolicæ_ (§ 34). This tendency got powerful support
from the political divisions of the empire made by Constantine the
Great; for now the bishops of capital cities demanded an extension
of their spiritual superiority corresponding to that given in secular
authority to the imperial governors. The guarding of earlier privileges
along with respectful consideration of more recent claims prevented
the securing of a perfect correspondence between the political and
hierarchical distribution of ranks. The result of giving consideration
to both was the development of the Patriarchal Constitution, in which
the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem
were recognised as heads of the church universal of equal rank with
jurisdiction over the patriarchates assigned them. The first place in
this clerical Pentarchy was claimed by the Roman see, which ever more
and more decidedly strove for the primacy of the whole church.
§ 46.1. =The Patriarchal Constitution.=--Constantine the Great
divided the whole empire into four prefectures which were
subdivided into dioceses, and these again into provinces. Many
bishops then of the capitals of these dioceses, especially in the
East, under the title of =Exarchs=, assumed a rank superior to
that of the metropolitans, just as these had before arrogated a
rank superior to that of provincial bishops. The first œcumenical
Council at Nicæa in A.D. 325 (§ 50, 1) affirmed on behalf of the
bishops of the three most prominent _Sedes apostolicæ_, =Rome=,
=Alexandria= and =Antioch=, that their supremacy had been already
established by old custom. The so-called second œcumenical
Council at Constantinople in A.D. 381 (§ 50, 4) exempted the
bishop of =Constantinople=, διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτὴν νέαν Ῥώμην (since
A.D. 330), from the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Heraclea,
and gave him the first rank after the bishop of Rome. To these
distinguished prelates there was given the title of honour,
=Patriarch=, which formerly had been given to all bishops; but
the Roman bishops, declining to take common rank with the others,
refused the title, and assumed instead the exclusive use of the
title =Papa=, Πάπας, which had also been previously applied to
all of episcopal rank. The fourth œcumenical Council of Chalcedon
in A.D. 451, in the 28th canon, ranked the patriarch of the
Eastern capital along with the bishop of Rome, granted him
the right of hearing complaints against the metropolitans of
all dioceses that they might be decided at an _endemic_ Synod
(§ 43, 2), and as an equivalent to the vast dominions of
his Roman colleague, gave him as an endowment in addition to
his own patriarchal district, the three complete dioceses of
Thrace, Pontus and Asia. The Exarchs of Heraclea in Thrace, of
Neo-Cæsarea in Pontus, and of Ephesus in Asia, thus placed under
him, bearing the title of _Archbishops_, ἀρχιεπίσκοποι, formed
a hierarchical middle rank between him and the metropolitans of
these dioceses, without, however, any strict definition of their
status being given, so that their preferential rank remained
uncertain and gradually fell back again into that of ordinary
metropolitans. But even at Nicæa in A.D. 325 the bishopric of
=Jerusalem= had been declared worthy of very special honour,
without, however, its subordination under the Metropolitan of
Cæsarea being disputed. Founding on this, Juvenal of Jerusalem
in the 3rd œcumenical Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 claimed
the rank and privileges of a patriarch, but on the motion of
Cyril of Alexandria was refused. He then applied to the Emperor
Theodosius II. who by an edict named him patriarch, and assigned
to him all Palestine and Arabia. Maximus, however, patriarch
of Antioch, who was thereby deprived of part of his diocese,
persisted in protesting until at Chalcedon in A.D. 451 at
least Phœnicia and Arabia were restored to him.--Within his own
official district each of these five prelates exercised supreme
spiritual authority, and at the head of his patriarchal Synod
decided all the affairs of the churches within the bounds. Still
many metropolitans, especially those of Salamis in Cyprus, of
Milan, Aquileia and Ravenna maintained a position, as Αὐτοκέφαλοι,
independent of any superiority of patriarchate or exarchate.
Alongside of the patriarchs in the East there were σύγκελλοι as
councillors and assistants, and at the imperial court they were
represented by permanent legates who were called _Apocrisiarians_.
From the 6th century the Popes of Rome began by sending them the
_pallium_ to confer confirmation of rank upon the newly-elected
metropolitans of the West, who were called in these parts
_Archiepiscopi_, Archbishops. The patriarchs meeting as a
court represented the unity of the church universal. Without
their consent no œcumenical Council could be held, nor could any
decision be binding on the whole church.--But first Jerusalem
in A.D. 637, then Antioch in A.D. 638, and next Alexandria in
A.D. 640, fell under the dominion of the Saracens.
§ 46.2. =The Rivalry between Rome and Byzantium.=--From the
time of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 the patriarch of
Constantinople continued to claim equality in rank and authority
with the bishop of Rome. But the principle upon which in either
case the claims to the primacy were based were already being
interpreted strongly in favour of Rome. In the East the spiritual
rank of the bishoprics was determined in accordance with the
political rank of the cities concerned. Constantinople was the
residence of the ruler of the οἰκουμένη, consequently its bishop
was œcumenical bishop. But in the eyes of the world Old Rome
still ranked higher than the New Rome. All the proud memories of
history clustered round the capital of the West. From Byzantium,
on the other hand, dated the visible decline, the threatened
overthrow of the empire. Moreover the West refused even to
admit the principle itself. Not the will of the emperor, not the
fortunes of the empire, ever becoming more and more deplorable,
should determine the spiritual rank of the bishops, but the
history of the church and the will of its Divine Founder and
Head. Measured by this standard the see of Constantinople stood
not only lower than those of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem,
but even below many other sees which though they scarcely had
metropolitan rank, could yet boast of apostolic origin. Then,
Rome unquestionably stood at the head of the church, for here
had lived, confessed and suffered the two chief apostles, here
too were their tombs and their bones; yea, still further, on the
Roman chair had Peter sat as its first bishop (§ 16, 1), whom the
Lord Himself had called to the primacy of the Apostles (§ 34, 8),
and the Roman bishops were his successors and heirs of his
privileges. The patriarch of Constantinople had nothing to
depend upon but his nearness to the court. He was backed up
and supported by the court, was only too often a tool in the
hands of political parties and a defender of heresies which
had the imperial favour. The case for the Roman bishop was
incomparably superior. His being a member of the West-Roman
empire, A.D. 395-476, with emperors for the most part weak and
oppressed on all sides by the convulsions caused by the invasions
of the barbarians, secured to him an incomparably greater
freedom and independence of action, which was little, if at
all, restricted by the Rugian and Ostrogoth invaders of Italy,
A D. 476-536. And even in A.D. 536, when the Byzantine empire
again obtained a footing in Italy, and held out with difficulty
against the onslaught of the Longobards from A.D. 569 to A.D. 752
within ever narrowing limits, the court could only seldom exercise
an influence upon his proceedings or punish him for his refusal
to yield by removal, imprisonment or exile. And while the East
was rent by a variety of ecclesiastical controversies, in which
sometimes the one, sometimes the other party prevailed, the
West under the direction of Rome almost constantly presented the
picture of undisturbed unity. The controversialists sought the
mediating judgment of Rome, the oppressed sought its intercession
and protection, and because the Roman bishops almost invariably
lent the weight of their intellectual and moral influence to the
cause of truth and right, the party in whose favour decision was
given, almost certainly at last prevailed. Thus Rome advanced
from day to day in the eyes of the Christian world, and soon
demanded as a constant right what personal confidence or pressure
of circumstances had won for it in particular cases. And in
the course of time Rome has never let a favourable opportunity
slip, never failed to hold what once was gained or even claimed
with any possibility of success. A strong feeling in favour of
strict hierarchical pretensions united all parties and found
its rallying point in the chair of St. Peter; even incapable and
characterless popes were upborne and carried through by means of
this idea. Thus Rome advanced with firm step and steady aim, and
in spite of all opposition and resistance continually approached
nearer and nearer to the end in view. The East could at last hold
on and save its ecclesiastical independence only by a complete
and incurable division (§ 67).
§ 46B. HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CHAIR AND ITS CLAIMS
TO THE PRIMACY.[127]
The history of the Roman bishopric during the first three centuries is
almost wholly enveloped in a cloud of legend which is only occasionally
broken by a gleam of historical light (see § 33, 3, 4, 5, 7; § 35, 5;
§ 37, 2; § 40, 2; § 41, 1, 3). Only after the martyr church became in
the 4th century the powerful state church does it really enter into
the field of regular and continuous history. And now also first begins
that striving after primacy, present from the earliest times among its
bishops and inherited from the political supremacy of “eternal Rome,”
to be prosecuted with success in political and ecclesiastical quarters.
Its history, for which biographies of the popes down to the end of the
9th century in the so-called _Liber pontificalis_ (§ 90, 6) are most
instructive sources, certainly always in need of critical sifting in
a high degree, permits therefore and demands for our purposes at this
point earnest and close consideration.
§ 46.3. =From Melchiades to Julius I., A.D. 310 to A.D. 352.=--At
the time when Constantine’s conversion so completely changed the
aspect of things =Melchiades= occupied the bishopric of Rome,
A.D. 310 to A.D. 314. Even in A.D. 313 Constantine conferred on
him as the chief bishop of the West the presidency of a clerical
commission for inquiry into the Donatist schism (§ 63, 1). Under
=Sylvester I.=, A.D. 314 to A.D. 335, the Arian controversy
broke out (§ 50), in which, however, he laid no claim to be
an authority on either side. That by his legates, Vitus and
Vincentius [Vincent], he presided at the first œcumenical
Synod at Nicæa in A.D. 325 is a purely Romish fabrication; no
contemporary and none of the older historians know anything of it.
On account of the rise in Egypt of the Meletian schism (§ 41, 4)
the 6th canon of the Council prescribes that the bishop of
Alexandria “in accordance with the old customs shall have
jurisdiction over Egypt, in Libya and in Pentapolis, since it
is also according to old custom for the bishop of Rome to have
such jurisdiction, as also the churches in Antioch and in the
other provinces.” The Council, therefore, as Rufinus also and
the oldest Latin collection of canons, the so-called _Prisca_,
understand this canon, maintains that the ecclesiastical
supremacy of the Roman chair extended not over all the West but
only over the ten _suburbicarian_ provinces belonging to the
diocese of Rome according to Constantine’s division, _i.e._ over
Middle and Southern Italy, with the islands of Sardinia, Corsica
and Sicily. The bishop of Rome, however, was and continued by
the wider development of the patriarchal constitution the sole
patriarch in all the West. What more natural than that he should
regard himself as the one patriarch _over_ all the West? But,
even as the only _sedes apostolica_ of the West, Rome had already
for a long time obtained a rank far beyond the limits of the
Nicene canon. In doubtful cases application was made from all
quarters of the West to Rome for instruction as to the genuine
apostolic tradition, and the epistolary replies to such questions
assumed even in the 4th century the tone of authoritative
statements of the truth, _epistolæ decretales_. But down to
A.D. 344 it was never attempted to claim the authority of Rome
over the East in giving validity to any matter. In this year,
however, the pressure of circumstances obliged the Council
of Sardica (§ 50, 2), after most of the Eastern bishops had
already withdrawn, to agree to hand over to the bishop of
Rome, =Julius I.=, A.D. 337-352, as a steadfast and consistent
confessor of the orthodox faith in this age of ecclesiastical
wavering, the right of receiving appeals from condemned bishops
throughout the empire, and if he found them well supported, of
appointing a new investigation by the bishops of the neighbouring
province. But this decree affected only the person of Julius and
was only the momentary makeshift of a hard-pressed minority. It
therefore attracted no attention and was soon forgotten,--only
Rome forgot it not.
§ 46.4. =From Liberius to Anastasius, A.D. 352 to
A.D. 402.=--Julius’ successor =Liberius=,[128] A.D. 352 to
A.D. 366, maintained with equal steadfastness as his predecessor
the confession of the orthodox Nicene faith, and was therefore
banished by the Emperor Constantius in A.D. 355, who appointed
as his successor the accommodating deacon Felix. But the members
of the church would have nothing to do with the contemptible
intruder, who moreover on the very day of the deportation of
Liberius had solemnly sworn with the whole clergy of Rome to
remain faithful to the exiled bishop. He succeeded indeed in
drawing over to himself a considerable number of the clergy. The
people, however, continued unfalteringly true to their banished
bishop, and even after he had in A.D. 358 by signing a heretical
creed (§ 50, 3) obtained permission to return, they received him
again with unfeigned joy. It was the emperor’s wish that Liberius
and Felix should jointly preside over the Roman church. But
Felix was driven away by the people and could not again secure
a footing among them. Liberius, who henceforth held his position
in Rome as a Nicæan, amnestied those of the clergy who had
fallen away. But the schism occasioned thereby in the church of
Rome broke out with great violence after his death. A rigorist
minority repudiated =Damasus I.=, A.D. 366 to A.D. 384, who had
been chosen as his successor by the majority, because he too at
an earlier date had belonged to the oath-breaking party of Felix.
This minority elected Ursinus as anti-bishop. Over this there
were contentions that led to bloodshed. The party of Damasus
attacked the church of Ursinus and one hundred and thirty-seven
corpses were carried out. Valentinian III. now exiled Ursinus,
and Gratian in A.D. 378 by an edict conferred upon Damasus the
right of giving decision without appeal as party and judge in
one person against all bishops and clergy involved in the schism.
In consequence of this victory of Damasus as partisan of Felix
there was now formed in Rome a tradition which has passed over
into the lists of the popes and the martyrologies, in which
Liberius figures as the adherent of a heretical emperor and a
bloody persecutor of the true Nicene faith and Felix II. as the
legitimate pope. He is also confounded with the martyr Felix who
suffered under Maximian and was celebrated in song by Paulinus
Nolanus, and is thus represented as a holy martyr.[129] To the
pontificate of =Siricius=, A.D. 384 to A.D. 398, the western
church is indebted for the oldest extant papal decretals dating
from A.D. 385 which contain a reply to various questions of
the Spanish bishop couched quite in the hierarchical form and
insisting in strong terms upon the binding obligation of clerical
celibacy. Subsequently the same pope, burdened with “the care of
all the churches,” feels himself obliged to issue an _encyclical_
to all the churches of the West, denouncing the frequent
neglect of existing ecclesiastical laws. In the Origenist
controversy between Jerome and Rufinus (§ 51, 2) he favoured
the latter;--whereas his successor, =Anastasius=, A.D. 398 to
A.D. 402, took the side of Jerome.
§ 46.5. =From Innocent I. to Zosimus, A.D. 402 to A.D. 418.=--In
consequence of the partition of the empire into an eastern and
a western division in A.D. 364 (comp. § 42, 4), the claims of
the Roman chair to ecclesiastical supremacy over the whole of the
West were not only confirmed but also very considerably extended.
For by this partition the western half of the empire included not
only those countries which had previously been reckoned western,
namely, Africa, Spain, Britain, Gaul and Italy, but also the
prefecture of Illyricum (Greece, Thessaly, Macedonia, Dalmatia,
Pannonia, Mœsia, Dacia) with its capital Thessalonica, and thus
events played into the hands of those who pressed the patriarchal
claims of Rome. Even when in A.D. 379 Eastern Illyria (Macedonia,
Mœsia and Dacia) was attached to the Eastern empire, the Roman
bishops continued still to regard it as belonging to their
patriarchal domain. These claims were advanced with special
emphasis and with corresponding success by =Innocent I.=,
A.D. 402 to A.D. 417. When in A.D. 402 he intimated to the
archbishop of Thessalonica his elevation to the chair, he at the
same time transferred to him as his representative the oversight
of all the Illyrian provinces, and to his successor, in A.D. 412,
he sent a formal document of installation as Roman vicar. Not
only did he apply to the Roman chair that canon of the Council
of Sardica which had referred only to the person of Julius, but
in a decretal to a Gallic bishop he extended also the clearly
circumscribed right of appeal on the part of condemned bishops
into an obligation to submit all “_causæ majores_” to the
decision of the apostolic see. From Africa a Carthaginian Synod
in A.D. 404 sent messengers to Rome in order to secure its
intercession with the emperor to put down the Donatists. From the
East Theophilus of Alexandria and Chrysostom of Constantinople
solicited the weighty influence of Rome in the Origenist
controversy (§ 51, 3); and Alexander of Antioch (§ 50, 8)
expresses the proud satisfaction he had, as only Western bishops
had done before, in asking the Roman bishop’s advice on various
constitutional and disciplinary matters. During the Pelagian
controversy (§ 53, 4) the Palestinian Synod at Diospolis in
A.D. 415 interceded with the Pope in favour of Pelagius accused of
heresy in Africa; on the other hand the African Synods of Mileve
and Carthage in A.D. 416 besieged him with the demand to give the
sanction of his authority to their condemnation of the heretic.
He took the side of the Anti-Pelagians, and Augustine could
shower upon the heretics the pregnant words: _Roma locuta ...
causa finita_.--The higher the authority of the Roman chair rose
under Innocent, all the more painful to Rome must the humiliation
have been, which his successor =Zosimus=, A.D. 417-418, called
down upon it, when he, in opposition to his predecessor, took
the part of Pelagius and his companion Cœlestius, and addressed
bitter reproaches to the Africans for their treatment of him, but
afterwards in consequence of their vigorous remonstrances and the
interference of the emperor Honorius was obliged to withdraw his
previous judgment and formally to condemn his quondam protegé.
And when a deposed presbyter of Africa, Apiarius, sought refuge
in Rome, the Council of Carthage in A.D. 418, in which Augustine
also took part, made this an excuse for forbidding under threat
of excommunication any appeal _ad transmarina judicia_. Zosimus
indeed appealed to the canon of the Sardican Synod, which he
quoted as Nicene; but the Africans, to whom that canon was quite
unknown, only said that on this matter they must make inquiries
among the Eastern churches.[130]
§ 46.6. =From Boniface I. to Sixtus III., A.D. 419 to
A.D. 440.=--After the death of Zosimus, 26th Dec., 418, a minority
of the clergy and the people, by the hasty election and ordination
of the deacon Eulalius, anticipated the action of the majority
who chose the presbyter Boniface. The recommendation of the city
prefect Symmachus secured for the former the recognition of the
Emperor Honorius; but the determined remonstrance of the majority
moved him to convene a Synod at Ravenna in A.D. 419 for a final
settlement of the dispute. When the bishops there assembled
could not agree, he called a new Synod to meet at Spoleto at the
approaching Easter festival, and ordered, so as to make an end
of disturbances and tumults in the city, that both rivals should
quit Rome until a decision had been reached. Eulalius, however,
did not regard the injunction but pushed his way by force of arms
into the city. The Emperor now banished him from Rome on pain of
death, and at Spoleto the bishops decided in consequence of the
moderation he had shown, to recognise =Boniface I.=, A.D. 419 to
A.D. 422, as bishop of Rome. His successor was =Cœlestine I.=,
A.D. 422 to A.D. 432. Apiarius, who meanwhile, because he
professed repentance and besought forgiveness, had been restored,
began anew to offend, was again deposed, and again obtained
protection and encouragement at Rome. But an African Synod at
Carthage energetically protested against Cœlestine’s interference,
charging him with having often referred to a Nicene canon
warranting the right of appeal to Rome which the most diligent
inquiries among the churches of Constantinople, Alexandria and
Antioch, had failed to discover. On the outbreak of the Nestorian
controversy (§ 52, 3) two opponents again sued for the favour
of the Roman league; first of all, Nestorius of Constantinople,
because he professed to have given particular information
about the Pelagian-minded bishops driven from Italy who sought
refuge in Constantinople (§ 53, 4) and had immediately made a
communication about the error of confounding the two natures of
Christ which had recently sprung up in the East. The brotherly
tone of this writing, free from any idea of subordination,
found no response at Rome. The letters of Cyril of Alexandria
proved more acceptable, filled as they were with cringing
flatteries of the Roman chair and venomous invectives against the
Constantinopolitan see and its occupier. Cœlestine unreservedly
took the side of Cyril, commanded Nestorius under threat of
deposition and excommunication within ten days to present to
a Roman Synod, A.D. 420, a written retractation, and remitted
to Cyril the carrying out of this judgment. To his legates at
the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, he gave the instructions:
_Auctoritatem sedis apostolicæ custodire debere mandamus.... Ad
disceptationem si fuerit ventum, vos de eorum sententiis judicare
debetis, non subire certamen._ The Council decided precisely
according to Cœlestine’s wish. The proud Alexandrian patriarch
had recognised Rome as the highest court of appeal; a Western
educated at Rome, named Maximian, thoroughly submissive to
Cœlestine, was, with the pope’s hearty approval, raised to the
patriarchal see of Constantinople as successor of the deposed
Nestorius; only John of Antioch opposed the decision. Cœlestine’s
successor =Sixtus III.=, A.D. 432 to A.D. 440, could already
boast in A.D. 433 that he had put himself superior to the decrees
of the Council, and in commemoration of the victory dedicated
a beautiful church newly built to the mother of God, now called
_S. Maria Maggiore_.[131]
§ 46.7. =From Leo the Great to Simplicius, A.D. 440 to
A.D. 483.=--=Leo I.=, A.D. 440 to A.D. 461 (comp. § 47, 22),
unquestionably up to that date the greatest of all the occupants
of the Roman chair, was also the most powerful, the worthiest and
most successful vindicator of its authority in the East as well
as in the West; indeed he may be regarded as properly the founder
of the Roman papacy as a universal episcopate with the full
sanction of the civil power. Even the Western Fathers of the 4th
and 5th centuries, such as Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine,
as also Innocent I., had still interpreted the πέτρα of Matt.
xvi. 18 partly of the confession of Peter, partly of the Person
of Christ. First in the time of Cœlestine an attempt was made to
refer it to the person of Peter. The legates of Cœlestine at the
Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 had said: ὅστις, ἕως τοῦ νῦν καὶ
ἀεὶ ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῦ διαδόχοις καὶ ζῇ καὶ δικάζει. Thus they claimed
universal primacy as of immediately Divine authority. Leo I.
adopted this view with all his soul. In the most determined
and persistent way he carried it out in the West; then next
in proconsular Africa which had so energetically protested in
the times of Innocent and Cœlestine against Romish pretensions.
When news came to him of various improprieties spreading there,
he sent a legate to investigate, and in consequence of his
report addressed severe censures which were submitted to without
opposition. The right of African clerics to appeal to Rome was
also henceforth unchallenged. In Gaul, however, Leo had still to
maintain a hard struggle with Hilary, archbishop of Arles, who,
arrogating to himself the right of a primacy of Gaul, had deposed
Celedonius, bishop of Besontio, _Besançon_. But Leo took up his
case and had him vindicated and restored by a Roman Synod. Hilary,
who came himself to Rome, defied the Pope, escaped threatened
imprisonment by secret flight, and was then deprived of his
metropolitan rights. At the same time, in A.D. 445, Leo obtained
from the young Emperor of the West, Valentinian III., a civil
enactment which made every sort of resistance to the divinely
established universal primacy of the Roman see an act of high
treason.--In the East, too, Leo gained a higher position than had
ever before been accorded to Rome on account of his moderation
in the Eutychian controversy (§ 52, 4). Once again was Rome
called in to mediate between the two conflicting parties. At the
Robber-Synod of Ephesus in A.D. 449, under the presidency of the
tyrannical Dioscurus of Alexandria, the legates of Leo were not,
indeed, allowed to speak. But at the next œcumenical Council at
Chalcedon in A.D. 451 his doctrine won a brilliant victory; even
here, however, much objection was raised to his hierarchical
pretensions. He demanded from the first the presidency for his
legates, which, however, was assigned not to them, but to the
imperial commissioners. The demand, too, for the expulsion of
Dioscurus from the Synod, because he dared _Synodum facere sine
auctoritate sedis apostolicæ, quod mumquam licuit, numquem factum
est_, did not, at first at least, receive the answer required.
When, notwithstanding the opposition of the legates the question
of the relative ranks of the patriarchs was dealt with, they
withdrew from the session and subsequently protested against the
28th canon agreed upon at that session with a reference to the
6th Nicene canon which in the Roman _translation_, _i.e._ forgery,
began with the words: _Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum_.
But the Council sent the Acts with a dutiful report to Rome for
confirmation, whereupon Leo strictly repudiated the 28th canon,
threatening the church of Constantinople with excommunication,
and so finally gained his point. The emperor annulled it in
A.D. 454, and Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople, was obliged
to write a humble letter to Leo acquiescing in its erasure; but
this did not prevent his successor from always maintaining its
validity (§ 63, 2).--When the wild hordes of Attila, king of the
Huns, spread terror and consternation by their approach, Leo’s
priestly form appeared before him as a messenger of God, and
saved Rome and Italy from destruction. Less successful was his
priestly intercession with the Arian Vandal chief Genseric,
whose army in A.D. 455 plundered, burnt and murdered throughout
Rome for fourteen days; but all the more strikingly after his
withdrawal did the pope’s ability display itself in restoring
comfort and order amid scenes of unutterable destitution and
confusion.
§ 46.8. =From Felix III. to Boniface II., A.D. 483 to
A.D. 532.=--Under Leo’s second successor, the Rugian or Scyrrian
Odoacer put an end to the West-Roman empire in A.D. 476 (§ 76, 6).
As to the enactments of the Roman state, although himself an
Arian, after seventeen years of a wise rule he left untouched the
orthodox Roman church, and the Roman bishops could under him, as
under his successor, the Ostrogoth Theodoric, also an Arian, from
A.D. 493 to A.D. 526, more freely exercise their ecclesiastical
functions than under the previous government, all the more
as neither of these rulers resided in Rome but in Ravenna.
=Pope Felix III.=, A.D. 483 to A.D. 492, in opposition to the
Byzantine ecclesiastical policy, which by means of the imperial
authority had for quite a hundred years retarded the development
of the orthodox doctrine (§ 52, 5), began a schism lasting
for thirty-five years between East and West, from A.D. 484 to
A.D. 519, which no suspicion of disloyal combination with the
Western rulers can account for. On the appointment of Felix III.
Odoacer assumed the right of confirming all elections of Popes,
just as previously the West Roman emperors had claimed, and Rome
submitted without resistance. The Gothic kings, too, maintained
this right.--=Gelasius I.=, A.D. 492 to A.D. 496 (comp. § 47, 22),
ventured before the Emperor Anastasius I., in A.D. 493, to
indicate the relation of _Sacerdotium_ and _Imperium_ according
to the Roman conception, which already exhibits in its infant
stage of development the mediæval theory of the two swords
(§ 110, 1) and the favourite analogy of the sun and the moon
(§ 96, 9). His peaceable successor =Anastasius II.=, A.D. 496 to
A.D. 498, entered into negotiations for peace with the Byzantine
court; but a number of Roman fanatics wished on this account to
have him cast out of the communion of the church, and saw in his
early death a judgment of heaven upon his conduct. He has ever
since been regarded as a heretic, and as such even Dante consigns
him to a place in hell. After his death there was a disputed
election between =Symmachus=, A.D. 498 to A.D. 514, and Laurentius.
The schism soon degenerated into the wildest civil war, in which
blood was shed in the churches and in the streets. Theodoric
decided for Symmachus as the choice of the majority and the first
ordained, but his opponents then charged him before the king as
guilty of the gravest crimes. To investigate the charges brought
against the bishop the king now convened at Rome a Synod of all
the Italian bishops, _Synodus palmaris_ of A.D. 502, so called
from the porch of St. Peter’s Church adorned with palms, where it
first met. As Symmachus on his way to it was met by a wild mob of
his opponents and only narrowly escaped with his life, Theodoric
insisted no longer on a regular proof of the charges against
him. The bishops without any investigation freely proclaimed him
their pope, and the deacon Eunodius of Pavia, known also as a
hymn writer, commissioned by them to make an apology for their
procedure, laid down the proposition that the pope who himself is
judge over all, cannot be judged of any man. Bloody street fights
between the two parties, however, still continued by day and
night. Symmachus’ successor =Hormisdas=, A.D. 514 to A.D. 523,
had the satisfaction of seeing the Byzantine court, in order
to prepare the way for the winning back of Italy, seeking
for reconciliation with the Western church, and in A.D. 519
submitting to the humbling conditions of restoration to church
fellowship offered by the pope. A sharp edict of the West Roman
emperor Justin II. against the Arians of his empire caused
Theodoric to send an embassy in their favour to Constantinople,
at the head of which stood =John I.=, A.D. 523 to A.D. 526, with
a threat of reprisals. The pope, however, seems rather to have
utilized his journey for intrigues against the Italian government
of the Goths, for after his return Theodoric caused him to
be cast into prison, in which he died. He was succeeded by
=Felix IV.= A.D. 526 to A.D. 530, after whose death the election
was again disputed by two rivals. This schism, however, was only
of short duration, since Dioscurus, the choice of the majority,
died during the next month. His rival =Boniface II.=, A.D. 530
to A.D. 532, a Goth by birth and favoured by the Ostrogoth
government, applied himself with extreme severity to put down
the opposing party.
§ 46.9. =From John II. to Pelagius II., A.D. 532 to
A.D. 590.=--Meanwhile Justinian I. had been raised to the
Byzantine throne, and his long reign from A.D. 527 to A.D. 565,
was in many ways a momentous one for the fortunes of the Roman
bishopric. The reconquest of Italy, from A.D. 536 to A.D. 553, by
his generals Belisarius and Narses, and the subsequent founding
of the Exarchate at Ravenna in A.D. 567, at the head of which a
representative of the emperor, a so-called Roman patrician stood,
freed the pope indeed from the control of the Arian Ostrogoths
which since the restoration of ecclesiastical fellowship with the
East had become oppressive, but it brought them into a new and
much more serious dependence. For Justinian and his successors
demanded from the Roman bishops as well as from the patriarchs of
Constantinople unconditional obedience.--=Agapetus I.=, A.D. 535
to A.D. 536, sent as peacemaker by the Goths to Constantinople,
escaped the fate of John I. perhaps just because he suddenly died
there. Under his successor =Silverius=, A.D. 536 to A.D. 537,
Belisarius, in December, A.D. 536, made his entry into Rome,
and in the March following he deposed the pope and sentenced
him to banishment. This he did at the instigation of the Empress
Theodora whose machinations in favour of Monophysitism had been
already felt by Agapetus. Theodora had already designated the
wretched =Vigilius=, A.D. 537 to A.D. 555, as his successor. He
had purchased her favour by the promise of two hundred pounds
of gold and acquiescence in the condemnation of the so-called
_three chapters_ (§ 52, 6) so eagerly desired by her. Owing
to his cowardliness and want of character Africa, North Italy
and Illyria shook off their allegiance to the Roman see and
maintained their independence for more than half a century.
Terrified by this disaster he partly retracted his earlier
agreement with the empress, and Justinian sent him into exile.
He submitted unconditionally and was forgiven, but died before
reaching Rome. =Pelagius I.=, A.D. 555 to A.D. 560, also a
creature of Theodora, subscribed the agreement and so confirmed
the Western schism which Gregory the Great first succeeded in
overcoming.--The fantastic attempt of Justinian to raise his
obscure birthplace Tauresium, the modern Bulgarian Achrida, to
the rank of a metropolis as Justinianopolis or _Prima Justiniana_,
and its bishop to the rank of patriarch with Eastern Illyria as
his patriarchate, proved, notwithstanding the consent of Vigilius,
a still-born child.
§ 46.10. =From Gregory I. to Boniface V., A.D. 590 to
A.D. 625.=--After the papal chair had been held by three
insignificant popes in succession =Gregory the Great=, A.D. 590
to A.D. 604 (comp. § 47, 22), was raised to the Apostolic
see, the greatest, most capable, noblest, most pious and most
superstitious in the whole long series of popes. He took the
helm of the church at a time when Italy was reduced to the most
terrible destitution by the savage and ruthless devastations of
the Arian Longobards lasting over twenty years (§ 76, 8), and
neither the emperor nor his exarch at Ravenna had the means of
affording help. Gregory could not allow Italy and the church to
perish utterly under these desperate circumstances, and so was
compelled to assume the functions of civil authority. When the
Longobards in A.D. 593 oppressed Rome to the uttermost there
remained nothing for him but to purchase their withdrawal with
the treasures of the church, and the peace finally concluded
with them in A.D. 599 was his and not the exarch’s work. The
exceedingly rich possessions of lands and goods, the so-called
_Patrimonium Petri_, extending throughout all Italy and the
islands, brought him the authority of a powerful secular prince
far beyond the bounds of the Roman duchy, in comparison with
which the rank of the exarch himself was insignificant. The
Longobards too treated with him as an independent political power.
Gregory, therefore, may rightly be regarded as the first founder
of the temporal power of the Papacy on Italian soil. But all
this as we can easily understand provoked no small dislike of
the pope at Constantinople. The pope, on the other hand, was
angry with the Emperor Maurice because he gave no consideration
to his demand that the patriarch, Johannes Jejunator, should
be prohibited from assuming the title Ἐπίσκοπος οἰκουμενικός.
Gregory’s own position in regard to the primacy appears from
his Epistles. He writes to the bishop of Syracuse: _Si qua culpa
in episcopis invenitur, nescio, quis Sedi apostolicæ subjectus
non sit; cum vero culpa non existit, omnes secundum rationem
humilitatis æquales sunt_. And with this reservation it was
certainly meant when he, in a letter to the patriarch of
Alexandria, who had addressed him as “_Universalis Papa_,”
most distinctly refused this title and readily conceded to
the Alexandrian as well as to the Antiochean see, as of Petrine
origin (the Antiochean directly, § 16, 1; the Alexandrian
indirectly through Mark, § 16, 4), equal rank and dignity with
that of Rome; and when he denounced as an anti-Christ every
bishop who would raise himself above his fellow bishops. Thus
he compared Johannes Jejunator to Lucifer who wished to exalt
himself above all the angels. Gregory, on the other hand, in
proud humility styled himself, as all subsequent popes have done,
_Servus servorum Dei_. When he extolled the Frankish Jezebel
Brunhilda [Brunehilda] (§ 77, 7), who had besought him to send
her relics and at another time a pallium for a bishop, as an
exemplary pious Christian woman and a wise ruler, he may, owing
to the defective communication between Rome and Gaul, have had
no authentic information about her doings and disposition. The
memory of the otherwise noble-minded pope is more seriously
affected by his conduct in reference to the emperor Phocas,
A.D. 602 to A.D. 610, the murderer of the noble and just emperor
Maurice, whom he congratulates upon his elevation to the throne,
and makes all the angelic choirs of heaven and all tongues on
earth break forth in jubilees and hymns of thanksgiving; but even
here again, when he thus wrote, the news of his iniquities,--not
only the slaughter of the emperor, but also of his queen, his
five sons and three daughters, etc., by which this demon in
human form cut his way to the throne,--may not have been known to
him in their full extent.--Phocas, however, showed himself duly
thankful, for at the request of pope =Boniface III.=, A.D. 606
to A.D. 607, he refused to allow the patriarch of Constantinople
to assume the title of Universal bishop, while at the same time
he formally acknowledged the chair of Peter at Rome as _Caput
omnium ecclesiarum_. To the next pope =Boniface IV.=, A.D. 608 to
A.D. 615, he presented the beautiful Pantheon at Rome, which from
being a temple dedicated to Cybele, the mother of the gods, and
to all the gods, he turned into a church of the mother of God and
of all the martyrs.[132]
§ 46.11. =From Honorius I. to Gregory III., A.D. 625 to
A.D. 741.=--For almost fifty years, from A.D. 633 under
=Honorius I.=, A.D. 625 to A.D. 638, the third successor of
Boniface IV., the _Monothelite controversy_ (§ 52, 8) continued
its disastrous course. Honorius, a pious and peace-loving man,
had seen nothing objectionable in this attempt of the Emperor
Heraclius (A.D. 611 to A.D. 641) to win the numerous Monophysites
back to the unity of the church by the concession of _one_ will
in the two natures of Christ, and was prepared to co-operate in
the work. But the conviction grew more and more strong that the
doctrine proposed in the interests of peace was itself heretical.
All subsequent bishops of Rome therefore unanimously condemned as
an accursed heresy (§ 52, 9), what their predecessor Honorius had
agreed to and confessed. This explains how the exarch of Ravenna
delayed for more than a year the confirmation of the election
of the next pope, =Severinus=, A.D. 638 to A.D. 640, and granted
it only in A.D. 640 as amends for his wholesale plundering of
the treasury of the Roman church to supply his own financial
deficiencies. In the time of =Martin I.=, A.D. 649 to A.D. 653,
the Emperor Constans II., A.D. 642 to A.D. 668, sought to make
an end of the bitter controversy by the strict prohibition of any
statement as to one will or two wills. The determined pope had to
suffer for his opposition by severe imprisonment and still more
trying banishment, in which he suffered from hunger and other
miseries (A.D. 655). The new emperor Constantinus Pogonnatus,
A.D. 668 to A.D. 685, finally recognised the indispensable
necessity of securing reconciliation with the West. In A.D. 680,
he convened an œcumenical Council at Constantinople at which the
legates of the pope =Agatho=, A.D. 678 to A.D. 682, the fifth
successor of Martin I., once more prescribed to the Greeks what
should henceforth be regarded throughout the whole empire as
the orthodox faith. The Council sent its Acts to Rome with the
request that they might be confirmed, which Agatho’s successor,
=Leo II.=, A.D. 682 to A.D. 683, did, notwithstanding the
condemnation therein very pointedly expressed of the heretical
pope Honorius, which indeed he explicitly approved.--Once again
in A.D. 686, the Roman church was threatened with a schism by a
double election to the papal chair. This, however, was averted
by the opposing electors, lay and clerical, agreeing to set
aside both candidates and uniting together in the election of
the =Thracian Conon=, A.D. 686 to A.D. 687. Precisely the same
thing happened with a similar result on the death of Conon.
The new candidate whom both parties agreed upon this time was
=Sergius I.=, A.D. 687 to A.D. 701, but he was obliged to purchase
the exarch’s confirmation by a present of a hundred pounds of gold.
His rejection of the conclusions of the second Trullan Council
at Constantinople in A.D. 692 (§ 63, 2), which in various points
disregarded the pretensions of Rome, brought him into conflict
with the emperor Justinian II., A.D. 685 to A.D. 711. The result
of this contest was to show that the power and authority of the
pope in Italy were at this time greater than those of the emperor.
When the emperor sent a high official to Rome with the order
to bring the pope prisoner to Constantinople, almost the whole
population of the exarchate gathered out in the pope’s defence.
The Byzantine ambassador sought and obtained protection from the
pope, under whose bed he crept, and was then allowed to quit Rome
in safety, followed by the scorn and abuse of the people. Soon
thereafter, in A.D. 695, Justinian was overthrown, and with slit
ears and nose sent into exile. In A.D. 705, having been restored
by the Bulgarian king, he immediately took fearful revenge upon
the rebel inhabitants of Ravenna. Pope Constantine I., A.D. 708
to A.D. 715, intimidated by what he had seen, did not dare to
refuse the imperial mandate which summoned him to Byzantium
for the arrangement of ecclesiastical differences. With fear
and trembling he embarked. But he succeeded in coming to an
understanding with the emperor, who received and dismissed him
with every token of respect. Under his successor, =Gregory II.=,
A.D. 715 to A.D. 731, the Byzantine iconoclast controversy
(§ 66, 1) gave occasion to an almost complete rupture between
the papacy and the Byzantine empire; and under =Gregory III.=,
A.D. 731 to A.D. 741, the papacy definitely withdrew from the
Byzantine and put itself under the Frankish government. Down to
the latest age of the exarchate of Ravenna the confirmation of
papal elections by the emperor or his representative, the exarch,
was always maintained, and only after it had been given was
consecration allowed. This is proved both from the biographies
of the papal books and from the relative formulæ of petition in
the _Liber diurnus Rom. Pontificum_, a collection of formulæ for
the performance of the most important acts in the service of the
Romish Church made between A.D. 685 and A.D. 751. The election
itself was in the hands of the three orders of the city (_clerus_,
_exercitus_ and _populus_).--Continuation § 82.
III. THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND LITERATURE.
§ 47. THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS AND THEIR MOST CELEBRATED
REPRESENTATIVES.
The Ancient Church reached its highest glory during the 4th and
5th centuries. The number of theological schools properly so-called
(§ 45, 1) was indeed small, and so the most celebrated theologians
were self-taught in theology. But all the greater must the intellectual
resources of this age have been and all the more powerful the general
striving after culture, when the outward means, helps and opportunities
for obtaining scientific training were so few. The middle of the 5th
century, marked by the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, may be regarded
as the turning point where the greatest height in theological science
and in other ecclesiastical developments was reached, and from this
point we may date the beginnings of decline. After this the spirit
of independent research gradually disappeared from the Eastern as
well as from the Western Church. Political oppression, hierarchical
exclusiveness, narrowing monasticism and encroaching barbarism choked
all free scientific effort, and the industry of compilers took the place
of fresh youthful intellectual production. The authority of the older
church teachers stood so high and was regarded as binding in so eminent
a degree that at the Councils argument was carried on almost solely
by means of quotations from the writings of those fathers who had been
recognised as orthodox.
§ 47.1. =The Theological Schools and Tendencies:=
a. =In the 4th and 5th centuries.=--Since the time of the
two Dionysiuses (§ 33, 7) the Alexandrian theology had
been divided into two different directions which we may
distinguish as the old and the new Alexandrian. =The Old
Alexandrian School= held by the subordinationist view
of Origen and strove to keep open to scientific research
as wide a field as possible. Its representatives showed
deep reverence for Origen but avoided his more eccentric
speculations. Its latest offshoot was the _Semiarianism_
with which it came to an end in the middle of the 4th
century. This same free scientific tendency in theology
was yet more decidedly shown in =the Antiochean School=.
Although at first animated by the spirit which Origen had
introduced into theology, its further development was a
thoroughly independent one, departing from its original
in many particulars. To the allegorical method of
interpretation of the Origenist school it opposed
the natural grammatico-historical interpretation, to its
mystical speculation, clear positive thinking. Inquiry into
the simple literal sense of holy scripture and the founding
of a purely biblical theology were its tasks. Averse to all
mysteries, it strove after a positive, rational conception
of Christianity and after a construction of dogma by
means of clear logical thought. Hence its dogmatic aim was
pre-eminently the careful distinguishing of the divine and
human in Christ and in Christianity, forming a conception
of each by itself and securing especially in both due
recognition of the human. The theology of the national
=East-Syrian Church=, far more than that of the Antiochean
or Græco-Syrian, was essentially bound down by tradition.
It had its seminaries in the theological schools of Nisibis
and Edessa. The oriental spirit was here displayed in an
unrestricted manner; also a tendency to theosophy, mysticism
and asceticism, a special productiveness in developing forms
of worship and constitution, and withal doctrinal stability.
In their exegesis the members of this school co-operated
with the Antiocheans, though not so decidedly, in opposing
the arbitrary allegorizing of the Origenist school, but
their exegetical activity was not, as with the Antiocheans,
scientific and critical but rather practical and homiletical.
=The New Alexandrian School= was the prevailing one for the
4th century so far as Alexandrian culture was concerned.
Its older representatives, at least, continued devotedly
attached to Origen and favourable to the speculative
treatment of Christian doctrine introduced by him. But
they avoided his unscriptural extravagances and carried out
consistently the ecclesiastical elements of his doctrine. By
a firm acceptance of the doctrine of the eternal generation
of the Son they overcame the subordinationism of their
master, and in this broke away from the old Alexandrian
school and came into closer relations to the theology of the
Western church. To the Antiochean school, however, they were
directly opposed in respect of the delight they took in the
mysteries of Christianity, and their disinclination to allow
the reason to rule in theology. The union of the divine and
human in Christ and in Christianity seemed to them a sublime,
incomprehensible mystery, any attempt to resolve it being
regarded as alike useless and profane. But in this way
the human element became more and more lost to view and
became absorbed in the divine. They energetically affirmed
the inseparable union of the two, but thereby lost the
consciousness of their distinctness and fell into the
contrary error of Antiochean onesidedness. With Cyril of
Alexandria the New Alexandrian school properly began to
assume the form of a sect and to show symptoms of decay,
although he himself retained the reputation of an orthodox
teacher. =The Western Theology= of this period, as well as
its North-African precursor (§ 31, 10, 11), energetically
insisted upon the application of Christianity to the life,
the development of the doctrines affecting this matter
and the maintenance of the church system of doctrine as a
strong protection against all wilfulness in doctrine. In
it therefore the traditional theology finds its chief home.
Still the points of contact with the East were so many and
so vital that however much inclined to stability the West
might be, it could not altogether remain unmoved and without
enrichment from the theological movements of the age. Thus
we distinguish in the West four different but variously
inter-connected tendencies. First of all there is the
genuinely _Western_, which is separated on the one hand in
Tertullian and Cyprian, but on the other hand is variously
influenced by the talented teachers of the New Alexandrian
School, which continued to mould and dominate the cultured
theology of the West. Its chief representatives are
Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, and above all, Augustine,
who completely freed the Latin theology from its hitherto
prevailing dependence on the Greek, placing it now upon its
own feet. The representatives of this tendency were at first
in complete accord with the members of the New Alexandrian
school in their opposition to the semi-Arian Origenists
and the Nestorianizing Antiocheans, but then as that school
itself drifted into the position of a heretical sect, they
also decidedly contended for the other side of the truth
which the Antiochean school maintained. A second group of
Western theologians were inspired by the writings of Origen,
without, however, abandoning the characteristics of the
Western spirit. To this class belongs Jerome, who afterwards
repudiated his master and joined the previously named school,
and Rufinus. The third group of Pelagians represent the
practical but cool rationalistic tendency of the West. The
fourth is that of the semi-Pelagians who in the Western
theology intermingle synergistic elements of an Antiochean
complexion.
b. =Of the 6th and 7th Centuries.=--The brilliant period
of theological literature had now closed. There still
were scholars who wrought laboriously upon the original
contributions of the fathers, and reproduced the thoughts
of their predecessors in a new shape suited to the needs
of the time, but spirit and life, creative power and
original productivity had well nigh disappeared. After the
monophysite Johannes Philoponus of Alexandria had commented
on the works of Aristotle and applied their categories
to theology, the Platonic philosophy, hitherto on account
of its ideal contents the favourite of all philosophizing
church fathers, was more and more set aside by the
philosophy of the Stagirite so richly developed on the
formal side. The theology of the Greeks even at so early a
date assumed to some extent the character of Scholasticism.
Alongside of it, however, we have a theosophic mysticism
which reverting from the tendency that had lately come into
vogue to Neoplatonic ideas, drew its chief inspiration from
the Pseudo-Dionysian writings. In the West, in addition to
the general causes of decay, we have also the sufferings of
the times amid the tumult of the migration of the nations.
In Italy Boëthius and Cassiodorus won for themselves
imperishable renown as the fosterers of classical and
patristic studies in an age when these were in danger of
being utterly forgotten. The series of Latin church fathers
in the strict sense ends with Gregory the Great; that of
Greek church fathers with Johannes Damascenus.
1. THE MOST IMPORTANT TEACHERS OF THE EASTERN CHURCH.
§ 47.2. =The Most Celebrated Representative of the Old
Alexandrian School= is the father of Church History =Eusebius
Pamphili=, _i.e._, the friend of Pamphilus (§ 31, 6), bishop
of Cæsarea from A.D. 314 to A.D. 340. The favour of the emperor
Constantine laid the imperial archives open to him for his
historical studies. By his unwearied diligence as an investigator
and collector he far excels all the church teachers of his age
in comprehensive learning, to which we owe a great multitude of
precious extracts from long lost writings of pagan and Christian
antiquity. His style is jejune, dry and clumsy, sometimes
bombastic. His =Historical Writings= supported on all sides by
diligent research, want system and regularity, and suffer from
disproportionate treatment and distribution of the material. To
his Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία in 10 bks., reaching down to A.D. 324,
he adds a highly-coloured biography of Constantine in 4 bks.,
which is in some respects a continuation of his history; and
to it, again, he adds a fawning panegyric on the emperor.--At
a later date he wrote an account of the Martyrs of Palestine
during the Diocletian persecution which was afterwards added
as an appendix to the 8th bk. of the History. A collection of
old martyrologies, three bks. on the life of Pamphilus, and a
treatise on the origin, celebration and history of the Easter
festival, have all been lost. Of great value, especially for the
synchronizing of biblical and profane history, was his diligently
compiled Chronicle, Παντοδαπὴ ἱστορία, similar to that of Julius
Africanus (§ 31, 3), an abstract of universal history reaching
down to A.D. 352, to which chronological and synchronistic tables
were added as a second part. The Greek original has been lost,
but Jerome translated it into Latin, with arbitrary alterations,
and carried it down to A.D. 378.--The =Apologetical Writings=
take the second place in importance. Still extant are the two
closely-connected works: _Præparatio Evangelica_, Εὐαγγελικὴ
προπαρασκευή, in 15 bks., and the _Demonstratio Evangelica_,
Εὐαγγελικὴ ἀπόδειξις, in 8 out of an original of 20 bks. The
former proves the absurdity of heathenism; the latter, the truth
and excellence of Christianity. A condensed reproduction of
the contents and text of the Θεοφανεία in 5 bks. is found only
in a Syriac translation. The Ἐκλογαὶ προφητικαί in 4 bks., of
which only a portion is extant, expounds the Old Testament in an
allegorizing fashion for apologetic purposes; and the treatise
against Hierocles (§ 23, 3) contests his comparison of Christ
with Apollonius of Tyana. A treatise in 30 bks. against Porphyry,
and some other apologetical works are lost.--His =Dogmatic
Writings= are of far less value. These treatises--Κατὰ Μαρκέλλου,
in 2 bks., the one already named against Hierocles, and Περὶ τῆς
ἐκκλησιαστικῆς θεολογίας, also against Marcellus (§ 50, 2)--are
given as an Appendix in the editions of the _Demonstratio
Evangelica_. On his share in Pamphilus’ Apology for Origen, see
§ 31, 6; and on his Ep. to the Princess Constantia, see § 57, 4.
The weakness of his dogmatic productions was caused by his
vacillating and mediating position in the Arian controversy,
where he was the mouthpiece of the moderate semi-Arians
(§ 50, 1, 3), and this again was due to his want of speculative
capacity and dogmatic culture.--Of his =Exegetical Writings=
the Commentaries on Isaiah and the Psalms are the most complete,
but of the others we have only fragments. We have, however, his
Τοπικά in the Latin translation of Jerome: _De Situ et Nominibus
Locorum Hebraeorum_.[133]
§ 47.3. =Church Fathers of the New Alexandrian School.=
a. The most conspicuous figure in the church history of the
4th century is =Athanasius=, styled by an admiring posterity
_Pater orthodoxiæ_. He was indeed every inch of him a church
father, and the history of his life is the history of the
church of his times. His life was full of heroic conflict.
Unswervingly faithful, he was powerful and wise in building
up the church; great in defeat, great in victory. His was a
life in which insight, will and action, earnestness, force
and gentleness, science and faith, blended in most perfect
harmony. In A.D. 319 he was a deacon in Alexandria. His
bishop Alexander soon discovered the eminent gifts of the
young man and took him with him to the Council of Nicæa
in A.D. 325, where he began the battle of his life. Soon
thereafter, in A.D. 328, Alexander died and Athanasius
became his successor. He was bishop for forty-five years,
but was five times driven into exile. He spent about
twenty years in banishment, mostly in the West, and died
in A.D. 373. His writings are for the most part devoted
to controversy against the Arians (§ 50, 6); but he
also contested Apollinarianism (§ 52, 1), and vindicated
Christianity against the attacks of the heathens in the
pre-Arian treatise in two bks. _Contra Gentes_, Κατὰ Ἑλλήνων,
the first bk. of which argues against heathenism, while the
second expounds the necessity of the incarnation of God in
Christ. For a knowledge of his life and pastoral activity
the _Librî paschales_, Festal letters (§ 56, 3), are of
great value.[134] Of less importance are his exegetical,
allegorical writings on the Psalms. His dogmatic,
apologetical and polemical works are all characterized
by sharp dialectic and profound speculation, and afford
a great abundance of brilliant thoughts, skilful arguments
and discussions on fundamental points in a style as clear
as it is eloquent; but we often miss systematic arrangement
of the material, and they suffer from frequent repetition
of the same fundamental thoughts, defects which, from the
circumstances of their composition, amid the hot combats of
his much agitated life, may very easily be understood and
excused.[135]
§ 47.4. =(The Three Great Cappadocians.)=--
b. =Basil the Great=, bishop of his native city of Cæsarea
in Cappadocia, is in very deed a “kingly” figure in church
history. His mother Emmelia and his grandmother Macrina
early instilled pious feelings into his youthful breast.
Studying at Athens, a friendship founded on love to the
church and science soon sprang up between him and his
likeminded countryman Gregory Nazianzen, and somewhat
later his own brother Gregory of Nyssa became an equally
attached member of the fraternity. After he had visited
the most celebrated ascetics in Syria, Palestine and
Egypt, he continued long to live in solitude as an ascetic,
distributed his property among the poor, and became
presbyter in A.D. 364, bishop in A.D. 370. He died in
A.D. 379. The whole rich life of the man breathed of the
faith that overcometh the world, of self-denying love and
noble purpose. He gave the whole powers of his mind to
the holding together of the Catholic church in the East
during the violent persecution of the Arian Valens. The
most beautiful testimony to his noble character was the
magnificent Basil institute, a hospital in Cæsarea, to which
he, while himself living in the humblest manner, devoted
all his rich revenues. His writings, too, entitle Basil
to a place among the most distinguished church fathers.
They afford evidence of rich classical culture as well as of
profound knowledge of Scripture and of human nature, and are
vigorous in expression, beautiful and pictorial in style.
In exegesis he follows the allegorical method. Among his
dogmatic writings the following are the most important:
Ll. 5 _Adv. Eunomium_ (§ 50, 3) and _De Spiritu s. ad
Amphilochium_ against the Pneumatomachians (§ 50, 5). The
other writings bearing his name comprise 365 Epistles,
moral and ascetic tractates, Homilies on the Hexæmeron and
13 Psalms, and Discourses (among them, Πρὸς τοὺς νέους,
ὁπως ἂν ἐξ ἑλληνικῶν ὠφελοῖντο λόγων), a larger and a
short Monastic rule, and a Liturgy.[136]
c. =Gregory Nazianzen= was born in the Cappadocian village
Arianz. His father Gregory, in his earlier days a
Hypsistarian (§ 42, 6), but converted by his pious wife
Nonna, became bishop of Nazianzum [Nazianzen]. The son, after
completing his studies in Cæsarea, Alexandria and Athens,
spent some years with Basil in his cloister in Pontus, but,
when his father allowed himself to be prevailed upon to sign
an Arianizing confession, he hasted to Nazianzum [Nazianzen],
induced him to retract, and was there and then suddenly and
against his will ordained by him a presbyter in A.D. 361.
From that time, always vacillating between the desire for
a quiet contemplative ascetic life and the impulse toward
ecclesiastical official activity, easily attracted and
repelled, not without ambition, and so sometimes irritable
and out of humour, he led a very changeful life, which
prevented him succeeding in one definite calling. Basil
transferred to him the little bishopric of Sasima; but
Gregory fled thence into the wilderness to escape the
ill-feelings stirred up against him. He was also for a long
time assistant to his father in the bishopric of Nazianzum
[Nazianzen]. He withdrew, however, in A.D. 375, when the
congregation in spite of his refusal appointed him successor
to his father. Then the small, forsaken company of Nicene
believers in Constantinople called him to be their pastor.
He accepted the call in A.D. 379, and delivered here in a
private chapel, which he designated by the significant name
of Anastasia, his celebrated five discourses on the divinity
of the Logos, which won for him the honourable title of
ὁ θεόλογος. He was called thence by Theodosius the Great in
A.D. 380 to be patriarch of the capital, and had assigned
to him the presidency of the Synod of Constantinople in
A.D. 381. But the malice of his enemies forced him to resign.
He returned now to Nazianzum [Nazianzen], administered for
several years the bishopric there, and died in A.D. 390 in
rural retirement, without having fully realised the motto
of his life: Πράξις ἐπίβασις θεωρίας. His writings consist
of 45 Discourses, 242 Epistles, and several poems (§ 48, 5).
After the 5 λόγοι θεολογικοί and the Λόγος περὶ φυγῆς (a
justification of his flight from Nazianzum [Nazianzen] by
a representation of the eminence and responsibility of the
priesthood), the most celebrated are two philippics, Λόγοι
στηλιτευτικοί (στηλίτευσις=the mark branded on one at
the public pillory), _Invectivæ in Julianum Imperatorem_,
occasioned by Julian’s attempt to deprive the Christians
of the means of classical culture.[137]
d. =Gregory of Nyssa= was the younger brother of Basil. In
philosophical gifts and scientific culture he excelled his
two elder friends. His theological views too were rooted
more deeply than theirs in those of Origen. But in zeal
in controverting Arianism he was not a whit behind them,
and his reputation among contemporaries and posterity is
scarcely less than theirs. Basil ordained him bishop of
Nyssa in A.D. 371, and thus, not without resistance, took
him away from the office of a teacher of eloquence. The
Arians, however, drove him from his bishopric, to which he
was restored only after the death of the Emperor Valens.
He died in A.D. 394. He took his share in the theological
controversies of his times and wrote against Eunomius and
Apollinaris. His dogmatic treatises are full of profound
and brilliant thoughts, and especially the Λόγος κατηχητικὸς
ὁ μέγας, an instruction how to win over Jews and Gentiles
to the truth of Christianity; Περὶ ψυχῆς καὶ ἀναστάσεως,
conversations between him and his sister Macrina after the
death of their brother Basil, one of his most brilliant
works; Κατὰ εἱμαρμένης, against the fatalistic theory of
the world of paganism; Πρὸς Ἕλληνας ἐκ τῶν κοινῶν ἐννοίων,
for the establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity on
principles of reason. In his numerous exegetical writings
he follows the allegorical method in the brilliant style of
Origen. We also have from him some ascetical tracts, several
sermons and 26 Epistles.
§ 47.5.
e. =Apollinaris=, called the Younger, to distinguish him
from his father of the same name, was a contemporary of
Athanasius, and bishop of Laodicea. He died in A.D. 390.
A fine classical scholar and endowed with rich poetic gifts,
he distinguished himself as a defender of Christianity
against the attacks of the heathen philosopher Porphyry
(§ 23, 3) and also as a brilliant controversialist against
the Arians; but he too went astray when alongside of the
trinitarian question he introduced those Christological
speculations that are now known by his name (§ 52, 1).
That we have others of his writings besides the quotations
found in the treatises of his opponents, is owing to the
circumstance that several of them were put into circulation
by his adherents under good orthodox names in order to get
impressed upon the views developed therein the stamp of
orthodoxy. The chief of these is Ἡ κατὰ μέρος (_i.e._
developed bit by bit) πίστις, which has come down to us
under the name of Gregory Thaumaturgus (§ 31, 6). Theodoret
quotes passages from it and assigns them to Apollinaris,
and its contents too are in harmony with this view. So
too with the tract Περὶ τῆς σαρκώσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου, _De
Incarnatione Verbi_, ascribed to Athanasius, which a scholar
of Apollinaris, named Polemon, with undoubted accuracy
ascribed to his teacher. That Cyril of Alexandria ascribes
this last-named tract to Athanasius may be taken as proof of
the readiness of the Monophysites and their precursor Cyril
to pass off the false as genuine (§ 52, 2). To Apollinaris
belong also an Epistle to Dionysius attributed to Julius,
bishop of Rome (§ 50, 2) and a tract, attributed to the
same, Περὶ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ἑνότητος τοῦ σώματος πρὸς τὴν
θεότητα, which were also assigned to Apollinaris by his own
scholars. Finally, the Pseudo-Justin Ἔκθεσις τῆς πίστεως
ἤτοι περὶ τριάδος seems to be a reproduction of a treatise
of Apollinaris’ Περὶ τριάδος, supposed to be lost, enlarged
with clumsy additions and palmed off in this form under the
venerated name of Justin Martyr.
f. =Didymus the Blind= lost his sight when four years of age,
but succeeded in making wonderful attainments in learning.
He was for fifty years Catechist in Alexandria, and as such
the last brilliant star in the catechetical school. He died
in A.D. 395. An enthusiastic admirer of Origen, he also
shared many of his eccentric views, _e.g._ Apocatastasis,
pre-existence of the soul, etc. But also in consequence of
the theological controversies of the times he gave to his
theology a decidedly ecclesiastical turn. His writings were
numerous; but only a few have been preserved. His book _De
Spiritu S._ is still extant in a Latin translation of Jerome;
his controversial tract against the Manichæans is known
only from fragments. His chief work _De S. Trinitate_, Περὶ
τριάδος, in 3 bks., in which he showed himself a vigorous
defender of the Nicene Creed, was brought to light in the
18th century. A commentary on the Περὶ ἀρχῶν of Origen
now lost, was condemned at the second Council of Nicæa in
A.D. 787.
§ 47.6.
g. =Macarius Magnes=, bishop of Magnesia in Asia Minor about
A.D. 403, under the title Μονογενὴς ἢ Ἀποκριτικός, etc.,
wrote an apology for Christianity in 5 bks., only recovered
in A.D. 1867, which takes the form of an account of a
disputation with a heathen philosopher. Doctrinally it has
a strong resemblance to the works of Gregory of Nyssa. The
material assigned to the opponent is probably taken from
the controversial tract of Porphyry (§ 23, 3).
h. =Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria=, was the nephew, protegé
and, from A.D. 412, also the successor of Theophilus
(§ 51, 3). The zealous and violent temper of the uncle was
not without an injurious influence upon the character of the
nephew. At the _Synodus ad Quercum_ in A.D. 403, he voted
for the condemnation of Chrysostom, but subsequently, on
further consideration, he again of his own accord entered
upon the _diptyche_ (§ 59, 6) of the Alexandrian church
the name of the disgracefully persecuted man. In order to
revenge himself upon the Jews by whom in a popular tumult
Christian blood had been shed, he came down upon them at
the head of a mob, drove them out of the city and destroyed
their houses. He also bears no small share of the odium of
the horrible murder of the noble Hypatia (§ 42, 4). He shows
himself equally passionate and malevolent in the contest
with the Nestorians and the Antiocheans (§ 52, 3), and
to this controversy many of his treatises, as well as
87 epistles, are almost entirely devoted. The most important
of his writings is Πρὸς τὰ τοῦ ἐν ἀθέοις Ἰουλιανοῦ (§ 42, 5).
He systematically developed in almost scholastic fashion the
dogma of the Trinity in his _Thesaurus de S. Consubstantiali
Trinitate_; and in a briefer and more popular form, in two
short tracts. As a preacher he was held in so high esteem,
that, as Gennadius relates, Greek bishops learnt his homilies
by heart and gave them to their congregations instead of
compositions of their own. His 30 Λόγοι ἑορταστικοί, _Homiliæ
paschales_, delivered at the Easter festivals observed in
Alexandria (§ 56, 3), in unctuous language expatiate upon
the burning questions of the day, mostly polemical against
Jews, heathens, Arians and Nestorians. His commentaries
on the books of the Old and New Testaments illustrate the
extreme arbitrariness of the typical-allegorical method.[138]
The treatise Περὶ τῆς ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ προσκυνήσεως
gives a typical exposition of the ceremonial law of Moses,
and his Γλαφυρά contain “ornate and elegant,” _i.e._
typical-allegorical, expositions of selected passages from
the Pentateuch.
i. =Isidore of Pelusium=, priest and abbot of a monastery
at Pelusium in Egypt, who died about A.D. 450, was one of
the noblest, most gifted and liberal representatives of
monasticism of his own and of all times. A warm supporter of
the new Alexandrian system of doctrine but also conciliatory
and moderate in his treatment of the persons of opponents,
while firm and decided in regard to the subject in debate,
he most urgently entreats Cyril to moderation. His writings
_Contra Gentiles_ and _Contra Fatum_ are lost; but his still
extant 2,012 Epistles in 5 bks. afford a striking evidence
of the richness of his intellect and of his culture, as
well as of the great esteem in which he was held and of
his far-reaching influence. His exegesis, too, which always
inclines to a simple literal sense, is of far greater
importance than that of the other Alexandrians.
§ 47.7. (=Mystics and Philosophers.=)
k. =Macarius the Great or the Elder=, monk and priest in
the Scetic desert, was exiled by the Arian Emperor Valens
on account of his zeal for Nicene orthodoxy. He died in
A.D. 391. From his writings, consisting of 50 Homilies, a
number of Apophthegms, some epistles and prayers, there is
breathed forth a deep warm mysticism with various approaches
to Augustine’s soteriological views, while other passages
seem to convey quite a Pelagian type of doctrine.
l. =Marcus Eremita=, a like-minded younger contemporary of
the preceding, lived about A.D. 400 as an inhabitant of
the Scetic desert. We possess of his writings only nine
tracts of an ascetic mystical kind, the second of which,
bearing the title Περὶ τῶν οἰομένων ἐξ ἔργων δικαιοῦσθαι,
has secured for them a place in the Roman Index with the
note “_Caute legenda_.” However even in his mysticism
contradictory views, Augustinian and Pelagian, in regard
to human freedom and divine grace, on predestination and
sanctification, etc., find a place alongside one another,
and have prominence given them according to the writer’s
humour and the requirement of his meditation or exhortation.
m. =Synesius of Cyrene=,[139] subsequently bishop of Ptolemais
in Egypt, was a disciple of the celebrated Hypatia (§ 42, 4)
and an enthusiastic admirer of Plato. He died about A.D. 420.
A happy husband and father, in comfortable circumstances
and devoted to the study of philosophy, he could not for a
long time be prevailed upon to accept a bishopric. He openly
confessed his Origenistic heterodoxy in reference to the
resurrection doctrine, the eternity of the world, as well
as the pre-existence of the soul. He also publicly declared
that as bishop he would continue the marriage relation with
his wife, and no one took offence thereat. In the episcopal
office he distinguished himself by noble zeal and courage
which knew no fear of man. His 10 Hymns contain echoes of
Valentinian views (§ 27, 4), and his philosophical tracts
are only to a small extent dominated by Christian ideas. His
155 Epistles are more valuable as illustrating on every hand
his noble character.
n. =Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa= in Phœnicia, lived in the
first half of the 5th century. He left behind a brilliant
treatise on religious philosophy, Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου. The
traditional doctrine of the Eastern church is unswervingly
set forth by him; still he too finds therein a place for
the eternity of the world, the pre-existence of the soul, a
migration of souls (excluding, however, the brute creation),
the unconditional freedom of the will, etc.
o. =Æneas of Gaza=, a disciple of the Neo-Platonist Hierocles
and a rhetorician in Alexandria, about A.D. 437 wrote a
dialogue directed against the Origenistic doctrines of the
eternity of the world and the pre-existence of the soul; as
also against the Neo-Platonic denial of the resurrection of
the body. It bore the title: Θεόφραστος.
§ 47.8. =The Antiocheans.=
a. =Eusebius of Emesa= was born at Edessa and studied in
Cæsarea and Antioch. A quiet, peaceful scholar, and one who
detested all theological wrangling, he declined the call to
the Alexandrian bishopric in place of the deposed Athanasius
in A.D. 341, but accepted the obscure bishopric of Emesa. He
was not, however, to be left here. When, on account of his
mathematical and astronomical attainments, the people there
suspected him of sorcery, he quitted Emesa and from that date
till his death in A.D. 360 taught in Antioch. Of his numerous
exegetical, dogmatical and polemical writings only a few
fragments are extant.
b. =Diodorus of Tarsus=, a scholar of the preceding, monk and
presbyter at Antioch, was afterwards bishop of Tarsus in
Cilicia, and died in A.D. 394. Only a few fragments of his
numerous writings survive. As an exegete he concerned himself
with the plain grammatico-historical sense and contested
the Alexandrian mode of interpretation in the treatise: Τίς
διαφορὰ θεωρίας καὶ ἀλληγορίας. By θεωρία he understands
insight into the relations transcending the bare literal
sense but yet essentially present in it as the ideal. By his
polemic against Apollinaris (§ 52, 1), he imprinted upon the
Antiochean school its specific dogmatic character (§ 52, 2),
in consequence of which he was at a later period regarded as
the original founder of the Nestorian party.
c. His scholar again was =John of Antioch=, whose proper name
afterwards almost disappeared before the honourable title of
=Chrysostom=. Educated by his early widowed mother Arethusa
with the greatest care, he attended the rhetoric school
of Libanius and started with great success as an advocate
in Antioch. But after receiving baptism he abandoned his
practice and became a monk. He was made deacon in A.D. 380
and presbyter in A.D. 386 in his native city. His brilliant
eloquence raised him at last in A.D. 398 to the patriarchal
chair at Constantinople (§ 51, 3). He died in exile in
A.D. 407. Next to Athanasius and the three Cappadocians
he is one of the most talented of the Eastern fathers, the
only one of the Antiochean school whose orthodoxy has never
been questioned. In his exegesis he follows the fundamental
principles of the Antiochean school. He wrote commentaries
on Isaiah (down to chap. viii. 10) and on Galatians. Besides
these his 650 Expository Homilies on all the Biblical books
and particular sections cover almost the whole of the Old
and New Testaments. Among his other dogmatical, polemical
and hortatory church addresses the most celebrated are the
21 _De Statuis ad populum Antiochen_, delivered in A.D. 387.
(The people of Antioch, roused on account of the exorbitant
tax demanded of them, had broken down the statues of
Theodosius I.) The _Demonstratio c. Julianum et Gentiles
quod Christus sit Deus_ and the _Liber in S. Babylam
c. Judæos et Gentiles_ are apologetical treatises. Of
his ethico-ascetic writings, in which he eagerly commends
virginity and asceticism, by far the most celebrated is
Περὶ ἱερωσύνης, _De Sacerdotis_, in 4 bks., in the form of
a dialogue with his Cappadocian friend Basil (the Great)
who in A.D. 370 had felt compelled to accept the bishopric
of Cæsarea after Chrysostom had escaped this honour by
flight.[140]
§ 47.9.
d. =Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia= in Cilicia, was the
son of respectable parents in Antioch, the friend and
fellow-student of Chrysostom, first under Libanius, then
under Diodorus. He died in A.D. 429. It was he who gave
full development and consistent expression to the essential
dogmatic and hermeneutical principles of the Antiochean
theology. For this reason he was far more suspected of
heresy by his Alexandrian opponents than even his teacher
Diodorus, and they finally obtained their desire by the
formal condemnation of his person and writings at the fifth
œcumenical Synod in A.D. 553 (§ 52, 6). Leontius Byzantinus
formulated his exegetical offence by saying that in his
exposition he treated the Holy Scriptures precisely as
ordinary human writings, especially that he interpreted the
Song of Songs as a love poem, _libidinose pro sua et mente
et lingua meretricia_, explained the Psalms after the
manner of the Jews till he emptied them dry of all Messianic
contents, _Judaice ad Zorobabelem et Ezechiam retulit_,
denied the genuineness of the titles of the Psalms, rejected
the canonical authority of Job, the Chronicles and Ezra
as well as James and other Catholic Epistles, etc. In
every respect Theodore was one of the ablest exegetes of the
ancient church and the Syrian church has rightly celebrated
him as the _“Interpres” par excellence_. He set forth his
hermeneutical principles in the treatise: _De Allegoria
et Historia_. Of his exegetical writings we have still his
Comm. on the Minor Prophets, on Romans, fragments of those
on other parts of the New Testament. Latin translations of
his Comm. on the Minor Epp. of Paul, with the corresponding
Greek fragments, are edited by Swete, 2 vols., Cambr.,
1880, 1882. An introduction to Biblical Theology collected
from Theodore’s writings and reproduced in a Latin form by
Junilius Africanus (§ 48, 1) is still extant. His dogmatic,
polemical and apologetical works on the Incarnation
and Original Sin (§ 53, 4), against Eunomius (§ 50, 3),
Apollinaris (§ 52, 1) and the Emperor Julian (§ 42, 5),
are now known only from a few fragmentary quotations.
e. =Polychronius, bishop of Apamea=, was Theodore’s brother and
quite his equal in exegetical acuteness and productivity,
while he excelled him in his knowledge of the Hebrew and
Syriac. Tolerably complete scholia by him on Ezekiel, Daniel
and Job have been preserved in the Greek Catenæ (§ 48, 1).
In regard to Daniel he maintains firmly its historical
character and understands chap. vii. of Antiochus Epiphanes.
f. =Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus= in Syria, was Theodore’s ablest
disciple, the most versatile scholar and most productive
writer of his age, an original investigator and a diligent
pastor, an upright and noble character and a man who kept
the just mean amid the extreme tendencies of his times,--yet
even he could not escape the suspicion of heresy (§ 52, 3,
4, 6). He died in A.D. 457. As an exegete he followed the
course of grammatico-historical exposition marked out by
his Antiochean predecessors, but avoided the rationalistic
tendencies of his teacher. He commented on most of the
historical books of the Old Testament, on the Prophets, the
Song, which he understood allegorically of the church as
the bride of Christ, and on the Pauline Epistles. Among his
historical works the first place belongs to his continuation
of the history of Eusebius (§ 5, 1). His Φιλόθεος ἱστορία,
_Hist. religiosa_, gives a glowing description of the
lives of 33 celebrated ascetics of both sexes. Of higher
value is the Αἱρετικῆς κακομυθίας ἐπιτομή, _Hæreticarum
fabularum compendium_. His Ἑλληνικῶν θεραπευτικὴ παθημάτων,
_De Curandis Græcorum Affectionibus_, is an apologetical
treatise. His seven Dialogues _De s. Trinitate_ are polemics
against the Macedonians and Apollinarians. The _Reprehensio_
xii. _Anathematismorum_ is directed against Cyril of
Alexandria; and the Ἐρανιστὴς ἤτοι Πολύμορφος against
monophysitism as a heresy compounded of many heresies
(§ 52, 4). Besides these we have from him 179 Epistles.[141]
§ 47.10. =Other Teachers of the Greek Church during the 4th and
5th Centuries.=
a. =Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem=, from A.D. 351 to A.D. 386,
in the Arian controversy took the side of the conciliatory
semi-Arians and thus came into collision with his imperious
and decidedly Arian metropolitan Acacius of Cæsarea. During
a famine he sold the church furniture for distribution
among the needy, and was for this deposed by Acacius. Under
Julian he ventured to return, but under Valens he was again
driven out and found himself exposed to the persecution
of the Arians, which was all the more violent because in
the meantime he had assumed a more decided attitude toward
Nicene orthodoxy. At the death of Valens in A.D. 378 he
returned and became reconciled to the victorious maintainers
of the Homoousion by fully accepting the doctrine at the
Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 (§ 50, 4). We still
have his 23 Catechetical Lectures delivered in A.D. 348 by
him as presbyter to the baptized at Jerusalem. The first
18 are entitled: Πρὸς τοὺς φωτιζομένους, _Ad Competentes_
(§ 35, 1); the last five: Πρὸς τοὺς νεοφωτίστους, _Catecheses
Mystagogicæ_, on Baptism, Anointing and the Lord’s Supper.
In their present form they afford but faint evidence of their
author having surmounted the semi-Arian standpoint.[142]
b. =Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis= or Constantia in Cyprus, was
born of Jewish parents in the Palestinian village Besanduce
and was baptized in his sixteenth year. His pious and
noble, but narrow and one-sided character was formed by his
education under the monks. He completed his ascetic training
by several years residence among the monks of the Scetic
desert, then founded a monastery in his native place over
which he presided for thirty years until in A.D. 367 he was
raised to the metropolitan’s chair at Salamis, where he died
in A.D. 403. In the discharge of his episcopal duties he
was a miracle of faithfulness and zeal, specially active and
self-denying in his care of the poor. But in the forefront
of all his thinking and acting there ever stood his glowing
zeal for ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The very soul of honour,
truth-loving and courageous, but credulous, positive, with
little knowledge of the world and human nature, and hence
not capable of penetrating to the bottom of complicated
affairs, he was all his days misused as a tool of the
intriguing Alexandrian Theophilus in the Origenistic
controversies (§ 51, 3). He was all the more easily won
to this from the fact that he had brought with him from
the Scetic desert the conviction that Origen was the prime
mover in the Arian and all other heresies. In spite of all
defects in form and contents his writings have proved most
serviceable for the history of the churches and heresies
of the first four centuries. The diligence and honourable
intention of his research in some measure compensate for
the bad taste and illogical character of his exposition and
for his narrow, one-sided and uncritical views. His Πανάριον
ἤτοι κιβώτιον κατὰ αἱρέσεων lxxx. is a full and learned
though confused and uncritical work, in which the idea
of heresy is so loosely defined that even the Samaritans,
Pharisees, Essenes, etc., find a place in it. He himself
composed an abridgment of it under the title: Ἀνακεφαλαίωσις.
His Ἀγκυρωτός is an exposition of the Catholic faith, which
during the tumults of the Arian controversy should serve
as an anchor of salvation to the Christians. The book Περὶ
μέτρων καὶ στάθμων, _De mensuris et ponderibus_, answers to
this title only in the last chapter, the 24th; the preceding
chapters treat of the Canon and translations of the Old
Testament. There are two old codices in the British Museum
which have in addition, in a Syriac translation, 37 chapters
on biblical weights and measures and 19 on the biblical
science of the heaven and the earth. The tract Περὶ τῶν
δώδεκα λίθων (on the high-priest’s breastplate) is of little
consequence.
c. =Palladius=, born in Galatia, retired at an early age into
the Nitrian desert, but lived afterwards in Palestine, where
he was accused of favouring the heresy of Origen (§ 51, 2).
Chrysostom consecrated him bishop of Hellenopolis in
Bithynia. Latterly he administered a small bishopric in
Galatia, where he died before A.D. 431. His chief writing
is the Πρὸς Λαῦσον ἱστορία, _Hist. Lausiaca_, a historical
romance on the hermit and monkish life of his times which is
dedicated to an eminent statesman called Lausus.
d. =Nilus=, sprung from a prominent family in Constantinople,
retired with his son Theodulus to the recluses of Mount
Sinai. By a murderous onslaught of the Saracens his beloved
son was snatched away from him, but an Arabian bishop bought
him and ordained both father and son as priests. He died
about A.D. 450. In his ascetical writings and specially
in the 4 books of his Epistles, about 1,000 in number,
he shows himself to be of like mind and character to his
companion Isidore, but with a deeper knowledge and more
sober conception of Holy Scripture. He himself describes
the capture of his son in _Narrationes de cæde monachorum
et captivitate Theoduli_.
§ 47.11. =Greek Church Fathers of the 6th and 7th Centuries.=
a. =Johannes Philoponus= was in the first half of the 6th
century teacher of grammar at Alexandria, and belonged to
the sect of tritheistic monophysites in that place (§ 52, 7).
Although trained in the Neo-Platonic school, he subsequently
applied himself enthusiastically to the Aristotelian
philosophy, composed many commentaries on Aristotle’s
writings, and was the first to apply the Aristotelian
categories to Christian theology. Notwithstanding many
heretical tendencies in his theology, among which is his
statement in a lost work, Περὶ ἀναστάσεως, that for the
saved at the last day entirely new bodies and an entirely
new world will be created, his philosophical writings
powerfully impelled the mediæval Greek Church to the study
of philosophy. His chief doctrinal treatise Διαιτητὴς ἢ περὶ
ἑνώσεως is known only from quotations in Leontius Byzantinus
and Johannes Damascenus. Of his other writings the most
important was the controversial treatise _Contra Procli
pro æternitate mundi argumenta_ in 18 bks. The 7 bks. Περὶ
κοσμοποίας treat of the six days’ work of creation with
great display of philosophical acuteness and acquaintance
with natural history.
b. =Dionysius the Areopagite.= Under this name (Acts xvii. 34)
an unknown writer, only a little earlier than the previously
named, published writings of a decidedly mystico-theosophical
kind. The first mention of them is at a conference of
the monophysite Severians (§ 52, 7) with the Catholics
at Constantinople in A.D. 533, where the former referred
to them, while the other side denied their authenticity.
Subsequently, however, they were universally received as
genuine, not only in the East but also in the West. They
comprise four tracts: 1. Περὶ τῆς ἱεραρχίας οὐρανίου;
2. Περὶ τῆς ἱεραρχίας ἐκκλησιαστικῆς; 3. Περὶ τῶν θείων
ὀνομάτων; 4. Περὶ τῆς μυστικῆς θεολογίας; and also 12 Epp.
to Apostolic men. Their author was a Monophysite-Christian
Neo-Platonist, who transferred the secret arts of the
Dionysian mysteries to Christian worship, monasticism,
hierarchy and church doctrines. He distinguished a θεολογία
καταφατική, which consisted in symbolic representations,
from a θεολογία ἀποφατική, which surmounted the symbolical
shell and rose to the perception of the pure idea by means
of ecstasy. Side by side with the revealed doctrine of Holy
Scripture he sets a secret doctrine, the knowledge of which
is reached only by initiation. The primal mystagogue, who
like the sun enlightens all spirits, is the divine hierarch
Christ, and the primitive type of all earthly order in the
heavenly hierarchy as represented in the courses of angels
and glorified spirits. There is constant intercourse between
the earthly and heavenly hierarchies by means of Christ the
highest hierarch incarnate. The purpose of this intercourse
is the drawing out of the θείωσις of man by means of
priestly consecration and the mysteries (_i.e._ the
Sacraments of which he reckons six, § 58). The θείωσις
has its foundation in baptism as consecration to the
divine birth, τελετὴ θεογενεσίας, and its completion in
consecration of the dead, the anointing of the body. The
historical Christ with His redeeming life, sufferings and
death is at no time the subject of the Areopagite mysticism.
It is always concerned with the heavenly Christ, not about
the reconciliation but only about the mystical living
fellowship of God and man, about the immediate vision and
enjoyment of God’s glory. The monophysite standpoint of the
author betrays itself in his tendency to think of the human
nature of Christ as absorbed by the divine. His Christian
Neo-Platonism appears in his fantastic speculations about
the nature of God, the orders of angels and spirits, etc.;
while his antagonism to the pagan Neo-Platonism is seen
in his regarding the θείωσις not as a natural power proper
to and dwelling in man, but as a supernatural power made
possible by the ἐνσάρκωσις of Christ, but still more
expressly by his emphatic assertion over against the
Neo-Platonic depreciation of the body, of the resurrection
of the flesh as the completion of the θείωσις. Hence also
the importance which he attaches to the sacrament of the
consecration of the dead.[143]
§ 47.12.
c. =Leontius Byzantinus=, at first an advocate at
Constantinople, subsequently a monk at Jerusalem, wrote
about the end of the 6th century controversial tracts against
Nestorians, Monophysites and Apollinarians, and in his
_Scholia s. Liber de sectis_ presented a historico-polemical
summary of all heresies up to that time.
d. =Maximus Confessor=, the scion of a well-known family of
Constantinople, was for a long time private secretary to
the Emperor Heraclius, but retired about A.D. 630 from love
of a contemplative life into a monastery at Chrysopolis
near Constantinople, where he was soon raised to the rank of
abbot. The further details of his story are given in § 52, 8.
He died in A.D. 662. In decision of character, fidelity
to his convictions and courage as a confessor during
the Monothelete controversy, he stands out among his
characterless countrymen and contemporaries as a rock in the
ocean. In scientific endowments and comprehensive learning,
in depth and wealth of thought there is none like him,
although even in him the weakness of the age, especially
slavish submission to authority, is quite apparent. His
scientific theology is built up mainly upon the three great
Cappadocians, among whom the speculative Nyssa has most
influence over him. His dialectic acuteness and subtlety he
derived from the study of Aristotle, while his imaginative
nature and the intensity of his emotional life which
predestined him to be a mystic, found abundant nourishment
and satisfaction in the writings of Dionysius. He was saved,
however, by the manysidedness of his mind and the soundness
of his whole life’s tendencies, from many eccentricities of
the Areopagite mysticism, so that in his humility he thought
that his soul was not pure enough to be able fully to
penetrate and comprehend these mysteries. His numerous
writings, of which more than fifty are extant, were in
great part occasioned by the struggle against Monophysitism
and Monotheletism. His mystico-ascetic writings are
also important, such as his Μυσταγωγία, treatises on the
symbolico-mystic meaning of the acts of church worship, his
epistles and several beautiful hymns. He also wrote scholia
and commentaries on the works of the Areopagite. He is
weakest in exegesis, where the most wilful allegorizing
prevails.
e. =Johannes Climacus=, abbot of the monastery at Sinai, died
at an extremely old age in A.D. 606. Under the title Κλίμαξ
τοῦ παραδείσου, _Heavenly Guide_, he composed a directory
toward perfection in the Christian life in thirty steps,
which became a favourite reading book of pious monks.
f. =Johannes Moschus= was a monk in a cloister at Jerusalem.
Accompanying his friend Sophronius, afterwards patriarch of
Jerusalem (§ 52, 8), he travelled through Egypt and the East,
visiting all the pious monks and clerics. At last he reached
Rome, where he wrote an account in his Λειμονάριον ἤτοι νέος
παραδείσος, _Pratum Spirituale_, of the edifying discourses
which he had had with famous monks during his travels, and
soon thereafter, in A.D. 619, he died.
g. =Anastasius Sinaita=, called the new Moses, because like
Moses he is said to have seen God, was priest and dweller
on Mount Sinai at the end of the 7th century. His chief work
Ὁδηγός, _Viæ duæ_, is directed against the _Acephalians_
(§ 52, 5) and his _Contemplationes_ preserved only in a
Latin translation give an allegorico-mystical exposition of
the Hexæmeron.
§ 47.13. =Syrian Church Fathers.=[144]
a. =Jacob of Nisibis=, as bishop of his native city and founder
of the theological school there, performed most important
services to the national Syrian Church. At the Council of
Nicæa in A.D. 325 he distinguished himself by vindicating
the homoüsion and also subsequently we find him sometimes in
the front rank of the champions of Nicene orthodoxy. Of his
writings none are known to us. He died in A.D. 338.
b. =Aphraates= was celebrated in his time as a Persian sage.
As bishop of St. Matthew near Mosul he adopted the Christian
name of =Mar Jacob=, and dedicated his 23 Homilies, which
are rather instructions or treatises, to a certain Gregory.
He wrote them between A.D. 336 and A.D. 345. The _Sermones_
ascribed even by Gennadius at the end of the 5th century
to Nisibis were composed by Aphraates. Although he lived
when the Arian controversy was at its height, there is no
reference to it in his treatises, which may be explained by
his geographical isolation. The polemic against the Jews to
which seven tracts are devoted _ex professo_, was one which
specially interested him.
c. =Ephraim the Syrian=,[145] called, on account of his
importance in the Syrian Church, _Propheta Syrorum_, was
born at Nisibis and was called by the bishop Jacob to
be teacher of the school founded there by him. When the
Persians under Sapor in A.D. 350 plundered the city and
destroyed the school, Ephraim retired to Edessa, founded a
school there, administered the office of deacon, and died
at a great age in A.D. 378. As an exegete he indulged to his
heart’s content in typology, but in other respects mostly
followed the grammatico-historical method with a constant
endeavour after what was edifying. Many of his writings have
been lost. Those remaining partly in the Syriac original,
partly in Greek and Latin translations, have been collected
by the brothers Assemani. They comprise Commentaries on
almost the whole Bible, Homilies and Discourses in metrical
form on a variety of themes, of these 56 are against
heretics (Gnostics, Manichæans, Eunomians, Audians, etc.),
and Hymns properly so called, especially funeral Odes.
d. =Ibas, bishop of Edessa=, at first teacher in the high
school there, translated the writings of Diodorus and
Theodore into Syriac, and thus brought down upon himself
the charge of being a Nestorian. Having been repeatedly
drawn into discussion, and being naturally outspoken, he was
excommunicated and deposed at the Robber Synod of Ephesus in
A.D. 449, but his orthodoxy was acknowledged by the Council
of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, after he had pronounced anathema
upon Nestorius. He died in A.D. 457. An epistle, in which
he gives an account of these proceedings to Bishop Meris of
Hardashir in Persia, led to a renewal of his condemnation
before the fifth œcumenical Council at Constantinople in
A.D. 553 (§ 52, 4, 6).
e. =Jacob, bishop of Edessa=, a monophysite, is the
most important and manysided among the later Syrians,
distinguished as theologian, historian, grammarian and
translator of the Greek fathers. He died in A.D. 708. Of his
works still extant in MS.--scholia on the Bible, liturgical
works and treatises on church law, revision of the Syrian
Old Testament according to the LXX., continuation of the
Eusebian Chronicle, etc.--only a few have been printed.
2. THE MOST IMPORTANT TEACHERS OF THE WESTERN CHURCH.
§ 47.14.
f. =During the Period of the Arian Controversy.=
a. =Jul. Firmicus Maternus.= Under this name we have a
treatise _De errore profanarum religionum_, addressed to
the sons of Constantine the Great, in which the writer
combats heathenism upon the Euhemerist theory (which
traces the worship of the heathen gods from the deifying
of famous ancestors), but besides reclaims many myths as
corruptions of the biblical history, and shows that the
violent overthrow of all idolatry is the sacred duty of
a Christian ruler from God’s command to Joshua to destroy
utterly the Canaanites.
b. =Lucifer of Calăris [Calaris]= in Sardinia, was a
violent, determined, and stubborn zealot for the Nicene
doctrine, whose excessive severity against the penitent
Arians and semi-Arians drove him into schism (§ 50, 8).
He died in A.D. 371. In his tract, _Ad Constantium
Augustum pro S. Athansio_, lb. ii., written in A.D. 360,
he upbraids the emperor with his faults so bitterly as
to describe him as a reckless apostate, antichrist, and
Satan. He boldly acknowledged the authorship and, in
prospect of a death sentence, wrote in A.D. 361 his
consolatory treatise, _Moriendum esse pro filio Dei_.
The early death of the emperor, however, permitted his
return from exile (§ 50, 2, 4), where he had written
_De regibus apostaticis_ and _De non conveniendo cum
hæreticis_.
c. =Marius Victorinus= from Africa, often confounded with
the martyr of the same name (§ 31, 12), was converted
to Christianity when advanced in life, about A.D. 360,
while occupying a distinguished position as a heathen
rhetorician in Rome. He gave proof of his zeal as a
neophyte by the composition of controversial treatises
against the Manichæans, _Ad Justinum Manichæum_, and
against the Arians, _Lb. iv. adv. Arium, De generatione
divina ad Candidum, De_ ὁμοουσίῳ _recipiendo_. In his
treatise, _De verbis scripturæ_, Gen. i. 5, he shows
that the creative days began not with the evening, but
with the morning. He composed three hymns _de Trinitate_,
and an epic poem on the seven brothers, the Maccabees.
d. =Hilary of Poitiers=--_Hilarius Pictavienses_--styled
the Athanasius of the West, and made _doctor ecclesiæ_
by Pius IX. in A.D. 1851, was sprung from a noble pagan
family of Poitiers (Pictavium). With wife and daughter
he embraced Christianity, and was soon thereafter,
about A.D. 350, made bishop of his native city. In
A.D. 356, however, as a zealous opponent of Arianism,
he was banished to Phrygia, from which he returned in
A.D. 360. Two years later he travelled to Milan, in
order if possible to win from his error the bishop of
that place, Auxentius, a zealous Arian. That bishop,
however, obtained an imperial edict which obliged him
instantly to withdraw. He died in A.D. 366. The study
of Origen seems to have had a decided influence upon
his theological development. His strength lay in the
speculative treatment of the groundworks of doctrine. At
the same time he is the first exegete proper among the
Western fathers writing the Latin language. He follows
exactly the allegorical method of the Alexandrians. His
works embrace commentaries on the Psalms and the Gospel
of Matthew, several polemical lectures (§ 50, 6), and
his speculative dogmatic masterpiece _de Trinitate_
in xii. books.
e. =Zeno, bishop of Verona=, who died about A.D. 380,
left behind ninety-three _Sermones_ which, in beautiful
language and spirited style, treat of various subjects
connected with faith and morals, combat paganism and
Arianism, and eagerly recommend virginity and monasticism.
f. =Philaster=, bishop of Brescia, contemporary of Zeno, in
his book _De hæresibus_, described in harsh and obscure
language, in an uncritical fashion and with an extremely
loose application of the word heresy, 28 pre-Christian
and 128 post-Christian systems of error.
g. =Martin of Tours=,[146] son of a soldier, had before
baptism, but after his heart had been filled with the
love of Christ, entered the Roman cavalry. Once, legend
relates, he parted his military cloak into two pieces in
order to shield a naked beggar from the cold, and on the
following night the Lord Jesus appeared to him clothed in
this very cloak. In his eighteenth year he was baptized,
and for some years thereafter attached himself to Hilary
of Poitiers, and then went to his parents in Pannonia.
He did not succeed in converting his father, but he
was successful with his mother and many of the people.
Scourged and driven away by the Arian party which there
prevailed, he turned to Milan where, however, he got
just as little welcome from the Arian bishop Auxentius.
He then lived some years on the island of Gallinaria,
near Genoa. When Hilary returned from banishment to
Pictavium, he followed him there, and founded in the
neighbourhood a monastery, the earliest in Gaul. He was
guilefully decoyed to Tours, and forced to mount the
episcopal chair there in A.D. 375. He converted whole
crowds of heathen peasants, and, according to the
legend given by Sulpicius Severus and Gregory of Tours
(§ 90, 2), wrought miracle after miracle. But he was
himself with his holy zeal, his activity in doing good,
his undoubted power over men’s hearts, and a countenance
before which even the emperor quailed (§ 54, 2), the
greatest and the most credible miracle. He died about
A.D. 400 in the monastery of Marmontiers [Marmoutiers],
which he had founded out from Tours. His tomb was
one of the most frequented places of pilgrimage. He
was wholly without scholarly culture, but the force
of intellect with which he was endowed lent him a
commanding eloquence. The _Confessio de s. Trinitate_
attributed to him is not genuine.
§ 47.15.
g. =Ambrose, bishop of Milan=, sprung from a prominent Roman
family, was governor of the province of Milan. After the
death of the Arian Auxentius in A.D. 374 violent quarrels
broke out over the choice of a successor. Then a child is
said to have cried from the midst of the crowd “Ambrose is
bishop,” and all the people, Arians as well as Catholics,
agreed. All objection was vain. Up to this time only a
catechumen, he received baptism, distributed his property
among the poor, and eight days after mounted the episcopal
chair. His new office he administered with truly apostolic
zeal, a father of the poor, a protector of all oppressed,
an unweariedly active pastor, a powerful opponent of heresy
and heathenism. His eloquence, which had won him a high
reputation in the forum, was yet more conspicuous in the
service of the church. To ransom the prisoners he spared not
even the furniture of the church. To a peculiarly winning
friendliness and gentleness he added great strength of
character, which prevented him being checked in his course
by any respect of persons, or by any threatening and danger.
He so decidedly opposed the intrigues of the Arian Empress
Justina, during the minority of her son Valentinian II.,
that she, powerless to execute her wrath, was obliged to
desist from her endeavours (§ 50, 4). With Theodosius the
Great he stood in the highest esteem. When the passionate
emperor had ordered a fearful massacre without distinction of
rank, age and sex, without enquiry as to guilt or innocence,
of the inhabitants of Thessalonica on account of a tumult
in which a general and several officers had been murdered,
Ambrose wrote him a letter with an earnest call to repentance,
and threatened him with exclusion from the communion of the
church and its services. The emperor, already repenting of
his hastiness, took patiently the rebuke administered, but
did nothing to atone for his crime. Some time after he went
as usual to church, but Ambrose met him at the entrance of
the house of God and refused him admission. For eight months
the emperor refrained from communion; then he applied for
absolution, which was granted him, after he had publicly done
penance before the congregation and promised never in future
to carry out a death sentence within thirty days of its being
pronounced. Theodosius afterwards declared that Ambrose was
the only one truly deserving the name of a bishop. Ambrose
was also a zealous promoter of monasticism in the West.
In his sermons he so powerfully recommended virginity
that many families forbade their daughters attending them.
He deserves special credit for his contributions to the
liturgical services (_Officium Ambrosianum_, _Cantus Ambr._,
Hymn Composition, § 59, 4-6). On all dogmatic questions he
strongly favoured the realism of the North African school,
while in exegesis he did not surmount the allegorical
method of the Alexandrians. To the department of morals
and ascetics belong the 3 bks. _De Officiis Ministrorum_,
a Christian construction of Cicero’s celebrated work and
the most important of all Ambrose’s writings; also several
treatises in recommendation of virginity. The book _De
Mysteriis_ explains baptism and the Lord’s Supper to the
neophytes. The 5 bks. _De fide_, the 3 bks. _De Spiritu S._
and the tract _De incarnatîonis sacramento_, treat of the
fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith in opposition
to Arians, Sabellians, Apollinarians, etc. These are
somewhat dependent upon the Greeks, especially Athanasius,
Didymus and Basil. His expositions of Old Testament histories
(_Hexaëmeron_, _De Paradiso_, _De Cain et Abel_, _De Noë
et arca_, _De Abraham_, _De Jacob et anima_, etc.) are
allegorical and typical in the highest degree. More important
are his _Sermones_ and 92 Epistles. But all his writings are
distinguished by their noble, powerful and popular eloquence.
h. =Ambrosiaster= is the name given to an unknown writer
whose allegorizing Commentary on Paul’s Epistles was long
attributed to Ambrose. This work, highly popular on account
of its pregnant brevity, was perhaps the joint work of
several writers. In its earliest portions it belongs to
the age of Damasus, bishop of Rome, who died in A.D. 384,
who is named as a contemporary. Augustine names a Hilary,
not otherwise known, as author of a passage quoted from it.
i. =Pacianus=,[147] bishop of Barcelona, who died about
A.D. 390, wrote in a clear style and correct Latinity three
Epistles against the Novatians, from the first of which,
_De Catholico nomine_, is borrowed the beautiful saying:
_Christianus mihi nomen est, Catholicus cognomen_. He also
wrote a _Liber exhortatorius ad pœnitentiam_ and a _Sermo
de baptismo_.
§ 47.16. =During the Period of Origenistic Controversy.=
a. =Jerome=[148]--_Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus_--of Stridon
in Dalmatia, received his classical training under the
grammarian Donatus at Rome. In A.D. 360 he was baptized by
bishop Liberius, but afterwards fell into sensual excesses
which he atoned for by penitential pilgrimages to the
catacombs. During a journey through Gaul and the provinces
of the Rhine and Moselle he seems to have formed the fixed
resolve to devote himself to theology and an ascetic life.
Then for more than a year he stayed at Aquileia, A.D. 372,
where he formed an intimate friendship with Rufinus. He next
undertakes a journey to the East. At Antioch in a vision,
during a violent fever, placed before the throne of the
judge of all, having answered the question Who art thou? by
the confession that he was a Christian, he heard the words
distinctly uttered: Thou liest! thou art a Ciceronian and no
Christian! He then sentenced himself to severe castigation
and promised with an oath to give up the reading of the
heathen classics which he had so much enjoyed. He afterwards
indeed excused himself from the fulfilment of this twofold
obligation; but this had sealed his devotion to an ascetic
life, and the desert of Chalcis, the Syrian Thebaid, became
for him during many years the school of ascetic discipline.
Worn out with privations, penances and sensual temptations
he returned in A.D. 379 to Antioch, where he was ordained
presbyter but without any official district being assigned.
Urged by Gregory of Nazianzum [Nazianzen], he next spent
several years in Constantinople. From A.D. 382 to A.D. 385
he again lived in Rome, where bishop Damasus honoured him
with his implicit confidence. This aroused against him the
envy and enmity of many among the Roman clergy, while at
the same time his zeal for the spread of monasticism and
virginity, as well as his ascetic influence with women, drew
upon him the hatred of many prominent families (§ 44, 4). On
the death of his episcopal patron in A.D. 384 his position
in Rome thus became untenable. He now returned to the East,
visited all the holy places in Palestine, and also made
an excursion to Alexandria where he stayed for four weeks
in the school of the blind Didymus. He then settled down at
Bethlehem, founded there with the means of his Roman lady
friends an establishment for monks, over which he presided
till his death in A.D. 420; and an establishment for
nuns over which St. Paula presided, who with her daughter
Eustochium had accompanied him from Rome. As to his share
in the Origenistic controversies into which he allowed
himself to be drawn, see § 51, 2. His character was not
without defects: vanity, ambition, jealousy, passionateness,
impatience and intense bitterness in debate, are only all
too apparent in his life. But where these, as well as his
scrupulous anxiety for the maintaining of a reputation
for unwavering orthodoxy and by zeal for monasticism
and asceticism, did not stand in the way, we often find
in him an unexpected clearness and liberality of view.
Comp. § 17, 6; 57, 6; 59, 1; 61, 1. To the instructions
of the Jew Bar Hanina he was indebted for his knowledge
of Hebrew and Chaldee. The greatest and most enduring
service was rendered to the study of holy scripture by his
pioneer labours in this direction. He is at his weakest
in his dogmatic works, which mostly are disfigured by
immoderately passionate polemic. In exegesis he represents
the grammatico-historical method, but nevertheless
frequently falls back again into allegorico-mystical
explanations. His style is pure, flowing and elegant, but
in polemic often reckless and coarse even to vulgarity. In
the department of exegesis the first place belongs to his
translation of the bible (§ 59, 1). We have also a number
of Commentaries--on Genesis, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Daniel, Minor Prophets, Matthew, Galatians,
Ephesians, Philippians and Philemon. His _Onomasticon s. de
situ et nominibus locorum Hebr._ is a Latin reproduction of
the Τοπικά of Eusebius. In the department of dogmatics we
have polemics against Lucifer of Calaris (§ 50, 3), against
Helvidius, Jovinian and Vigilantius (§ 63, 2), against John
of Jerusalem (§ 51, 2) and in several treatises against
Rufinus, and finally against the Pelagians (§ 53, 4). In
the department of history we have his Latin adaptation and
continuation of the second part of the Eusebian Chronicle,
his _Catalogus Scriptorum ecclest. s. de viris illustr._,
which tells in anecdotal form about the lives and writings
of biblical and ecclesiastical writers, 135 in number,
from Peter down to himself, with the avowed purpose of
proving the falseness of the reproach that only ignorant
and uncultured men had embraced Christianity. It was
afterwards continued by the Gaul =Gennadius= of Marseilles
down to the end of the fifth century. Finally, the romancing
legendary sketches of the lives of the famous monks Paul of
Thebes (§ 39, 4), Hilarion (§ 44, 3) and Malchus, were added.
His 150 Epistles are extremely important for the church
history of his times. Of his translations of the Greek
fathers only those of Didymus, _De Spiritu S._ and that
of 70 _Homilies_ of Origen, are now extant.
§ 47.17.
b. =Tyrannius Rufinus= of Aquileia after receiving baptism
lived for a long time in monastic retirement. His enthusiasm
for monasticism and asceticism led him in A.D. 373 to Egypt.
At Alexandria he spent several years in intercourse with
Didymus. He contracted there that enthusiastic admiration
of Origen which made his after life so full of debate and
strife. He next went in A.D. 379 to Jerusalem, where bishop
John ordained him presbyter. Here he found Jerome, with whom
he had become acquainted at Aquileia, and the two friends
were brought more closely together from their mutual love for
Origen, although afterwards this was to prove the occasion of
the most bitter enmity (§ 51, 2). About A.D. 397 he returned
to Italy. He died in A.D. 410. His literary activity was
mainly directed to the transplanting of the writings of
Greek fathers to Latin soil. To his zeal in this direction
we owe the preservation of Origen’s most important work Περὶ
ἀρχῶν, _De principiis_, and of no fewer than 124 Homilies.
The former, indeed, has been in many places altered in an
arbitrary manner. He also translated several Homilies of
Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, Pamphilus’ Apology for Origen,
the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions (§ 28, 3), etc. There
are extant of his own works: the Continuation of his Latin
reproduction of the Church History of Eusebius, down to
A.D. 388, the romancing _Historia eremitica s. Vitæ Patrum_,
biographies of 33 saints of the Nitrian desert (§ 51, 1),
an _Apologia pro fide sua_, the _Invectivæ Hieron._ in
2 bks. the treatise _De benedictionibus Patriarcharum_,
an exposition of Genesis xlix. in the spirit and style of
Origen, and an _Expositio symboli apost._
c. =Sulpicius Severus=[149] from Aquitania in Gaul, had gained
great reputation by his eloquence as an advocate, when the
death of his young wife disgusted him with the world, and
led him to withdraw into a monastery. He died about A.D. 410.
In his _Chronica_ or _Historia sacra_ (§ 5, 1), a summary
of biblical and ecclesiastical history, he imitates not
unsuccessfully the eloquence of Sallust, so that he has
been called “the Christian Sallust.” His _Vita_ of Martin
of Tours is a panegyric overflowing with reports of miracles.
The three dialogues on the virtues of Eastern Monks and on
the merits of St. Martin, may be regarded as a supplement to
the _Vita_.
d. =Petrus [Peter] Chrysologus= is the name by which Peter,
bishop of Ravenna, is best known. He also received the title
_Chrysostomus Latinorum_. He died in A.D. 450. Among the
176 _Sermones_ ascribed to him, the discourses expository
of the baptismal formula are deserving of special mention.
Of his Epistles, one in Latin and Greek addressed to Eutyches
(§ 52, 4) is still preserved, in which the writer warns
Eutyches against doctrinal errors.
§ 47.18. =The Hero of the Soteriological
Controversy.=--=Augustine=--_Aurelius Augustinus_--was born in
A.D. 354 at Tagaste in Numidia. From his pious mother Monica he
early received Christian religious impressions which, however,
were again in great measure effaced by his pagan father the
_Decurio_ Patricius. While he studied in Carthage, he gave way
to sensuality and worldly pleasure. Cicero’s Hortensius first
awakened again in him a longing after higher things. From about
A.D. 374 he sought satisfaction in the tenets of the Manichæan
sect, strongly represented in Africa, and for ten years he
continued a catechumen of that order. But here, too, at last
finding himself cruelly deceived in his struggle after the
knowledge of the truth, he would have sunk into the most utter
scepticism, had not the study of the Platonic philosophy still for
awhile held him back. In A.D. 383 he left Africa and went to Rome,
and in the following year he took up his residence in Milan as a
teacher of eloquence. An African bishop, once himself a Manichæan,
had comforted his anxious mother, who followed him hither, by
assuring her that the son of so many sighs and prayers could
not be finally lost. At Milan too the sermons of Ambrose made
an impression on Augustine’s heart. He now began diligently to
search the scriptures. At last the hour arrived of his complete
renewal of heart and life. After an earnest conversation with
his friend Alypius, he hastened into the solitude of the garden.
While agonizing in prayer he heard the words thrice repeated:
_Tolle, lege_! He took up the scriptures, and his eye fell upon
the passage Rom. xiii. 13, 14. This utterance of stern Christian
morality seemed as if written for himself alone, and from this
moment he received into his wounded spirit a peace such as he had
never known before. In order to prepare for baptism he withdrew
with his mother and some friends to the country house of one of
them, where scientific studies, pious exercises and conversations
on the highest problems of life occupied his time. Out of
these conversations sprang his philosophical writings. At
Easter A.D. 387 Ambrose baptized him, and at the same time his
illegitimate son Adeodatus, who not long afterwards died. His
return journey to Africa was delayed by the death of his mother
at Ostia, and at last, after almost a year’s residence in Rome,
he reached his old home again. In Rome he applied himself to
combat the errors of Manichæism, arguing with many of his old
companions whom he met there. After his return to Africa in
A.D. 388, he spent some years on his small patrimonial estate
at Tagaste engaged in scientific work. During a casual visit to
Hippo in A.D. 391 he was, in spite of all resistance, ordained
presbyter, and in A.D. 395 colleague of the aged and feeble
bishop Valerius, whose successor he became in the following year.
Now began the brilliant period of his career, in which he stands
forth as a pillar of the church and the centre of all theological
and ecclesiastical life throughout the whole Western world. In
A.D. 400 began his battle against the Donatists (§ 63, 1). And
scarcely had he brought this to a successful end in a religious
discussion at Carthage in A.D. 411, when he was drawn into a far
more important Soteriological controversy by Pelagius and his
followers (§ 53), which he continued till the close of his life.
His death occurred in A.D. 430 during the siege of Carthage by
the Vandals. He has written his own life in his _Confessiones_
(Engl. translat., Oxf., 1838; Edin., 1876). In the form of an
address to God he here unfolds before the Omniscient One his
whole past life with all its errors and gracious providences
in the language of prayer full of the holiest earnestness and
most profound humility, a lively commentary on the opening
words: _Magnus es, Domine, et laudabilis valde.... Fecisti nos
ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te._
The biography of his disciple Possidius may serve as a supplement
to the Confessions.--Augustine was the greatest, most powerful,
and most influential of all the fathers. In consequence of his
thoroughly Western characteristics he was indeed less perfectly
understood and appreciated in the East; but all the greater was
his reputation in the West, where the whole development of church
and doctrine seemed always to move about him as its centre. The
main field of his literary activity in consequence of his own
peculiar mental qualities, his philosophical culture, speculative
faculty, and dialectic skill, as well as the ecclesiastical
conflicts of his time, to which his most important works are
devoted, was Systematic Theology, Dogmatics and Ethics, Polemics
and Apologetics. He is weakest as an exegete; for he had little
interest in philological and grammatico-historical research into
the simple literal sense of scripture. He was unacquainted with
the original language of the Old Testament, and even the New
Testament he treats only in a popular way according to the Latin
translations. Neither does he deal much with the exegetical
foundations of dogmatics, which he rather develops from the
Christian consciousness by means of speculation and dialectic,
and from the proof of its meeting the needs of humanity. Over
against philosophy he insisted upon the independence and
necessity of faith as the presupposition and basis of all
religious knowledge. _Rationabiliter dictum est per prophetam:
Nisi credideretis non intelligetis. Credamus ut id quod credimus
intelligere valeamus._
§ 47.19. =Augustine’s Works.=
a. =Philosophical Treatises= belonging to the period preceding
his ordination. The 3 bks. _Contra Academicos_ combat
their main position that men cannot attain to any certain
knowledge; the treatise _De Vita beata_ shows that true
happiness consists in the knowledge of God; the 2 bks. _De
Ordine_ treat of the relation of good and evil in the divine
order of the world; the 2 bks. _Soliloquia_ are monologues
on the means and conditions of the knowledge of supernatural
truths, and contain beside the main question an Appendix _De
immortalitate animæ_, etc.
b. =Dogmatic Treatises.= The most important are: _De Trinitate_
in 15 bks. (Engl. transl., Edin., 1874), a speculative
dogmatic construction of the dogma, of great importance
for its historical development; _De doctrina christiana_
in 4 bks. (Engl. transl., Edin., 1875), of which the first
three bks. form a guide to the exposition of scripture after
the analogy of faith, while the 4th book shows how the truth
thus discovered is to be used (Hermeneutics and Homiletics);
finally, the two bks. _Retractationes_, written in his
last years, in which he passes an unfavourable judgment
on his earlier writings, and withdraws or modifies much in
them. Among his =Moral-ascetic writings= the bk. _De bono
conjugali_ is of special interest, called forth by Jovinian’s
utterances on non-meritoriousness of the unmarried state
(§ 62, 2); he admits the high value of Christian marriage,
but yet sees in celibacy genuinely chosen as a means to
holiness a higher step in the Christian life. Also the
bk. _De adulterinis conjugis_ against second marriages,
and two treatises _De Mendacium_ and _Contra Mendacium ad
Consentium_, which in opposition to the contrary doctrine
of the Priscillianists (§ 54, 2), unconditionally repudiates
the admissibility of equivocation.
c. =Controversial Treatises.= Of 11 treatises against the
Manichæans (§ 54, 1) the most important is that _C. Faustum_
in 33 bks. (Engl. transl., Edin., 1875), interesting as
reproducing in quotations the greater part of the last work
of this great champion of the Manichæans. Then came the
discussion with the Donatists (§ 63, 1), which he engaged
in with great vigour. We have ten treatises directed against
them (Engl. transl., Edin., 1873). Of far greater importance
was the conflict which soon after broke out against the
Pelagians and then against the semi-Pelagians (§ 53, 4, 5),
in which he wrote fourteen treatises (Engl. transl.,
3 vols., Edin., 1873-1876). Also the Arians, Priscillianists,
Origenists and Marcionites were combated by him in special
treatises, and in the bk. _De hæresibus_ he gave a summary
account of the various heresies that had come under his
notice.
d. Among his =Apologetical Treatises= against pagans and
Jews, by far the ablest and most important is the work _De
Civitate Dei_, in 22 bks., a truly magnificent conception
(Engl. transl., 2 vols., Edin., 1873), the most substantial
of all apologetical works of Christian antiquity, called
forth by the reproach of the heathens that the repeated
successes of the barbarians resulted from the weakening and
deteriorating influence of Christianity upon the empire.
The author repels this reproach in the first four bks.
by showing how the Roman empire had previously in itself
the seeds of decay in its godless selfishness, and thence
advancing immorality; Ilium was and continued pagan, but
its gods could not save it from destruction. Ilium’s Epigone,
haughty Rome, meets the same fate. It owed its power only to
God’s will and His government of the world, and to His using
it as a scourge for the nations. The next five books show
the corruption of the heathen religions and the inadequacy
of heathen philosophy. Then the last 12 bks. point out
the contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdom
of the world in respect of their diverse foundations,
their entirely different motive powers, their historical
development and their ultimate disposal in the last judgment.
e. The most important and complete of his =Exegetical Works=
are the 12 bks. _De Genesi ad litteram_, a gigantic
commentary on the three first chapters of Genesis, which
in spite of its title very often leaves the firm ground
of the literal sense to revel in the airy regions of
spiritualistic and mystical expatiation. Of his _Sermones_,
400 are recognised as genuine (Engl. transl., Hom. on N.T.,
2 vols., Oxf., 1844 f.; Hom. on John and 1st John, 2 vols.,
Oxf., 1848; Comm. on Psalms, 6 vols., Oxf., 1847 f.; Harmony
of Evangelists, and Serm. on Mt., Edin., 1874; Commentary
on John, 2 vols., Edin., 1875). His correspondence still
preserved comprises 270 Epistles (Engl. transl., 2 vols.,
Edin., 1874, 1876).
§ 47.20. =Augustine’s Disciples and Friends.=
a. =Paulinus=, deacon of Milan, who wrote, at Augustine’s
request, the life of Ambrose, awakened in A.D. 411 the
Pelagian controversy by the charges which he made, and
took part in it himself by writing in A.D. 417 the _Libellus
c. Cœlestium ad Zosimum Papam_.
b. =Paulus [Paul] Orosius=, a Spanish presbyter, who visited
Augustine in Africa in A.D. 415 to urge him to combat
Priscillianism, took part with him there in his conflict
with the Pelagians. He has left behind a _Commonitorium de
errore Priscillianistarum et Origenistarum ad Augustinum_;
an _Apologeticus de arbitrii libertate c. Pelagium_ and
_Hist. adv. Paganos_ in 7 bks. The last named work was
written at Augustine’s urgent entreaty, and pursues in a
purely historical manner the same end which Augustine in his
_City of God_ sought to reach in a dogmatico-apologetic way.
c. =Marius Mercator= was a learned and acute layman, belonging
to the West, but latterly resident in Constantinople. He
made every effort to secure the condemnation of Pelagianism
even in the East, and so wrote not only against its Western
leaders but also against its Antiochean supporters, Nestorius
and Theodore of Mopsuestia (§ 53, 4).
d. =Prosper Aquitanicus=, also a layman and an enthusiastic
follower of Augustine, not only wrote several treatises
against the semi-Pelagians of his native Gaul (§ 53, 5),
but also poured out the vials of his wrath upon them in
poetic effusions (§ 48, 6). He died about A.D. 460.
e. =Cæsarius, bishop of Arelate=, now Arles in Gaul, originally
a monk in the monastery of Larinum, was one of the most
celebrated, most influential, and in church work most
serviceable of the men of his times. It is also mainly
due to him that in A.D. 529 moderate Augustinianism gained
the victory over semi-Pelagianism. He died in A.D. 543.
His treatise _De gratia et libero arbitrio_ is no longer
extant, but two rules for monks and nuns composed by him,
_Ad monachos_, _Ad virgines_, as well as a considerable
number of _Sermones_, the best of their time, are still
preserved.
f. =Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe= in Africa, on account of
his zeal for the Catholic doctrine, was banished by the
Arian Vandal king Thrasimund, but returned after the
king’s death in A.D. 523. He was one of the stoutest
champions of Augustinianism. His writings against Arians
and semi-Pelagians have been often printed. He died in
A.D. 555. His scholar and biographer was =Fulgentius
Ferrandus=, deacon at Carthage about A.D. 547. Alongside
of and after him we meet with bishop =Facundus= of Hermiane,
and the archdeacon =Liberatus of Carthage=, who with
characteristic African energy defend the _Tria Capitula_
(§ 52, 6) basely surrendered by the Roman bishop Vigilius.
§ 47.21. =Pelagians and semi-Pelagians.=
I. =Pelagius=, a British monk, the originator of the heresy
named after him (§ 53, 3, 4), left behind a considerable
number of writings, of which, however, for the most part
we have now only fragments in the works of his opponents.
References in Augustine, Marius Mercator, and others show
that to him belong the _Lb._ xiv. _Expositionum in Epistt.
Pauli_, which have been ascribed to Jerome and included
among his works, scholia-like explanations with good sound
grammatico-historical exegesis. The wish to make this
useable and safe for the Catholic church led at an early
date to various omissions and alterations in it. Afterwards
its heretical origin was forgotten which notwithstanding
the purifying referred to is still quite discernible. Two
epistles addressed to Roman ladies recommending virginity
have also got a place among the works of Jerome.--=Julianus,
bishop of Eclanum= in Italy, is the only one among the
followers of Pelagius who can be regarded as of scientific
importance. He was an acute but frivolous and vulgar
opponent of Augustine, whom he honoured with the epithets
_amentissimus et bardissimus_ (comp. § 53, 4).
II. At the head of the semi-Pelagians or Massilians stands:
a. =Johannes Cassianus=. Gennadius designates him as
_natione Scythus_; but he received his early education
in a monastery at Bethlehem. He then undertook a
journey in company with the abbot to visit the Egyptian
monks, stayed next for a long time with Chrysostom at
Constantinople, and after his banishment resided some
years in Rome, and finally in A.D. 415 settled down at
Massilia (Marseilles), where he established a monastery
and a nunnery, and organised both after the Eastern
model. He died about A.D. 432. His writings were held
in high esteem throughout the Middle Ages. In the
_De institutis Cœnobiorum_ he describes the manner
of life of the Palestinian and Egyptian monks, and
then treats of the eight vices to which the monks were
specially exposed. The 24 _Collationes Patrum_ report
the conversations which he had with the Eastern monks
and hermits about the ways and means of attaining
Christian perfection. The 13th _Collatio_ is, without
naming him, directed against Augustine’s doctrine,
and develops semi-Pelagian Synergism (§ 53, 5). Both
writings, however are certainly calculated to serve
the development of his own monkish ideal as well as his
own dogmatic and ethical views, rather then to afford
a historically faithful representation of the life and
thinking of oriental monasticism of that time. The 7 bks.
_De incarnatione Christi_ combat not only Nestorianism
but also Pelagianism as in its consequences derogatory
to the divinity of Christ.
b. =Vincentius [Vincent] Lerinensis=, monk in the Gallic
monastery of Lerinum, was Cassianus’ most distinguished
disciple. He died about A.D. 450. On his often printed
_Commonitorium pro cath. fidei antiquit. et universit._,
comp. § 53, 5.
c. =Eucherius, bishop of Lyons=, left behind him several
ascetical works (_De laude eremi; De contemtu mundi_),
Homilies, and a _Liber formularum spiritualis
intelligentiæ_ as guide to the mystico-allegorical
interpretation of Scripture. He died about A.D. 450.
d. =Salvianus=, presbyter at Marseilles, was in his
earlier days married to a heathen woman whom he
converted, and with her took the vow of continency.
He died about A.D. 485. He wrote _Adv. avaritiam_
Lb. iv., in which the support of the poor and surrender
of property to the church for pious uses are recommended
as means of furthering the salvation of one’s own soul.
In consequence of the oppression of the times during
the convulsions of the migration of the peoples and
the reproach of the heathen again loudly raised that
the weakness of the Roman empire was occasioned by the
introduction of Christianity, he wrote _De providentia
s. de gubernatione Dei et de justo præsentique judicio_,
Lb. viii., which in rhetorical and flowery language
depicted the dreadful moral condition of the Roman
world of that day.
e. =Faustus of Rhegium=, now Riez in Provence, in his
earlier years an advocate, then monk and abbot of the
cloister of Lerinum, and finally bishop of Rhegium, was
the head of the Gallic semi-Pelagians of his times. In
his writings he stated this doctrine in a moderate form.
He died in A.D. 493.
f. =Arnobius the Younger=, the contemporary and
fellow-countryman of Faustus, wrote a very important
work entitled _Prædestinatus_, which in a very thorough
and elaborate manner contests the doctrines of Augustine.
Comp. § 53, 5.
§ 47.22. =The Most Important Church Teachers among the Roman
Popes.=
a. =Leo the Great= occupied the papal chair from A.D. 440 to
A.D. 461. While but a deacon he was the most distinguished
personage in Rome. On assuming the bishopric he gave the
whole powers of his mind to the administration of his office
in all directions. By the energy and consistency with which
he carried out the idea of the Roman primacy, he became the
virtual founder of the spiritual sovereignty of Rome. With
a strong arm he guided the helm of the church, reformed
and organized on every side, settled order and discipline,
defended orthodoxy, contended against heretics (Manichæans,
Priscillianists, Pelagians, Eutychians), and appeased the
barbarians (Attila). Of his writings we have 96 _Sermones_
and 173 Epistles, which last are of the utmost importance
for the church history of his times. He is also supposed
to be the author of a talented work _De vocatione Gentium_
(§ 53, 5).
b. =Gelasius I.=, A.D. 492 to A.D. 496, left behind him a
treatise _Adv. hæresin Pelagianem_, another _De duabus
in Christo naturis_, and a work against the observance of
the Lupercalia which some prominent Romans wished to have
continued. He also wrote 18 Decretals. The celebrated
_Decretum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis_, in
a sense the oldest _Index prohibitorum_, is ascribed to
him. The first section, wanting in the best MSS., contains
a biblical canon corresponding to that of the Synod of
Hippo, A.D. 393 (§ 59, 1); the second section treats of
the pre-eminence of the Church of Rome granted by our Lord
Himself in the person of Peter; the third enumerates the
œcumenical Councils; and the fourth, the writings of the
fathers received by the Roman Church; the Chronicle and
Church History of Eusebius are found fault with (_quod
tepuerit_) but not rejected; in respect to the writings of
Origen and Rufinus the opinion of Jerome is approved. The
fifth section gives a list of books not to be received--the
New Testament Apocrypha, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria,
Arnobius, Cassianus, Faustus of Rhegium, etc.
c. =Gregory the Great=, A.D. 590 to A.D. 604, born in Rome
about A.D. 540, sprung from a distinguished old Roman
family, held about A.D. 574 the office of city prefect,
after his father’s death founded on his inherited estates,
six monasteries, and himself withdrew into a seventh,
which he built in Rome. Ordained deacon against his will in
A.D. 579, he was entrusted with the important and difficult
office of a papal _apocrisiarius_ in Constantinople, and was
constrained in A.D. 590, after a long persisted-in refusal,
to mount the papal chair, which obliged him to abandon
the long-cherished plan of his life, the preaching of the
gospel to the Anglo-Saxons (§ 77, 4). Gregory united a rare
power and energy of will with real mildness and gentleness
of character, deep humility and genuine piety with the
full consciousness of his position as a successor of Peter,
insight, circumspection, yea even an unexpected measure of
liberal-mindedness (comp. _e.g._ § 57, 4; 75, 3) with all
monkish narrowness and stiff adherence to the traditional
forms, doctrines and views of the Roman Church. He himself
lived in extremest poverty and simplicity according to
the strictest monastic asceticism, and applied all that he
possessed and received to the support of the poor and the
help of the needy. It was a hard time in which he lived,
the age of the birth throes of a new epoch of the world’s
history. There is therefore much cause to thank the good
providence which set such a man as spiritual father, teacher
and pastor at the head of the Western Church. He took special
interest in fostering monasticism and such-like institutions,
which were, indeed, most conducive to the well-being of
the world, for during this dangerous period of convulsion,
monasticism was almost the only nursery of intellectual
culture. The Roman Catholic church ranks him as the last
of the Fathers, and places him alongside of Ambrose, Jerome
and Augustine, the four greatest teachers of the church,
_Doctores ecclesiæ_, whose writings have been long reverenced
as the purest and most complete vehicles of the Catholic
tradition. Among the Greeks a similar position is given to
Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen and Chrysostom. The
rank thus assigned to Gregory is justifiable inasmuch as
in him the formation and malformation of doctrine, worship,
discipline and constitution peculiar to the ancient church
are gathered up, completed and closed. His most complete
work is the _Expositio in b. Jobum s. Moralium_, Ll. xxxv.,
(Engl. transl., Lib. of Fath., 3 vols., Oxf., 1844-1850)
which, by dragging in all possible relations of life which
an allegorical interpretation can furnish, is expanded into
a repertory of moral reflections. His _Regula pastoralis
s. Liber curæ pastoralis_ obtained in the West a position
of almost canonical authority. In his “Dialogues,” of which
the first three books treat “_de vita et miraculis Patrum
Italicorum_,” and the 4th book mostly of visionary views of
the hereafter (heaven, hell and purgatory), “_de æternitate
animarum_,” we meet with a very singular display of the most
uncritical credulousness and the most curious superstition.
Besides these we have from him Homilies on Ezekiel and
the Gospels, as well as a voluminous correspondence in
880 Epistles of great importance for the history of the
age. To Gregory also is attributed the oft quoted saying
which compares holy scripture to a stream _in quo agnus
peditat et elephas natat_.
§ 47.23. =The Conservators and Continuators of Patristic Culture.=
a. =Boëthius=, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus, was
descended from a distinguished Roman family, and stood high
in favour with the Ostrogoth Arian king Theodoric. Accused,
however, by his enemies of treasonable correspondence with
the Byzantine court, he was, after a long imprisonment,
condemned unheard and executed, A.D. 525. In prison
he composed the celebrated treatise, _De consolatione
philosophiæ_, which, written in pure and noble language,
was the favourite book of the Latin Middle Ages, and was
translated into all European languages: first of all by
Alfred the Great into Anglo-Saxon, and often reprinted in
its original form. The book owed its great popularity to the
mediæval tradition which made its author a martyr for the
Catholic faith under Arian persecution; but modern criticism
has sought to prove that in all probability he was not even
a Christian. Still more decidedly the theological writings
on the Trinity and the Two Natures of Christ bearing his
name are repudiated as irreconcileable with the contents
and character of the _De consolatione_; though, on the
other hand, their authenticity has again found several
most capable defenders. Finally, Usener has conclusively,
as it seems, in a newly discovered fragment of Cassiodorus,
brought forward a quite incontestable witness for their
authenticity. In any case Boëthius did great service in
preserving the continuity of Western culture by his hearty
encouragement and careful prosecution of classical studies
at a time when these were threatened with utter neglect. Of
special importance was his translation of a commentary on
the logical works of Aristotle as the first and for a long
time almost the only philosophical groundwork of mediæval
scholasticism (§ 99, 2).
c. Magnus Aurelius =Cassiodorus=, surnamed Senator, belonged
to Southern Italy and held the highest civil offices under
Odoacer and Theodoric for fifty years. About A.D. 540,
he retired to the cloister of Vivarium founded by him in
Southern Italy, and devoted the rest of his life to the
sciences and the instruction of the monks. He collected a
great library in his monastery, and employed the monks in
transcribing classical and patristic writings. He died about
A.D. 575 when almost a hundred years old. His own writings
show indeed no independence and originality, but are all
the more important as concentrated collections of classical
and patristic learning for the later Latin Middle Ages. His
twelve books of the History of the Goths have come down only
in the condensed reproduction of Jordanes or Jornandes. His
twelve books _Variarum_ (_sc. epistolarum et formularum_),
which consist of a collection of acts and ordinances of the
period of his civil service, are important for the history
of his age. His _Historia ecclest. tripartita_ (§ 5, 1),
was for many centuries almost the only text book of church
history, and his _Institutiones divinarum et sæcularum
litterarum_ had a similar position as a guide to the study
of theology and the seven liberal arts (§ 90, 8). Also his
commentary on the Psalms and the most of the books of the
New Testament, made up of compilations, was held in high
esteem.
c. =Dionysius Exiguus=, a Scythian by birth, who became a Roman
abbot, and died about A.D. 566, may also be placed in this
group. He translated many Greek patristic writings, by his
_Cyclus paschalis_ became founder of the Western reckoning
of Easter (§ 56, 3), and also the more universally adopted
so-called Dionysian era. By his _Codex Canonum_ he is also
the founder of the Western system of Canon Law (§ 43, 3).
§ 48. BRANCHES OF THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN POETRY.
§ 48.1. =Exegetical Theology.=--Nothing was done in the way
of criticism of the original biblical text. Even Jerome was
only a translator. For the Old Testament the LXX. sufficed,
and the divergences of the Hebrew text were explained as
Jewish alterations. Hebrew was a _terra incognita_ to the
fathers, Polychronius and Jerome only are notable exceptions.
The allegorical method of interpretation was and continued to be
the prevalent one. The Antiocheans, however, put limits to it by
their theory and practice of the right of historico-grammatical
interpretation. Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia
contested the principles of Origen, while Gregory of Nyssa in his
_Proemium in Cant._ undertook their defence. The first attempt
at a system of =Hermeneutics= was made by the learned Donatist
Tychonius in his book the _Regulæ_ vii. _ad investigandam
intelligentiam ss. Scr._ More profound is Augustine’s _De
Doctrina Chr._ The Εἰσαγωγὴ τῆς θείας γραφῆς of the Greek
Adrianus with its opposition to the immoderate allegorizing
that then prevailed, deserves mention here. Jerome contributed
to biblical =Introduction= by his various _Proœmia_. The
first attempt at a scientific introduction to biblical study
(isagogical and biblico-theological in the form of question
and answer), is met with in the 2 bks. _Instituta regularia
div. legis_ of the African Junilius, a prominent courtier at
Constantinople, about A.D. 550. There is a Latin rendering made
by Junilius at the request of Primasius, bishop of Adrumetum,
of a treatise composed originally in Syriac, by Paul the Persian,
teacher of the Nestorian seminary at Nisibis, which he had
collected from the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, for the
purposes of instruction. The title _Departibus div. legis_,
usually given to the whole, properly belongs only to the first
part of the treatise. A more popular guide is Cassiodorus’
_Institutio divinarum litt._ Some contributions were made
to biblical archaeology by Eusebius and Epiphanius. Of the
allegorical =Exegetes= of the East, the most productive was
Cyril of Alexandria. The Antiochean school produced a whole
series of able expositors of the grammatico-historical sense
of scripture. In the commentaries of Chrysostom and Ephraem
[Ephraim] the Syrian, that method of interpretation is applied
in a directly practical interest. The Westerns Hilary, Ambrose,
Ambrosiaster, Jerome and Augustine, as well as their later
imitators, all allegorize; yet Jerome also applied himself very
diligently to the elucidation of the grammatical sense. Only
Pelagius is content to rest in the plain literal meaning of
scripture. From the 6th century, almost all independent work in
the department of exegesis ceased. We have from this time only
_Catenæ_, collections of passages from commentaries and homilies
of distinguished fathers. The first Greek writer of Catenæ, was
Procopius of Gaza, in the 6th century; and the first Latin writer
of these was Primasius of Adrumetum, about A.D. 560.
§ 48.2. =Historical Theology.=--The writing of Church history
flourished especially during the 4th and 5th centuries (§ 5, 1).
For the history of heresies we have Epiphanius, Theodoret,
Leontius of Byzantium; and among the Latins, Augustine,
Philastrius [Philaster], and the author of _Prædestinatus_
(§ 47, 21f). There are numerous biographies of distinguished
fathers. On these compare the so-called _Liber pontificalis_, see
§ 90, 6. Jerome laid the foundation of a history of theological
literature in a series of biographies, and Gennadius of
Massilia continued this work. With special reference to monkish
history, we have among the Greeks, Palladius, Theodoret and
Joh. Moschus; and among the Latins, Rufinus, Jerome, Gregory
the Great and Gregory of Tours (§ 90, 2). Of great importance
for ecclesiastical statistics is the Τοπογραφία χριστιανική
in 12 bks., whose author _Cosmas Indicopleustes_, monk in the
Sinai peninsula about A.D. 540, had in his earlier years as an
Alexandrian merchant travelled much in the East. The connection
of biblical and profane history is treated of in the Chronicle
of Eusebius. Orosius too treats of profane history from the
Christian standpoint. The _Hist. persecutionis Vandalorum_
(§ 76, 3), of Victor, bishop of Vita in Africa, about A.D. 487,
is of great value for the church history of Africa. For chronology
the so-called _Chronicon paschale_, in the Greek language, is of
great importance. It is the work of two unknown authors; the work
of the one reaching down to A.D. 354, that of the other, down to
A.D. 630. These chronological tables obtained their name from the
fact that the Easter cycles and indictions are always carefully
determined in them.
§ 48.3. =Systematic Theology.=
a. =Apologetics.= The controversial treatises of Porphyry
and Hierocles were answered by many (§ 23, 3); that of
the Emperor Julian also (§ 42, 5), especially by Gregory
Nazianzen, Chrysostum [Chrysostom] (in the Discourse on
St. Babylas), and most powerfully by Cyril of Alexandria.
Ambrose and the poet Prudentius answered the tract of
Symmachus, referred to in § 42, 4. The insinuations of
Zosimus, Eunapius, and others (§ 42, 5) were met by Orosius
with his _Historiæ_, by Augustine with his _Civ. Dei_,
and by Salvian [Salvianus] with his _De gubernatione
Dei_. Johannes Philoponus wrote against Proclus’ denial
of the biblical doctrine of creation. The vindication of
Christianity against the charges of the Jews was undertaken
by Aphraates, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Gregentius, bishop
of Taphne in Arabia, who, in A.D. 540, disputed for four
days amid a great crowd with the Jew Herban. Apologies of
a general character were written by Eusebius of Cæsarea,
Athanasius, Theodoret and Firmicus Maternus.
b. In =Polemics= against earlier and later heretics, the
utmost energy and an abundance of acuteness and depth of
thought were displayed. See under the history of theological
discussions, § 50 ff.
c. Positive =Dogmatics=. Origen’s example in the construction
of a complete scientific system of doctrine has no imitator.
For practical purposes, however, the whole range of Christian
doctrine was treated by Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of
Nyssa, Apollinaris, Epiphanius, Rufinus (_Expositio Symboli
Apost._), Augustine (in the last book of the _Civ. Dei_, in
first book of his _De Doctrina Chr._, and in the _Enchiridium
ad Laurentium_). The African Fulgentius of Ruspe (_De regula
veræ fidei_), Gennadius of Massilia (_De fide sua_), and
Vincentius [Vincent] of Lerinum in his _Commonitorium_. Much
more important results for the development of particular
dogmas were secured by means of polemics. Of supreme
influence on subsequent ages were the mystico-theosophical
writings of the Pseudo-Areopagite. This mysticism, so far
as adopted, was combined by the acute and profound thinker
Maximus Confessor with the orthodox theology of the Councils.
d. =Morals.= The _De officiis ministr._ of Ambrose is a system
of moral instruction for the clergy; and of the same sort
is Chrysostom’s Περὶ ἱερωσύνης; while Cassianus’ writings
form a moral system for the monks, and Gregory’s _Exposit.
in Jobum_ a vast repertory on general morality.
§ 48.4. =Practical Theology.=--The whole period is peculiarly
rich in distinguished homilists. The most brilliant of the Greek
preachers were: Macarius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory
Nazianzen, Ephraem [Ephraim] the Syrian, and above all Chrysostom.
Of the Latins the most distinguished were Ambrose, Augustine,
Zeno of Verona, Petrus [Peter] Chrysologus, Leo the Great, and
Cæsarius of Arles. A sort of Homiletics is found in the 4th of
Augustine’s _De Doctr. Chr._, and a directory for pastoral work,
in the _Regula pastoralia_ of Gregory the Great. On Liturgical
writings, comp. § 59, 6; on Constitutional works, § 43, 3-5.
§ 48.5. =Christian Poetry.=--The beginning of the prevalence of
Christianity occurred at a time when the poetic art had already
ceased to be consecrated to the national life of the ancient
world. But it proved an intellectual power which could cause to
swell out again the poetic vein, relaxed by the weakness of age.
In spite of the depraved taste and deteriorated language, it
called forth a new period of brilliancy in the history of poetry
which could rival classical poetry, not indeed in purity and
elegance of form, but in intensity and depth. The Latins in
this far excelled the Greeks; for to them Christianity was more
a matter of experience, emotion, the inner life, to the Greeks
a matter of knowledge and speculation. Among the =Greeks= the
most distinguished are these: =Gregory Nazianzen=. He deserves
notice mainly for his satirical _Carmen de vita sua_, περὶ ἑαυτοῦ.
Among his numerous other poems are some beautiful hymns and
many striking phrases, but also much that is weak and flat.
The drama Χριστὸς πάσχων, perhaps wrongly bearing his name,
modelled on the tragedies of Euripides and in great part made
up of Euripidean verses, is not without interest as the first
Christian passion-play, and contains some beautiful passages;
_e.g._ the lament of Mary; but it is on the whole insipid
and confused. =Nonnus of Panopolis=, about A.D. 400, wrote
a Παράφρασις ἐπικὴ τοῦ Εὐαγγ. κατὰ Ἰωάννην, somewhat more
useful for textual criticism and archaeology, than likely
to afford enjoyment as poetry. Of the poetical works of the
Empress =Eudocia=, wife of Theodosius II., daughter of the
pagan rhetorician Leontius of Athens, hence called Athenais
(she died about the year 460), only fragments of their renderings
in the Cyprian legends have come down to us. The loss of her
_Homero-centoes_ celebrated by Photius, _i.e._ reproductions
of the biblical books of the New Testament in pure Homeric words
and verses, is not perhaps to be very sorely lamented. On the
other hand, the poetic description of the church of Sophia, built
by Justinian I. and of the ambo of that church which =Paulus
Silentiarius= left behind him, is not only of archaeological
value, but also is not without poetic merit.
§ 48.6. =Christian Latin Poetry= reached its highest excellence
in the composition of hymns (§ 59, 4). But also in the more
ambitious forms of epic, didactic, panegyric, and hortatory
poems, it has respectable representatives, especially in Spain
and Gaul, whose excellence of workmanship during such a period
of restlessness and confusion is truly wonderful. To the fourth
century belongs the Spaniard =Juvencus=, about A.D. 330. His
_Hist. evangelica_ in 4 books, is the first Christian epic;
a work of sublime simplicity, free of all bombast or rhetorical
rant, which obtained for him the name of “the Christian Virgil.”
His _Liber in Genesin_ versifies in a similar manner the Mosaic
history of the patriarchs. His countryman =Prudentius=, who died
about A.D. 410, was a poet of the first rank, distinguished for
depth of sensibility, glowing enthusiasm, high lyrical flow,
and singular skill in versification. His _Liber Cathemerinon_
consists of 12 hymns, for the 12 hours of the day, and his
_Liber Peristephanon_, 14 hymns on the same number of saints who
had won the martyr’s crown; his _Apotheosis_ is an Anti-Arian
glorification of Christ; the _Hamartigenia_ treats of the origin
of sin; the _Psychomachia_ describes the conflict of the virtues
and vices of the human soul; and his 2 bks. _Contra Symmachum_
combat the views of Symmachus, referred to in § 42, 4.--In the
fifth century flourished: =Paulinus=, bishop of Nola in Campania,
who died in A.D. 431. He left behind him 30 poems, of which
13 celebrate in noble, enthusiastic language, the life of Felix
of Nola, martyr during the Decian persecution. =Coelius Sedulius=,
an Irishman (?), composed in smooth dignified verse the Life of
Jesus, and the _Mirabilia divina s. Opus paschale_, so called
from 1 Cor. v. 7 in 5 bks.; and a Collatio V. et N.T. in elegiac
verse. The _De libero arbitrio c. ingratos_ of the Gaul =Prosper
Aquitanicus= lashes with poetic fury the thankless despisers of
grace (§ 53, 5).--The most important poet of the sixth century
was =Venantius Fortunatus=, bishop of Poitiers, _Vita Martini_,
hymns, elegies, etc.
§ 48.7. In the =National Syrian= Church, the first place as a
poet belongs to =Ephraem= [Ephraim], the _Propheta Syrorum_. In
poetic endowment, lyrical flow, depth and intensity of feeling,
he leaves all later writers far behind. Next to him stands
=Cyrillonas=, about A.D. 400, a poet whose very name, until quite
recently, was unknown, of whose poems six are extant, two being
metrical homilies. Of =Rabulas of Edessa=, who died in A.D. 435,
the notorious partisan of Cyril of Alexandria (§ 53, 3), and of
=Baläus=, about A.D. 430, we possess only a number of liturgical
odes, which are not altogether destitute of poetic merit.
This cannot, however, be said of the poetic works of =Isaac of
Antioch=, who died about A.D. 460, filled with frigid polemics
against Nestorius and Eutyches, of which their Catholic editor
(Opp. ed. G. Bickell, Giess., 1873 f.) has to confess they are
thoroughly “insipid, flat and wearisome, and move backwards and
forwards in endless tautologies.” Less empty and tiresome are
the poetic effusions of the famous =Jacob of Sarug=, who died
in A.D. 521; biblical stories, metrical homilies, hymns, etc.
Most of the numerous liturgical odes are the compositions of
unknown authors.
§ 48.8. =The Legendary History of Cyprian.=--At the basis of the
poetic rendering of this legend in 3 bks. by the Empress Eudocia,
about A.D. 440, lay three little works in prose, still extant in
the Greek original and in various translations. In early youth
Cyprian, impelled by an insatiable craving after knowledge, power
and enjoyment, seeks to obtain all the wisdom of the Greeks, all
the mysteries of the East, and for this purpose travels through
Greece, Egypt, and Chaldæa. But when he gets all this he is
not satisfied; he makes a compact with the devil, to whom he
unreservedly surrenders himself, who in turn places at his
disposal now a great multitude of demons, and promises to make
him hereafter one of his chief princes. Then comes he to Antioch.
There Aglaidas, an eminent heathen sophist, who in vain abandoned
all to win the love of a maiden named Justina, who had taken
vows of perpetual virginity, calls in his magical arts, in order
thereby to gain the end so ardently desired. Cyprian enters into
the affair all the more eagerly since he himself also meanwhile
has entertained a strong passion for the fair maiden. But the
demons sent by him, at last the devil himself, are forced to flee
from her, through her calling on the name of Jesus and making
the sign of the cross, and are obliged to own their powerlessness
before the Christians’ God. Now Cyprian repents, repudiates his
covenant with the devil, lays before an assembly of Antiochean
Christians a confession inspired by the most profound despairing
sorrow of the innumerable mischiefs wrought by him with the help
of the demons, is comforted by the Christians present by means
of consolatory words of scripture, receives baptism, enters
the ranks of the clergy as reader, passes quickly through the
various clerical offices, and suffers the death of a martyr
as bishop of Antioch, along with Justina, under the Emperor
Claudius II.--Gregory Nazianzen too in a discourse delivered at
Constantinople in A.D. 379, “on the day of the holy martyr and
bishop Cyprian,” treated of the legend, in which without more ado
he identifies the converted Antiochean sorcerer with the famous
Carthaginian bishop of that name, and makes him suffer martyrdom
under Decius (?).--The romance may have borrowed the name of its
hero from an old wizard; but his type of character is certainly
to be looked for in the philosophico-theurgical efforts of
the Syrio-Neoplatonic school of Iamblichus (§ 24, 2), in which
the then expiring heathenism gathered up its last energies
for conflict with victorious Christianity. The conception of
the heroine on the other hand, is with slight modifications
borrowed from the Thecla legend (§ 32, 6). By the _Legenda aurea_
(§ 104, 8), which is just an adaptation of this earlier one,
the legend of Cyprian was carried down even beyond the time of
the Reformation. Calderon’s “Wonder-working Magician” presents
a Spanish-Catholic, as the Faustus legend of the 16th century
presents a German Protestant construction, which latter, however,
in direct opposition to the tendency of the early Christian
legend, allows the magician to drop into hell because his
repentance came too late. The Romish Church, however, still
maintains the historical genuineness of the old legend, and
celebrates both of the supposed saints on one day, 25th September.
IV. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES AND HERESIES.
§ 49. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE GENERALLY.
When a considerable fulness of Christian doctrine had already in
previous periods found subjective and therefore variously diversified
development, it had now, besides being required by the altered condition
of things, become necessary that the church should sift and confirm
what was already developed or was still in the course of development.
The endeavour after universal scientific comprehension and accurate
definition became stronger every day. The lively intercourse between
the churches, which prevented the various doctrinal types from being
restricted to particular countries, brought opposite views into contact
and conflict with one another. The court, the people, the monks took
parts, and so the church became the scene of passionate and distracting
struggles, which led to the issuing of a canon of orthodoxy recognised
by the whole Catholic church of the West and of the East, and to the
branding every deviation therefrom with the mark of heresy.
The =Heresies= of the previous period were mainly of a syncretic
kind (§ 26). Those of the period now under consideration have
an evolutionary or formatory character. They consist in the
construction of the system of doctrine by exclusive attention
and extreme estimation of the one side of the Christian
truth that is being developed, which thus passes over into
errors; while it is the task of orthodoxy to give proportionate
development to both sides and to bring them into harmony. Of
syncratic heresies only sporadic traces from the previous period
are found in this (§ 54). The third possible form of heresies is
the revolutionary or reformatory. Heretics of this class fancy
that they see in the developed and fixed system of the Catholic
church excrescences and degenerations which either do not exist,
so that by their removal the church is injured and hindered in
her essential and normal functions, or do really exist, but for
the most part are not now duly distinguished from the results of
sound and normal development, so that the good would be removed
with the bad. During the period under consideration only isolated
instances of this kind of heresy are met with (§ 62).
§ 50. THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY, A.D. 318-381.[150]
The series of doctrinal contendings opened with the Trinitarian or
Arian controversy. It first of all dealt with the nature and being
of the Logos become man in Christ and the relation of this Logos to
the Father. From the time of the controversy of the two Dionysiuses
(§ 33, 7) the idea of the consubstantiality of the Son and the Father
had found supporters even in Alexandria and a new school was formed
with it as the fundamental doctrine (§ 47, 1). But the fear excited
by Sabellius and the Samosatians (§ 33, 8), that the acknowledgment
of the Homoousia might lead to Monarchianism, caused a strong reaction
and doomed many excellent fathers to the bonds of subordinationism.
It was pre-eminently the school of the Antiochean Lucian (§ 31, 9)
that furnished able contenders against the Homoousia. In Origen the
two contraries, subordination and the eternal generation from the
substance of the Father, had been still maintained together (§ 33, 6).
Now they are brought forward apart from one another. On the one side,
Athanasius and his party repudiate subordination but hold firmly by
the eternal generation, and perfected their theory by the adoption
of the Homoousia; but on the other side, Arius and his party gave up
the eternal generation, and held fast to the subordination, and went
to the extreme of proclaiming the Heteroousia. A third intermediate
party, the semi-Arians, mostly Origenists, wished to bind the separated
contraries together with the newly discovered cement of the ὁμοιουσία.
In the further course of the controversies that now broke out and raged
throughout the whole church for almost a century, the question of the
trinitarian position of the Holy Spirit was of necessity dragged into
the discussion. After various experiences of victory and discomfiture,
the Homoousia of the Son and of the Spirit was at last affirmed and
became the watchword of inviolable orthodoxy.
§ 50.1. =Preliminary Victory of the Homoousia,
A.D. 318-325=--=Arius=, a disciple of Lucian, from A.D. 313
presbyter at Alexandria, a man of clear intellect and subtle
critical spirit, was in A.D. 318 charged with the denial of the
divinity of Christ, because he publicly taught that while the
Son was indeed before all time yet He was not from eternity (ἦν
ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), that by the will of the Father (θελήματι θεοῦ) He
was created out of nothing (κτίσμα ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων), and that by
His mediating activity the world was called into being; as the
most perfect created image of the Father and as executor of the
Divine plan of creation, He might indeed in an inexact way be
called θεός and λόγος. =Alexander=, bishop of Alexandria at that
time, who maintained the doctrine of the eternal generation and
consubstantiality, convened a synod at Alexandria in A.D. 321,
which condemned the doctrine of Arius and deposed him. But the
people, who revered him as a strict ascetic, and many bishops,
who shared his views, took part with him. He also applied for
protection to famous bishops in other places, especially to his
former fellow student (Συλλουκιανίστης) Eusebius of Nicomedia,
and to the very influential Eusebius of Cæsarea (§ 47, 2).
The former unreservedly declared himself in favour of the
Arian doctrine; the latter regarded it as at least not dangerous.
Arius spread his views among the people by means of popular songs
for men of various crafts and callings, for millers, sailors,
travellers, etc. In this way a serious schism spread through
almost all the East. In Alexandria the controversy was carried
on so passionately that the pagans made it the subject of reproach
in the theatre. When Constantine the Great received news of
this general commotion he was greatly displeased. He commanded,
fruitlessly, as might be expected, that all needless quarrels
(ἐλάχισται ζητήσεις) should be avoided. Hosius, bishop of Cordŏva,
who carried the imperial injunction to Alexandria, learnt the
state of matters there and the serious nature of the conflict,
and brought the emperor to see the matter in another light.
Constantine now summoned in A.D. 325 an =Œcumenical Council at
Nicæa=, where he himself and 318 bishops met. The majority, with
Eusebius of Cæsarea at their head, were Origenists and sought,
as did also the =Eusebians=, the party of Eusebius of Nicomedia,
to mediate between the opposing views, the latter, however,
being much more favourable to the Arians. The maintainers of the
Homoousia were in a decided minority, but the vigorous eloquence
of the young deacon =Athanasius=, whom Alexander brought with
him, and the favour of the emperor, secured complete ascendancy
to their doctrine. Upon the basis of the baptismal formula
proposed by Eusebius of Cæsarea to his own congregation, a new
confession of faith was sketched out, which was henceforth used
to mark the limits of this trinitarian discussion. In this creed
several expressions were avoided which, though biblical, had
been understood by the Arians in a sense of their own, such as
πρωτότοκος πάσης τῆς κτίσεως πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνιων, and in their
place strictly Homoousian formulæ were substituted, ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας
τοῦ πατρός, γεννηθεὶς οὐ ποιηθεὶς, ὁμοούσιος τῷ πατρί; while with
added anathemas those entertaining opposite views were condemned.
This was the =Symbolum Nicænum=. Arius was excommunicated and
his writings condemned to be burnt. Dread of deposition and love
of peace induced many to subscribe who were not convinced. Only
Arius himself and two Egyptian bishops, Theonas and Secundus,
refused and went into exile to Illyria. Also Eusebius of Nicomedia
and Theognis of Nicæa, who subscribed the Symbol but refused to
sign the anathematizing formula, were three months afterwards
banished to Gaul.[151]
§ 50.2. =Victory of Eusebianism, A.D. 328-356.=--This unity
under the Nicene Symbol was merely artificial and could not
therefore be enduring. The emperor’s dying sister Constantia and
the persuasion of distinguished bishops induced Constantine to
return to his earlier view of the controversy. Arius agreed to
a Confession drawn up in general terms and was, along with the
other banished ones, restored in A.D. 328. Soon thereafter, in
A.D. 330, the emperor commanded that Arius should be restored to
office. But meanwhile, in A.D. 328, Athanasius himself had become
bishop and replied with unfaltering determination that he would
not comply. The emperor threatened him with deposition, but by
a personal conference Athanasius made such an impression upon him
that he gave way. The enemies of Athanasius, however, especially
the Meletians driven on by Eusebius of Nicomedia (§ 41, 4),
ceased not to excite suspicion about him as a disturber of the
peace, and got the emperor to reopen the question at a Synod at
Tyre, in A.D. 335. consisting of pure Arians. Athanasius appealed
against its verdict of deposition. A new Synod was convened
at Constantinople in A.D. 335 and the emperor banished him to
Treves in A.D. 336. It was now enjoined that, notwithstanding
the opposition of the bishop of Constantinople, Arius should
be there received back again into church fellowship, but on
the evening before the day appointed he died suddenly, being
over eighty years old. Constantine the Great soon followed him,
A.D. 337, and Constantine II. restored Athanasius to his church
which received him with enthusiasm. Constantius, however, was
decidedly favourable to the Eusebians, and this gave tone to the
court and to the capital where in all the streets and markets,
in all the shops and houses, the questions referred to were
considered and discussed. The Eastern bishops for the most part
vacillated between the two extremes and let themselves be led by
Eusebius of Nicomedia. He and his party managed for a time to set
aside the Homoousian formula and yet to preserve an appearance of
orthodoxy. Eusebius, who from A.D. 338 was bishop in the capital,
died in A.D. 341, but his party continued to intrigue in his
spirit. The whole West, on the other hand, was strictly Nicæan.
The Eusebians in A.D. 340 opened a Council at Antioch, which
anew deposed Athanasius, and put in his place a rude Cappadocian,
Gregorius [Gregory]. Athanasius fled to Rome, where a Council
under bishop Julius in A.D. 341 solemnly acknowledged his
orthodoxy and innocence. A new Council convened at Antioch in
A.D. 340 for the consecration of a church, sketched four creeds
one after another, approaching indeed, in order to conciliate
the West, as closely as possible that of Nicæa, but carefully
avoiding the term ὁμοούσιος. In the interests of unity Constantius
and Constans jointly convened an Œcumenical Council at Sardica in
Illyria in A.D. 344. But when the Westerns under the presidency
of Hosius, disregarding the Antiochean anathema, allowed a seat
and vote to Athanasius, the Easterns withdrew and formed an
opposition Council at Philippopolis in Thrace. At Sardica where
important privileges were granted to the Roman bishop Julius
(§ 46, 3), the Nicene creed was renewed and Athanasius was
restored. Constantius, after Gregorius [Gregory] had died, who
meanwhile had become doubly hated because of his violent deeds,
confirmed Athanasius’ restoration, and the Alexandrian church
received again their old pastor with shouts of joy. But after the
death of Constans in A.D. 350, Constantius was again won over to
the side of the Arians. They assembled at the Council of Sirmium
in Pannonia in A.D. 351, where, however, they did not strike
directly at Athanasius but at first only at a friend of his who
presented to them a weak spot. The bishop =Marcellus of Ancyra=
in Galatia by his zealous defence of the Nicene _Homoousia_ had
been betrayed into the use of Sabellian expressions and views.
At a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 336 he was on this account
suspended, and then contended with by Eusebius of Cæsarea in the
course of this Council; but in the West and at the Council of
Sardica he had been defended. Afterwards, however, one of his
own scholars =Photinus=, bishop of Sirmium, had drifted into
unmistakable, and indeed into dynamic Monarchianism (§ 33, 1).
His doctrine had been already rejected as heretical at a Council
at Antioch in A.D. 344 and also in the West at a distinctly
Nicæan Council at Milan in A.D. 345. The Council of Sirmium
now formally deposed him and with his condemned also Marcellus’
doctrine.[152] The Eusebians, however, were not satisfied with
this. So soon as Constantius by the conquest of the usurper
Magnentius got an absolutely free hand, he arranged at their
instigation for two Eusebian Synods, one at Arles in Gaul,
A.D. 353, the other at Milan, A.D. 355, where Athanasius was
again condemned. The emperor now commanded that all Western
bishops should subscribe his condemnation. Those who refused were
deposed and banished. Among them were, the Roman bishop Liberius,
Hosius of Cordova, Hilary of Poitiers, Eusebius of Vercelli,
and Lucifer of Calăris [Calaris]. And now a second Gregorius
[Gregory], a Cappadocian, not less rude and passionate than the
first, was forcibly installed bishop of Alexandria. Athanasius
performed the service in a quiet and dignified manner, and then
withdrew to the monks in the Egyptian desert in A.D. 356. Thus
it seemed that Arianism in the modified or rather concealed form
of Eusebianism had secured a final victory throughout the whole
range of the Roman Empire.
§ 50.3. =Victory of Homoiousianism, A.D. 357-361.=--The Eusebians
now, however, fell out among themselves. The more extreme party,
with the Antiochean deacon Aëtius and bishop Eunomius of Cyzicus
at their head, carried their heresy so far as to declare that
the Son is unlike to the Father (ἀνόμοιος). They were hence
called =Anomœans=, also _Exucontians_ (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων). But also
the distinctly moderate party, called =semi-Arians=[153] or
_Homoiousians_, from their adoption of the formula ὁμοιούσιος,
made preparations for a decisive conflict. At their head stood
Basil, bishop of Ancyra, and Constantius too was favourable
to them. But the intriguing court bishops, Ursacius and Valens,
strictly Arian at heart, knew how to gain their ends by secret
paths. With the emperor’s consent they held a second Council at
Sirmium in A.D. 357, where it was resolved to avoid wholly the
non-biblical phrase οὐσία, which caused all the contention, to
abandon all definitions of the nature of God which to man is
incomprehensible, and to unite upon the simple formula, that
the Son is _like_ the Father (ὅμοιος hence the name =Homoians=).
Hosius of Cordova, facile through age and sufferings, bought his
reprieve by subscription. He died, after a bitter repentance,
in A.D. 361, when almost a hundred years old. The rest of
the Westerns, however, at the Synod of Agenum renewed their
Nicene Confession; the semi-Arians under Basil at Ancyra their
Antiochean Confession. The latter, too, found access to the
emperor, who let their Confession be confirmed at a third Synod
at Sirmium in A.D. 358, and obliged the court bishops to sign it.
The latter then came to a compromise with the semi-Arians in the
formula: τὸν Υἱὸν ὅμοιον τῷ Πατρὶ εἶναι κατὰ πάντα ὡς αἱ ἅγιαι
γραφαὶ λέγουσιν. Liberius of Rome, too, worn out with three
years’ exile, agreed to sign this symbol and ventured to return
to Rome (§ 46, 4). The formula pleased the emperor so well that
he decided to have it confirmed by an œcumenical Council. But in
order to prevent the dreaded combination of the Homoousians and
Homoiousians in the West, Ursacius and Valens contrived to have
two Councils instead of one, an Eastern Council at Seleucia and
a Western Council at Rimini, A.D. 359. Both rejected the formula
of Sirmium; the Easterns holding by that of Antioch, the Westerns
by that of Nicæa. But Ursacius knew how by cunning intrigues to
weary them out. When the bishops had spent two years at Seleucia
and Rimini, which seemed to them no better than banishment, and
their messengers after a half year’s journey had not succeeded
in obtaining an audience of the emperor, they at last subscribed
the _Homoian_ symbol. Those who refused, Aëtius and Eunomius,
were persecuted as disturbers of the church’s peace. Thus
the Homoian creed prevailed through the whole Roman empire.
Constantius’ death, however, in A.D. 361, soon broke up this
artificial bond.
§ 50.4. =Final Victory of the Nicene Creed, A.D. 361-381.=--Julian
gave equal rights to all parties and recalled all the banished
bishops, so that many churches had two or three bishops.
Athanasius also returned. For the restoration of church order
he called a Synod at Alexandria in A.D. 362, and here in the
exercise of a gentle and wise temper he received back into church
fellowship the penitent Arian bishops, in spite of the protest
of the strict zealot Lucifer of Calaris. The happy results of
Athanasius’ procedure led the emperor again to banish him, on the
pretext that he was a disturber of the peace. Julian’s successor,
Jovian, was favourable to the Nicene doctrine and immediately
restored Athanasius, A.D. 364, meanwhile extending toleration
to the Arians. But Valens, to whom his brother Valentinian I.
surrendered the East, A.D. 364-378, proved a zealous Arian. He
raged with equal violence against the Athanasians and against
the semi-Arians, and thus drove the two into close relations
with one another. Athanasius was obliged to flee, but ventured
after four months to return, and lived in peace to the end of
his days. He died in A.D. 373. Valens was meanwhile restricted
in his persecutions on two sides, by the pressing representations
of his brother Valentinian, and by the manly resistance of
eminent bishops, especially the three Cappadocians (§ 47, 4).
The machinations of the Western empress Justinia, during
the minority of her son Valentinian II., were successfully
checkmated by Ambrose of Milan. He passively but victoriously
opposed the soldiers who were to take possession of his church
for the Arians by a congregation praying and singing psalms.
Theodosius the Great gave its deathblow to Arianism. He called
Gregory Nazianzen to the patriarchal chair at Constantinople.
To Gregory also at a subsequent time he assigned the presidency
of the so-called =Second Œcumenical Council at Constantinople
in A.D. 381=.[154]--When, however, his patriarchate was attacked,
because he had changed his bishopric (§ 45), he resigned
his office. No new Symbol was here drawn up, but only the
Nicene Symbol was confirmed as irrefragable. On the so-called
Nicæan-Constantinopolitan Symbol, comp. § 59, 2. After this
the Arians ventured only to hold services outside of the cities.
Subsequently all churches in the empire were taken from them.--The
Constantinopolitan Council of A.D. 381 did not fairly represent
parties. Being called by the then merely Eastern emperor, and
so consisting only of Eastern bishops, it was not properly an
œcumenical synod, and for a long time even in the East itself was
not regarded as such. Still it was of importance to the bishop of
Constantinople that it should have this rank, and his endeavours
were favoured by the circumstance that it had been called
by Theodosius who was honoured both in East and West as Sole
Potentate and “second Constantine.” After the Council of
Chalcedon in A.D. 451 (§ 46, 1) the whole East was unanimous
in recognising it. The West, however, at least Rome, still
rejected it, until finally under Justinian I., in consequence
of the Roman chair becoming dependent upon the Byzantine court
(§ 46, 9), the dispute was here no longer agitated.
§ 50.5. =The Pneumatomachians, A.D. 362-381.=--Arius and the
Arians had described the Holy Spirit as the first creature
produced by the Son. But even zealous defenders of the Homoousia
of the Son vacillated. The Nicene Symbol was satisfied with
a bare καὶ εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα ἅγιον; and even Hilary of Poitiers,
avoiding all exact definition, contented himself with recording
the phrases of Scripture. But Athanasius, at the Synod of
Alexandria in A.D. 362, Didymus the Blind, and the three
Cappadocians, consistently applied their idea of the Homoousia
to the Spirit and won the adhesion of the Nicene theologians.
It was hardest for the semi-Arians who had accepted the
Nicene platform, at whose head stood Macedonius, bishop
of Constantinople, who had been deposed by the Homoians
in A.D. 360, to acquiesce in this conclusion (Macedonians,
Pneumatomachians). The so-called second œcumenical Council
of A.D. 381 sanctioned in a now lost doctrinal “Tome” the full
Homoousia of the Holy Spirit. The West had already in A.D. 380
at a Roman Synod under the presidency of Bishop Damasus condemned
in 24 anathemas, along with all other trinitarian errors, every
sort of opposition to the perfect Homoousia of the Spirit.[155]
§ 50.6. =The Literature of the Controversy.=--Arius himself
developed his doctrine in a half poetical writing, the Θάλεια,
fragments of which are given by Athanasius. Arianism found a
zealous apologist in the Sophist Asterius, whose treatise is lost.
The church historian, Philostorgius (§ 5, 1), sought to vindicate
it historically. On the semi-Arian side Eusebius of Cæsarea wrote
against Marcellus--Κατὰ Μαρκέλλου and Περὶ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς
θεολογίας. The Ἀπολογητικός of Eunomius is lost. Among the
opponents of Arianism, Athanasius occupies by a long way the
first place (IV. Orations against the Arians, Ep. concerning
Councils of Seleucia and Ariminum, Hist. of Arians to the Monks,
Apology against the Arians, etc., all included in Hist. Tracts
of Athanasius, “Lib. of Fath.,” 2 vols., Oxf., 1843 f.). On the
works of Apollinaris belonging to this controversy see § 47, 5.
Basil the Great wrote 4 bks. against Eunomius; Περὶ τοῦ ἁγίου
Πνεῦματος, Ad Amphilochium, against the Pneumatomachians.
Gregory Nazianzen wrote five Λόγοι θεολογικοί. Gregory of Nyssa
12 Λόγοι ἀντιῤῥητικοὶ κατὰ Εὐνομίου. Didymus the Blind, 3 bks.
_De Trinitate_. Epiphanius, the Ἀγκυρώτος. Cyril of Alexandria
a θησαυρὸς περὶ τῆς ἁγίας καὶ ὁμοούσιας Τριάδος. Chrysostom
delivered twelve addresses against the Anomoians. Theodoret
wrote _Dialogi VII. d. s. Trinitate_. Ephraëm [Ephraim] Syrus,
too, combated the Arians frequently in his sermons. Among the
Latins the most celebrated polemists are: Lucifer of Calaris
(_Ad Constantium p. Lb. II. pro Athen._); Hilary of Poitiers
(_De Trinitate Lb. I., de Synodus s. de fide Orientalium, contra
Constantium Aug._; _C. Auxentium_); Phœbadius, bishop of Agenum
about A.D. 359 (_C. Arianos_); Ambrose (_De fide ad Gratianum
Aug. Lb. V._); Augustine (_C. Sermonem Arianorum_; _Collatio
cum Maximo Arianorum episc._; _C. Maximinum_); Fulgentius of
Ruspe (_C. Arianos_, and 3 bks. against the Arian Vandal king
Thrasimund).
§ 50.7. =Post-Nicene Development of the Dogma.=--Even the
Nicene Symbol did not completely surmount every trace of
subordinationism. It is at least capable of a subordinationist
interpretation when the Father alone is called εἷς θεός and so
identified with the Monas. Augustine completely surmounted this
defect (_De Trinitate Lb. XV._). The personality of the Spirit,
too, as well as His relation to the Father and the Son, had not
yet been determined. A step was taken towards the formulating of
the doctrine of the Spirit’s personality by the acknowledgment
in the now lost Tome of the Council of Constantinople of A.D. 381
of the full Homoousia of the Spirit with the Father and the
Son.[156] But the doctrine of the Spirit’s relations to Father
and Son still continued undetermined and even by the addition
(to the εἰς τὸ πν. ἅγ.) of: τὸ κυρίον, τὸ ζωοποιὸν, τὸ ἐκ πατρὸς
ἐκπορευόμενον, τὸ σὺν τῷ πατρὶ καὶ τῷ υἱῷ συνπροσκυνούμενον
καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον in the so-called _Symbolum Nic.-Constant._
(§ 59, 2), a definition so incomplete was obtained, that even
five hundred years afterwards the great schism that rent the
church into an Eastern and a Western division found in this
its doctrinal basis (§ 67, 1). Augustine, too, had meanwhile
come forward with a further development of this doctrine,
and taught in his speculation upon the Spirit that He proceeded
from the Son as well as from the Father (John xv. 26).
Fulgentius of Ruspe was the next most famous representative
of the further development of the dogma (_De s. Trinitate_).
The so-called Athanasian Creed (§ 59, 2) simply adopted this
advanced development in the proposition: _qui procedit a
Patre et Filio_. Similarly the _Filioque_ is found also in the
so-called Nic.-Constant. Creed laid before the Synod of Toledo
in A.D. 589 (§ 76, 2).--Continuation § 67, 1; § 91, 2.
§ 50.8. =Schisms in consequence of the Arian Controversy.=
I. =The Meletian Schism at Antioch.= The Arians at Antioch
had already in A.D. 330 driven away Eustathius, the bishop
of the see, who favoured the Nicene doctrine. A portion
of his people, however, remained attached to him and
Homoousianism under the leadership of the Presbyter
Paulinus, and were called Eustathians. When in A.D. 360
Eudoxius, the Arian bishop, left Antioch, in order to
take possession of the episcopal chair of the capital,
his former congregation chose Meletius, bishop of Sebaste,
formerly a Eusebian, but for some time friendly to the
Nicene party, as his successor. His first sermon, however,
served to undeceive those who had chosen him, so that after
a few weeks they drove him away and put Euzoius, a decided
Arian, in his place. Yet he had already won a following
in the congregation which, when Julian’s succession made
it possible for him to return, took him back as bishop.
Athanasius and the Alexandrian Synod of A.D. 362 had
meanwhile made every effort to reconcile these Meletians
and the Eustathians and to unite them under the banner of
Nicæanism. But Lucifer, bishop of Calaris, sent to Antioch
for this purpose, confirmed the schism instead of healing
it by ordaining Paulinus bishop on the death of Eustathius
in A.D. 360. The whole church now took sides, the East that
of Meletius, the West along with Egypt, that of Paulinus.
The Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 gave to Meletius
the presidency as the oldest bishop present. When, after
two days, he died, Gregory Nazianzen, his successor in the
presidency, recommended that the next election should be
postponed till the death of the aged Paulinus and that then
both parties should join the election. It was, however, all
in vain. Flavian was appointed successor to Meletius, and
when Paulinus died in A.D. 388, the Presbyter Evagrius was
chosen opposition bishop in his stead. Theodosius I., from
A.D. 392 sole ruler, insisted upon the West recognising
Flavian. But in Antioch itself the schism lasted down
to the death of Evagrius. Finally, in A.D. 415, the
able successor of Flavian, bishop Alexander, effected
a reconciliation, by taking part on a feast day along with
his congregation in the public worship of the Eustathians,
joining with them in singing and prayer, and in this way
won them over to join him in the principal church.
II. =The Schism of the Luciferians.= After Lucifer by his
irrational zeal had caused so much discord in Antioch,
he returned in A.D. 362 to Alexandria, and there protested
against Athanasius for receiving back penitent Arians and
semi-Arians. He and his fanatical adherents formed the
sect of Luciferians, which renewed the Novatianist demands
for Church purity, and continued to exist down to the fifth
century.
III. On the =Schism of Damasus and Ursacius at Rome=, see
§ 46, 4.
§ 51. THE ORIGENIST CONTROVERSIES, A.D. 394-438.
Naturally and necessarily the Christological are closely connected
with the Trinitarian controversies (§ 52). But between the two comes in
another controversy, the Origenistic, which was indeed more of personal
than of ecclesiastical interest, but still strengthened the church in
the conviction that Origen was an arch-heretic.
§ 51.1. =The Monks of the Scetic and Nitrian Deserts.=--The most
distinguished defenders of Nicene orthodoxy, Athanasius, the three
Cappadocians, Didymus, Hilary, etc., had all held Origen in high
esteem. But the constant references of the Arians to his authority
brought him into discredit, not only among the more narrow-minded
opposers of Arius, especially in the West, but also among the
monks of the Scetic desert in Egypt, with Pachomius at their
head. These repudiated the speculation of Origen as the source
of all heresy, and in their views of God and divine things
adopted a crude anthropomorphism. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis,
also belonged originally to this party (§ 47, 10). In direct
opposition to them, another Egyptian monkish order in the Nitrian
desert adhered to Origen with enthusiastic reverence and occupied
themselves in a pious contemplative mysticism that tended to a
somewhat extreme spiritualism.
§ 51.2. =The Controversy in Palestine and Italy,
A.D. 394-399.=--In Palestine Origen had a warm supporter in
=bishop of Jerusalem=, and in the two Latins =Jerome= and
=Rufinus= who were staying there (§ 47, 16, 17). But when
in A.D. 394 a couple of Westerns who happened to come there
expressed their surprise, Jerome, anxious for his reputation
for orthodoxy, was at once prepared to condemn the errors of
Origen. Meanwhile the Scetic monks had called the attention
of the old zealot =Epiphanius= to the Palestinian nursery of
heresy. Immediately he made his way thither and took advantage
of John’s friendly invitation to occupy his pulpit by preaching
a violent sermon against Origenism. John then preached against
anthropomorphism. Epiphanius pronounced an anathema against that
tendency but desired John to do the same in regard to Origenism.
When John refused, then Epiphanius, together with Jerome and the
Bethlehemite monks withdrew from communion with John and Rufinus,
and invaded John’s episcopal rights by ordaining a presbyter
over the Bethlehemite monks. Now sprang up a violent controversy,
which Theophilus of Alexandria, by sending the presbyter Isidore,
sought to allay. Jerome and Rufinus were reconciled at the altar
in A.D. 396. The latter soon again returned to the West. He
translated, omitting objectionable passages, Origen’s work Περὶ
ἀρχῶν, and was indiscreet enough to remark in the preface that
even the orthodox Jerome was an admirer of Origen. Stirred up
by his Roman friends, Jerome began with unmeasured violence
a passionate polemic against Origenism and the friend of his
youth. He produced at the same time a literal rendering, no
longer extant, of the Περὶ ἀρχῶν. Rufinus replied with equal
bitterness, and the passion displayed by both led to further
causes of offence. The Roman bishop Siricius took part with
Rufinus, but his successor Anastasius summoned him to answer
for his opinions at Rome. Rufinus did not appear, but sent
an apology which so little satisfied Anastasius that he rather
consented to send letters to John of Jerusalem and other oriental
bishops in condemnation of Origenism, A.D. 399. Rufinus withdrew
to Aquileia and there continued to translate the writings of
Origen and others of the Greeks.
§ 51.3. =The Controversy in Alexandria and Constantinople,
A.D. 399-438.=--=Theophilus=, patriarch of Alexandria, a pompous,
ambitious and strong-handed ecclesiastical prince, had down to
A.D. 399 been on good terms with the Origenist monks and even
in the Easter address of that year expressed himself in strong
terms against the heresy of the anthropomorphists. The monks rose
in rebellion over this, attacked him with clubs and forced him
to pronounce an anathema upon Origen. Soon thereafter he had a
personal dispute with his former friends. The aged and venerable
presbyter Isidore and the four so-called “long brothers,” ἀδελφοὶ
μακροί, two of whom served in his church as _œconomi_, refused to
pay him pupils’ and legates’ money and fled from his passionate
displeasure to their companions in the Nitrian desert. In
A.D. 399, however, at an endemic Synod at Alexandria he condemned
Origen, and in A.D. 401 published a violent manifesto against
the Origenists.[157] The noble but shortsighted Epiphanius
approved it and Jerome hastened to translate it into Latin. With
rude military force the Nitrian monks were scattered and driven
away. Persecuted by the warrants issued by the patriarch, they
sought protection from bishop =John Chrysostom= at Constantinople
(§ 47, 8), whose intercession, however, Theophilus contemptuously
rejected. For peace sake Chrysostom now wished to retire. But the
monks found access to the Empress Eudoxia, and upon her appeal
to the Emperor Arcadius, Theophilus was cited before a Synod at
Constantinople over which Chrysostom presided. Theophilus foamed
with rage. He succeeded by misrepresentation of the facts to win
to his side the zealot Epiphanius. The noble old man hasted full
of zeal and prejudice to Constantinople, but coming to see things
in their true light, he withdrew from them with the words, “I
leave to you the court and hypocrisy.” Theophilus, however, knew
well how to get on with the court and hypocrisy. Chrysostom,
by severe and searching preaching, had aroused the anger of
the Empress. Relying upon this, Theophilus landed with a great
retinue at Constantinople, and organized at the Empress’s estate
of Drus, the Oak, near Chalcedon, a Council, _Synodus ad Quercum_,
A.D. 403, which pronounced Chrysostom guilty of immorality,
offences against the church and high treason. The Emperor
condemned him to exile. Chrysostom soothed the people excited
in his favour, and allowed himself quietly to be sent away. A
violent earthquake, however, next night and the incontrollable
excitement of the populace, led the Emperor to entreat the
exile by special messenger immediately to return. After three
days’ absence he had a triumphal entrance again into the city.
Theophilus fled precipitately to Alexandria. Soon thereafter
Chrysostom very solemnly denounced the noisy inauguration of
a statue of the empress during the celebration of worship, and
when on this account her rage flamed up against him afresh, the
unfortunate words were uttered by him in a sermon on the day of
John the Baptist: Πάλιν Ἡρωδίας μαίνεται, πάλιν πράσσεται, πάλιν
ἐπὶ πίνακι τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ Ἰωάννου ζητεῖ λαβεῖν. Now the game
was again in Theophilus’ favour. His party fanned the flame at
the court. During the Easter vigils, A.D. 404, armed men burst
into the church of Chrysostom and carried him away an exile to
Cucusus in Armenia. With heroic courage he bore all the miseries
of the journey, the climate and the wild lawless neighbourhood.
With his people from the place of his banishment he maintained
regular pastoral intercourse.--Soon after the outbreak of
the conflict, Theophilus as well as Chrysostom had diligently
sought to obtain the support of the West. Both sent letters and
messengers to Rome, Milan and Aquileia, seeking to justify their
cases before the churches. Innocent I. of Rome urged the deciding
of the controversy at an œcumenical Council, but did not carry
his point. After the disgraceful banishment of Chrysostom the
whole West took his side, and Innocent got Honorius to apply to
Arcadius for his recall; but the only result was that in A.D. 407
he was sent to still more severe banishment at Pityus, on the
Black Sea. He succumbed to the fatigues of the journey and
died on the way with words on his lips that had been the motto
of his life: Δόξα τῷ θεῷ πάντων ἕνεκεν. A great part of his
congregation at Constantinople refused to acknowledge the new
patriarch Arsacius and his successor Atticus, and continued apart,
notwithstanding all persecutions, under the name of Johannites,
until Theodosius II. in A.D. 438 fetched back with honour the
bones of their revered pastor and laid them in the imperial vault.
Amid personal animosities and embittered feelings the Origenist
controversy was long lost to view, but we must return to it again
further on (§ 52, 6).[158]
§ 52. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY.[159]
In the Trinitarian controversy we dealt with the pre- and
extra-historical existence of the Son of God, with His divine nature
in itself; but now, at the crucial point of Christian speculation and
ecclesiastical conflict, we come to treat of His historical existence
as that of the incarnate Son of God, of the connection of the divine
nature of the Logos with the human nature of the Son of Mary, and of
the mutual relations of both to one another. Even during the Arian
controversy the conflict was begun, and while the church maintained
against Arius the full divinity of Christ, it also affirmed against
Apollinaris the completeness of His humanity. In three further phases
this conflict was continued. In the Dyoprosopic controversy the church
maintained the unity of the Person of Christ against the Antiochean
extreme represented by Nestorius, which hold both natures so far
apart that the result seemed to be two persons. In the Monophysite
controversy the opposite extreme of the new Alexandrian school
was combated, which in the unity of the person lost sight of the
distinctness of the natures. In the Monothelite controversy a unionistic
effort was resisted which indeed allowed the duality of natures to be
affirmed nominally, but practically denied it by the acknowledgment of
only one will.
§ 52.1. =The Apollinarian Controversy,
A.D. 362-381.=[160]--Previously the older _Modalists_, _e.g._,
Beryllus and Sabellius, had taught that by the incarnation the
Logos had received merely a human body. Marcellus shared this
view; but also his antipodes Arius had adopted it in order
to avoid postulating two creatures in Christ. Athanasius held
by the doctrine of Origen, that the human soul in Christ is
a necessary bond between the Logos and the body, as well as
an organ for giving expression to the Logos through the body.
At the Synod of Alexandria, A.D. 362, therefore, he obtained
ecclesiastical sanction for the recognition of a complete human
nature in Christ. =Apollinaris= of Laodicea (§ 47, 5), who had
helped to arrange for this Council, also disapproved of the
expression σῶμα ἄψυχον, but yet thought that the doctrine of
the completeness of the human nature must be denied. He was led
to this position by his adoption of trichotomic principles. He
maintained that Christ has taken merely a σῶμα with a ψυχὴ ἄλογος,
and that the place of the ψυχὴ λογικὴ (ὁ νοῦς) was represented
in him by the divine Logos. If this were not so then, he thought,
one must assume two persons in Christ or let Christ sink down
to the position of a mere ἄνθρωπος ἔνθεος. Only in this way
too could absolute sinlessness be affirmed of him. On the other
hand, Athanasius and the two Gregories saw that in this way
the substantiality of the incarnation and the completeness of
redemption were lost. The so-called second œcumenical Council of
A.D. 381 rejected the doctrine of Apollinaris, who with his party
was excluded from the Church. The Apollinarians subsequently
joined the Monophysites.
§ 52.2. =Christology of the Opposing Theological Schools.=--In
consequence of the Arian controversy the perfect divinity, and in
consequence of the Apollinarian controversy the perfect humanity,
of Christ were finally established. On the relation between
the two natures conditioned by the union there was definite
result attained unto. Apollinaris had taught a connection of
the divinity with the _incomplete_ manhood so intimate that
he had unwittingly destroyed the duality of the natures, and
by means of an ἀντιμεθίστασις τῶν ὀνομάτων transferred the
attributes of the one nature to the other; so that not only
the body of Christ must have been deified and have been therefore
worthy of worship, but also birth, suffering and death must be
referred to His divinity. In his treatise: Κατὰ μέρος πίστις,
he teaches: οὐ δύο πρόσωπα, οὐδὲ δύο φύσεις, οὐδὲ γὰρ τέσσαρα
προσκυνεῖν λέγομεν, θεὸν καὶ υἱὸν θεοῦ καὶ ἄνθρωπον καὶ πνεῦμα
ἅγιον, and in the tract _De incarnatione Verbi_, wrongly
attributed to Athanasius: Ὁμολογοῦμεν εἶναι αὐτὸν υἱὸν τοῦ
θεοῦ καὶ θεὸν κατὰ πνεῦμα, υἱὸν ἀνθρώπου κατὰ σάρκα· οὐ δύο
φύσεις τὸν ἕνα υἱὸν, μίαν προσκυνητὴν καὶ μίαν ἀπροσκύνητον,
ἀλλὰ μίαν φύσιν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκομένην καὶ προσκυνομένην
μετὰ τῆς σάρκος αὐτοῦ μίᾳ προσκυνήσει. So, too, in the Epistle
ascribed to Julius of Rome. The =Alexandrian Theology=, although
rejecting the mutilation of the human nature favoured by
Apollinaris, sympathized with him in his love for the mystical,
the inconceivable and the transcendental. In opposition to the
Arian heresy it gave special emphasis to the divinity of Christ
and taught a ἕνωσις φυσική of both natures. Only before the
union and _in abstracto_ can we speak of two natures; after
the incarnation and _in concreto_ we can speak only of one
divine-human nature. Mary was therefore spoken of as the mother
of God, θεοτόκος. Athanasius in his treatise against Apollinaris
acknowledged an ἀσύγχυτος φυσικὴ ἕνωσις τοῦ λόγου πρὸς τὴν ἰδίαν
αὐτοῦ γενομένην σάρκα, and explained this φυσικὴ ἕνωσις as a
ἕνωσις κατὰ φύσιν. The Cappadocians (§ 47, 4) indeed expressly
admitted two natures, ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλα, but yet taught a commingling
of them, σύγκρασις, κατάμιξις, a συνδραμεῖν of the two natures,
εἰς ἕν, a μεταποιηθῆναι of the σὰρξ πρὸς τὴν θεότητα. Cyril of
Alexandria taught that the ἐνσάρκωσις was a φυσικὴ ἕνωσις, an
incarnation in the proper sense. Christ consists ἐκ δύο φύσεων,
but not ἐκ δύο φύσεσι, _i.e._ only before the incarnation and
_in abstracto_ (κατὰ μόνην τὴν θεωρίαν) can we speak of two
natures. In the God-man two natures would be two subjects, and
so there would be two Christs; the redeemer would then only be
an ἄνθρωπος θεοφόρος and not a θεάνθρωπος, and could thus afford
no guarantee of a complete redemption, etc. The =Antiochean
Theology= (§ 47, 8, 9), in opposition to Apollinaris, affirmed
most emphatically the complete and unchangeable reality of the
human nature of Christ at and after its union with the divine.
It would therefore only admit of a συναφεία or a ἕνωσις σχετική,
by which both are brought into the relation (σχέσις) of common
being and common action. Expressions like θεοτόκος, θεὸς
ἐγγέννηθεν, θεὸς ἔπαθεν, seemed to the thinkers of this school
blasphemous, or at least absurd. They acknowledged indeed that
the σάρξ of Christ is worthy of adoration but only in so far as
it is the organ of the redeeming Logos, not because in itself
it shares in the divine attributes. The most developed form of
this doctrine was presented by Theodore of Mopsuestia in strict
connection with his anthropology and soteriology. The historical
development of the God-man is with him the type and pattern of
the historical redemption of mankind. Christ assumed a complete
human nature, with all its sinful affections and tendencies,
but he fought these down and raised His human nature by constant
conflict and victory to that absolute perfection to which by the
same way He leads us through the communication of His Spirit.
He expressly guarded himself against the charge of making Christ
into two persons: Christ is ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο, but not ἄλλος καὶ
ἄλλος for the human nature has in the incarnation renounced
personality and independence.--Each of these two schools
represented one side of the truth of the church’s doctrine;
in the union of the two sides the church proclaimed the full
truth. On the other hand the two schools proceeded more and more
one-sidedly to emphasise each its own side of the truth, and so
tended toward positive error. Thus arose two opposite errors, the
separating of the natures and the confusing of the natures, which
the church rejected one after the other, and proclaimed the truth
that lay at the root of both.--During this discussion arose the
=Western Theology= as the regulator of the debate. So long as it
dealt with the one-sided extreme of the Antiocheans it stood side
by side with the Alexandrians. Augustine, _e.g._ used indeed the
expression _mixture_, but in reality he explains the relation
of both natures to one another quite in accordance with the
afterwards settled orthodoxy. But when at last the method of
exclusions reached the error of the Alexandrians, the Westerns
turned quite as decidedly to the other side and maintained the
union of the two sides of the truth (Leo the Great). The conflict
attracted great attention when it broke out at first in the West,
but it was so quickly settled that soon no trace of it remained.
In Southern Gaul a monk Leporius came forward teaching the
Antiochean doctrine of the union of the two natures. In A.D. 426
he went to Africa, entered into conflict with Augustine, but
retracted his errors almost immediately.
§ 52.3. =The Dyoprosopic or Nestorian Controversy,
A.D. 428-444.=[161]--In A.D. 428 a monk of Antioch called
=Nestorius=, a distinguished orator, was appointed patriarch of
Constantinople. He was an eloquent and pious man but hasty and
imprudent, with little knowledge of the world and human nature,
and immoderately severe against heretics. The hatred of an
unsuccessful rival in Constantinople called Proclus and the
rivalry of the patriarch of Alexandria, who hated him not only as
a rival but as an Antiochean, made the position of the unsupported
monk a very hard one, and his protection of the expatriated
Pelagians (§ 53, 4) excited the Roman bishop Cœlestine against
him. Anastasius, a presbyter brought with him by Nestorius,
was annoyed at the frequent use of the expression θεοτόκος and
preached against it. Nestorius took his part against people and
monks, sentenced the monks who had insulted him personally to
endure corporal punishment, and at an endemic Synod in A.D. 439
condemned the doctrine objected to. And now Cyril of Alexandria
(§ 47, 6) entered the lists as champion of the Alexandrian
dogmatics. He won to himself Cœlestine of Rome (§ 46, 6), as
well as bishops Memnon of Ephesus and Juvenalis [Juvenal] of
Jerusalem, and at the court, Pulcheria (sister of Theodosius II.
A.D. 408-450); while the empress Eudocia (§ 48, 5) and the Syrian
bishops took the side of Nestorius. All conciliatory attempts
were frustrated by the stiffness of the two patriarchs. Cœlestine
of Rome in A.D. 430 demanded of Nestorius a recantation within
ten days, and Cyril at a Synod of Alexandria in A.D. 430 produced
twelve strong counterpropositions containing anathemas, which
Nestorius answered immediately by twelve counteranathemas. Thus
the controversy and the parties engaged in it became more and
more violent. For its settlement the emperor called the so-called
=Third= (properly =Second=, comp. § 50, 4) =Œcumenical Council
at Ephesus in A.D. 431=. Nestorius enjoyed the decided favour
of the emperor, the imperial plenipotentiary was his personal
friend, and a portion of the emperor’s bodyguard accompanied him
to Ephesus. But Cyril appeared with a great retinue of bishops
and a faithful guard of servants of the church and seamen, who
should in case of need prove the correctness of the Alexandrian
dogmatics with their fists. In addition Memnon of Ephesus had in
readiness a crowd of clergy, monks and people from Asia Minor.
Before the Roman legates and the Syrian bishops had arrived Cyril
opened the Council without them with 200 bishops. Nestorianism
was condemned, Nestorius excommunicated and deposed, and
Cyril’s anathematizing propositions adopted as the standard
of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The Roman legate recognised the
Council, but the imperial commissioner refused his approval;
and the Syrian bishops, under the presidency of John of Antioch
proceeded, on their arrival, to hold an opposition Council, which
excommunicated Cyril and Memnon. Nestorius of his own accord
retired into a monastery. Meanwhile in Constantinople, at the
instigation of Pulcheria, a popular tumult was raised in favour
of Cyril. The emperor set aside all the three leaders, Nestorius,
Cyril and Memnon, and authorised a mediating creed drawn up by
Theodoret (§ 47, 9) in which the θεοτόκος was recognised but an
ἀσύγχυτος ἕνωσις was affirmed. Cyril and Memnon still remained
in their offices. They subscribed Theodoret’s formula and John
subscribed the condemnation of Nestorius, A.D. 433, who was
deposed and given over to the vengeance of his enemies. Driven
from his monastic retreat and in many ways ill-treated, he died
in destitution in A.D. 440. The compromise of the two leaders
called forth opposition on every side. The Syrian church
was in revolt over their patriarch’s betrayal of the person
of Nestorius. John avenged himself by deposing his opponents.
This had well-nigh been the fate of the noble Theodoret;
but the patriarch exempted him from condemning the person
of Nestorius in consideration of his condemnation of the
doctrine.--The Egyptians also charged their patriarch with
the denial of the true doctrine. He was at pains, however, to
give proof of his zeal by the vindictiveness of his persecutions.
Not without an eye to results he wrought to have the anathema
of the church pronounced upon the heads of the Antiochean school,
and one of their partisans, bishop Rabulas of Edessa, pounced
upon the famous theological school at Edessa, at the head of
which then stood the distinguished presbyter Ibas (§ 47, 13).
After the death of Rabulas, however, in A.D. 436, the school
again rose to great eminence. Theodoret and Cyril meanwhile
contended with one another in violent writings. Death closed
the mouth of Cyril in A.D. 444. But Rabulas unweariedly sought
out and burnt the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which
Ibas had translated into Syriac. The latter published a letter
to Maris bishop of Hardashir in Persia, which at a subsequent
period obtained symbolical rank among the Nestorians, and Thomas
Barsumas, bishop of Nisibis, wrought successfully for the spread
of Nestorianism in the Persian church. In A.D. 489 the school of
Edessa was again destroyed by order of the emperor Zeno. Teachers
and scholars migrated to Persia, and founded at Nisibis a school
that long continued famous. At a Synod in Seleucia in A.D. 499,
under the patriarch Babäus of Seleucia, the whole Persian
church finally broke off from the orthodox church of the Roman
empire (§ 64, 2). They called themselves according to their
ecclesiastical language Chaldean Christians. Their patriarch
bore the title Jazelich, καθολικός. The Nestorian church passed
on from Persia into India, where its adherents, appropriating the
old legend that the apostle Thomas had introduced Christianity
into India (§ 16, 4), called themselves Thomas-Christians.
§ 52.4. =The Monophysite Controversy.=
I. =Eutychianism, A.D. 444-451.=--Cyril’s successor was
=Dioscurus=, who was inferior to his predecessor in
acuteness, but in passionateness and tyrannical cruelty
left him far behind. An old archimandrite in Constantinople
called =Eutyches= taught not only that after His incarnation
Christ had only one nature, but also that the body of
Christ as the body of God is not of like substance with
our own. The patriarch Domnus of Antioch accused him without
success to Theodosius II., and Theodoret wrote against him
a controversial treatise under the title Ἐρανιστὴς ἤτοι
Πολύμορφος, in which he opposed the doctrine of Eutyches
as a conglomeration of many heresies. Dioscurus now joined
in the fray, and wrought upon the emperor, whose minister
the eunuch Chrysaphius and whose consort Eudocia he had
won over to his side, to pass severe measures against the
Syrians, and especially Theodoret, whom the emperor forbade
to pass beyond the range of his diocese. Eusebius, bishop
of Doryläum, in Phrygia, however, accused Eutyches before
an endemic Synod at Constantinople, in A.D. 448, presided
over by the patriarch Flavian. Eutyches, though under
imperial protection, was nevertheless, upon his refusal
to retract, excommunicated and deposed. He appealed to
an œcumenical Synod and betook himself to =Leo the Great=
(§ 46, 7) at Rome. Flavian also appeared before the Roman
bishop. Leo took the side of Flavian, and in a letter to
that patriarch developed with great acuteness and clearness
the doctrine of the two natures in Christ. The emperor,
however, convoked an œcumenical Council at Ephesus, A.D. 449,
at which Dioscurus presided, while Flavian and his party had
no vote and Theodoret was not even present, but at which for
the first time there was a representative of the monastic
order in the person of the zealous monophysite, the Abbot
Barsumas. The Council was conducted in an extremely arbitrary
and violent manner. The doctrine of two natures was rejected,
and when Eusebius stepped forward to defend it, the Egyptians
shouted: Away with him! Burn him! Tear him in two pieces, as
he has torn the Christ! Flavian as well as Eusebius appealed
to the bishop of Rome; but the Synod pronounced on both the
sentence of excommunication. When now some bishops sprang
forward, and embracing Dioscurus’ knees entreated him to
desist from such injustice, he called in the soldiers to
his help who with chains and unsheathed swords rushed into
the church, after them a crowd of fanatical monks, stout
parabolani and a raging rabble. Flavian was sorely injured
by blows and kicks, and died soon afterwards in banishment.
The Roman legates and Eusebius escaped similar maltreatment
only by speedy flight. During the later sittings Eutyches
was restored, but the chiefs of the opposite party, Ibas,
Theodoret, Domnus, etc., were deposed and excommunicated.
Leo the Great addressed to the emperor a vigorous protest
against the decisions of this =Robber Synod=, _Latrocinium
Ephesinum_, σύνοδος ληστρική. The result was that Theodosius
quarrelled with Eudocia, was reconciled to Pulcheria, and
dismissed his minister. Flavian’s body was now taken in
state to Constantinople, and honourably buried. Theodosius’
death in A.D. 450 prevented any further steps being taken.
His sister Pulcheria, with her husband Marcian, ascended
the throne. A new =Œcumenical Council= (the so-called
=fourth=) =at Chalcedon in A.D. 451=, deposed Dioscurus,
who was banished to Gangra in Paphlagonia, but spared the
other party leaders of the Monophysites, and condemned
Nestorianism as well as Eutychianism. Cyril’s synodal
rescripts against Nestorius and Leo’s Epistle were
made the basis of the formal statement of the orthodox
doctrine: “that Christ is true God and true man, according
to His Godhead begotten from eternity and like the Father
in everything, according to his humanity born of Mary
the Virgin and God bearer in time and like to us men in
everything, only without sin; and that after His incarnation
the unity of the person consists in two natures which
are conjoined without confusion (ἀσυγχύτως) and without
change (ἀτρέπτως), but also without rending (ἀδιαιρέτως)
and without separation (ἀχωρίστως).” In this Synod too
there were frequently scenes which in unruly violence were
little behind those of the Robber Synod. When, for example,
Theodoret entered amid the loud cheers of the orientals,
the Egyptians saluted him with wild shouts (δι’ εὐσέβειαν
κράζομεν, said they): “Away with the Jew, the blasphemer
of God!” A scene of wild confusion and tumult followed
which only with the greatest difficulty was quelled by
the imperial commissioners. Then at the eighth session,
when the Egyptians demanded not only the express and special
condemnation of the doctrine but also that of the person
of Nestorius, and Theodoret sought to justify him, the storm
broke out afresh, and this time the Egyptians gained their
point, but they were again defeated after violent debate,
in their attempt to secure the condemnation of the person
and writings of Ibas.[162]
§ 52.5.
II. =Imperial Attempts at Union, A.D. 451-519.=--The supporters
of the Alexandrian dogmatics left the Council full of
resentment at the defeat which they had sustained. They
were henceforth called Monophysites. The whole church was
now in a state of feverish excitement. In Palestine the
monk Theodosius, secretly co-operating with the dowager
empress Eudocia living there in exile, roused the mob into
rebellion. In Egypt the uproar was still more violent.
Timotheus Aëlurus assumed the position of an opposition
patriarch and drove out the orthodox patriarch Proterius.
The same thing was done in Antioch by the monk Petrus
[Peter] Fullo (ὁ γραφεύς). In order to give a Monophysite
colour to the liturgy he added to the Trishagion (Is. vi. 3),
which had been liturgically used in the oldest churches, the
formula θεὸς ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δι’ ἡμᾶς. Party violence meanwhile
went the length of insurrections and blood-shedding on both
sides. The new emperor Leo I. the Thracian, A.D. 457-474,
a powerful and prudent ruler, interposed to bring about
a pacification. In accordance with the advice of the most
distinguished bishops of the empire the two mutinous leaders
of the Monophysites were banished, and the patriarchal
sees thus vacated filled by moderate Dyophysites. But after
Leo’s death and the dethronement of his son-in-law Zeno in
A.D. 475, the usurper Basiliscus issued an edict in A.D. 476,
under the name of an =Encyclion=, by which the Chalcedonian
Symbol, along with Leo’s Epistle, was condemned, and
Monophysitism was proclaimed to be the universal national
religion. Fullo and Aëlurus were also reinstated. The
patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, on the other hand,
organized a Dyophysite counter-revolution, Basiliscus was
overthrown, and the emperor Zeno again placed upon the
throne in A.D. 477. About this time Aëlurus died, and his
party chose Petrus [Peter] Mongus (μογγός, stammering) as
his successor; but the court appointed a Dyophysite Johannes
Talaja. Acacius, when Talaja took up a hostile position
towards him, joined with his opponent Mongus. Both agreed
upon a treaty of union, which also found favour with the
emperor Zeno, and by an edict, the so-called =Henoticon=
of A.D. 482 obtained the force of a law. Nestorianism
and Eutychianism were condemned, Cyril’s anathematisms
were renewed, the Chalcedonian decisions abrogated,
and the Nicene faith alone declared valid, while all
controverted points were to be carefully avoided in teaching
and preaching. Naturally protests were made from both sides.
The strict Monophysites of Egypt threw off Mongus, and were
now called Ἀκέφαλοι. Felix III. of Rome, at the head of the
Dyophysites, refused to have church fellowship with Acacius.
Thus arose a 35 years’ schism, A.D. 484-519, between East
and West. Only the Acoimetæ monks in Constantinople (§ 44, 3)
continued to hold communion with Rome. Church fellowship
between the parties was not restored until Justin I.,
who thought that the schism would hinder his projected
reconquest of Italy, in conjunction with the Roman bishop
Hormisdas in A.D. 519, cancelled the Henoticon, and deposed
those who adhered to it.
§ 52.6.
III. =Justinian’s Decrees, A.D. 527-553.=--During the violent
conflict of parties Justinian I. entered upon his long
and politically considered glorious reign, A.D. 527-565.
He regarded it as his life task permanently to establish
orthodoxy, and to win back heretics to the church, above
all the numerous Monophysites. But the well-disposed emperor,
who moreover had no deep insight into the thorny questions
of theological controversy, was in various ways misled by
the intrigues of court theologians, and the machinations
of his crafty consort Theodora, who was herself secretly
a Monophysite. The =Theopaschite Controversy= first called
forth from him a decree. The addition made to the Trishagion
by Petrus [Peter] Fullo, θεὸς ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δι’ ἡμᾶς,
had been smuggled into the Constantinopolitan liturgy
about A.D. 512. The Acoimetæ pronounced it heretical, and
Hormisdas of Rome admitted that it was at least capable of
being misunderstood and useless. But Justinian sanctioned
it in A.D. 533. Encouraged by this first success, Theodora
used her influence to raise the Monophysite Anthimus to
the episcopal chair of the capital. But the Roman bishop
Agapetus, who stayed in Constantinople as ambassador
of the Goths, unmasked him, and obtained his deposition.
Mennas, a friend of Agapetus, was appointed his successor
in A.D. 536. All Monophysite writings were ordered to be
burnt, their transcribers were punished by the loss of their
hand. Two Palestinian abbots, Domitian and Theodore Ascidas,
secret Monophysites and zealous friends of Origen, lived at
court in high favour. To compass their overthrow, Mennas at
an endemic Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 543 renewed the
condemnation of the arch-heretic and his writings. The court
theologians, however, subscribed without objection, and in
concert with Theodora plotted their revenge. Justinian had
long regarded Egypt with peculiar interest as the granary
of the empire. He felt that something must be done to pacify
the Monophysites who abounded in that country. Theodora
persuaded him that the Monophysites would be satisfied
if it were resolved, along with the writings of Theodore,
the father of the Nestorian heresy, to condemn also the
controversial writings of Theodoret against the venerated
Cyril and the Epistle of Ibas to Maris. The supposed errors
of these were collected before him in the _Three Chapters_.
The emperor did this by an edict in A.D. 544, and demanded
the consenting subscription of all the bishops. The
orientals obeyed; but in the West opposition was shown
on all sides, and thus broke out the violent =Controversy
of the Three Chapters=. Vigilius of Rome, a creature of
Theodora (§ 46, 9), had secretly promised his co-operation,
but, not feeling able to face the storm in the West, he
broke his word. Justinian had him brought to Constantinople
in A.D. 547 and forced from him a written declaration,
the so-called _Judicatum_, in which he agreed to the
condemnation of the _Three Chapters_. The Africans,
under Reparatus of Carthage excommunicated the successor
of Peter, and fought manfully for the rights and honour of
the calumniated fathers. Fulgentius Farrandus [Ferrandus]
wrote _Pro tribus capitt._, Facundus of Hermiane, _Defensío
III. capitt._, and the deacon Liberatus of Carthage,
a _Breviarium causæ Nestorian. et Eutychianorum_, an
important source of information for the history of the
Christological Controversies. Justinian finally convened
the =Fifth Œcumenical Council at Constantinople in A.D. 553=,
which confirmed all the imperial edicts. Vigilius issued
a _Constitum ad Imp._, in which he indeed rejected the
doctrines of the Three Chapters but refused to condemn
the persons. Under imprisonment and exile he became pliable,
and subscribed in A.D. 554. He died in A.D. 555 on his
return to his bishopric. His successor Pelagius formally
acknowledged the Constantinopolitan decrees, and North
Africa, North Italy and Illyria renounced the dishonoured
chair of Peter. At last Gregory the Great, with much
difficulty, gradually brought this schism to an end.
§ 52.7.
IV. =The Monophysite Churches.=--Justinian, however, did not
thereby reach the end he had in view. The Monophysites
continued their separation because the hated Chalcedonian
Symbol was still acknowledged. But more injurious to them
than the persecutions of the orthodox national church
were the endless quarrels and divisions among themselves.
First of all the two leaders in Alexandria, Julianus and
Severus, became heads of rival parties. The =Severians= or
φθαρτολάτραι taught that the body of Christ in itself had
been subject to corruption (the φθορά); the =Julianists=
denied it. This first split was followed by many others.
By transferring the Monophysite confusion of οὐσία
and ὑπόστασις to the doctrine of the Trinity arose the
Monophysite sect of the =Tritheists=, who taught that
in Christ there is one nature, and that in the Trinity
a separate nature is to be ascribed to each of the three
persons. Among them was the celebrated philosopher, Johannes
Philoponus (§ 47, 11), who supported this doctrine by the
Aristotelian categories. He also vindicated the notion that
the present world as to form and matter would perish at the
last day, and an entirely new world with new bodies would
be created. In opposition to this Conon, bishop of Tarsus,
affirmed that the overthrow of the world would be in form
only, and that the risen saints would again possess the
same bodies though in a glorified form. His followers the
so-called =Cononites= separated from the main stem of the
Tritheists and formed an independent sect.--The Monophysites
were most numerous in Egypt. Out of hatred to the Greek
Catholics they forbade the use of the Greek language in
their churches, and chose a Coptic patriarch for themselves.
They aided the Saracens in their conquest of Egypt in
A.D. 640, who out of gratitude for this drove away the
Catholic patriarch. From Egypt Monophysitism spread into
Abyssinia (§ 64, 1). Already in A.D. 536 Byzantine Armenia
had been conquered by the Persians, who showed favour to
the previously oppressed Monophysites (§ 64, 3). In Syria
and Mesopotamia, during Justinian’s persecutions, the
unwearied activity of a monk, Jacob Zanzalus, commonly
called el Baradai, because he went about clad as a beggar,
ordained by the Monophysites as bishop of Edessa and the
whole East, saved the Monophysite church from extinction.
He died in A.D. 538. After him the Monophysites were
called =Jacobites=. They called the Catholics Melchites,
_Royalists_. Their patriarch resided at Guba in Mesopotamia.
Subordinate to him was a suffragan bishop at Tagrit with the
title of _Maphrian_, _i.e._ the Fruit-bearer. At the head of
the Armenian Monophysites stood the patriarch of Aschtarag
with the title _Catholicus_. The Abyssinian church had a
metropolitan with the title _Abbuna_[163]--_Continuation_
§ 72, 2.
§ 52.8. =The Monothelite Controversy, A.D. 633-680.=--The
increasing political embarrassments of the emperor made a
union with the Monophysites all the more desirable. The emperor
Heraclius, A.D. 611-641, was advised to attempt a union of
parties under the formula: that Christ accomplished His work
of redemption by the exercise of one divine human will (μιᾷ
θεανδρικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ). Several Catholic bishops found nothing
objectionable in this formula which had already been used by
the Pseudo-Dionysius (§ 47, 11). In A.D. 633 the patriarchs
Sergius of Constantinople and Cyrus of Alexandria on the basis
of this concluded a treaty, in consequence of which most of
the Severians attached themselves again to the national church.
Honorius of Rome also was won over. But the monk Sophronius, who
soon thereafter in A.D. 634 became patriarch of Jerusalem, came
forward as the decided opponent Of this union, which led back
to Monophysitism. The conquest of Jerusalem, however, soon
after this, A.D. 637, by the Saracens put him outside of the
scene of conflict. In A.D. 638 the emperor issued an edict,
the =Ecthesis=, by which it was sought to make an end of the
strife by substituting for the offensive expression ἐνέργεια the
less objectionable term θέλημα, and confirming the Monothelite
doctrine as alone admissible. Now the monk Maximus (§ 47, 12)
entered the lists as the champion of orthodoxy. He betook
himself to Africa, where since Justinian’s time zeal for the
maintenance of the Chalcedonian faith was strongest, and here
secured political support in Gregorius [Gregory] the imperial
governor who sought to make himself independent of Byzantium.
This statesman arranged for a public disputation at Carthage
in A.D. 645 between Maximus and the ex-patriarch Pyrrhus of
Constantinople, the successor of Sergius, who, implicated in
a palace intrigue, deposed from his office and driven from
Constantinople, sought refuge in Africa. Pyrrhus willingly
submitted and abjured his error. An African General Synod in
A.D. 646 unanimously condemned Monothelitism, renounced church
fellowship with Paulus, the new patriarch of Constantinople, and
demanded of Pope Theodorus, A.D. 642-649, a fulmination against
the heresy. In order to give this demand greater emphasis,
Maximus and Pyrrhus travelled together to Rome. The latter was
recognised by the pope as legitimate patriarch of Constantinople,
but, being induced by the exarch of Ravenna to recant his
recantation, he was excommunicated by the pope, with a pen
dipped in the sacramental wine, returned to Constantinople and
was, after the death of Paulus, reinstated in his former office.
Maximus remained in Rome and there won the highest reputation
as the shield of orthodoxy.--The proper end of the union, namely
the saving of Syria and Egypt, was meanwhile frustrated by
the Mohammedan conquest of Syria in A.D. 638, and of Egypt
in A.D. 640. The court, however, for its own honour still
persevered in it. Africa and Italy occupied a position of
open revolt. Then emperor Constans II., A.D. 642-668, resolved
to annul the Ecthesis. In its place he put another enactment
about the faith, the =Typus=, A.D. 648, which sought to get back
to the state of matters before the Monothelite movement; that
neither one nor two wills should be taught. But Martin I. of
Rome at the first Lateran Synod at Rome in A.D. 649 condemned
in the strongest terms the Typus as well as the Ecthesis along
with its original maintainers, and sent the Acts to the emperor.
The exarch of Ravenna, Olympius, was now ordered to take the
bold prelate prisoner, but did not obey. His successor sent the
pope in chains to Constantinople. In A.D. 653 he was banished
for high treason to the Chersonese, where he literally suffered
hunger, and died in A.D. 655 six months after his arrival.
Still more dreadful was the fate of the abbot Maximus. At
the same time with Martin or soon after he too was brought
to Constantinople a prisoner from Rome. Here for a whole year
every effort imaginable was made, entreaties, promises, threats,
imprisonment, hunger, etc., in order to induce him to acknowledge
the Typus, but all in vain. The emperor then lost all patience.
In a towering rage at the unparalleled obstinacy of the monk’s
resistance he doomed him, A.D. 662, to dreadful scourging, to
have his tongue wrenched out and his hand hewn off, and to be
sent into the wildest parts of Thrace, where he died a few weeks
after his arrival at the age of 82 years. Such barbaric severity
was effectual for a long time. But under the next emperor
Constantinus Pogonnatus, A.D. 668-685, the two parties prepared
for a new conflict. The emperor resolved to make an end of it
by a General Council. Pope Agatho held a brilliant Synod at Rome
in A.D. 679, where it was laid down that not one iota should
be abated from the decisions of the Lateran Synod. With these
decisions and a missive from the pope himself, the papal legates
appeared at the =Sixth Œcumenical Council at Constantinople in
A.D. 680=, called also _Concil. Trullanum I._, because it was
held in the mussel-shaped vaulted hall Trullus in the imperial
castle, under the presidency of the emperor. As at Chalcedon
the Epistle of Leo I., so also here that of Agatho lay at the
basis of the Council’s doctrinal decrees: δύο φυσικὰ θελήματα
ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀμερίστως, ἀσυγχύτως, οὐχ ὑπεναντία, ἀλλὰ
ἑπόμενον τὸ ἀνθρώπινον καὶ ὑποτασσόμενον τῷ θείῳ. The Synod even
condescended to grant the pope a report of the proceedings and
to request his confirmation of its decisions. But the Greeks,
finding a malicious pleasure in the confusion of their rivals,
contrived to mix in the sweet drink a strong infusion of bitter
wormwood, for the Council among the other representatives of
Monothelite error ostentatiously and expressly condemned pope
Honorius as an accursed heretic. Pope Leo II. in a letter
to the emperor confirmed the decisions of the Council,
expressly homologating the condemnation of Honorius, “_qui
profana proditione immaculatam fidem subvertere conatus
est_.”--Henceforth Dyothelitism prevailed universally. Only
in one little corner of Asia, to which the arm of the state
did not reach, a vestige of Monothelitism continued to exist.
Its scattered adherents gathered in the monastery of St. Maro
in Lebanon, and acknowledged the abbot of this cloister as
their ecclesiastical head. They called themselves Maronites, and
with sword in hand maintained their ecclesiastical as well as
political independence against Byzantines and Saracens (§ 72, 3).
§ 52.9. =The Case of Honorius.=--The two Roman Synods, A.D. 649
and 679, had simply ignored the notorious fact of the complicity
of Honorius in the furtherance of Monothelite error, and Agatho
might hope by the casual statement in his letter, that the Roman
chair never had taken the side of heretical novelties, to beguile
the approaching œcumenical Synod into the same obliviousness. But
the Greeks paid no heed to the hint. His successor Leo II. could
not do otherwise than homologate the Eastern leaders’ condemnation
of heresy, even that of Honorius, hard though this must have
been to him. On the other hand, the biographies of the popes from
Honorius to Agatho in the Roman _Liber pontificalis_ (§ 90, 6)
help themselves out of this dilemma again by preserving a dead
silence about any active or passive interference of Honorius
in the Monothelite controversy. In the biography of Leo II. for
the first time is Honorius’ name mentioned among those of the
condemned Monothelites, but without any particular remark about
him as an individual. So too in the formulary of a profession of
faith in the _Liber diurnus_ of the Roman church made by every
new pope and in use down to the 11th century (§ 46, 11). From
the biography of Leo in the Pontifical book was copied the simple
name into the readings of the Roman Breviary for the day of
this saint, and so it remained down to the 17th century. It had
then been quite forgotten in the West that by this name a pope
was designated. Oftentimes it had been affirmed that even Roman
popes might fall and actually had fallen into error; but only
such cases as those of Liberius (§ 46, 4), Anastasius (§ 46, 8),
Vigilius (§ 52, 6), John XXII. (§ 110, 3; 112, 2) were adduced;
that of Honorius occurred to nobody. It was only in the 15th
century, through more careful examination of Acts of Synods that
the true state of matters was discovered, and in the 16th century
when the question of the infallibility of the pope had become
a burning one (§ 149, 4), the case of Honorius became the real
Sisyphus rock of Roman Catholic theology. The most laborious
attempts have been made by most venturesome means to get it out
of the way. The condemnation of Honorius by the sixth œcumenical
Council has been described as merely a spiteful invention of
later Greeks, who falsified everything relating to him in the
Acts of the Council; so, _e.g._ Baronius, Bellarmine, etc.--The
condemnation actually took place but not at the œcumenical first,
but at the schismatical second, Trullan Council of A.D. 692
(§ 63, 2), and the record of procedure has been by the malice
of later Greeks transferred from the record of the second to
that of the first.--Forged epistles of Honorius were laid before
the sixth œcumenical Council, by means of which it was misled
into passing sentence upon him.--The condemnation of the pope
did not turn upon his doctrine but upon his unseasonable love
of peace.--The pope meant well, but expressed himself so as
to be misunderstood; so _e.g._ the Jesuit Garnier in his ed.
of the _Liber diurnus_, the Vatican Council, and Hefele in
the 2nd ed. of his Hist. of the Councils.--In the epistles
referred to he spoke as a private individual and not officially,
_ex cathedra_.--It is, however, fatal to all such explanations
that the infallible pope Leo II. solemnly denounced _ex cathedra_
his infallible predecessor Honorius as a heretic. Besides the
only other possible escape by distinguishing the _question du
fait_ and the _question du droit_ has been formally condemned
_ex cathedra_ in connection with another case (§ 156, 5).[164]
§ 53. THE SOTERIOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES, A.D. 412-529.[165]
While the Trinitarian and Christological controversies had their
origin in the East and there gave rise to the most violent conflicts,
the West taking indeed a lively interest in the discussion and by the
decisive voice of Rome giving the victory to orthodoxy at almost every
stage of the struggle, it was in the West that a controversy broke
out, which for a full century proceeded alongside of the Christological
controversy, without awakening in the East more than a passing and even
then only a secondary interest. It dealt with the fundamental questions
of sin and grace. In opposition to the Pelagian _Monergism_ of human
freedom, as well as the semi-Pelagian _Synergism_ of divine grace and
human freedom, the Augustinian _Monergism_ of divine grace finally
obtained the victory.
§ 53.1. =Preliminary History.=--From the earliest times the
actual universality of sin and the need of divine grace in
Christ for redemption from sin received universal acknowledgment
throughout the whole church. But as to whether and how far the
moral freedom of men was weakened or lost by sin, and in what
relation human conduct stood to divine grace, great uncertainty
prevailed. Opposition to Gnosticism and Manichæism led the older
fathers to emphasise as strongly as possible the moral freedom
of men, and induced them to deny inborn sinfulness as well
as the doctrine that sin was imprinted in men in creation,
and to account for man’s present condition by bad training,
evil example, the agency of evil spirits, etc. This tendency
was most vigorously expressed by the Alexandrians. The new
Alexandrian school showed an unmistakable inclination to connect
the universality of sin with Adam’s sin, without going the length
of affirming the doctrine of inherited sinfulness. In Soteriology
it remained faithful to its traditional synergism (comp., however,
§ 47, 7k, l.) The Antiochean school sought to give due place to
the co-operation of the human will alongside of the necessity of
divine grace, and reduced the idea of inherited sin to that of
inherited evil. So especially Chrysostom, who was indeed able to
conceive that Adam by his actual sin become mortal could beget
only mortal children, but not that the sinner could beget only
sinners. The first man brought death into the world, we confirm
and renew the doom by our own sin. Man by his moral will does
his part, the divine grace does its part. The whole East is
unanimous in most distinctly repudiating all predestinational
wilfulness in God. In the West, on the other hand, by Traducianism
or Generationism introduced by Tertullian, which regards
the soul as begotten with the body, the way was prepared
for recognising the doctrine of inherited sin (_Tradux animæ,
tradux peccati_) and consequently also of monergism. Tertullian,
himself, proceeding from the experience, that in every man
from birth there is present an unconquerable tendency to sin,
spoke with great decidedness of a _Vitium originis_. In this
he was followed by Cyprian, Ambrose and Hilary. Yet even these
teachers of the church had not altogether been emancipated
from synergism, and alongside of expressions which breathe the
hardest predestinationism, are found others which seem to give
equal weight to the opposite doctrine of human co-operation in
conversion. Augustine was the first to state with the utmost
consistency the doctrine of the divine monergism; while Pelagius
carried out the synergism of the earlier fathers until it became
scarcely less than human monergism.--Meanwhile Traducianism did
not succeed in obtaining universal recognition even in the West.
Augustine vacillates; Jerome and Leo the Great prefer Creationism,
which represents God as creating a new soul for each human being
begotten. Most of the later church fathers, too, are creationists,
without, however, prejudicing the doctrine of inherited sin.
Those of them who supported the trichotomic theory (§ 52, 1)
held that it was the cobegotten ψυχὴ ἄλογος, _anima sensitiva_
as opposed to the _anima intellectualis_, while those who
supported the dichotomic theory, which posits merely body and
soul, held that it was the soul created good by God, which was
infected on its passing into the body begotten by human parents
with its inherited sin. The theory of Pre existence, which
Origen had brought forward (§ 31, 5) had, even in the East,
only occasional representatives (§ 47, 7m, n, o.).[166]
§ 53.2. =The Doctrine of Augustine.=--During the first period
of his Christian life, when the conflict with Manichæism still
stood in the forefront of his thinking and controversial activity,
Augustine, looking at faith as a self-determining of the human
will, had thought a certain measure of free co-operation on the
part of man in his conversion to be necessary and had therefore
refused to maintain his absolute want of merit. But by his whole
life’s experience he was irresistibly led to acknowledge man’s
natural inability for any positive co-operation and to make faith
together with conversion depend solely upon the grace of God. The
perfect and full development of this doctrine was brought about
by means of his controversy with the Pelagians. Augustine’s
doctrinal system in its most characteristic features is as
follows: Man was created free and in the image of God, destined
to and capable of attaining immortality, holiness and blessedness,
but also with the possibility of sinning and dying. By the
exercise of his freedom he must determine his own career. Had
he determined himself for God, the being able not to sin and not
to die, would have become an impossibility of sinning and dying,
the _Posse non peccare et mori_ would have become a _Non posse
peccare et mori_. But tempted by Satan he fell, and thus it
became for him impossible that he should not sin and die, _non
posse non peccare et non mori_. All prerogatives of the Divine
image were lost; he retained only the capacity for outward civil
righteousness, _Justitia civilis_, and a capacity for redemption.
In Adam, moreover, all mankind sinned, for he was all mankind. By
generation Adam’s nature as it was after sin, with sin and guilt,
death and condemnation, but also the capacity for redemption,
passed over to all his posterity. Divine grace, which alone can
redeem and save man, attached itself to the remnant of the divine
image which expressed itself in the need of redemption and the
capacity for redemption. Grace is therefore absolutely necessary,
in the beginning, middle and end of the Christian life. It is
granted man, not because he believes, but that he may believe;
for faith too is the work of God’s grace. First of all grace
awakens through the law the consciousness of sin and the desire
for redemption, and leads by the gospel to faith in the Redeemer
(_gratia præveniens_). By means of faith it thus secures the
forgiveness of sin as _primum beneficium_ through appropriating
the merits of Christ and in part the powers of the divine
life through the implanting of living fellowship with Christ
(in baptism). Thus is free will restored to the good (_Gratia
operans_) and evidences itself in a holy life in love. But
even in the regenerate the old man with his sinful lusts is
still present. In the struggle of the new with the old he is
continually supported by Divine grace (_Gratia co-operans_)
unto his justification (_Justificatio_) which is completed in
the making righteous of his whole life and being through the
Divine impartation (_Infusio_) of new powers of will. The final
act of grace, which, however, according to the educative wisdom
of God is not attained in this life, is the absolute removal
of evil desire (_Concupiscentia_) and transfiguration into the
perfect likeness of Christ through resurrection and eternal
life (_Non posse peccare et mori_). Apart from the inconsistent
theory of justification proposed, this view of nature and grace
is thoroughly Pauline. Augustine, however, connects with it the
doctrine of an absolute predestination. Experience shows that not
all men attain to conversion and redemption. Since man himself
can contribute nothing to his conversion, the ground of this must
be sought not in the conduct of the man but only in an eternal
unconditional decree of God, _Decretum absolutum_, according
to which He has determined out of the whole fallen race of man,
_Massa perditionis_, to save some to the glory of His grace and
to leave others to their deserved doom to the glory of His penal
righteousness. The ground of this election is only the wise and
mysterious good pleasure of the divine will without reference to
man’s faith, which is indeed only a gift of God. If it is said:
“God wills that all men should be saved,” that can only mean,
“all who are predestinated.” As the outcasts (_Reprobati_)
can in no way appropriate grace unto themselves, the elect
(_Electi_) cannot in any way resist it (_Gratia irresistibilis_).
The one sure sign that one is elected is, therefore, undisturbed
perseverance in the possession of grace (_Donum perseverantiæ_).
To the heathens, even the noblest of them, he refused salvation,
but made a distinction in the degrees of their penal tortures.
So too unbaptized children were all regarded as lost. Although
over against this he also set down the proposition: _Contemtus,
non defectus sacramenti damnat_, the resolution of this
contradiction lay in the special divine election of grace, which
secures to the elect the dispensation of the sacrament.[167]
§ 53.3. =Pelagius and his Doctrine.=--Pelagius (§ 47, 21),
a British monk of respectable learning and decided moral
earnestness, living far away from the storms and strife of life,
without any strong inward temptations, without any inclination
to manifest sins and without deep experience of the Christian
life, knowing and striving after no higher ideal than that of
monkish asceticism, had developed a theory quite antagonistic
to that of Augustine. He was strengthened in his opposition to
Augustine’s doctrine of the corruption of human nature and its
unfitness for all co-operation in conversion and sanctification,
by observing that this doctrine was often misused by careless men
as an excuse for carnal confidence and moral selfishness. He was
thus made more resolute in maintaining that it is more wholesome
to preach to men an imperative moral law whose demands they, as
he thought, could satisfy by determined will and moral endeavour.
Man at first was created mortal by God, and not temporal but
spiritual death is the consequence and punishment of sin. Adam’s
fall has changed nothing in human nature and has had no influence
upon his descendants. Every man now is born just as God created
the first man, _i.e._ without sin and without virtue. By his
wholly unweakened freedom he decides for himself on the one
side or the other. The universality of sin results from the
power of seduction, of mere example and habit. Still there may
be completely sinless men; and there have been such. God’s grace
facilitates man’s accomplishment of his purpose. It is, therefore,
not absolutely, but by the actual universality of sin, relatively
necessary. Grace consists in enlightenment by revelation, in
forgiveness of sin as the expression of divine forbearance, and
in the strengthening of our moral powers by the incentive of
the law and the promise of eternal life. God’s grace is destined
for all men, but man must make himself worthy of it by honest
striving after virtue. Christ became man, in order by His perfect
teaching and by the perfect pattern of His life to give us the
most powerful incentive to reformation and the redeeming of
ourselves thereby. As in sin we are Adam’s offspring, so in
virtue shall we be Christ’s offspring. He regarded baptism as
necessary (infant baptism _in remissionem futurorum peccatorum_).
Children dying unbaptized he placed in a lower stage of
blessedness. The same inconsistent submission to the fathers
of ecclesiastical tradition shows itself in the acceptance of
ecclesiastical views of revelation, miracles, prophecy, the
Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, whereas a more consistent
and systematic thinker would have felt compelled from his
anthropological principles to set aside or at least modify these
supernaturalistic elements.
§ 53.4. =The Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 411-431.=--From A.D. 409
Pelagius resided in Rome. Here he gained over to his views
Cœlestius, a man of greater acuteness and scientific attainments
than himself. Both won high respect in Rome for their zeal for
morality and asceticism and promulgated their doctrine without
opposition. In A.D. 411 both went to Carthage, whence Pelagius
went and settled in Palestine. Cœlestius remained behind
and obtained the office of presbyter. Now for the first time
his errors were opposed. Paulinus deacon of Milan (§ 47, 20)
happening to be there formally complained against him, and a
provincial Synod at Carthage A.D. 412 excommunicated him, on
his refusal to retract. In the same year too Augustine published
his first controversial treatise: _De peccatorum meritis et
remissione et de baptismo parvulorum, Lb. III._ In =Palestine=
Pelagius had attached himself to the Origenists. Jerome, besides
passing a depreciatory judgment upon his literary productions,
contested his doctrine as an expounder of the Origenist heresy
(_Ep. ad Ctesiphontem_ and _Dialog. c. Pelagium, Lb. III._),
and a young Spanish presbyter Paulus [Paul] Orosius (§ 47, 20)
complained of him to the Synod of Jerusalem A.D. 415, under the
presidency of bishop John of that city. The synergistic orientals,
however, could not be convinced of the dangerous character of
his carefully guarded doctrine. Such too was the result of the
Synod of Diospolis or Lydda in A.D. 415 under bishop Eulogius of
Cæsarea, where two Gallic bishops appeared as accusers. Augustine
proved to the Palestinians in _De gestis Pelagii_ that they had
allowed themselves to be kept in the dark by Pelagius. Orosius
too published a controversial tract, _Apologeticus c. Pelag._,
in reply to which, or more probably to Jerome, Theodore of
Mopsuestia wrote the book now lost, Περὶ τοὺς λέγοντας, φύσει
καὶ οὐ γνώμη πταίειν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. Then the Africans again
took up the controversy. Two Synods at Mileve and Carthage, in
A.D. 416, reiterated their condemnation and sent their decree
to Innocent I. at Rome. The Pope acquiesced in the proceedings
of the Africans. Pelagius sent a veiled confession of faith and
Cœlestius appeared personally in Rome. Innocent died, however,
in A.D. 417, before his arrival. His successor Zozimus [Zosimus],
perhaps a Greek and certainly weak as a dogmatist, allowed
himself to be won over by Cœlestius and brought severe charges
against the Africans, against which again these entered a
vigorous protest. In A.D. 418 the emperor Honorius issued his
_Sacrum rescriptum_ against the Pelagians and a general Synod
at Carthage in the same year emphatically condemned them. Now
Zozimus [Zosimus] was prevailed on also to condemn them in his
_Epistola tractatoria_. Eighteen Italian bishops, among them
Julian of Eclanum in Apulia, the most acute and able apologist
of Pelagianism, refused to subscribe and were banished. They
sought and obtained protection from the Constantinopolitan bishop
Nestorius. But this connection did harm to both. The Roman bishop
Cœlestine took part with those who opposed the Christological
views of Nestorius (§ 52, 3), and at the =Œcumenical Council
of Ephesus in A.D. 431=, the orientals condemned along with
Nestorius also Pelagius and Cœlestius, without, however,
determining anything positive in regard to the doctrine under
discussion. To this end with unwearied zeal laboured Marius
Mercator, a learned layman of Constantinople, who published
two _Commonitoria_ against Pelagius and Cœlestius, and a
controversial treatise against Julian of Eclanum. Meanwhile
too Augustine rested not from his energetic polemic. In A.D. 413
he wrote _De spiritu et littera ad Marcellinum_; in A.D. 415
against Pelagius, _De natura et gratia_; against Cœlestius,
_De perfectione justitiæ hominis_. In A.D. 416, _De gestis
Pelagii_. In A.D. 418, _De gratia Dei et de peccato originali
Lb. II. c. Pelag. et Cœl._ In A.D. 419, _De nuptiis et
concupiscentia Lb. II._, against the charge that his doctrine
was a reviling of God-appointed marriage. In A.D. 420, _C. duas
epistolas Pelagianorum et Bonifatium I._, against the vindicatory
writings of Julian and his friends. In A.D. 421, _Lb. VI.
c. Julianum_. And later still, _Opus imperfectum c. secundam
Juliani responsionem_. Engl. Transl.; Ante-Nicene Lib.:
Anti-Pelag. Wr., 3 vols., Edin., 1867 ff.
§ 53.5. =The Semi-Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 427-529.=--Bald
Pelagianism was overthrown, but the excessive crudeness of the
predestination theory, as set forth by Augustine, called forth
new forms of opposition. The monks of the monastery of Adrumetum
in North Africa, by severely carrying out the predestination
theory to its last consequences, had fallen, some into
sore distress of soul and despair, others into security and
carelessness, while others again thought that to avoid such
consequences, one must ascribe to human activity in the work
of salvation a certain degree of meritoriousness. The abbot of
the monastery in this dilemma applied to Augustine, who in two
treatises, written in A.D. 427, _De gratia et libero arbitrio_
and _De correptione et gratia_, sought to overcome the scruples
and misconceptions of the monks. But about this time in Southern
Gaul there was a whole theological school which rejected the
doctrine of predestination, and maintained the necessity of
according to human freedom a certain measure of co-operation
with divine grace, in consequence of which sometimes the one,
sometimes the other, is fundamental in conversion. At the head
of this school was Johannes Cassianus († A.D. 432), a disciple
and friend of Chrysostom, founder and president of the monastery
at Massilia. His followers are thence called Massilians or
Semi-Pelagians. He had himself contested Augustine’s doctrine,
without naming it, in the 13th of his _Collationes Patrum_
(§ 47, 21). Of his disciples the most famous was Vincentius
[Vincent] Lerinensis (of the monastery of Lerinum), who in his
_Commonitorium pro Catholicæ fidei antiquitate et universitate_
(Engl. Transl., Oxford, 1836) laid down the principle that the
catholic faith is, _quod semper, ubique et ab omnibus creditum
est_. Judged by this standard Augustine’s doctrine was by no
means catholic. The second book of this work, now lost, probably
contested Augustinianism expressly and was, therefore, suppressed.
But Augustine had talented supporters even in Gaul, such as
the two laymen Hilarius and Prosper Aquitanicus (§ 47, 20). What
took place around them they reported to Augustine, who wrote
against the Massilians _De predestinatione Sanctorum_ and
_De dono perseverantiæ_. He was prevented by his death, which
took place in A.D. 430, from taking part longer in the contest.
Hilarius and Prosper, however, continued it. Since the Roman
bishop Cœlestine, before whom in A.D. 431 they personally made
complaint, answered with a Yes and No theology, Prosper himself
took up the battle in an able work _De gratia Dei et libero
arbitrio contra Collatorem_, but in doing so unwittingly smoothed
off the sharpest points of the Augustinian system. This happened
yet more decidedly in the ingenious treatise _De Vocatione
gentium_, whose author was perhaps Leo the Great, afterwards
pope but then only a deacon. On the other side, opponents
(Arnobius the younger?) used the artifice of presenting, in
the notable work entitled _Prædestinatus_, pretending to be
written by a follower of Augustine, a caricature of the doctrine
of predestination carried to the utmost extreme of absurdity,
and these sought to justify their own position. The first book
contains a description of ninety heresies, the last of which is
predestinationism; the second gives as supplement to the first
the pretended treatise of such a predestinarian; and the third
confutes it. A certain presbyter Lucidus, a zealous adherent of
the doctrine of predestination, was by a semi-Pelagian synod at
Aries in A.D. 475 forced to recant. Faustus, bishop of Rhegium
(§ 47, 21), sent after him by order of the Council a controversial
treatise _De gratia Dei et humanæ mentis libero arbitrio_, and
also in the same year A.D. 475, a Synod at Lyons sanctioned
semi-Pelagianism. The treatise of Faustus, although moderate
and conciliatory, caused violent agitation among a community
of Scythian monks in Constantinople, A.D. 520. They complained
through bishop Possessor of Carthage to pope Hormisdas, but
he too answered with a Yes and No theology. Then the Africans
banished by the Vandals to Sardinia took up the matter. They
held a Council in A.D. 523, by whose order Fulgentius of Ruspe
(§ 47, 20), a zealous apologist of Augustinianism composed his
_De veritate prædest. et gratia Dei Lb. III._, which made an
impression even in Gaul. And now two able Gallic bishops, Avitus
of Vienne and Cæsarius of Arles (§ 47, 20) entered the lists in
behalf of a moderate Augustinianism, and won for it at the Synod
of Oranges in A.D. 529 a decided victory over semi-Pelagianism.
Augustine’s doctrine of original sin in its strictest form,
and his assertions about the utter want of merit in every human
act and the unconditional necessity of grace were acknowledged,
faith was extolled as exclusively the effect of grace, but
predestination in regard to the _Reprobati_ was reduced to
mere foreknowledge, and predestination to evil was rejected as
blasphemy against God. A synod held in the same year, A.D. 529,
at Valence confirmed the decrees of Oranges. Boniface II. of Rome
did the same in A.D. 530.[168]--Continuation § 91, 5.
§ 54. REAPPEARANCE AND REMODELLING OF EARLIER HERETICAL SECTS.
Manichæism (§ 29) had still numerous adherents not merely in the far
off eastern provinces but also in Italy and North Africa; and isolated
Marcionite churches (§ 27, 11) were still to be found in almost all the
countries within the empire and also beyond its bounds. An independent
reawakening of Gnostic-Manichæan tendencies arose in Spain under the
name of Priscillianism.
§ 54.1. =Manichæism.=--The universal toleration of religion,
which Constantine introduced, was also extended to the Manichæans
of his empire (§ 29, 3). But from the time of Valentinian I.
the emperors issued repeatedly severe penal laws against them.
The favour which they obtained in Syria and Palestine led bishop
Titus of Bostra in Arabia Petræa, about A.D. 370, to write
his 4 Bks. against the Manichæans. The Manichæan church stood
in particularly high repute in North Africa, even to the 4th
and 5th centuries. Its most important representative there,
Faustus of Mileve, published a controversial treatise against
the Catholic church, which Augustine, who had earlier been
himself an adherent of the Manichæans, expressly answered in
33 Bks. (Engl. Transl.: “Ante-Nicene Lib.” Treatises against
Faustus the Manichæan, Edin., 1868). When the Manichæan Felix,
in order to advance the cause of his church, came to Hippo,
Augustine challenged him to a public disputation, and after two
days’ debate drove him into such straits that he at last admitted
himself defeated, and was obliged to pronounce anathema on Mani
and his doctrine. With still greater zeal than by the imperial
government were the African Manichæans persecuted by the Vandals,
whose king Hunerich (§ 76, 3) burnt many, and transported whole
ships’ loads to the continent of Europe. In the time of Leo
the Great († A.D. 461) they were very numerous in Rome. His
investigations tend to show that they entertained antinomian
views, and in their mysteries indulged in lustful practices.
Also in the time of Gregory the Great († A.D. 604) the church
of Italy was still threatened by their increase. Since then,
however, nothing more is heard of Manichæan tendencies in
the West down to the 11th century, when suddenly they again
burst forth with fearfully threatening and contagious power
(§ 108, 1). In the eastern parts of the empire, too, numerous
Gnostic-Manichæan remnants continued to exist in secret, and
from the 9th to the 12th century reappeared in a new form (§ 71).
Still more widely about this time did such views spread among the
Mussulman rulers of the Eastern borderlands, as far as China and
India, as the Arabian historians of this period testify (§ 29, 1).
§ 54.2. =Priscillianism, A.D. 383-563.=--The first seeds of the
Gnostic-Manichæan creed were brought to Spain in the 4th century
by an Egyptian Marcus. A rich and cultured layman Priscillian
let himself be drawn away in this direction, and developed
it independently into a dualistic and emanationistic system.
Marriage and carnal pleasures were forbidden, yet under an
outward show of strict asceticism were concealed antinomian
tendencies with impure orgies. At the same time the sect
encouraged and required lies and perjury, hypocrisy and
dissimulation for the spread and preservation of their community.
“_Jura, perjura, secretum perdere noli._” Soon Priscillianists
spread over all Spain; even some bishops joined them. Bishop
Idacius of Emerida by his passionate zeal against them fanned
the flickering fire into a bright flame. A synod at Saragossa
in A.D. 380 excommunicated them, and committed the execution of
its decrees to Bishop Ithacius of Sossuba, a violent and besides
an immoral man. Along with Idacius he had obtained from the
emperor Gratian an edict which pronounced on all Priscillianists
the sentence of banishment. Priscillian’s bribes, however, not
only rendered this edict inoperative, but also an order for the
arrest of Ithacius, which he avoided only by flight into Gaul.
Here he won over the usurper Maximus, the murderer of Gratian,
who, greedy for their property, used the torture against the
sect, and had Priscillian as well as some of his followers
beheaded at Treves in A.D. 385. This was the first instance
of capital punishment used against heretics. The noble bishop,
Martin of Tours (§ 47, 14), to whom the emperor had previously
promised that he would act mildly, hastened to Treves and
renounced church fellowship with Ithacius and all bishops
who had assented to the death sentence. Ambrose too and other
bishops expressed their decided disapproval. This led Maximus
to stop the military inquisition against them. But the glory of
martyrdom had fired the enthusiasm of the sect, and among the
barbarians who made their way into Spain from A.D. 409 they
won a rich harvest. Paulus [Paul] Orosius (§ 47, 20) wrote his
_Commonitorium de errore Priscillianist._ in A.D. 415, looking
for help to Augustine, whom, however, concern and contests
in other directions allowed to take but little part in this
controversy. Of more consequence was the later interference
of Leo the Great, occasioned by a call for help from bishop
Turribius of Astorga. Following his instructions, a _Concilium
Hispanicum_ in A.D. 447 and still more distinctly a Council
at Braga in A.D. 563 passed vigorous rules for the suppression
of heresy. Since then the name of the Priscillianists has
disappeared, but their doctrine was maintained in secret for
some centuries longer.[169]
V. WORSHIP, LIFE, DISCIPLINE AND MORALS.
§ 55. WORSHIP IN GENERAL.
Christian worship freed by Constantine from the pressure of
persecution developed a great wealth of forms with corresponding
stateliness of expression. But doctrinal controversies claimed so
much attention that neither space nor time was left for carrying the
other developments in the same way through the fire of conflict and
sifting. Hence forms of worship were left to be moulded in particular
ways by the spirit of the age, nationality and popular taste. The public
spirit of the church, however, gave to the development an essential
unity, and early differences were by and by brought more and more into
harmony. Only between East and West was the distinction strong enough
to make in various ways an impression in opposition to the levelling
endeavours of catholicity.
The age of Cyril of Alexandria marks an important turning point
in the development of worship. It was natural that Cyril’s
prevailing doctrine of the intimate connection of the divine
and human natures in the person of Christ should have embodied
itself in the services of the church. But this doctrine was
yet at least one-sided theory which did not wholly exclude
its perversion into error. In the dogma, indeed, thanks to
the exertions of Leo and Theodoret, the still extant Monophysite
error had no place given it. But in the worship of the church
it had embedded itself, and here it was not overcome, and its
presence was not even suspected, so, it could now not only
develop itself undisturbed in the direction of worship of saints,
images, relics, of pilgrimages, of sacrifice of the mass, etc.,
but also it could decisively deduce therefrom a development of
dogmas not yet established, _e.g._ in the doctrine of the church,
of the priesthood, of the sacraments, especially of the Lord’s
Supper, etc., etc.
§ 56. FESTIVALS AND SEASONS FOR PUBLIC WORSHIP.
The idea of having particular days of the week consecrated in memory
of special incidents in the work of redemption had even in the previous
period found expression (§ 37), but it now passed into the background
all the more as the church began to apply itself to the construction in
the richest possible form of a Christian year. The previous difference
in the development of East and West occasioned each to take its
own particular course, determined in the one case very much by a
Jewish-Christian, in the other by a Gentile-Christian, tendency.
Nevertheless in the 4th century we find a considerable levelling
of these divergences. This at least was attained unto thereby that
the three chief festivals received an essentially common form in both
churches. But in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the further development
of the Christian year, the two churches parted all the more decidedly
from one another. The Western church especially gave way more and more
unreservedly to the tendency to make the natural year the type and
pattern for the Christian year. Thus the Western Christian year obtained
a richer development and grew up into an institution more vitally and
inwardly related to the life of the people. The luxuriant overgrowth
of saints’ days, however, prevented the church from here reaching its
ideal.
§ 56.1. =The Weekly Cycle.=--Constantine the Great issued a law
in A.D. 321, according to which all magisterial, judicial and
municipal business was stopped on =Sunday=. At a later period
he also forbade military exercises. His successors extended the
prohibition to the public spectacles. Alongside of Sunday the
=Sabbath= was long celebrated in the East by meetings in the
churches, avoidance of fasting and by standing at prayers. The
_Dies stationum_, Wednesday and Friday (§ 37), were observed in
the East as fast days. The West gave up the Wednesday fast, and
introduced in its place the anti-Judaic Sabbath fast.
§ 56.2. =Hours and Quarterly Fasts.=--The number of appointed
_hours of prayer_ (the 3rd, 6th and 9th hours, comp. Dan.
vi. 10-14; Acts ii. 15; iii. 1; x. 9) were increased during
the 5th century to eight (_Horæ canonicæ: Matutina_ or matins
at 3 a.m.; _Prima_ at 6 a.m.; _Tertia_ at 9 a.m.; _Sexta_ at
12 noon; _Nona_ at 3 p.m.; _Vesper_ at 6 p.m.; _Completorium_
at 9 p.m.; and _Mesonyktion_ or Vigils at 12 midnight); yet
generally two of the night hours were combined, so as to
preserve the seven times required in Ps. cxix. 164. This
arrangement of hours was strictly observed by monks and clerics.
The common basis of prayer for devotions at these hours was the
Psalter divided among the seven days of the week. The rest of the
material adapted to the course of the Christian year, consisting
of scripture and patristic readings, legends of martyrs and
saints, prayers, hymns, doxologies, etc. gradually accumulated
so that it had to be abbreviated, and hence the name _Breviarium_
commonly given to such selections. The Roman Breviary, arranged
mainly by Leo the Great, Gelasius and Gregory the Great, gradually
throughout the West drove all other such compositions from the
field. An abbreviation by Haymo, General of the Minorites, in
A.D. 1241 was sanctioned by Gregory IX., but had subsequently
many alterations made upon it. The Council of Trent finally
charged the Papal chair with the task of preparing a new
redaction which the clergy of the whole catholic church would
be obliged to use. Such a production was issued by Pius V. in
A.D. 1568, and then in A.D. 1631 Urban VIII. gave it the form
in which it is still current.--In the West the year was divided
into three-monthly periods, _quatuor tempora_, corresponding to
the seasons of prayer recurring every three hours. There were
harvest prayer and thanksgiving seasons, occupied, in accordance
with Joel ii., with penance, fasting and almsgiving. Leo the
Great brought this institution to perfection. The _quatuor
tempora_, ember days, occur in the beginning of the Quadragesima,
in the week after Pentecost, and in the middle of the 7th and
10th months (Sept. and Dec.), and were kept by a strict fast on
Wednesday, Friday and Saturday with a Sabbath vigil.
§ 56.3. =The Reckoning of Easter.=--At the Council of Nicæa in
A.D. 325 the Roman mode of observing Easter prevailed over that
of Asia Minor (§ 37, 2). Those who adhered to the latter method
were regarded as a sect (_Quartadecimani_ Τεσσαρεσκαιδεκατῖται).
The Council decreed that the first day of full moon after the
spring equinox should be regarded as the 14th Nisan, and that the
festival of the resurrection should be celebrated on the Sunday
following. The bishop of Alexandria undertook the astronomical
determination of the festival on each occasion, because there
astronomical studies were most diligently prosecuted. He
published yearly, usually about Epiphany, a circular letter,
_Liber paschalis_, giving to the other churches the result of
the calculation, and took advantage generally of the opportunity
to discuss the ecclesiastical questions of the day. First of all
at Alexandria, probably to prevent for all time a combination
of the Jewish and Christian Easter festivals, the practice was
introduced of keeping the feast when the 14th and 16th of the
new moon fell upon Friday and Sunday, not on the same Sunday
but eight days later,--a practice which Rome also, and with her
a great part of the West, adopted in the 5th century (§ 77, 3).
A further difference existed as to the point of time with
which the day of full moon was to be regarded as beginning.
The Easter Canon of Hippolytus (§ 31, 3) had calculated it in
a very unsatisfactory manner according to a sixteen-years’ cycle
of the moon, after the course of which the day of full moon would
again occur on the same day of the year. In Alexandria the more
exact nineteen-years’ cycle of Anatolius was adopted, according
to which the day of full moon had an aberration of about one
day only in 310 years, and even this was caused rather by
the imperfection of the Julian year of 365 days with three
intercalary days in 400 years. But in Rome the reckoning was
made as the basis of an eighty-four years’ cycle which had indeed
the advantage of completing itself not only on the same day of
the year but on the same day of the week; while, on the other
hand, it had this drawback that after eighty-four years it had
fallen about a day behind the actual day of full moon. There was
also this further difference that in Alexandria the 21st of March
was regarded as the day when day and night were equal, and at
Rome, but wrongly, the 18th of March. The cycle of 532 (28 ✕ 19)
years reckoned in A.D. 452 by Victorius, a bishop of Aquitaine,
was assimilated to the Alexandrian, without, however, losing
the advantage of the eighty-four years’ cycle above referred
to, which, however, it succeeded in obtaining only by once in
every period of nineteen years fixing the equinox on the 20th
of March. The Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus (§ 47, 23), finally,
in A.D. 525 harmonized the Roman and the Alexandrian reckoning
by setting up a ninety-five years’ cycle (5 ✕ 19), and this cycle
was introduced throughout all the West by Isidore of Seville
and the Venerable Bede (§ 90, 2). The error occasioned by the
inexactness of the Julian calendar continued till the Gregorian
reform of the calendar (§ 149, 3).
§ 56.4. =The Easter Festivals.=--The pre-eminence of the
Christian festival of victory (the resurrection) over that
of suffering, especially among the Greeks, led, even in the
4th century to the former as the fruit of the latter being drawn
into the paschal season, and distinguished as πάσχα ἀναστάσιμον
from that as πάσχα σταυρώσιμον, and also at last to the adoption
of the one name of Paschal or Easter Festival and to the regarding
of the whole Quadragesima season as a preparation for Easter.
The Saxon name Easter is derived from the old German festival
of Ostara the goddess of spring which was celebrated at the same
season.--With the beginning of the Quadragesima the whole mode
of life assumes a new form. All amusements were stopped, all
criminal trials sisted and the din of traffic in streets and
markets as far as possible restricted. The East exempted Sunday
and Sabbath from the obligation of fasting, with the exception
of the last Sabbath as the day of Christ’s rest in the grave,
but the West exempted only Sunday. Gregory the Great, therefore,
fixed the beginning of the Quadragesima on Wednesday of the
seventh week before Easter, _Caput jejunii, Dies cinerum_, Ash
Wednesday, so called because the bishop strewed ashes on the
heads of believers with a warning reference to Gen. iii. 19,
comp. xviii. 27. With the Tuesday preceding, Shrove Tuesday
(from _shrive_, to confess), ended the carnival season (_carni
valedicere_) which, beginning with 6th Jan. or the feast of the
three holy kings, reached its climax in the last days, from three
to eight, before Ash Wednesday. On this closing day the people
generally sought indemnification for the approaching strict
fast by an unmeasured abandoning of themselves to pleasure. From
Italy where this custom arose and was most fully carried out,
it subsequently found its way into the other lands of the West.
In opposition to these unspiritual proceedings the period of
the Easter festivals was begun three weeks earlier with the 10th
Sunday before Easter (_Septuagesima_). The Hallelujah of the Mass
was silenced, weddings were no more celebrated (_Tempus clausum_),
monks and clerics already began the fast. The Quadragesima
festival reached its climax in the last, the _great_ week. It
began with Palm Sunday (ἑορτὴ τῶν βαΐων) and ended with the great
Sabbath, the favourite time for baptisms (Rom. vi. 3). Thursday
as the memorial day of the institution of the Lord’s Supper,
and Friday as the day of Christ’s death, Good Friday, were days
of special importance. A solemn night service, Easter vigils,
marked the transition to the joyous Easter celebrations. The old
legend that on this night Christ’s second coming would take place
rendered the service peculiarly solemn. Easter morning began with
the jubilant greeting: The Lord is risen, and the response, He is
risen indeed. On the following Sunday, the Easter Octave, _Pascha
clausum_, ἀντίπασχα, the Easter festival was brought to a close.
Those baptized on the great Sabbath wore for the last time their
white baptismal dress. Hence this sabbath was called _Dominica
in albis_; subsequently, in accordance with the Introitus
from 1 Pet. ii. 2, Quasimodogeniti; and by the Greeks, καινὴ
κυριακή. The joyous celebrations of Easter extended over all
the Quinquagesima period between Easter and Pentecost. Ascension
day, _Festum ascensionis_, ἑορτὴ τῆς ἀναλήψεως, and Pentecost,
πεντεκοστή, were introduced as high festivals by vigil services;
and the latter was concluded by the Pentecost-Octave, by the
Greeks called κυριακὴ τῶν ἁγίων μαρτυρησάντων and at a much later
date styled by the Latins Trinity Sunday. The Festival-Octaves,
ἀπολύσεις, had an Old Testament pattern in the עֲצֶרֶת of the Feast
of Tabernacles, Lev. xxiii. 26.
§ 56.5. =The Christmas Festivals.=--The first traces of the
Christmas festival (_Natalis Christi_, γενέθλια) in the Roman
church are found about A.D. 360. Some decades later they appear
in the Eastern church. The late introduction of this festival
is to be explained from the disregard of the birthday and the
prominence given to the day of the death of Christ in the ancient
church; but Chrysostom even regarded it as the μητρόπολις πασῶν
τῶν ἑορτῶν. Since the 25th of March as the spring equinox was
held as the day of creation, the day of the incarnation, the
conception of Christ, the second Adam, as the beginning of the
new creation was held on the same day, and hence 25th Dec. was
chosen as the day of Christ’s birth. The Christian festival thus
coincided nearly with the heathen _Saturnalia_, in memory of
the Golden Age, from 17th to 23rd Dec., the _Sigillaria_, on
the 24th Dec., when children were presented with dolls and images
of clay and wax, sigilla, and the _Brumalia_, on 25th Dec., _Dies
natalis invicti solis_, the winter solstice. It was considered
no mere chance coincidence that Christ, the eternal Sun,
should be born just on this day. The Christmas festival too
was introduced by a vigil and lasted for eight days, which in
the 6th century became the _Festum circumcisionis_. The revelling
that characterised the New Year Festival of the pagans, caused
the ancient church, to observe that day as a day of penance and
fasting. The feast of the Epiphany on the 6th Jan. (§ 37, 1) was
also introduced in the West during the 4th century but obtained
there a Gentile-Christian colouring from Luke ii. 21 and was
kept as the festival of the first fruits of the Gentiles and
received the name of the Festival of the three holy kings. For
even Tertullian in accordance with Ps. lxxii. 10 had made the
Magi kings; it was concluded that they were three because of
the three gifts spoken of; and Bede, about A.D. 700, gives their
names as Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. By others this festival
was associated with Christ’s first miracle at the marriage in
Cana, and also with the feeding of the 5,000 in the wilderness.
After the analogy of the Easter festival since the 6th century
a longer preliminary celebration has been connected with the
Christmas festival. In the Eastern church, beginning with the
14th of Nov., it embraced six Sundays with forty fast days, as
the second Quadragesima of the year. In the Latin church, as
the season of Advent, it had only four Sundays, with a three
weeks’ fast.
§ 56.6. =The Church Year= was in the East a symbolic adaptation
of the natural year only in so far as it brought with it the
Christianising of the Jewish festivals and the early recognition
of Western ideas about the feasts. Only on the high festivals,
Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are they retained; on the
other Sundays and festivals they never obtained expression.
The Easter festival was considered the beginning of the church
year; thereafter the Quadragesima or Epiphany; and finally,
the Old Testament beginning of the year in September. The whole
church year was divided into four parts according to the _Lectio
continua_ of the gospel, and the Sundays were named thereafter.
The κυριακὴ πρώτη τοῦ Ματθαίου was immediately after Pentecost.
The =Latin Church Year= begins with the season of Advent, and
distinguishes a _Semestre Domini_ and a _Semestre ecclesiæ_.
But only the former was fully developed: Christmas, Easter,
Pentecost with the Sundays belonging to them, representing the
founding, developing and completing of the history of salvation.
To a corresponding development of the second half we find early
contributions, _e.g._ the Feast of Peter and Paul on 29th June
as festival of the founding of the church by the Apostles, the
Feast of the leading martyr Laurentius (§ 22, 5) on 10th August
as memorial of the struggle prescribed to the _Ecclesia militans_,
and the Feast of Michael on 29th September with reference to the
completion in the _Ecclesia triumphans_. That in these feasts we
have already the germs of the three festivals of the community
of the church which were to correspond to the three festivals of
the Lord’s history appears significantly in the early designation
of the Sundays after Pentecost as _Dominica post Apostolos, post
Laurentium, post Angelos_. But it never was distinctly further
carried out. This deeply significant distribution was overlaid
by saint worship, which overflowed the _Semestre Domini_. The
principle of Christianising the Pagan rites was legitimated by
Gregory the Great. He instructed the Anglo-Saxon missionaries
to the effect (§ 77, 4), that they should convert the heathen
temples into churches and heathen festivals into ecclesiastical
festivals and days of martyrs, _ut duræ mentes gradibus vel
passibus non autem saltibus eleventur_. The saints henceforth
take the place of gods of nature and the church year reproduced
with a Christian colouring all the outstanding points in the
natural year.--As the last festival connected with the history
of the Lord, the Feast of the Glorification, ἁγία μεταμόρφωσις,
was held in the East on 6th August. According to tradition
the scene was enacted on Mt. Tabor, hence the feast was called
Θαβώριον. The Latin church adopted it first in the 15th century
(_F. transfigurationis_).[170]
§ 56.7. =The Church Fasts= (§ 37, 3).--In the Greek church the
ordinance of fasting was more strict than in the Latin. In one
period, however, we have a system of fasts embracing four great
fasting seasons: The Quadragesima of Easter and of Christmas, the
period of from three to five weeks from the Pentecost Octave (the
Greek Feast of All Saints) to that of Peter and Paul on 29th June,
and the fourteen days before the Ascension of Mary on 15th August.
There were also the νηστεῖαι προεόρτιοι on the evenings previous
to other festivals; and finally, the weekly recurring fasts
of Wednesday and Friday. The strictest was the pre-Easter fast,
observed with gradually advancing rigidness. On Sexagesima Sunday
flesh was eaten for the last time, then followed the so-called
Butter week, when butter, cheese, milk and eggs were still
allowed; but thereafter complete avoidance of all fattening
food was enjoined, reaching during the great week to the
utmost possible degree of abstinence. In the West instead
of Wednesday, Saturday was taken along with Friday, and down
to the 13th century it was enjoined that nothing should be
eaten on these two days of the week, as also on the quarterly
days (_quatuor tempora_) and the evenings preceding the feasts
of the most famous Apostles and martyrs, the vigil fasts, until
3 p.m. (_Semijejunium_) or even till 6 p.m. (_Plenum jejunium_);
while in the longer seasons of fasting before Easter and before
Christmas the injunction was restricted to avoidance of all fat
foods (_Abstinentia_).--Continuation § 115, 1.
§ 57. WORSHIP OF SAINTS, RELICS AND IMAGES.[171]
Though with the times of persecution martyrdom had ceased, asceticism
where it was preached with unusual severity gave a claim to canonisation
which was still bestowed by the people’s voice regarded as the voice of
God. Forgotten saints were discovered by visions, and legend insensibly
eked out the poverty of historical reminiscences with names and facts.
The veneration of martyrs rose all the higher the more pitiable the
present generation showed in its lukewarmness and worldliness over
against the world-conquering faith of that great cloud of witnesses.
The worship of Mary, which came in as a result of the Nestorian
controversy, was later of being introduced than that of the martyrs,
but it almost immediately shot far ahead and ranked above the adoration
of all the other saints. The adoration of Angels, of which we find the
beginnings even in Justin and Origen, remained far behind the worship
of the saints. Pilgrimages were zealously undertaken, from the time
when the emperor’s mother Helena, in A.D. 326, went as a pilgrim to
holy places in Palestine and afterwards marked these out by building
on them beautiful churches. The worship of images was introduced first
in the age of Cyril of Alexandria and was carried out with peculiar
eagerness in the art-loving East. The Western teachers, however,
and even Gregory the Great himself, only went the length of becoming
decoration, using images to secure more impressiveness in teaching and
greater liveliness in devotion. In the West, however, still more than
in the East, veneration of relics came into vogue.
§ 57.1. =The Worship of Martyrs and Saints= (§ 39, 5).[172]--At
a very early period churches were built upon the graves of
Martyrs (_Memoria_, _Confessio_, μαρτύριον), or their bones
were brought into churches previously built (_Translationes_).
New edifices were dedicated in their names, those receiving
baptism were named after them. The days of their death were
observed as special holy seasons with vigil services, Agape
and oblations at their graves. In glowing discourses the orators
of the church, in melodious hymns the poets, sounded forth
their praises. The bones of the martyrs were sought out with
extraordinary zeal and were looked upon and venerated as
supremely sacred. Each province, each city and each calling
had its own patron saint (_Patronus_). Perhaps as early as the
3rd century several churches had their martyr calendars, _i.e._
lists of those who were to have the day of their death celebrated.
In the 4th century this custom had become universal, and from the
collection of the most celebrated calendars, with the addition
of legendary stories of the lives and sufferings of martyrs or
saints (_Legendæ_, so called because they were wont to be _read_
at the memorial services of the individuals referred to), sprang
up the _Martyrologies and Legends of the Saints_, among the
Greeks called _Menologies_ from μήν, a month. Most esteemed
in the West was the martyrology of the Roman church, whose
composition has been recently put down, equally with and upon
the same grounds as that of the so called _Liber Comitis_,
§ 59, 3, to the time of Jerome as the chief representative of
Western theological learning. This collection formed the basis
of the numerous Latin martyrologies of the Middle Ages (§ 90, 9).
A rich choice was afforded by these catalogues of saints to
those wishing names to use at baptism or confirmation; the saint
preferred became thereby the patron of him who took his name. The
three great Cappadocians in the East and Ambrose in the West were
the first to open the floodgates for the invocation of saints
by their proclaiming that the glorified saints through communion
with the Lord shared in His attribute of omniprescence and
omniscience; while Augustine rather assigned to the angels
the task of communicating the invocations of men to the saints.
In the liturgies prayers for the saints were now displaced by
invocations for their intercession. In this the people found
a compensation for the loss of hero, genius and _manes_ worship.
The church teachers at least wished indeed to make a marked
distinction between _Adoratio_ and _Invocatio_, λατρεία and
δουλεία, rendering the former to God only. A festival of All the
Martyrs was celebrated in the East as early as the 4th century
on the Pentecost octave (§ 56, 4). In the West, Pope Boniface IV.,
in A.D. 610, having received from the Emperor Phocas the Pantheon
as a gift and having converted it into a church of the most
Blessed Virgin and all the Martyrs, founded a _Festum omnium
Sanctorum_, which was not, however, generally recognised before
the 9th century (1st Nov.). Owing to the great number of saints
one or more had to be assigned to each day in the calendar. The
day fixed was usually that of the death of the saint. The only
instance of the celebration of a birthday was the festival
of John the Baptist (_Natalis S. Joannis_). The 24th June was
fixed upon by calculating from Christmas (acc. to Luke i. 26),
and its occurring in the other half of the year from that of
Christ afforded a symbolical parallel to John iii. 30. As an
appendage to this we meet even in the 5th century with the
_F. decollationis S. Joannis_ on 29th Aug. On the second day
of the Christmas festival the Feast of the Proto-martyr Stephen
was celebrated as the first fruits of the incarnation of God;
on the third, the memory of the disciple who lay on the Master’s
breast; on the fourth, the innocent children of Bethlehem
(_F. innocentium_) as the _flores_ or _primitiæ martyrum_. The
festival of the Maccabees (πανήγυρις τῶν Μακκαβαίων) leads yet
further back as the memorial of the heroic mother and her seven
sons under Antiochus Epiphanes. It was observed as early as the
4th century and did not pass out of use till the 13th. Among the
festivals of Apostles that of Peter and Paul (_F. Apost. Petri
et Pauli_) on 29th June, as the solemnization of their common
martyrdom at Rome, was universally observed. But Rome celebrated
besides a double _F. Cathedræ Petri_, for the _Cathedra Romana_
on 18th Jan., and for the _Cathedra Antiochena_ on 22nd Feb.
For a long time a symbolical arrangement of the calendar days
prevailed; the patriarchs of the Old Testament were put in the
time before Christmas, the later saints of the old dispensation
in the Quadragesima, and the Apostles and Founders of the church
after Pentecost, then the Martyrs, next the Confessors, and
finally, the Virgins as prototype of the perfected church.
§ 57.2. =The Worship of Mary and Anna.=[173]--The εὐλογουμένη ἐν
γυναιξί who herself full of the Holy Ghost had prophesied: ἰδοὺ
γὰρ, ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν μακαριοῦσι με πᾶσαι αἱ γενεαί, was regarded
as the highest ideal of all virginity. All the reverence, which
the church accorded to virginity, culminated therefore in her.
Even Tertullian alongside of the Pauline contrasts Adam and
Christ, placed this other, Eve and Mary. The _perpetua virginitas
b. Mariæ_ was an uncontested article of faith from the 4th century.
Ambrose understood of her Ezek. xliv. 3, and affirmed that she
was born _utero clauso_; Gregory the Great saw an analogy between
this and the entering of the Risen One through closed doors
(John xx. 19); and the second Trullan Council, in A.D. 692,
confessed: ἀλόχευτον τὸν ἐκ τῆς παρθένου θεῖον τόκον εἶναι.
Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, Basil, Chrysostom, had indeed
still found something in her worthy of blame, but even Augustine
refuses to admit that she should be reckoned among sinners: _Unde
enim scimus, quid ei plus gratiæ collatum fuerit ad vincendum
omni ex parte peccatum?_ Yet for a long time this veneration of
Mary made little progress. This was caused partly by the absence
of the glory of martyrdom, partly by its development in the
church being forestalled and distorted by the heathenish and
godless Mariolatry of the Collyridians, an Arabian female sect
of the 4th century, which offered to the Holy Virgin, as in
heathen times to Ceres, cakes of bread (κολλυρίδα). Epiphanius,
who opposed them, taught: ἐν τιμῇ ἔστω Μαρία, ὁ δὲ Πατὴρ καὶ Υἱὸς
καὶ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα προσκυνείσθω, τὴν δὲ Μαρίαν οὐδεὶς προσκυνείτω.
On the Antidicomarianites, see § 62, 2. The victory of those who
used the term θεοτόκος in the Nestorian controversy gave a great
impulse to Mariolatry. Even in the 5th century, the festival
of the Annunciation, _F. annunciationis, incarnationis_, ἑορτὴ
τοῦ εὐαγγελισμοῦ, τοῦ ἀσπασμοῦ, was held on the 25th March.
With this was also connected in the West the festival of the
Purification of Mary, _F. purificationis_ on 2nd Feb., according
to Luke ii. 22. On account of the candles used in the service
it was called the Candlemas of Mary, _F. candelarum, luminum_,
Luke ii. 32. In consequence of an earthquake and pestilence in
A.D. 542, Justinian founded the corresponding ἑορτὴ τῆς ὑπαπάντης,
_F. occursus_, only that here the meeting with Simeon and Anna
(Luke ii. 24) is put in the foreground. Both festivals, the
Annunciation and the Purification, had the same dignity as those
dedicated to the memory of our Lord. From the endeavour to put
alongside of each of the festivals of the Lord a corresponding
festival of Mary, about the end of the 6th century the Feast
of the Ascension of Mary (πανήγυρις κοιμήτεως, _F. assumptionis,
dormitionis M._) was introduced and celebrated on 15th Aug.;
and in the 7th century, the Feast of the Birth of Mary (_F.
nativitatis M._), on 8th Sept. The former was founded on the
apocryphal legend (§ 32, 4), according to which Christ with the
angels brought the soul of his just departed mother, and, on the
following day, its glorified body, to heaven, and there united
it again with the soul.--The first traces of a =veneration of
Anna= around whom, as the supposed wife of Joachim and mother of
the Virgin, the apocryphal gospels of the childhood had already
gathered a mass of romantic details, are found in the 4th century
in Gregory of Nyssa and Epiphanius. Justinian I. in A.D. 550
built a church of St. Anna in Constantinople. In the East the
25th of July was celebrated as the day of her death, the 9th Sept.
as the day of her marriage, and the 9th Dec. as the day of her
conception. In the West the veneration of Anna was later of being
introduced. It became popular in the later Middle Ages and was
made obligatory on the whole catholic church by Gregory XIII.
in A.D. 1584. The day fixed was 26th July. Yet Leo III. in the
8th century had allowed a pictorial representation of the legend
of St. Joachim and St. Anna to be put in the church of St. Paul
in Rome.--Continuation § 104, 7, 8.
§ 57.3. =Worship of Angels.=--The idea of guardian angels
of nations, cities, individuals, was based on Deut. xxxii. 8
(in the LXX.); Dan. x. 13, 20, 21; xii. 1; Matt. xviii. 10;
Acts xii. 15, even as early as the 2nd century. Ambrose
required the invocation of angels. But when the Phrygian sect
of the Angelians carried the practice the length of idolatrous
worship, the Council at Laodicea in the 4th century opposed
it, and Epiphanius placed it in his list of heresies. Supposed
manifestations of the Archangel Michael led to the institution
from the 5th century of the feast of Michael observed on 29th
Sept., as a festival of the angels collectively representing
the idea of the church triumphant.
§ 57.4. =Worship of Images= (§ 38, 3).--The disinclination of
the ancient church to the pictorial representations of the person
of Christ as such, and also the unwillingness to allow religious
pictures in the churches, based upon the prohibition of images
in the decalogue, was not yet wholly overcome in the 4th century.
Eusebius of Cæsarea, with reference to the statues of Paneas
(§ 13, 2) and other images of Christ and the Apostles, speaks
of an ἐθνικὴ συνηθεία. He administered a severe reproof to the
emperor’s sister, Constantia, and referred to the prohibition
of the decalogue, when she expressed a wish to have an image
of Christ. Asterius, bishop of Amasa in Pontus († A.D. 410),
earnestly declaimed against the custom of people of distinction
wearing clothes embroidered with pictures from the gospel history,
and recommends them rather to have Christ in their hearts. The
violent zealot, Epiphanius, the most decided opponent of all
religious idealism, tore the painted curtain of a Palestinian
village church in Anablatha with the injunction to wrap therewith
a beggar’s corpse. But Greek love of art and the religious needs
of the people gained the victory over Judaic-legal rigorism
and abstract spiritualism. Here too the age of Cyril marks
the turning point. In the 5th century authentic miraculous
pictures of Christ, the Apostles and the God-mother (εἰκόνες
ἀχειροποίητοι), made their appearance, and with them began image
worship properly so called, with lighting of candles, kissing,
burning incense, bowing of the knee, prostrations (προσκύνησις
τιμητική). Soon all churches and church books, all palaces
and cottages, were filled with images of Christ and the saints
painted or drawn by the monks. Miracle after miracle was wrought
beside, upon or through them. In this, however, the West did not
keep pace with the East. Augustine complains of image worship
and advises to seek Christ in the bible rather than in images.
Gregory the Great, while blaming the violence of Serenus, bishop
of Massilia in breaking the images, wishes that in churches
images should be made to serve _ad instruendas solummodo mentes
nescientium_. The Nestorians who were strongly opposed to images,
expressly declared that the hated Cyril was the originator of
_Iconolatry_.
§ 57.5. =Worship of Relics= (§ 39, 5).--The veneration for
relics (λείψανα) proceeded from a pious feeling in human nature
and is closely associated with that higher reverence which the
church paid to its martyrs. It began with public assemblies
at the graves of martyrs, memorial celebrations and services
in connection with the translations of their bones held in
the churches. Soon no church, no altar (Rev. vi. 9), could be
built without relics. When the small number of known martyrs
proved insufficient, single parts of their bodies were divided
to different churches. But dreams and visions showed rich stores
previously unthought of in remnants of the bones of martyrs
and saints. The catacombs especially proved inexhaustible mines.
Miracles and signs vouched for their genuineness. Theodosius I.
already found it necessary in A.D. 386, to prohibit the traffic
in relics. Besides bones, were included also clothes, utensils,
instruments of torture. They healed the sick, cast out devils,
raised the dead, averted plagues, and led to the discovery of
offenders. The healed expressed their gratitude in votive tablets
and in presentations of silver and golden figures of the healed
parts. A scriptural foundation was sought for this veneration of
relics in 2 Kings xiii. 21; Ecclesiastic. xlvi. 14; Acts xix. 12.
According to a legend commonly believed in the 5th century,
but unknown to Eusebius and the Bordeaux pilgrim of A.D. 333,
Helena, mother of Constantine, found in A.D. 326 the Cross of
Christ along with the crosses of the two thieves. The one was
distinguished from the others by a miracle of healing or of
raising from the dead. The pious lady left one half of the cross
to the church of the Holy Sepulchre and sent the rest with the
nails to her son, who inlaid the wood in his statues and some of
the nails in his diadem, while of the rest he made a bit for his
horse. Since the publication of the _Doctrina Addaei_, § 32, 6,
it has become apparent that this Helena legend is just another
version of the old Edessa legend about the Byzantine saint,
according to which the wife of the emperor Claudius converted
by Peter is represented in precisely similar circumstances as
having found the cross. To pious and distinguished pilgrims
permission was given to take small splinters of the wood
kept in Jerusalem, so that soon bits of the cross were spread
and received veneration throughout all the world. According
to a much later report a σταυρώσιμος ἡμέρα on 14th Sept. was
observed in the East as early as the 4th century in memory of
the finding of the cross. From the time of Gregory the Great a
_F. inventionis S. Crucis_ was observed in the West on 3rd May.
The festival of the exaltation of the cross, σταυροφανεία, _F.
exaltationis S. Crucis_, on 14th Sept., was instituted by the
emperor Heraclius when the Persians on their being conquered
in A.D. 629, were obliged to restore the cross which they had
taken away.
§ 57.6. =The Making of Pilgrimages.=--The habit of making
pilgrimages (pilgrim=peregrinus) to sacred places also rested
upon a common tendency in human nature. The pilgrimage of Helena
in A.D. 326 found numerous imitators, and even the conquest
of Palestine by the Saracens in the 7th century did not quench
pilgrims’ ardour. Next to the sacred places in Palestine, Sinai,
the grave of Peter and Paul at Rome (_Limina Apostolorum_), the
grave of Martin of Tours (§ 47, 14) and the supposed scene in
Arabia of the sufferings of Job, as a foreshadowing of Christ’s,
were the spots most frequented by pilgrims. Gregory of Nyssa
in an Epistle Περὶ τῶν ἀπιόντων εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα most vigorously
opposed the immoderate love of pilgrimages, especially among
monks and women. In the strongest language he pointed out the
danger to true religion and morality; and even Jerome so far
gave way to reason as to say: _Et de Hierosolymis et de Brittania
æqualiter patet aula cœlestis_. Chrysostom and Augustine, too,
opposed the over estimating of this expression of pious feeling.
§ 58. THE DISPENSATION OF THE SACRAMENTS.
During this period nothing was definitely established as to the idea
and number of the sacraments (μυστήρια). The name was applied to the
doctrines of grace in so far as they transcended the comprehension of
the human understanding, as well as to those solemn acts of worship by
which grace was communicated and appropriated in an incomprehensible
manner to believers, so that only in the 12th century (§ 104, 2) were
the consecrations and blessings hitherto included therein definitely
excluded from the idea of the sacrament under the name Sacramentalia.
It was, however, from the first clearly understood that Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper were essentially the sacramental means of grace. Yet even
in the 3rd century, anointing and laying on of hands as an independent
sacrament of Confirmation (_Confirmatio_, χρίσμα) was separated
from the idea of baptism, and in the West, from the administration
of baptism. The reappearance of the idea of a special priesthood as
a divine institution (§ 34, 4) gave also to Ordination the importance
of a sacrament (§ 45, 1). Augustine whom the Pelagians accused
of teaching by his doctrine of original sin and concupiscence that
God-ordained marriage was sinful, designated Christian marriage, with
reference to Eph. v. 32, a sacrament (§ 61, 2) in order more decidedly
to have it placed under the point of view of the nature sanctified by
grace. Pseudo-Dionysius, in the 6th century (§ 47, 11), enumerates six
sacraments: Baptism, Chrism, Lord’s Supper, Consecration of Priests
and Monks and the Anointing of the Dead (τῶν κεκοιμημένων). On Extreme
Unction, comp. § 61, 3.
§ 58.1. =Administration of Baptism= (§ 35, 4).--The postponing
of baptism from lukewarmness, superstition or doctrinal prejudice,
was a very frequent occurrence. The same obstacles down to the
6th century stood in the way of infant baptism being regarded
as necessary. Gregory of Nyssa wrote Πρὸς τοὺς βραδύνοντας
εἰς τὸ βάπτισμα, and with him all the church fathers earnestly
opposed the error. In case of need (_in periculo mortis_) it
was allowed even by Tertullian that baptism might be dispensed
by any baptized layman, but not by women. The institution of
godfather was universal and founded a spiritual relationship
within which marriage was prohibited not only between the
godparents themselves, but also between those and the baptized
and their children. The usual ceremonies preceding baptism were:
The covering of the head by the catechumens and the uncovering
on the day of baptism; the former to signify the warding
off every distraction and the withdrawing into oneself. With
exorcism was connected the ceremony of breathing upon (John
xx. 22), the touching of the ears with the exclamation: Ephphatha
(Mark vii. 34), marking the brow and breast with the sign of
the cross; in Africa also the giving of salt acc. to Mark ix. 50,
in Italy the handing over of a gold piece as a symbol of the
pound (Luke xiii. 12 f.) entrusted in the grace of baptism. The
conferring of a new name signified entrance into a new life.
At the renunciation the baptized one turned him to the setting
sun with the words: Ἀποτάσσομαί σοι Σατανᾶ καὶ πασῇ τῇ λατρείᾳ
σου; to the rising sun with the words: Συντάσσομαί σοι Χριστέ.
The dipping was thrice repeated: in the Spanish church, in the
anti-Arian interest, only once. Sprinkling was still confined
to _Baptismus Clinicorum_ and was first generally used in the
West in infant baptism in the 12th century, while the East still
retained the custom of immersion.
§ 58.2. =The Doctrine of the Supper= (§ 36, 5).--The doctrine
of the Lord’s Supper was never the subject of Synodal discussion,
and its conception on the part of the fathers was still in a high
degree uncertain and vacillating. All regarded the holy supper as
a supremely holy, ineffable mystery (φρικτόν, _tremendum_), and
all were convinced that bread and wine in a supernatural manner
were brought into relation to the body and blood of Christ; but
some conceived of this relation spiritualistically as a dynamic
effect, others realistically as a substantial importation to
the elements, while most vacillated still between these two
views. Almost all regarded the miracle thus wrought as μεταβολή,
_Transfiguratio_, using this expression, however, also of the
water of baptism and the anointing oil. The spiritualistic theory
prevailed among the Origenists, most decidedly with Eusebius of
Cæsarea, less decidedly with Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen,
and again very decidedly with Pseudo-Dionysius. In the West
Augustine and his disciples, even including Leo the Great, favour
the spiritualistic view. With Augustine the spiritualistic view
was a consequence of his doctrine of predestination; only to the
believer, _i.e._ to the elect can the heavenly food be imparted.
Yet he often expresses himself very strongly in a realistic
manner. The realistic view was divided into a dyophysitic or
consubstantial and a monophysitic or transubstantial theory.
A decided tendency toward the idea of transubstantiation was
shown by Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Hilary of Poitiers,
and Ambrose. The view of Gregory of Nyssa is peculiar: As by
Christ during His earthly life food and drink by assimilation
passed into the substance of His body, so now bread and wine
by the almighty operation of God by means of consecration is
changed into the glorified body of Christ and by our partaking
of them are assimilated to our bodies. The opposing views were
more sharply distinguished in consequence of the Nestorian
controversy, but the consistent development of dyophysitism
in the eucharistic field was first carried out by Theodoret
and Pope Gelasius († A.D. 496). The former says: μένει γὰρ
ἐπὶ τῆς προτέρας οὐσίας; and the latter: _Esse non desinit
substantia vel natura panis et vini.... Hoc nobis in ipso Christo
Domino sentiendum_ (Christological), _quod in ejus imagine_
(Eucharistical), _profitemur_. The massive concrete popular
faith had long before converted the μεταβολή into an essential,
substantial transformation. Thence this view passed over into
the liturgies. Gallican and Syrian liturgies of the 5th century
express themselves unhesitatingly in this direction. Also
the tendency to lose the creaturely in the divine which still
continued after the victory of Dyophysitism at Chalcedon, told
in favour of the development of the dogma and about the end of
our period the doctrine of Transubstantiation was everywhere
prevalent.[174]--Continuation § 91, 3.
§ 58.3. =The Sacrifice of the Mass= (§ 36, 6).--Even in the
4th century the body of Christ presented by consecration in
the Supper was designated a sacrifice, but only in the sense
of a representation of the sacrifice of Christ once offered.
Gradually, however, the theory prevailed of a sacramental
memorial celebration of the sacrifice of Christ in that of
an unbloody but actual repetition of the same. To this end
many other elements than those mentioned in § 36, 6 co-operated.
Such were especially the rhetorical figures and descriptions
of ecclesiastical orators, who transferred the attributes of the
one sacrifice to its repeated representations; the re-adoption of
the idea of a priesthood (§ 34, 4) which demanded a corresponding
conception of sacrifice; the pre-eminent place given to the
doctrine of sacraments; the tendency to place the sacrament
under the point of view of a magically acting divine power, etc.
The sacrificial idea, however, obtained its completion in its
application to the doctrine of Purgatory by Gregory the Great
(§ 61, 4). The _oblationes pro defunctis_ which had been in use
from early times became now masses for the souls of individuals;
their purpose was not the enjoyment of the body and blood
of Christ by the living and the securing thereby continued
communion with the departed, but only the renewing and repeating
of the atoning sacrifice for the salvation of the souls of the
dead, _i.e._ for the moderating and shortening of purgatorial
sufferings. The redeeming power of the sacrifice of the eucharist
was then in an analogous manner applied to the alleviation of
earthly calamities, sufferings and misfortunes, in so far as
these were viewed as punishments for sin. For such ends, then,
it was enough that the sacrificing priest should perform the
service (_Missæ solitariæ_, Private Masses). The partaking
of the membership was at last completely withdrawn from the
regular public services and confined to special festival
seasons.--Continuation § 88, 3.
§ 58.4. =The Administration of the Lord’s Supper.=--The sharp
distinction between the _Missa Catechumenorum_ and the _Missa
Fidelium_ (§ 36, 2, 3) lost its significance after the general
introduction of infant baptism, and the name _Missa_, mass, was
now restricted to the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper properly so
called. In the Eastern and North African churches the communion
of children continued common; the Western church forbade it in
accordance with 1 Cor. xi. 28, 29. The _Communis sub una_ (sc.
_specie_), _i.e._ with bread only, was regarded as a Manichæan
heresy (§ 29, 3). Only in North Africa was it exceptionally
allowed in children’s communion, after a little girl from natural
aversion to wine had vomited it up. In the East, as early as the
4th century, one observance of the Lord’s Supper in the year was
regarded as sufficient; but Western Councils of the 5th century
insisted upon its observance every Sunday and threatened with
excommunication everyone who did not communicate at least on
the three great festivals. The elements of the supper were still
brought as presents by the members of the church. The bread
was that in common use, therefore usually leavened. The East
continued this practice, but the West subsequently, on symbolical
grounds, introduced the use of unleavened bread. The colour of
the wine was regarded as immaterial. Subsequently white wine was
preferred as being free from the red colouring matter. The mixing
of the wine with water was held to be essential, and was grounded
upon John xix. 34; or regarded as significant of the two natures
in Christ. Only the Armenian Monophysites used unmixed wine.
The bread was broken. To the sick was often brought in the
East instead of the separate elements bread dipped in wine.
Subsequently also, first in children’s communion and in the
Greek church only, bread and wine together were presented in
a spoon. The consecrated elements were called εὐλογίαι after
1 Cor. x. 16. The εὐλογίαι left over (περισσεύουσα) were after
communion divided among the clergy. At a later period only so
much was consecrated as it was thought would be needed for use
at one time. The overplus of unconsecrated oblations was blessed
and distributed among the non-communicants, the catechumens
and penitents. The name εὐλογίαι was now applied to those
elements that had only been blessed which were also designated
ἀντίδωρα. The old custom of sending to other churches or bishops
consecrated sacramental elements as a sign of ecclesiastical
fellowship was forbidden by the Council at Laodicea in the
4th century.--Continuation § 104, 3.
§ 59. PUBLIC WORSHIP IN WORD AND SYMBOL.
The text of the sermon was generally taken from the bible portion
previously read. The liturgy attained a rich development, but the
liturgies of the Latin and Greek churches were fundamentally different
from one another. Scripture Psalms, Songs of Praise with Doxologies
formed the main components of the church service of song. Gnostics
(§ 27, 5), Arians (§ 50, 1), Apollinarians and Donatists found hymns
of their own composition very popular. The church was obliged to outbid
them in this. The Council at Laodicea, however, in A.D. 360, sought to
have all ψαλμοὶ ἰδιωτικοί banished from the church, probably in order
to prevent heretical poems being smuggled in. The Western church did
not discuss the subject; and Chrysostom at least adorned the nightly
processions which the rivalry of the Arians in Constantinople obliged
him to make, with the solemn singing of hymns.
§ 59.1. =The Holy Scriptures= (§ 36, 7, 8).--The doubts about
the genuineness of particular New Testament writings which
had existed in the days of Eusebius, had now greatly lessened.
Fourteen years after Eusebius, Athanasius in his 39th Festal
Letter of A.D. 367 gave a list of canonical scriptures in which
the Eusebian antilegomena of the first class (§ 36, 8) were
without more ado enumerated among the κανονιζόμενα. From these
he distinguished the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Esther,
Judith, and Tobit, as well as the Διδαχὴ καλουμένη τῶν Ἀποστόλων
and the Shepherd of Hermas as ἀναγινωσκόμενα, _i.e._ as books
which from their excellent moral contents had been used by
the fathers in teaching the catechumens and which should be
recommended as affording godly reading. The Council at Laodicea
gave a Canon in which we miss only the Apocalypse of John,
objected to probably on account of the unfavourable view of
chiliasm entertained by the church at that time (§ 33, 9);
as regards the Old Testament it expressly limited the public
readings in churches to the 22 bks. of the Hebrew canon. The
Council at Hippo, in A.D. 393, gave synodic sanction for the
first time in the West to that Canon of the New Testament which
has from that time been accepted.--The question as to the value
of the books added to the Old Testament in the LXX. remained
undecided down to the time of the Reformation. The Greek church
kept to the Athanasian distinction of these as ἀναγινωσκόμενα
from the κανονιζόμενοι, until the confession of Dositheus in
A.D. 1629 (§ 152, 3) in its anti-Calvinistic zeal maintained
that even those books should be acknowledged as γνήσια τῆς
γραφῆς μέρη. In the North African church Tertullian and Cyprian
had characterized them without distinction as holy scripture.
Augustine followed them, though not altogether without hesitation:
_Maccab. scripturam non habent Judæi ... sed recepta est ab
ecclesia non inutilitor, si sobrie legatur vel audiatur_; and
the Synods at Hippo in A.D. 393 and at Carthage in A.D. 397 and
A.D. 419 put them without question into their list of canonical
books, adding this, however, that they would ask the opinion of
the transmarine churches on the matter. Meanwhile too in Rome
this view had prevailed and Innocent I. in A.D. 405 expressly
homologated the African list. Hilary of Poitiers and Rufinus on
the other hand upheld the view of Athanasius, and Jerome in his
_Prologus galeatus_ after enumerating the books of the Hebrew
Canon went so far as to say: _Quidquid extra hos est, inter
Apocrypha ponendum_, and elsewhere calls the addition to Daniel
merely _næniæ_. In the _Præfatio in libros Salom._, he expresses
himself more favourably of the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus,
Judith, Tobit and Maccabees: _legit quidem ecclesia, sed inter
canonicas scripturas non recipit ... legat ad ædificationem
plebis sed non ad auctoritatem dogmatum confirmandam_. This
view prevailed throughout the whole of the Middle Ages among
the most prominent churches down to the meeting of the Council
of Trent (§ 136, 4); whereas the Tridentine fathers owing
to the rejection of the books referred to by the Protestants
(§ 161, 8), and their actual or supposed usefulness in supporting
anti-Protestant dogmas, _e.g._ the meritoriousness of good works,
Tob. iv. 11, 12; intercession of saints, 2 Macc. xv. 12-14;
veneration of relics, Ecclus. xlvi. 14; xlix. 12; masses
for souls and prayers for the dead, 2 Macc. xii. 43-46, felt
themselves constrained to pronounce them canonical.--The
inconvenient _Scriptio continua_ in the biblical Codices led
first of all the Alexandrian deacon Euthalius, about A.D. 460,
by stichometric copies of the New Testament in which every line
(στίχος) embraced as much as with regard to the sense could
be read without a pause. He also undertook a division of the
Apostolic Epistles and the Acts into chapters (κεφάλαια). An
Alexandrian church teacher, Ammonius, even earlier than this,
in arranging for a harmony of the gospels had divided the gospels
in 1,165 chapters and added to the 355 chapters of Matthew’s
gospel the number of the chapter of parallel passages in the
other gospels. Eusebius of Cæsarea completed the work by his
“Evang. Canon,” for he represents in ten tables which chapters
are found in all the four, in three, in two or in one of the
gospels.[175]--Jerome made emendations upon the corrupt text
of the Itala by order of Damasus, bishop of Rome, and then made
from the Hebrew a translation of the =Old Testament= of his own,
which, joined to the revised translation of the New Testament,
after much opposition gradually secured supremacy throughout all
the West under the name of the =Vulgata=. The Monophysite Syrians
got from Polycarp in A.D. 508 at the request of bishop Xenajas
or Philoxenus of Mabug, a new slavishly literal translation of
the New Testament. This so-called Philoxenian translation was,
in A.D. 616, corrected by Thomas of Charcal, provided after
the manner of the Hexapla of Origen with notes--the Harclensian
translation--and in A.D. 617 enlarged by a translation of the
Old Testament executed by bishop Paulus of Tella in Mesopotamia
according to the Hexapla text of the LXX.--Diligent =Scripture
Reading= was recommended by all the fathers, with special fervour
by Chrysostom, to the laity as well as the clergy. Yet the
idea gained ground that the study of Scripture was the business
of monks and clerics. The second Trullan Council, in A.D. 692,
forbade under severe penalties that scripture should be understood
and expounded otherwise than had been done by the old fathers.
§ 59.2. =The Creeds of the Church.=
I. =The Nicæno-Constantinopolitan Creed.=--The Nicene Creed
(§ 50, 1, 7) did not =in the East= succeed in dislodging
the various forms of the Baptismal formula (§ 35, 2);
indeed, owing to the statement of this third article
restricting itself to a mere καὶ εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα ἅγιον
it was little fitted to become a universal symbol. But
what the _Nicænum_ in spite of its unexampled pretensions
never won, the so-called _Nicæno-Constantinopolitanum_
of A.D. 451, not being chargeable with the deficiency
referred to, actually achieved. The idea prevailing
until quite recently that this Symbol originated at
the so-called second œcumenical Council at Constantinople
in A.D. 381 as an enlargement of the Nicene confession,
has now been shown to be quite erroneous. After the Romish
theologian Vincenzi laboured to prove that this was a
production forged by the Greeks in the interests of their
“heretical” doctrine of the procedure of the Holy Spirit
from the Father only (§ 50, 7), Harnack on the basis of
the researches of Caspari and Hort reached the following
results: The so-called Nicæno-Constantinopolitan Creed is
identical with the creed recommended by Epiphanius in his
_Anchoratus_, about A.D. 373, as genuinely apostolic-Nicene;
the creed of the Anchoratus is that which forms the subject
of Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures (§ 47, 10), probably at
a later date revised, enriched by the introduction of the
most important phrases from the Nicænum and an additional
section on the Holy Spirit (comp. § 50, 5, 7), and
issued in his own name by Cyril while bishop of Jerusalem
(A.D. 351-386) as a Baptismal formula for the church of
Jerusalem; this new recension of the Jerusalem Symbol
was probably laid before the Council at Constantinople
in A.D. 381 by Cyril as a proof of his own orthodoxy that
had always been somewhat questionable and as such passed
over into the Acts which are now lost; thus at least is
it most simply explained how even in A.D. 451 it could be
quoted in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon alongside
of the Nicene as the Constantinopolitan; in proportion
then as the Council of Constantinople of A.D. 381 came
to be regarded as an œcumenical Council (§ 50, 4), this
creed, erroneously ascribed to that Council, had accorded
to it the rank of an œcumenical Symbol.
II. =The Apostles’ Creed.=--The Roman church and with it the
whole =West=, standing upon the supposed Apostolic origin
of their symbol, did not suffer it to be dislodged by the
Nicænum nor to be assimilated by any importations from
it. Nevertheless during the period when the Roman chair
was dominated by the Byzantine court theology (§ 52, 3)
the so-called _Nicæno-Constantinopolitanum_ succeeded in
displacing the old Western creed, aided by the opposition
to the Arianism that was being driven forward by the
Visigoths and Ostrogoths in Italy and Spain (§ 76, 2, 7),
which demanded a more decidedly anti-Arian formula.
After this danger had been long overcome, the desire
was expressed in the 9th century for a shorter creed
that might serve as a baptismal formula and as the basis
of catechetical teaching. They fell back, however, not
upon the old Roman creed, but upon a more modern Gallic
expansion of it, which forms what is called by us now
the Apostles’ Creed. Owing to the reverence shown to the
Roman church this creed soon found its way throughout
all the West, and arrogated to itself here the name
of an œcumenical Symbol, although it has never been
acknowledged by the Greek church. The legend of its
apostolic origin was carried out still further by the
assertion that each of the twelve Apostles composed one
article as his contribution to the formula (συμβολή).
Laurentius Valla and Erasmus were the first to dispute
its apostolic origin.
III. =The Athanasian Creed.=--The so-called Athanasian Symbol,
which from its opening words is also known as _Symb._
“_Quicunque_,” sprang up in the end of the 5th century
out of the opposition of Western Catholicism to German
Arianism, so that it is doubtful whether it had its
origin in Gaul, Spain or North Africa. In short, sharply
accentuated propositions it sets forth first of all the
Nicene-Constant. doctrine of the Trinity in its fuller
form as developed by Augustine (§ 50, 7), then in the
second part the dogmatic results of the Nestorian and
Eutychian controversies (§ 52, 3, 4), and in the severest
terms makes eternal salvation dependent on the acceptance
of all these beliefs. The earliest certain trace of its
existence is found in Cæsarius of Arles (A.D. 503-543) who
quotes some sentences borrowed from it as of acknowledged
authority. The idea that Athanasius was its author arose
in the 8th century and was soon accepted throughout the
West as an undoubted truth. It was first taken notice of
by the Greek church in the 11th century, and on account
of the _filioque_ (§ 67, 1) was pronounced heretical.[176]
§ 59.3. =Bible Reading in Church and Preaching.=--The =Reading=
of non-canonical books in church, which had previously been
customary (§ 36, 3), was now forbidden. The _Lectio continua_,
_i.e._ the reading of entire biblical books was the common
practice down to the 5th century. In the Latin church at each
service there were usually two readings, one from the Gospels,
the other from the Epistles or the Prophets. The _Apostolic
Constitutions_ (§ 43, 4) have three, the Prophets, Epistles,
and Gospels; so too the Gallican and Spanish churches; while
the Syrian had four, the additional one being from Acts. As
the idea of the Christian Year was carried out, however, the
_Lectio continua_ gave place to the _Lectio propria_, _i.e._
a selection of passages which correspond to the character
of the particular festival. In the West this selection was
fixed by the _Lectionaries_ among which the so-called _Liber
comitis_, which tradition assigned to Jerome, in various
forms and modifications, found acceptance generally throughout
the West. In the East where the _Lectio continua_ continued
much more prevalent, lectionaries came into use first in the
8th century. The lesson was read by a reader from a reading desk;
as a mark of distinction, however, the gospel was often read by
the deacon. For the same purpose, too, lights were often kindled
during this reading.--The =Sermon= was generally by the bishop,
who might, however, transfer the duty to a presbyter or deacon.
Monks were forbidden to preach in the church. They were not
hindered from doing so in the streets and markets, from roofs,
pillars and trees. The bishop preached from his episcopal throne,
but often, in order to be better heard, stood at the railing of
the choir (_Cancelli_). Augustine and Chrysostom often preached
from the reading desk. In the East preaching came very much to
the front, lasted often for an hour, and aimed at theatrical
effects. Very distracting was the practice, specially common
in Greece of giving loud applause with waving of handkerchiefs
and clapping of hands (κρότος, _Acclamatio_). In the West the
sermon consisted generally of short simple addresses (_Sermones_).
Extempore discourses (ὁμιλίαι σχεδιασθεῖσαι) were greatly
appreciated, more so than those repeated from memory; reading
was quite an exceptional occurrence. Even the emperors after
Constantine’s example gave sometimes sermonic lectures in
extra-ecclesiastical assemblies. Among the Syrians sermons in
verse and strophically arranged, with equal number of syllables
in the lines but unrhymed, were very popular.
§ 59.4. =Hymnology.=[177]--Ephraëm [Ephraim] the Syrian
(† A.D. 378) introduced melodious orthodox hymns in place
of the heterodox hymns of the Syrian Gnostics Bardesanes and
Harmonius (§ 27, 5). On the later Syrian hymn writers, see
§ 48, 7. The introduction of their hymns into the public service
caused no trouble. For the Greeks orthodox hymns were composed
by Gregory Nazianzen and Synesius of Ptolemais. The want of
popularity and the ban of the Laodicean Council hindered their
introduction into the services of the church; but this ban was
removed as early as the 5th century. Under the name of Troparies,
from τρόπος=art of music, shorter, and soon also longer, poems
of their own composition were introduced alongside of the church
service of Psalms (§ 70, 2). But unquestionably the palm for
church hymn composition belongs to the Latin church. With Hilary
of Poitiers († A.D. 368) begins a series of poets (Ambrose,
Damasus, Augustine, Sedulius, Eunodius, Prudentius, Fortunatus,
Gregory the Great) who bequeathed to their church a precious
legacy of spiritual songs of great beauty, spirituality, depth,
power, grandeur and simplicity.
§ 59.5. =Psalmody and Hymn Music.=[178]--From the time when
clerical _cantores_ (§ 34, 3) were appointed the symphonic
singing of psalms by the congregation seems to have been on
the wane. The Council of Laodicea forbade it altogether, without,
however, being able quite to accomplish that. Antiphonal or
responsive singing was much enjoyed. Hypophonic singing of the
congregation in the responses with which the people answered the
clerical intonings, readings and prayers, and in the beating of
time with which they answered the clerical singing of psalms, was
long persisted in in spite of clerical exclusiveness. The singing
of prayers, readings and consecrations was first introduced
in the 6th century. At first church music was simple, artless,
recitative. But the rivalry of heretics forced the orthodox
church to pay greater attention to the requirements of art.
Chrysostom had to declaim against the secularisation of Church
music. More lasting was the opposition of the church to the
introduction of instrumental accompaniments. Even part singing
was at this time excluded from the church. In the West psalmody
took a high flight with a true ecclesiastical character. Even in
A.D. 330, bishop Sylvester erected a school at Rome for training
singers for the churches. Ambrose of Milan was the author of a
new kind of church music full of melodious flow, with rhythmical
accent and rich modulation, nobly popular and grandly simple
(_Cantus Ambrosianus_). Augustine speaks with enthusiasm of the
powerful impression made on him by this lively style of singing,
but expresses also the fear that the senses might be spellbound
by the pleasant sound of the tune, and thus the effect of
the words on the mind be weakened. And in fact the Ambrosian
chant was in danger during the 6th century through increasing
secularisation of losing its ecclesiastical character. Then
appeared Gregory the Great as reformer and founder of a new
style of music (_Cantus Romanus, ferinus, choralis_) for which
at the same time, in order that he might fix it in a tune book
(_Antiphonarium_), he invented a special notation, the so-called
_Neumæ_, either from πνεῦμα as characterizing the music, or from
νεῦμα as characterizing the musical notes, a wonderful mixture
of points, strokes and hooks. The Gregorian music is in unison,
slow, measured and uniform without rhythm and beat, so that
it approaches again the old recitative mode of psalm singing,
while still at the same time its elaboration of the art with
much richer modulation marks an important step in advance. The
Ambrosian briskness, freshness and popular style were indeed
lost, but all the more certainly the earnestness, dignity and
solemnity of Church music were preserved. But it was a very great
defect that the Gregorian music was assigned exclusively to well
equipped choirs of clerical singers, hence _Cantus choralis_, for
the training of which Gregory founded a school of music in Rome.
The congregation was thus deprived of that lively participation
in the public service which up to that time it had enjoyed.
§ 59.6. =The Liturgy.=--The numerous liturgies that had sprung
up since the 4th century were reared on the basis of one common
type which we find in the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions
(§ 43, 4). The most important orthodox liturgies are: the
Jerusalem liturgy which is ascribed to the Apostle James, the
Alexandrian which claims as its author Mark, disciple of the
Apostles (§ 16, 4), the Byzantine which professes to have been
composed by Basil and abbreviated by Chrysostom, which ultimately
dislodged all others from the orthodox church of the East.
Among Western liturgies the following are distinguished for
antiquity, reputation and significance: the Gallican Masses
of the 5th century, the Milan liturgy, professedly by Barnabas,
probably by Ambrose, and the Roman or that of St. Peter, to the
successive revisions of which are attached the names of the great
popes Leo the Great, † A.D. 461, Gelasius I., † A.D. 496, and
Gregory the Great, † A.D. 604. It gradually obtained universal
ascendancy in the West. Its components are: The _sacramentarium_,
prayers for the service of the Mass, the _antiphonarium_, the
_lectionarium_, and the _Ordo Romanus_, guide to the dispensation
of the Mass. The uniting of these several writings to the _Missale
Romanum_ belongs to a later period.--=The Greek Liturgy= in the
combining of the vesper, matins and principal service of worship
represents a threefold religious drama in which the whole course
of the sacred history from the creation of the world to the
ascension of our Lord is brought to view. In the lighting and
extinguishing of candles, in opening and closing of doors,
in the figured cloth covering the altar space, (§ 60, 1), in
burning of incense and presentations, in the successive putting
on of various liturgical vestments, in the processions and
genuflections of the inferior clergy, in the handling of the
sacramental elements, etc., the chief points of the gospel
history are symbolically set forth. The word accompanying the
ceremonies (intonations, responses, prayers, readings, singing)
has a subordinate significance and forms only a running commentary
on the drama.--=The Latin Church= changed the dramatic character
of the liturgy into a dogmatic one. It is no longer the objective
history of salvation which is here represented, but the subjective
appropriation of salvation. The sinner in need of redemption
comes to the altar of the Lord, seeks and finds quickening and
instruction, forgiveness and grace. The real pillar of the whole
service is therefore the word, and to the symbol is assigned only
the subordinate part of accompanying the word with a pictorial
representation. The components of the liturgy are partly such
as invariably are repeated in every Mass, partly such as change
with the calendar and the requirements of particular festivals.
Among the former the canon of the Mass forms the real centre of
the whole Mass. It embraces the eucharistic forms of consecration
with the prayer offered up in connection with the offering of it
up.--Among the liturgical writings are specially to be named the
=Diptychs= (δὶς ἀπτύσσω, to fold twice), writing tablets which
were covered on the inside with wax. They were the official lists
of persons of the ancient church, and were of importance for the
liturgy inasmuch as the names written upon them were the subject
of special liturgical intercession. We have to distinguish,
δίπτυχα ἐπισκόπων, in which are written the names of the foreign
bishops with whom church fellowship is maintained, and δίπτυχα
ζώντων or lists of their own church members as the offerers, and
δίπτυχα νεκρῶν.[179]
§ 59.7. =Liturgical Vestments.=--A special clerical costume which
made the clergy recognisable even in civil life arose from their
scorning to submit to the whims of fashion. The transition from
this to a compulsory liturgical style of dress was probably
owing to the fact that the clergy in discharging their official
functions wore not their every-day attire, but a better suit
reserved for the purpose. If in this way the idea of sacred
vestments was arrived at it was an easy step to associate
them with the official costume of the Old Testament priesthood,
attributing to them, as to the dress of the Jewish priests, a
symbolico-mystical significance, to be diversified according to
their patterns as well as according to the needs of the worship
and their hierarchical rank. In the West the proper dress for
Mass was and continued the so-called _Alba_, among the Greeks
στοιχάριον or στιχάριον, a white linen shirt reaching down
to the feet after the pattern of the old Roman _Tunica_ and
corresponding to the long coat of the Old Testament priest,
with a girdle (_Cingulum_). The shorter _Casula_ or _Pineta_,
among the Greeks φελώνιον, over the Alba took the place of the
_Toga_. It was originally without sleeves, simply a coloured
garment of costly material furnished with an opening for the
head, but in later times made more convenient by being slit half
way down on both sides. The _Orarium_, ὀράριον, afterwards called
_Stola_, is a long wide strip of costly cloth which the deacon
threw over his left shoulder and on his right thigh, but the
priest and the bishop wore it over both shoulders and at the
sacrifice of the Mass in the form of the cross over the breast.
Over these priestly vestments the bishop wore as representing
the high priest’s ephod the so-called _Dalmatica_, among the
Greeks σάκκος, a costly sleeved robe; and the archbishop also
the _Pallium_, ὠμοφόριον. This last was originally a complete
robe, but in order not to conceal the episcopal and priestly
ornaments it was reduced to a small white woollen cape with two
strips hanging down on the breast and the back. To episcopal
ornaments of the Greeks besides belonged the ἐπιγονάτιον, a
square-shaped piece of cloth, hanging down from the σάκκος on
the left side, ornamented with a picture of Christ sewed on
stiff pasteboard; and to correspond to the high priest’s Urim
and Thummim, the πανάγιον, a painting in enamel of a saint,
hung to the breast by a golden chain. Among the Latins the place
of the latter is taken by the golden cross for the breast or
_Pectorale_. As covering of the head the priest had the Barretta
(_birretum_), the bishop the mitre, _mitra_ (§ 84, 1). The ring
and staff (marriage ring and shepherd’s staff) were in very early
times made the insignia of the episcopal office. The settling of
the various liturgical colours for the successive festivals of
the Christian year was first made during the 12th century.[180]
§ 59.8. =Symbolical Acts in Worship.=--The fraternal kiss
was a general custom throughout the whole period. On entering,
the church door or threshold was kissed; during the liturgical
service the priest kissed the altar, the reader the Gospel. Even
relics and images were kissed. When one confessed sin he beat
upon his breast. The sign of the cross was made during every
ecclesiastical action and even in private life was frequently
used. The custom of washing the hands on entering God’s house
and lighting candles in it, was very ancient. No quite certain
trace of sprinkling with holy water is found before the 9th
century. The burning of incense (_thurificari_) is first found
late in the 4th century. In earlier times it was supposed to draw
on and feed the demons; afterwards it was regarded as the surest
means of driving them away. The consecration of churches and the
annual commemoration thereof are referred to even by Eusebius
(ἐγκαινίων ἑορταί). Even so early as the times of Ambrose the
possession of relics was regarded as an indispensable condition
to such services.
§ 59.9. =Processions= are of early date and had their
prototypes in the heathen worship in the solemn marches
at the high festivals of Dionysos, Athene, etc., etc. First at
burials and weddings, they were practised since the 4th century
at the reception of bishops or relics, at thanksgivings for
victories, especially at seasons of public distress and calamity
(_Rogationes_, _Supplicationes_). Bishop Mamertus of Vienna about
A.D. 450 and Gregory the Great developed them into regularly
recurring institutions whose celebration was rendered more solemn
by carrying the gospels in front, costly crosses and banners,
blazing torches and wax candles, relics, images of Mary and the
saints, by psalm and hymn singing. The prayers arranged for the
purpose with invocation of saints, and angels and the popular
refrain, _Ora pro nobis!_ were called _Litanies_.
§ 60. PLACES OF PUBLIC WORSHIP, BUILDINGS
AND WORKS OF ART.[181]
Church architecture made rapid advance as a science in the times
of Constantine the Great. The earliest architectural style thus
developed is found in the Christian _Basilicas_. Whether this was
a purely original kind of building called forth by the requirements
of congregational worship, or whether and how far it was based upon
previously existing styles, is still a subject of discussion. In later,
and especially oriental, church buildings the flat roof of the basilica
was often changed into a cupola. Of the plastic arts painting was the
next to be represented.
§ 60.1. =The Basilica.=--The original form of the Christian
basilica was that of an oblong four-sided building running from
west to east. It was divided lengthwise by rows of pillars, into
three parts or aisles, in such a way as to leave the middle aisle
at least double the breadth of each of the other two. The middle
aisle led up to a semicircular recess (κόγχη, ἀψίς, _Concha_,
_Absida_), curved out of the eastern side wall, which was
separated from the middle aisle proper by a railing (κιγκλίδες,
_Cancelli_) and a curtain (καταπέτασμα, _Velum_), and, because
raised a few steps, was called βῆμα (from βαίνω). From the 5th
century the pillars running down the length of the house were
not carried on to the eastern gable, and thus a cross passage
or transept was formed, which was raised to the level of the
Bema and added to it. This transept now in connection with the
middle aisle and the recess imprints upon the ground plan of the
church the significant form of the cross. At the entrance at the
western end there was a porch which occupied the whole breadth
of the house. Thus then the whole fell into three divisions.
The =Bema= was reserved for the clergy. The elevated seat of
the bishop (θρόνος, _Cathedra_) stood in the middle of the
round wall forming the recess, lower seats for the presbyters
on both sides (σύνθρονοι), the altar in the centre or in front
of the recess. As a place reserved for the altar and the clergy
the βῆμα had also the names ἅγιον, ἄδυτον, ἱερατεῖον, _Sacrarium_,
_Sanctuarium_, the name “Handbook of Painting: Italian Schools.
Based on Kügler’s Handbook.” by Eastlake; new ed. by Layard,
2 vols., Lond., 1886.] of Choir being first given it in the Middle
Ages. Under the Apse or Bema there was usually a subterranean
chamber, κρυπτή, _Memoria_, _Confessio_, containing the bones of
martyrs. The altar space in later times in the Eastern churches
instead of being marked off by railings or curtains was separated
by a wooden partition which because adorned with sacred pictures
painted often on a golden ground and inlaid with most precious
stones, was called the picture screen (εἰκονόστασις). It had
usually three doors of which the middle one, the largest of the
three, the so-called “Royal” door, was reserved for the bishop
and for the emperor when he communicated. The =Nave= or main
part of the building, consisting of three, less frequently of
five, aisles (νάος, ναῦς, _Navis_, so called partly from its
oblong form, partly and chiefly on account of the symbolical
significance of the ship as a figure of the means of salvation,
Gen. vii. 23), was the place where the baptized laity met, and
were arranged in the different aisles according to sex, age
and rank. In the Eastern churches galleries (ὑπερῶα) were often
introduced along the sides for the women. The =Porch= (πρόναος,
_Vestibulum_) which from its great width was also called νάρθηξ
or _Ferula_, properly the hollow stalk of an umbelliferous plant,
was the place occupied by the catechumens and penitents. In front
of it, in earlier times unroofed, afterwards covered, was the
enclosure (αἴθριον, αὐλή, _Atrium_, _Area_) where a basin of
water stood for washing the hands. Here too the penitents during
the first stage of their discipline, as well as the _energumeni_,
had to stand. That the Atrium was also called _Paradisus_, as
Athanasius tells us, is best explained by supposing that here
for the warning of penitents there was a picture of Adam and
Eve being driven out of Paradise. The porch and the side aisles
just to the height of the pillars, were shut in with tesselated
rafters and covered with a one-sided slanting roof. But middle
aisle and transept were heightened by side walls resting on the
pillars and rising high above the side roofs and covered with a
two-sided slanting roof. In order that the pillars might be able
to bear this burden, they were bound one to another by an arched
binding. The walls of the middle aisle and transepts rising above
the side roofs were supplied with windows, which were usually
wanting in the lower walls.--Utility was the main consideration
in the development of the plan of the basilicas, but nevertheless
at the same time the idea of symbolical significance was also
in many ways very fully carried out, such as the form of the
cross in the ground plan, and the threefold division into middle
and side aisles. In the bow-shaped binding of the pillars the
idea of pressing forward (Phil. iii. 13, 14) was represented,
for there the eye was carried on from one pillar to the other
and led uninterruptedly forward to the recess at the east end,
where stood the altar, where the Sun of righteousness had risen
(Mal. iv. 2). The semicircle of the recess to which the eye was
carried forward reminded of the horizon from which the sun rose
in his beauty; and the bold rising of the walls of the middle
aisle, which rested on the arched pillars, pointed the eye
upwards and gave the liturgical _sursum corda_ which the bishop
called out to the congregation a corresponding expression in
architectural form. This significance was further intensified
by the light falling down from above into the sacred place.
§ 60.2. =Secular Basilicas.=--All spaces adorned with pillared
courts were called among the ancient Romans basilicas. In
the private houses of distinguished Romans the name _Basilica
domestica_ was given to the so-called Oëcus, _i.e._ the chamber
reserved for solemn occasions with the peristyle in front,
the inner open court surrounded by covered pillared halls;
while public markets and courts of justice were called _Basilicæ
forenses_. The latter were oblong in shape; at the end opposite
the entrance the dividing wall was broken through and in the
opening a semicircular recess was carved out with an elevated
platform, and in this were the tribunal of the prætor and seats
for the assessors and the jury. In the covered pillared courts
along the two sides were the wares exposed for sale and in the
usually uncovered large middle space the buyers and lookers-on
moved about. Outside of the enclosing wall before the entrance
was often a pillared porch standing by itself for a lobby.--From
having the same name and many correspondences in construction
the later Christian basilica was supposed to have been copied
from the forensic basilica. Zestermann was the first to contest
this theory and in this found hearty support especially on
the Catholic side. According to him the Christian basilica
had nothing in common with the forensic, but was called forth
quite independently of any earlier style of building by the
requirements of Christian worship. Now certainly on the one
side the similarity had been quite unduly over-estimated.
For almost everything that gave its symbolically significant
character to the ecclesiastical basilica,--the transept and
the form of the cross brought out by it, the bow-shaped binding
of the pillars, the walls of the middle aisle resting on the
pillars rising sheer into the heights, as well as the entirely
new arrangement of the whole house, are the essential and
independent product of the Christian spirit. But on the other
hand, differences have been greatly exaggerated and features
which the ecclesiastical basilica had in common with the forensic,
which were demonstrably copied from the latter, have been ignored.
On both sides, too, the importance for our question of the
_basilicæ domesticæ_ used for worship before regular churches
were built, has been overlooked. Here the peristyle with its
pillared courts with the oëcus attached supplied the divisions
needed for the different classes attending divine service (clergy,
congregation, penitents, catechumens). What was more natural
than that this form of building, brought indeed into more perfect
accord with the Christian idea and congregational requirements,
should be adopted in church building and with it also the name
with a new application to Christ the heavenly King? But one
and indeed a very essential feature in the later basilica style
is wanting generally in the oëcus of private houses, viz. the
Apse. One would naturally suppose that it was borrowed from the
forensic basilica in consideration of its purpose there, scruples
against such procedure being lessened as the heathen state passed
over to Christianity. Thus too it is easily explained how the
earliest basilicas, like that of Tyre consecrated in A.D. 313,
of which Eusebius’ description gives us full information, have
as yet no Apse.
§ 60.3. =The Cupola Style.=--We meet with the first example of
the cupola style among Christian buildings in the form of Roman
mausoleums in chapels or churches raised over martyrs’ graves.
This style, however, was in many ways unsuitable for regular
parish churches. The necessarily limited inner space embraced
within the circular or polygonal walls would not admit of
the significant shape of the nave being preserved; it could
not be proportionally partitioned among clergy, congregation,
catechumens and penitents. In an ideal point of view only
the centre of the whole space was suitable for the bema with
the altar, bishop’s throne, etc. In that case, however, the
half of the congregation present would have to stand behind
the officiating clergy and so this arrangement was not to be
thought of. In the later ecclesiastical buildings, therefore,
of the cupola style the ground plan of the basilica was adopted,
with atrium and narthex at the west end and bema and apse at
the east end. The old basilica style, though capable of so
much artistic adornment, passed now indeed more and more into
desuetude before the overpowering impression made upon one
entering the building by the cupola (θόλος, _Cuppula_) like
a cloud of heaven overspanning at a giddy height the middle
space, pierced by many windows and resting on four pillars
bound by arches one to another. Besides this main and complete
cupola there were often a number of semi- and secondary cupolas,
which gave to the whole building from without the appearance
of a rich well ordered organism. The greatest masterpiece
in this style, which Byzantine love of art and beauty valued
far more than the simple basilica, is the church of Sophia at
Constantinople (Σοφία=Λόγος), at the completion of which in
A.D. 587 Justinian I. cried out: Νενίκηκά σε Σαλομών.
§ 60.4. =Accessory and Special Buildings.=--Alongside of the main
building there generally were additional buildings for special
purposes (ἐξέδραι), surrounded by an enclosing wall. Among these
isolated extra buildings _Baptistries_ (βαπτιστήρια, φωτιστήρια)
held the first rank. They were built in rotunda form after the
pattern of the Roman baths. The baptismal basin (κολυμβήθρα,
_Piscina_) in the middle of the inner space was surrounded by
a series of pillars. In front there was frequently a roomy porch
used for the instruction of catechumens. When infant baptism
became general, separate baptistries were no longer needed. Their
place was taken by the baptismal font in the church itself on the
north side of the main entrance. For the custody of church jewels,
ornaments, robes, books, archives, etc. in the larger churches
there were special buildings provided. The spirit of brotherhood,
the _Philadelphia_, expressed itself in the πτωχοτροφεῖα,
ὀρφανοτροφεῖα, γηροκομεῖα, βρεφοτροφεῖα (Foundling Hospitals),
νοσοκομεῖα, ξενοδοχεῖα. The burying ground (κοιμητήριον,
_Cimeterium_, _Dormitorium_, _Area_) was also usually within
the wall enclosing the church property. The privilege of burial
within the church was granted only to emperors and bishops. When
clocks came into vogue towers were introduced, but these were at
first simply attached to the churches, occasionally even standing
quite apart.
§ 60.5. =Church furniture.=--The centre of the whole house of
God was the _Altar_ (ἁγία τράπεζα, θυσιαστήριον, _Ara_, _Altare_),
since the 5th century commonly of stone, often overlaid with gold
and silver. The altar stood out at the east end, the officiating
priest behind it facing the congregation. The introduction of
the _Missæ solitariæ_ (§ 58, 3) made it necessary in the West to
have a large number of altars. In the Greek church the rule was
to have one altar. Moveable altars, for missionaries, crusaders,
etc., were necessary since the consecration of the altar had
been pronounced indispensable. The Latins used for this purpose
a consecrated stone plate with a cover (_Palla_); the Greeks
only a consecrated altar cloth (ἀντιμήνσιον). The altar cloth
was regarded as essential, a _denudatio alteris_ as impious
desecration; according to liturgical rule, however, the altar
was bared on Friday and Saturday of Passion Week. From the
altar cloth was distinguished the _Corporale_, εἰλητόν, for
covering the oblations. On the altar stood the _Ciborium_, a
canopy supported by four feet, to which by a golden chain was
attached a dove-shaped vessel (περιστήριον) with the consecrated
sacramental elements for the communion of the sick. The
_Thuribulum_ was for the burning of incense, cross for marches
and processions (_Cruces stationales_) and banners (_Vexilla_).
In the nave were seats for the congregation; in the narthex
there were none. The pulpit or reading desk (_Pulpitum_) at
first movable, afterwards permanently fixed to the railings
in the middle of the bema in the basilica was called the _Ambo_
from ἀναβαίνω, or _Lectorium_, our English Lectern. In many
churches two ambos were erected, on the north or left side for
the gospel, and on the south or right side for the epistle. In
larger churches, however, the ambo was often brought forward into
the nave. Our chancel had its origin late in the Middle Ages by
a separate preaching Ambo being erected beside the lectern, and
raised aloft in order that the preacher might be better seen and
heard.--The introduction of church clocks (_Nolæ_, _Campanulæ_,
because commonly made of Campanian brass which was regarded as
the best) is sometimes ascribed to bishop Paulinus of Nola in
Campania, who died in A.D. 431, sometimes to Pope Sabinianus,
who died in A.D. 606. In the East they were first introduced
in the 9th century. In early times the hours of service were
announced by _Cursores_, ἀνάδρομοι, afterwards by trumpets or
beating of gongs.
§ 60.6. =The Graphic and Plastic Arts= (§ 38, 3; § 57, 4).--The
Greek church forbade all nudity; only face, hands and feet
could be left uncovered. This narrowness was overcome in the
West. Brilliancy of colour, costliness of material and showy
overloading of costume made up for artistic deficiencies.
The εἰκόνες ἀχειροποίητοι afforded stereotyped forms for the
countenances of images of Christ, Mary and the Apostles. The
_Nimbus_, originally a soft mist or transparent cloud, with which
pagan poets and painters surrounded the persons or heads of the
gods, in later times also those of the Roman emperors, made its
appearance during the 5th century in Christian painting as the
_halo_, in the form of rays, of a diadem or of a circle, first
of all in figures of Christ. Images of the Saviour bound to the
cross were first introduced about the end of the 6th century.
The symbol was previously restricted to the representation of
a lamb at the foot of the cross, a bust of Christ at the top or
in the middle of the cross, or the full figure of Christ holding
His cross before Him. _Anastasius Sinaita_ in the 7th century,
to show his opposition to the monophysite doctrine that only the
body had been crucified, painted a figure of the crucified which
straightway came to be regarded in the Eastern church as the
pattern figure, without the crown of thorns, with nimbus, the
wound of the spear with blood streaming forth, the cross with an
inscription on both sides--JC. XC.--and a sloping peg as support
for the feet, and under the cross the skull of Adam. The Western
crucifix figures, on the other hand, though likewise governed
by a special type, show greater freedom in artistic development.
Wall or fresco painting was most extensively carried on in
the Catacombs during the 4th-6th centuries. Mosaic painting,
_Musivum_, λιθοστράτια, with its imperishable beauty of colouring,
was used to decorate the long flat walls of the basilicas,
the vaulted ceilings of the cupolas and the curving sides of
the apse (glass-mosaic on a gold ground). Liturgical books were
adorned with miniature figures. Sublimity came more and more
to characterize ecclesiastical art; it became more majestic,
dignified and dispassionate, but also stiffer and less natural.
Statues seemed to the ancient church heathenish, sensuous and
realistic. The Greek church at last prohibited them entirely
and would not suffer even a single crucifix, but only simple
crosses with a sloping transverse beam at the foot. The West
had more liberal views, yet even there Christian statues were
only quite isolated phenomena. There was less scruple in regard
to bas-reliefs and alto-reliefs (ἀναγλυφαί) especially on
sarcophagi and ecclesiastical furniture.
§ 61. LIFE, DISCIPLINE AND MORALS.[182]
When whole crowds of worldly-minded men, who only sought worldly
advantages from professing Christ, were drawn into the church after
the State had become Christian, the Christian life lost much of the
earnestness, power and purity, by which it had conquered the old
world of heathenism. More and more the church became assimilated
and conformed to the world, church discipline grew more lax, and moral
decay made rapid progress. Passionate contentions, quarrels and schisms
among bishops and clergy filled also public life with party strife,
animosity and bitterness. The immorality of the court poisoned by its
example the capital and the provinces. Savagery and licentiousness
grew rampant amid the devastating raids of the barbarians. Hypocrisy
and bigotry speedily took the place of piety among those who strove
after something higher, while the masses consoled themselves with
the reflection that every man could not be a monk. But in spite of
all Christianity still continued to act as a leaven. In public and
civil life, in the administration of justice and the habits of the
people, the Christian spirit, theoretically at least, and often also
practically, was still everywhere present. The requirements of humanity
and the rights of man were recognised; slavery was more and more
restricted; gladiatorial shows and immoral exhibitions were abolished;
the limits of proud exclusive nationality were broken through; polygamy
was never tolerated, and the sanctity of marriage was insisted upon,
the female sex obtained its long unacknowledged rights; benevolent
institutions (§ 60, 4) flourished; and the inveterate vices of ancient
paganism could at least be no longer regarded as the sound, legitimate
and natural conditions and expressions of civil and social life. Even
the pagan, who, adopting the profession of Christianity, remained
pagan at heart, was obliged at least to submit himself to the forms
and requirements of the church, to its discipline and morals. The shady
side of this period is glaring enough, but a bright side and noble
personages of deep piety, moral earnestness, resolute denial of self
and the world, are certainly not wanting.
§ 61.1. =Church Discipline.=--The Penitential Discipline of
the 3rd century (§ 39, 2) dealt only with public offences which
had become common scandal. But even those who were burdened in
conscience with heavy but hidden sins and thereby felt themselves
excluded from church fellowship, were advised to seek deliverance
from this secret excommunication by public confession of sin
before the church in the form of _exomologesis_ and to submit to
whatever humiliation the church should lay upon them. In presence
of this hard and unreasonable demand the need must have soon
become apparent of a secret and private tribunal in place of
this public one, which when once introduced would soon drive
the earlier out of the field. The first step in this direction
was taken in the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century
in the Eastern church by the appointment of a special penitential
presbytery (πρεσβ. ἐπὶ τῆς μετανοίας), who under an oath of
secresy heard the confession of such sinners and laid upon them
the proper penances. But when in A.D. 391, a female penitent, a
married lady of good family in Constantinople, having committed
adultery in the church with a deacon during her time of penance,
confessed this sin also to a priestly confessor and so brought
about the excommunication of the guilty deacon, the Patriarch
Nectarius was obliged on account of the popular feeling excited
to again abolish the whole institution and to leave to the
consciences of such sinners themselves the question of partaking
in the sacraments. But it was evident that this could not
exclude pastoral advice and guidance by the clergy. In the
West, notwithstanding the confident assertions of Socrates,
we never meet with a penitential priest expressly appointed
to such duties. Jerome on Matt. xvi. 19 calls it pharisaic
pride in a bishop or presbyter to arrogate the judicial function
of forgiving sins, “_cum apud Deum non sententia sacerdotum, sed
reorum vita quæratur_.” Augustine distinguishes three kinds of
penance corresponding to the three classes in the congregation.
1. The penance of catechumens; all their previous sins are
atoned for by baptism.
2. The penance of believers whose venial sins (_peccata
venialia_) occasioned by the universal sinfulness of human
nature obtain forgiveness in daily prayer.
3. The penance of those who on account of serious actual
breaches of the decalogue (_peccata gravia s. mortalia_)
are punished with ecclesiastical excommunication.
In estimating the church discipline to be exacted of this last
class of offenders he lays down the principle that the degree
of its publicity is to be measured in accordance with the degree
of publicity of the offence committed, and according to the
magnitude of the scandal which it has occasioned. And when
some Italian bishops demanded “_in pœnitentia, quæ a fidelibus
postulatur_” the reading before the congregation of a written
confession of their sin, Leo the Great forbade this extreme
practice, as unevangelical as it was unreasonable, declaring
that it was quite enough to confess the sin first to God and
then in secret confession to the priest. But when Leo added the
assertion: _divina bonitate ordinatum esse, ut indulgentia Dei
nisi supplicationibus sacerdotum nequeat obtineri; et salvatorem
ipsum, qui hane præpositis ecclesiæ tradidit potestatem, ut
et confidentibus actionem pœnitentiæ durent, et eosdem salubri
satisfactione purgatos ad communionem sacramentorum per januam
reconciliationis admitterent, huic utique operi incessabiliter
intervenire_,--we have here the first foundation laid of the
present Roman Catholic doctrine of penance. But this _confessio
secreta_ is still something very different from the later
so-called Auricular Confession. Leo’s ordinance treats only of
the confession of grave offences, which, if openly committed or
proclaimed, would have called forth punishment from the judicial
tribunal; _quibus_, says Leo, _possint legum constitutione
percelli_. But still more important is the distinction that even
Leo does not confer upon the priest absolute power of forgiving
sin as God’s vicegerent, but only allows him to officiate as
“_peccator pro delictis pœnitentium_.” Besides Leo’s view of
the unconditional necessity of confession in order to obtain
divine forgiveness of heinous sins by no means gained universal
acceptance in the church. The opinion that it was enough to
confess sins to God alone, and that confession to a priest,
while helpful and wholesome, was not absolutely necessary, was
universally prevalent in the East, where Chrysostom especially
maintained it, and even in the West down to the time of Gratian,
A.D. 1150, and Petrus [Peter] Lombardus [Lombard], † A.D. 1164,
had numerous and important representatives among the teachers
of the church (§ 104, 4). An important step onwards on the path
opened up by Leo was taken soon after him in the West when not
merely actual sins but even sinful dispositions and desires,
ambition, anger, pride, lust, etc., of which Joh. Cassianus
enumerates eight as _vitia principalia_, as well as the sinful
thoughts springing from them, were included in the province
of secret confession. A system of confession as a regular
and necessary preparation for observing the sacrament did
not as yet exist.--The so-called Penitential books from the
6th century afforded a guide to determine the penances to
be imposed upon the penitents in the form of fasts, prayers,
almsgiving, etc., according to the degree of their guilt. The
first Penitential book for the Greek church is ascribed to
the Patriarch of Constantinople, Joh. the Faster or Jejunator,
† A.D. 595, and is entitled: Ἀκολουθία καὶ τάξις ἐπὶ τῶν
ἐξομολογουμένων.[183]--Continuation § 89, 6.
§ 61.2. =Christian Marriage.=--The ecclesiastical consecration
of the marriage tie (§ 39, 1) performed after, as well as before,
civil marriage by mutual consent before two secular witnesses,
was made more solemn by being separated from the ordinary
worship and celebrated at a special week-day service (_missa
pro sponsis_), and a rich ritual grew up which gradually
developed itself into an independent liturgy. Into this many
bridal customs hitherto despised as heathenish were introduced,
the wedding ring, veiling the bride, the crowning both betrothed
parties with wreaths, bridal sashes, bridal torches, bridesmaids
or παράνυμφοι. The granting of the wedding ceremony was regarded
as an honour which would be refused in the case of marriages not
approved by the church. But neither the refusal nor the neglect
of the ceremony on the part of those newly married interfered
with the validity of the marriage. Charlemagne was the first
in the West and Leo VI. (§ 70, 2) was the first in the East,
to make the church ceremony obligatory. Marriage between free
and bond, which was regarded by the state as concubinage, was
regarded by the church as perfectly valid. Blood relationship by
consanguinity and affinity was regarded as hindrance to marriage;
artificial relationship by adoption and spiritual relationship
by baptismal and confirmational sponsorship (§ 58, 1) were also
hindrances. Marriage between brothers’ or sisters’ children was
pronounced unbecoming by Augustine. Gregory the Great forbade
it on physiological grounds, and permitted marriage only in the
third or fourth degree of relationship. With gradually increasing
strictness the prohibition was extended even to the seventh
degree, but finally was fixed at the fourth by Innocent III.
in A.D. 1215. In direct opposition to the Roman law of hereditary
claims which established the degree of relationship according
to the number of actual descendants, so that father and son were
counted as related in the first degree to one another, brothers
and sisters as in the second degree, uncle and niece or nephew
as in the third, brothers’ or sisters’ children as in the fourth
degree, the canon law on hindrances to marriage begins this
reckoning after the withdrawal of the common parents, so that
brother and sister are related in the first degree, uncle and
niece in the second, etc. Several Councils of the 4th century
wished to make the contracting of a second marriage occasion
of church discipline; subsequently this demand was abandoned.
Many canonists, however, contest even yet the legitimacy of a
third marriage, and a fourth was almost universally admitted to
be sinful and unallowable (§ 67, 2). The contracting of mixed
marriages, with heathens, Jews or heretics, demanded penance,
and was strictly forbidden by the second Trullan Council in
A.D. 692. Only adultery was usually admitted as affording ground
for divorce; and also for the most part, unnatural vice, murder
and apostasy. The Council at Mileve in Africa in A.D. 416 for
the first time forbade divorced persons marrying again, even
the innocent party, and Pope Innocent I. † A.D. 417, made this
prohibition applicable universally.--Continuation § 89, 4.
§ 61.3. =Sickness, Death and Burial.=--The anointing the sick
with oil (Mk. vi. 13; Jas. v. 14) as means of charismatic bodily
healing is met with down to the 5th century. Innocent I. put
it in a decretal of A.D. 416, for the first time as a sacrament
for the dispensation of spiritual blessing to the sick. But many
centuries passed before the anointing of the sick was generally
observed as the sacrament of Extreme Unction (§ 70, 2; 104, 5).
On the other hand, the Areopagite (§ 47, 11) reckoned the
anointing of the dead a sacrament. The closing of the eyes
implied that death was a sleep with the hope of an awakening
in the resurrection. The fraternal kiss sealed the communion
of Christians even beyond the grave. The putting garlands on
the corpse as expressive of victory still met with opposition.
Several Synods found it necessary to forbid the absurdity of
squeezing the consecrated elements into the lips of the dead
or laying them in the coffin. Passionate lamentation, rending
of garments, wearing sackcloth and ashes, hired mourners, cypress
branches, etc., were regarded as despairing, heathenish customs.
So too festivals of the dead by night were condemned, while on
the contrary funeral processions by day, with torches, lamps,
palm and olive branches, were in high repute. Julian and the
Vandals prohibited them. In the 4th century the celebration of
the Agape and Supper at the grave was still frequent. In their
place afterwards we find mourning feasts, but these, on account
of their being abused, were disallowed by the church.
§ 61.4. =Purgatory and Masses for Souls.=--The connection of the
custom already referred to by Tertullian of not only praying in
family worship for members of the family that had fallen asleep,
but also by oblations of sacramental elements on the memorial
days of the dead (_Oblationes pro defunctis_) of giving to the
intercessions at the Supper in public worship a special direction
to them, with the doctrine of =Purgatory= (_Ignis purgatorius_)
which had developed itself in the West since the 5th century,
gave rise to the institution of masses for souls (§ 58, 3). The
idea of a place of punishment between death and the resurrection,
in which the venial sins (_peccata venialia_) of believers must
be atoned for, was quite unknown to the whole ancient church down
to the age of Augustine and to the Greek church till even after
his day (§ 67, 6). Mention is made indeed even by Origen of a
future πῦρ καθάρσιον or καθαρτικόν; but he means by it a mere
spiritual burning, from which even a Paul and a Peter were not
exempted. In the West it was first Augustine who deduced from
Matt. xii. 32, that even in the hereafter forgiveness of sins
is possible, holding in accordance with 1 Cor. iii. 13-15 that
it is not incredible, but yet always questionable, that many
believers who took over with them into the hereafter a sinful
connection with their earthly past life, might there he purified
by an “_ignis purgatorius_” of longer or shorter duration
as the continuation and completion of the earthly “_ignis
tribulationis_,” fiery trial, from the earthly dross still
adhering to them, and so might be saved. With greater confidence
_Cæsarius of Arles_ teaches that believers who during their
earthly life had neglected to atone for their minor offences
by almsgiving and other good works, must be purified by a
lingering fire in the next world, in order to win admission
into eternal blessedness. Finally, Gregory the Great raised
this idea into an established dogma of the Western church, while
he, at the same time, taught that by the intercession of the
living for the dead, and especially by the sacrifices of the
mass offered for them their purgatorial pains would be moderated
and curtailed. He too referred to Matt. xii. and 1 Cor. iii.
The reference to 2 Maccabees xii. 41-46 belongs to a later
period.--Continuation, § 106, 2, 3.
§ 62. HERETICAL REFORMERS.
During the 4th century a spirit of opposition to the dominant
ecclesiastical system was awakened, but as it manifested itself in
isolated forms, it had no abiding result and was soon stamped out.
This spirit showed itself in various attempts which passed beyond what
evangelical principles could vindicate. It directed its attacks partly
against the secularization of the church, branching out often into
wild fanaticism and rigorism, and partly against superstition and
externalism. Disgusted with the interminable theological controversies
and heresy huntings of that age, many came to regard the distinction
between orthodoxy and heresy as a matter of indifference so far
as religion is concerned, and to look for the core and essence of
Christianity not so much in doctrine as in morals.
§ 62.1. =Audians and Apostolics.=--As fanatical opponents of the
secularizing of the church, besides the Montanists (§ 40, 1) and
the Novatians (§ 41, 3) still surviving as isolated communities
down to the 5th century, we meet during the 4th century with the
Donatists (§ 63, 1), the Audians and the Apostolics. The sect
of the =Audians= was founded about A.D. 340 by a layman, a monk,
Audius or Udo from Mesopotamia. Having been challenged for his
crude anthropomorphic views, in support of which he referred to
Gen. i. 26 and other passages, he allowed himself to be chosen
and ordained bishop over his adherents. Placed thus in a directly
hostile relation to the Catholic church, they accused the church
of most arrant worldliness and degeneracy, called for a return
to apostolic poverty and avoided all communion with its members.
They also rejected the Nicene canon on the observance of Easter
and adopted the quartodeciman practice (§ 56, 3). On the motion
of several Catholic bishops the emperor banished the founder
of the sect to Scythia, where he laboured earnestly for the
conversion of the Goths, founded also some bishoprics and
monasteries with strict rules, and died in A.D. 372. The
persecution of the Christians under Athanaric, in A.D. 370
(§ 76, 1), pressed sorely upon the Audians. Still remnants of
them continued to exist down to the end of the 5th century.--The
so-called =Apostolics= of Asia Minor in the 4th century went
even further than the Audians. Of their origin nothing certain
is known. They declared that the holding of private property and
marriage are sinful, and unconditionally refused readmission to
all excommunicated persons.
§ 62.2. =Protests against Superstition and External
Observances.=--About the end of the 4th century lively protests
were made against the superstitions and shallow externalism of
the church. They were directed first of all to the worship of
Mary, especially the now wide-spread belief in her _perpetua
virginitas_ as mother of Jesus (§ 57, 2). The first protesters
against this doctrine that we meet with are the so-called
=Antidicomarianites= in Arabia, whom Epiphanius sought to turn
from their heresy by a doctrinal epistle incorporated in his
history of heresies. In the West too there sprang up several
opponents of this dogma of the church. One of the most prominent
of these was a layman =Helvidius= in Rome in A.D. 380, a scholar
of Auxentius, the Arian bishop of Milan. Then about A.D. 388 the
Roman monk =Jovinian= opposed on substantial doctrinal grounds
the prevailing notions about the merit of works and external
observances, especially monasticism, asceticism, celibacy
and fasting. And finally, =Bonosus=, bishop of Sardica, about
A.D. 390, wrought in the same direction, though at a later period
he seems to have given his adhesion to the Ebionite error that
Jesus had been an ordinary man whom God adopted as His Son on
account of His merit (_Filius Dei adoptivus_). At least his
younger contemporary Marius Mercator describes him as an advocate
of these views alongside of Paul of Samosata and Photinus. We
also find many allusions during the 7th century to a sect of
Bonosians teaching similar doctrines in Spain and Gaul, who are
frequently associated with the Photinians. Even before Jovinian,
=Aërius=, a presbyter of Sebaste in Armenia, about A.D. 360,
entered his protest against the doctrine of the merit of external
observances. He objected to prayer and oblations for the dead,
would have no compulsory fasting, and no distinction of rank
between bishops and presbyters. In this way he was brought into
collision with his bishop Eustathius (§ 44, 3). Persecuted on all
sides, his adherents betook themselves to the caves and forests.
The two monks of Milan, Sarmatio and Barbatianus, about A.D. 396,
were perhaps scholars of Jovinian, were at least of the same
mind with him. Finally, =Vigilantius=, presbyter at Barcelona
about A.D. 400, with passionate violence opposed the veneration
of relics, the invocation of saints, the prevailing love of
miracles, the vigil services, the celibacy of the clergy and the
merit of outward observances.--The counterblast of the church was
hot and violent. Epiphanius wrote against the Audians and Aërians;
Ambrose against Bonosus and the followers of Jovinian; Jerome
with unparalleled bitterness and passion against Helvidius,
Jovinian and Vigilantius; Augustine with greater moderation
discussed the views of Jovinian which in their starting point
were related to his own soteriological views.[184]
§ 62.3. =Protests against the Over-Estimation of Doctrine.=--Even
in the times of Athanasius a certain Rhetorius made his appearance
with the assertion that all heretics had a right to their opinion,
and Philastrius [Philaster] speaks of a sect of =Rhetorians= in
Egypt who, perhaps with a reference to Phil. i. 18, set aside
altogether the idea of heresy and placed the essence of orthodoxy
in fidelity to convictions. The =Gnosimachians= were related to
them in the depreciation of dogma, but went beyond them by wholly
withdrawing themselves from the domain of dogmatics and occupying
themselves exclusively with morals. They are put in the list of
heretics by Joh. Damascenus. This sect had sprung up during the
monophysite and monothelite controversies, and maintained that
since God requires of a Christian nothing more than a righteous
life (πράξεις καλάς), all striving after theoretical knowledge
is useless and fruitless.
§ 63. SCHISMS.
The Novatian and the Alexandrian Meletian Schisms (§ 41, 3, 4)
continued to rage down into our period. Then in consequence of the
Arian controversy there arose among the orthodox three new schisms
(§ 50, 8). Among them was a Roman schism, followed later by several
others that grew out of double elections (§ 46, 4, 6, 8, 11). The
most threatening of all the schisms of this period was the Donatist in
North Africa. On the Johannite schism in Constantinople, see § 51, 3.
Owing to various diversities in the development of doctrine (§ 50, 7),
constitution (§ 46), worship (§ 56 ff.), and discipline (§ 61, 1),
material was accumulating for the grand explosion that was to burst
up the connection of East and West (§ 67). The imperial union attempts
during the Monophysite controversy caused a thirty-five years’ schism
between the two halves of the Christian world (§ 52, 5), and want of
character in the Roman bishop Vigilius split off the West for half a
century (§ 52, 6). The split between the East and West over the union
with the Monothelite party (§ 52, 8) was soon indeed overcome. But
soon thereafter the second Trullan Council at Constantinople, A.D. 692,
which, as the continuation of the 5th and 6th œcumenical Councils
(σύνοδος πενθέκτη, _Concilium quinisextum_), occupied itself exclusively
with questions of constitution, worship, and discipline, which had
not there been discussed, gave occasion to the later incurable and
disastrous schism.
§ 63.1. =The Donatist Schism, A.D. 311-415.=--In North Africa,
where echoes of the Montanist enthusiasm were still heard, many
voluntarily and needlessly gave themselves up to martyrdom during
the Diocletian persecution. The sensible bishop of Carthage
Mensurius and his archdeacon Cæcilian [Cæcilius] opposed this
fanaticism. Both had given up heretical books instead of the
sacred books demanded of them. This was sufficient to make the
opposite party denounce them as _traditores_. Mensurius died
in A.D. 311, and his followers chose Cæcilian [Cæcilius] as
his successor, and had him hastily ordained by bishop Felix
of Aptunga, being sorely pressed by the machinations of the
other party. The opposition, with a bigoted rich widow Lucilla
at its head, denounced Felix as a traditor, and so treated his
ordination as invalid. It put up a rival bishop in the person of
the reader Majorinus, who soon got, in A.D. 313, a more powerful
successor in Donatus, called by his own followers the Great. The
schism spread from Carthage over all North Africa. The peasants,
sorely oppressed by exorbitant taxes and heavy villeinage,
took the side of the Donatists (_Pars Donati_). Constantine
the Great at the very first declared himself against them. When
they complained of this, the emperor convened for the purpose of
special investigation a clerical commission at Rome in A.D. 313,
under the presidency of the Roman bishop Melchiades, and then a
great Western Synod at Arles in A.D. 314. Both decided against
the Donatists. They appealed to the immediate decision of the
emperor, who also heard the two parties at Milan, but decided
in accordance with previous judgments in A.D. 316. Now followed
severe measures, taking churches from them and banishing
their bishops which powerfully excited and increased their
fanaticism. Constantine resorted therefore to milder and
more tolerant procedure, but in their fanatical zeal they
repudiated all compromises. Under Constans the matter became
still more formidable. Ascetics mad with enthusiasm, drawn from
the very dregs of the people, who called themselves _Milites
Christi_, _Agonistici_, swarmed as beggars through the country,
_Circumcelliones_, roused the oppressed peasants to revolt,
preached freedom and fraternity, forced masters to do the work
of slaves, robbed, murdered, and burned. Political revolution
was carried on under the cover of a religious movement. An
imperial army put down the revolt, and an attempt was made
in A.D. 348 to pacify the needy Donatists by imperial gold.
But Donatus flung back the money with indignation, and the
rebellion was renewed. A severe sentence was now passed upon
the heads of the party, and all Donatist churches were closed
or taken from them. Julian restored the churches and recalled
the exiled bishops. He allowed the Donatists with impunity to
take violent revenge upon the Catholics. Julian’s successor
however again issued strict laws against the sectaries, and
schisms arose among themselves. Toward the end of the 4th
century bishop Optatus of Mileve opposed them in his treatise
_De Schismate Donatistarum Ll. VII._ In A.D. 400 Augustine,
bishop of Hippo Regius, began his unwearied attacks upon this
sect. The mildest terms were offered to induce the Donatists to
return to the church. Many of the more moderate took advantage
of the opportunity; but this only made the others all the
more bitter. They refused repeated invitations to a discussion,
fearing Augustine’s masterly dialectic. Augustine, who at first
maintained that force should not be used in matters of faith, was
moved by the persistent stiffneckedness and senseless fanaticism
of his opponents to change his opinion, and to confess that
in order to restore such heretics to the church, to salvation,
recourse must be had to violent compulsion (_coge intrare_,
Lk. xiv. 23). A synod at Carthage in A.D. 405 called upon the
Emperor Honorius to take proceedings against this stiffnecked
sect. He did so by imposing fines, banishing their clergy,
and taking their churches. Augustine renewed the challenge to
a public disputation. The Donatists were at last compelled by
the emperor to enter the lists. Thus came about the three days’
_Collatio cum Donatistis_ of A.D. 411 at Carthage. There appeared
279 Donatist and 286 Catholic bishops. Petilian and Primian were
the chief speakers on the side of the Donatists, Augustine and
Aurelian of Carthage on the other. The imperial commissioner
assigned the victory to the Catholics. In vain the Donatists
appealed. In A.D. 414 the Emperor declared that they had
forfeited all civil rights, and in A.D. 415 he threatened
all who attended their meetings with death. The Vandals, who
conquered Africa in A.D. 429, persecuted Catholics and Donatists
alike, and a common need furthered their reconciliation and
secured a good mutual understanding.--The Donatists started from
the principle that no one who is excommunicated or deserves to
be excommunicated is fit for the performance of any sacramental
action. With the Novatians they demanded the absolute purity
of the church, but admitted that repentance was a means for
regaining church fellowship. They maintained that they were
the pure and the Catholics were schismatics, who had nothing
in common with Christ, whose administration of the sacraments
was therefore invalid and useless, so that they even rebaptized
those who had Catholic baptism. The partiality of the state for
their opponents and confused blending of the ideas of the visible
and invisible church led them to adopt the view that church
and state, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, had
nothing in common with one another, and that the state should not
interfere in religious matters.
§ 63.2. =The _Concilium Quinisextum_, A.D. 692.=--This Council
claimed to be regarded as œcumenical and was recognised as such
even by Pope Sergius I. The Greeks had not yet got over their
vexation at the triumph which Rome had won at the last œcumenical
Council (§ 52, 8). It thus happened that among the multitude of
harmless decrees the following six were smuggled in which were
in flat contradiction to the Roman practice.
1. In enumerating the sources of the canon law alone valid
almost all the Latin Councils and Papal Decretals were
omitted, and the whole 85 _Canones Apostt._ (§ 43, 4)
included, whereas Rome had pronounced only the first
50 valid.
2. The Roman custom of enforcing celibacy on presbyters and
bishops is condemned as unjustifiable and inhuman (§ 45, 2).
3. Fasting on the Saturdays of the Quadragesima is forbidden
(§ 56, 4).
4. The 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon which makes the
patriarch of Constantinople equal to the bishop of Rome is
repeated and anew enforced (§ 46, 1, 7).
5. The Levitical prohibition against blood and things strangled
is sanctioned as still binding upon Christians, although it
had never been enforced by the Roman church.
6. Images of Christ in the shape of a lamb, which were very
common in the West, were forbidden. The papal legates
subscribed the decrees of the Council; but the Pope forbade
their publication in all the churches of the West. Compare
further § 46, 11.
VI. THE CHURCH OUTSIDE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.[185]
§ 64. MISSIONARY OPERATIONS IN THE EAST.
The real missionarizing church of this period was the Western
(§ 75 ff.). It was pre-eminently fitted for this by its practical
tendency and called to it by its intimate connection with the hordes
of the migrating peoples. Examples of organized missionary activity in
the East are rare. Yet other more occasional ways were opened for the
spread of Christianity outside of the empire, by Christian fugitives
and prisoners of war, political embassies and trade associations.
Anchorets, monks and stylites, too, who settled on the borders of
the empire or in deserts outside, by their extraordinary appearance
made a powerful impression on the surrounding savage tribes. These
streamed in in crowds, and those strange saints preached Christ to
them by word and work.
§ 64.1. =The Ethiopic-Abyssinian Church.=[186]--About A.D. 316
a certain Meropius of Tyre on a voyage of discovery to the
countries south of Egypt was murdered with his whole ship’s
company. Only his two nephews Frumentius and Aedesius were spared.
They won the favour of the Abyssinian king and became the tutors
of the heir apparent, Aizanas. Frumentius was subsequently, in
A.D. 438, ordained by Athanasius bishop of the country. Aizanas
was baptised, the church spread rapidly from Abyssinia to
Ethiopia and Numidia. A translation of the bible into the Geez
dialect, the language of the country, is attributed to Frumentius.
Closely connected with the Egyptian mother church, it fell with
it into Monophysitism (§ 52, 7). In worship and discipline,
besides much that is primitive, it has borrowed many things
from Judaism, and retained many of the old habits of the country,
_e.g._ observing the Sabbath alongside of the Sunday, forbidding
certain meats, circumcision, covenanting. Their canon comprised
81 books: besides the biblical, there are 16 patristic writings
of the Pre-Chalcedonian age.
§ 64.2. =The Persian Church.=--The church had taken root in
Persia as early as the 3rd century. With the 4th century there
came a sore time of bloody persecution, which was constantly fed
partly by the fanatical Magians, partly by the almost incessant
wars with the Christian Roman empire, which aroused suspicion of
foreign sympathies hostile to the country. The first great and
extensive persecution of the Christians broke out in A.D. 343
under Shapur or Sapores [Sapor] II. It lasted 35 years and during
this dreadful time 16,000 of the clergy, monks and nuns were
put to death, but the number of martyrs from the laity was far
beyond reckoning. Only shortly before his death Shapur [Sapor]
stopped the persecution and proclaimed universal religious
toleration. During 40 years’ rest the Persian church attained
to new vigour; but the fanaticism of Bishop Abdas of Susa who
caused a fire-temple to be torn down in A.D. 418, occasioned
a new persecution, which reached its height in A.D. 420 under
Bahram or Baranes V. and was carried on for 30 years with the
most fiendish ingenuity of cruel tortures. The generosity of a
Christian bishop, Acacius of Amida in Mesopotamia, who by the
sale of the church property redeemed a multitude of Persian
prisoners of war and sent them to their homes, at last moved
the king to stop the persecution. The Nestorians driven from the
Roman empire found among the Persians protection and toleration,
but were the occasion under king Firuz or Peroz of a new
persecution of the Catholics, A.D. 465. In A.D. 498 the whole
Persian church declared in favour of Nestorianism (§ 52, 3),
and enjoyed forthwith undisturbed toleration, developed to an
unexpected extent, retained its bloom for centuries, gave itself
zealously to scientific studies in the seminaries at Nisibis,
and undertook successfully mission work among the Asiatic tribes.
The war with the Byzantines continued without interruption.
Chosroes II. advanced victoriously as far as Chalcedon in
A.D. 616 and persecuted with renewed cruelty the Catholic
Christians of the conquered provinces. Finally the emperor
Heraclius plucked up courage. By the utter rout of A.D. 628
the power of the Persians was broken (§ 57, 5), and in A.D. 651
the Khalifs overthrew the dynasty of the Sassanidæ.
§ 64.3. =The Armenian Church.=--There were flourishing Christian
churches in Armenia so early as Tertullian’s time. The Arsacian
ruler Tiridates III., from A.D. 286, was a violent persecutor
of the Christians. During his reign, however, Gregory the
Illuminator, the Apostle of Armenia, carried on his successful
labours. He was the son of a Parthian prince, who, snatched
when a child of two years’ old by his nurse from the midst
of a massacre of his whole family, received in Cappadocia a
Christian training. In A.D. 302 he succeeded in winning over
to Christianity the king and the whole country. He left behind
him the church which he thus founded in a most prosperous
condition. His grandson Husig, his great grandson Nerses I.
and his son Isaac the Great held possession of the patriarchal
dignity and flourished even in the hard times, when Byzantines,
Arsacides, and Sassanidæ fought for possession of the country.
Mesrop, with the help of Isaac, whose successor he became in
A.D. 440 (dying in A.D. 441), gave to his church a translation
of the bible into their own tongue, for which he had to invent
a national alphabet. Under his successor, the patriarch Joseph,
the famous religious war with the Persian Sassanidæ broke
out, who wished to lead back the Armenians to the doctrine
of Zoroaster. In the fierce battle at the river Dechmud in
A.D. 451 the holy league was defeated. But Armenia still
maintained amid sore persecution its Christian confession.
In A.D. 651 the overthrow of the Sassanidæ brought it under
the rule of the Khalifs.--The Armenian church had vigorously
and earnestly warded off Nestorianism, but willingly opened
its arms to Monophysitism introduced from Byzantine Armenia.
At a synod at Feyin, in A.D. 527, it condemned the Chalcedonian
dogma.--Gregory the Illuminator had excited among the Armenians
an exceedingly lively interest in culture and science, and when
Mesrop gave them an independent system of writing, the golden age
of Armenian literature dawned (the 5th century). Not only were
many works of classical and patristic Greek and Syrian literature
made the property of the Armenians through translations, but
numerous writers built up a literature of their own. The history
of the conversion of Armenia was written in the 4th century
by Agathangelos, private secretary of the king. Whether this
was composed in Greek or in Armenian is doubtful; both texts
are still extant, evidently much interpolated with fabulous
matter and also in many points conflicting with one another.
In the 5th century Eznik in his “Overthrow of Heretics” addressed
a vigorous polemic against pagans, Persians, Marcionites and
Manichæans. Moses of Chorene, also a scholar of Mesrop, composed
from the archives a history of Armenia, and Elisaeus described
the Armeno-Persian religious war, in which, as secretary of the
Armenian commander in chief, he had taken part. On the service
done by the Mechitarists to the old Armenian literature, see
§ 164, 2.[187]
§ 64.4. =The Iberians=, in what is now called Georgia and Grusia,
received Christianity about A.D. 326 through an Armenian female
slave Nunia, whose prayer had healed many sick. The church then
extended from Iberia to the =Lazians= in what is now Colchias
and among the neighbouring =Abasgians=. In =India= Theophilus
of Diu (an island of the Arabian Gulf?) found in the middle
of the 4th century several isolated Christian communities. He
was sent by his fellow-citizens as hostage to Constantinople and
there was educated for the Arian priesthood. He then returned
home and carried on a successful mission among the Indians.
The relations of the Indian to the Persian church led to the
former becoming affected with Nestorianism (§ 52, 3). Cosmas
Indicopleustes (§ 48, 2) found in the 6th century three Christian
churches still surviving in India. Theophilus also wrought in
=Arabia=. He succeeded in converting the king of the Himyarite
kingdom at Yemen. In the 6th century, however, a Jew Dhu-Nowas
obtained for himself the sovereignty of Yemen and persecuted the
Christians with unheard of barbarity. At last Eleesban king of
Abyssinia interfered; the crowned Jew was slain, and from that
time Yemen had Christian kings till the Persian Chosroes II. made
it a Persian province in A.D. 616. Anchorets, monks and stylites
wrought successfully among the Arab nomadic hordes.
§ 65. THE COUNTER-MISSION OF THE MOHAMMEDANS.[188]
Abu Al’ Kasem Mohammed from Mecca made his appearance as a prophet in
A.D. 611, and founded a mixed religion of arid Monotheism and sensual
Endæmonism drawn from Judaism, Christianity and Arabian paganism.
His work first gained importance when driven from Mecca he fled to
Medina (Hejira, 15th July, A.D. 622). In A.D. 630 he conquered Mecca,
consecrated the old Heathen Kaaba as the chief temple of the new
religion, Islam (hence Moslems), and composed the Coran, consisting
of 114 suras, which had been collected by his father-in-law, Abu Bekr.
At his death all Arabia had accepted his faith and his rule. As he made
it the most sacred duty of his adherents to spread the new religion by
the sword and had inspired them with a wild fanaticism, his successors
snatched one province after another from the Roman empire and the
Christian church. Within a few years, A.D. 633-651, they conquered
all Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Persia, then, in A.D. 707, North Africa,
and, in A.D. 711, Spain. Farther, however, they could not go for the
present. Twice they unsuccessfully besieged Constantinople, A.D. 669-676,
and A.D. 717-718, and, in A.D. 732, Charles Martel at Tours completely
crushed all their hopes of extending further into the West. But the
whole Asiatic church was already reduced by their oppressions to the
most miserable condition, and three patriarchates, those of Alexandria,
Antioch and Jerusalem, were forced to submit to their caprices. Amid
manifold oppressions the Christians in those conquered lands were
tolerated on the payment of a tax, but fear and an eye to worldly
advantages led whole crowds of nominal Christians to profess Islam.
§ 65.1. =The Fundamental Principle of Islam= is an arid
Monotheism. Abraham, Moses and Jesus are regarded as God-sent
prophets. The miraculous birth of Jesus, by a virgin, is also
accepted, and Mary is identified with Miriam the sister of Moses.
The ascension of Christ is also received. Mohammed, the last and
highest of all the prophets, of whom Moses and Christ prophesied,
has restored to its original purity his doctrine, which had
been corrupted by Jews and Christians. At the end of the days
Christ will come again to conquer Antichrist and give universal
sovereignty to Islam. Most conspicuous among the corruptions
of the doctrine of Jesus is the dogma of the Trinity, which
is without more ado pronounced Tritheism, and conceived of as
including the mother of Jesus as the third person. So too the
incarnation of God is regarded as a falsification. The doctrine
of divine providence is strongly emphasized, but is contorted
into the grossest fatalism. The Mussulman is in need of no
atonement. Faith in the one God and His prophet Mohammed secure
for him the divine favour, and his good works win for him the
most abundant fulness of eternal blessedness, which consists in
absolutely unrestricted sensual enjoyments. The constitution is
theocratic; the prophet and his successors the Khalifs are God’s
vicegerents on earth. Worship is restricted to prayers, fastings
and washings. The Sunna or tradition of oral utterances of the
prophet is acknowledged as a second principal source for Islam,
alongside of the Coran. The opposition of the Shiites to the
Sunnites is rooted in the non-recognition of the first three
Khalifs and the prophet’s utterances only witnessed to by them.
Mysticism was first fostered among the Ssufis. The Wechabites,
who first appear in the 12th century, are the Puritans of Islam.
§ 65.2. =The Providential Place of Islam.=--The service under
Providence rendered by Mohammedanism which first attracts
attention is the doom which it executed upon the debased church
and state of the East. But it seems also to have had a positive
task which must be sought mainly in its relation to heathenism.
It regarded the abolition of idolatry as its principal task.
Neither the prophet nor his successors gave any toleration to
paganism. Islam converted a mass of savage races in Asia and
Africa from the most senseless and immoral idolatries to the
worship of the one God, and raised them to a certain stage of
culture and morality to which they could never have risen of
themselves. But also upon yet another side, though only in a
passing way, it has served a providential purpose, in spurring
on mediæval Christianity by its example of devotion to scientific
pursuits. Syncretic, as its religious and intellectual life
originally was, during its flourishing period from A.D. 750,
under the brilliant dynasty of the Abassidean Khalifs at Bagdad
in Asia, and from A.D. 756 (comp. § 81) under the no less
brilliant dynasty of the Ommaiadean Khalifs at Cordova in Spain,
driven out by the Abassidæ from Damascus, it readily appropriated
the elements of culture which the classical literature of
the ancient Greeks afforded it (§ 42, 4), and with youthful
enthusiasm its scholars for centuries on this foundation kept
alive and advanced scientific studies--philosophy, astronomy,
mathematics, natural science, medicine, geography, history--and
by their appropriation of those researches the Latin Middle Ages
reached to the height of their scientific culture (§ 103, 1).
But also the reawakening of classical studies in the Byzantine
Middle Ages (§ 68, 1), which is of still more importance for the
West (§ 120, 1), is preeminently due to the impetus given by the
scientific enthusiasm of the Moslems of Bagdad, who shamed the
Greeks into the study of their own literature. With the overthrow
of those two dynasties, the culture period of the Moslems closed
suddenly and for ever, but not until it had accomplished its task
for the Christian world.[189]
THIRD SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GRÆCO-BYZANTINE CHURCH
IN THE 8TH-15TH CENTURIES
(A.D. 692-1453).
I. Developments of the Greek Church in Combination
with the Western.
§ 66. ICONOCLASM OF THE BYZANTINE CHURCH (A.D. 726-842).[190]
The worship of images (§ 57, 4) had reached its climax in the East
in the beginning of the 8th century. Even the most zealous defenders
of images had to admit that there had been exaggerations and abuses.
Some, _e.g._, had taken images as their godfathers, scraped paint off
them to mix in the communion wine, laid the consecrated bread first
on the images so as to receive the body of the Lord from their hands,
etc. A powerful Byzantine ruler, who was opposed to image worship from
personal dislike as well as on political grounds, applied the whole
strength of his energetic will to the uprooting of this superstition.
Thus arose a struggle that lasted more than a hundred years between
the enemies of images (εἰκονοκλάσται) and the friends of images
(εἰκονολάτραι), in which there stood, on the one side, the emperor
and the army, on the other, the monks and the people. Twice it seemed
as if image worship had been completely and for ever stamped out;
but on both occasions a royal lady secured its restoration. In practice
indeed the Roman church remained behind the Greek, but in theory
they were agreed, and in the struggle it gave the whole weight of
its authority to the friends of images. On the part taken by the
Frankish church, see § 92, 1.
§ 66.1. =Leo III., the Isaurian, A.D. 717-741.=--Leo, who was
one of the most powerful of the Byzantine emperors, after the
attack of the Saracens on Constantinople, in A.D. 718, had
been successfully repelled, felt himself obliged to take other
measures against the aggressions of Islam. In the worship of
images abhorred by Jews and Moslems he perceived the greatest
obstacle to their conversion, and, being personally averse to
image worship, he issued an edict, in A.D. 726, which first
ordered the images to be placed higher in the churches that
it might be impossible for the people to kiss them. But the
peaceable overcoming of this deeply rooted form of devotion
was frustrated by the unconquerable firmness of the ninety-year
old patriarch Germanus in Constantinople, as well as by the
opposition of the people and the monks. The greatest dogmatist
of this age, Joh. Damascenus, who was secured from the rage
of the emperor in Palestine under Saracen rule, issued three
spirited tracts in defence of the images. A certain Cosmas
took advantage of a popular rising in the Cyclades, had himself
proclaimed emperor and went with a fleet against Constantinople.
But Leo conquered and had him executed, and now in a second edict
of A.D. 730 ordered all images to be removed from the churches.
Now began a war against images by military force, which went
to great excess in fanatical violence. Repeated popular tumults
were quelled in blood. Only in Rome and North Italy did the
powerful arm of the emperor make no impression. Pope Gregory II.,
A.D. 715-731, treated him in his letters like a stupid,
ill-mannered school-boy. In proportion as the bitterness
against the emperor increased enthusiasm for the pope increased,
and gave expression to itself in the most vehement revolts
against the imperial Council. A great part of the exarchate
(§ 46, 9) surrendered voluntarily to the Longobards and so
much of it in the north as remained with the emperor proved
more obedient to the pope than to the sovereign. Gregory III.,
A.D. 731-741, at a Synod in Rome in A.D. 731 excommunicated
all enemies of images. The emperor fitted out a powerful fleet
to chastise him, but a storm broke it up. He now deprived the
pope of all his revenues from Southern Italy, severed Illyria
(§ 46, 5) in A.D. 732 from the papal chair and gave it to the
patriarch of Constantinople, but in doing so he cut the last
cord that bound the Roman chair to the interests of the Byzantine
Court (§ 82, 1).
§ 66.2. =Constantine V. A.D. 741-775.=--To the son and successor
of Leo the monks gave the unsavoury names of Copronymus and
Caballinus in token of their hatred, the latter on account
of his love of horses, the former because it was said that
at his baptism he had defiled the water. He was like his father
a powerful ruler and soldier, and in the battle against images
yet more reckless and determined. He conquered his brother-in-law
who had rebelled with the aid of the friends of the images, and
caused him to be cruelly treated and blinded. As popular tumults
still continued, he thought to get ecclesiastical sanction
for his principles from an œcumenical Council. About 350 bishops
assembled in Constantinople, A.D. 754. But, as the chair of
Constantinople had just become vacant, while Rome, which had
excommunicated the enemies of images, refused to answer the
summons, and Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were under Saracen
rule, there was not a single patriarch present at the Synod.
The Council excommunicated all who made images of Christ, for
it declared that the Supper was the only true image of Christ,
and condemned every kind of veneration of images. These decrees
were now relentlessly carried out with savage violence. Thousands
of monks were scourged, imprisoned, banished, chased through
the circus with nuns in their arms for the sport of the people,
or forced into marriage, many had their eyes gouged out, or had
their nose or ears cut off, and the monasteries were turned into
barracks or stables. Even in private houses no image of a saint
was any longer to be seen. From Rome Stephen II. protested
against the decisions of the Council, and Stephen III. from
a Lateran Synod of A.D. 769 thundered a fearful anathema against
the enemies of images. But in the Byzantine empire monkery and
image worship were well nigh extinguished.
§ 66.3. =Leo IV., Chazarus, A.D. 775-780.=--The son of
Constantine was of the same mind with his father, but wanted
his energy. His wife =Irene= was an eager friend of the images.
When the emperor discovered this, he began to take active
measures, but his suspiciously sudden death put a stop to
operations. Irene now used the freedom which the minority
of her son Constantine VI. afforded her for the introduction
of image worship. She called a new Council at Constantinople
in A.D. 786, which also Hadrian I. of Rome attended, while the
other patriarchs, being under Saracen rule, took no part in it.
But the imperial guard attacked the place where they were sitting,
and broke up the Council. Irene now arranged for the =Seventh
Œcumenical Council at Nicæa, A.D. 787=. The eighth and last
session was held in the imperial palace at Constantinople, after
the guards had been withdrawn from the city and disarmed. The
Council annulled the decisions of A.D. 754, and sanctioned image
worship for it allowed the bowing and prostration before the
images (τιμητικὴ προσκύνησις) as a token of the reverence
which was due to the original, and declared that this in no
way interfered with that worship (λατρεία) which was due to
God alone.[191]
§ 66.4. The next emperors were friendly to image worship, but
the victory had departed from their standards. Then the army,
which had always been hostile to images, proclaimed =Leo V.,
the Armenian, A.D. 813-820=, emperor, an avowed opponent of
images. He proceeded very cautiously, but the soldiers set aside
his prudence and launched out into violent raids against images.
At the head of the patrons of images was Theodorus Studita, abbot
of the monastery of Studion (§ 44, 2), a man of unfeigned piety
and unfaltering decision of character, the most acute apologist
of image worship, who had even in exile been eagerly promoting
the interests of his party. He died in A.D. 826. Leo lost his
life at the hand of conspirators. His successor, =Michael II.,
Balbus, A.D. 820-829=, allowed at least that images should be
reverenced in private. His son =Theophilus, A.D. 829-842=, on
the other hand, made it the business of his life to root out
entirely every trace of image worship. But his wife =Theodora=,
who after his death conducted the government as regent, had it
formally reintroduced by a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 842.
Since then all opposition to it has ceased in the Greek church,
and the day of the Synodal decision, 19th February, was appointed
a standing festival of orthodoxy.
§ 67. DIVISION BETWEEN GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES AND
ATTEMPTS AT UNION, A.D. 857-1453.[192]
The second Trullan Council in A.D. 692 had given the first occasion
to the great schism which rent the Christian world into two halves
(§ 63, 2); Photius gave it a doctrinal basis in A.D. 867; and Michael
Cærularius in A.D. 1053 completed its development. The increasing
need of the Byzantine government drove it to make repeated attempts
at reconciliation, but these either were never concluded or the union,
if at all completed, proved a mere paper union. The Sisyphus labour of
union efforts ended only with the overthrow of the Byzantine empire in
A.D. 1453. The three stages referred to--the early misunderstandings,
the avowed doctrinal divergence, and the final decisive separation--as
well as the persistent rejection of attempts at reunion, were not
wholly owing to the importance of ceremonial differences. After as
well as before there had been free church communion between them.
It was not owing to the importance of the almost solitary point of
doctrinal difference between them, in reference to the _filioque_
(§ 50, 7), where if there had been good will a common understanding
might easily have been won. It was really the papal claims to the
primacy to which the Greeks absolutely refused to submit.
§ 67.1. =Foundation of the Schism, A.D. 867.=--During the
minority of the emperor Michael III., son of Theodora (§ 66, 4),
surnamed the Drunkard, his uncle Bardas, Theodora’s brother,
directed the government. Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople
at that time, himself descended from the imperial family, lashed
severely the godless, vicious life of the court, and in A.D. 857
kept back from the communion the all-powerful Bardas, who lived
in incestuous intercourse with his own daughter-in-law. He was
then deposed and banished. =Photius=, the most learned man of his
age, previously commander of the imperial bodyguard, was raised
to the vacant chair, and inherited the hatred of all the friends
of Ignatius. He made proposals of agreement which were proudly
and scornfully rejected. He then held a Synod in A.D. 859, which
confirmed the deposition of Ignatius and excommunicated him. But
nothing in the world could make his party abandon his claims. Now
Photius wished to be able to lay in the scales the Roman bishop’s
approval of his questionable proceedings. He therefore laid
an account of matters highly favourable to himself before Pope
=Nicholas I.=, and sought his brotherly love and intercessions.
The pope answered that he must first examine the whole affair.
His two legates, Rhodoald of Porto and Zacharias of Anagni, were
bribed and at a Council at Constantinople in A.D. 861 gave their
consent to the deposition of Ignatius. Nicholas, however, had
other reporters. He excommunicated his own legates and pronounced
Ignatius the lawful patriarch. Bitterness of feeling reached its
height in Constantinople, when soon thereafter the Bulgarians
broke their connection with the Byzantine mother church and
submitted to the pope (§ 73, 3). Photius now by an Encyclica
of A.D. 866 called the patriarchs of the East to a Council
at Constantinople, and charged the Roman church with the most
extreme heresies; that it enjoined fasting on Saturday (§ 56, 1),
allowed milk, butter and cheese to be eaten during the first
week of the Quadragesima (§ 56, 7), did not acknowledge married
priests (§ 45, 2), did not prohibit the clergy from shaving the
beard (§ 45, 1), pronounced anointing by a presbyter invalid
(§ 35, 4), but above all, that by the addition of the _filioque_
(§ 50, 7) it had falsified the creed, recognising thus two
principles and so falling back into dualism. With such heresies
too the pope had now infected the Bulgarians. The meeting of the
Council took place in A.D. 867. Three monks, tutored by Photius,
represented the patriarchs under Saracen rule. Excommunication
and deposition were hurled against the pope, and this sentence
was communicated to the Western churches. The pope was evidently
alarmed. He justified himself before the Frankish clergy and
insisted that they should answer the charges of the Greeks
in a scholarly reply. This was done by several, most ably by
Ratramnus, monk at Corbie. But during that year, A.D. 867, the
emperor Michael was murdered. His murderer and successor Basil
the Macedonian undertook the patronage of the party of Ignatius,
and asked of Pope Hadrian II. a new investigation and decision.
A =Synod at Constantinople, A.D. 869=, counted by the Latins
the 8th œcumenical, condemned Photius and restored Ignatius.
The deciding about the Bulgarians, however, was not committed
to the Council but to the reputed representatives of the Saracen
patriarchs as impartial umpires. They naturally decided in favour
of the Byzantine patriarch. In vain the legates remonstrated.
Photius in other respects under misfortune displays a character
worthy of our esteem. For several years he languished without
company, without books, under the strictest monastic rules.
Yet he reconciled himself to Ignatius. Basil entrusted him with
the education of his children, and on the death of Ignatius in
A.D. 878, restored him to the patriarchate. But still the ban of
an œcumenical Council lay upon him. Only a new œcumenical Council
could vindicate him. John VIII. agreed to this against the
remonstrances of the Bulgarians. But at the ninth =Council
at Constantinople, A.D. 879=, the eighth according to the Greeks,
the papal legates were completely duped. There was no mention of
the Bulgarians, the Council of A.D. 869 was repudiated, and every
one excommunicated who dared add anything to the creed. The pope
afterwards indeed launched an anathema against the patriarch,
his Council, and his followers. The succeeding emperor, Leo the
Philosopher, A.D. 886-911, again deposed Photius in A.D. 886, but
only that he might put an imperial prince in his place. Photius
died in monastic exile in A.D. 891.
§ 67.2. =Leo VI., the Philosopher, A.D. 886-911.=--This emperor
was three times married without having any children. He married
the fourth only when he had assured himself that she would not
be barren. The patriarch Nicolaus [Nicolas] Mysticus refused
(§ 61, 2) to celebrate the marriage and was deposed. A Synod
at Constantinople in A.D. 906, attended by the legates of Pope
Sergius III., approved the marriage and the deposition. But
on his deathbed Leo repented of his violence. His brother and
successor Alexander restored the patriarch Nicolas, and Pope
John X. attended a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 920, which
condemned the Council of A.D. 906, and pronounced a fourth
marriage absolutely unallowable, but showed no inclination to
make any concessions to the pope. New negociations were begun
by the emperor =Basil II.= In consideration of a large sum of
money the venal pope John XIX. was willing to acknowledge the
Byzantines as œcumenical patriarchs of the East, and to resign
all claims of the chair of Peter upon the Eastern church. But the
affair became known before it was concluded. The removal of the
new Judas was loudly demanded throughout the West, and the pope
was compelled to break off his negociations.
§ 67.3. =Completion of the Schism, A.D. 1054.=-Though so many
anathemas had been flung at Rome by Byzantium and at Byzantium
by Rome, they had hitherto been directed only against the persons
and their followers, not against the respective churches as
such. This defect was now to be supplied. The emperor Constantine
Monómachus sought the papal friendship which he thought necessary
to the success of his warlike undertakings. But the patriarch
=Michael Cærularius= frustrated his efforts. In company with the
Metropolitan of the Bulgarians, Leo of Achrida, he addressed in
A.D. 1053 an epistle to bishop John of Trani in Apulia, in which
he charged the Latins with the worst heresies, and adjured the
Western bishops to separate from them. To the heresies already
enumerated by Photius, he added certain others; the use of blood
and things strangled, the withdrawal of the Hallelujah during
the fast season, and above all the use of unleavened bread in
the Supper (§ 58, 4), on account of which he invented for the
heretics the name of Azymites. This letter fell into the hands
of Cardinal =Humbert=, who translated it and laid it before pope
Leo IX. A violent correspondence followed. The emperor offered
to do anything to restore peace. At his request the pope sent
three legates to Constantinople, among them the occasion of the
strife, Humbert (§ 101, 2), and Cardinal Frederick of Lothringen,
afterwards pope Stephen IX. (§ 96, 6). These fanned the flame,
instead of quenching it. Imperial pressure indeed brought the
abbot of Studion, Nicetas Pectoratus to burn his controversial
treatise before the legates, but no threat nor violence could
move to submission the patriarchs, on whose side were the people
and the clergy. The legates finally laid a formal decree of
excommunication on the altar of the church of Sophia, which
Michael together with the other Eastern patriarchs solemnly
returned, A.D. 1054.
§ 67.4. =Attempts at Reunion.=--The crusades increased the breach
instead of healing it. Many negociations were begun but none of
them came to much. At a Synod at Bari in Naples, in A.D. 1098,
Anselm of Canterbury (§ 101, 1), who then lived as a fugitive
in Italy, proved to the Greeks there present the correctness
of the Latin doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit.
In A.D. 1113, Petrus [Peter] Chrysologus, Archbishop of Milan,
vindicated it in a complete discourse before the emperor at
Constantinople. And in A.D. 1135, Anselm of Havelberg, who
went to Constantinople as ambassador for Lothair II., disputed
with the Archbishop Nicetas of Nicomedia, and afterwards at the
command of the pope wrote down the disputation with creditable
faithfulness. The hatred and abhorrence of the Greeks reached
its climax on the erection of the Latin empire at Constantinople,
A.D. 1204-1261 (comp. § 94, 4). Nevertheless =Michael Palæologus,
A.D. 1260-1282=, who brought this dynasty to an end, strove
on political grounds in every way possible to overcome this
ecclesiastical schism. The patriarch Joseph of Constantinople
and his librarian, the celebrated =Joannes Beccus=, stubbornly
withstood him. The latter indeed in imprisonment became convinced
that the differences were unessential and that a union was
possible. This change of mind secured for him the patriarch’s
chair. Meanwhile the negotiations of the emperor with the pope,
Gregory X., in which he acknowledged the Roman chair to be the
highest court of appeal in doctrinal controversies, were brought
to a point in the œcumenical =Council at Lyons, A.D. 1274=,
reckoned by the Latins the fourteenth. The imperial legates here
acknowledged the primacy of the pope and subscribed a Roman creed,
while to them was granted liberty to use their creed without the
addition and to practise their peculiar ecclesiastical customs.
Beccus vindicated this union in several treatises. But a change
of dynasty overthrew him in A.D. 1283. Joseph was restored and
the union of Lyons was broken up leaving no trace behind.
§ 67.5. The advance of the Turks made it absolutely necessary
for the East Roman emperors to secure the support of the West
by reconciling and uniting themselves with the papacy. But the
powerful party of the monks, supported by popular prejudice
against the proposal, thwarted the imperial wishes on all sides.
The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem too were
zealous opponents, not only animated by the old bitterness toward
their more prosperous rivals on the chair of Peter, but also
influenced against the views of the emperor by the policy of
their Saracen rulers. The emperor =Andronicus III. Palæologus=
won to his side the abbot =Barlaam= of Constantinople, hitherto,
though born in Calabria and there educated in the Roman Catholic
faith, a zealous opponent of the Western doctrine. Barlaam went
at the head of an imperial embassy to Avignon where the pope
at that time, Benedict XIII., resided, A.D. 1339. Negotiations,
however, broke down through the obstinacy of the pope, who
demanded of the Greeks above all unconditional submission in
doctrine and constitution, and also showed not once any wish
for renewing the conference.--On Barlaam, comp. § 69, 2.--The
political difficulties of the emperor, however, continually
increased, and so =Joannes V. Palæologus= took further steps.
He himself in A.D. 1369 in Rome passed over to the Latin church,
but neither did he get his people to follow him, nor did pope
Urban V. get the Western princes to give help against the Turks.
§ 67.6. The union attempts of =Joannes VII. Palæologus= had more
appearance of success. The emperor had won over the patriarch
Joseph of Constantinople, as well as the clever and highly
cultured archbishop =Bessarion= of Nicæa, and went personally
in company with the latter and many bishops, in A.D. 1438,
to the papal Council at =Ferrara= (§ 110, 8), where the pope,
Eugenius IV., fearing lest the Greeks might join the reformatory
Council at Basel, showed himself very gracious. The Council,
nominally on account of the outbreak of a plague at Ferrara
was transferred to =Florence=, and here the union was actually
consummated in A.D. 1439. The primacy of the pope was acknowledged,
though not altogether without dubiety of expression, the ritual
differences as well as the priestly marriages of the Greeks
tolerated, the doctrinal difference reduced to a misunderstanding
and the orthodoxy of both churches maintained. In the Latin text
of the decree referred to the pope was acknowledged as “Successor
of Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and the vicar of Christ,”
as “head of the whole Church, and father and teacher of all
Christians, to whom plenary power was given by our Lord Jesus
Christ to feed, rule, and govern the universal Church”--yet
with the significant addition “in such a way as it is set forth
in the œcumenical Councils and in the sacred Canons,” by which
certainly the Greeks thought only of the Canons of Nicæa and
Chalcedon referred to in § 46, 1, but the Latins mainly of the
Pseudo-Decretals of § 87, 2; and thus it happens that in most
of the Greek texts the propositions that define the universal
primacy of the pope are either wanting, or essentially modified.
The first place after the pope is given to the patriarch of
Constantinople. In regard to the doctrine of the Procession
of the Holy Spirit it was admitted that the Greek formula “_ex
Patre per Filium_” was essentially the same as the Latin “_ex
Patre Filioque_,” and by the definition “_quod Sp. S. ex P. simul
et F. et ex utroque æternaliter tanquam ab uno principio et unica
spiratione procedit_,” the latter was saved from the charge of
dualism. A new difference, however, came to light in reference
to Purgatory (§ 61, 4). The intercessions of the living and the
presenting of masses for the dead were allowed by the Greeks as
helping to secure the forgiveness of their still unatoned for
venial sins, but they decidedly opposed the view that any of the
dead could obtain this by his own temporary endurance of penal
sufferings, and they would not hear of a fire as a means for its
attainment. The Latins also taught that the unbaptized or those
dying in mortal sin immediately pass into eternal condemnation
and the perfectly pious immediately pass into God’s presence;
while the Greeks maintained that this happens only at the last
judgment. After long disputes, the Greeks, urged by their emperor,
at last gave in on both points. Without much difficulty they
accepted the seven sacraments of the Westerns (§ 104, 2). Thus
was the union consummated amid embracings and jubilant shoutings.
But in reality everything remained as of old. A powerful party at
whose head stood archbishop Marcus Eugenicus of Ephesus, who had
been shouted down at Florence, roused the whole East against the
union that had been made on paper. The new patriarch Metrophanes,
whom they repudiated, was ridiculed as Μητροφόνος, and in
A.D. 1443 the rest of the Eastern patriarchs at a Synod at
Jerusalem excommunicated all who maintained the union. When
moreover the hoped for help from the West did not come even
the union party lost their interest in it. Bessarion passed
over to the Roman church, became cardinal and bishop of Tuscoli,
and was as such on two occasions very near being made pope.[193]
§ 67.7. The Byzantine Christian empire went meanwhile rapidly
to decay. On the 29th May, 1453, Constantinople was stormed by
Mohammed II. The last emperor, Constantine XI., fell in a heroic
struggle against tremendous odds. Mohammed conferred upon the
patriarch Gennadius (§ 68, 5) the spiritual primacy and even
temporal supremacy and full jurisdiction over the whole orthodox
inhabitants of the empire, making him, however, answerable for
their conduct. The other two patriarchates of Jerusalem and
Antioch were in religious matters co-ordinate, in political
matters subordinate, to him. For the executing of his spiritual
power he had around him a Synod of twelve archbishops, of whom
four as holders of the four divisions of the patriarchal diocese
resided in Constantinople. The Synod chose the patriarchs and
the Sultan confirmed the elections.--All union negociations were
now at an end, for the Porte could only wish for the continuance
of the schism. The enormous crowds of Greek refugees who sought
protection in foreign lands, especially in Italy, Hungary,
Galicia, Poland, Lithuania, either went directly over to the
Roman Catholic church, or formed churches of their own under
the name of United Greeks, purchasing liberty to observe their
old church constitution and liturgy by accepting the Romish
doctrine and the papal primacy.
II. Developments in the Eastern Church without the
Co-operation of the Western.
§ 68. THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND LITERATURE.
The iconoclastic struggle, A.D. 726-842, was to some extent a war
against art and science. At least no period in the history of the Greek
Middle Ages is so poor in these as this. But about the middle of the
9th century Byzantine culture awoke from its deep torpor to a vigour
of which no one would have thought it capable. What is still more
wonderful, for six hundred years it maintained its position without
a break at this elevation and prosecuted literary and scientific
studies with a zeal that seemed to be quickened as its political
condition became more and more desperate. What specially characterized
the scholarly efforts of this time was the revival of classical studies
which from the 6th century had been almost entirely neglected. Now all
at once the decaying Greeks, who were threatened with intellectual as
well as political bankruptcy, began to realize the rich heritage which
their pagan forefathers had bequeathed them. They searched out these
treasures amid the dust of libraries and applied to them a diligence,
an enthusiasm, a pride, which fills us with astonishment. The Hellenic
intellect had, indeed, long lost its genial creative power. The most
ambitious effort of this age did not go beyond explanatory reproduction
and scholarship. Upon theology, however, bound hard and fast in
traditional propositions and Aristotelian formulæ, the revival of
classical studies had relatively little influence, and where it did
break the fetters it only gave entrance to a deluge of heathen Hellenic
views that paganized Christianity.
§ 68.1. The shame caused by the zeal with which the Khalifs
of the Abassidean line at the end of the 8th century applied
themselves to the classical Greek literature seems to have given
the first impulse to the =Revival of Classical Studies=. Behind
this we must suppose there was the influence of the Byzantine
rulers, unless they had lost all trace of national feeling.
Bardas, the guardian and co-regent of Michael III. (§ 67, 1),
if there is nothing else in him worthy of praise, has the credit
of having been the first to lay anew the foundation of classical
studies by establishing schools and paying their teachers. Basil
the Macedonian, although himself no scholar, patronized and
protected the sciences. Photius was the teacher of his children,
and implanted in them a love of study which they transmitted to
their children and children’s children. Leo, the Philosopher, the
son, and Constantine Porphyrogenneta, the grandson, of Basil were
the brilliant scholars in the Macedonian dynasty. Their place was
taken by the line of the Comneni from A.D. 1057, which introduced
a most brilliant period in the history of scientific studies.
The princesses of this house, Eudocia and Anna Comnena, won high
fame as gifted and learned authors. What Photius was for the
age of the Macedonians, Psellus was for the age of the Comneni.
Thessalonica vied with Constantinople as a new Athens in
the brilliancy of its classical culture. The rudeness of
the crusaders threatened during the sixty years’ interregnum
of the Latin dynasty, to undo the work of the Comneni. But
when in A.D. 1261 the Palæologi again obtained possession of
Constantinople, learning rose once more to the front and won
an ever increasing significance. And when the Turks took it in
A.D. 1453 crowds of learned Greeks settled in Italy and spread
their carefully fostered culture all over the West.
§ 68.2. =Aristotle and Plato.=--The revival of classical studies
secured again a preference for Plato, who seemed more classical,
at least more Hellenic, than Aristotle. But the ecclesiastical
imprimatur that had been given to Aristotle, which had been
formally expressed by Joh. Damascenus, formed a barrier against
the overflowing of Platonism into the theological domain. The
church’s distrust of Plato, on the other hand, drove many of
the more enthusiastic friends of classical studies into a sort
of Hellenic paganism. The eagerness of the struggle reached its
height in the 15th century. Gemisthus Pletho moved heaven and
earth to drive the hated usurper Aristotle from the throne of
science. He called for unconditional surrender to the wisdom of
the divine Plato and expressed the confident hope that soon the
time would come when Christianity and Islam would be conquered
and the religion of pure humanity would have universal sway.
Of similar views were his numerous scholars, of whom the most
distinguished was Bessarion (§ 67, 6). But Aristotle also
had talented representatives in George of Trebizond and his
scholars. Numerous representatives of the two schools settled
in Italy and there carried on the conflict with increasing
bitterness.--Continuation § 120, 1.
§ 68.3. =Scholasticism and Mysticism= (μάθησις and
μυσταγωγία).--By the application of the Aristotelian
method which Joh. Philoponus (§ 47, 11) had suggested, and
Joh. Damascenus had carried out, the scientific treatment of
doctrine in the Greek church had taken a form which in many
respects resembles the scholasticism of the Latin Middle Ages,
without being able, however, to reach its wealth, power, subtlety
and depth. But alongside of the dialectic scholastic treatment
of dogma there was found, especially in the quiet life of the
monasteries, diligent fostering of the mysticism based upon
the pseudo-Areopagite (§ 47, 11). Its chief representative
was Nicolas Cabasilas. This mysticism never ran counter to
the worship or doctrine of the church, but rather rendered to
it unconditional acknowledgment, and was specially characterized
by its decided preference for the symbolical, to which it is
careful to attach a thoroughly sacramental significance. No
reason existed for any hostile encounters between dialectic
and mysticism.
§ 68.4. =The Branches of Theological Science.=--About the
beginning of our period Joh. Damascenus collected the results
of previous =Dogmatic= labours in the Greek church by the use
of the dialectic forms of Aristotle into an organic system. His
Ecdosis is the first and last complete dogmatic of the old Greek
church. The manifold intercourse with the Latin church occasioned
by the union efforts was not, however, without influence on
the Greek church. In spite of the keenest opposition on debated
questions, the far more thoroughly developed statement by Latin
scholasticism of doctrines in regard to which both were agreed
communicated itself to the Greek church, so that all unwittingly
it adopted on many points the same bases and tendencies of
belief. =Polemics= were constantly carried on with Nestorians,
Monophysites and Monothelites, and fresh subjects of debate were
found in the iconoclastic disputes, newly emerging dualistic
sects, the Latin schismatics and the defenders of the union. By
the changed circumstances of the time =Apologetics= again came
to the front as a theological necessity. The incessant advance
of Islam and the Jewish polemic, which was now gaining boldness
from the protection of the Saracens, urgently demanded the
work of the Apologist, but the dominant scholastic traditional
theology of the Greeks in its hardness and narrowness was little
fitted to avert the storm of God’s judgment. Finally, too, the
revival of classical studies and the introduction of pagan modes
of thought were followed by a renewal of anti-pagan Apologetics
(Nicolas of Methone). In =Exegesis= there was no independent
original work. Valuable catenas were compiled by Œcumenius,
Theophylact and Euthymius Zigabenus. =Church History= lay
completely fallow. Only Nicephorus Callisti in the 14th century
gave any attention to it (§ 5, 1). Incomparably more important
for the church history of those times are the numerous _Scriptores
hist. Byzantinæ_. As a writer of legends Simeon Metaphrastes in
the 10th century (?) gained a high reputation.
§ 68.5. The most distinguished theologian of the 8th century
was =Joannes Damascenus=. He was long in the civil service of
the Saracens, and died about A.D. 760 as monk in the monastery
of Sabas in Jerusalem. His admirers called him _Chrysorrhoas_;
the opponents of image worship who pronounced a thrice repeated
anathema upon him at the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 754,
called him Mansur. His chief work, which ranks in the Greek
church as an epoch-making production, is the Πηγὴ γνώσεως. Its
first part, Κεφάλαια φιλοσοφικά, forms the dialectic, the second
part, Περὶ αἱρέσεων, the historical, introduction to the third or
chief part: Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως, a systematic
collection of the doctrines of faith according to the Councils,
and the teachings of the ancient Fathers, especially of the three
Cappadocians. His Ἱερὰ παράλληλα contain a collection of _loci
classici_ from patristic writings on dogmatic and moral subjects
arranged in alphabetical order. He wrote besides controversial
tracts against Christological heretics, the Paulicians,
the opponents of image worship, etc., and composed several
hymns for church worship.[194]--Among the numerous writings
of =Photius=, who died in A.D. 891, undoubtedly the most
important is his Bibliotheca, Μυριοβίβλιον. It gives reports
about and extracts from 279 Christian and pagan works, which
have since in great part been lost. In addition to controversial
treatises against the Latins and against the Paulicians,
there are still extant his Ἀμφιλόχια, answers to more than
300 questions laid before him by bishop Amphilochius, and his
Nomo-canon (§ 43, 3) which is still the basis of Greek canon
law, and was, about A.D. 1180, commented on by the deacon of
Constantinople, Theodore Balsamon in his Ἐξήγησις τῶν ἱερῶν καὶ
θείων κανόνων.--The brilliant period of the Comnenian dynasty
was headed by =Michael Psellus=, teacher of philosophy at
Constantinople, a man of wide culture and possessed of an
astonishingly extensive store of information which was evinced
by numerous works on a variety of subjects, so that he was
designated φιλοσόφων ὕπατος. He died in A.D. 1105. Among his
theological writings the most important is Περὶ ἐνεργείας
δαιμόνων (comp. § 71, 3). As this work is of the utmost
importance for the demonology of the Middle Ages, so the
Διδασκαλία παντοδαπή, a compendium of universal science on
the basis of theology, is for the encyclopædic knowledge of that
period. His contemporary =Theophylact=, archbishop of Achrida,
in Bulgaria, left behind him an important commentary in the form
of a catena. Euthymius Zigabenus, monk at Constantinople, in the
beginning of the 12th century, composed, by order of the emperor
Alexius Comnenus, in reply to the heretics, a Πανοπλία δογματικὴ
τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως ἤτοι ὁπλοθήκη δογμάτων in 24 bks.,
which gained for him great repute in his times. It is a mere
compilation, and only where he combats the sects of his own
age is it of any importance. His exegetical compilations are of
greater value. The most important personality of the 12th century
was =Eustathius=, archbishop of Thessalonica. As commentator on
Homer and Pindar he has been long highly valued by philologists;
but from the publication of his theological _Opuscula_ it appears
that he is worthy of higher fame as a Christian, a theologian, a
church leader and reformer of the debased monasticism of his age
(§ 70, 4). His friend and pupil, =Michael Acominatus= of Chonæ,
archbishop of Athens, treated with equal enthusiasm of the church
and his fatherland, of Christian faith and Greek philosophy, of
patristic and classical literature, and in a beautiful panegyric
raised a becoming memorial to his departed teacher. His younger
brother, =Nicetas Acominatus=, a highly esteemed statesman of
Constantinople, wrote a Θεσαυρὸς ὀρθοδοξίας in 27 bks., which
consists of a justificatory statement of the orthodox doctrine
together with a refutation of heretics, much more independent
and important than the similar work of Euthymius. He died in
A.D. 1206. At the same time flourished the noble bishop =Nicolas
of Methone= in Messenia, whose refutation of the attacks of the
neo-Platonist Proclus, Ἀνάπτυξις τῆς θεολογικῆς στοιχειώσεως
Πρόκλου is one of the most valuable productions of this period.
His doctrine of redemption, which has a striking resemblance
to Anselm of Canterbury’s theory of satisfaction (§ 101, 1), is
worthy of attention. He also contributed several tracts to the
struggle against the Latins. During the times of the Palæologi,
A.D. 1250-1450, the chief subjects of theological authorship
were the vindication and denunciation of the union. =Nicolas
Cabasilas=, archbishop of Thessalonica and successor of Palamas,
deserves special mention. He was like his predecessor the
vindicator of the Hesychasts (§ 69, 2), and was himself one
of the noblest mystics of any age. He died about A.D. 1354.
His chief work is Περὶ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ζωῆς. His mysticism is
distinguished by depth and spirituality as well as by reformatory
struggling against a superficial externalism. He also shares the
partiality of Greek mysticism for the liturgy as his _Expositio
Missæ_ shows. From his contemporary =Demetrius Cydonius= we have
an able treatise _De Contemnenda Morte_. Archbishop =Simeon of
Thessalonica= belongs to a somewhat later time, about A.D. 1400,
a thorough expert in classical and patristic literature and a
distinguished church leader. His comprehensive work, _De Fide,
Ritibus et Mysteriis Ecclesiast._ is an important source of
information about the church affairs of the Greek Middle Ages.
=Marcus Eugenicus= of Ephesus, the most capable opponent of the
Florentine union (§ 67, 2), besides controversial tracts, wrote
a treatise Περὶ ἀσθενείας ἀνθρώπου as a philosophico-dogmatic
foundation of the doctrine of eternal punishment at which the
emperor John VII. Palæologus had taken offence as incompatible
with divine justice and human frailty. His disciple Gregorius
[Gregory] Scholarius, known as a monk by the name =Gennadius=,
was the first patriarch of Constantinople after it had been taken
by the Turks. At the Council of Florence he still supported the
union, but was afterwards its most vigorous assailant. In the
controversy of the philosophers he contended against Pletho for
the old-established predominance of Aristotle. At the request of
the Sultan, Mohammed II., he laid before him a _Professio fidei_.
§ 68.6. A religious romance entitled =Barlaam and Josaphat=
whose author is not named, but evidently belonged to the East,
was included, even in the Middle Ages, among the works of
Joh. Damascenus, read by many especially in the West, translated
into Latin and rendered often in metrical form. It describes
the history of the conversion of the Indian prince Josaphat
by the eremite Barlaam with the object of showing the power of
Christianity against the allurements of sin and its superiority
to other religions. An uncritical age accepted the story as
historical, and venerated its two heroes as saints. The Roman
martyrology celebrated the 27th Nov. in their memory. Liebrecht
has discovered that the romance so popular in its days was
but a Christianized form of a legendary history of the life
and conversion of the founder of Buddhism, which existed in
pre-Christian times, and has come down to us under the title
_Lalita ristara Purâna_, often copying its original even in the
minutest details.
§ 69. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE 12TH-14TH CENTURIES.
With the mental activity of the Comnenian age there was also
reawakened a love of theological speculation and discussion, and
several doctrinal questions engaged considerable attention. Then there
came a lull in the controversial strife for two hundred years, to be
roused once more by a question of abstruse mysticism.
§ 69.1. =Dogmatic Questions.=--Under the emperor Manuel
Comnenus, A.D. 1143-1180, the question was discussed whether
Christ presented His sacrifice for the sins of the world only to
the Father and the Holy Spirit, or also at the same time to the
Logos, _i.e._ to Himself. A Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 1156
sanctioned the latter notion.--Ten years later a controversy
arose over the question whether the words of Christ: “The Father
is greater than I,” refer to His divine or to His human nature
or to the union of the two natures. The discussion was carried on
by all ranks with a liveliness and passionateness which reminds
one of the similar controversies of the 4th century (§ 50, 2).
The emperor’s opinion that the words applied to the God-man
gained the victory at a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 1166.
The dissentients were punished with the confiscation of their
goods and banishment.--Manuel excited a third controversy by
objecting to the anathema of “the God of Mohammed” in the formula
of abjuration for converts from Mohammedanism. In vain did the
bishops show the emperor that the God of Mohammed was not the
true God. The formula had to be altered.
§ 69.2. =The Hesychast Controversy, A.D. 1341-1351.=--In the
monasteries of Mount Athos in Thessaly the Areopagite mysticism
had its most zealous promoters. Following the example given three
centuries earlier by Simeon, an abbot of the monastery of Mesnes
in Constantinople, the monks by artificial means put themselves
into a condition that would afford them the ecstatic vision
of God which the Areopagite had extolled as the highest end
of all mystic endeavours. Kneeling in a corner of the solitary
closed cell, the chin pressed firmly on the breast, the eyes set
fixedly on the navel, and the breath held in as long as possible,
they sank at first into melancholy and their eyes became dim.
Continuing longer in this position the depression of spirit which
they at first experienced gave way to an inexpressible rapture,
and at last they found themselves surrounded by a bright halo of
light. They called themselves _Resting Ones_, ἡσυχάζοντες, and
maintained that the brilliancy surrounding them was the uncreated
divine light which shone around Christ on Mount Tabor. Barlaam
(§ 67, 5), just returned from his unfortunate union expedition,
accused the monks and their defender, Gregorius [Gregory] Palamas,
afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica, as Ditheistic heretics,
scornfully styling them _navel-souls_, ὀμφαλόψυχοι. But a Council
at Constantinople, in A.D. 1341, the members of which were
unfavourable to Barlaam because of his union efforts, approved
the doctrine of uncreated divine light which as divine ἐνεργεία
is to be distinguished from the divine οὐσία. Barlaam, in order
to avoid condemnation, recanted, but withdrew soon afterwards
to Italy, where he joined the communion of the Latin church
in A.D. 1348, and died as a bishop in Calabria. A disciple
of Barlaam, Gregorius [Gregory] Acindynos and the historian
Nicephorus Gregoras [Gregory] continued the controversy against
the Hesychasts. Down to A.D. 1351 as many as three Synods had
been held, which all decidedly favoured the monks.
§ 70. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP AND LIFE.
The Byzantine emperors had been long accustomed to carry out in a
very high-handed manner their own will even in regard to the internal
affairs of the church. The anointing with sacred oil gave them a
sacerdotal character and entitled them to be styled ἅγιος. Most of
the emperors, too, from Leo the Philosopher (§ 68, 1), possessed some
measure of theological culture. The patriarchate, however, if amid so
many arbitrary appointments and removals it fell into the proper hands,
was always a power which even emperors had to respect. What protected
it against all encroachments of the temporal power was the influence
of the monks and through them of the people. In consequence of the
controversies about images, Theodorus Studita (§ 66, 4) founded a
strong party which fought with all energy against every interference
of the State in ecclesiastical matters and against the appointing of
ecclesiastical officers by the temporal power, but only with temporary
success. The monks, who had been threatened by the iconoclastic
Isaurian with utter extermination, at the restoration grew and
prospered more than ever in outward appearance, but gave way more
and more to spiritual corruption and extravagance. The Eastern monks
had not that genial many-sided culture which was needed for the
cultivation of the fields and the minds of the barbarians. They
were deficient in those powers of tempering, renovating and ennobling,
whereby the monks of the West accomplished such wonderful results.
But, nevertheless, if in those debased and degenerate days one looks
for examples of fidelity to convictions, firmness of character,
independence and moral earnestness, he will always find the noblest
in the monasteries.--Public worship had already in the previous period
attained to almost complete development, but theory and practice
received enrichment in various particulars.
§ 70.1. =The Arsenian Schism, A.D. 1262-1312.=--Michael
Palæologus, after the death of the emperor Theodore Lascaris
in A.D. 1259, assumed the guardianship of his six years’ old
son John, had himself crowned joint ruler, and in A.D. 1261 had
the eyes of the young prince put out so as to make him unfit
for governing. The patriarch Arsenius then excommunicated him.
Michael besought absolution, and in order to obtain it submitted
to humiliating penances; but when the patriarch insisted that
he should resign the throne, the emperor deposed and exiled
him, A.D. 1267. The numerous adherents of Arsenius refused to
acknowledge the new patriarch Joseph (§ 67, 4), seceded from the
national church, and when their leader died in exile in A.D. 1273,
their veneration for him expressed itself in burning hatred
of his persecutors. When Joseph died in A.D. 1283, an attempt
was made to decide the controversy by a direct appeal to God’s
judgment. Each of the two parties cast a tract in defence of its
position into the fire, and both were consumed. The Arsenians,
who had expected a miracle, felt themselves for the moment
defeated and expressed a readiness to be reconciled. But on
the third day they recalled their admissions and the schism
continued, until the patriarch Niphon in A.D. 1312 had the bones
of Arsenius laid in the church of Sophia and pronounced a forty
days’ suspension on all the clergy who had taken part against him.
§ 70.2. =Public Worship.=--In the Greek church preaching retained
its early prominence; the homiletical productions, however, are
but of small value. The objection to hymns other than those found
in Scripture was more and more overcome. As in earlier times
(§ 59, 4) Troparies were added to the singing of psalms, so now
the New Testament hymns of praise and doxologies were formed
into a so-called Κανών, _i.e._ a collection of new odes arranged
for the several festivals and saints’ days. The 8th century was
the Augustan age of church song. To this period belonged the
celebrated ἅγιοι μελωδοί, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus,
Cosmas of Jerusalem, and Theophanes of Nicæa. The singing after
this as well as before was without instrumental accompaniment and
also without harmonic arrangement.--There was a great diversity
of opinion in regard to the idea of the sacraments and their
number. Damascenus speaks only of two: Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper. Theodorus Studita, on the other hand, accepts the
six enumerated by the Pseudo-Areopagite (§ 58). Petrus [Peter]
Mogilas in his Anti-Protestant _Confessio orthodoxa_ of A.D. 1643
(§ 152, 3) is the first confidently to assert that even among
the Latins of the Middle Ages the Sacraments had been regarded
as seven in number. The Greeks differed from the Latins in
maintaining the necessity of immersion in baptism, in connecting
the chrism with the baptism, using leavened bread in the Supper
and giving both elements to all communicants. From the time of
Joh. Damascenus the teachers of the church decidedly subscribed
to the doctrine of Transubstantiation; but in regard to penance
and confession they stoutly maintained (§ 61, 1), that not the
priest but God alone can forgive sins. The _Unctio inferiorum_,
εὐχέλαιον, also made way in the Greek church, applied in the form
of the cross to forehead, breast, hands and feet; yet with this
difference that, expressly repudiating the designation “extreme”
unction, it was given not only in cases of mortal illness, but
also in less serious ailments, and had in view bodily cure as
well as spiritual benefit.--The emperor Leo VI. the Philosopher
made the benediction of the church (§ 61, 2) obligatory for a
legally valid marriage.
§ 70.3. =Monasticism.=--The most celebrated of all the monastic
associations were those of Mount Athos in Thessaly, which was
covered with monasteries and hermit cells, and as “the holy
mount” had become already a hallowed spot and the resort of
pilgrims for all Greek Christendom. The monastery of Studion,
too (§ 44, 3), was held in high repute. There was no want of
ascetic extravagances among the monks. There were numerous
stylites; many also spent their lives on high trees, δενδρίται,
or shut up in cages built on high platforms (κιονῖται), or
in subterranean caverns, etc. Others bound themselves to
perpetual silence. Many again wore constantly a shirt of iron
(σιδηρούμενοι), etc. A rare sort of pious monkish practice made
its appearance in the 12th century among the =Ecetæ=, Ἱκέται.
They were monks who danced and sang hymns with like-minded nuns
in their monasteries after the pattern of Exod. xv. 20, 21.
Although they continued orthodox in their doctrine and were
never charged with any act of immorality, Nicetas Acominatus
proceeded against them as heretics.
§ 70.4. =Endeavours at Reformation.=--In the beginning of
the 12th century a pious monk at Constantinople, Constantinus
Chrysomalus, protested against prevailing hypocrisy and formalism.
A decade later the monk Niphon took a similar stand. Around both
gathered groups of clergy and laymen who, putting themselves
under their pastoral direction and neglecting the outward
forms of the church, applied themselves to the deepening of
the spiritual life. Both brought down on themselves the anathema
of the church. The patriarch Cosmas, who was not convinced that
Niphon was a heretic and so received him into his house and at
his table, was deposed in A.D. 1150. Eustathius, archbishop of
Thessalonica (§ 68, 5), carried on his reformatory efforts quite
within the limits of the dominant institutions of the church,
and so kept himself safe from the machinations of his enemies.
Relentlessly and powerfully he struggled against the corruption
in the Christian life of the people, and especially against
the formalism and hypocrisy, the rudeness and vulgarity, the
spiritual blindness and pride, and the eccentric caricatures of
ascetism that were exhibited by the monks, though he was himself
in heart and soul a monk. Two hundred years later Nicolas
Cabasilas (§ 68, 5) yet more distinctly maintained that a
consistent life was the test and love the root of all virtue.
§ 71. DUALISTIC HERETICS.
Remnants of the Gnostic-Manichæan heresy lingered on into the 7th
century in Armenia and Syria, where the surrounding Parseeism gave them
a hold and support. Constantinus of Mananalis near Samosata gathered
these together about the middle of the 7th century and reformed them
somewhat in the spirit of Marcion (§ 27, 11). The Catholics, sneeringly
called by them Ῥομαῖοι, gave the name of =Paulicians= to them because
they regarded Paul alone as a true apostle. Even before the rise of the
Paulicians, a sect existed in Armenia called =Children of the Sun= who
had mixed up the Zoroastrian worship with Christian elements. They, too,
during the 9th and 10th centuries, by reorganization reached a position
of more importance, and represented, like the Paulicians, a reformatory
opposition to the formal institutions of the Catholic church. A similar
attitude was assumed by the =Euchites= in Thrace during the 11th
century. Like the old Euchites (§ 44, 7), they got their name from
the unceasing prayers which they regarded as the token of highest
perfection. Their dualistic-gnostic system is met with again among
the =Bogomili= in Bulgaria. These were still more decidedly hostile
to the Catholic church, and had adopted the anthropological views
of Saturninus and the Ophites as well as the trinitarian theory
of Sabellius (§ 27, 6, 9; 33, 7). All these sects were accused by
their Catholic opponents with entertaining antinomian doctrines and
practising licentious orgies and unnatural abominations.
§ 71.1. =The Paulicians.=--They called themselves only Χριστιανοί,
but were in the habit of giving to their leaders and churches the
names of Paul’s companions and mission stations. They combined
dualism, demiurgism and docetism with a mysticism that insisted
upon inward piety, demanded a strict but not rigorous asceticism,
forbade fasting and allowed marriage. Their worship was very
simple, their church constitution moulded after the apostolic
pattern, with the rejection of the hierarchy and priesthood. They
were specially averse to the accumulation of ceremonies and the
veneration of images, relics and saints in the Catholic church.
They also urged the diligent study of Scripture, rejecting,
however, the Old Testament, and the Jewish-Christian gospels
and epistles of the New Testament. The Catholic polemists
of the 9th century traced their origin and even their name
(=Παυλοϊωάννοι) to a Manichæan family of the fourth century,
a widow Callinice and her two sons Paul and John. None of the
distinctive marks of Manichæism, however, are discoverable
in them, and their founding by Constantine of Mananalis is a
historic fact, as also that he, in A.D. 657, assumed the Pauline
name of Sylvanus. The first church, which he called _Macedonia_,
was founded by him at Cibossa in Armenia. From this point he made
successful missionary journeys in all directions. The emperor
Constantinus Pogonnatus, A.D. 668-685, began a bloody persecution
of the Paulicians. But the martyr enthusiasm of Sylvanus, who
was stoned in A.D. 685, made such an impression upon the imperial
officer Symeon, that he himself joined the sect, was made their
chief under the name of Titus, and on the renewal of persecution
in A.D. 690 joyfully died at the stake. His successor Gegnesius,
who took the name of Timothy, was obliged by Leo the Isaurian to
undergo an examination under the patriarch of Constantinople, had
his orthodoxy attested, and received from the iconoclast emperor
a letter of protection. Soon, however, divisions sprang up within
the sect itself. One of their chiefs Baanes, on account of his
antinomian practices, was nicknamed ὁ ῥυπαρός the smutty. But,
about A.D. 801, Sergius Tychicus, converted in earlier years
by a Paulician woman, who directed him to the Bible, made his
appearance as a reformer and second founder of the sect. He
died in A.D. 835. Leo the Armenian, A.D. 813-820, organized an
expedition for their conversion. The penitents were received back
into the church, the obstinate were executed. A mob of Paulicians
murdered the judges, fled to the Saracen regions of Armenia, and
founded at Argaum, the ancient Colosse, a military colony which
made incessant predatory and retaliating raids upon the Byzantine
provinces. They were most numerous in Asia Minor. The empress
Theodora (§ 66, 4) carried out against them about A.D. 842 a
new and fearfully bloody persecution. Many thousands were put to
death. This too was the fate of an officer of high rank. His son,
Carbeas, also an officer, incited by an ardent desire for revenge,
gathered about 5,000 armed Paulicians around him in A.D. 844,
fled with them to Argaum, and became military chief of the sect.
New crowds of Paulicians streamed daily in, and the Khalifs
assigned to them two other fortified frontier cities. With a
well organized army, thirsting for revenge, Carbeas wasted the
Byzantine provinces far and wide, and repeatedly defeated the
imperial forces. Basil the Macedonian after two campaigns, at
last in A.D. 871, hemmed in the Paulician army in a narrow pass
and annihilated it. Their political power was now broken. The
sect, however, still continued to gather members in Syria and
Asia Minor. In A.D. 970, the emperor John Tzimisces transported
the greater part of them as watchers of the frontier of Thrace,
where Philippopolis became their Zion. They soon had possession
of all Thrace. Alexius Comnenus, A.D. 1081-1118, was the first
earnestly again to attempt their conversion. He himself appeared
at Philippopolis in A.D. 1115, disputed a whole day with their
leaders, promised and threatened, rewarded and punished, but
all his efforts were fruitless. From that time we hear nothing
more of them. Their remnants probably joined the Euchites and
the Bogomili.
§ 71.2. =The Children of the Sun=, or Arevendi were a sect
gathered and organized in the 9th century in Armenia by a
Paulician Sembat in the country town of Thontrace into a separate
community of Thontracians. In A.D. 1002 the metropolitan Jacob
of Harkh gave a Christian tinge to their doctrine, went through
the country preaching repentance and the performances of ritual
observances, and obtained much support from clergy and laity. The
Catholicus of the Armenian church caused him to be branded and
imprisoned. He made his escape, but was afterwards slain by his
opponents.
§ 71.3. =The Euchites=, Messelians [Messalians], Enthusiasts,
attracted the attention of the government in the beginning of
the 11th century as a sect widely spread in Thrace. In common
with the earlier Euchites (§ 44, 7) they had great enthusiasm
in prayer, but they were distinguished from them by their dualism.
Their doctrine of the two sons of God, Satanaël and Christ, shows
a certain relation to the form of Persian dualism, which derives
the two opposing principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman, from one eternal
primary essence, Zeruane Acerene. The germs of this sect may
have come from the transplanting of Paulicians to Thrace by the
emperor Tzimisces. The Byzantine government sent a legate to
Thrace to suppress them. This may have been Michael Psellus
(§ 68, 5) whose Διάλογος περὶ ἐνεργείας δαιμόνων is the only
source of information we have regarding them.
§ 71.4. =The Bogomili=, θεόφιλοι, taught: that Satanaël, the
firstborn son of God, as chief and head over all angels, clothed
with full glory of the Godhead, sat at the right hand of the
Father; but, swelling with pride, he thought to found an empire
independent of his Father and seduced a portion of the angels to
take part with him. Driven with them out of heaven, he determined
after the pattern of the creation of the Father (Gen. i. 1) to
create a new world out of chaos (Gen. ii. 3 ff.). He formed the
first man of earth mixed with water. When he set up the figure,
some of the water ran out of the great toe of the right foot
and spread out over the ground; and after he had breathed his
breath into it, that also escaped owing to the looseness of the
figure by the toe, permeated the soil moistened with the water
and animated it as a serpent. At Satanaël’s earnest entreaty the
heavenly Father took pity on the miserable creature, and gave
it life by breathing into it His own breath. Afterwards with
the Father’s help Eve, too, was created. Satanaël in the form
of the serpent seduced, deceived and lay with Eve in order that
by his seed, Cain and his twin sister Calomina, Adam’s future
descendants, Abel, Seth, etc., might be oppressed and brought
into bondage. Jealous lest the latter should obtain that heavenly
dwelling place from which they had been driven, Satanaël’s angels
seduced their daughters (Gen. vi.). From this union sprang giants
who rebelled against Satanaël, but were destroyed by him in the
flood. Henceforth he reigned unopposed as κοσμοκράτωρ, seduced
the greater part of mankind, and endowed Moses with the power of
working miracles as the instrument of his tyranny. Only a few men
under the oppression of his law attained the end of their being;
the sixteen prophets and those named in Matt. i. and Luke iii.
Finally, in the year 5,500 after the creation of man, the supreme
God moved with pity caused a second son, the Logos, to go forth
from His bosom, who as chief of the good angels is called Michael,
and sent Him to earth for man’s redemption. He entered in an
ethereal body through the right ear into the virgin to be born
of her with the semblance of an earthly body. Mary noticed
nothing of all this. Without knowing how or whence, she found
the child in swaddling clothes before her in the cave. His
death on the cross was naturally in appearance only. After his
resurrection he showed himself to Satanaël in his true form,
bound him with chains, robbed him of his divine power, and
compelled him to abandon his divine designation, by taking the
El from his name, so that he is henceforth called Satan. Then He
returned to the Father, took the seat that formerly was Satanaël’s
at His right hand, and sinks again into the bosom of the Father
out of which He had come. This, however, did not take place
before a new Aëon [Æon], the Holy Spirit, emanated from the
Godhead, and was sent forth as continuator and completer of the
work of redemption. This Spirit, too, after he has finished his
task will sink back again into the Father’s bosom.--Of the Old
Testament the Bogomili acknowledged only the Psalter and the
Prophets; of the New Testament books they valued most the
Gospel of John. Veneration of relics and images, as well as
the sign of the cross they abhorred as demoniacal inventions.
Church buildings were regarded by them as the residences of
demons. Satanaël himself in earlier days resided in the temple
of Jerusalem, later in the church of Sophia at Constantinople.
Water baptism, which was introduced by John the Baptist a
servant of Satanaël, they rejected; but the baptism of Christ is
spiritual baptism (παράκλησις=_Consolamentum_). It was imparted
by laying the Gospel of John on the head of the subject of
baptism, with invocation of the Holy Spirit and chanting the
Lord’s Prayer. They declared the Catholic mass to be a sacrifice
presented to demons; the true eucharist consists in the spiritual
nourishment by the bread of life brought down in Christ from
heaven, to which also the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer
refers. They placed great value upon prayer, especially the use
of the Lord’s Prayer. So too they valued fasting. Their ascetism
was strict and required abstinence from marriage and from
the eating of flesh. But prevarication and dissimulation they
regarded as permissible.--The emperor Alexius Comnenus caused
their chief Basil to be brought to Constantinople, under the
delusive pretext of wishing himself to become a proselyte of
the sect, got him to open all his heart, and enticed him under
the semblance of a purely private conference to make reckless
statements, while behind the curtain a judge of heresies was
taking notes. This first act in the drama was followed by a
second. The sentence of death was passed upon all adherents of
Basil who could be laid hold upon. Two great funeral piles were
erected, one of which was furnished with the figure of the cross.
The emperor exhorted them, at least to die as true Christians,
and in token of this to choose the place of death provided with
a cross. Those who did so were pardoned, the rest for the most
part condemned to imprisonment for life. Basil himself, however,
was actually burnt, A.D. 1118. The sect was not by any means thus
rooted out. The Bogomili hid themselves mostly in monasteries,
and Bulgaria long remained the haunt of dualistic heresy, which
spread thence through the Latin church of the West.
§ 72. THE NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CHURCHES OF THE EAST.
The Nestorian and Monophysite churches of the East owed the
protection and goodwill of their Moslem rulers to their hostile
position in regard to the Byzantine national church. Among the Persian
Nestorians as well as among the Syrian and Armenian Monophysites we find
an earnest endeavour after scholarship and great scientific activity.
They were the teachers of the Saracens in the classical, philosophical
and medical sciences, and with no little zeal pursued the study
of Christian theology. The Nestorians also long manifested great
earnestness in missions. Only when the science-loving Khalifs gave
place to Mongolian and Turkish barbarians did those churches lose
their prestige, and that stagnation and torpidity passed over them in
which they still lie. In order to crown the Florentine union attempts
of A.D. 1439 (§ 67, 6), Rome solemnly proclaimed in the immediately
following year the complete union with all the detached churches of
the East. But this was a vain self-delusion or a bit of jugglery. Men
pretending to be deputed by those churches treated about restoration to
the bosom of the church, which was accorded them amid great applause.
§ 72.1. =The Persian Nestorians=, or Chaldean Christians
(§ 64, 2), stood in peculiarly friendly relations to the Khalifs,
who, in the Nestorian opposition to Theotokism, worship of saints,
images and relics, and priestly celibacy, saw an approach to a
rational Christianity more in accordance with the Moslem ideal.
The Nestorian seminaries at Edessa, Nisibis, Seleucia, etc., were
in high repute. The rich literature issued by them is, however,
mostly lost, and what of it remains is known only by Asseman’s
[Assemani’s] quotations (_Biblioth. Orientalia_). Among the later
Nestorian authors the best known is Ebed Jesus, Metropolitan
of Nisibis, who died in A.D. 1318. His writings treat of all
subjects in the domain of theology. The missionary zeal of the
Nestorians continued unabated down to the 13th century. Their
chief mission fields were China and India. At the beginning
of the 11th century they converted the prince of the Karaites,
a Tartar tribe to the south of Lake Baikal, who as vassals of
the great Chinese empire had the name Ung-Khan. A large number
of the people followed their prince. The Mongol conqueror
Genghis-Khan married the daughter of the Karaite prince, but
quarrelled with him, drove him from his throne, and took his life,
A.D. 1202.--With the overthrow of the Khalifs by Genghis-Khan
in A.D. 1219, the prosperity of the Nestorian church came to an
end. At first the Nestorians attempted missionary operations not
unsuccessfully among the Mongols. But the savage Tamerlane, the
Scourge of Asia, A.D. 1369-1405, drove them into the inaccessible
mountains and wild ravines of the province of Kurdistan.[195]
§ 72.2. Among the =Monophysite Churches= the most important was
the =Armenian= (§ 64, 3). It boasted, at least temporarily and
partially, of political independence under national rulers. The
Armenian patriarch from the 12th century had his residence in
the monastery of Etshmiadzin at the foot of Ararat. The literary
activity in the translation of classical and patristic writings,
as well as in the production of original works, reached a
particularly high point in the 8th and then again in the 12th
century. To the earlier period belong the patriarch Johannes
Ozniensis and the metropolitan Stephen of Sünik, to the later,
the still more famous name of the patriarch Nerses IV. Clajensis,
whose epic “Jesus the Son” is regarded as the crown of Armenian
poetry, and his nephew, the metropolitan Nerses of Lampron. The
two last named readily aided the efforts for reunion with the
Byzantine church, but owing to the troubles of the time these
came to nothing. The Western endeavours after union which were
actively carried on from the beginning of the 13th century, split
upon the dislike of the Armenian church to the Western ritual,
and found acceptance with only a relatively small fragment of
the people. These _United Armenians_ acknowledged the primacy of
the pope and the catholic system of doctrine, but retained their
own constitution and liturgy.--In =the Jacobite-Syrian Church=
(§ 52, 7), too, theological and classical studies were prosecuted
with great vigour. The most distinguished of its scholars during
our period was George, bishop of the Arabs, who died in A.D. 740.
He translated and annotated the Organon of Aristotle, and wrote
exegetical, dogmatic, historical and chronological works, also
poems on various themes, and a number of epistles important for
the history of culture during these times, in which he answered
questions put to him by his friends and admirers. The brilliant
Gregory Abulfarajus is the last of the distinguished scholars of
the Jacobite-Syrian church. He was the son of a converted Jewish
physician, and hence he is usually called Barhebræus. He was
made bishop of Guba, afterwards Maphrian of Mosul, and died
in A.D. 1286. His noble and truly benevolent disposition, his
extraordinary learning, the rich and attractive productions
of his pen, and his skill as a physician made him universally
revered by Christians, Mohammedans and Jews. Among his writings,
for the most part still in manuscript, the most important
and best known is the _Chronicon Syriacum_.--The Jacobite
church suffered most in =Egypt=. The perfidy of the Copts, who
surrendered the country to the Saracens, was terribly avenged.
From A.D. 1254 the Fatimide Khalifs held them down under the
most severe oppression, and this became yet more severe under
the Mamelukes. The Copts were completely driven out of the
cities, and even in the villages maintained only a miserable
existence. Their church was now in a condition of utter
stagnation. In =Abyssinia= (§ 64, 1) the national rulers
maintained their position, though pressed within narrower
limits from time to time by the Saracens. But here, too, church
life became fossilized. At the head of the church was an Abbuna
consecrated by the Coptic patriarch (§ 64, 1; 165, 3).
§ 72.3. =The Maronites= (§ 52, 8) attached themselves to the
Western church on the appearance of the crusades in A.D. 1182,
renouncing their Monothelite heresy and acknowledging the primacy
of the pope, but retaining their own ritual. In consequence of
the Florentine union measures they renewed their connection in
A.D. 1445, and subsequently adopted also the doctrinal conclusions
of the Council of Trent. Their numbers at the present day amount
to somewhere about 200,000.
§ 72.4. =The Legend of Prester John.=--In A.D. 1144 Bishop Otto
of Freisingen obtained from the bishop of Cabala in Palestine,
whom he met at Viterbo, information about a powerful Christian
empire in Central Asia, and published it in A.D. 1145 in his
widely-read Chronicle. According to this story the king of that
region, a Nestorian Christian, who was named Prester John, had
not long before driven to flight the Mohammedan kings of the
Persians and Medes, and thus delivered from great danger the
crusaders in the Holy Land. He had also wished to go to the
help of the church of Jerusalem, but was prevented by the Tigris
which overflowed its banks. Twenty years later appeared a writing
attributed to Prester John, first referred to by the Chronicler
Alberich. It was addressed to the European princes in a Latin
translation which contained the most fabulous stories, borrowed
from the Alexander legends, about the extent and glory of
his empire and the many wonders in nature, white lions, the
phœnix, giants and pigmies, dog-headed and horned men, fauns,
satyrs, cyclops, etc., which were to be seen in his country; and
notwithstanding all these absurdities it was received as genuine.
The pope, Alexander III., took occasion from its appearance to
send an answer to Prester John by his own physician Philip, of
whose fate nothing more is known. When in A.D. 1219 the first
news reached Palestine of the irrepressible advance of Mongolian
hordes under Genghis Khan, the crusaders felt justified in
assuming that he was the successor of the celebrated Prester John,
and was now to accomplish what his distinguished predecessor
had wished to undertake. But they were soon cruelly undeceived.
The missionaries sent to the Mongols about the middle of
the 13th century (§ 93, 15), reported that the last Prester
John had lost his kingdom and his life in battle with Genghis
Khan. Nevertheless the belief in the continued existence of an
exceedingly glorious and powerful empire ruled by a Christian
priest in further India was not by any means overthrown; but it
was no longer sought in an Asiatic but in an African “India,” and
the Portuguese actually believed that at last the famed Prester
John had been found in the Christian king of Abyssinia, so that
that country was known down to the 17th century as _Regnum presb.
Joannis_.--The Jacobite historian Barhebræus had identified the
first Presbyter-king with the prince of the Mongolian Karaites
converted by the Nestorians. His name Ung-Khan or Owang-Khan
corresponded both to the name Joannes and to the Chaldean
כַּהֲנָא=priest. This notion prevailed until recently the Orientalist
Oppert by careful examination and comparison of all Oriental
and Western reports reached the conclusion (§ 93, 16) that these
legends are to be referred to the kingdom established about
A.D. 1125 by Kur-Khan, prince of the tribe of the Caracitai in
the Mandshuria of to-day. This prince, who was probably himself
a Nestorian Christian, favoured the establishment of Christianity
in his country; but this was utterly destroyed by Genghis Khan so
early as A.D. 1208. The title Prester or Presbyter given to the
prince of this tribe is to be explained perhaps by the statement
of the missionary Ruysbroek that almost all male Nestorians in
Central Asia received priestly consecration.[196]
§ 73. THE SLAVONIC CHURCHES ADHERING TO THE ORTHODOX
GREEK CONFESSION.
Among the crowds of immigrants whom the wanderings of the people had
set in motion, the Germans and the Slavs are those whose future is of
most historic interest. The former went at once in a body over to the
Roman Catholic church, and at first it appeared as if the Slavs were
with similar unanimity to attach themselves to the Byzantine orthodox
church. But only the Slavs of the Eastern countries remained true to
that communion, though they were mostly with it brought under the yoke
of the Turkish power. So was it with the specially promising Bulgarian
church. All the more important was the incomparably more significant
gain which the Greek church made in the conversion of the Russians.
§ 73.1. Soon after Justinian’s time the Slavic hordes began to
overflow the =Greek Provinces=--Macedonia, Thessaly, Hellas and
Peloponnesus. The old Hellenic population was mostly rooted out;
only in well fortified cities, especially coast towns, as well as
on the islands, did the Greek people and the Christian confession
remain undisturbed. The empress Irene made the first successful
attempt to restore Slavic Greece to the allegiance of the empire
and the church, and Basil the Macedonian, A.D. 867-886, completed
the work so thoroughly that at last even the old pagan Mainottes
(§ 42, 4) in the Peloponnesus bent their necks to the double yoke.
Regenerated Hellenism by its higher culture and national, as well
as ecclesiastical, tenacity, completely absorbed by assimilation
the numerically larger Slavic element of the population, and
Mount Athos with its hermits and monasteries (§ 70, 3) became
the Zion of the new church.
§ 73.2. The =Chazari= in the Crimea asked about A.D. 850 for
Christian missionaries from Constantinople. The court sent them
a celebrated monk Constantine, surnamed the Philosopher, better
known under his monkish name of =Cyril=. Born at Thessalonica,
and so probably of Slavic descent, at least acquainted with the
language of the Slavs, he converted in a few years a great part
of the people. In A.D. 1016, however, the kingdom of the Chazari
was destroyed by the Russians.
§ 73.3. =The Bulgarians= in Thrace and Mœsia had obtained a
knowledge of Christianity from Greek prisoners, but its first
sowing was watered with blood. A sister, however, of the Bulgarian
king Bogoris had been baptized when a prisoner in Constantinople.
After her liberation, she sought, with the help of the Byzantine
monk =Methodius=, a brother of Cyril, to win her brother to
the Christian faith. A famine came to their aid, and a picture
painted by Methodius, representing the last judgment, made a
deep impression on Bogoris. In A.D. 861 he was baptized and
compelled his subjects to follow his example. But soon thereafter,
Methodius, along with his brother Cyril, was called to labour in
another field, in Moravia (§ 79, 2), and political considerations
led the Bulgarian prince in A.D. 866 to join the Western church.
At his request pope Nicholas I. sent bishops and clergy into
Bulgaria to organize the church there after the Roman model.
Byzantine diplomacy, however, succeeded in winning back the
Bulgarians, and at the œcumenical Council at Constantinople in
A.D. 869, their ambassadors admitted that the Bulgarian church
according to divine and human laws belonged to the diocese of the
Byzantine patriarch (§ 67, 1). Meantime the two Apostles of the
Slavs, Cyril and Methodius, by the invention of a Slavic alphabet
and a Slavic translation of the Bible, laid the foundation of a
Slavic ecclesiastical literature, which was specially fostered
in Bulgaria under the noble-minded prince Symeon, A.D. 888-927.
Basil II., the Slayer of the Bulgarians, conquered Bulgaria in
A.D. 1018. It gained its freedom again, together with Walachia,
in A.D. 1186; but fell a prey to the Tartars in A.D. 1285, and
became a Turkish province in A.D. 1391.
§ 73.4. =The Russian Church.=--Photius speaks in A.D. 866 of the
=Conversion of the Russians= as an accomplished fact. In the days
of the Grand Duke Igor, about A.D. 900, there was a cathedral at
Kiev. Olga, Igor’s widow, made a journey to Constantinople and
was there baptized in A.D. 955 under the name Helena. But her son
Swätoslaw could not be persuaded to follow her example. The aged
princess is said according to the report of German chroniclers
to have at last besought the emperor Otto I. to send German
missionaries, and that in response Adalbert of Treves, afterwards
archbishop of Magdeburg, undertook a missionary tour, from which,
however, he returned without having achieved his purpose, after
his companions had been slain. Olga’s grandson, Vladimir, “Equal
of the Apostles,” was the first to put an end to paganism in
the country. According to a legend adorned with many romantic
episodes he sent ten Boyars in order to see how the different
religions appeared as conducted in their chief seats. They were
peculiarly impressed with the beautiful service in the church of
Sophia. In A.D. 988, in the old Christian commercial town Cherson,
shortly before conquered by him, Vladimir was baptized with the
name Basil, and at the same time he received the hand of the
princess Anna. The idols were now everywhere broken up and burnt;
the image of Perun was dragged through the streets tied to the
tail of a horse, beaten with clubs and thrown into the Dnieper.
The inhabitants of Kiev were soon afterwards ordered to gather
at the Dnieper and be baptized. Vladimir knelt in prayer on the
banks and thanked God on his knees, while the clergy, standing
in the stream, baptized the people. On the further organization
of the Russian church Anna exercised a powerful and salutary
influence. Vladimir died in A.D. 1015. His son Jaroslaw I., the
Justinian of the Russians, attended to the religious needs of his
people by the erection of many churches, monasteries and schools,
improved the worship, enriched the psalmody, awakened a taste for
art and patronized learning. The monastery of Petchersk at Kiev
was the birthplace of Russian literature and a seminary for the
training of the clergy. Here, at the end of the 11th century, the
monk Nestor wrote his annals in the language of the country. The
metropolitan of Kiev was the spiritual head of the whole Russian
church under the suzerainty of the patriarch of Constantinople.
After the great fire of A.D. 1170, which laid the glory of Kiev
in ashes, the residency of the Grand Duke was transferred to
Vladimir. In A.D. 1299 the metropolitan also took up his abode
there, but only for a short time; for in A.D. 1328 the Grand Duke
Ivan Danilowitsch settled at Moscow and the metropolitan went
there along with him. The patriarch of Constantinople on his own
authority consecrated in A.D. 1353 a second Russian metropolitan
for the forsaken Kiev, to whom he assigned the Southern and
Western Russian provinces which since A.D. 1320 had been under
the rule of the pagan Lithuanians. This schism was overcome
in A.D. 1380 on the next occasion of a vacancy in the Moscow
chair by the appointment to Moscow of the Kiev metropolitan. But
the Lithuanian government, which had meanwhile become Catholic
(§ 93, 15), compelled the South Russian bishops in A.D. 1414 to
choose a metropolitan of their own independent of Moscow, who in
A.D. 1594 with his whole diocese at the Synod of Brest (§ 151, 3)
attached himself to Rome. The primate of Moscow continued under
the jurisdiction of Constantinople until, in A.D. 1589, the
patriarch Jeremiah II. (§ 139, 26), on the occasion of his being
personally present at Moscow voluntarily declared the Russian
church independent of him, and himself consecrated Job, the
metropolitan of that time, its first patriarch.[197]
§ 73.5. =Russian Sects.=--About A.D. 1150, the monk Martin, an
Armenian by birth, insisted upon a liturgical reform that seemed
to him most necessary. Among other things he declared that it was
sinful to lead the subject of baptism to the baptismal font from
right to left or from south to north; the direction should be
reversed following the course of the sun. But it seemed to him
most important that a reform should be made in the hitherto
prevalent mode of making the sign of the cross. Instead of
symbolizing, as up to this time had been done, the two natures in
Christ and the three persons in the Trinity by bending the little
finger and the thumb, and making the sign of the cross with other
three, they made this sign with the fore and middle fingers.
For nearly ten years this monk was allowed to disseminate his
errors unchecked, till a Council obliged him to retract. Two
hundred years later a certain Carp Strigolnik at Novgorod in
A.D. 1375 publicly accused the clergy of sinning, because,
in accordance with an old custom, they took fees in assisting
in the consecration of bishops, and demanded of all orthodox
Christians that they should separate from them as unworthy of
their office. But he, along with many of his followers, was
mobbed by the adherents of the opposite party and drowned in
the Volga. More dangerous than all the earlier sectaries was
the so-called Jewish sect at the end of the 15th century,
which sought to reduce orthodox Christianity to a rationalistic
cabbalistic Ebionitism. About A.D. 1470 the Jew Zachariah arrived
at Novgorod. He won two distinguished priests Alexis and Denis to
his views, that Christ was nothing more than an ordinary Jewish
prophet, that the Mosaic law is a divine institution and is of
perpetual obligation. By the advice of the Jew the two priests
continued to profess the greatest zeal for the ceremonial laws
of the Church, and by strict observance of the fasts obtained
a great reputation for piety, but secretly they wrought all the
more successfully for the dissemination of their sect among all
classes of the people. When the czar, Ivan III., in A.D. 1480,
came to Novgorod, they made so favourable an impression on
him that he took them with him to Moscow, where they reaped a
rich harvest for their secret doctrine. They succeeded through
their influence with the czar in placing at the head of the
whole Russian church a zealous proselyte for their sect in the
archimandrite Zosima. Meanwhile at Novgorod iconoclast excesses
were committed by the sectaries, which the archbishop of that
place, Gennadius, set himself to suppress by imposing generally
mild penalties. His successor Joseph Ssanin proceeded much more
energetically. He did not rest till the czar in A.D. 1504 called
a Church Synod at Novgorod which condemned the chiefs of the sect
to be burnt, and their followers to be shut up in monasteries.
Even the metropolitan Zosima as a favourer of the sect was sent
to a monastery; but Alexis managed so cleverly that he retained
his office and dignity to the end of his life. Secret remnants
of this sect, as well as of the two previously referred to,
continued to exist for a long time, even down to the 17th
century, when sectarianism in the Russian Church made again
a new departure (§ 163, 10).
§ 73.6. =Romish Efforts at Union.=--From a very early time Rome
cast a covetous glance at the young Russian church, and she
spared neither delicate hints nor attempts to subdue by force
by the aid of Danes, Swedes, Livonians and at a later time,
the Poles. In order to avert this danger and to obtain from
the West assistance against the oppressive yoke of the Mongols,
A.D. 1234-1480, the Grand Duke Jaroslav [Jaroslaw] II. of
Novgorod was not averse to a union. His son Alexander succeeded
him in A.D. 1247. By a glorious victory over the Swedes in
A.D. 1240, on the Neva, he won for himself the surname Newsky,
and in A.D. 1242 he defeated the Livonians on the ice of Lake
Peipus. Pope Innocent IV. who had already in A.D. 1246 nominated
Arch bishop Albert Suerbeer (§ 93, 12) a legate to Russia with the
power to erect bishoprics there, addressed an earnest exhortation
to the young prince in A.D. 1248 with promises of help against
the Mongols, urging him to go in the footsteps of his father and
to secure his own and his subjects’ salvation by doing what his
father had promised. The Grand Duke referred to the wisest men
of the land and answered the Pope: From Adam to the flood, from
that to the Confusion of languages, etc., down to Constantine and
the seventh œcumenical Council, we know the true history of the
Church, but yours we do not wish to acknowledge. Alexander Newsky
died in A.D. 1263, and has been ever since venerated by his
country as a national hero and by his Church as a national saint.
The prospects of the Roman Curia were more favourable during
the 14th century owing to the Lithuanian and Polish supremacy in
South and West Russia, and by the schism of the Russian Church
into Kiev and Moscow primacies. In those Southern and Western
provinces there was originally less disinclination to Rome than
in Moscow. Still even here we meet during the 15th century in the
metropolitan Isidore, born in Thessalonica, a prelate who made
everything work toward a union with Rome. When the Union Synod
of A.D. 1438 was to meet at Ferrara (§ 67, 6), he represented to
the Grand Duke Vassili that it was his duty to appear there. He
gave a hesitating and unwilling consent. At the Council Isidore
along with Bessarion showed himself a zealous promoter of the
union. He returned in A.D. 1441 as cardinal and papal legate.
But when at the first public service in Moscow he read aloud the
union documents, the Grand Duke had him imprisoned and banished
to a monastery. He escaped from his prison and died in Rome in
A.D. 1643.--Continuation, § 151, 3.
SECOND DIVISION.
THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN AND ROMAN CHURCH
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.[198]
§ 74. CHARACTER AND DIVISIONS OF THIS PERIOD
OF THE DEVELOPMENT.
With the historically significant appearance of the Germanic peoples,
from whose blending with the old Celtic and Latin races of the conquered
countries the _Romance_ group of nationalities has its origin, there
begins a new phase in the historical development of the world and the
church. The so-called migration of the nations produced an upheaval
and revolution among the very foundations and springs of history such
as have never since been seen. For a similar significance cannot be
ascribed to the appearance at a somewhat later period of a motley crowd
of Slavic tribes and a detached contingent of the Turanian-Altaic race
(Finns, Magyars, etc.), because the stream of their development ran in
the same channel. Thus the appearance of the Germans forms the watershed
between the old world and the new. This dividing boundary, however,
is not a straight line; for the shoots of the old world run on for
centuries alongside of and among the young growths of the new world.
In so far as those remnants of the old have no relation to the new
and work out uninfluenced by their surroundings their own material
in their own way, the history of their developments has no place here;
but even these demand consideration at this point in so far as they
affect the development of the new world as a means of educating and
moulding, arresting and perverting. Just as the history of the church
and the world as a whole is distributed into ancient and modern,
so the special history of the Germano-Roman world can and must be
distributed into ancient and modern, the dividing boundary of which
is the Reformation of the 16th century. The earlier of these two phases
of history presents itself to us with a Janus-head, whose two faces are
directed the one to the ancient, the other to the modern world. This
follows from the fact that the groups of peoples referred to did not
require any longer to pursue the weary way of their development on
their own charges, but rather entered upon the spiritual heritage of
the defunct ancient world, and were able by means thereof more quickly
and surely to grow to the maturity of their own proper and independent
rank and culture. The Roman and, for some branches of the Slavic races,
also the Byzantine, church was the bearer and medium of this spiritual
heritage, and as such became teacher and disciplinarian of the young
world. The Reformation is the emancipation from the administrator of
discipline, whose leading strings were cast off by the youth when he
reached the maturity of man’s estate. It is the assertion of the German
nation that it had reached its intellectual majority.
§ 74.1. =The Character of Mediæval History.=--As its name implies
the mediæval period of church history is one of transition from
the old to the new. The old is the now completed development
of Christianity under the moulding influences of the ancient
Greek and Roman world; the new is the complete incorporation of
the special forms of life and culture that characterize the new
peoples, who are placed by means of the migration of the nations
in the foreground of history. But since the peculiar culture
of these nations was first present only potentially and as a
capacity, and was to realize itself first through the influence
of the early Christian culture, between the old and the new a
middle and intermediate age intervened, the extent of which was
just that influence of the old completed culture upon the new
developing culture. This conflict during the whole course of the
Middle Ages was carried on by those powerful waves of action and
reaction (formation, deformation, reformation), which, however,
amid the ferment of the times displayed an ever varying mixing
of the one with the other. The Middle Ages have brought forth
the most magnificent phenomena, the papacy, the monastic system,
scholasticism, etc., but characteristic of them all is that
crude blending of the three kinds of movement named above, which
hindered its effectiveness and led to its own deterioration.
First in the beginning of the 16th century did the reformatory
endeavours become so mature and strong that it could assume a
purer form and carry out its efforts with success. With this too
we reach the end of the Middle Ages and witness the birth of the
modern world.
§ 74.2. =Periods in the Church History of the German-Roman
Middle Ages.=--The first regular period is marked by the end of
the Carolingian age, which may be regarded as completed by the
dying out of the German Carolingians in A.D. 911. The movement
in all the chief departments of the church was hitherto regular
and unbroken: before Charlemagne an ascending one, during his
reign reaching the summit, and after his death declining. It is
the =universal German= period of history. The fundamental idea
of the Carolingian dynasty, which survived even its weakest
representatives, was no other than the combination of all
German, Roman and Slavic nationalities under the sceptre of
one German empire. The last German Carolingian carried this
idea with him to the grave. The powerful impulse present even in
the 9th century toward national separation and the dismemberment
of the Carolingian empire into independent Germanic, Romanic and
Slavic nations has since asserted its irresistible power. But
with the Carolingian empire the Carolingian epoch of civilization
also came to an end. And even the glory of the papacy, whose
intrigues had undermined the empire, because it had thus snapped
the branch on which it sat, now sank into the lowest depths of
weakness and corruption. When we take a general survey of the
beginning of the 10th century, we find on all sides, in church
and state, in secular and spiritual governments, in science,
culture and art, the creations of Charlemagne overthrown, and
a _seculum obscurum_ introduced from which amid great oppression
and savagery, emerge the conditions, earnests and germs of a new
golden age.--A second period is marked out, in quite a different
fashion, by the age of Pope Boniface VIII. or the beginning of
the 14th century. Up to this time =Germany= stood distinctly in
the foreground both of the history of the world and of the church;
but the unhappy conflict of Boniface with Philip the Fair of
France placed the papacy at the mercy of French policy, and so
henceforth in all the movements of Church history =France= stands
in the front. The pontificate of Boniface forms a turning point
also for the historical development within the church itself. The
most vast and influential products of mediæval ecclesiasticism
are the papacy, monasticism and scholasticism. The period before
Boniface is characterized by the growth and flourishing of these;
the period after Boniface by their decay and deterioration.
The reformatory current, too, which permeated the whole of
the Middle Ages, has in each of these two periods its own
distinctive character. Before Boniface those representatives of
the dominant ecclesiastical system were themselves inspired by a
powerful reformatory spirit working its way up from the great and
widespread depravation of the 10th century, accompanied, however,
by a hierarchical lust of power far beyond the limits justifiable
on evangelical principles. The evangelical reformatory endeavours
again directed against those representatives of ecclesiasticism
are still relatively few and isolated and find but a slight echo,
while as their caricature we see alongside of them heretical
extravagances which have scarcely ever had their like in history.
Toward the end of the first period, however, this relation
begins to be reversed. The papacy, monasticism and scholasticism
becoming more and more deteriorated are the patrons of every sort
of deterioration within the church. The revolutionary heretical
movement is indeed overcome, but all the more powerfully,
generally and variedly does the evangelical reformatory movement,
though still always burdened with much that was confused and
immature, assert itself independently of and over against those
ecclesiastical principalities, without being able, however,
to exert upon them any abiding influence.--Thus our phase of
development is divided into three periods: the period from the
4th to the 9th cent. (till A.D. 911); the period from the 10th
to the 13th cent. (A.D. 911-1294); and the period of the 14th
and 15th cent. (A.D. 1294-1517).
FIRST SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GERMAN-ROMAN CHURCH FROM THE 4TH TO
THE 9TH CENTURY (DOWN TO A.D. 911).
I. Founding, Spread, and Limitation of the German Church.[199]
§ 75. CHRISTIANITY AND THE GERMANS.
In the pre-German age Europe was for the most part inhabited by
Celtic races. In Britain, Spain and Gaul, however, these were subjugated
by the Roman forces and Romanized, whereas in northern, eastern and
middle Europe they were oppressed, exterminated or Germanized by the
Germans. In its victorious march through Europe, Christianity met with
Celtic races of unmixed nationality only in Ireland and Scotland, for
even among the neighbouring Britons the Celtic nationality was already
blended with the Roman. Only in a very restricted field, therefore,
could the church first of all develop itself according to the Celtic
mode of culture. But here, with a wonderful measure of independence,
missionary operations were so energetically prosecuted that for a
long time it seemed as if the greater part of the opposite continent
with its German population was to be its prey, until at last the Romish
church would be driven out of its own home as well as out of its hopeful
mission fields (§ 77).--Even in pre-Christian times a second and more
powerful immigration from the East had begun to pour over Europe. The
various Germanic groups of tribes now presented themselves, followed
by other warlike races, Huns, Slavs, Magyars, etc., alternately driving
and being driven. The Germans first came into contact with Christian
elements in the second half of the 3rd century, and toward the end of
the 5th a whole series of powerful German peoples are found professing
the Christian faith, and each successive century far down into the
Middle Ages brings always new trophies from these nations into the
treasure-house of the church. It would certainly be wrong to ascribe
these results to a national predisposition of the German churches
and type of mind for Christianity. This cannot be altogether denied,
but it did not predispose the German peoples to Christianity as it
then was preached, but was first developed when this by other ways
and means had found an entrance and only at the Reformation of the
16th century did it get full expression. For that predisposition was
directed to the deepest and innermost sides of Christianity, for which
the ecclesiastical institution of the times in its externalism had
little appreciation; and the first task of the German spirit was to
secure recognition of this reformatory principle.
§ 75.1. =The Predisposition of the Germans for
Christianity.=--What we have been accustomed to hear about
this subject is in part greatly exaggerated, in part sought
for where its proper germ does not lie. The German mythology
may indeed conceal many deep thoughts under the garb of legendary
poetry which have some relation to Christian truth and afford
evidence of the religious needs, the speculative gifts and the
characteristic profundity of German thought, but this scarcely
in a larger measure than in the Greek myths, philosophemes and
mysteries.[200] Much more suggestive of a predisposition to
Christianity than such bright spots in the mythological system
of the Germans are the special and distinguishing characteristics
of the life of the German people. The fidelity of the vassal to
his lord, transferred to Christ the heavenly king, constitutes
the special core of Christianity. Besides, closely connected
therewith, the love of battle and faithfulness in battle for
and with the hereditary or elected chief found a parallel in
the struggles and victories of the Christian life. Further,
the Germans’ noble love of freedom, sanctified by the Gospel,
afforded form and expression for the glorious freedom of the
children of God. And finally, the spirituality of the Germans’
worship, praised even by Tacitus, who says that they _nec
cohibere parietibus Deos, neque in ullam humani oris speciem
adsimulare, ex magnitudine cœlestium arbitrantur_, predisposed
them in favour of the worshipping of God in spirit and in truth.
§ 75.2. What is of most significance, however, for understanding
the almost unopposed =Adoption of Christianity= by so many German
races is the slight hold that their heathen religion had upon
them at that time. It is essentially characteristic of heathenism
as the religion of nature that it can flourish only on its
native soil. German paganism, however, had been uprooted by its
transplantation to European soil and had, amid the movements of
peoples during the first centuries after their migration, never
quite struck root in the new ground. In the later centuries,
when it had long enough time for doing so, _e.g._ among the
Frisians, Saxons, Danes, it offered an incomparably more resolute
resistance. Again, rapid conversion will be furthered or hindered
according as the new home is one where already from Roman times
Christian institutions existed or even had existed, or is one
where the old primitive heathenism still prevailed. Only in
the latter case could German paganism develop its full power
and strike its roots deeply and feel at home upon the new soil;
whereas in the other case, the higher culture and spiritual
power of Christianity, even where it had been vanquished by
the barbarians, disturbed the even tenour and naïvete of the
genuinely pagan course of development. The circumstance also
deserves mention, that the marriage of heathen princes with
Christian princesses frequently secured their conversion along
with that of their subjects. In the narrower circles of the home,
the family, the tribe, innumerable instances of the same sort of
thing repeatedly occurred. There is something specially Germanic,
in the prominent position which German feeling had assigned to
the wife: _Inesse quin etiam_, says Tacitus, _sanctum aliquid
et providum putant; nec aut consilia earum adspernantur, aut
responsa negligunt_.[201]
§ 75.3. =Mode of Conversion in the Church of these Times.=--Apart
from the too frequent practice of Christian rulers to secure
conversions by the sword, baptism and conversion were commonly
regarded as an _opus operatum_, and whole crowds of heathens
without any knowledge of saving truth, with no real change of
heart and mind, were received into the church by baptism. No one
can approve this. But it must be admitted that only in this way
could striking and rapid results have been reached; that indeed
in the stage of childhood, in which the Germans then were, it
had a certain measure of justification. By the history even of
its attack upon German paganism an entirely different career of
conflict and victory was marked out to Christianity than that
through which it had to pass in its conquests of Græco-Roman
paganism. In this latter case it had to confront a high form of
civilization which had outlived its powers and had lost itself
in its own perplexities, which for a thousand years had proved
in its civilization and history a παιδαγωγὸς εἰς Χριστόν.
All this was wanting to the Germans. If the Roman world might
be compared to a proselyte who in ripe, well proved and much
experienced maturity receives baptism, the conversion of the
Germans may be compared to the baptism of children.--Gregory the
Great had at first directed the missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons
(§ 77, 4) to destroy the idol temples of converted heathens. But
further reflection convinced him that it was better to transform
them into Christian churches, and now he laid it down as a maxim
in Roman Catholic missions that pagan forms of worship and places
of worship which were capable of modification to Christian uses
should be carefully preserved and respected: “_Nam duris mentibus
simul omnia abscindere impossibile esse dubium non est, quia et
is qui summum locum ascendere nititur, gradibus vel passibus,
non autem saltibus, elevatur._” It was a fateful, two-edged word,
which led Catholic missions to a brilliant outward success, but
has saturated the Catholic worship and life with a pagan leaven,
which works in it powerfully down to the present day.
§ 76. THE VICTORY OF CATHOLICISM OVER ARIANISM.[202]
The first conversions of multitudes of the German races occurred
at the time when Arianism had reached its climax in the Roman empire.
Internal disturbances and external pressure compelled a portion of
the Goths in the second half of the fourth century to throw themselves
into the arms of the East Roman empire and to purchase its protection
by the adoption of Arian Christianity. The missionary zeal of the
national clergy, with bishop Ulfilas at their head, though we cannot
indicate particularly his methods, spread Arianism in a short time
over a multitude of the German nationalities. Down to the end of
the fifth century Arianism was professed by the larger portion of
the German world, by Visigoths and Ostrogoths, by Vandals, Suevi and
Burgundians, by the Rugians and Herulians, by the Longobards, etc. And
as the early friendly relations to the Roman empire had given Arianism
a foundation among those peoples, so the later hostile relations to the
Roman empire now turned Catholic made them cling tenaciously to their
Arian heresy. Arianism had more and more assumed the character of a
national German Christianity, and it almost seemed as if the whole
German world, and with it the universal history of the future, were
its secure prey. But a quick end was made of these expectations by
the conversion of one of its chief branches to Catholicism. The Franks
had from the first pursued a policy which was directed rather to
the strengthening of the future of its brother tribes, than to the
accelerating of the downfall of the Roman empire. This policy led them
to embrace Catholicism. Trusting to the protection of the Catholic
Christians’ God and the sympathies of the whole Catholic West, the
Frankish rulers took advantage of the call to suppress heresy and
conquer heretics’ lands. To renounce heresy so as to find occasion for
attacking the territories of heretics, was probably with them a matter
of political necessity.
§ 76.1. =The Goths in the lands of the Danube.=--From the middle
of the 3rd century Christianity had found an entrance among the
Goths through Roman prisoners of war. At the Council of Nicæa
in A.D. 325 there was present a Gothic bishop Theophilus. From
A.D. 348 the scion of an imprisoned Cappadocian Christian family,
=Ulfilas=[203] by name, wrought as bishop among the Visigoths,
already attached to the Arian confession, with so much zeal and
success for the spread of Christianity that the hatred of the
pagans was roused to such a pitch that in A.D. 355 they began
a bloody persecution of the Christians. With a great part of the
Gothic Christians Ulfilas fled over the Danube, and the emperor
Constantius, who honoured him as a second Moses, assigned him
a dwelling-place in Mount Hæmus. Ulfilas continued his work for
thirty-three years with many tokens of blessing. In order that
the Goths might have access to the original fount of saving
knowledge, he translated the Holy Scriptures into their language,
for which he invented a written character of his own. He died
in A.D. 381. A short biography of the Apostle of the Goths
was written by his disciple Auxentius, bishop of Dorostorus
in Silistria, which gives an account at first hand of his life
and doctrine. But not all Gothic Christians were expatriated
with Ulfilas. Those who remained behind were a leaven which
ever continued to expand and spread. So Athanaric, king of the
Thervingians, about A.D. 370, started a new and cruel persecution
against them. Soon afterwards a rebellion broke out among the
pagan Thervingians. At the head of the malcontents was Frithigern.
He was subdued, but got aid from the emperor Valens and in
gratitude for the help given adopted the Arian religion of
the emperor. This was the first conversion in multitude among
the Goths. A second followed not long after. The Huns had rushed
down like a whirlwind in A.D. 375 and destroyed the empire of the
Ostrogoths. A part of these were obliged to join the Huns; while
another fled into the country of the Thervingians. These last
again were driven before the conquerors and crossed the Danube
under Frithigern and Alaviv, where in A.D. 376 Valens gave
them a settlement on condition that they should profess Arian
Christianity. But this friendship did not last long, and Valens
fell in A.D. 378 fighting against them. Theodosius, the restorer
of the Catholic faith in the Roman empire, made peace with them.
They retained, however, their Arian Confession, which spread
from them in a way not yet explained to the Ostrogoths and other
related tribes. Chrysostom started a Catholic mission among them,
but it was stopped at his death.
§ 76.2. =The Visigoths in Gaul and Spain.=--The death of
Theodosius in A.D. 395 and the partition of his empire gave
the signal to the Visigoths to attempt securing for themselves
more room. Alaric devastated Greece, broke in upon Italy in
search of prey and plundered Rome in A.D. 410. His successor
Athaulf descended upon southern Gaul, and Wallia founded there
a Visigoth empire with Toulouse for its capital, which under
Euric, who died in A.D. 483, reached the summit of its glory.
Euric extended his kingdom in Gaul, and in A.D. 475, conquered
the most of Spain. He sought to strengthen his government by
having one system of law and one religion, but in his projected
conversion of his subjects to Arianism, he met with unexpected
opposition, which he sought in vain to put down by a severe
persecution of the Catholics. The Roman population and the
Catholic bishops longed for a Catholic government and placed
their hopes in the Frankish king Clovis who had been converted
in A.D. 496. As saviour and avenger of the Catholic faith Clovis
completely destroyed the Visigoth power on this side the Pyrenees
in a battle at Vouglé near Poitiers in A.D. 507. In Spain,
however, the Visigoths retained their power and persisted in
their efforts to convert all to the Arian faith. Under the
violent Leovigild these efforts culminated in A.D. 585 in a
cruel persecution. His son and successor Reccared, however,
saw the vanity and danger of this policy and took the opposite
course. At the third Synod of Toledo in A.D. 589 he adopted the
Catholic faith and with the co-operation of the able metropolitan
Leander of Seville secured complete ascendency for Catholicism
throughout the empire. Under the later kings the Visigoth power
sank lower and lower amid the treacheries, murders and revolts of
internal factions, and in A.D. 711 the last king of the Visigoths,
Roderick, after a bloody fight at Xeres de la Frontera yielded to
the Saracens who had rushed down from Africa upon Spain.
§ 76.3. =The Vandals in Africa.=--Early in the 5th century
the Vandals, who were even then Arian Christians, combining
with the Alani and Suevi, made a descent from Pannonia upon
Gaul in A.D. 406 and from thence upon Spain in A.D. 409, and
made dreadful havoc of these rich and fertile lands. In A.D. 428
the Roman proconsul of Africa, Boniface, unjustly accused of
treason by the Roman government, in his straits called in the
aid of the Vandals. Their king Genseric went in A.D. 429 with
50,000 men. Boniface, however, was meanwhile reconciled with
his government and did all in his power to get the barbarians
to retire. But all in vain. Genseric conquered Africa and founded
there a powerful Vandal empire. In A.D. 455 he even made an
attack upon Rome, which was plundered by his hordes for fourteen
days. In order to prevent any sympathy being shown by Africa
for Rome he determined to secure throughout his empire uniform
profession of the Arian creed, and in prosecuting this purpose
during his fifty years’ reign exercised continual cruelties.
He died in A.D. 477. But the African Catholics were faithful to
their creed unto death and went forth to martyrdom in a spirit
worthy of their ancestors of the 2nd or 3rd centuries. His
son Hunneric allowed them only a short respite and began again
in A.D. 483 the bloody work. He died in A.D. 484. Under his
successor Guntamund [Gunthamund], who died in A.D. 496, a stop
was put to the persecution; but Thrasamund [Thrasimund], who died
in A.D. 523, again adopted bloody measures. Hilderic, who died
in A.D. 530, a man of mild and generous temper, and the son of
a Catholic mother, openly favoured the Catholics. Gelimer, a
great-grandson of Genseric, put himself at the head of the Arians
whom Hilderic’s catholic sympathies had alienated, took Hilderic
prisoner and had him executed. But before he could carry out the
intended persecution, Justinian’s general Belisarius marched into
Africa, annihilated the Vandal army in a battle near Tricameron
in A.D. 533, and overthrew the Vandal empire.[204]
§ 76.4. =The Suevi= were still heathens when they entered Spain
with the Vandals in A.D. 409. Here under their king Rechiar they
adopted the Catholic faith. But Remismund to please the Visigoths
went over to Arianism in A.D. 465 with the whole people. Carraric,
who thought he owed the cure of his son to the relics of Martin
of Tours, passed over again to Catholicism in A.D. 550. With
the co-operation of Martin, metropolitan of Braga, he converted
his people, and a Provincial Synod at Braga in A.D. 563 under
Theodimir I. completed the work. The empire of the Suevi was
destroyed by Leovigild king of the Visigoths, in A.D. 585.
§ 76.5. =The Burgundians= carried on by the irresistible advance
of Vandals, Suevi and Alani from their home on the Main and the
Neckar, where they had adopted the Catholic faith, founded an
independent kingdom in the Jura district. Here they came into
contact with the Visigoths and for the most part fell away to
Arianism. Of Gundiac’s four sons, who divided the empire among
them, only Chilperic II., the father of Clotilda, remained
Catholic. By fratricide his brother Gundobald secured complete
sovereignty. The bishop Avitus of Vienne (§ 53, 5), however,
vigorously opposed Arianism, and to secure its suppression called
a Council at Epaon in A.D. 517, the decisions of which were
recognised by Sigismund, Gundobald’s son, and were made valid
throughout the empire. But even this did not satisfy Clotilda,
the wife of the Frankish king Clovis, as an atonement for her
father’s death. Her sons, urged by their mother to prove avengers
of her father’s blood, made an end of the Burgundian empire in
A.D. 534.
§ 76.6. =The Rugians=, in combination with the Herulians,
Scyrians and Turcellingians, had founded an independent kingdom
in the Old Roman Noricum, the Lower Austria of to-day. Arianism
had been introduced among them by the Goths but without the
complete expulsion of paganism. The Romans among them attached to
Catholicism were sorely oppressed. But from A.D. 454, =Severinus=
wrought among them like a messenger from heaven to bless, help
and comfort the heavily burdened. He died in A.D. 482. Even from
the barbarians he won the deepest reverence, and over heathens
and Arians he had an almost magical power. He prophesied to the
Scyrian Odoacer his future greatness. This prince in A.D. 476
put an end to the West Roman empire and ruled ably and wisely
as king of Italy for seventeen years. He put an end too to Arian
fanaticism in Rugiland in A.D. 487 by overthrowing the empire of
the Rugians. But in A.D. 489 the Ostrogoth Theodoric came down
upon Italy, conquered Ravenna after a three years’ siege, took
Odoacer prisoner and in a wild drunken revel had him put to death
in A.D. 493.
§ 76.7. =The Ostrogoths= when they conquered Italy had already
for a long time been Arians, but were free from that fanaticism
which so often characterized German Arianism. Theodoric granted
full liberty to Catholicism, spared, protected and prized Roman
culture, in all which certainly his famous minister Cassiodorus
(§ 47, 23) had no small share. This liberal-minded tolerance was
indeed made easy to the king by the thirty-five years’ schism of
that time (§ 52, 5), which prevented any suspicions of danger to
the state from the combination of Roman and Byzantine Catholics.
And in fact, when this schism was healed in A.D. 519, Theodoric
began to interest himself more in Arianism and to give way
to such suspicions. He died in A.D. 526. The confusions that
followed his death were taken advantage of by the emperor
Justinian for the reconquest of Italy. His general Narses
annihilated the last remnants of the Ostrogoth power in A.D. 554.
The Byzantine government again rose upon the ruins of the Goths,
and in A.D. 567 established the exarchate with Ravenna as its
capital. For the time being Arianism was completely destroyed
in Italy.[205]
§ 76.8. =The Longobards in Italy.=--In A.D. 569 the Longobards
under Alboin made a descent upon Italy from the lands of the
Danube, and conquered what has been called Lombardy after them,
with its capital Ticinum, now Pavia. His successors extended
their conquests farther south, till at last only the farthest
point of Italy, the duchies of Naples, Rome and Perugia, Ravenna
with its subject cities and Venice, acknowledged Byzantine rule.
Excited by desire of plunder and political jealousy, the Arian
Longobards warred incessantly for twenty years with Roman
culture and Roman Catholicism. But after this first outburst of
persecution had been stilled, religious indolence won the upper
hand and the Arian clergy were not roused from their indifference
to spiritual things by the growing zeal for conversions which
characterized the Catholic bishops. Pope Gregory the Great,
A.D. 590-604, devoted himself unweariedly to the task, and was
powerfully supported by a Bavarian princess, the zealous Catholic
queen Theodelinde. The Longobards were so enamoured of this
fair and amiable queen that, when her first husband Anthari was
murdered in A.D. 590, one year after their marriage, they allowed
her to choose for herself one of the dukes to be her husband and
their king. Her choice fell on Agilulf, who indeed himself still
continued an Arian, but did not prevent the spread of Catholicism
among his people. Their daughter Gundiberge, married successively
to two Longobard kings, Ariowald († A.D. 636) and Rothari
(† A.D. 652) was an equally zealous protectress of the Catholic
church; and with Rothari’s successor Aribert, brother’s son of
Theodelinde, who died in A.D. 663, begins the series of Catholic
rulers of the Longobards.--Continuation, § 82, 1.
§ 76.9. =The Franks in Gaul.=--When the West Roman empire was
overthrown by Odoacer in A.D. 476, the Roman authority was still
for a long time maintained in Gaul by the proconsul Syagrius.
But the Merovingian Clovis, A.D. 481-511, put an end to it by
the battle of Soissons in A.D. 486. In A.D. 493 he married the
Burgundian princess Clotilda, and she, a zealous Catholic, used
every effort to convert her pagan husband. The national pride
of the Frank resisted long, but she got permission to have her
firstborn son baptized. The boy, however, died in his baptismal
robes, and Clovis regarded this as a punishment from his gods.
Nevertheless on the birth of his second son he was unable to
resist the entreaties of his beloved wife. He too sickened after
his baptism; but when contrary to expectation he recovered amid
the fervent prayers of the mother, the heathen father confessed
that prayer to the Christian’s God is more powerful than Woden’s
vengeance. He remembered this when threatened in A.D. 496 at
Tolbiac with loss of the battle, of his life and of his empire
in the war with the Alemanni. Prayer to the national gods had
proved fruitless. He now turned in prayer to the God of the
Christians, promising to own allegiance to Him, if He should
get the victory. The fortune of battle soon turned. The army and
kingdom of the Alemanni were destroyed. At his baptism at Rheims
on Christmas Eve, A.D. 496, Archbishop Remigius addressed him
thus: “Bend thy neck, proud Sigamber; adore what thou hast burnt,
burn what thou hast adored!” The later tradition, first reported
by Hincmar of Rheims in the 9th century, relates that when the
church officer with the anointing oil could not get forward
because of the crowd, in answer to Remigius’ prayer a white dove
brought an oil flask from heaven, out of which all the kings of
the Franks from that day have been anointed. The conversion of
Clovis, soon followed by that of the nobles and the people, seems
really to have been a matter of conviction and genuine according
to the measure of his knowledge of God. He made a bargain with
the Christian’s God and fulfilled the obligations under which
he had placed himself. Of an inner change of heart we can indeed
find no trace. There was, however, no mention of that in his
bargain. Just after his conversion he commits the most atrocious
acts of faithlessness, treachery and secret murder. The Catholic
clergy of the whole West nevertheless celebrated in him a second
Constantine, called of God as avenger upon heathenism and Arian
heresy, and asked of him nothing more, seeing in this the task
which providence had assigned him. The conversion of Clovis was
indeed in every respect an occurrence of the greatest moment.
The rude Arianism of the Germans, incapable of culture, received
here its deathblow. The civilization and remnants of culture of
the ancient world found in the Catholic church its only suitable
vehicle for introduction into the German world; and now the
Franks were at the head of it and laid the foundation of a new
universal empire which would for centuries form the central
point of universal history. On the work of Friddin [Fridolin]
and Columbanus in the land of the Franks, see § 77, 7.
§ 77. VICTORY OF THE ROMISH OVER THE OLD BRITISH CHURCH.[206]
According to an ancient but more than doubtful tradition a British
king Lucius about the middle of the 2nd century is said to have asked
Christian missionaries of the Roman bishop Eleutherus and by them to
have been converted along with his people. This, however, is certain,
that at the end of the 3rd century (§ 22, 6) Christianity had taken
root in Roman Britain, probably through intercourse with the Romans.
Down to the Anglo-Saxon invasion in A.D. 449, the British church
certainly kept up regular communication with that of the continent,
especially with Gaul. From that time, being driven back into North
and South Wales, it was completely isolated from the continental church;
but all the more successfully it spread itself out among its neighbours
in the allied tribes of Ireland and Scotland, among the former through
Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish, among the latter by Columba, the
Apostle of the Scots, and followed a thoroughly independent course of
development. When one hundred and fifty years later, in A.D. 596 the
long interrupted intercourse with Rome was again renewed by a Romish
mission to the Anglo-Saxons, several divergences from Roman practice
were discovered among the Britons in respect of worship, constitution
and discipline. Rome insisted that these should be corrected, but
the Britons insisted on retaining them and repudiated the pretensions
of the Romish hierarchy. The keen struggle which therefore arose,
beginning amid circumstances that promised a brilliant success to
the British church, ended with complete submission to Rome. The
battle-field was then transferred to Germany, and there too in spite
of the resolute resistance of their apostles the contest concluded
with the same result (§ 78). The struggle was not merely one of highly
tragic interest but of incomparable importance for the history of
Europe. For had the result been, as for a time it seemed likely that
it would be, in favour of the old British church, not only England but
also all Germany would have taken up a decidedly anti-papal attitude,
and not only the ecclesiastical but also the political history of
the Middle Ages would have most likely been led into an altogether
different course.
§ 77.1. =The Conversion of the Irish.=--Among the Celtic
inhabitants of the island of Ireland there were some individual
Christians from the beginning of the 5th century. The mission
of a Roman deacon Palladius in A.D. 431 was without result. But
in the following year, A.D. 432, the true apostle of the Irish,
=Patrick=, with twenty-four companions, stept upon the shore of
the island. The only reliable source of information about his
life and work is an autobiography which he left behind him,
_Confessiones_. According to it he was grandson of a presbyter
and son of a deacon residing at Banava, probably in Britain, not
likely in Gaul. In his sixteenth year he was taken to Ireland by
Irish pirates and sold to an Irish chief whose flocks he tended
for six years. After his escape by flight the love of Christ
which glowed within his heart gave him no rest and his dreams
urged him to bring the glorious liberty of the children of God
to those who so long kept him bound under hard slavery. Familiar
with the language and the customs of the country, he gathered the
people by beat of drum into an open field and told them of the
sufferings of Christ for man’s salvation. The Druids, priests
of the Celts, withstood him vigorously, but his attractive and
awe-inspiring personality gained the victory over them. Without
a drop of martyr’s blood Ireland was converted in a few years,
and was thickly strewn with churches and monasteries. Patrick
himself had his residence at Macha, round which the town of
Armagh, afterwards the ecclesiastical metropolis, sprang up. He
died about A.D. 465, and left the island church in a flourishing
condition. The numerous monasteries, in which calm piety
flourished along with diligent study of Scripture and from which
many teachers and missionaries went forth, won for the land the
name of _Insula Sanctorum_. Only after the robber raids of the
Danes in the 9th century did the glory of the Irish monasteries
begin to fade.[207]
§ 77.2. =The Mission to Scotland.=--A Briton, Ninian, educated
at Rome, wrought, about A.D. 430, among the Celtic =Picts= and
=Scots= in Scotland or Caledonia. But those converted by him fell
back into paganism after his death. The true Apostle of Scotland
was the Irishman =Columba=. In A.D. 563 he settled with twelve
disciples on the small Hebridean island Hy. Its common name,
Iona, seems to have originated by a clerical error from Ioua,
and was then regarded as the Hebrew equivalent of Columba, a dove.
Icolmkill means Columba’s cell. Here he founded a monastery and
a church, and converted from this centre all Caledonia. Although
to the last only a presbyter and abbot of this monastery, he had
all the authority of an apostle over the Scottish church and its
bishops, a position that was maintained by successive abbots of
Iona. He died in A.D. 597. The numerous monasteries founded by
him vied with the Irish in learning, piety and missionary zeal.
The original monastery of Iona flourished in a superlative
degree.[208]
§ 77.3. =The Peculiarities of the Celtic Church.=--In the
Anglo-Saxon struggle the following were the main points at issue.
1. On the part of Rome it was demanded that they should submit
to the archiepiscopal jurisdiction instituted by the pope,
which the British refused as an unrighteous assumption.
2. The British had an =Easter Canon= different from that
of the Romish church. They were indeed nothing else than
Quartodecimans, although they like these in ignorance
referred to the Johannine tradition (§ 34, 2), but celebrated
their Easter always on a Sunday, the settling of which they
decided according to an 84 years’ cycle of the moon, after
Rome had adopted a cycle of 19 years (§ 56, 3).
3. The Celtic clergy had also a different =Tonsure= from the
Roman _Tonsura Petri_ which seems to have been the Greek
_Tonsura Pauli_ (§ 45, 1), although the zealous advocate of
the Roman customs, Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow, in a letter
to Naitan, king of the Picts, derives it from Simon Magus.
4. Besides this there was also the question of the Marriage
of Priests, which indeed the popish Anglo-Saxon Archbishop
Augustine declared himself at first willing to allow to the
British, which, however, was subsequently so passionately
denounced by Boniface as _fornicatio_ and _adulterium_.
5. If, further, according to Bede’s statement, besides their
divergent views about Easter, the British _et alia plurima
imitati ecclesiasticæ contraria faciebant_, this certainly
cannot be understood of doctrinal divergences, but
only of different forms of constitution and worship,
or ecclesiastical habits and customs, as might be well
expected in churches that had been completely separated
since A.D. 449. We need only think, _e.g._, of the progress
made by the idea of the papal primacy (§ 46, 7-10), the
consolidation and reconstruction of monasticism under
Benedict (§ 85), the codification of Roman canon law by
Dionysius Exiguus (§ 43, 3), the modification of the idea
of penance since Leo the Great (§ 61, 1) and the development
of the doctrine of the mass down to Gregory the Great
(§ 58, 3; 59, 6). The most considerable peculiarity of
constitution in the Celtic church seems to have been that
above referred to in placing the abbots of the principal
monasteries at the head of the hierarchy. Only in one
passage (Bede, III. 19) is there mention of ecclesiastical
doctrine: In A.D. 640 Pope John IV. addressed a conciliatory
letter to the Scots in which he warns them against the
Pelagian heresy, “_quam apud eos revivescere didicerat_.”
When then we turn our attention to the Celtic church planted on
the continent at a later period, it is specially Columbanus’ view
of Easter that is regarded in France as heretical. Often and loud
as Boniface lifted up his voice against the horrible heresies
of British, Irish and Scotch intruders, it is found at last that
these consist in the same or similar divergences as those of the
Anglo-Saxons. Not insisting upon the law of celibacy, opposition
to the Roman primacy, the Romish tradition and the Romish canon
law, especially the ever-increasing strictness of the Roman
marriage laws (§ 61, 2), more simple modes of administering the
sacraments and conducting public worship, even in unconsecrated
places in forests and fields,--these and such like were the
heresies complained of.--As concerns the _pro_ and _con._ of
the evangelical purity of the ancient British Christianity, so
highly praised by Ebrard, one occupying an impartial historical
standpoint is justified in expecting that as all the good
development so also all the bad development which had taken
firm root in the common thought and feeling of the church down
to the middle of the 5th century, would not have been uprooted
from the church of Patrick and Columba, so also in the 7th
century it would be still prevalent there. And this expectation
is in general confirmed, so far as our information goes about
all which was not expressly imported from Rome into the British
church. If we deduct the by no means insignificant amount of
unevangelical corruption which was first introduced into the
Romish church during the period between Leo the Great and Gregory
the Great, A.D. 440-604, partly by exaggerating and adorning
elements previously there, partly by bringing in wholly new
elements of ecclesiastical credulity, superstition and mistaken
faith, there still remains for the Celtic church standing outside
of this process of deterioration a relatively purer doctrine. Yet
the Christianity that remains is by no means free of mixture from
unevangelical elements as Jonas of Bobbio himself shows in his
biography of his teacher Columbanus. But the more embittered the
conflict between the British and the Romish churches became over
matters of constitution and worship, the more did differences
in faith and life, which had been overlooked at first, assume
serious proportions, and supported by a careful study of
Scripture, led to greater evangelical freedom and purity on
the side of the British. This is thoroughly confirmed by Ebrard’s
numerous quotations from the literature of that period.[209]
§ 77.4. =The Romish Mission to the Anglo-Saxons.=--To protect
himself against the robber raids of the Picts and Scots, the
British king Vortigern sought the aid of the Germans inhabiting
the opposite shores. Two princes of the Jutes, Hengist and Horsa,
driven from their home, led a horde of Angles and Saxons over
to Britain in A.D. 449. New hordes kept following those that had
gone before and after a hundred years the British were driven
back into the western parts of the island. The incomers founded
seven kingdoms; at the head of all stood the prince of one of
the divisions who was called principal king, the Bretwalda. The
Anglo-Saxons were heathens and the bitter feelings that prevailed
between them and the ancient Britons prevented the latter
from carrying on missionary operations among the former. The
opportunity which the British missed was seized upon by Rome.
The sight of Anglo-Saxon youths exposed as slaves in the Roman
market inspired a pious monk, afterwards Pope Gregory I., with
a desire to evangelize a people of such noble bodily appearance.
He wished himself to take the work in hand, but was hindered
by the call to the chair of Peter. He now bought Anglo-Saxon
youths in order to train them as missionaries to their
fellow-countrymen. But when soon thereafter the Bretwalda
Ethelbert of Kent married the Frankish princess Bertha, Gregory
sent the Roman abbot =Augustine= to England with forty monks in
A.D. 596. Ethelbert gave them a residence and support in his own
capital Dorovernum, now Canterbury. At Pentecost the following
year he received baptism and 10,000 of his subjects followed his
example. Augustine asked from Gregory further instructions about
relics, books, etc. The pope sent him what he sought and besides
the pallium with archiepiscopal rights over the whole Saxon and
British church. Augustine now demanded of the Britons submission
to his archiepiscopal authority and that they should work
together with him for the conversion of the Saxons. But the
British would do nothing of the sort. A personal interview with
their chiefs under Augustine’s oak in A.D. 603 was without result.
At a second conference everything was spoilt by Augustine’s
prelatic pride in refusing to stand up on the arrival of the
Britons. Inclined to compliance the Britons had just proposed
this at the suggestion of a member as a sign. Augustine died
in A.D. 605. The pope nominated as his successor his previous
assistant Laurentius. Ethelbert’s heathen son and successor,
Eadbald, oppressed the missionaries so much that they decided
to withdraw from the field, in A.D. 616. Only Laurentius delayed
his retreat in order to make a final attempt at the conversion of
Eadbald. He was successful. Eadbald was baptized; the fugitives
returned to their former posts. In the kingdom of Essex Augustine
had already established Christianity, but a change of government
had again restored paganism. The gospel, however, soon afterwards
got entrance into Northumbria, the most powerful of the seven
kingdoms. King Edwin, the founder of Edinburgh, won the hand of
the Kentish princess Ethelberga, daughter of Bertha. With her,
as spiritual adviser of the young queen, went the monk Paulinus,
A.D. 625. These two persuaded the king and he again persuaded
his nobles and the priests to embrace Christianity. At a popular
assembly Paulinus proved the truth of Christianity, and the
chief priest Coisi, setting at defiance the gods of his fathers,
flung with his own hand a spear into the nearest idol temple.
The people thought him mad and looked for Woden’s vengeance.
When it came not, they obeyed the command of Coisi and burnt
down the temple, A.D. 627. Paulinus was made bishop of Eboracum,
now York, which pope Honorius on sending a pallium raised to
a second metropolitanate. Edwin, however, fell in battle in
A.D. 633 fighting against Penda, the pagan king of Mercia;
Paulinus had to flee and the church of Northumbria was almost
entirely rooted up.[210]
§ 77.5. =Celtic Missions among the Anglo-Saxons.=--The saviour
of Northumbria was Oswald, A.D. 635-642, the son of a former
king who had been driven out by Edwin. He had found refuge as
a fugitive in the monastery of Hy and was there converted to
Christianity. To restore the church in Northumbria the monks
sent him one of their number, the amiable Aidan. Oswald acted as
his interpreter until he acquired the Saxon language. His success
was unexampled. Oswald founded a religious establishment for him
on the island of Lindisfarne, and supported by new missionaries
from Hy, Aidan converted the whole of the northern lands to
Christianity. Oswald fell in battle against Penda. He was
succeeded as king and also as Bretwalda by his brother Oswy.
Irish missionaries joined the missionary monks of Hy, rivalling
them in their exertions, and by A.D. 660 all the kingdoms of
the Heptarchy had been converted to Christianity, and down to
this date all, with the exception of Kent, which alone still
adhered to the Romish church, belonged to the ancient British
communion.[211]
§ 77.6. =The Celtic Element Driven out of the Anglo-Saxon
Church.=--Oswy perceived the political danger attending the
continuance of such ecclesiastical disputes. He succeeded in
convincing also his neighbour kings of the need of ecclesiastical
uniformity. The only question was as to which of the two should
be recognised. The choice fell upon the Romish. Oswy himself
most decidedly preferred it. His wife Eanfled, Edwin’s daughter,
was a zealous partisan of the Romish church, and on her side
stood a man of extraordinary power, prudence and persistence, the
abbot Wilfrid, a native Northumbrian, trained in the monastery of
Lindisfarne. He had, however, visited Rome, and since then used
all his eloquence and skill in intrigue in order to lay all
England at the feet of the pope. The queen and the abbot wrought
together upon the Bretwalda, and he in his turn upon the other
princes. To these personal influences were added others of a
more general kind: the preference for things foreign over those
of home growth, the brilliancy and preponderating weight of the
Romish church, and above all, the gulf, not yet by any means
bridged over, between the Saxons and the British. When secret
negociations toward the desired end had been carried out, Oswy
called a general Synod at the nunnery of Streoneshalch, now
Whitby, _Synodus Pharensis_, A.D. 664. Here all the civil and
ecclesiastical notabilities of the Heptarchy were assembled.
The chief speaker on the Roman side was Wilfrid, on the Celtic
side bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. The observance of Easter was
the first subject of discussion. Wilfrid referred to the Apostle
Peter, to whom the Lord said: Thou art Peter, etc. Then Oswy
asked Colman whether it was true that the Lord had said so to
Peter. Colman could not deny it, and Oswy declared that he would
follow him who had the power to open for them the gates of heaven.
And so the question was settled. Oswy as Bretwalda carried out
with energy the decisions of the Council, and within a few weeks
the scissors had completed the conversion of the whole Heptarchy
to the Roman tonsure and the Roman faith.[212]
§ 77.7. =Spread and Overthrow of the British Church on the
Continent.=--The first Celtic missionary who crossed the channel
was the Irishman =Fridolin=, about A.D. 500. With several
companions he settled near Poitiers in Aquitaine which was
then under the Visigoths, converted the Arian bishop of that
place together with his congregation to trinitarian orthodoxy,
and, under the protection of Clovis, who had meanwhile, A.D. 507,
overthrown the Visigoth power in Gaul, founded churches and
monasteries. Afterwards he wrought among the heathen Alemanni in
Switzerland (§ 78, 1). We have fuller and more reliable accounts
of Columba the younger, usually called =Columbanus=, an Irishman
by birth, who, in A.D. 590, with twelve zealous companions, went
forth from the British monastery of Bangor in Co. Down, Ireland,
and settled among the Vosges mountains. Here they founded the
monastery of Luxovium, now Luxeuil, as centre with many others
affiliated to it. They cultivated the wilderness and wrought
laboriously in restoring church discipline and order in a region
that had been long spiritually neglected. But their strict
adherence to the British mode of observing Easter caused offence.
The severe moral discipline which they enjoined was galling to
the careless Burgundian clergy, and the aged Brunehilda swore
to compass their death and destruction, because of the influence
adverse to her authority which they exercised upon her grandson,
the young king Theodoric II. Thus it happened that in A.D. 610,
after twenty years’ labours, they were driven away. They turned
then to Switzerland (§ 78, 1). But when persecuted here also,
Columbanus with his followers migrated to Italy, about A.D. 612,
where, under Agilulf’s protection (§ 76, 8), he founded the
celebrated monastery of Bobbio and contended against Arianism.
The _Regula Columbani_ extant in several MSS. constitutes a
written guide to Christian piety and breathes a free evangelical
spirit, while the annexed _Regula cœnobialis fratrum de Hibernia_,
also ascribed to him, bears a rigoristic ascetic character,
enjoining frequent flagellations. Columbanus died in A.D. 615.
The monks of his order joined the Benedictines in the 9th century.
On his personal relation to the Romish chair during his residence
in Gaul and Italy we get some information from three of his
epistles still extant. In the first he asks Gregory the Great
for an explanation of the Gallic observance of Easter, and in
the second he asks Boniface IV. to confirm his old British mode
of reckoning Easter. In both he recognises the pope as occupier
of the chair of Peter, and in the second greets him as head of
all the churches of Europe and describes the Roman church as the
chief seat of the orthodox faith. In the third, on the other hand,
he demands of the pope in firm terms an account of his own faith
and that of the Roman church. He did so in consequence of a
report having reached him, probably through the mention by the
5th œcum. Council (§ 52, 6) of a schism between Rome and Northern
Italy, that the Roman chair had fallen into the heresies of
Eutyches and Nestorius.--The ablest of Columbanus’ followers
was Gallus or St. Gall. He remained in Switzerland and had his
faithfulness rewarded by rich success. After Columbanus had been
expelled from France traces of Celtic ecclesiastical institutions
may indeed for a considerable time have lingered on among his
Frankish scholars and friends animated by the missionary zeal
of their master. For from their midst as it would seem proceeded
most of those Frankish missionaries who carried the gospel in the
7th century to the German lands (§ 78). But from the time of the
overthrow of the old Celtic ecclesiastical system at the Synod of
Streoneshalch in A.D. 664, whole troops of its adherents, British,
Irish, Scotch and Anglo-Saxons, crossed the channel to convert
Germany. With very few exceptions, only the names of these men,
and for the most part not even these, have come down to us. But
their zeal and success are witnessed to by the fact that even in
the beginning of the 8th century throughout all the district of
the Rhine, as well as Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Alemannia
we find a network of flourishing churches bearing the impress
of Celtic institutions. And the overthrow of this great and
promising ecclesiastical system, partly by peaceful, partly by
violent transportation into the Romish church, was the work of
the Anglo-Saxon Winfrid, whom the Romanists, quite rightly from
their point of view, honour, under the name of Boniface, as the
Apostle of Germany (§ 78, 4-8).[213]
§ 77.8. =Overthrow of the Old British System in the Iro-Scottish
Church.=--After the British Church had lost, in A.D. 664, all
support in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, it could not long maintain
itself in its own original Celtic home. The Scottish kings
on political grounds, in order to avoid giving their Saxon
neighbours an opportunity of gratifying the love of conquest
under the pretext of zeal for the faith, were obliged to
assimilate their church organization with that of the Southerns.
The learned Abbot Adamnan of Hy, when, in A.D. 684, by order
of his king, he visited the Northumbrian court, professed to
be there convinced of the correctness of the Romish observance
of Easter. But when his monks stoutly resisted, he left the
monastery and went on a missionary tour to Ireland where he
urged his views so successfully that in A.D. 701 the most of the
Irish adopted the Roman reckoning. Some years later, in A.D. 710,
Naitan II., the powerful king of the Picts, asked instructions
from Abbot Ceolfrid about the superiority of the Romish practice
regarding Easter and the tonsure, forced his whole people to
adopt the Romish doctrine and banished the obstinate priests.
Finally, the Anglo-Saxon Egbert, educated in Ireland, but
subsequently won over to the Romish church, induced by visions
and tempests to abandon his projected mission to the heathen
Frisians (§ 78, 3), and to devote himself to what was regarded
as the more arduous task of the conversion of the schismatical
monks of Hy, succeeded in A.D. 716 in so far overcoming their
obstinacy that they at least gave up their divergent tonsure and
Easter reckoning. Thereafter the Romanists were satisfied with
the gradual Romanizing of the whole Celtic regions in the west
and north. In worship, constitution and discipline all remained
for a long time as it had been of old. The Roman law of celibacy
could not win its way. Public worship was conducted and the
sacraments dispensed in the language of the people and in the
simple forms of primitive times. Canon law was almost everywhere
made subordinate to the customs of the national church. Indeed,
when in A.D. 843, the kingdom of the Picts, where the papacy
had made most progress, went by inheritance to the Scottish
king Kenneth, he restored even there the old ecclesiastical
institutions of their fathers. Malcolm III., who died in
A.D. 1093, was the first of the Scottish kings to begin the
complete, thorough and lasting Romanizing of the whole country.
His marriage with the English princess Margaret, a zealous
supporter of the papacy, marks the beginning of that policy
which was carried out and completed by their son David, who
died in A.D. 1152. In Ireland the English conquest of A.D. 1171
under Henry III. prepared the way for the complete Romanizing
of the island. Still in both Scotland and Ireland down to the
14th century many of the old Celtic priests survived. To them was
given the Celtic name Kele-de, _servus_ or _vir Dei_, Latinized
as Colidei, and in modern form, Culdees. They were secular
priests who, bound by a strict rule, in companies generally of
twelve with a prior over them, like a Catholic canon (§ 84, 1),
devoted themselves to a common spiritual life and activity,
maintaining an existence in many places down to the end of
the 8th century. The origin of the rule under which they lived
is still very obscure. It allowed them to marry but enforced
abstinence from marital intercourse during the period of their
service, and required of them, besides the charge of the public
services, special attention to the poor. In Scotland particularly
their societies soon became so numerous that almost the whole
secular clergy went over to them. By the forcible introduction
of regular canons they were crushed more and more down to the
11th century, or where they still existed, they were deprived
of the right of pastoral supervision and administration of the
sacraments and reduced to subordinate positions, such as that
of choir singers.--The usual application of the name of Culdees
to all, even earlier representatives of the Celtic church, is
quite unjustifiable.[214]
§ 78. THE CONVERSION AND ROMANIZING OF GERMANY.[215]
In the Roman period the regions of the Rhine and the Danube had
become Christian countries, but the rush of the migration of the
peoples had partly destroyed the Christian foundations, partly overlaid
them with heathen superstitions. By the end of the 6th century a great
part of Germany was already under the dominion of the Franks, and,
to distinguish it from the country of the West Franks or Neustria,
was called Austrasia or the land of the East Franks. South-western
and South-eastern Germany (Alemannia, Bavaria, Thuringia) was governed
by native dukes under the often disputed over-lordship of the Franks.
North-western Germany (embracing the Frisians and the Saxons) still
enjoyed undisputed national independence. The first serious attempt
to introduce or restore Christianity in Austrasia began about the end
of the 6th century. The missionaries who took the work in hand went,
partly from Neustria, partly from this side of the Channel. The Irish
and Scottish monasteries were overflowing. Those dwelling in them
had an unconquerable passion for travel and in their hearts an eager
longing to spread Christ’s kingdom by preaching the gospel. This
impulse was greatly strengthened by the overthrow of their national
prestige (§ 77, 6). They were thus out of sympathy with their native
land, and were encouraged to hope that they might win on the opposite
continent what they had lost at home. Crowds of monks from Iro-Scottish
monasteries crossed over into the heathen provinces of Germany. But
Romish Christian Anglo-Saxons, no less fond of travel, impelled by
the same missionary fervour and no slight zeal for their own communion,
followed in their steps. Thus in the 8th century on German soil the
struggle was renewed which at home had been already fought out, to
end again as before in the defeat of the Celtic claims. In almost all
German countries we find traces of Irish or Scottish missionaries and
married priests, reproachfully styled adulterers. What mainly secured
for the Anglo-Saxons the victory over them was the practical talent for
organization shown by the former, and their attachment to the imposing
spiritual power of the papal see. To them alone is Germany indebted
for her incorporation into the Roman ecclesiastical union; for even
the Frankish missionaries for the most part had no connection with
Rome.--Most rapid and successful progress was made by the mission
where there had previously been Christian institutions, _e.g._ in
the provinces of the Rhine and the Danube. The work was more difficult
on the east of the Scheldt in Friesland, Hesse, Thuringia and Saxony,
where paganism had reigned undisturbed. Mission work was at once
furthered and hindered by the selfish patronage of the Frankish rulers.
Paganism and national liberty, the yoke of Christ and the yoke of the
Franks, seemed inseparably conjoined. The one stood and fell with the
other. The sword of the Franks was to make the way for the cross of
Christ, and the result of preaching was to afford an introduction to
political subjection. The missionaries submitted regretfully to this
amalgamation of religious and political interests, but it was generally
unavoidable.
§ 78.1. =South-Western Germany.=--Here were located the
powerful race of the =Alemanni=. Of the Christian institutions
of the Roman period only some shadowy remnants were now to be
seen. The diet of Tolbiac in A.D. 496 which gave the Franks a
Christian king, first secured an entrance among the Alemanni
to Christianity. Yet progress was slow, for the Franks did
not resort to force. The revision of Alemannian jurisprudence,
concluded by Dagobert I. about A.D. 630, assumed indeed that the
country was wholly Christian, but it only anticipated what the
country was destined to become. =Fridolin= (§ 77, 7), founder
of the monastery of Seckingen on an island of the Rhine above
Basel, is called the first Apostle of the Alemanni, A.D. 510.
The reports that have reached us of his work are highly legendary
and unreliable. After =Columbanus= in A.D. 610 had been compelled
along with his companions to leave the Frankish territory
(§ 77, 7), he chose Alemannian Switzerland as the field of their
operations. They settled first of all at Tuggen on the Zurich
lake. The fiery zeal with which they destroyed heathen idols,
roused the wrath of the inhabitants, who maltreated them and
drove them away. They next wrought for three years at Bregentz
where they converted many pagans. The main instrument in this
work was =Gallus= who had gained thorough mastery of the language
of the people. Driven from this place also, Columbanus and
his followers settled in Italy. Only =Gallus=, who was ill at
the time, remained behind. He felt obliged, in spite of all
unfavourable circumstances, to carry on the work that had been
begun. In a wild forest dale by the stream Steinach, where he
was held firm by a thorn bush while on his knees praying, he
built a cell, from which arose in later times the famous abbey of
St. Gall. He died, after an eminently useful and successful life
in his 95th year in A.D. 646. He does not seem to have been so
persistent as Columbanus in maintaining the peculiarities of the
British church. His disciple =Magnoald= continued his work and
founded the monastery of Füssen on the Upper Lech in Swabia. At
the same time there wrought at Breisgau the hermit =Trudpert=, an
Irishman, who laid the foundation of the future abbey of Trudpert
at the foot of the Black Forest, and was murdered in A.D. 643
by a servant given up to him for forced labour. Somewhat later
we meet with =Pirminius=, a Frankish cleric, on the Lake of
Constance, where, under the protection of the Frankish ruler
Charles Martel, he founded the monastery of Reichenau in A.D. 724.
A national rising of the Alemanni against the Franks drove him
away after three years; but the monastery remained uninjured. He
then proceeded down the Rhine and founded several monasteries,
the last at Hornbach in the diocese of Metz, where he died in
A.D. 753.
§ 78.2. =South-Eastern Germany.=--After the successful labours
of Severinus (§ 76, 6) the history of the Danubian provinces
is shrouded in thick darkness. A hundred years later we find
there the powerful nation of the Boyars, now Bavarians, with
native dukes descended from Agilulf. Only scanty remnants of
Christianity were to be seen. In A.D. 615 the Frankish abbot
=Eustasius= of Luxeuil, the successor of Columbanus, appears
prosecuting the missionary labours, and struggling against the
so-called heresies of Bonosus and Photinus, remnants probably
of Gothic Arianism. About the middle of the 7th century, at the
court of the Duke of Bavaria, Theodo I., at Regensburg, =Emmeran=,
bishop of Poitiers, laboured for three years. Suddenly he
left the country and made a pilgrimage to Italy. Being charged
with the seduction of the Princess Ota, he was on his journey
in A.D. 652, according to others in A.D. 715, overtaken by her
brother and cruelly murdered. Ota is said at the advice of the
saint himself to have named him as her seducer, in order to
screen the actual seducer from vengeance. The true Apostle of
Bavaria was bishop =Rupert= of Worms. In A.D. 696 he baptized
the Duke Theodo II. with his household, founded many churches
and monasteries, and almost completed the Christianizing of
the country. The centre of his operations was the bishopric of
Salzburg, founded by him. About A.D. 716 he returned to Worms
and died there in A.D. 717. An old tradition describes him as
a Scot, whether in respect of his descent or of his undoubtedly
ecclesiastical tendencies, is uncertain. We find at least no
trace of his having had any connection with Rome. Soon after
him a Frankish itinerant bishop called =Corbinianus= made his
appearance in Bavaria, and was the founder of the episcopal see
at Freisingen, A.D. 724. He was a man of imperious temper and
unbending stubbornness, who exercised discipline with reckless
strictness, rooted out the remnants of pagan superstition, and
founded many churches and monasteries. He died in A.D. 730.--That
the Frankish missionaries were still more or less influenced by
the old British traditions is shown by the fact that Boniface
found the Bavarian church free from Rome. Duke Theodo II. soon
after Rupert’s departure on a pilgrimage to Rome had indeed
entered into relations with Gregory II., in consequence of which
three Roman clerics made their appearance in Bavaria. But the
organization of the Bavarian church committed to them by the
pope could not be carried out on account of political troubles.
Boniface was the first who succeeded in some measure in
doing this.--The Apostle of the neighbouring Thuringians was
an Irishman =Kilian= or Kyllena, who, toward the end of the
7th century, along with twelve companions, entered the province
of Würzburg. These faithful men found the reward of their labours
in the crown of martyrdom. But crowds of their zealous believing
fellow-countrymen followed them, and continued with rich success
the work which they had begun, until, after a hard struggle, they
were obliged to resign the field to Boniface.
§ 78.3. =North-Western Germany.=--In the Middle Rhine provinces
Christian episcopal dioceses had been maintained, but in a feeble
condition and overrun with crowds of heathen people. About the
middle of the 6th century a Frank called =Goar= settled as a
hermit within the bounds of the diocese of Treves, converted
many of the surrounding heathens and put to shame the envious
suspicions of the clergy of Treves, his holiness being attested
according to later legends by many extraordinary miracles. The
beautiful town of St. Goar has grown up round the spot where he
built his cell and church. After him in the same region wrought
a Longobard =Wulflaich= who as a stylite (§ 44, 6), in spite
of the northern climate, preached down to the heathens from
his pillar. But the neighbouring bishops disliked his senseless
asceticism and had the pillar thrown down.--After the Frankish
king Dagobert I. conquered the south of the Netherlands in
A.D. 630, an accomplished Frankish priest, =Amandus=, appeared
at Rome preaching the gospel among the Frisians settled there.
The command given by him for the compulsory baptism of all the
pagans only intensified the hatred against him and his sacred
message. Insulted, maltreated and repeatedly thrown into the
Scheld, he left the country to missionarize among the Basques
of the Pyrenees and then among the Slavs of the Danube. But at
a later period he returned to Ghent, and gained great influence
after having succeeded in converting a rich Frisian called
Bavo, with whose help he built two monasteries. In A.D. 647
he was chosen bishop of Maestricht, but retired in A.D. 649,
notwithstanding the dissuasion of Pope Martin I., on account of
the opposition of his clergy, and then founded the monastery of
Elno, afterwards called St. Amand, near Tournay, where he died
in A.D. 648. During the same period wrought =Eligius=, formerly a
skilful goldsmith at the court of Dagobert, from A.D. 641 bishop
of Noyon, where he died in A.D. 658. He took numerous missionary
journeys for the conversion of the Frisians extending as far
as the Scheld. From this side of the Channel too wistful eyes
had looked over to the Frisian coasts. A Briton said to have
been converted to Romanism by Augustine the Apostle of the
Anglo-Saxons, =Livinus=, appeared as a missionary on the Scheld
about A.D. 650, but was slain by the heathens soon after his
arrival. The celebrated supporter of Romish claims, =Wilfrid=
(§ 77, 6), first preached the gospel to the Frisians living
north of the Scheld. He had been elected archbishop of York, but,
expelled from his bishopric (§ 88, 3), he went to seek protection
at Rome and was cast by a storm on the Frisian shores, which was
fortunate for him as hired assassins waited for him in France.
He spent the winter of A.D. 677-678 in Friesland, preached daily,
baptized Duke Aldgild and “thousands” of the people. But in
the following spring he took his departure. Aldgild’s successor
Radbod († A.D. 719), who passed his whole life in war with Pippin
of Heristal († A.D. 714) and Charles Martel, hated and persecuted
Christianity as the religion of the Franks, and the seed sown
by Wilfrid perished. Pippin’s victory at Dorstadt in A.D. 689
compelled him for a time to show greater toleration. Then
immediately a Frankish mission was started under bishop =Wulfram=
of Sens, a pupil of the monastery of Fontanelle founded by
Columbanus. According to an interesting tradition, which, however,
does not stand the test of criticism, Radbod was himself just
about to receive baptism, but drew back from the baptismal font,
because he would rather go with his glorious forefathers to hell
than enter the Christian heaven with a crowd of miserable people.
It is probably only a legend designed in the interest of the
doctrine of predestination.--The true Apostle of the Frisians was
the Anglo-Saxon =Wilibrord= who, in company with twelve followers,
undertook the work in A.D. 690. Born in Northumbria about
A.D. 658, he received his first training under Wilfrid at the
monastery of Ripon and then in an Irish monastery under the
direction of Egbert, whose debt to the Frisians (§ 77, 8) he
now undertook to pay. Pippin gave protection and aid to the
missionaries, and Wilibrord travelled to Rome that he might get
there support for his life work. He returned armed with papal
approbation and supplied with relics. But meanwhile a party of
his followers, probably dissatisfied with his control, sent one
of their number called Suidbert to England, where he received
episcopal consecration. Wilibrord’s party, however, kept the
upper hand. Suidbert went to the Bructeri on the Upper Ems, and,
when driven thence by the Saxons, to the Rhine, where he built a
monastery on an island of the Rhine given him by Pippin, and died
there in A.D. 715.--After many years’ successful labour Wilibrord,
at Pippin’s command, went a second time to Rome in A.D. 696, to
be there consecrated a bishop. Sergius I. gave him consecration
under the name of Clement, distinguishing him in this way as
an eminent man, and Pippin gave him the castle of Utrecht as
an episcopal residence. From this centre his missionary labours
stretched out over Radbod’s realm and even across the Danish
frontier. During a visit to the island of Heligoland he ventured
to baptize three men in a holy well. Radbod would have the
blasphemers together to sacrifice to the gods; thrice he enquired
at the sacred lot, but it answered regularly in favour of the
missionaries. But, in consequence of the complete defeat which
Charles Martel suffered at the hands of Radbod at Cologne, in
A.D. 715, the Frisian mission was stopped and only after Radbod’s
death in A.D. 719 could Wilibrord commence operations again from
the monastery of Echternach, to which he had meanwhile withdrawn.
When he died at the age of eighty-one in A.D. 739, the conversion
at least of South Friesland was almost completed. We hear nothing
of conflicts and disputes with Celtic missionaries all through
his fifty years of missionary labour, in consequence, no doubt,
of his mild and peaceful temper, which led him to attend rather
to the Christianizing of the heathen than to the Romanizing
of those who were already Christian.--In consequence of
jurisdictional claims of the Cologne see, the episcopate of
Utrecht remained vacant for a long time after Wilibrord’s death.
The mission among the heathens was meanwhile conducted with zeal
and success by =Gregory=, a Frankish nobleman of the Merovingian
family and a favourite pupil of Boniface, who as abbot of the
monastery of Utrecht presided over its famous seminary. Willehad,
the Anglo-Saxon, was held in high repute by his scholars and
was made bishop of Bremen by Charlemagne. The conversion of the
northern Frisians was completed by =Liudger=, a native Frisian,
afterwards bishop of Münster.
§ 78.4. =The Missionary Work of Boniface.=--The Anglo-Saxon
=Winfrid= or =Boniface=,[216] born at Kirton in Wessex
about A.D. 680 had at an early age, on account of his piety,
ecclesiastical tastes and practical talent, gained an honourable
position in the church of his native land. But he was driven by
an irresistible impulse to devote himself to the heathen tribes
of Germany. In A.D. 716 he landed in Friesland. Although Radbod,
then at war with Charles Martel, considering that he had no
connection with the Franks, put no hindrances in his way, he
had not such success as encouraged him to continue, and so before
winter he returned home. But his missionary ardour gave him no
rest; even his election as abbot of his monastery of Nutscall was
not sufficient to hold him back. And so in the spring of A.D. 718
he crossed the Channel a second time, but went first of all to
Rome, where Gregory II., A.D. 715-731, supplied him with relics
and papal authority for the German mission. The task to which
he now applied himself was directed less to the uprooting of
paganism than to the overthrow of that Celtic heresy which had
on many sides struck its roots deeply in German soil. He next
attempted to gain a footing in Thuringia. But he could neither
induce the “adulterous” priests to submit to Rome, nor seduce
their people from allegiance to them. News of Radbod’s death
in A.D. 719 moved him to make a journey into Friesland, where
he aided Wilibrord for three years in converting the heathens.
Wilibrord wished him to remain in Friesland as his coadjutor,
and to be his future successor in the bishopric of Utrecht. But
this reminded him of his own special task. He tore himself away
and returned to Upper Hesse in A.D. 722. Here he won to Roman
Christianity two Christian chiefs Dettic and Deorulf, erected
with their help the monastery of Amanaburg (Arnöneburg, not
far from the Ohm or _Amana_), and baptized, as his biographer
Willibald assures us, in a short time “many thousands” of the
heathens. He reported his success to the pope who called him to
Rome in A.D. 723, where, after exacting of him a solemn vow of
fealty to the papal chair, he consecrated him Apostolic bishop
or Primate of all Germany, and gave him a _Codex canonum_ and
commendatory letters to Charles Martel and the German clergy,
as well as to the people and princes of Thuringia, Hesse, and
even heathen Saxony. He next secured at the court of Charles
Martel a letter of protection and introduction from that powerful
prince, and then again betook himself to Hesse. The cutting
down of the old sacred oak of Thor at Geismar near Fritzlar
in A.D. 724, against which he raised the axe with his own hand
amid the breathless horror of the heathen multitudes, building
a Christian chapel with its timber, marked the downfall of
heathenism in the heart of Germany. In the following year,
A.D. 725, he extended his operations into Thuringia, where
Celtic institutions were still more widely spread than in Hesse.
This extension of his field of labour required a corresponding
increase of his staff. He applied to his English friends, of whom
bishop Daniel of Winchester was the most distinguished. His call
was responded to year after year by Anglo-Saxon priests, monks
and nuns. All England was roused to enthusiasm for the work of
its apostle and supported him with advice and practical aid,
with prayers and intercessions, with gifts and presents for his
personal and ecclesiastical necessities. Thus there soon arose
two spiritual armies over against one another; both fought with
equal enthusiasm for what seemed to them most high and holy.
But the Anglo-Saxon invader gained ground always more and more,
though indeed amid much want, weariness and care, and the Celtic
church gradually disappeared before advancing Romanism. Meanwhile
Gregory II. had died. His successor Gregory III., A.D. 731-741,
to whom Boniface had immediately submitted a report, answered by
sending him the archiepiscopal pallium with a commission as papal
legate in the German lands to found bishoprics and consecrate
bishops. His work in Thuringia, after ten years’ struggles and
contests, was so far successful that he could look around for
other fields of labour. He chose now, however, not heathen Saxony
but the already Christianized Bavaria, which, as still free from
Rome and strongly infected with the British heresy, seemed to
afford a more attractive field for his missionary zeal. He made
a hasty tour of inspection through the country in A.D. 735-736.
The most important result of this journey was the accession
of a fiery young Bavarian named Sturm, supposed to be next in
succession to Odilo the heir of the throne, whom Boniface took
with him to educate at the seminary at Fritzlar. In the following
year he undertook a third journey to Rome, undoubtedly to consult
with the pope about the further organization of the German
church and the best mode of its accomplishment. He had the most
flattering reception and stayed almost a whole year in Rome.
The pope sent him away in A.D. 738 with apostolic letters to
the clergy, people and nobles of Middle Germany, and also to
some distinguished Bavarian and Alemannian bishops, in which
those addressed were urged to assist his legate by their ready
and hearty obedience in bringing about a much-needed organization
of the churches in their several provinces.[217]
§ 78.5. =The Organization Effected by Boniface.=--The attention
of Boniface was directed first of all to Bavaria, and duke Odilo
reigning there since A.D. 737 anticipated it by an invitation.
Arriving in Bavaria he divided the whole Bavarian church into
four dioceses. Bivilo of Passau had before this been consecrated
as bishop in Rome. Erembert of Freisingen received consecration
at the hand of the legate. The bishops of Regensburg and Salzburg,
however, down to the close of their lives, asserted themselves
as opposition bishops over against those appointed by Boniface.
Odilo, too, withdrew from him his favour, and entrusted not
to him but to Pirminian the Alemannian Apostle, who sided with
the Celtic church, the organization and oversight of several
newly-founded Bavarian monasteries. Thus the results of the papal
legate’s visit to Bavaria were of a very doubtful kind, and he
had not even made a beginning of Romanizing Alemannia. In the
meantime, however, an incident occurred which gave him in a short
time the highest measure of influence and success. Charles Martel
died in A.D. 741 and his sons succeeded him, Carloman in Austrasia
and Pepin the Short in Neustria. Charles Martel had indeed on
Gregory’s recommendation given Boniface a letter of protection
that he might carry on his work in Hesse and Thuringia, but
he had never gone further, so that Boniface often complained
bitterly to his English friends of the indolent, even hostile
attitude of the Frankish prince. But he could not wish a better
coadjutor than Carloman, who was really rather more a monk than
a prince. And so Boniface no longer delayed the organization of
the Hessian and Thuringian churches, for in the course of the
year 741 he founded four bishoprics there. It was a matter of
still greater consequence that Carloman and then also Pepin aided
him in the reorganization of the Frankish national church on
both sides of the Vosges mountains, where partly on account of
sympathy with the British church system, partly on account of the
wild spirit engendered by a life of war and the chase, the clergy
had not hitherto submitted to the influence of the papal emissary.
In order that the estates of the realm might be advised by “the
envoy of St. Peter” and the clergy of the empire about what was
necessary for the Austrasian church, Carloman, at the close of
an imperial diet, at a place unknown, called the first Austrasian
Synod, _Concilium Germanicum_, in A.D. 742, and gave to its
decrees the authority of imperial laws. Boniface was recognised
as Archbishop and Primate of the whole Austrasian church; it was
forbidden that the higher or lower clergy should have anything
to do with arms, hunting and war, that all “false and adulterous”
priests should be expelled; that the admission of “strange”
clerics should be dependent on examination before a Synod to
be held annually; that in all monasteries the Benedictine rule
(§ 85, 1) should be enforced; and that it be made the duty of
counts to support the bishops in maintaining church discipline
and stamping out all remnants of paganism. In the next year,
A.D. 743, Carloman summoned the Second Austrasian Synod at
Liptinä, now Lestines, near Cambray, which confirmed the decrees
of the first and enlarged their scope, especially in regard to
the rooting out of pagan superstition and enforcing strictly the
Romish prohibition of marriage between those naturally (§ 61, 2)
and spiritually (§ 58, 1) related. Thus upon the whole the
legal reorganization of the church of Austrasia might have
been regarded as complete, even though its actual enforcement
required yet many severe struggles. In A.D. 744 Boniface laid
the foundation of the famous monastery of Fulda which for
many centuries was a chief resort and principal school of
the Benedictine monks of Germany. Its first abbot was young
Sturm.--After the close of the Austrasian Synod Boniface began
to treat with Pepin about the reorganization of the church in
Neustria. Pepin called a Neustrian provincial Synod at Soissons
in A.D. 744. Its decrees in regard to discipline were in essential
agreement with those of the two Austrasian Synods. Besides it was
resolved to erect three metropolitan sees. Two of the prelates
designate, however, refused to accept the pallium offered by pope
Zacharias, A.D. 741-752, ostensibly on the plea that the payment
of the fee demanded would render them guilty of simony. Their
refusal, however, was perhaps mainly due to Pepin’s discovery
that the political unity of Neustria required a Primate at Rheims
rather than three metropolitans (§ 83). At a national Synod,
place of meeting unknown, held in A.D. 745, called by the two
princes acting together, at Boniface’s request the bishop Gewilib
of Mainz, a rude warrior guilty of secret murders, was deposed.
It was now the wish of Boniface that he should receive the vacant
episcopal chair of Cologne, which was destined to be raised
into a metropolitan see. Yet, through the machinations of his
opponents, the vacancy at Cologne was otherwise filled, and
Boniface was at last obliged to be satisfied with the less
important bishopric of Mainz. At a second national Council
of A.D. 748 held probably at Düren he succeeded in getting
a considerable number of Austrasian and Neustrian bishops to
subscribe a declaration of absolute submission to the pope
in which they fully acknowledged the papal supremacy over the
Frankish church. Pepin, who now, after the retirement of his
brother Carloman from the government in A.D. 747, in order to
spend the rest of his days in the monastery of Monte Cassino,
was sole ruler of both kingdoms, obtained the express approval
of pope Zacharias in A.D. 752 in making an end of the puppet
show of a sham Merovingian royalty (§ 82, 1). But it is quite
a mistake to say that Boniface was the intermediary in this
matter between the pope and the mayor of the palace. His letters
rather show, from the disfavour in which he at that time stood
at the court of Pepin, that the negociations were carried on
directly with the pope without his knowledge.[218]
§ 78.6. =Heresies Confronted by Boniface.=--Among the numerous
heresies with which Boniface had to deal the most important were
those of the Frankish Adalbert, the Scotchman Clement, and the
Irishman Virgilius. Adalbert wrought on the left bank of the
Rhine far into the interior of Neustria; Clement among the East
Franks. In the summer of A.D. 743 Carloman had at Boniface’s
urgent request cast both into prison, and at the Neustrian Synod
of Soissons in A.D. 744 Boniface secured Adalbert’s condemnation.
Yet soon after we find both at liberty. Boniface now accused them
before the pope Zacharias, and they were condemned unheard at
a Lateran Council in A.D. 745. The legate’s written accusation
charged the Frankish =Adalbert= with the vilest hypocrisy and
blasphemy: He boasted that an angel had brought him relics
of extraordinary miracle-working power, by which he could do
anything that God could; he placed himself on an equality with
the apostles; he introduced unlearned and uncanonically ordained
bishops; he forbade pilgrimages to Rome, and the consecration
of churches and chapels in the names of apostles and martyrs,
but had no objection to their consecration in his own name; he
neglected divine service in consecrated places and assembled the
people for worship in woods and fields and wheresoever it seemed
good to him; he let his own hair and nails be venerated as relics;
he absolved those who came to him in confession with the words:
I know all your sins, for nothing is hidden from me, confession
is unnecessary, go in peace, your sins are forgiven you, etc.;
in this way he won great influence especially over women and
peasants, who honoured him as a great apostle and miracle-worker.
Three documents supported the report of Boniface; viz., a
biography of Adalbert composed by one of his admirers, according
to which his mother in the “ever blessed” hour of his birth had
in vision seen an ox go forth out her right side; also, a letter
said to have fallen from heaven to Jerusalem which guaranteed his
divine mission; and finally, a prayer composed by him which while
generally breathing a spirit of deep humility and firm faith,
went on to invoke a rarely-named angel. If we strike out from
these charges those which evidently rest upon misunderstanding
and legendary or malevolent exaggeration, we have before us a
man who in opposition to the prevailing worship of saints and
relics maintained that the relics set up for veneration were no
more worthy of it than his own hair and nails would be, who also
disputed the advantage of pilgrimages, denied the necessity of
auricular confession, insisted upon the universal priesthood of
believers in opposition to Romish hierarchical claims, and the
evangelical worship of God in spirit and in truth in opposition
to the Romish overestimation of consecrated places; but in
doing so perhaps, more certainly in mystic-theosophic enthusiasm
than in conscious deceitfulness, he may have boasted of divine
revelations and the possession of miracle-working power.--The
figure of the Scotchman =Clement= comes out yet more distinctly
in the charge formulated against him. He is simply an adherent
of the pure and unadulterated ecclesiastical system of the old
British church. He treats with contempt the Canon law, and does
not regard himself as bound by the decrees of Synods or the
authority of the Latin Fathers; he claims to be a bishop and
still lives in “adulterous” wedlock; he affirms that a man
may marry the widow of his deceased brother; he teaches with
reference to Christ’s descent into hell that even those who
died in heathenism may yet be redeemed, and “_affirmat multa
alia horribilia de prædestinatione Dei contraria fidei cath_.”
The pope committed to his legate the execution of the Synod’s
condemnatory judgment. But still in A.D. 747 Boniface again
complains that the undiminished reputation of both heretics at
all points stands in his way. Soon after this, however, Carloman,
after Adalbert had submitted in a disputation with Boniface, sent
him into confinement in the monastery of Fulda, from which he
made his escape, and after long wanderings was at last killed
by the swineherds. No information has reached us as to the end
of Clement.--The Irishman =Virgilius= was from A.D. 744 bishop
of Salzburg, and, as before at the court of Pepin, so now at his
recommendation at the court of the Bavarian duke Odilo, he stood
in high favour. After a long and determined refusal he at last
agreed to submit to the Romish choice of bishops. A priest of
his diocese unskilled in Latin had baptized _in nomine patria
et filia et speritus sancti_, Boniface pronounced such baptism
invalid. Virgilius thought otherwise and appealed to the pope
who was obliged to admit that he was right. But now Boniface
complained of him as a heretic because he taught: _Quod alius
mundus et alii homines sub terra sint_, and this time the pope
took the side of his legate, because upon the accepted notion
of the orbicular form of the earth, the doctrine of antipodes
(already regarded by Lactantius and Augustine as of dangerous
tendency) amounted to a denial of the unity of the human
race and the universality of redemption, whereas the Irishman
belonging to a seafaring race probably considered the earth to
be globular. The pope, in A.D. 748, ordered his deposition and
removal from the clerical order, which Boniface, however, was
not able to accomplish.[219]
§ 78.7. =The End of Boniface.=--On the one hand, distrusted,
and set aside by Pepin and the new pope Stephen II., A.D. 752-757,
from his position as legate (§ 82, 1), and also, on the other
hand, feeling himself overborne in his old age by the burden of
his episcopal and archiepiscopal cares, sorrows and conflicts,
Boniface had his favourite pupil, the energetic Lullus, already
recognised by pope Zacharias, elected as his successor, and
with Pepin’s consent transferred to him at once the independent
administration of the episcopal diocese of Mainz. He now
determined to devote his last as he had his first energies
undividedly to his archiepiscopal diocese embracing the Frisian
church, which still needed firm episcopal control and was now
threatened with a pagan reaction. After Wilibrord’s death in
A.D. 739, Cologne, resting its pretensions on an ancient deed
of gift by Dagobert, claimed jurisdiction over the Frisian church.
Boniface indeed at Carloman’s orders had ordained a new bishop
to the Utrecht chair, in A.D. 741, probably the Anglo-Saxon
Eoban. Yet this new bishop never came into actual, at least not
into undisputed possession. In one of his last letters Boniface
earnestly but in vain implores pope Stephen II. to disallow the
unjust pretensions of Cologne. Charlemagne first settled the
dispute by requiring Alberich, Gregory’s successor in the Utrecht
see, to receive consecration at the hands of the Cologne prelate.
With a stately retinue of fifty-two followers clerical or lay,
and with a foreboding presentiment carrying with him a winding
sheet, Boniface sailed down the Rhine in the spring of A.D. 754.
Whether he had now in view a reorganization of the existing
Frisian church and how far he succeeded, we have no means of
knowing. On the other hand his biographers in their legendary
exaggeration cannot sufficiently extol the wonderful success
of his missionary preaching. Wherever he appeared throughout
the land he baptized thousands of heathens. At last he had
pitched his tent in the neighbourhood of what is now Dokkum,
and there, on June 5th, A.D. 755, a number of neophytes received
confirmation. But a wild troop of heathen apostates rushed down
on them before the break of day. The guard desired to offer armed
resistance, but Boniface refused to shed blood, and, according
to the report of an old woman, received his deathblow holding the
gospel over his head. His companions were also cut down around
him. Utrecht, Mainz and Fulda quarrelled over his bones. Signs
and wonders at last decided in favour of Fulda, which he had
himself fixed upon as their resting place.--By order of Lullus,
a priest of Mainz called Wilibald wrote his life about A.D. 760.
Another life by an anonymous author in Utrecht appeared about
A.D. 790; and yet another by the Regensburg monk Othlo about
A.D. 1060. His literary remains consist of Epistles, Sermons,
and Penitentials of doubtful authenticity.
§ 78.8. =An Estimate of Boniface.=--In opposition to the current
Roman Catholic apotheosis of Boniface which assigns to him as the
true Apostle of the Germans the highest place of honour in the
firmament of German saints and cannot find the least shadow or
defect in all his life, struggles and doings, ultra-protestant
estimates have run to the very contrary extreme. Ebrard has
carried this to the utmost length. He refuses to credit him with
zeal, any hearty regard, any real capacity for proper mission
work among the heathens. Alongside of Wilibrord he was only a
despicable Romish spy; in Hesse and Thuringia only the brutal
destroyer of the Culdee church that flourished there, and in the
Frankish empire only the inconscionable agent of Rome who allied
himself to the Rome-favouring dynasty of Pepin in order to secure
the overthrow of the Culdee-favouring Merovingians, purchasing
thus Frankish aid in subjecting the German and Frankish churches
to the hierarchical tyranny of Rome. He can find in him no
trace of intellectual or spiritual greatness. On the contrary
fanaticism, hatred and a persecuting spirit, intrigue and
dishonesty, servility, dissimulation, hypocrisy, lying and
double dealing are there in abundance. His world-wide fame
is accounted for by this, that he is the accursed founder of
all mischief which has arisen upon Germany from its connection
with the papal chair.--It is true that Boniface stopped the
course of the national and independent development of the German
church that had begun and put it on the track of Roman Catholic
development and mal-development. But even had Boniface never
crossed the Channel this fate could scarcely have been averted.
It is further true that Boniface was far more eager in uprooting
heretical “Celtism” and bringing Frankish and Bavarian Christians
under the Romish yoke than in converting heathen Saxons to
Christianity. But he was thus eager because that seemed to him
in the first instance more necessary and important than aiming
at new conversions. It is a crying injustice to deny that he
showed any zeal, any energy, or that he had any success in the
conversion of the heathen in Friesland, Hesse and Thuringia. All
his thoughts, labours and endeavours are dominated by a steadfast
conviction that the pope is the head and representative of
the church in which alone salvation can be found. But yet with
him the church laws which emanate from the Holy Spirit stand
superior to the pope. Hence the right of final decision on all
ecclesiastical questions belongs indeed to the pope, but only
_secundum canones_. The expression ascribed to Boniface in
Gratian’s Decretal: _Papa a nemine judicetur nisi devius a
fide_ is never met with in any of his extant writings, but
it thoroughly well characterizes his position. Thus alongside
of the most abject submission to the chair of Peter, we see
how firmly he speaks to pope Zacharias in connection with
the Neustrian pallium affair about the Simoniacal greed of
the officials, and on another occasion declares his profound
indignation at the immoral, superstitious and blasphemous
proceedings, fit to be compared to the old pagan Saturnalia,
which, went on in Rome openly before the eyes of the pope
unchecked and unpunished. He also showed brave resistance
when papal dispensations infringed his ordinances founded
upon the canon law, and protested vigorously, when Stephen II.,
in A.D. 754, disregarding the archiepiscopal authority gave
episcopal consecration to Chrodegang of Metz. But Boniface never
mixed himself up with the political intrigues of the popes, nor
did he ever intermeddle in the political manœuvres between Pepin
and the Merovingians, between the Frankish empire and its German
vassals. An inventive genius, great and profound thoughts, a
liberal and comprehensive view of matters, we certainly often
miss in him. All his thoughts, feelings and desires were bound
within the narrow limits of Romish ecclesiasticism. His piety
was deep, earnest and sincere, but is quite of the legalistic
and hard external kind that characterizes Roman Catholicism.
With the most painful conscientiousness he holds by Rome’s
ecclesiastical institutions; any resistance to these is abhorrent
to him and he persecutes heresies as cursed and soul-destroying.
He clearly understands the absurdity of prohibiting marriage
between those who are related only in baptism and at confirmation.
For he sees that on this principle all marriages between Christian
people as recipients of baptism must be forbidden since by
baptism they have all become sons and daughters of Christ and His
church, and so are spiritually brothers and sisters. But then he
willingly sacrifices his understanding, and continues to denounce
all marriages between those spiritually related as fearful sin
and horrible incest. Very characteristic too are many of his
questions to the popes as to what should be held on this point
and that, mostly about very trivial and indifferent matters of
common life. Thus he lets himself be informed that raw bacon
should only be eaten smoked, but that the eating of the flesh of
horses, hares, beavers, jackdaws, ravens and storks is absolutely
forbidden, “_immundum enim est et execrabile_.”[220]
§ 78.9. =The Conversion of the Saxons.=--The first missionary
attempts among the Saxons, who had forced their way from the
north-west of Germany down to the neighbourhood of the Rhine,
were made by two Anglo-Saxon monks, who were both called Ewald,
the black or the white Ewald. A Saxon peasant received them
hospitably, but so soon as he discovered their object, fell
upon them with his household servants and slew them, A.D. 691.
Boniface had many pious wishes about his heathen kinsfolk but
did nothing for their conversion. The most that he did was
to found the monastery of Fulda on the Saxon frontier as the
rallying point for a future clerical raid upon Saxon paganism.
For thirty years, however, this remained but a pious wish, till
at last the sword of the most powerful of the Frankish kings
took up the mission. The subjugation of the powerful as well as
hostile Saxon people was with Charlemagne a political necessity.
But lasting subjugation was impossible without conversion and
conversion was impossible without subjugation; for the Saxons
hated the religion of the Franks no less heartily than they did
the Franks themselves. Alcuin with true magnanimity exerted all
his influence with his royal friend against any use of force in
conversion, but political necessity overcame the counsel of the
much trusted friend. The Saxon war lasted for thirty-three years,
A.D. 772-804. In the very first campaign the strongest Saxon
fortress Eresburg was stormed and their most revered idol, the
Erminsul, was destroyed. Frankish priests followed the Frankish
arms and Christianized immediately the conquered districts. But
as soon as Charlemagne’s army was engaged elsewhere, the Saxons
proceeded to destroy again all Christian foundations. In the
imperial diet at Paderborn in A.D. 777 they were obliged to
swear that life and property would be forfeited by a new apostasy.
But the most powerful of the Saxon princes, Wittekind, who had
not appeared at the diet, organized a new revolt. The Frankish
army sustained a fearful defeat at Mount Sunthal, all Christian
priests were murdered, all churches were destroyed. Charlemagne
took a dreadful revenge. At Verden he beheaded in one day 4,500
Saxons. After a new rebellion, a second diet at Paderborn in
A.D. 785 prescribed for them horribly bloody laws. The least
resistance against the precepts of the church was punished with
death. Wittekind and Albion, the two most famous Saxon chiefs,
acknowledged the vanity of further resistance. They were baptized
in A.D. 785 and continued thenceforward faithful to the king
and the church. But the rebellions of the rest of the Saxons
were still continued. In A.D. 804 Charlemagne drove 10,000 Saxon
families from their homes on the Elbe, and gave the country to
the Obohites [Obotrites] that were subject to him. Now for the
first time was a lasting peace secured. Charlemagne had founded
eight bishoprics in Saxony, and under these bishops’ care
throughout this blood-deluged country, no longer disturbed,
a Christianity was developed as truly hearty and fresh as in
any other part of Germany. One witness to this among others is
afforded by the popular epic the Heliand (§ 89, 3).[221]
§ 79. THE SLAVS IN GERMAN COUNTRIES.[222]
The sudden rush of the wild hordes of the Huns in the 5th century
drove the Slavs to the south of the Danube and to the west of the
Vistula. Again in the 6th century Slavic tribes forced their way
westward under pressure from the Mongolian Avars who took possession
of Dacia, Pannonia and Dalmatia. For the conversion of the Slavs in
north-eastern Germany nothing was done; but much was attempted on
behalf of the conversion of the southern Slavs and the Avars, who were
specially under the care of the see of Salzburg.
§ 79.1. =The Carantanians and Avars.=--The Carantanian prince
Boruth, in what is now called Carinthia, in A.D. 748 asked the
help of the Bavarian duke Thassilo II. against the oppression
of the Avars. His nephew Chatimar, who had received a Christian
training in Bavaria, when in A.D. 753 he succeeded to the throne,
introduced Christianity into his country. After the overthrow
of Thassilo in A.D. 788, Carinthia came under Frankish rule, and
Charlemagne extended his conquests over the Avars and Moravians.
Bishop Arno of Salzburg, to whom metropolitan rights had been
accorded, conducted a regular mission by Charlemagne’s orders
for the conversion of these peoples. In A.D. 796, Tudun, the
prince of the Avars, with a great band of his followers, received
baptism, and vowed in A.D. 797 to turn the whole nation of the
Avars to Christianity, and asked for Christian teachers. In
the 9th century, however, the name of the Avars passed away
from history.
§ 79.2. =The Moravian Church.=--In A.D. 855 Rastislaw, Grand
Duke of Moravia, freed his country from the Frankish yoke and
deprived the German bishops of all their influence. He asked
Slavic missionaries from the Byzantine emperor. The brothers
=Cyril= and =Methodius= (§ 73, 2, 3) who had already approved
themselves as apostles of the Slavs, answered the call in
A.D. 863. They introduced a liturgy and public worship in the
language of the Slavs, and by preaching in the Slavic tongue
they won their way to the hearts of the heathen people. But in
spite of this encouraging success they found themselves, amid
the political convulsions of the age, in a difficult position.
Only by attachment to the pope could they reasonably expect
to hold their ground. They accepted therefore an invitation
of Nicholas I. in A.D. 867, but on their arrival in Rome they
found that Hadrian II. had succeeded to the papal chair. Cyril
remained in Rome and soon died, A.D. 869. =Methodius= swore
fealty to the pope and was sent away as archbishop of Moravia.
But now all the more were the German bishops hostile to him.
They suspected his fidelity to the pope, charged him with heresy
and inveighed against the Slavic liturgy which he had introduced.
John VIII., rendered suspicious of him by these means, called
upon him in strong terms in A.D. 879 to make answer for himself
at Rome. Methodius obeyed and succeeded in completely vindicating
himself. The pope confirmed him in his archiepiscopal rank and
expressly permitted him to use the Slavic liturgy, enjoining,
however, that by way of distinction the gospel should first be
read in Latin and then rendered in a Slavic translation. The
intrigues of the German clergy, however, continued and embittered
the last days of the good and brave apostle of the Slavs. He
died in A.D. 885. A general persecution now broke out against
the Slavic priests and the metropolitan chair of Moravia remained
vacant for fourteen years. John IX. restored it in A.D. 899. But
in A.D. 908 the Moravian kingdom was overthrown. The Bohemians
and Magyars shared the spoil between them.
§ 79.3. =The Beginnings of Christianity in Bohemia.=--On New
Year’s day of A.D. 845 fourteen Bohemian lords appeared at
Regensburg at the court of Louis of Germany and asked for
baptism along with their followers. Of the motives and of
the consequences of this step we know nothing. When Rastislaw
raised the Moravian empire to such a height of glory the
Bohemians connected themselves closely with Moravia. Rastislaw’s
successor Swatopluc married a daughter of the Bohemian
prince Borsivoi in A.D. 871. After that Methodius extended
his missionary labours into Bohemia. Borsivoi himself and his
wife, Ludmilla, were baptized by Methodius in A.D. 871. The sons
of Borsivoi, also, Spitihnew, who died in A.D. 912 and Wratislaw,
who died in A.D. 926, with the active support of their mother
furthered the interests of the church in Bohemia.
§ 80. THE SCANDINAVIAN NATIONS.[223]
The mission to the Frisians and Saxons called the attention of
missionaries to the neighbouring Jutes and Danes. Wilibrord (§ 78, 3)
in A.D. 696 carried the gospel across the Eider, and Charlemagne felt
it necessary in order to maintain his authority over the Frisians and
Saxons to extend his conquest and that of the church over the peninsula
of Jutland to the sea coast. He could not, however, accomplish his
design. Better prospects opened up before Louis the Pious. Threatened
with expulsion through disputes about the succession, Harald the king
of the Jutes sought the protection of the Franks. Consequently Ebo,
archbishop of Rheims, crossed the Eider in A.D. 823 at the head of an
imperial embassy and clothed with full authority from pope Paschalis I.
He baptized also a number of Danes, and when, after a year’s absence,
he returned home, he took with him several young Jutes to educate as
teachers for their countrymen. But Harald was again hard pressed and
concluded to break entirely with the national paganism. In A.D. 826 he
took ship, with wife and child, accompanied by a stately retinue, and
at Mainz, where Louis then held his court, received baptism with great
pomp and ceremony. Soon after his return a young monk followed him
from the monastery of Corbei on the Weser. =Ansgar=, the apostle of
the north, had committed to him by Louis the hard and dangerous task
of winning the Scandinavian nations for the church. Ansgar devoted his
whole life to the accomplishment of this task, and in an incomparable
manner fulfilled it, so far as indomitable perseverance, devotion and
self-denial amid endless difficulties and perverse opposition could
do it.
§ 80.1. =Ansgar= or Anschar, the son of a Frankish nobleman, born
A.D. 801, was educated in the monastery of Old Corbie in Picardy,
and on the founding of New Corbie in A.D. 822 was made Superior
of it. Even in very early youth he had dreams and visions which
led him to look forward to the mission field and the crown of
martyrdom. Accompanied by his noble-minded brother monk Autbert,
who would not let his beloved friend go alone, Ansgar started in
A.D. 826 on his first missionary journey. Harald had established
his authority in the maritime provinces of Jutland, but he
ventured not to push on into the interior. In this way the
missionary efforts of the two friends were restricted. On the
frontier of Schleswig, however, they founded a school, bought
and educated Danish slave youths, redeemed Christian prisoners
of war and preached throughout the country. But in the year
following Harald was driven out and fled to the province of
Rüstringen on the Weser, which Louis assigned to him for life.
Also the two missionaries were obliged to follow him. Autbert
died in the monastery of Corbie in A.D. 829, having retired
again to it when seized with illness. Soon afterwards the emperor
obtained information through ambassadors sent by the Swedish
king Bjorn, that there were many isolated Christians in their
land, some of them merchants, others prisoners of war, who had
a great desire to be visited by Christian priests. Ansgar, with
several companions, undertook this mission in A.D. 830. On the
way they were plundered by Norse pirates. His companions spoke
of returning home, but Ansgar would not be discouraged. King
Bjorn received them in a very kindly manner. A little group
of Christian prisoners gathered round them and heartily joined
in worship. A school was erected, boys were bought and adults
preached to. Several Swedes sought baptism, among them the
governor of Birka, Herigar, who built at his own cost the first
Christian church. After eighteen months Ansgar returned to the
Frankish court in order to secure a solid basis for his mission.
Louis thus perceived an opportunity of founding a bishopric for
the Scandinavian Norsemen at Hamburg on the borders of Denmark.
He appointed Ansgar bishop in A.D. 834, and assigned to him and
the mission the revenues of the rich abbey of Turholt in Flanders.
Ansgar obtained in Rome from Gregory IV. the support of a bull
which recognised him as exclusively vicar apostolic over all the
Norse. Then he built a cathedral at Hamburg, besides a monastery,
bought again Danish boys to educate for the priesthood and sent
new labourers among the Swedes, at whose head was the Frankish
monk Gauzbert. But soon misfortunes from all sides showered down
upon the poor bishop. His patron Louis died in A.D. 840, Harald
apostatized from the faith, the Swedish missionaries were driven
out by the pagans, the Norse rushed down on Hamburg and utterly
destroyed city, church, monastery, and library. Moreover Charles
the Bald took possession of the abbey of Turholt which according
to the Treaty of Verdun in A.D. 843 had fallen to Flanders, in
order to bestow it upon a favourite. Ansgar was now a homeless
beggar. His clergy, when he had no longer support for them, left
him. His mission school was broken up. His neighbour, bishop
Leuterich of Bremen, with whom he sought shelter, inspired by
despicable jealousy, turned him from his door. At last he got
shelter from a nobleman’s widow who provided for him at her
own expense a lodging at Ramslo, a country house near Hamburg.
In A.D. 846 Leuterich died. Louis of Germany now gave to the
homeless Apostle of the North a fixed habitation by appointing
Ansgar to the vacant bishopric. The bishops of Cologne and Verden
had divided between them the shattered fragments of the Hamburg
bishopric. But at last pope Nicholas I. in A.D. 834 put an end
to their selfish pretensions by uniting the two dioceses of
Hamburg and Bremen into one, and conferring upon it metropolitan
rights for the North. But meanwhile Ansgar notwithstanding all
the neediness in which he himself lived had been working away
uninterruptedly on behalf the Scandinavian mission. In =Denmark=
the king was Eric whose court Ansgar repeatedly visited as
ambassador of the German king. By Eric’s favour he had been
enabled to found a church in Schleswig and to organize a mission
stretching over the whole country. Eric did not venture himself
to pass over to Christianity, and when pagan fanaticism broke out
in open rebellion in A.D. 854, he fell in a battle against his
nephew who headed the revolt. A boy, Eric II., perhaps grandson
of the fallen Eric, mounted the throne. But the chief Jovi
reigned in his name, a bitter foe of the Christians, who drove
away all Christian priests and threatened every Christian in the
land with death. Yet in A.D. 855 Eric II. emancipated himself
from the regency of Jovi and granted toleration to the Christians.
The work of conversion was now again carried on with new zeal and
success.--All attempts, by means of new missionaries, to gather
again the fragments of the mission in =Sweden=, broken up by
Gauzbert’s expulsion, had hitherto proved vain. At last Ansgar
himself started on his journey thitherward about A.D. 850. By
rich presents and a splendid entertainment he won king Olaf’s
favour. A popular assembly determined to abide by the decision
of the sacred lot and this decided in favour of the adoption
of Christianity. From that time the Swedish mission was carried
on without check or hindrance under the direction of Erimbert,
whom Ansgar left there. Ansgar died in A.D. 865. The most dearly
cherished hope of his life, that he should be honoured with the
crown of martyrdom, was not realized; but a life so full of toil,
privation and trouble, sacrifice, patience and self-denial, was
surely nobler than a martyr’s crown.[224]
§ 80.2. =Ansgar’s Successor= in the see of Hamburg-Bremen was
=Rimbert=, his favourite scholar, his companion in almost all
his journeys, who wrote an account of his master’s life and
pronounced him a saint. He laboured according to his ability
to follow in the steps of his teacher, especially in his care
for the Scandinavian mission. But he was greatly hindered by
the wild doings of the Danish and Norse pirates. This trouble
reached its height after Rimbert’s death, and went so far
that the archbishop of Cologne on the pretext that the Hamburg
see had been extinguished was able to renew his claims upon
Bremen.--Continuation, § 93.
§ 81. CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM.[225]
From A.D. 665 the Byzantine rule in =North Africa= (§ 76, 3) was
for a time narrowed and at last utterly overthrown by the Saracens
from Egypt, with whom were joined the Berbers or Moors who had been
converted to Islam. In A.D. 711, called in by a rebel, they also
overthrew the Visigoth power in =Spain= (§ 76, 2). In less than
five years the whole peninsula, as far as the mountain boundaries
of the north, was in the hands of the Moors. Then they cast a covetous
glance upon the fertile plains beyond the Pyrenees, but Charles Martel
drove them back with fearful loss in the bloody battle of Poitiers
in A.D. 732. The Franks were in this the saviours of Europe and of
Christianity. In A.D. 750 the Ommaiadean dynasty at Damascus, whose
lordship embraced also the Moors, were displaced by the Abbassidean,
but a scion of the displaced family, Abderrhaman I., appeared in Spain
and founded there an independent khalifate at Cordova in A.D. 756,
which soon rose to an unexampled splendour. Also in =Sicily= the Moslem
power obtained an entrance and endeavoured from that centre to maintain
itself by constant raids upon the courts of Italy and Provence. The
expulsion of the Moors from Spain and Sicily was first completely
accomplished during the next period (§ 95).
§ 81.1. =Islam in Spain.=--The Spanish Christians under the
Ommaiade rule were called Mozarabians, _Arabi Mustaraba_, _i.e._
Arabianized Arabs as distinguished from Arabs proper or _Arabi
Araba_. They were in many places under less severe restrictions
than the Oriental Christians under Saracen rule. Many Christian
youths from the best families attended the flourishing Moorish
schools, entered enthusiastically upon the study of the Arabic
language and literature, pressed eagerly on to the service of the
Court and Government, etc. But in opposition to such abandonment
of the Christian and national conscience there was developed
the contrary extreme of extravagant rigorism in obtrusive
confessional courage and uncalled-for denunciation of the prophet.
Christian fanaticism awakened Moslem fanaticism, which vented
itself in a bloody persecution of the Christians in A.D. 850-859.
The first martyr was a monk Perfectus. When asked his opinion
about Mohammed he had pronounced him a false prophet, and was
executed. The khalif of that period, Abderrhaman II., was no
fanatic. He wished to stop the extravagant zeal of the Christians
at its source, and made the metropolitan Recafrid of Seville
issue an ecclesiastical prohibition of all blasphemy of the
prophet. But this enactment only increased the fanaticism of
the rigorists, at whose head stood the presbyter, subsequently
archbishop, Eulogius of Cordova and his friend Paulus
Alvarus (§ 90, 6). Eulogius himself, who kept hidden from
her parents a converted Moorish maiden, and was on this account
beheaded along with her in A.D. 859, was the last victim of
the persecution.--The rule of the Arabs in Spain, however, was
threatened from two sides. When Roderick’s government (§ 76, 2)
had fallen before the arms of the Saracens in A.D. 711, Pelayo,
a relation of his, with a small band of heroic followers,
maintained Christian national independence in the inaccessible
mountains of Asturia, and his son-in-law Alphonso the Catholic
in the Cantabrian mountains on the Bay of Biscay. Alphonso
subsequently united both parties, conquered Galicia and the
Castilian mountain land, erecting on all sides the standard
of the cross. His successors in innumerable battles against
the infidels enlarged their territory till it reached the
Douro. Of these Alphonso II., the Chaste, who died in A.D. 850,
specially distinguished himself by his heroic courage and his
patronage of learning. Oviedo was his capital. On the east
too the Christian rule now again made advance.--Charlemagne
in A.D. 778 conquered the country down to the Ebro. But a
rebellion of the Saxons prevented him advancing further, and
the freebooting Basques of the Pyrenees cut down his noblest
heroes. Two subsequent campaigns in A.D. 800, 801, reduced all
the country as far as the Ebro, henceforth called the Spanish
March, under the power of the Franks.[226]
§ 81.2. =Islam in Sicily.=--A Byzantine military officer
fled from punishment to Africa in A.D. 827 and returned with
10,000 Saracen troops which terribly devastated Sicily. Further
migrations followed and in a few years all Sicily was under the
rule of the Arabs, who made yearly devastating raids from thence
upon the Italian coasts, venturing even to the very gates of Rome.
In A.D. 880 they settled on the banks of the Garigliano, and put
all central Italy under tribute, until at last in A.D. 916 the
efforts of pope John X. were successful in driving them out.
Spanish-Moorish pirates landed in A.D. 889 on the coasts of
Provence, besieged the fortress of Fraxinetum, and plundered
from this centre for a hundred years the Alpine districts and
northern Italy. Their robber career in south Italy was most
serious of all. It lasted for three centuries and was first
brought to an end by the Norman invasion.--Continuation, § 95, 1.
II. THE HIERARCHY, THE CLERGY AND THE MONKS.
§ 82. THE PAPACY AND THE CAROLINGIANS.
The Christianizing of the German world was in great part accomplished
without the help of Rome. Hence the German churches, even those that
were Catholic, troubled themselves little at first about the papal
chair. The Visigoth church in Spain was most completely estranged
from it. The Saracen invasion of A.D. 711 cut off all possibility
of intercourse with Rome. Even the free Christian states in Spain
down to the 11th century had no connection with Rome. The Frankish
churches, too, in Gaul as well as in Austrasia, throve and ran wild
in their independence during the Merovingian age. On the other hand,
the relation of the English Church to Rome was and continued to be
very intimate. Numerous pilgrimages of Anglo-Saxons of higher and lower
ranks were undertaken to the grave of the chief of the Apostles, and
increased the dependence of the nation on the chair of St. Peter. For
the support of these pilgrims and as a training school for English
clergy, the _Schola Saxonica_ was founded in the 8th century, and for
its maintenance and that of the holy places in the city, on Peter’s day
the 29th June was collected the so-called Peter’s pence, a penny for
every house. Out of this sprang a standing impost on all the English
people for the papal chair, which in the 13th century became a money
tax upon the kings of England which Henry VIII. was the first to
repudiate in A.D. 1532. The credit belongs to the Anglo-Saxons and
especially to Boniface of not only delivering the rich sheaves of their
missionary harvest into the granaries of Rome, but also of organizing
the previously existing churches of the Frankish territories after
the Romish method and rendering them obedient to the Roman see. Since
then there has been such a regular intercourse between the pope and
the Carolingian rulers that it absorbed almost completely the whole
diplomatic activity of the Romish curia.
§ 82.1. =The Period of the Founding of the States of the
Church.=--From bequests and presents of ancient times the
Roman chair succeeded to an immense landed property, _Patrimonium
S. Petri_, which afforded it the means of greatly assuaging the
distress of the inhabitants of Italy during the disturbances
of the migrations of the peoples. There was naturally then no
word of the exercise of sovereign rights. From the time of the
restoration of the Byzantine exarchate in A.D. 567 (§ 76, 7) the
political importance of the pope grew immensely; its continued
existence was often dependent on the good will of the pope for
whom generally indeed the idea of becoming the court patriarch
of a Longobard-Roman emperor was not an enticing one. But the
pope could not prevent the Longobard power (§ 76, 8) from gaining
ground in the north as well as in the south of the peninsula. An
important increase of influence, power and prestige was brought
to the papal chair under =Gregory II.=, A.D. 715-731, through
the rebellions in northern and central Italy occasioned by the
Byzantine iconoclastic disputes. Rome was in this way raised
to a kind of political suzerainty not only over the Roman duchy
but also over the rest of the exarchate in the north--Ravenna
and the neighbouring cities together with Venice (§ 66, 1).
=Gregory III.=, A.D. 731-741, hard pressed by Luitprand the
Longobard, thrice (A.D. 739, 740) applied for help to the Frank
=Charles Martel=, who, closely bound in friendship with Luitprand,
his ally against the Saracens, sent some clerics to Italy to
secure a peaceful arrangement. Gregory’s successor =Zacharias=,
A.D. 741-752, sanctioned by his apostolic judgment the setting
aside of the Merovingian sham king Childeric III., whereupon
=Pepin the Short=, in A.D. 752, assumed the royal title with
the royal power which he had long possessed. The next elected
pope called Stephen died before consecration, consequently his
successor of the same name is usually designated =Stephen II.=,
A.D. 752-757. The Longobard Aistulf had in A.D. 751 conquered
Ravenna and the cities connected with it. Pope Stephen II. sought
help anew of the Frankish king and supported his petition by
forwarding an autograph letter of the Apostle Peter, in which
he exhorted the king of the Franks as his adopted son under
peril of all the pains of hell to save Rome and the Roman church.
He himself at Pepin’s invitation went to France. At Ponthion,
where, in A.D. 754, the king greeted him, Pepin promised the
pope to restore to Rome her former possessions and to give
protection against further inroads of the Longobards; while the
pope imparted to the king and his two sons Charles and Carloman
the kingly anointing in the church of St. Dionysius or Denis
in Paris. At Quiersy then Pepin took counsel with his sons and
the nobles of his kingdom about the fulfilling of his promise,
bound the Longobard king by oath in the year following after
a successful campaign to surrender the cities, properties and
privileges claimed by the pope, and assigned these in A.D. 755
as a present to St. Peter as their possessor from that time forth.
But scarcely had he retired with his army when Aistulf not only
refused all and any surrender, but broke in anew upon Roman
territory, robbing and laying waste on every side. By a second
campaign, however, in A.D. 756, Pepin compelled him actually
to deliver over the required cities in the provinces of Rome
and Ravenna the key of which he deposited with a deed of gift,
no longer extant, on the grave of St. Peter; while the pope,
transferring to Pepin the honorary title of Exarch of Ravenna,
decorated him with the insignia of a Roman patrician. When the
Byzantine envoys claimed Ravenna as their own property, Pepin
answered that the Franks had not shed their blood for the Greeks
but for St. Peter.--Aistulf’s death followed soon after this
and amid the struggles for the succession to the throne one of
the candidates, duke Desiderius of Tuscany, sought the powerful
support of the pope and promised him in return the surrender
of those cities of the eastern province of Ravenna which still
remained in the hands of the Longobards. The pope obtained
Pepin’s consent to this transaction, and Desiderius was
made king. But neither Stephen nor his successor Paul I.,
A.D. 757-767, could get him completely to fulfil his promise,
and new encroachments of the Longobards as well as new claims
of the pope intensified the bad feeling between them, which the
conciliation of Pepin, who died in A.D. 768 had not by any means
overcome.[227]
§ 82.2. After the death of Paul I. the nobles forced one of
their own order upon the Romans as pope under the name of
Constantine II. Another party with Longobard help appointed
a presbyter, Philip. The former maintained his ground for
thirteen months, but was then overthrown by a clerical party
and, with his eyes put out, was cast into the street. They now
united in the choice of =Stephen III.=, A.D. 768-772.--Desiderius
wished greatly to form a marriage connection with the Frankish
court, and found a zealous friend in Bertrada, the widow of Pepin.
When Stephen heard of it his wrath was unbounded, and he gave
unbridled expression to it in a letter which he sent to her sons
Charlemagne and Carloman. Referring to the fact that the devil
had already in Paradise by the persuasion of a woman overthrown
the first man and with him the whole race, he characterized this
plan as _propria diabolica immissio_, declared that any idea
of a connection by marriage of the illustrious reigning family
of the Franks with the _fœtentissima Longobardorum gens_, from
which all vile infections proceed, was nothing short of madness,
etc. Not peace and friendship, but only war and enmity with this
robber of the patrimony of Peter would be becoming in the pious
kings of the Franks. He laid down this his exhortation at the
grave of Peter and performed over it a Mass. Whoever sets himself
to act contrary to it, on him will fall the anathema and with the
devil and all godless men he shall burn in everlasting flames;
but whosoever is obedient to it, shall be partaker of eternal
salvation and glory. Nevertheless Charles married Desiderata the
daughter of Desiderius, and Gisela, Charles’ sister, married the
son of Desiderius. But before a year had passed, in A.D. 771,
he wearied of the Longobard wife and sent her home. Soon after
this Carloman died. Charles seized upon the inheritance of his
youthful nephews, who together with their mother found shelter
with Desiderius. When =Hadrian I.=, A.D. 772-795, refused to give
the royal anointing to Carloman’s sons, Desiderius took from him
a great part of the States of the Church and threatened Rome. But
Charles hastened at the pope’s call to give him help, conquered
Pavia, shut up king Desiderius in the monastery of Corbei, and
joined Lombardy to the Frankish empire. Further information
as to what passed between him and Hadrian at Rome in A.D. 774
is only to be got from the _Vita Hadriani_ (§ 90, 6) written
during the reign of Louis of France. It relates as follows: At
the grave of Peter the pope earnestly exhorted him to fulfil
at last completely the promise which his father Pepin I. with
his own consent and that of the Frankish nobles gave to pope
Stephen II. at Quiersy in A.D. 754. Charles after reading over
the document referred to agreed to everything promised therein,
and produced a new deed of gift after the style (_ad instar_)
of the old, undertaking to transfer to the Roman church
a territorial possession which, together with the assumed
_Promissio_ of Pepin described with geographical precision,
embraced almost all Italy, excepting Lombardy but including
Corsica, Venice and Istria. It is now quite inconceivable that
Charles, let alone Pepin, should have given the pope such an
immense territory which Pepin for a simple footing in A.D. 754,
and Charles for at least three-fourths of it, must have first
themselves conquered. Moreover this account of the matter is
directly contradicted by the statement of all the witnesses of
Pepin’s own times. On the part of the Franks the continuator of
the Chronicler Fredégar, on the part of the Romans the biographer
of Stephen II. in the _Liber pontificalis_ and that pope himself
in his letters to Pepin, all speak of the negociations between
the king and the pope as having reference simply to Rome and
Ravenna. And since all attempts to reconcile these contradictions
by exegetical devices have failed, we can only regard this
as a fiction designed to palm off upon Louis of France Rome’s
own ambitious territorial scheme. All that Charlemagne did was
to confirm and renew his father’s gifts, as Hadrian himself
distinctly states: _Amplius_ (=further, _i.e._ for time to
come) _confirmavit_.--Moreover Pepin, and still more Charlemagne,
would hardly have granted to the holy father by his gift
absolute sovereignty over the States of the Church thus founded.
By conferring the patriciate upon the two Frankish princes,
the pope, indeed, himself acknowledged that the suzerainty
now belonged to them which formerly the Byzantine emperor
had exercised by his viceroy, the exarch of Ravenna. A more
exact definition of these rights, however, may have been first
given when Charles was crowned emperor, his imperial authority
undoubtedly extending over the Papal States. The pope as a
temporal prince was his vassal and must himself, like all
citizens of Rome, take the oath of allegiance to the emperor.
Judicial authority and the appointment of government officials
belonged to him; but they were supervised and controlled by
the Frankish ambassadors, _Missi dominici_, who heard appeals
and complaints of all kinds and were authorized to give a final
judgment.
§ 82.3. =Charlemagne and Leo III.=--Hadrian I. was succeeded by
=Leo III.=, A.D. 795-816. During a solemn procession in A.D. 799
he was murderously attacked by the nephews of his predecessor
and severely beaten. Some of the bystanders declared that they
had seen the bandits tear out his tongue and eyes. The legend
vouched for by the pope himself was added that Peter by a miracle
restored him both the next night. Leo meanwhile escaped from
his tormentors and fled to Charlemagne. His opponents accused
him before the king of perjury and adultery, and the hearing of
witnesses seems to have confirmed the serious charges, for Alcuin
hastened to burn the report which was given in to him on the
subject. But the pope was honourably discharged and assumed again
the chair of Peter under the protection of a Frankish guard.
Next year Charles crossed the Alps with his army for a campaign
against Benevento. He convened a Synod at Rome; but the bishops
maintained that the pope, the head of all, can be judged of none;
yet the pope with twelve sponsors swore an oath of purgation and
prayed for his accusers. At the Christmas festival Charles went
to the church of St. Peter. At the close of Mass the pope amid
the applause of the people placed a beautiful golden crown upon
his head (A.D. 800). The world is asked to believe that he did
it by the immediate impulse of a divine inspiration; but it was
the result of the negociations of years and the fulfilment of
a promise by which the pope had purchased the king’s protection
against his enemies. With the idea of the imperial power
Charlemagne connected the idea of a theocratic Christian
universal monarchy in the sense of Daniel’s prophecy. The
Greeks had proved themselves unworthy of this position and
so God had transferred it to the king of the Franks. As emperor,
Charles stands at the head of all Christendom, and has only
God and His law over him. He is the most obedient son, the most
devoted servant of the church, so far as it is the vehicle and
dispenser of salvation; but he is its supreme lord and ruler so
far as it needs to adopt earthly forms and an earthly government.
Church and state are two separate domains, which, however, on all
sides limit and condition one another. Their uniting head they
have in the person of the emperor. Hence on every hand Charles’
legislation enters the domain of the church, in respect of her
constitution, worship and doctrine. On these matters he consults
the bishops and synods, but he confirms, enlarges and modifies
their decisions according to his own way of thinking, because for
this he is personally answerable to God. In the pope he honours
the successor of Peter and the spiritual head of the church;
but, because the emperor stands over church and state, he is also
ruler of the pope. The pope who gave him imperial consecration
did it not by any power of his own immanent in the papacy, but
by special divine impulse and authority. Hence the crowning
of the emperor is only to be once received at the pope’s hand.
This rank is henceforth hereditary in the house of Charles, and
only the emperor can beget and nominate the new emperor. The
unity of the empire is to be maintained under all circumstances,
and hence, contrary to the Frankish custom of dividing the
inheritance, younger sons are to receive only the subordinate
rank of ruling princes.[228]
§ 82.4. =Louis the Pious and the Popes of his
Time.=--Charlemagne’s weaker son Louis the Pious, A.D. 814-840,
was not in a position to carry out the work his father had begun.
But pious as Louis was, he was yet as little inclined as his
immediate successor to give up the imperial suzerainty over
the city and chair of St. Peter. The popes were most expressly
required before receiving papal consecration to obtain imperial
confirmation of their election. Leo’s successor =Stephen IV.=,
A.D. 816-817, seems indeed to have evaded it, yet still he let
the Romans take the oath of fealty to the emperor, and unasked
submitted to make a journey over the Alps in order to get over
the anomaly of an emperor without the consecration of Peter’s
hand. An agreement come to on that occasion, A.D. 816, between
emperor and pope has not been preserved. A few days after
his return the pope died. The newly-elected =Paschalis I.=,
A.D. 817-824, also indeed mounted the papal chair without
imperial confirmation, but apologized by an embassy on the ground
that he had been unwillingly obliged to act so, and praying for a
continuation of the agreement made with his predecessor, to which
the emperor consented. Indeed, according to a diploma of A.D. 817,
extant only in a transcript, bearing the name of Louis, the
king was to bestow upon the papal chair, besides what Pepin and
Charlemagne had given, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, and many
estates in Calabria and Naples. There was also an undertaking
that only after having been consecrated should any newly-elected
pope interchange friendly greetings with the emperor. All copies
of this document can be traced back to a collection of imperial
grants to the Romish church of the 11th century. At its basis
there lay probably a genuine document, but it has been variously
altered in the interests of the high church party.--Some years
later, after he had decoyed to France and blinded his illegitimate
nephew Bernard, who had as reigning prince in Italy rebelled
against the law of succession passed in A.D. 817, Louis sent his
son Lothair into Italy to quiet the tumults there, and the pope
availed himself of this opportunity to crown the prince already
crowned by his father as co-emperor. But scarcely had Lothair
got over the Alps again when two of the most distinguished and
zealous of the Frankish partisans were in A.D. 823 blinded and
beheaded in the papal palace. Before the imperial commission
the pope took an oath of purgation, to which 34 bishops and
5 presbyters joined with him in swearing, but bluntly refused
to deliver up the perpetrator of the deed. As the pope died soon
afterwards, Lothair was sent a second time to Rome, in order
to enforce once and for all upon his successor =Eugenius II.=,
A.D. 824-827, the observance of imperial rights. The result of
their conference was the so-called _Constitutio Romano_, by which
the election of the pope (§ 46, 11) was taken from the common
people and given to the clergy and nobles, but the consecration
was made dependent on the emperor’s confirmation and an oath
of homage from the newly-elected pope (A.D. 824). Nevertheless
his successor Valentine was elected and consecrated without any
reference to the constitution. He died, however, after six months,
and now the Frankish party came forward so energetically that
the new pope =Gregory IV.=, A.D. 827-844, was obliged to submit
in all particulars to the requirements of the law. But soon
after political troubles arose in the Frankish kingdom which
could not fail to contribute to the endeavours of the papacy
after emancipation. From his weak preference for his younger
son, Charles the Bald, born of a second marriage, Louis was
led in A.D. 829 to set aside the law of succession he himself
had issued in A.D. 817. The sons thus disinherited rebelled with
the assistance of the most distinguished Frankish prelates, at
whose head was Wala, abbot of Old Corbie, cousin of Charlemagne,
and the bishops Agobard of Lyons, Ebo of Rheims, etc., as
assertors of the unity of the empire. Also pope Gregory IV.,
whose predecessors had sanctioned the law of succession now set
aside, was won over and was taken across the Alps by Lothair to
strengthen his cause by the weight of his apostolic authority.
The pope threatened with the ban those bishops who remained true
to the old emperor and had obeyed his summons to attend the diet.
But they answered the pope that he had no authority in the empire
of the Franks, and that if he did not quietly take himself over
the Alps again they would excommunicate him. He was inclined to
yield, but Wala’s counsel restrained him. He answered the bishops
earnestly and moderately, and, as a last attempt at conciliation,
went himself personally to the camp of the emperor, but was
unable to effect anything. But next morning Louis had no army;
during the night most of his soldiers had passed over to the camp
of his enemy. The emperor now had to surrender himself prisoner
to his son Lothair, then at a diet at Compiègne in A.D. 833,
to do humble penance in church and to resign the government. His
penitent son, Louis the German, however, set him free in A.D. 834.
A severe judgment was now passed upon the confederate prelates at
the Diedenhosen in A.D. 835. But the brothers continued constantly
at war with one another, and Louis the Pious did not live to see
the end of it.
§ 82.5. =The Sons of Louis the Pious and the Popes of their
Days.=--The Treaty of Verdun, A.D. 843, put an end to the bitter
war between the sons of Louis the Pious, and made of the western
empire three independent groups of states under Lothair, Louis
the German and Charles the Bald. Lothair I., who got the title
of Emperor with Italy and a strip of land between Neustria and
Austrasia, died in A.D. 855. Of his sons, Louis II. inherited
Italy with title of Emperor, Lothair II. the province called
after him Lotharingia, _Lotharii regnum_, and Charles Burgundy
and Provence. Lothair and Charles died in A.D. 869 soon after one
another without heirs, and before the emperor Louis II. could lay
his hands upon their territories they were seized by the uncle.
By the treaty of Mersen, A.D. 870, Charles took the Romanic, and
Louis the German took the German portions. Thus was completed
the partition of the Carolingian empire into three parts
distinguished as homogeneous groups of states by language
and nationality: Germany, France and Italy.--Gregory IV. had
survived the overthrow of the universal monarchy of Charlemagne.
His successor, =Sergius II.=, A.D. 844-847, did not observe
the obligations devolving on him by the _Constitutio Romana_.
But Lothair I. was not inclined to let pass this slight to
his imperial authority. His son Louis was sent into Italy with
a powerful army, and obliged the pope and the Romans to take
the oaths of fealty to his father with the promise not again to
consecrate a pope before they had the emperor’s consent. But the
next pope =Leo IV.=, A.D. 847-855, was also consecrated without
it, but excused himself from the circumstances of the age,
the pressure of the Saracens, while making humble professions
of most dutiful obedience. His successor =Benedict III.=,
A.D. 855-858, did not regard the imperial consent as necessary,
and the anti-pope set up by the French party could not maintain
his position.
§ 82.6. =The Legend of the Female Pope Joanna.=--Between Leo IV.
and Benedict III. is inserted an old legend of the pontificate
of a woman, the so-called female pope Joanna: A maiden from Mainz
went in man’s clothes with her lover to Athens, obtained there
great learning, then appeared at Rome as Joannes Anglicus,
was elected pope, but having become pregnant by one of her
chamberlains, was seized with labour pains in the midst of a
solemn procession and died soon after, having been pope under
the name of John VIII. for two years, five months and four days.
This story was widely credited from the 13th to the 17th century,
but its want of historical foundation is proved by the following
facts:
1. The immediate succession of Benedict III. to Leo. IV. has
contemporary testimony from the _Annales Bertiniani_ of
A.D. 855, also from a letter of Hincmar to Nicholas I.,
Benedict’s successor, as well as the inscription “Benedict”
and “Lothair,” on a Roman denarius of the same year.
2. Neither Photius nor Michael Cærularius, who certainly would
not have failed to make a handle of such a papal scandal
(§ 67), know anything of the matter.
3. The first certain trace of the existence of such a legend
is found about A.D. 1230 in Stephen of Bourbon, yet there
indeed the words are added: _Ut dicitur in chronicis_; but
he makes the female pope mount St. Peter’s chair only about
A.D. 1100, knows neither her name nor her native country,
and describes the catastrophe of her overthrow differently
from the legend current in later times.
4. On the other hand, the existence of her biography in the
_Liber pontificalis_ between that of Leo IV. and that of
Benedict III., was regarded down to the 17th century as
the oldest and indeed almost contemporary witness to the
historicity of the female pope. It is wanting, however, in
the oldest and best MSS. and must therefore be considered
a later interpolation. This also applies to the reference
made thereto by Marianus Sectus (d. A.D. 1086), Sigbert of
Semblours (d. A.D. 1113), Otto of Friesingen (d. A.D. 1158),
and Godfrey of Viterbo (about A.D. 1190). Even in the oldest
MSS. of the Chronicle of the Roman penitentiary Martinus
Polonus (d. A.D. 1278) we read nothing of the female pope;
yet the story must soon have been inserted there, for
Tolomeo of Lucca about A.D. 1312 affirms in his Church
History, that all writers whom he had read, with the single
exception of Martin, made Benedict III. follow immediately
after Leo IV. Perhaps Martin himself in a second enlarged
edition of his chronicle had inserted a biography of the
female pope, which he might do with the less hesitation
if it was true that the pope of his own time John XX.,
A.D. 1276-1277, thought it wrong not to count the female
pope and so styled himself John XXI. From that time all
chroniclers of the Middle Ages without the slightest
expression of doubt repeated the legend in essentially the
same way as Martin’s chronicle and the _Liber pontificalis_
report it. The Reformed theologian, David Blondel, in
A.D. 1649, performed a service to the Catholic church
by his elaborate critical treatment of the legend which
destroyed all belief in its historicity. After this, however,
it was again vindicated by Spanheim (_Opp._ ii. 577) and
Kist; and even Hase regards it as still conceivable that
the church which has affirmed the existence of things that
never were, may have denied the existence of things that
were, if the knowledge of it might prove hazardous to the
interests of the papacy.
The origin and gradual development of the legend, about the
middle of the 12th century and certainly in Rome, may be most
simply explained with Döllinger from a combination of the
following data.
1. From the time of Paschalis II. in A.D. 1099 it was customary
for the new pope in the solemn Lateran procession when
having his entrance on office attested to sit upon two
old chairs standing in the Lateran with pierced seats,
which probably came from an old Roman bath. But the popular
wit of the Romans suggested another reason for the pierced
seats. The chairs were thus pierced in order that before the
consecration a deacon might satisfy himself of the manhood
of the new pope; for, it would be added by and by, a woman
in disguise was once made pope, etc.
2. In a street of Rome was found a statue in white robes with
a child and an enigmatical inscription, the letter P six
times repeated which some read: _Parce pater patrum papissæ
prodere partum_, others: _Papa pater patrum peperit papissa
papellum_; so that this statue was supposed to represent the
female pope with her child.
3. Further the papal processions between the Lateran and the
Vatican at a point where the direct way was too narrow were
wont to diverge into another wider street; this was done, it
was now said, because at this place the catastrophe referred
to had befallen the female pope.
4. That the name Joannes was given to the female pope is easily
explained from the frequency of this name among the popes.
In A.D. 1024 it had been already held by nineteen. And that
she who had brought such a disgrace upon the papacy should
have been described as a native of the German city of Mainz,
is explained from national antipathy entertained by the
Italians for everything German.
5. Finally, the most difficult part of the problem, why this
episode should have been inserted just between Leo IV. and
Benedict III., may perhaps find satisfactory solution in the
supposition that the legend may have been first introduced
as an appendix to a codex of the _Liber ponficalis_ which
closed with the biography of Leo IV.[229]
§ 82.7. =Nicholas I. and Hadrian II.=--The successor of
Benedict III., =Nicholas I.=, A.D. 858-867, was chosen with
the personal concurrence of the emperor Louis II. then in
Rome. This pope was undoubtedly the greatest of all the popes
between Gregory I. and Gregory VII. He was a man of inflexible
determination, clear insight and subtle intellect, who, favoured
by the political movement of the age, supported by public opinion
which regarded him as a second Elijah, and finally backed up in
his endeavours after papal supremacy by the Isidorian collection
of decretals just now brought forward (§ 87, 2), could give
prestige and glory to the struggle for law, truth and discipline.
Among the many battles of his life none brought him more credit
and renown than that with Lothair II. of Lothringia. That
he might marry his mistress Waldrade, Lothair accused his
wife Thielberga of committing incest before her marriage with
her brother, abbot Hucbert, and of having obtained abortion
to conceal her wickedness. Before a civil tribunal she was in
A.D. 858 acquitted by submitting to a divine ordeal, the boiling
caldron ordeal which a servant undertook for her. But Lothair
treated her so badly that at last, in order simply to be rid of
her tormentors, she confessed herself guilty of the crime charged
against her before a Synod at Aachen in A.D. 859 attended by the
two Lothringian metropolitans Günther of Cologne and Thietgaut
of Treves, and expressed the wish that she should atone for
her sins in a cloister. But soon she regretted this step and
fled to Charles the Bald in Neustria. A second Synod at Aachen
in A.D. 860 now declared the marriage with Thielberga null,
and Lothair formally married Waldrade. Meanwhile the Neustria
metropolitan Hincmar of Rheims had published an opinion in
respect of civil and ecclesiastical law (_De divortio Lotharii_)
wholly favourable to the ill-used queen, and she herself had
referred the matter to the pope. Nicholas sent two Italian
bishops, one of whom was Rhodoald of Porto (§ 67, 1), to
Lothringia to investigate the affair. These took bribes and
decided at the Synod of Metz in A.D. 863 in favour of the
king. But Nicholas annulled the decisions of the Council,
excommunicated his legates and deposed the two Lothringian
metropolitans who had vainly trusted to the omnipotence of
Lothringian gold in Rome. Thirsting for revenge they incited
the emperor Louis II., Lothair’s brother, against the pope.
He besieged Rome, but came to an understanding with the pope
through his wife’s mediation. Lothair, detested by his subjects,
threatened with war by his uncles Louis of Germany and Charles
the Bald as champions of the childless Thielberga, repented and
besought the pope for grace and protection from the ambitious
designs of his uncles. Nicholas now sent a legate, Arsenius,
across the Alps, who acting as plenipotentiary in all three
kingdoms, obliged Lothair to take back Thielberga and put away
Waldrade. But she flung herself upon him and in her arms Lothair
soon forgot the promise to which he had sworn. At the same time
he reconciled himself to his uncles whose zeal had somewhat
cooled in presence of the lordly conduct of the papal legate.
Thielberga now herself sought divorce from the pope. But Nicholas
continued firmly to insist upon his demands. His successor
=Hadrian II.=, A.D. 867-872, an old man of seventy-five years,
could only gradually emancipate himself from the imperial party
which had elected him and taken him under its protection. He
received back again the two excommunicated metropolitans, without,
however, restoring them to their offices, released Waldrade
from church discipline, and always put off granting Thielberga’s
reiterated request for divorce. Lothair now went himself to
Rome, took a solemn oath that he had no carnal intercourse with
Waldrade since the restoration of his wife, and received the
sacrament from the pope’s hand. Full of hope that he would get
success in his object he started for home, but died at Piacenza
of a violent fever in A.D. 869. When dead the uncles pounced
upon the kingdom. Hadrian used all his influence in favour of
the emperor, the legitimate heir, and threatened his opponents
with excommunication. But Hincmar of Rheims composed a state
paper by order of his king, in which he told the pope that the
opinion of France was that he should not interfere with things
about which he knew nothing. The pope was obliged to let this
insult pass unrevenged. In a dispute of his own Hincmar succeeded
in giving the pope a second rebuff (§ 83, 2).[230]
§ 82.8. =John VIII. and his Successors.=--His successor
=John VIII.=, A.D. 872-882, was more successful than Hadrian
in bringing the Carolingian king to kneel at his footstool.
In the art of intrigue and in the perfidy, hypocrisy and
unconscionableness required therefor, he was, however, greatly
superior. He succeeded almost completely in freeing the papal
chair from the imperial authority. But he did so only to make it
a playball of the wildest party interests around his own hearth.
To his account mainly must be laid the unfathomable degradation
and debasement of the papacy during the 10th century. When the
emperor Louis II. died in A.D. 875, Louis the German, as elder
and full brother of his father, ought to have been his heir.
But the pope wished to show the world that the papal favour
could make a gift of the imperial crown to whomsoever it chose.
Accepting his invitation, Charles the Bald appeared in Rome and
was crowned by the pope on Christmas Day, A.D. 875. But he had
to pay dearly for the papal favour, by formally renouncing all
claims to the rights of superior over the States of the Church,
allow for the future absolute freedom in the election of popes,
and accept a papal representative and clerical primate for all
France and Germany. But not altogether satisfied with this,
the pope made the new emperor submit himself to a formal act
of election by the Lombards of Pavia, and in order to secure
the approval of his own nobles to his proceedings he even agreed
to give them the right of election. The Neustrian clergy, however,
with Hincmar at their head, offered a vigorous resistance and
at the first Synod at Pontion in A.D. 876 there were violent
altercations. The shameful compromise satisfied neither pope
nor emperor. In Rome a wild party faction gained ground against
the pope, and the Saracens pressed further and further into Italy.
From the emperor, who knew not how to keep back the advances of
the Normans in his own country, no help could be expected. Yet
he made hasty preparations, purchased a dishonourable peace
from the Normans, and crossed the Alps. But new troubles at
home imperiously called him back, and at the foot of Mount Cenis
in A.D. 877, he died in a miserable hut of poison administered
by his physician, a Jew. The pope got into yet greater straits
and made his position worse by further intrigues. Also his
negotiations with Byzantium in A.D. 879 involved him in yet
more serious troubles (§ 67, 1). He died in A.D. 882, apparently
by the hand of an assassin. A year before his death Charles
the Fat, the youngest son of Louis the German, had been crowned
emperor, and he, the least capable of all the Carolingian line,
by the choice of the Neustrian nobles, united once more all the
Frankish empire under his weak sceptre. Marinus, the successor
of John VIII., died after a single year’s pontificate. So
was it, too, with Hadrian III. And now the Romans, without
paying any heed to the impotent wrath of the emperor, elected
and consecrated =Stephen V.=, A.D. 885-891, as their pope. In
A.D. 857 the German nobles at last put an end to the despicable
rule of the fat Charles by passing an act of formal deposition.
They chose in his place Arnulf of Carinthia, a natural son of
Charles’ brother Carloman. Pope =Formosus=, A.D. 891-896, called
him to his assistance in A.D. 894, and crowned him emperor. But
he could not hold his ground in Italy and the opposition emperor
Lambert, a Longobard, had possession of the field. Formosus died
soon after Arnulf’s withdrawal. Boniface VI., who died after
fifteen days, was succeeded by =Stephen VI.= in A.D. 896. This
man, infected by Italian fanaticism, had the body of Formosus,
who had favoured the Germans, lifted from the grave, shamefully
abused and then thrown into the Tiber. The three following popes
reigned only a few weeks or months, and were either murdered
or driven away. John IX., A.D. 898-900, in order to pacify the
German party, honoured again the memory of Formosus.--Arnulf’s
tenure of the empire, however, had only been a short vain dream;
but in Germany during a trying period he wielded the sceptre
with power and dignity. When he died in A.D. 899, the German
nobles elected his seven-year-old son, Louis the Child. He
died in A.D. 911, and with him the dynasty of the Carolingians
in Germany became extinct. In France this line continued to
exist in pitiable impotence down to the death of Louis V. in
A.D. 987.--Continuation, § 96.
§ 82.9. =The Papacy and the Nationalities.=[231]--From the
time of Charlemagne the policy of the French kings was to
establish bishoprics on the frontiers of their territories
for Christianizing the neighbouring heathen countries, and
thereby securing their conquest, or, if this had been already
won, confirming it. The first part of this purpose the popes
could only approve and further, but just as decidedly they
opposed the second. There must be a reference to the chair
of Peter, that the pope may maintain and preserve as head of
the universal church the rights of nationalities. Each country
won to Christianity should be received into the organism of the
church with its national position unimpaired, and so under the
spiritual fatherhood of the pope there would be established
a Christian family of states, of which each member occupies
a position of perfect equality with the others. In this way
the interests of humanity, and at the same time, the selfish
interests of papal policy, were secured. This policy was
therefore directed to the emancipating as soon as possible
the newly founded national churches from the supremacy of the
German clergy and giving them an independent national church
organization under bishops and archbishops of their own.
§ 83. THE RANK OF METROPOLITAN.[232]
The position of metropolitan was not regarded with equal favour in
the German church and in the German state. Amid the variety of races
the metropolitans represented the unity of the national church, as
the pope did that of the universal church, while at the same time
as an estate of the empire they exercised great influence on civil
administration and foreign policy. The reigning princes recognised
in the unity of the ecclesiastical administration of the country a
support and security for the political unity and therefore opposed
the partition of the national church into several metropolitanates,
or, where the larger extension of the empire required several
archbishoprics, wished rather to give the ablest of these the rank
and authority of a primate. The popes on the other hand endeavoured to
give each of the larger countries at least two or three metropolitans,
and to prevent as far as possible the appointment of a national church
primate; for in the unity of the national church they perceived the
danger of such a prelate sooner or later giving way to the desire to
emancipate himself from Rome and secure for himself the position of an
independent patriarch.
§ 83.1. =The Position of Metropolitans in General.=--As
representing the unity of the national churches the interests
of the metropolitans were bound up with those of the ruling
princes. They were the most vigorous supporters of their policy,
and generally got in return the prince’s hearty support. This
coalition of the metropolitans and the civil power, however,
threatened the subordinate clergy with abject servitude, and
drove them to champion the interests of the pope. Through
pressure of circumstances, a widespread conspiracy of bishops
and abbots was formed during the last years of Louis the Pious
to emancipate the clergy and especially the episcopate from
the dominion of the state and the metropolitans and to place
them immediately under the papal jurisdiction. They founded upon
the Isidorian decretals as showing their rights in the earliest
times (§ 87, 2). Their endeavour met indeed powerful opposition,
but the statements of the Pseudo-Isidore had now obtained the
validity of canon law.
§ 83.2. =Hincmar of Rheims.=--Among the =French= prelates
after the restoration of the order of metropolitans by Boniface
the first place was held by the occupant of the see of Rheims.
It reached the summit of its glory under Hincmar of Rheims,
A.D. 845-882, the ablest of all the ecclesiastical leaders of
France. His life consists of an uninterrupted series of battles
of the most varied kind. The first fight in which he engaged was
the predestination controversy of Gottschalk (§ 91, 5). But his
strength did not lie in dogmatics but in church government. And
here, every inch a metropolitan, he has fought the most glorious
battles of his life and affirmed, against the assumptions of
popes and emancipation efforts of bishops, the autonomy of
reigning princes, the freedom and independence of national
churches, and the jurisdiction of metropolitans. Of this sort
was his contest with bishop Rothad of Soissons. Hincmar had
deposed him in A.D. 861 for insubordination. Rothad appealed to
pope Nicholas I. on the ground of the Sardican Canon (§ 46, 3),
which, however, had never been accepted in the Frankish Empire.
He had at the same time referred the pope to the Isidorian
decretals. Thus supported, Nicholas after a hard struggle had
Rothad reinstated in A.D. 865. The insolent defiance of his
own nephew, Hincmar, bishop of Laon, led the archbishop into
another obstinate fight. Here too the Isidorian decretals played
a prominent part. Hadrian II. in A.D. 869 took the side of the
nephew, but the metropolitan gained the victory, and the nephew,
who defied the king as well as the metropolitan and moreover had
entered into treasonable communication with the German court,
ended his course by being deprived of his eyes by the king. Down
to A.D. 875 Hincmar was inflexibly true to the king as a pillar
of his policy and his throne. But when Charles the Bald in
that year paid down as purchase price for the imperial throne,
not only the autonomy of the empire but also the freedom of the
French church and the rights of the metropolitans, he was obliged
now to turn his weapons against him. Hincmar died in A.D. 882
in flight before the Normans. With him the glory of the French
archbishopric sank into its grave. The pseudo-Isidorian party
had triumphed, the bishops were emancipated from the government
of the princes of their country, but instead of this were often
surrendered to the rude caprice of secular nobles.
§ 83.3. =Metropolitans in other lands.=--The =English= princes
in the interests of the political unity of the Heptarchy for
a long time withstood the endeavours of the popes to place a
rival alongside of the archbishop of Canterbury. The action and
reaction of these opposing interests were particularly strong
in the time of Wilfrid (§ 78, 3), whom the Roman party had
appointed archbishop of York. Wilfrid was driven away and died
in A.D. 709 after an eventful life, without succeeding in taking
possession of the place to which he had been appointed. At last,
however, the pope reached his end. In A.D. 735 a Northumbrian
prince obtained a pallium, and after that the see of York got
an undisputed place alongside that of Canterbury.--In =Northern
Italy= there were metropolitan sees at Ravenna, Milan and
Aquileia which still made their old claims to self-government
(§ 46, 1). Sergius, the prelate of Ravenna, about A.D. 760,
thought it would be well out of the ruins of the exarchate to
found an ecclesiastical state after the model of that of Rome.
There was often opposition there to the Roman supremacy. On
this account the violent archbishop John of Ravenna, who was
also a defrauder of the church, suffered the most complete
humiliation from Nicholas I. in A.D. 861, in spite of the
emperor’s protection. The force of public opinion compelled
the emperor to abandon his protégé when excommunicated by the
pope. But during the pontificate of John VIII., Ausbert, prelate
of Milan (died A.D. 882), who kept true to the German party,
could defy papal anathema and deposition. His successor, however,
again acknowledged the papal supremacy.--In =Germany=, since
the time of Charlemagne, new metropolitan sees had been created
at Salzburg, Cologne, Treves and Hamburg-Bremen. Mainz, however,
still claimed the primacy and represented the unity of the German
church. The Isidorian forgery availed not here as in the land of
its birth to stop the contention of the archbishop. The German
metropolitanate to the advantage of the empire maintained its
rights untouched for centuries. Among the primates of Mainz
the most important by far was =Hatto I.=, A.D. 891-913. Even
under Arnulf (died A.D. 899), whose most trusted adviser he
was, he exercised a wide as well as wholesome influence on the
administration of the empire. It was still greater under Louis
the Child (died A.D. 911) whom he raised to the throne and for
whom he acted as regent. Conrad I. (§ 96, 1) also owed to him
his election as king of the Germans. In the internal affairs
of the German church, he directed and adjusted, organized and
ruled in this time of general upheaval with wonderful insight,
wisdom and energy, most conspicuously, and that too against
papal assumptions, at the great national synod of Tribur in
A.D. 895. The primate regarded it as a political axiom, that,
in order to conserve and advance the unity of the empire, the
particularism of the several races and the struggles of their
chiefs and princes for independence should be crushed. Owing to
the consistency and energy with which he carried out his idea,
he did indeed make many enemies. The stories of insidious perfidy
and bloody violence which have attached themselves to his memory
are to all appearance due to their calumnious hatred. His sudden
death probably gave rise to the legend that the devil fetched
him away and cast him into the mouth of Etna. To him, and not
to the much less important Hatto II., who died in A.D. 970, is
the other equally baseless legend of the Mäusethurm near Bingen
to be referred.--Continuation, § 97, 2.
§ 84. THE CLERGY IN GENERAL.[233]
The bishops subject to the archbishop were called diocesan bishops,
or, as voting members of the Provincial Synod, suffragan bishops. The
canonical election of bishops by the people and clergy was completely
done away with in the German national church. Kings without opposition
filled vacant bishoprics according to their own choice. Louis the
Pious at the Synod of Aachen, in A.D. 817, restored canonical election
by people and clergy, subject to the emperor’s confirmation, but
his successors paid no attention to the law. Deposition was usually
carried out by the Provincial and National Synods. The investiture of
bishops with pastoral staff and marriage ring by the reigning prince
is occasionally met with even in the Merovingian age and became general
after the development of the benefice system in the 9th century. Out
of the institution of bishops without dioceses, _Episcopi regionarii_,
originally intended for missionary service, arose in all probability
the institution of _Chorepiscopi_ which flourished especially in
France during the 8th and 9th centuries. With the old _Chorepiscopi_
(§ 34, 2; § 45) they have nothing in common beyond the name. They
were subordinate assistants of the diocesan bishops, whose convenience,
unspirituality and often absence on state affairs demanded such
substitutes. But by their arbitrary conduct and refractoriness they
often gave great trouble to those bishops who had any care for their
flock. A Synod at Paris, therefore, in A.D. 849, withdrew all authority
from them. From that time they gradually sank out of view. The inferior
clergy, taken generally from the serfs, stood mostly in slavish
dependence on the bishop and often had not the barest necessaries
of culture. Their appointment lay with the bishop, yet the founder of
a church and his successors frequently retained the right of patronage
in choosing their own officiating clergymen.[234] Especially in the
later Merovingian and earlier Carolingian periods, the Frankish clergy,
superior and inferior, had become terribly corrupt. Boniface was the
first to reintroduce some sort of discipline (§ 78, 5) and Charlemagne’s
powerful government contributed in an extraordinary measure to the
ennobling of the clergy. Yet the corruption was too general and too
great to be altogether eradicated. Louis the Pious, therefore, in
A.D. 816, extended to the whole kingdom a reformation which Chrodegang
of Metz had introduced fifty years previously among his own clergy, by
which means discipline and order were again improved for some decades.
But in the troublous times of the last Carolingians everything went
again into confusion and decay. Exemption from civil jurisdiction
was accorded the clergy during this period only to this extent, that
the secular courts could not proceed against a clergyman without the
advice of the bishop, and the bishop himself was subject only to the
jurisdiction of the king and the Provincial Synod.
§ 84.1. =The Superior Clergy.=--In the German states from
the earliest times the superior clergy constituted a spiritual
aristocracy which by means of their higher culture won a more
influential position in civil life than the secular nobles. In
all important affairs of state the bishops were the advisers of
the king; they were almost exclusively employed on embassies; on
all commissions there were clerical members and always one half
of the _Missi dominici_ were clerics. This nearness to the person
of the king and their importance in civil life made them rank as
one of the estates of the realm. The Frankish idea of immunity,
in consequence of which by royal gift along with the rights of
territorial lords there were handed over to the new proprietors
also the princely right of levying taxes and administering
justice, brought to them secular as well as spiritual jurisdiction
over a great part of the land. As the court of the Frankish
king was moved from place to place, he required a special court,
chapel, with a numerous court-clergy, at the head of which was
an Arch-chaplain, usually the most distinguished prelate in
the land. The names _Capella_ and _Capellani_ were originally
applied only to court chapels and court chaplains, and were
derived from the fact that in the chapel was kept the _Cappa_
or coat of Martin of Tours as a precious relic and the national
palladium of France. The court clergy formed the nursery for
future bishops of the realm. In addition to the ring and staff
as episcopal insignia we find in the Carolingian age the bishop’s
cap, consisting of two long sheets of tin or pasteboard running
up to a peak, covered with silk of the same colour as the dress
used in celebrating mass, generally richly ornamented with gold
and precious stones, called by the old pagan name _Infula_ or
_Mitra_.[235]
§ 84.2. =The Inferior Clergy.=--The enormous expansion of
episcopal dioceses rendered a new arrangement of the =inferior
clergy= indispensable. The extension churches in towns and the
country churches which previously had been served by the clergy
of the cathedral church, obtained a regular clergy of their
own. As these churches were always dedicated to a saint they
were called _Tituli_, and the clergy appointed to officiate in
them, _Intitulati_, _Incardinati_, _Cardinales_. Thus originated
the idea of _Parochia_, παροικία and of _Parochus_ or parish
priest,[236] who, because the _cura animarum_ was committed to
him was also called Curate, as in the French curé. Over about
ten parishes was placed an _Archipresbyter ruralis_ who was
called _Decanus_, Dean. As the right of administering baptism
belonged originally to him exclusively, his church was called
_Ecclesia baptisimalis_; his diocese, _Christianitas_ or _Plebs_;
he himself also, _Plebanus_. A further arrangement was first
introduced in the 8th century by Heddo of Strasburg [Strassburg],
who gave to each of the deans in his diocese seven archdeacons,
_præpositi_, provosts. Besides the parish churches there were
many chapels or oratories where divine service was conducted
only at certain times by the neighbouring parish clergy or
chaplains appointed for that purpose. To this class also belong
the domestic chapels in episcopal residences or on the estates
of noblemen which were served by special domestic or castle
chaplains. The latter indeed had in addition the duty of feeding
the dogs, waiting at table and taking charge of the lady’s pony.
Notwithstanding repeated reinforcement of the old law: _Ne quis
vage ordinetur_, there was still a great number of so-called
_Clericis vagis_, mostly vagabonds and idlers, who, ordained by
unprincipled bishops for a reward, roamed over the country like
clerical pedlars.
§ 84.3. =Compulsory Celibacy= was stoutly resisted by the German
clergy. The inferior clergy were mostly married. At ordination
they were ordered indeed to separate from their wives and to
abstain from marital intercourse, but the promise was rarely
fulfilled. Among the unmarried clergy, fornication, adultery
and unnatural lust were prevalent. A bishop, Ulrich of Augsburg,
addressed to Nicholas I. a philippic against the law of celibacy
with fearless exposures of its evil consequences. The =moral
condition= of the clergy was generally speaking shockingly low.
Legacy hunting, forging of documents, simony and chaffering for
benefices were carried on in a shameless way. The lordly habits
of the bishops consisted in hunting, going about with dogs and
falcons, and in wild drunken revels. In the 7th century it was
the peculiar pleasure of the Frankish bishops in wild scenes
of blood that induced them to take part in the wars, and led
to their being afterwards obliged to fit out contingents for
the field at the cost of their ecclesiastical revenues. Pepin,
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious passed stringent laws against
these warlike habits of churchmen; but the later Carolingians
not only tolerated but actually encouraged them.
§ 84.4. =Canonical life.=--Augustine’s institution of a
_monasterii Clericorum_ (§ 45, 1) was often imitated in later
times. But bishop =Chrodegang of Metz=, who died in A.D. 766,
gave it for the first time, about A.D. 760, a fixed and permanent
form. His rule or _Canon_ is closely connected with the monastic
rule of St. Benedict (§ 85), with the omission of the vow of
poverty. He built a commodious residence Domus, _monasterium_
(comp. Germ. words Dom and Münster), in which all the clergy of
his cathedral church were obliged to live, pray, work, eat and
sleep under the constant and strict supervision of the bishop
or his archdeacon. This was the _Vita canonica_. After morning
devotions all the members of the establishment gathered together
in the hall where the bishop or provost read to them a chapter
from the Bible, most frequently from Leviticus, from the rule or
from the fathers, and added thereto the necessary explanations
and exhortations. The hall was therefore called the Chapter House;
then the name =Chapter=[237] was given to the whole body gathered
together there. The =Colleges=[238] were a subsequent development
of the chapter in non-episcopal city churches, with a provost
or deacon at their head. Louis the Pious allowed Chrodegang’s
rule to be revived and generalized by the deacon Amalarius of
Metz, and at the National Assembly at Aachen in A.D. 817 enforced
it for the whole kingdom. It is known as _Regula Aquisgranensis_.
But soon after the Canons endeavoured to emancipate themselves
more and more from the burdensome yoke of episcopal control.
Gunther of Cologne (§ 82, 7) who, though deposed by the pope,
retained his official position, was obliged to purchase the
support of his chapter by a bargain in accordance with which
a great part of the ecclesiastical revenues of the chapter were
placed at their own full disposal as Prebends or Benefices. And
what this one chapter gained for itself was afterwards contended
for by others.[239]--Continuation, § 97, 3.
§ 85. MONASTICISM.[240]
While from the 5th century one rush of migrating peoples was rapidly
followed by another, the monkish orders fell into decay, barbarism and
corruption. They would scarcely have survived this period of commotion,
at least would not have proved the great blessing that they have
been to the German west, had not the spirit of ancient Rome with its
practical turn, its appreciation of law and order and its organizing
talent, given them at the right time, what they hitherto wanted, a
rule answering to the requirements and circumstances of the age, and
by means of it firm footing, unity, order and legal form. This task was
accomplished by =Benedict of Nursia= (d. A.D. 543), the patriarch of
Western Monasticism. The rule, which he prescribed in A.D. 529 to the
monks of the monastery of Monte Cassino in Campania founded by him, was
not unduly ascetic, combined strict discipline with a certain degree
of mildness and indulgence, estimated the needs of human nature as well
as the circumstances of the times, and was, in short, adaptable and
practical. From the rule of Cassiodorus (§ 47, 23) Benedict’s disciples
borrowed that zeal for scholarly studies about which their master had
given no directions, and Gregory the Great inspired the order with
enthusiasm for missionary labours. Thus the Benedictine order obtained
its full consecration to its calling of worldwide significance. Soon
spreading over all the West, being introduced into France by Maurus in
A.D. 543, it nobly fulfilled its vocation by cultivating the soil and
the mind, by clearing the forests, bringing in waste lands, zealously
preaching the gospel, rooting out superstition and paganism, educating
the young, fostering and restoring literature, science and art. The
barbarous age, however, which saw the overthrow of the Merovingians
and the rise of the Carolingians, exerted a deteriorating influence
also on the Benedictines. But Charlemagne restored strict discipline,
and assigned to the monasteries the task of erecting schools and
prosecuting scholarly studies. By authority of Louis the Pious and
by order of the National Assembly at Aachen in A.D. 817, =Benedict of
Aniane= undertook a reformation and re-organization of all the monkish
systems throughout the empire. At the head of a commission appointed
for that purpose he visited all the Frankish monasteries, and compelled
them to organize themselves after his improved Benedictine Rule.
§ 85.1. The one source of information regarding the life
of =Benedict of Nursia= is the miracle-laden record of the
miracle-loving pope Gregory the Great in the second book of
his Dialogues. Benedict’s =Rule= comprises 73 chapters. The
first principle of the monastic life is obedience to the Abbot,
as representative of Christ. The choice of abbot lies with the
brothers. Of serving brothers the rule knows nothing. The chief
occupation is agriculture. Idleness is strictly forbidden. Charge
of the kitchen and reading at table are duties performed by all
the monks in turn week about. Divine service begins at 3 a.m. and
is rendered regularly through all the seven hours (§ 56, 2). Two
meals a day are partaken of and each monk has daily half a bottle
of wine. Flesh meat is given only to the sick and weak. At table
and after the _Completorium_ or last hour of prayer, no word
was allowed to be spoken. All the brothers slept in a common
dormitory, each in a separate bed, but completely dressed and
girded, so as to be ready at call for matins. The discipline was
strict and reasonable; first private, then public rebuke, then
penal fasting, corporal punishment, and finally excommunication.
Hospitality and attention to the poor were enjoined on all
monasteries. Reception was preceded by a year’s novitiate.
The vow included _Stabilitas loci_, _Conversio morum_ (poverty
and chastity) and _Obedientia_. The _Oblati_ were a special kind
of novices, _i.e._ children who in their early youth were placed
in the monastery by their parents. They were educated in the
monastic schools and were not allowed to go back to the world.
§ 85.2. =Benedict of Aniane= (A.D. 821) was originally called
Witiza and was the son of a Visigoth count. He had served as
a soldier under Charlemagne. In attempting to save his brother
he was himself almost drowned. His ambition was now directed
to an ascetic life, in which his personal performances were
most remarkable. On the river Anianus in Languedoc he founded
in A.D. 779 the monastery of Aniane. He was the indispensable
and all-powerful counsellor of Louis the Pious. In order to have
him always near him, Louis founded for him the monastery of Inda
or the Cornelius-Münster near Aachen. In the interests of his
cloister reform he published in A.D. 817 a _Codex regulorum_ in
which he collected all the monastic rules previously known.
§ 85.3. The rule of the elder Benedict made no reference to
=Nunneries=; but his sister Scholastica is regarded as the
founder of the order of female Benedictines. Another form of
female asceticism was developed after the model of the canonical
life of the secular clergy in the institution of canonesses. The
rule, which Louis the Pious at Aachen in A.D. 816 allowed them
to draw up for themselves, is distinctly milder than that of
the nuns. The ladies’ orders gradually became places of resort
for the unmarried daughters of the nobles. The canonical age for
taking the nun’s vows was twenty-five. The novitiate lasted three
years. Besides the _propria professio_ the _paterna devotio_ was
also regarded as binding. In regard to dress the adoption of the
veil was the main thing; but in addition they wore the wreath as
a symbol of virginity and the ring as token of spiritual marriage.
At this time the cutting of the hair was only a punishment for
unchaste nuns. The honourable position of the wife among the
Germans secured special respect for the abbess, and obtained
for the most famous nunneries exemption, civil prerogatives and
proprietary, even princely rights. The frequent appearance of
=Double-Cloisters= where monks and nuns, naturally in separate
dwellings, under a common rule either of an abbess as often in
England, or of an abbot, was also peculiarly German.
§ 85.4. =The Greater Monasteries=, formed as they were of a vast
number of separate buildings for agriculture, cattle rearing,
handicraft and arts of all kinds, for elementary teaching, for
higher education, for hospitable entertainment, caring for the
sick, etc., came by and by to attain the proportions of little
towns. Frequently they were the centre around which cities were
raised. The monastery of Vivarium in Calabria, Cassiodorus’
foundation, inspired Western monasticism with an enthusiasm
for scholarly studies. The regulations of Monte Cassino were
extended to all monasteries of the West. Columbanus’ monastery
of Bobbio rooted out paganism and Arianism in northern Italy. The
monasteries of Iona in Scotland and Bangor in Ireland gained high
repute in the struggle of the Celtic church against the Roman.
The English monastery of Wearmouth was a famous school of science.
In France St. Denys near Paris and Old Corbei in Picardy gained
a high reputation. In South Germany St. Gall, Reichenau, Lorsch
and Hirschau, in Central Germany Fulda, Hersfeld and Fritzlar,
and in North Germany New Corbei, a branch from Old Corbei, were
main centres of Christian culture.
§ 85.5. In its new Western form also monasticism was still
without the clerical character. But there was an ever-increasing
tendency to draw the monastic and the clerical institutions
more and more closely together. By means of celibacy and
the introduction of the canonical life (§ 84, 4) the clergy
came to have the monkish character, and on the other hand,
most of the monks, in the first instance for monastic and
mission services, took clerical orders. By and by monks sought
appointments as curates (§ 84, 2), and thus rivalries arose
between them and the clergy. The monasteries were wholly under
the jurisdiction of the bishops in whose diocese they lay. The
exemptions of this period were limited to security for the free
election of the abbot, independent administration of property
and gratuitous performance of consecrations by the bishop. In
the Frankish empire, however, abbots were ordinarily appointed
to vacancies by the court, and rich abbeys were also often
bestowed upon distinguished noblemen _in commendam_, _i.e._,
for temporary administration with the enjoyment of their revenues,
or even to court and military officers as a reward for special
services. Such lay abbots or _abbacomites_ often stayed in the
monasteries for months with their families, their huntsmen and
their soldiers, and made them the scene of their drinking bouts,
their field sports and their military exercises. The kings
retained the richest abbacies to themselves or gave them to
their sons and daughters, wives and concubines.
§ 85.6. =The Stylites= (§ 44, 6) on account of the climate,
could gain no footing, though attempts were indeed made, _e.g._
by Wulflaich (§ 78, 3). In place of them we find male and female
recluses, =Reclusi= (_Inclusi_) and _Reclusæ_, who shut themselves
up in cells which they never quitted. =Hermits of the Woods=,
unfettered by any rules, found great favour among the Germans.
Their national melancholic temperament inclining them to solitude,
their strong love of nature, their passionate delight in roaming
unchecked through woods and mountains, contributed to make such a
mode of life attractive. It was during the 6th century that this
craze for hermit life reached its height in Germany, and its main
seat was in Auvergne with its wild mountains, glens and gorges.
But as the cell of the saint was often in later times developed
into a monastery on account of the crowds of disciples that
gathered round, the hermit life gradually passed over into a
regulated cœnobite life. In Switzerland Meinard, son of a count
of Zollern, was a hermit of this sort. In A.D. 861 he had been
murdered by two robbers, and this was afterwards discovered, the
legend says, by means of two ravens feeding upon the body of the
murdered man. His cell in later times grew into the beautiful
Benedictine abbey of Maria-Einsiedeln with its miracle-working
image of the mother of God, which at this day is visited by more
than a hundred thousand pilgrims yearly.
§ 86: THE PROPERTY OF CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES.
The inalienableness of church property being regarded as the first
principle of its administration, it grew by enormous strides from year
to year through donations and legacies, At the end of the 7th century
there was in Gaul fully a third of the whole territory in the possession
of the churches and monasteries, while the national exchequer was
quite exhausted. In this emergency Charles Martel founded the benefice
system, for which he also converted into money the abundant possessions
of the church. His sons, however, Carloman and Pepin the Short, in
consideration of the reorganization of the Frankish church effected by
Boniface (§ 78, 5), sought to avert the impoverishment of many churches
and cloisters by a partial restitution so far as the neediness of the
times would allow. Charlemagne and Louis the Pious did still more in
this direction, so that partly by these means, partly by the continued
donations of rich people, church property soon acquired its earlier
proportions. Thus, _e.g._, the monastery of Luxeuil had in the 9th
century an estate with 15,000 farm-houses upon it.--The administration
of the property of churches and monasteries lay in the hands of the
bishops and abbots. For defending and maintaining secular and legal
rights there were ecclesiastical and monastic advocates, _Advocati
ecclesiæ_. This institution, however, often degenerated into an
agency for oppressing the peasants and plundering the property of
their clients; for many advocates assumed arbitrary powers and dealt
with the property of the church and its proceeds just as they chose.
§ 86.1. =The Revenues of Churches and Monasteries.=--The main
sources of their growing wealth were donations and legacies.
Princes often made bequests of enormous magnitude and rich people
in private life vied with them. Occasions were never wanting;
restoration from sickness, escape from danger, the birth of
a child, etc., regularly won for the church whose patron saint
had been helpful, some valuable present. The clergy also used
all means in their power to encourage this prevailing readiness
to bestow presents; and to this must in great measure be traced
the beginnings of the forging of deeds. A peculiar form for
bequeathing a gift was that of the _Precaria_, according to
which the giver retained to himself for his lifetime the use
of the goods which he gifted. Church property was farther greatly
increased by the personal possessions of the clergy and the
monks, which at the death of the former and at the _conversio_
of the latter usually became part of the revenue of the church
or cloister to which their owners belonged. Besides the proceeds
of its own estates the church drew the tithes of all property
and incomes of parishioners, the claim being enforced as a _jus
divinum_ by a reference to the Mosaic legislation and made a
law of the empire by the injunction of Charlemagne. On the other
hand the clergy were forbidden to exact payment for discharge
of official duties, so called stole-dues, because they were
performed by the priest dressed in the _stola_. The cathedral
church was entitled to an annual tax, _Honor cathedræ_, levied
upon all the churches of the diocese. The inferior clergy, on the
other hand, often arrogated to themselves the right in accordance
with a bad custom of grasping by violent plunder the possessions
of their deceased bishop, _Spolium_.[241]
§ 86.2. =The Benefice System.=--In consequence of the vast
gifts of the Merovingians to the churches and their ministrants,
when Charles Martel assumed the government, the sources of crown
revenue that hitherto seemed inexhaustible were almost completely
dried up, while this prince, in order to deliver the country from
the Saracens and in order to maintain his rule over against the
innumerable petty tyrants who threatened to dismember the empire,
required a yet fuller treasury than any of his predecessors. Out
of these circumstances grew the =Benefice System=. The soldiers
who had served the nation and princes had been as before rewarded
by grants of lands. These, however, were no longer given as
hereditary possessions but only for the lifetime of the receiver
(_Beneficium_), and for this he was under obligation to supply
a proportionate contingent for military service. When the crown
lands had been well nigh exhausted, Charles Martel did not
hesitate to lay claim to the church property. His son Carloman
at the first Austrasian national Synod in A.D. 742 (§ 78, 5)
promised to restore the church property that had thus been
alienated, but had soon to confess his inability to perform his
promise. At the second Austrasian Synod at Lestines in A.D. 743
he therefore limited the immediate restitution to the most
pressing cases of notoriously poor and needy churches and
monasteries. He was driven to this by the absolutely needful
claims of the civil and military departments. But the claim
of the church to get back the property was secured by the
beneficiary giving a _Precarial_ letter and by the payment of
an annual tax of a solidus for every farm house on the estate.
The king also promised the full restoration on the death of
the beneficiary, with express retention, however, of the right,
if the needs of the times required it, to lease out again the
vacant _precariæ_. Even Pepin at the Neustrian national Synod
at Soissons in A.D. 744 granted similar concessions, but yet
in the execution of them did not go so far as his brother. In
A.D. 751 he caused a _descriptio et divisio_, _i.e._ an inventory
of church property with an exact fixing of the limits of its
various titles to be made.[242]--The annual tax referred to was
transformed by Charlemagne into a second tithe, the so-called
_Nonæ_. But even after the partial restitution effected by the
descendants of Pepin there still remained upon the restored
property the beneficial burdens that had been laid upon it,
especially the obligation to supply and equip a certain number
of soldiers, and this was thence transferred to the whole
property of the church.--The benefice system, originating
in the pressure of circumstances, continued to spread more
and more, and formed the foundation of the entire social and
civil organization of the Middle Ages.[243]
§ 87. ECCLESIASTICAL LEGISLATION.
The construction of ecclesiastical legislation for the German
empire was at first wholly the work of the Synods. The popes exerted
scarcely any influence upon it, but all the more powerfully was
felt the influence of the kings. They summoned the Synods, laid
down to them the subjects to be discussed, and confirmed according
to their own judgment their decisions. From the time that the Frankish
bishoprics were filled by native Franks the independent life of
the Synods was quenched, and ecclesiastical affairs were arranged
at the national assemblies in which the bishops also took part as
territorial nobles. The great national Synods, too, at which Boniface’s
reorganization of the church in accordance with Roman ecclesiastical
law as carried (§ 78, 5) were _Concilia mixta_ of this kind; and
even under Charlemagne and Louis of France these were still prevalent.
Charles, however, made their proceedings more orderly by grouping the
nobles into three ranks as bishops, abbots and counts. Under the Pepin
dynasty alongside of the synodal we have the royal decrees, arranged
in separate chapters, and hence the ordinances are called _Capitularia_.
Purely ecclesiastical Synods in later times again gained a footing and
were particularly numerous in the times of Hincmar.
§ 87.1. =Older Collections of Ecclesiastical Law.=--Gregory II.
furnished Boniface with a _Codex canonum_, undoubtedly the
_Dionysiaca_ (§ 43, 3), and Hadrian II. presented Charlemagne
with one which was solemnly received at the National Synod of
Aachen in A.D. 802. There was in Spain a new collection which
was erroneously attributed to bishop Isidore of Seville, who to
distinguish him from the Frankish Pseudo-Isidore is designated
the genuine Isidore, or more correctly as _Hispana_. This
collection in form attaches itself to _Dionysiaca_. In the
9th century it was introduced among the Franks, and here gave
contents and name to the Pseudo-Isidorian collection. In close
connection with this masterpiece of forgery stands the collection
of laws by Benedictus Levita of Mainz, which was indeed called
a collection of capitularies, but was gathered mainly from
documents of ecclesiastical legislation, genuine and spurious. A
collection of true and genuine capitularies was made in A.D. 827
by Ansegis, Abbot of Fontenelles. Benedict’s collection was
included in it as 5th, 6th, and 7th books. Besides these large
collections many bishops prepared epitomized collections for
the use of their own dioceses, of which several are extant under
the name of _Capitula Episcoporum_. Decidedly in the interest
of the Pseudo-Isidore are the _Capitula Angilramni_, composed
and subscribed by bishop Angilramnus of Metz (d. A.D. 791). The
dates and contents of the three first-named collections were
determined in the interest of the Pseudo-Isidorian, and are still
a matter of controversy. Benedict, according to his own credible
statement, undertook his work at the command of the archbishop
Otgar, of Mainz, for the archives of Mainz, but completed and
published it probably in France only after Otgar’s death, which
occurred in A.D. 847. But while in earlier times it was generally
believed that Benedict had used the Pseudo-Isidore, Hinschius
has become convinced that the author of the capitula is identical
with the Pseudo-Isidore, and from Benedict’s capitularies has
unravelled first the composition of the capitula and then that
of the decretals.[244]
§ 87.2. =The Collection of Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore.=--In
the fiftieth year of the 9th century there appeared in France
under the name of Isidorus Mercator a collection of canons and
decretals, which indeed completely embraced the older so-called
_Isidoriana_, but was enlarged by the addition of a multitude
of forged decretals. The surname Mercator, otherwise Peccator,
is probably derived from the well known Marius Mercator
(§ 47, 20), who had also occupied himself with the translation
of ecclesiastical documents, which the Pseudo-Isidore used
for his work. It begins with the fifty _Canones Apostt._, then
follow fifty-nine forged decretals which are assigned to the
thirty oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades (d. A.D. 314).
The second part embraces, besides the original document of
the Donation of Constantine, genuine synodal decrees falsified
apparently only in one passage. The third part, again, contains
decretals of Sylvester, the successor of Melchiades, down to
Gregory II. (d. A.D. 731), of which thirty-five are not genuine.
The non-genuine decretals are for the most part not altogether
forgeries, but are rather based upon the literature of theology
and canon law then existing, amplified or altered, and wrought
up to serve the purposes of the compiler. The system of the
Pseudo-Isidore is characterized by the following peculiarities:
Over the _Imperium_ is raised the _Sacerdotium_, ordained of
Christ to be governor and judge of the world. The unity and
head of the _Sacerdotium_ is represented by the pope. Bishops
are related to the pope as the other apostles were to Peter.
The metropolitan is only _primus inter pares_. Between the pope
and the bishops as an intermediate rank we have the primates or
patriarchs. This rank, however, belongs only to such metropolitan
sees as either were ordained to it by the apostles and their
successors, or to such sees in more recently converted lands
as were elevated to this position in consequence of the multitude
of bishops belonging to them. Provincial Synods should be held
only with the consent of the pope, their decrees become valid
only after receiving his confirmation, and all _causæ majores_,
especially all complaints against bishops, belong solely to
his own judicature. Priests are the _Familiares Dei_, the
_Spirituales_; the laity, on the other hand, are the _Carnales_.
No clergyman, least of all a bishop, may be taken before a
secular tribunal. A layman may not appear as an accuser against
a clergyman, and the Synods are enjoined to render charges
against a bishop as difficult as possible. An expelled bishop,
before the charges against him can be examined, must have been
fully restored (_Exceptio Spolii_). If the accused regards his
judges as _inimici_ or _suspecti_, he may appeal to be examined
before the pope. For the establishing of a charge at least
seventy-two witnesses are necessary, etc.
§ 87.3. The forgery originated in France, where it had been in
existence for some years before it was known in Rome, as appears
from the process against Rothad of Soissons (§ 83, 2). Rothad
first brought it to Rome in A.D. 864. Blondel and Kunst regard
Benedict Levita as its author. He first gave currency to the
forgery in his Collection of Capitularies. and so arouses
the suspicion that he is himself the forger. Philipps fathers
it upon Rothad of Soissons; Wasserschleben ascribes it to
archbishop Otgar of Mainz, who, as a prominent head of the
clerical conspiracy against Louis the Pious (§ 82, 4), would
have reason to defend himself against the judgment which would
befall conspirators. But this doom did not in any very special
manner threaten Otgar. On Louis’ restoration he was not sentenced
or deposed by any synod, but was without more ado received into
favour by the emperor. The Pseudo-Isidore’s hostile attitude
toward the chorepiscopi (§ 84), while gaining no footing in
Germany, certainly prevailed in France; and France, not Germany,
was the place where this collection first appeared between
A.D. 853 and 864. Since now, moreover, the prominence given
by the Pseudo-Isidore to the rank of primate may be regarded
as equally favourable to the see of Rheims as to that of Mainz,
Weizsäcker and v. Noorden have sought the original home of the
forgery in the diocese of Rheims, and point to Ebo, archbishop of
Rheims, Hincmar’s predecessor, as the forger. And Ebo certainly
stood in the front rank of the revolt referred to. Before him
Louis had specially to humble himself. He was therefore taken
prisoner immediately upon the emperor’s restoration, and deprived
of his office at the Synod of Didenhofen in A.D. 835 (§ 82, 4).
The emperor Lothair, indeed, restored him in A.D. 840, but
his position was still very insecure, as he had before a year
passed to save himself by flight on the approach of Charles
the Bald, and never again saw Rheims, which till Hincmar’s
elevation remained in the hands of chorepiscopi. The composition
of the collection, according to v. Noorden, belongs to the
period immediately preceding and lasting through his restitution.
Finally Hinschius regards Rheims as undoubtedly the scene
of the composition of these forgeries, but he cannot ascribe
them to Ebo because, according to his demonstration, Benedict’s
Pseudo-Isidore used as his authority only a collection completed
after A.D. 847, and by that time Ebo could not have the shadow
of a hope of restoration. But he also advances other weighty
considerations. Ebo himself had never attempted to make good
the claims which the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals would have
afforded him. If his own affairs had first led him to think
of forging decretals he must have foreseen that the extensive
studies necessary for such a work would have demanded many years
of laborious effort, and would be concluded much too late to
serve his purpose. It would, therefore, seem to him safer to
confine himself to what his immediately present circumstances
urgently required; whereas the actual Pseudo-Isidore, on the
contrary, puts in the mouths of the early popes, with no little
zeal and emphasis, a vast array of other exhortations and decrees
that seemed to him useful amid the troubles of that age for the
well being of the church and its ministers. Thus the whole work
assumes more of the character of a _pia fraus_ of a somewhat
high church cleric of that time than of a forgery devised in
the selfish interests of an individual. This much, however,
must be admitted, that the directions quoted about judicial
procedure against accused bishops exactly fit the case of Ebo.
As the first attempt to use the non-genuine decretals only found
in Pseudo-Isidore was made at the Synod of Soissons in A.D. 853,
by those clerics who had been ordained by Ebo after his deposition
but rejected by Hincmar, the final redaction and publication must
fall between A.D. 847 and 853. Langen fixes the date at A.D. 850,
and refers its authorship to Servatus Lupus (§ 90, 5). Nobody
then doubted their genuineness. Even Hincmar seems for a long
time to have had no doubts. But he decidedly repudiated their
legal authority in the Frankish church, and energetically opposed
them when they were sought to be enforced against the independence
of the church. Thus he could always refer to them where their
contentions agreed with his own, or, as in the case against his
nephew, where they supported his rights as primate, in order to
defeat his opponents with their own weapons. Subsequently however,
in A.D. 872, in a letter written in the name of his king to pope
Hadrian, he characterized them in contrast with the genuine and
valid decretals as _secus a quoquam compilata sive conficta_.
The Magdeburg Centuriators were the first conclusively to prove
them spurious. The Jesuit Turrianus, however, entered the lists
once more on their behalf. But the reformed theologian, David
Blondel, castigated so sharply and thoroughly this theological
unprincipledness, that even in the Roman Catholic church their
non-genuineness has been now since admitted.[245]
§ 87.4. Among the many spurious documents which the
Pseudo-Isidore included in his collection of ecclesiastical
laws, we find an =Edictum Constantini Imperatoris=. In the
first part of it, the so-called _Confessio_, Constantine makes
a confession of his faith, and relates in detail in what a
wonderful way he was converted to Christianity by pope Sylvester,
and cured of leprosy (§ 42, 1). Then in the second part, the
so-called _Donatio_, he confers upon the chair of Peter, with
recognition of its absolute primacy over all patriarchates of
the empire, imperial power, rank, honour, and insignia, as all
privileges and claims of imperial senators upon its clergy. In
order that the possessor of this gift may be able to all time to
maintain the dignity of his position, he gives him the Lateran
palace, transfers to him independent dominion over “_Romanam
urbem et omnes Italiæ seu_ (in Frankish Latin of the 8th and
9th centuries this means ‘as well as’) _occidentalium regionum
provincias, loca et civitates_” (therefore not merely Italy
but the whole West Roman empire); he removes his own imperial
residence to Byzantium, “_quoniam ubi principates Sacerdotum et
Christ. religionis Caput ab Imperatore cœlesti constitutum est,
justum non est, ut illic Imperator terrerum habeat potestatem_.”
In a letter of Hadrian I. to Charlemagne in A.D. 788, in which he
salutes the emperor as a second Constantine who is called upon by
God not only to restore to the apostolic chair the “_potestas in
his Hesperiæ partibus_,” which had been already assigned it by
the first Constantine, but also all later legacies and donations
“of various patricians and other God-fearing men,” which the
godless race of the Longobards in course of time tore from it,
we have the first hint at the idea of a _Donatio Constantini_.
The same pope, too, according to the _Vita Hadriani_ in the
Romish Pontifical, on the occasion of Charles’ visit to Rome
in A.D. 774 is said to have reclaimed from him an enormous grant
of land (§ 82, 2). It seemed therefore an extremely probable
supposition that assigned Rome as the place where this document
originated, and the period of the overthrow of the Longobard
empire, whether actually accomplished or on the eve of taking
place, as the date of its fabrication (§ 82, 1, 2). Against
this view, almost universally prevalent, quite recently Grauert
has advanced a vast array of powerful arguments, _e.g._, the
limitation of the _Donatio_ of Constantine to Italy which
is here suggested contradicts its own express statement. The
words of the letter of Hadrian referred to speak not of a
dominion =over= Italy, and which they could have read, “_in
has H. partes_,” but of a dominion in Italy which was founded
upon Constantine’s munificence and enlarged by many subsequent
presents. They do not, therefore, refer like the words of
the _Donatio_ to sovereign territorial authority, but to the
exceedingly wide-spread and rich property included in the
_Patrimonium Petri_ (§ 46, 10). The “potestas,” said to have
been assigned by Constantine to the Roman see, does not exceed
the authority which even according to the _Vita Sylvestri_ of
the Pontifical had been given by Constantine to that pope.--Thus
the donation document is met with first in the Pseudo-Isidore.
It was often afterwards referred to by the Frankish government.
By Rome, on the other hand, although even Nicholas I. was made
acquainted with the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals by Rothad, and
referred to them in A.D. 865, they are never used, either against
the Franks or against the Byzantines until, in A.D. 1053, we meet
an allusion to them in a letter from Leo IX. to the patriarch
Michael Cærularius (§ 67, 3). Grauert accounts for this by saying
that there were two recensions of Pseudo-Isidore, a shorter,
which had only the first part of the document, the so-called
_Confessio_; and a longer, which had also the _Donatio_, and
that Rothad took probably only the shorter one to Rome. From
these and other data adduced by Grauert it seems more than
probable that the foundry in which the document was forged
was not in Rome, but rather in France among the high church
party there, from which also the full-fledged forgery
proceeded. It would also seem that a double purpose was
served by its composition. On the one hand, over against the
Greeks it represented the chair of Peter as raised above all
the patriarchates of the empire, and the Western empire as a
thoroughly legitimate one transferred by Constantine the Great
to the pope, and then by him to the kings of the Franks. And,
on the other hand, it also made it clear to the Frankish princes
that all temporal power in the West essentially, and from of old,
belonged to the pope, and is bestowed upon them by means of their
coronation by the pope’s hands.--That from the time when they met
with the document unto the 11th century the Byzantines did not
contest its genuineness, need not surprise us when we consider
the uncritical character of the age. They would also be the less
disposed to do so as they could only thereby hope to win that
perfect equality in spiritual authority as well as in secular
rank with the Roman bishop which the fourth œcumenical council
had assigned to their patriarchal see. But while the Byzantines
may be regarded as inconsiderately incorporating this donation
of Constantine into their historical and legal books, blotting
out indeed the passages which seemed to them to favour the
pretensions of the pope to universal sovereignty, it is a
more difficult task to secure for it acceptance among Western
diplomatists. Even in A.D. 999 a state paper of Otto III.
describes it as a pure fiction. High church tendencies, however,
raised their standard also in the West during the 11th century
(§ 96, 4, 5). Indeed, even in A.D. 1152, an Arnoldist (§ 108, 7),
named Wetzel, wrote to the Emperor Frederick I.: “Their lies
and heretical fables are now so completely exploded that even
day-labourers and cow-men could prove to scholars their emptiness,
and the pope with his cardinals ventures not for shame to show
himself in the city of Rome.” The victory, however, of the papacy
over the Hohenstaufen gained currency for it again, and it was
the treatise of Laurentius Valla, “De falso credita et ementita
Constantini donatione declamatio,” which Ulrich von Hutten issued
in multitude from the press, gave it the death blow (§ 120, 1).
When, thereafter, even Baronius admitted the spuriousness of the
document, though assigning its fabrication to the Greeks, who
wished by it to prove that the Roman primacy was not of Christ
but from Constantine, it found no longer a vindicator even in the
Roman Catholic church.
III. THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.
§ 88. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND ART.
The German Arians undoubtedly used the language of the people
in their services. The adoption of Catholicism, however, led to the
introduction of the Latin tongue. The last trace of acquaintance with
Ulfilas’ translation of the Bible is found in the 9th century. The
nations converted directly to Catholicism had from the first the Latin
language in public worship. Only the Slavs still retained the use of
their mother tongue (§ 79, 2). The Roman liturgy, as well as the Roman
language, was adopted in all churches with the exception of those of
Milan and Spain. After Pepin had entered into closer relations with
the popes, he endeavoured, in A.D. 754, at their desire, to bring about
a uniformity between the Frankish ritual and the Roman pattern; and
Charlemagne, whom Hadrian I. presented with a Roman Sacramentarium,
carried it out with relentless energy. The slightness of the liturgical
contributions of the Germans is to be accounted for partly by the
fact that the Roman liturgy was already presented to them in a
richly developed and essentially complete form, but also partly
by the exclusion of the national languages and the refusal to give
the people a share in the liturgical services. Under the constraint
of a foreign tongue the Germans could not put the impress of their
national character on a department in which language plays so important
a part.
§ 88.1. =Liturgy and Preaching.=--Alongside of the Roman or
Gregorian =Liturgy= many others also were in use. The people
and clergy of Milan so determinedly adhered to their old
Ambrosian liturgy, that even Charlemagne could not dislodge
it, and down to the present day Milan has preserved this
treasure. No less energetically did the Spaniards hold by
their national liturgy, the so-called Mozarabic (§ 81, 1).
It has a strong resemblance to the oriental liturgies, but
was further elaborated by bishops Leander and Isidore of Seville
(§ 80, 2), and was recognised by the National Synod of Toledo in
A.D. 633 as valid for the whole of Spain. The Gallican liturgies
too of the Carolingian times betrayed a certain dependence upon
the oriental rituals. =Preaching=, in the services of the Western
churches was always subordinate to the liturgy, and the relapse
into savagery occasioned by the migrations of the peoples drove
it almost completely out of the field. The missionary fervour in
the Western church during the 7th century was the first thing to
re-awaken a sense of its importance. But then very few priests
could compose a sermon. Charlemagne, therefore, about A.D. 780,
had a Latin Homiliarium compiled by Paulus Diaconus [Paul
Warnefrid] (§ 90, 3) from the fathers for all the Sundays and
Festivals of the year, as a model for their own composition,
or, where that was too much to be expected, for reading in
the original or in a translation. During the whole Middle
Ages and beyond the Reformation it continued to be one of the
most read and most diligently used books in the Roman Catholic
church. Missionaries naturally preached themselves or through
interpreters in the language of the people; even in constituted
churches preaching was generally conducted in the speech of
the country. Charlemagne and the Synods of his time insisted
at least upon German or Romanic preaching.
§ 88.2. =Church Music= (§ 59, 4, 5).--After Gregory’s ordinance
church music continued to be restricted to the clergy. Charlemagne
indeed insisted, but unsuccessfully, that all the people should
take part in singing the _Gloria_ and the _Sanctus_. In the
7th-9th cent. a number of Latin hymn-writers flourished, of
whom the most distinguished were Bede, Paul Warnefrid, Theodulf
of Orleans, Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, and Walafrid Strabo. The
beautiful Pentecost hymn _Veni creator Spiritus_ is ascribed
to Charlemagne. The old classical form and colouring were
more and more lost, but all the more the essentially Christian
and Germanic character of simplicity and spirituality became
prominent. Toward the end of our period the composition of Latin
hymns obtained a new and fruitful impetus from the adoption
of the so-called =Sequences= or =Proses= in the Mass. Under
the long series of notes, hitherto without words attached,
which were appended to the Alleluia to express inarticulate
jubilation, hence called _jubilationes_, were now placed
appropriate rhythmical words in Latin prose, which, however,
soon assumed the form of metre, rhyme and strophes. The first
famous writer of Sequences was the monk Notker Balbulus of
St. Gall, who died in A.D. 912. Connected in form with the
Latin Sequences were the more recently introduced Old Frankish
_Lais_ (Celtic=verse, song) and the Old German _Leiche_ (=melody,
song), to simple airs that had been used for popular songs. The
only one which the church allowed to the people, and that only
in services outside of the church, in processions, rogations and
pilgrimages, in going to the church, at translations of relics,
funerals, consecrations of churches, popular religious festivals,
etc., was the singing or rather reciting of the _Kyrie eleison_
from the great Litany. The fondness of the Germans for singing
and composing hymns led, in the second half of the 9th century,
to the attaching to these words short rhyming sacred verses in
their mother tongue, and this in such a manner that the _Kyrie
eleison_ always formed the refrain of a strophe, so that they
were called =Leisons=. This was the beginning of German church
music. Of the Leisons only one hymn to St. Peter in the Old
High-German dialect has come down to our day.--=The Gregorian
Music=, _Cantus firmus_ or _choralis_, won a most complete
victory over the Ambrosian (§ 59, 5). In A.D. 754 Pepin at
the request of Stephen II. ordered that in France only the
Roman singing should be allowed, and Charlemagne secured for
it complete and exclusive ascendency in all the West by violently
extirpating the already very degenerate Ambrosian music, by
establishing the celebrated singing schools of Metz, Soissons,
Orleans, Paris, Lyons, etc., at the head of which he placed
teachers brought from Rome, and by introducing instruction in
singing in all the higher and lower schools. The first =Organ=
came to France in A.D. 757 as a present to Pepin the Short from
the Greek emperor Constantinus Copronymus; the second to Aachen
with an embassy from the emperor Michael I. in Charlemagne’s
time. From that time they became more common. They were still
as instruments very imperfect. They had only from 9 to 12 notes,
and the keys were so stiff that they had to be beaten down with
the fist.[246]--Continuation, § 104, 10, 11.
§ 88.3. =The Sacrifice of the Mass.=--As the idea of sacrifice
gained place there sprang up in addition to the masses for the
souls of the departed (§ 58, 3) private masses for various other
purposes, for the success of some undertaking, for the recovery
of a sick person, for good weather and a good harvest, etc.
To some extent the multiplication of masses was limited by the
ordinance that celebration should be made at the same altar
and by the same priest only once in the day. From the wish to
secure that as many masses as possible should be said for their
souls after death, churches and monasteries were formed into
fraternities with a stipulated obligation to celebrate a certain
number of masses for each deceased member of the fraternity in
all the churches and monasteries belonging thereto. Fraternities
of this kind, into which as a special favour princes and nobles
were received, were called =Confederacies for the Dead=.
§ 88.4. =The Worship of Saints= (§ 57).--This practice
found a very ready response from the Germans. It afforded
some compensation for the abandoned worship of their ancestors.
But over all other saints towered the mother of God, the meek
and gentle queen of heaven. In her the old German reverence
for woman found its ideal and full satisfaction. In respect of
=Image Worship= (§ 57, 4) the Germans lagged behind, partly from
the scarcity of images, partly from national aversion to them.
The Frankish church of the Carolingian age protested formally
against them (§ 92, 1). But all the greater was the zeal shown
in the =Worship of Relics= (§ 57, 5) in which the worshipper
had the saint concretely and bodily. The relics of the West were
innumerable. Rome was an inexhaustible storehouse; and from the
successive missionaries, from the deserts and solitudes, from the
monasteries and bishops’ seats, there went forth crowds of new
saints whose bones were venerated with enthusiasm. The gaining
of a new relic for a church or monastery was regarded as a piece
of good fortune for the whole land, and amid thousands assembled
from far and near the translation was carried out, accompanied
with liberal gifts of money. The Frankish monastery of Centula
could show in the 9th century an immensely long list of the
relics which it possessed, from the grave of the Innocents,
the milk of the Holy Virgin, the beard of Peter, his cloak,
the _Oratorium_ of Paul, and even from the wood of the three
tabernacles that Peter wished to build on Tabor. The custom of
making =Pilgrimages= (§ 57, 6) also found great favour among the
travel-loving Germans, especially among the Anglo-Saxons. The
places most frequented by pilgrims were the tomb of the chief
Apostles at Rome, then the tomb of Martin of Tours, and, toward
the end of our period, that of St. James of Compostella, _Jacobus
Apostolus_ the elder, the supposed founder of the Spanish church,
whose bones were discovered there by Alfonso the Chaste. The
immoralities consequent upon pilgrimages, about which even
the ancient church complained, were also only too apparent
in this later age. On account of them Boniface urges that his
countrywomen should be forbidden to go on pilgrimages, since
this only served to supply the cities of Gaul and Italy with
prostitutes. The idea of =Guardian Angels= (§ 57, 3) was eagerly
adopted by the Germans. They were specially drawn to the warlike
Archangel Michael, the conqueror of the great dragon (Dan. xii. 1;
Jude 9; Rev. xii. 7 ff.).--Continuation, § 104, 8.
§ 88.5. =Times and Places for Public Worship.=--The beginning
of the church year was changed from Easter to Christmas. All
Saints’ Day (§ 57, 1), originally a Roman local festival, was
made a universal ordinance by Gregory IV. who, in A.D. 835, fixed
its date at 1st Nov. The abundance of relics and the multitude
of masses that were said made it necessary to increase the number
of altars in the churches beyond what Charlemagne had enjoined.
Afterwards they were usually limited to three. The high altar
stood out by itself in the middle of the choir recess. The side
altars leant on pillars or on the chief altar. A relic shrine
generally from the 8th century formed the back of the altar. No
trace of a chancel is found, not even of a confessional chair. In
churches which had the right of baptizing (§ 84, 2) there were as
a rule separate baptistries. In place of these, after the right
of baptizing was conferred on all churches, the baptismal font
was introduced, either on the left side of the main entrance or
at the point where the transepts crossed the nave. This change
required the substitution of sprinkling for immersion. Clocks and
towers became always more common. The latter, at first separate
from the buildings, were from Charlemagne’s time attached to the
church edifice. The baptism of bells, their consecration with
water, oil and chrism, with the bestowing on them of some saint’s
name, was forbidden by Charlemagne, but it was nevertheless
continued, and is common to this day in the Roman Catholic church.
§ 88.6. Most attention was paid to ecclesiastical architecture
and painting, south of the Alps during the Ostro-gothic period,
north of the Alps during the Carolingian period. The Anglo-Saxons,
however, in their island home also developed a taste for art.
During the 9th century it received special attention in the
German monasteries of St. Gall and Fulda. The monk Tutilo of
St. Gall, d. A.D. 912, was pre-eminently distinguished both as
a master in architecture, painting and sculpture, and in poetry
and scholarship. The old Roman basilica style still maintained
the front rank in church building. Yet at Ravenna, the Byzantium
of Italy, during the Gothic domination there were several
beautiful churches in the Byzantine cupola style. Einhard
received from Charlemagne the rank of a court architect. Of
all the churches built in Charlemagne’s time the most important
was the cathedral of Aachen. It was built in the cupola style
after the pattern of the cathedral church of Ravenna. Intended
as a royal chapel, it was connected by a pillared passage with
the palace. It was therefore also of only moderate dimensions.
Its being appropriated as the coronation church led subsequently
to its enlargement by the addition to it in A.D. 1355 of a
large choir in the Gothic style. The church afforded abundant
scope for the use of the art of the statuary. Costly shrines
for relics were required, crucifixes, lamps, _ciboria_, incense
vessels, etc., on which might be lavished all the refinements
of artistic skill. The church books had artistically carved
covers. Church doors, episcopal thrones, reading desks,
baptismal fonts, afforded room for practice in _relievo_
work. Among the various kinds of pictorial representations
miniature painting was most diligently practised upon copies
of the church books.--Continuation, § 104, 12, 14.
§ 89. NATIONAL CUSTOMS, SOCIAL LIFE AND CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
The remains of Christian popular poetry of this period afford a
convincing proof of the powerful and profound manner in which the
truths of Christianity (§ 75, 1) had been grasped by the German races.
The great mass of the people indeed had adopted the new faith in a
purely historical fashion. Only gradually did it make its way into
the inner spiritual life, and meanwhile out of the not fully conquered
paganism there grew up a rich crop of superstitions in connection
with the Christian life. It must be confessed that the state of
morality among the Germans had fallen very low as compared with
that which prevailed before Germany’s conversion to Christianity.
A sadder contrast is scarcely conceivable than that presented by a
comparison of the description in Tacitus of the old German customs
and discipline and the account of Gregory of Tours of colossal
criminality and brutish sensuality in the Merovingian Age. But
never more than here does the fallacy: _Post hoc ergo propter hoc_,
require to be guarded against. The moral deterioration of the German
peoples was carried out independently of their contemporaneous, merely
external, Christianization. The cause of it lies only in the overturning
of the foundations of German life by the migration of the peoples.
Severed from their original home, the most powerful guardian of
ancestral customs, and set down as conquerors in the midst of rich
countries with morally base surroundings, which had a poisonous effect
upon them, with that eagerness and tenacity which characterize children
of nature, they seized upon the seductive treasures and enjoyments,
and their unfettered passion broke through all restraints of discipline
and morality. The clearest proof of this view lies in the fact that the
moral decay appeared in so remarkable a degree only among such peoples
as settled in the corrupt Roman world and became amalgamated with it,
most conspicuously among the Franks in Gaul and the Longobards in Italy,
whereas among the Anglo-Saxons and the inhabitants of Germany the moral
development was more normal.
§ 89.1. =Superstition.=--A powerful impulse was given to
superstition on the one hand by the church, according to the
educational method recommended by Gregory the Great (§ 75, 3),
refusing recklessly to root out every element of paganism and
rather endeavouring to give Christian applications to heathen
institutions and views and to fill pagan forms with Christian
contents, and on the other hand, by the representatives of the
church not regarding belief in the existence of heathen deities
as a delusion but counting the gods and goddesses as demons.
The popular belief therefore saw in them a set of dethroned
deities who in certain realms of nature maintain their ancient
sway, whom therefore they dare not venture altogether to
disoblige. The fanciful poetic view of nature prevailing
among the Germans contributed also to this result, with its
love of the mysterious and supernatural, its fondness for
subtle enquiries and intellectual investigations. Thus, in
the worship of the saints as well as in the church’s belief in
angels and devils, new rich worlds opened themselves up before
the Christianized Germans, which the popular belief soon improved
upon. The pious man is exposed on all sides to the vexations of
demons, but he is also on all sides surrounded by the protecting
care of saints and angels. The popular belief made a great deal
of the devil, but the relation of men to the prince of darkness
and his attendant spirits seemed much too earnest and real to be
as yet the subject of the humour which characterized the devil
legends of the later Middle Ages, in which the cheated, “stupid”
devil is represented as at last possessed only of impotent rage
and sneaking off in disgrace.
§ 89.2. =Popular Education.=--The idea of a general system
of education for the people was already present to the mind
of Charlemagne. Yet as we may suppose only beginnings were made
toward its realization. Bishop Theodulf of Orleans was specially
active in founding schools for the people in all the villages
and country towns of his diocese. The religious instruction of
the youth was restricted as a rule to the teaching of the Lord’s
Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. Whatever grown up man or woman
did not know these two was at Charles’ command to be subjected
to flogging and fasting and to be made to learn them besides.
As evidence of the extent of a religious consciousness among
the people may be adduced the German forms of adjuration,
belief, confession and prayer, of the 8th and 9th centuries
which are still preserved. Further means of advancing the
religious education of the people were afforded by the attempts
to make the biblical and patristic books accessible to the people
by translations in their own language. Among the Germans the
monastery of St. Gall was famous for its zeal in originating
a national literature. Among the Anglo-Saxons this effort was
made and carried out by Alfred the Great, who died in A.D. 901
(§ 90, 10).
§ 89.3. =Christian Popular Poetry.=--It makes its first
appearance at the end of the 7th century and continued far
down into the 9th century. It flourished chiefly in England
and Germany. Under the name of the Northumbrian =Cædmon=, who
died in A.D. 680, there has been preserved a whole series of
biblical poems of no small poetic merit, which range over the
whole of the Old and New Testament history. The most important
Anglo-Saxon poet after him was his countryman =Cynewulf= living
about a century later. His poems are less homely and simple,
but more elaborate than those of Cædmon, and as full of poetic
enthusiasm as these. He too paints for us in his “Christ” the
picture of the Redeemer as that of a manly victorious prince
among his true “champions and earls” with such clear-cut features
that “whoever once beholds them will never again forget them.”
His poetically wrought up legends bear more of the Romish stamp
with traces of saint worship and the doctrine of merit.[247]
Still higher than these two Anglo-Saxon productions stands
the German-Saxon epic the =Heliand=, of the time of Louis of
France, a song of the Messiah worthy of its august subject,
truly national, perfect in form, simple, lively and majestic
in style, transposing into German blood and life a genuine deep
Christianity. In poetic value scarcely less significant is the
“Krist” of Otfried, a monk of Weissenberg about A.D. 860. Near
to his heart as well as to that of the Anglo-Saxon singers lay
the thought: _thaz wir Kriste sungun in unsere Zungun_. It is,
however, no longer popular but artistic poetry, in which the old
German letter rhyme or alliteration gives place to the softer
and more delicate final rhyme. To this class belongs also the
so-called =Wessobrunner Prayer=, of which the first poetical
half is probably a fragment of a larger hymn of the creation,
and a poem in High German on the end of the world and the last
judgment, known by the name of =Muspilli=, extant only as a
fragment which is, however, almost unsurpassable in dignity
and grandeur of description.
§ 89.4. =Social Condition.=--From the point of view of German
law the contract of betrothal had the validity of =marriage=
and the subsequent nuptial ceremony or surrender of the bride
to the bridegroom in a public legal manner by her father or legal
guardian was held to be only the carrying out of that contract.
The bridal ceremony with the ecclesiastical benediction of the
marriage bond already legally tied, was frequently celebrated
only on the day following the marriage, therefore after its
consummation. The Capitulary of Charlemagne of A.D. 802 came
to the support of the claims of the church (§ 61, 2), ordaining
that without previous careful enquiry as to the relationship of
the parties by the priest, and the elders of the people, and also
without the priestly benediction, no marriage could be concluded.
The Pseudo-Isidorian decretals ascribed this demand to the popes
of the 4th and 5th centuries. But the right to perform marriages
was not thereby committed to the church; it was only that the
religious consecration of the civil ordinance of marriage was
now made obligatory. It seemed best of all when sooner or later
the spouses voluntarily renounced marital intercourse; but this
was strictly forbidden during Lent (§ 56, 4, 5), on all festivals
and on the station days of the week (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday
and Sunday). Second marriages were branded with the reproach of
incontinence and called forth a lengthened penance. There was on
the other hand as yet no prohibition of divorce, and the marrying
again of those separated was only unconditionally forbidden in
particular cases. The church was not willing to tolerate mixed
marriages with heathens, Jews and Arians. The Germans found it
most difficult to reconcile themselves to the strict requirements
of the church in regard to the prohibited degrees of relationship.
National customs had regarded many such marriages, especially
with a brother’s widow, as even a pious duty.[248]--Continuation,
§ 104, 6.--=Slavery= or Serfdom was an institution so closely
connected among the Germans with their notions of property that
the church could not think of its entire abolition; indeed the
church itself, with its large landed possessions, owned quite
a multitude of slaves. Yet it earnestly maintained the religious
and moral equality of masters and servants, assigned to the
manumission of slaves one of the first places among good works,
and was always ready to give protection to bondmen against cruel
masters.[249]--The church with special energy entered upon the
task of =Caring for the Poor=; even proud and heartless bishops
could not overlook it. Every well appointed church had several
buildings in which the poor, the sick, widows and orphans were
maintained at the church’s cost.[250]
§ 89.5. =Practice of Pubic Law.=--The custom of =Blood Revenge=
was also a thoroughly German institution. It had, however,
been fairly restricted by the custom of =Composition= or the
payment of satisfaction in the form of a pecuniary fine. The
church from its dislike of capital punishment decidedly favoured
this system. As a means of securing judicial evidence oaths
and ordeals were administered. Only the freeman, who was quite
capable of acting in accordance with his own judgment, was
allowed to take an =Oath=; the husband took the oath for his
wife, the father for the children, the master for the slave.
Relatives, friends and equals in rank swore along with him as
sharers of his oath, _Conjuratores_. Although they repeated with
him the oath formula, the meaning of their action simply was
that they were fully satisfied as to the honour and truthfulness
of him who took the oath. Where the oath of purgation was not
allowed, _conjuratores_ were not forthcoming and the other means
of proof awanting, the =Ordeal= (_Ordale_ from _Ordâl_=judgment)
was introduced. Under this may be included:
1. The Duel, derived from the old popular belief: _Deum adesse
bellantitus_. Only a freeman was allowed to enter the lists.
Old men, women, children and priests were allowed to put in
their place another of the same rank by birth.
2. Various fire tests; holding the bare hand a length of time
in the fire; in a simple shirt walking over burning logs of
wood; carrying glowing iron in the bare hand for nine paces;
walking barefoot over nine or twelve glowing ploughshares.
3. Two water tests: the accused was obliged to pick up with
his naked hand a ring or stone out of a kettle filled with
boiling water, or with a cord round his naked body he was
cast into deep water, his sinking was the proof of his
innocence.
4. The cross test: he whose arms first sank with weariness from
the cruciform position, was regarded as defeated.
5. The Eucharist test, applied especially to priests: it was
expected that the criminal should soon die under the stroke
of God’s wrath. As a substitute for this among the laity
we find the test of the consecrated morsel, _Judicium offæ_
which the accused was required to swallow during mass.
6. The bier test, _Judicium feretri_: if when the accused
touched the wound of the murdered man blood flowed from
the wound or forth from the mouth, it was regarded as proof
of his guilt.
The church with its belief in miracles occupied the same
ground as that on which the ordeal practice was rooted. It
could therefore only combat the heathen conception of the
ordeal and not the thing itself. But the church took charge of
the whole procedure, and certainly did much to reduce the danger
to a minimum. It was Agobard of Lyons, who died in A.D. 840, who
first contended against the superstition as worthy of reprobation.
Subsequently the Roman chair, first by Nicholas I., forbade
ordeals of all kinds.--Among the various kinds of privileges
involving the inviolability of person and goods, profession and
business, the privileges of the church were regarded as next
highest to those of the king. Any injury done to ecclesiastical
persons or properties and any crime committed in a sacred place,
required a threefold greater composition than _ceteris paribus_
would have otherwise been required. The bishop ranked with the
duke, the priest with the count.
§ 89.6. =Church Discipline and Penitential Exercises=
(§ 61, 1).--=The German= State allowed the church a share in
the administration of punishments, and regarded an evildoer’s
atonement as complete only when he had submitted to the
ecclesiastical as well as the secular judgment. Out of this grew
the institution of Episcopal =Synodal Judicatures=, _Synodus_,
under Charlemagne. Once a year the bishop accompanied by a royal
_Missus_ was to travel over the whole diocese, and, of every
parish priest assisted by assessors sworn for the purpose, should
inquire minutely into the moral and ecclesiastical condition
of each of the congregations under him and punish the sins and
shortcomings discovered. Directions for the conducting of Synodal
judicatures were written by Regino of Prüm and Hincmar of Rheims
(§ 90, 5). The state also gave authority to =Ecclesiastical
Excommunication= by putting its civil forces at the disposal
of the church. Pepin ordained that no excommunicated person
should enter a church, no Christian should eat or drink with
him, none should even greet him. Directions for the practice of
=Penitential Discipline= are given in the various =Penitentials=
or Confessional-books, which, after the pattern of forensic
productions, settle the amount of penal exactions for all
conceivable sins in proportion to their enormity. The Penitential
erroneously ascribed to Theodore archbishop of Canterbury
(§ 90, 8) is the model upon which most of these are constructed.
The Confessional-books that go under the names of the Venerable
Bede and Egbert of York obtained particularly high favour. All
these books, even in their earliest form extremely perverse and
in their later much altered forms full of contradictions, errors
and arbitrary positions, reduced the whole penitential practice
to the utmost depths of externalization and corruption. How
confused and warped the church idea of penitence had become is
seen by the rendering of the word _pœnitentia_ by penance, _i.e._
satisfaction, atonement. In the Penitentials _pœnitere_ is quite
identical with _jejunare_. The idea of _pœnitentia_ having been
once associated with external performances, there could be no
objection to substitute the customary penitential act of fasting
(§ 56, 7) for other spiritual exercises, or by adoption of
the German legal practice of receiving composition to accept
a money tax for ecclesiastical or benevolent purposes. In this
way the first traces made their appearance of the Indulgences
of the later Roman Catholic church. It therefore followed from
this, that, as satisfaction could be rendered for all sins by
corresponding acts of penance, so these works might also be
performed vicariously by others. Thus in the Penitentials there
grew up a system of =Penitential Redemptions= which formed the
most despicable mockery of all earnest penitence. For example,
a direction is given as to how a rich man may be absolved from
a penance of seven years in three days, without inconveniencing
himself, if he produces the number of men needed to fast for
him. Such deep corruption of the penitential discipline, however,
aroused, in the 8th and 9th centuries, a powerful reaction
against the Confessional-books and their corrupt principles.
It was first brought forward at the English Synod at Clovesho
in A.D. 747; in its footsteps followed the French Synods of
Chalons in A.D. 813, of Paris A.D. 829, of Mainz, A.D. 847.
The Council of Paris ordered that all Confessional-books should
be seized and burnt. They nevertheless still continued to be
used.--There did not as yet exist any universal and unconditional
compulsion to make confession. The custom, however, of a yearly
confession in the Easter forty days’ season was even during the
9th century so prevalent, that the omission of it was followed by
a severe censure by the synodal court. The formulæ of absolution
were only deprecative, not judicative.[251]
IV. THEOLOGY AND ITS BATTLES.
§ 90. SCHOLARSHIP AND THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE.[252]
With the exception of Ulfilas’ famous efforts, the Arian period of
German church history is quite barren in scientific performances. Yet
those few who preserved and fostered the scientific gains of earlier
times were honoured and made use of by the noble-minded Ostrogoth king
Theodoric, and under him Boethius [Boëthius] and Cassiodorus (§ 47, 23)
performed the praiseworthy task of saving the remnants of classical
and patristic learning. For Spain the same office was performed by
Isidore of Seville, who died in A.D. 636, whose text-books continued
for centuries, even on this side the Pyrenees, to supply the groundwork
of scholarly studies. The numerous Scottish and Irish monasteries
maintained their reputation down to the 9th century for eminent piety
and distinguished scholarship. Among the Anglo-Saxons the learned Greek
monk Theodore of Tarsus, who died in A.D. 690, and his companion Hadrian,
enkindled an enthusiasm for classical studies, and the venerable Bede,
who died in A.D. 735, though he never quitted his monastery, became
the most famous teacher in all the West, The Danish pirates did indeed
crush almost to extinction the seeds of Anglo-Saxon culture, but Alfred
the Great sowed them anew, though this revival was only for a little
while. In Gaul Gregory of Tours, who died in A.D. 595, was the last
representative of Roman ecclesiastical learning. After him we enter
upon a chaos without form and void, from which the creative spirit of
Charlemagne first called a new day which spread over the whole West its
enlightening beams. This light, however, was put out even by the time of
the great emperor’s grandson, and then we suddenly pass into the night
of the _Sæculum Obscurum_ (§ 100).
§ 90.1. =Rulers of the Carolingian Line.=--=Charlemagne=,
A.D. 768-814, may be regarded as beginning his scientific
undertakings on his first entrance into Italy in A.D. 774.
On this occasion he came to know the scholars Peter of Pisa,
Paul Warnefrid, Paulinus of Aquileia, and Theodulf of Orleans,
and brought them to his palace. From A.D. 782, however, the
particularly brilliant star of his court was the Anglo-Saxon
scholar Alcuin, whom Charles had met in Italy in the previous
year. Scientific studies were now carried on in an exceedingly
vigorous manner in the palace. The royal family, the whole court
and its surroundings engaged upon them, but of them all Charles
himself was the most diligent and successful of Alcuin’s students.
In the royal school, _Schola palatina_, which was ambulatory
like the royal residence itself, the sons and daughters of the
king with the children of the most distinguished families of
the land received a high-class education. The teaching staff
was constantly recruited from England, Ireland and Italy. After
such preparations Charles issued in A.D. 787 a circular to all
the bishops and abbots of his kingdom which enjoined under threat
of his severe royal displeasure that schools should be erected in
all monasteries and cathedral churches. Meanwhile his endeavours
were most successful, but were rather one-sided in the preference
given to classical and patristic literature, without a proper
national foundation. Charles’s great and generous nature indeed
had a warm interest in national culture, but those around him,
with the single exception of Paul Warnefrid, had in consequence
of their Latin monkish training lost all taste for German thought,
language and nationality, and fearing lest such studies might
endanger Christianity and cause a relapse into paganism, they
did not help but rather hindered the king’s effort to promote
a national literature.--=Louis the Pious=, A.D. 814-840, had his
weak government disturbed by the strifes of parties and of the
citizens. This period, therefore, was not specially favourable
to the development of scientific studies, but the seed sown by
his father still bore noble fruit. His son Lothair issued an
ordinance which gave a new organization to the educational system
of Italy, indeed created it anew. But Italy restless and full of
factions was the land where least of all such institutions could
be successfully conducted. A new golden age, however, dawned
for France under =Charles the Bald=, A.D. 840-877. His court
resembled that of his great grandfather in having gathered to
it the élite of scholars from all the West. The royal school
gained new renown under the direction of _Joannes Scotus Erigena_.
The cathedral and monastic schools of France vied with the most
famous institutions of Germany (St. Gall, Fulda, Reichenau, etc.),
and over the French episcopal sees men presided who had the most
distinguished reputation for scholarship. But after Charles’s
death the bloom of the Carolingian period passed away with almost
inconceivable rapidity amid the commotions of the time into thick
darkness, chaos and barbarism.
§ 90.2. =The most distinguished Theologians of the
Pre-Carolingian Age.=
1. In Merovingian France flourished =Gregory of Tours=,
sprung of a good Roman family. When in A.D. 573, in
order to get cured of an illness, he made a pilgrimage
to the tomb of St. Martin (§ 47, 14), he had the bishopric
of Tours conferred upon him, where he continued till his
death in A.D. 595. His _Historia Ecclesiastica Francorum_
in ten Bks. affords us the only exact and trustworthy
information we possess of the Merovingian age. The
_Ll. VII. Miraculorum_ are a collection of several
hagiographic writings, four of them recounting some
of the innumerable miracles of St. Martin.
2. Scientific studies were prosecuted more vigorously on the
other side of the Pyrenees than on this. In the empire of
the Suevi (§ 76, 4) archbishop =Martin of Braccara=, now
Braga, distinguished himself in the work of Catholicising
the Arian population. He was previously abbot of the
monastery of Dumio, and died about A.D. 580. He was a
voluminous writer on church law and also in the departments
of moral and ascetical theology. His writings in the latter
section have so much in common with those of Seneca that
they were at one time ascribed to the Roman moralist. The
treatise _De Correctione Rusticorum_ is very important for
the history of the morals, legal institutions and culture
of that period.--The great star of the Spanish Visigothic
kingdom was =Isidorus [Isidore] Hispalensis=, who died
in A.D. 636. He was descended from a distinguished Gothic
family, and, as successor of his brother Leander, rose to
the archbishopric of Seville (Hispalis). His writings are
diligent compilations, which have preserved to us many
fragments and items of information otherwise unknown.
Incomparably greater, however, was the service they rendered
in conveying classical and patristic learning to the German
world of that age. His most comprehensive work consists
of xx. Bks. _Originum s. Etymologiarum_, an encyclopædic
exhibition of the whole field of knowledge of the day. He
also wrote a _Chronicon_ reaching down to A.D. 627, and
_Hist. de regibus Gotorum_, a shorter _Hist. Vandalorum
et Suevorum_, and a continuation of Jerome’s _Catalogus
de viris illustr_. Of more importance than his numerous
compilations of mystico-allegorical expositions of Scripture
are the iii. Bks. _Sententiarum_, a well-arranged system of
doctrine and morals from patristic passages, especially from
Augustine and Gregory the Great, and the _Lb. II. de ecclest.
officiis_. The two last-named works were highly prized
as text-books throughout the Middle Ages. The two books
_Contra Judæos_ belong to the department of apologetics.
He also composed a monastic rule (comp. further § 87, 1
and 88, 1).--Isidore’s elder brother =Leander of Seville=,
who died in A.D. 590, had a good reputation as a church
leader (§ 76, 2; 88, 1), and had no insignificant rank
as a theological writer. The same may be said of the two
bishops of Toledo, =Ildefonsus=, who died in A.D. 669, and
=Julianus=, who died in A.D. 690.
3. England’s greatest and most famous teacher was the
Anglo-Saxon, the =Venerable Bede=. Trained in the monastery
of Wearmouth, he subsequently took up his residence in
the monastery of Jarrow, where he died in A.D. 735. He
was a proficient in all the sciences of his time and
withal a model of humility, piety and amiability. While
his numerous pupils reached the highest places in the
service of the church, their famous teacher continued
in quiet retirement as a simple monk. He himself wished
nothing else. Even on his deathbed he continued unweariedly
to teach and write. Immediately before his death he
dictated the last chapter of an Anglo-Saxon translation
of the Gospel of John. By far his most important work
for us is the _Hist. ecclest. gentis Anglorum_ in 5 Bks.
reaching down to A.D. 731 (Engl. Transl. by Giles, Lond.,
1840; and by Gidley, Lond., 1871). Connected with this are
his biographies of several saints of his native land, also
a history of the monastery of Wearmouth, and a _Chronicon
de sex ætatibus mundi_ reaching down to A.D. 729. His
commentaries ranging over almost all the books of the Old
and New Testament give evidence of a wonderful knowledge
of the fathers. His numerous sermons are mostly exegetical
and practical, rarely doctrinal. He was distinguished too
as a poet in Latin as well as in his mother tongue.
§ 90.3. =The most distinguished Theologians of the Age of
Charlemagne.=
1. The brightest star in the theological firmament of this
period was the Anglo-Saxon =Alcuin= (Albinus) with the
Horatian surname of Flaccus, which he got for his poetical
productions. He was educated in the famous school of York
under Egbert and Elbert. When the latter was made archbishop
in A.D. 766, Alcuin undertook the presidency of the schools.
While on a visit to Rome in A.D. 781 he met Charlemagne who
took him to his court, where he became the emperor’s teacher,
friend and most trusted counsellor. Down to his death in
A.D. 804 he was the king’s right hand in all religious
ecclesiastical and educational matters. In order to allay
a feeling of home-sickness, he undertook a journey in
A.D. 789 to his native country as ambassador of Charlemagne,
returned in A.D. 793, and did not again quit France. In
A.D. 796 Charles gave him the abbacy of Tours. He soon
raised its monastic school to the highest rank as a seminary
of learning. His exegetical works are mere compilations. The
_Ll. II. de fide s. et Individuæ Trinitatis_ may be regarded
as his dogmatic masterpiece; a compendium of dogmatics based
upon Augustine’s writings. The _Quæstiones de Trin._ treat
of the same matter in the catechetical form of question and
answer. He contributed to the doctrinal controversies of his
time the _Libellus de processione Spiritus S._ (§ 91, 2) and
by several learned controversial tracts against the leaders
of the Adoptionists (§ 91, 1). It is doubtful whether at all,
and if so to what extent, he had to do with the composition
of the _Libri Carolini_ (§ 94, 1) which appeared during his
stay in England. His numerous epistles, about 300 in number,
are very important for the history of his times. In his
Latin poems he sometimes very happily imitates his classical
models.[253]
2. =Paulus Diaconus= or Paul (the son of) Warnefrid, of
an honourable Longobard family, was next to Alcuin the
most distinguished scholar of his age. Probably sorrow
at the overthrow of his people (§ 82, 2) drove him into
the monastery of Monte Cassino; but Charlemagne took
him to his court in A.D. 782, where he was an object
of admiration as a Homer among the Grecians, a Virgil,
Horace, Tibullus, among the Latinists, and a Philo (!)
among the Hebraists. Love of his native land, however,
led him back to his monastery in A.D. 786, where he died
at a very advanced age in A.D. 795. What was specially
praiseworthy in this learned and amiable man, all the more
that few then took interest in those matters, was love and
enthusiasm for the language, the national legends and heroic
tales, the old laws and customs of his fellow-countrymen.
His most important work is the _Historia s. de Gestis
Langobardorum_ in 6 bks., reaching down to A.D. 774. The
earlier _Hist. Romana_, composed at the wish of a daughter
of king Desiderius, is, so far as its earlier periods are
concerned, compiled from the classical historians, but for
the later periods down to the overthrow of the Gothic rule
is more independent. At the Frankish court he composed the
_Hist. Episcoporum Mettensium_. He was also distinguished
as a poet. On his _Homiliarius_ comp. § 88, 1.[254]
3. =Theodulf, bishop of Orleans=, distinguished as a Christian
poet and learned theologian, and especially as a promoter
of popular education, stood in high repute with Charlemagne,
but under Louis the Pious, being suspected of treasonable
correspondence with Bernard of Italy, was deposed and
banished in A.D. 818. Subsequently, however, he was
pardoned and recalled, but died in A.D. 821 before he
reached his diocese. His book _De Spiritu S._ was a
contribution to the controversy about the procession
of the Holy Spirit (§ 91, 2). At Charlemagne’s request
he described and explained the baptismal ceremony in the
book _De ordine baptismi_. His numerous poems have been
published in 6 bks.
4. =Paulinus=, patriarch of Aquileia, who died in A.D. 804,
and bishop =Leidrad of Lyons=, who died in A.D. 813, took
part in Alcuin’s controversy against the Adoptionists by
the publication of able treatises.
5. Of the works of =Hatto=, abbot of Reichenau, subsequently
bishop of Basel, who died in A.D. 836, we still have
the so-called _Capitulare Hattonis_, with prefatory
directions for the official guidance of the Basel clergy,
and the _Visio Wettini_, describing the vision of a monk
of Reichenau called Wettin, who in A.D. 824 three days
before his death was conducted by an angel through hell,
purgatory and paradise. Hatto wrote it in prose and Walafrid
Strabo rendered it into verse. It made a great impression
on his contemporaries and was probably not without influence
upon Dante’s _Divina Comediá_.
§ 90.4. =The most distinguished Theologians of the Age of Louis
the Pious.=
1. =Agobard of Lyons=, a Spaniard by birth, died as
archbishop of Lyons in A.D. 840. As the resolute defender
of the integrity of the empire and the head of the national
church party among the Frankish clergy, he was drawn into
a conspiracy against Louis the Pious in A.D. 833 (§ 82, 4),
which led to his deposition and banishment in A.D. 835.
After two years, however, he was pardoned. He was a man
of remarkable culture and extraordinary force of character,
and withal a vigorous opponent of all ecclesiastical and
extra-ecclesiastical superstition. On his writings referring
to these matters see § 92, 2. In the book _Adv. dogma
Felicis_ he contended against Adoptionism (§ 91, 1). In
connection with his battle against the insolence and pride
of the numerous and wealthy Jews in his diocese he wrote and
dedicated to the emperor the accusatory tract _De insolentia
Judæorum_, followed by several similar addresses to the
most influential councillors of the crown. Another series
of writings from his pen was devoted to the vindication
of the attitude which he had assumed in the struggle
between Louis the Pious and his sons. Several treatises
on the position and task, the rights and duties of the
ministerial office show a reformatory tendency. He engaged
in a passionate controversy with Amalarius of Metz about
the necessity of a liturgical reform. Against Fredigis of
Tours, Alcuin’s successor, he maintained the view regarding
the prophets and apostles that the Holy Spirit _non solum
sensum prædicationis et modos vel argumenta dictionum
inspiraverit, sed etiam ipsa corporalia verba extrinsecus
in ora illorum ipse formaverit_.
2. =Claudius, bishop of Turin=, who died in A.D. 839, was
also a Spaniard by birth and a scholar of Felix of Urgel
(§ 91, 1), without, however, imbibing his heretical views.
He was throughout his whole career a zealous and determined
reformer. His reformatory notions were set forth first
of all in his exegetical works that covered almost the
whole range of Scripture. Of these only the commentary
on Galatians is now extant. He also vindicated his position
against the attacks of his old friend the abbot Theodemir
in his _Apologeticus_ (§ 92, 2).
3. =Jonas of Orleans=, the successor of Theodulf, was one of
the most distinguished prelates of his age, who wrought
earnestly and successfully for the restoring of discipline
and order in his diocese. In the struggle between Louis the
Pious and his sons he resolutely took the side of the old
king. He died in A.D. 844. His three books, _De institutione
laicali_ constitute a handbook of morals for married
persons, which also, because it deals with the sins and
vices that were then rampant, is of value as a picture of
the moral condition of his age. The book _De institutione
regia_, addressed to Louis’ son Pepin, may be regarded
as an appendix to the former treatise. In opposition to
the iconoclastic opinions of Claudius (§ 92, 2) he wrote
_Ll. III. De cultu imaginum_.
4. The principal work of the priest =Amalarius of Metz= is
his _De ecclesiasticis officiis_ in 4 bks., a detailed
description of all the ceremonies of public worship and
the ecclesiastical furniture and vestments, with many
arbitrary mystico-allegorical explanations, which called
forth a crushing rejoinder from Agobard. On his revision
of the rule of Chrodegang, see § 84, 4.
5. From the pen of the German monk =Christian Druthmar= of Old
Corbei we have a commentary on Matthew, which is remarkable
for the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper which it sets forth
(§ 91, 3), as well as for the hermeneutical principle there
laid down, that first and foremost the exegete must secure
a thorough understanding of the historical literal sense,
before he may think of developing the spiritual sense, which
must have the former as its basis.
6. =Rabănus [Rabanus] Magnentius Maurus=, the most
distinguished scholar of his age, was descended from an
old Roman family but one that had long been Germanized at
Mainz. His earliest education was received at the monastery
of Fulda. He then became a pupil of Alcuin at Tours. In
A.D. 803 he became himself a teacher at Tours, and in
A.D. 822 was made abbot of Fulda. After the death of Louis
the Pious he took the side of Lothair against Louis the
German, and was consequently obliged to resign his position
as abbot and to quit Fulda in A.D. 842. Subsequently,
however, he obtained Louis’ favour, and upon Otgar’s
death in A.D. 847 (§ 87, 3) was appointed his successor
in the archiepiscopal see of Mainz. He died in A.D. 856.
The monastic school at Fulda was raised by him to the
highest eminence. His commentaries extending over almost
all the Old and New Testaments are mainly occupied with
the development of the so-called spiritual sense, manifest
wonderful familiarity with the writings of the Latin fathers
from Ambrose to Bede, and were held in the highest esteem
throughout the Middle Ages. The same may be said of his
numerous homilies. The encyclopædic work _De universo_
in 22 bks., is a continuation of Isidore’s _Origines_.
His book _De institutione clericorum_ in 3 bks. affords
a summary of all that was then to be learnt by the clergy
for the practical work of the ministry. The _Tractatus de
diversis quæstionibus ex V. et N. T. contra Judæos_ is an
apologetic treatise. He wrote against Gottschalk’s doctrine
of predestination in a letter to bishop Noting of Verona
(§ 91, 5), and another to the abbot Eigil of Prüm against
Radbert’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper (§ 91, 3). Of his
many other works we may mention a _Martyrologium_ based
upon ancient authorities.
7. =Walafrid Strabo= received his early training in the
monastery of Reichenau. He studied subsequently under
Rabanus at Fulda, in which institution he became a teacher.
About A.D. 842 he was made abbot of Reichenau; the seminary
here he raised to high repute, although he died in his
early prime in A.D. 849. Among his evangelical writings
his so-called _Glossæ ordinariæ_, _i.e._ short explanations
of the Latin text of the Bible, mostly culled from the
commentaries of Rabanus, were extremely popular, and
continued in use throughout the Middle Ages as an exegetical
handbook. In the liturgical department we have his treatise
_De exordiis et incrementis rerum ecclesiasticarum_, in
which he expresses himself on the image controversy in
the spirit of the old Frankish church (§ 92, 1). Walafrid
was also famous as a writer of sacred and secular poems.
§ 90.5. =The Most Distinguished Theologians of the Age of Charles
the Bald.=
1. The powerful metropolitan =Hincmar of Rheims=, who died
in A.D. 882 (§ 82, 7; 83, 2), was not indeed strong in
dogmatics, but in his writings just as well as in his life
and struggle he was heart and soul a church leader and
statesman. His most important work from a theological point
of view is the _Capitula Synodica ad presbyteros parochiæ
suæ_ on various points of worship and discipline, a notable
witness to the zeal and care which this man, so much taken
up with affairs of state and ecclesiastical controversies,
showed in the discharge of his ministerial duties. Of his
writings in connection with the Gottschalk controversy
(§ 91, 5, 6) only the prolix work _De predest. Dei et libero
arbitrio_ vindicating the decrees of Quiersy of A.D. 853 are
now extant.
2. =Paschasius Radbertus=, who died about A.D. 865, was
monk, and, from A.D. 844-851, also abbot of the monastery
of Corbei in Picardy. But among the monks of that place
there was a cotery which occasioned the most profound grief
to the pious-minded abbot; especially the learned monk
Ratramnus under the protection of court favour took delight
in contesting the somewhat ultra-pietistic views of his
abbot. Probably it was this that led Radbertus to resign his
office in A.D. 851. Besides the two treatises controverted
by Ratramnus he composed biblical commentaries, which are
more independent and contain more of his own than was common
at that time. He also wrote 3 bks. on faith, love and hope;
besides several Hagiographies.
3. =Ratramnus=, the antagonist of the former, takes a very
prominent place among the clear and subtle thinkers of that
age. Besides his controversial treatises against Radbertus
(§ 91, 3, 4) and against Hincmar (§ 91, 5, 6), he took part
in the burning controversy between the Greeks and Latins
(§ 67, 1) and wrote, _Contra Græcorum opposita Romanam eccl.
infamantium_.
4. =Florus Magister= was a cleric of the diocese of Lyons
distinguished no less for great learning than for poetic
gifts. His principal work _De actione Missarum, s. expositio
in Canonem Missæ_ is, notwithstanding its title, not so
much a liturgical treatise as a controversial tract against
Radbertus’ doctrine of the Eucharist (§ 91, 3). In the
liturgical controversy between Agobard and Amalarius,
he took the side of Agobard and argued against Amalarius
in several epistles. In the predestinarian controversy
he published the work _Contra J. Scoti Erigenæ erroneas
definitiones_ (§ 91, 5). He also composed a _Martyrologium_.
5. =Haymo, bishop of Halberstadt=, who died in A.D. 853, won
great reputation not only by his compiled exegetical works
and his _Homiliarium_ for the festival part of the year,
but also as author of a Church History, which, however, is
nothing more than a working up of extracts from Rufinus.
6. =Servatus Lupus=, scholar of Rabanus, was from A.D. 842
abbot of Ferrières. His 130 epistles are important for the
history of his time, as he was in constant correspondence
with the most famous men of his day. On the side of
Gottschalk in the predestinarian controversy he wrote
his treatise _De tribus quæstionibus_.
7. =Remigius of Auxerre=, who died about A.D. 908, was
teacher of the monastic school at Rheims, and subsequently
at Paris. Besides numerous commentaries on the books of
the Old and New Testaments in the usual compilatory and
allegorical style, he has left in his _Expositio Missæ_
a mystico-allegorical explanation of the ceremonies of
the mass.
8. =Regius of Prüm=, abbot of the monastery there,
subsequently resigned his rank and retired into the
monastery of Treves. He died in A.D. 915. His _Chronicon_
reaching down to A.D. 906 is of great value for his own
times. His 2 bks. _De cantis synodalibus et disciplinis
ecclesiasticis_ are a directory for the visitation of
churches to be carried out by means of synodical judicatures.
§ 90.6.
9. =Anastasius Bibliothecarius= was abbot of a Roman monastery
and librarian under popes Nicholas I., Hadrian II. and
John VIII., and visited the Byzantine court in A.D. 869
as member of an embassy of Emperor Louis II., and was also
present at the 8th œcumenical Council at Constantinople
(§ 67, 1). He translated the acts of this synod into Latin,
wrote the lives of several saints, and composed a _Hist.
ecclest. s. Chronographia tripartita_ drawn from three
Byzantine historical works of that period. To the _Liber
Pontificalis s. de vitio Roman. pontificum_, reaching down
to the death of Stephen V. in A.D. 891, which has been
ascribed to him, he can only have contributed the _Vita_
of pope Nicholas I., and perhaps also the _Vitæ_ of his
four immediate predecessors. It is a history of the popes
gathered together from various sources that had their
origin at different times, the earliest of which goes back
to A.D. 354. The oldest extant recension of it reaches
down to Pope Conon in A.D. 687, and forms an important
link in the chain of Romish fabrications and interpolations,
by means of which the numerous fabricated acts of Romish
martyrs, as well as already existing fables referring
to particular popes and emperors (comp. _e.g._ § 42, 1),
gained credence, more recently introduced liturgical
practices had assigned to them a more remote antiquity,
and the popes were represented as legislators for the
whole church. The complete biographies often written by
contemporaries preserved in this collection are of great
historical value.
10. =Eulogius of Cordova= was chosen archbishop in A.D. 858,
but was not received by the Moorish government, and suffered
martyrdom in A.D. 859 (§ 81, 1). The most important of his
writings is the historical _Memoriale Sanctorum s. Ll. III.
de Martyrib. Cordubens_. The _Apologeticus Sanctorum_ is a
continuation of the former with violent invectives against
Islam and its false prophet. =Paulas [Paul] Alvarus= of
Cordova, from his youth closely associated with Eulogius,
wrote his life and vindicated in a _Judiculus luminosus_
the tendency to court martyrdom then frequently shown by
Christians but often objected to.
§ 90.7.
11. =Joannes Scotus Erigena=, the miracle as well as the
enigma of his age, by birth probably an Irishman, who
flashed out as a brilliant meteor in the court of Charles
the Bald and passed away from view, without its being known
whence he came or whither he went, was the greatest scholar,
the most profound, subtle and liberal thinker of his times,
with a speculative power the like of which was not seen
for centuries before and after. He died after A.D. 877.
His extant works embrace fragments of his commentary
on the Areopagite (§ 47, 11), and a Latin faithful,
literal and therefore hard to understand translation
of the Areopagite’s writings, also a translation of a
work of Maximus Confessor on difficult passages from
the writings of Gregory Nazianzen (_Loca ambigua_), his
controversial treatise _De prædestinatione_ (§ 91, 5),
a homily on the prologue of John’s gospel, a fragment of
a speculative-mystical treatise _De egressu et regressu
animæ ad Deum_, and the _Opus palmare_ of the author, by
far the most comprehensive of his writings, the 5 bks. _De
divisione naturæ_. Based upon the gnosis of the school of
Origen, but resting mainly on the theosophical mysticism of
the Areopagite and the dialectic of Maximus Confessor, he
produced in this treatise a system of speculative theology
of magnificent dimensions which, in spite of every effort
to hold by the doctrinal position of the church, is but
one piece of heterodoxy from beginning to end. He starts
from the principle that true theology and true philosophy
are only formally different, but essentially identical.
The _Fides_ have to express the truth as _Theologia
affirmativa_ (καταφατική) in the biblically revealed and
ecclesiastically communicated shell, accommodating itself
to the finite understanding by figurative and metaphorical
expressions. But the task of the _Ratio_ is to strip off
this shell (_Theologia negativa_, ἀποφατική), and by means
of speculation raise the faith to knowledge. The title of
this book is to be explained from its fundamental thought
that nature, _i.e._ the sum of all being and non-being, by
which he understands everything the existence of which is
yet unknown, or merely potential, or necessarily belonging
to things past, comprises four forms of existence:--_Natura
creatrix non creata_, _i.e._ God as the potential sum of
all being, _Natura creatrix creata_, _i.e._ the eternal
thoughts of God regarding the world as the eternal primal
types of all creation, _Natura creata non creans_, _i.e._
the world in time as the visible product and sensible
realization of the eternal invisible world of ideas,
and _Natura nee creata nee creans_, _i.e._ God as the
final end of all created being, to whom all creation
when all contradictions have been overcome returns in
the ἀποκατάστασις τῶν πάντων. The Aristotelian threefold
division into the unmoved and moving, the moved and moving,
and the moved and not moving, seems to have afforded
him the starting-point for his fourfold division; while
the divergent conception of them, their enlargement and
development may be traced to Platonic and Neo-Platonic
influences.--That such a system must essentially tend
to pantheism soon became evident, but on the other hand
Erigena’s own Christian consciousness strongly reacted
against the pantheistic current of his thought, and he was
anxiously concerned to preserve the fundamental truths of
Christian Theism. By the fundamental fourfold division of
his system he could not give to the doctrine of the Trinity
a necessary and controlling but only an accidental and
occasional position. Only the presence of this doctrine
in Scripture and tradition obliged him to maintain it.
He speaks indeed of three persons in God, but he uses the
expression only in an improper sense, and has no intention
of explaining Father, Son and Spirit as mere names of
divine relations (_habitudines_, _relationes_): _Pater
vult, Filius facit, Spir. S. perficit_. In the Son as
the creative Word of God are all original causes of
things, undistinguished, unordered; by the Spirit are
they differentiated into the various phenomena and
effects in the kingdom of nature as well as of grace.
On his doctrine of evil, comp. § 91, 5. As Origen has
in himself the germs of all orthodoxy and heterodoxy of
the ancient church undeveloped and uncontrasted, so also
in Erigena are there the germs of the contradictions
of later scholasticism and mysticism. Had he lived
three centuries later he would probably have set the
whole learned world astir, but now he passed unhonoured,
misunderstood, scarcely regarded worth dealing with for
heresy (§ 91, 5), and apparently leaving little trace
behind him. His great work _De divisione naturæ_ was
first condemned by a provincial Council at Sens, and
this judgment was confirmed by Honorius III. in A.D. 1225.
The book was characterized as _Scatens vermibus hæreticæ
pravitatis_; orders were given that it should be sought out
everywhere and burnt.[255]
§ 90.8. =The Monastic and Cathedral Schools= had as their
main task the training of capable servants for the church. The
handbooks mainly in use were those of Cassiodorus, Isidore, Bede,
Alcuin and Rabanus. Great diligence was shown, especially in the
monasteries, in founding libraries and multiplying books by means
of good copies. Alcuin made a threefold division of all sciences;
ethics, physics and theology. Ethics corresponded to what was
afterwards called the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic);
Physics to the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and
Astronomy). These two together comprehended the whole range
of the seven _free_ arts, _i.e._ worthy of the study of a free
man, liberal studies. Latin was the language of intercourse
and instruction. Greek, which was spread by Theodore of Tarsus,
a Greek monk, who, after being long a teacher in Rome, was in
A.D. 669 made archbishop of Canterbury, and by his pupils was
also taught in the more important schools. Acquaintance with
Hebrew was much more rare, and was often obtained by means
of intercourse with learned Jews. Boethius [Boëthius] was the
vehicle of instruction in philosophy. In the 9th century the works
ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite (§ 47, 11) were sent to
France as a present from the Byzantine emperor Michael to Louis
of France. He was identified with the founder of the church of
Paris of the same name, and patriotic feeling gave an immense
impulse to the study of his writings. The abbot Hildmin of
St. Denys, and subsequently Joannes Erigena, translated them
into Latin. Encyclopædic works, giving compendiums of the whole
range of the sciences then known, were produced by Isidore and
Rabanus.[256]--Continuation, § 99, 3.
§ 90.9. =Various Branches of Theological Science.=--The labours
of the German church in the department of scientific theology was
directed to the church’s immediate needs, and hence the character
of its theology was biblical and practical, and the reputation of
the fathers so extravagantly high, that wherever it was possible,
teaching, preaching, proving and refuting were all carried on in
their very words. Charlemagne’s powerful efforts in the direction
of reform gave even in the department of theology abundant
occasion and encouragement to scholars round about him to a
more independent procedure, and the theological controversies
of the 9th century afforded sufficient scope to independent
thinking.
1. =Exegesis= on the basis of the Vulgate was most diligently
prosecuted. Charlemagne set Alcuin to produce a critical
revision of its very corrupt text. Agobard combated the
mechanical theory of inspiration by the assertion that the
holy prophets were something better than Balaam’s ass. Only
one out of the very numerous exegetes, Christian Druthmar,
recognised it as a first principle, most essential and
necessary, if not the only task of the exegete, to bring
out the grammatical and historical sense of the words
of Scripture. The literal sense was and continued to
be regarded as the scullion of interpretation, while it
was thought that the most precious treasures of Divine
wisdom were to be found in the _allegorical_ sense,
_i.e._ with application to the mysteries of the faith,
the _tropological_ or moral, and the _anagogical_, which
aimed at the elevation of the mind.
2. In =Systematic Theology= Apologetics was most feebly
represented. The humble form of the paganism to be
controverted did not require elaborate defences of the
Christian faith, but the advance of Mohammedanism and the
great number of Jews established in France, especially
under Louis of France, by means of their wealth and bribes,
developed an incredible arrogance. While Jewish and pagan
slaves were not allowed to have baptism, Christian slaves
on the other hand were compelled to observe the Sabbath,
to work on Sunday, to eat flesh on fast days; they openly
blasphemed Christ, insulted the church and sold Christian
slaves to the Saracens. Agobard fought against them
energetically by word, Scripture and action, but the
needy court protected them. Isidore and Rabanus in their
apologetical writings proved the nullity of the Jewish
beliefs. From the time of Charlemagne theologians were
much more eagerly engaged in polemics (§§ 91, 92). Isidore
in his _Ll. III. Sententiarum_ collected from patristic
passages a system of doctrine and morals, which continued
a favourite text-book for centuries. Alcuin’s _Ll. III.
De fide Trinitatis_ form a compendium of dogmatics. The
introduction of the Pseudo-Areopagita into the West prepared
the way for speculative mysticism, which had its first
representative in Joannes Scotus Erigena.
3. In =Practical Theology= homiletical literature was but
poorly represented. Besides the Homiliarius of Paul
Warnefrid (§ 88, 1), we meet with Bede, Walafrid, Rabanus
and Haymo as authors of sermons. On the other hand great
and constant interest was shown in developing a theory of
worship, in describing it and giving a mystical explanation
of it. Isidore with _De officiis ecclesiasticis_ was
the first in this department. Charlemagne set to all his
theologians the task of explaining the baptismal ceremony.
In the time of Louis the Pious, Agobard appears as a
reformer of the liturgy, in connection with which he
passionately contended against Amalarius, against whom
also Florus Magister entered the lists. Important works
in this department were also written by Rabanus, Walafrid
and Remigius. On works treating of church law and church
discipline, see § 87 and § 89, 5.
4. Finally, as to the department of =Historical Theology= all
knowledge of earlier church history was derived from Rufinus
and Cassiodorus. Even Haymo’s Church History is made up
simply of extracts from Rufinus. All the greater diligence
was shown throughout the Middle Ages in chronicling the
ecclesiastical and political events of the immediate
present and also keeping the past in memory. This endeavour
shows itself in a threefold direction. (a) The writing of
=National Chronicles=. The Visigoths had their Isidore, the
Ostrogoths their Cassiodorus,[257] the Longobards their Paul
Warnefrid, the Franks their Gregory of Tours, the Britons
their Gildas[258] and Nennius,[259] the Anglo-Saxons
their Bede.--(b) Then we have the clumsy compilations of
=Annals= and =Chronicles= which most monasteries produced,
and which were continued from year to year.--(c) And
further, =Biographies=, both of distinguished statesmen
and distinguished churchmen. The _Vitæ Sanctorum_ are
innumerable, mostly quite uncritical, composed purely for
the glorification of some local saint. To this category
belong the numerous _Martyrologies_, arranged in the
order of the Calendar. Among the most famous were those
prepared by Bede, Ado of Vienne, Usuardus, Rabanus, Notker
Balbulus, Wandelbert, etc. In the department of historical
biography proper may be included the portion of the
_Liber pontificalis_ belonging to this period, the _Hist.
Mettensium Episcoporum_ of Paul Warnefrid, and Isidore’s
continuation of Jerome’s _Catalogus_, which was further
continued by Ildefonsus of Toledo.
§ 90.10. =Anglo-Saxon Culture under Alfred the Great=,
A.D. 871-901.--Alfred the Great, the greatest and noblest of
all the kings that England has ever had, was the grandson of
Egbert who had united in A.D. 827 the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
When five years old he received papal anointing at Rome and two
years later in company with his pious father he travelled thence,
made a considerable stay at the brilliant court of Charlemagne
where he received the impress of its superior culture, and
began his reign in A.D. 871 in his 22nd year when the kingdom
was sorely oppressed by Danish invasions. He applied all the
energy of his mind to the difficult problems of government, to
the emancipation and civilization of his country and people by
driving out the Danish robbers, and then improving the internal
condition of the land by attention to agriculture, industry and
trade, by a wise organization, legislation and administration,
by the founding of churches, monasteries and schools, and
by furthering every scientific endeavour from a thoroughly
national point of view. When already thirty-six years of age
he learnt the Latin language and used this acquirement for the
enriching of Anglo-Saxon literature by translations from his
own hand, with many important additions of his own, of Boëthius’
_Consolatio philosophiæ_, the Universal History of Orosius, Bede’s
History of the Church of England and the _Regula pastoralis_ of
Gregory the Great. He also began a translation of the Psalms.
He stimulated his learned friends to a like activity, among whom
bishop Asser of Sherborne in his _Vita Alfredi_ (Engl. transl.
in “Six Old English Chronicles”) has reared a worthy memorial
of his master.[260]--Continuation, § 100, 1.
§ 91. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES.
The first important heresy that grew up independently on German
soil was Adoptionism. This heresy took its rise at that point in the
development of Christology that was reached by the 6th œcumenical
Council of Constantinople in A.D. 680 (§ 52, 8), for it recognises
the double nature and the double will while denying the double sonship.
Frankish orthodoxy, however, saw in it not a further development of
doctrine, but a relapse into Nestorianism, and so condemned the new
doctrine. During the same period the dogma of the procession of the
Holy Spirit was the subject of lively controversy, and the Frankish
church came forward as defender of Western orthodoxy against the Greeks.
In the Eucharistic controversy the most eminent Frankish theologians
opposed the Transubstantiation doctrine of Balbutus [Balbulus].
A further controversy as to the conception of the Blessed Virgin
was closely connected with the one just referred to. Neither of
them was made the subject of any synodal decision. On the other
hand very definite synodal decisions were passed in reference to the
predestination controversy, without, however, bringing that controversy
by any means to a conclusion. Of subordinate importance was the dispute
over the expression _Trina Deitas_.
§ 91.1. =The Adoptionist Controversy, A.D. 782-799.=--Of all
Christian dogmas none were so offensive to the Moslems as that
of the Trinity which to their barren monotheism necessarily
appeared as Tritheism, and none were the subject of so much scorn
as the idea that God should have a son. It need not, therefore,
surprise us to find that Spanish theologians endeavoured to
put this doctrine in a form as little offensive as possible
to the Moslems. One =Migetius= went so far as to adopt a very
crude form of Sabellianism, for he, undoubtedly approaching
the Mohammedan view of the prophetic order, represented the
Trinitarian development of the one Divine Being as a threefold
historical manipulation of God: in David the person of the
Father is revealed, in Christ as son of David that of the Son,
and finally, in the Apostle Paul that of the Holy Spirit. At
a Spanish synod of A.D. 782 he was successfully opposed by the
archbishop =Elipandus of Toledo=, who took the opportunity of
attempting a further development of the Christological dogma.
This also was more fully elaborated by =Felix of Urgel= in
the Spanish Mark. Both taught: That Christ is properly Son of
God only according to His divine nature (_Filius Dei Naturâ_);
according to His human nature He is properly, like all of us,
a servant of God, and only by the decision of the Divine will
is He adopted as the Son of God (_Filius Dei Adoptivus_), just
as all of us may by Him and after His example be raised from the
condition of servant into the family of God. According to His
Divine nature therefore He is the =Only Begotten=, according to
His human nature the =First Begotten= Son of God. The adoption
of the human nature into Divine Sonship began with its conception
by the Holy Ghost, but was more definitely determined in His
baptism, and perfected in His resurrection. The first scene of
the controversy called forth by this doctrine was enacted on
Spanish soil. Two representatives of the Asturian clergy, the
presbyter Beatus of Libana and bishop Etherius of Osma, contended
by word and writing against the heresy of Elipandus (A.D. 785).
This was done perhaps with the view of emancipating the Asturian
church from the see of Toledo then under Saracen domination. The
Asturians applied to Hadrian I., who in an epistle to the bishops
of Spain in A.D. 786 condemned Adoptionism as a heresy. The
controversy entered upon a second stage through the interference
of Charlemagne. The absence of Adoptionism in Frankish Spain
afforded him an excuse for interfering, and he readily seized
upon this, because it gave him an opportunity of posing as the
defender of orthodoxy in the West, _i.e._ as Emperor _in esse_.
Before a Synod at Regensburg in A.D. 792, Felix was compelled
to renounce this heresy, and was sent to Rome to pope Hadrian I.
There he had to make a second recantation, but escaped from
prison and fled to Saracenic territory. In the meantime Alcuin
had returned from his travels in England, and immediately engaged
in controversy by addressing an affectionate exhortation to
Felix. The Spaniards gave a very firm reply and Charlemagne
then convened the famous œcumenical German Synod of Frankfort
in A.D. 794. After further investigation Adoptionism was again
condemned, and the judgment of the synod, in order that it might
have an œcumenical character, was sent to Spain accompanied
by four complete reports as representing the various national
churches and authorities. But on the Spaniards this made little
impression. Just as little effect had a learned controversial
tract of Alcuin’s, to which Felix made a smart rejoinder.
Meanwhile Charlemagne sent a clerical commission under Leidrad
of Lyons and Benedict of Aniane (§ 85, 2) into the Spanish
Mark, in order to root out the weeds of heresy that were growing
there. Felix declared himself ready for further enquiry. At the
national Synod of Aachen in A.D. 792 he disputed for six days
with Alcuin, and declared himself at last thoroughly convinced.
Alcuin and Paulinus of Aquileia published new controversial
tracts, and Leidrad went a second time into the Spanish Mark
where he succeeded in rooting out the heresy. But all the more
determined were the bishops of Saracenic Spain in maintaining
their doctrine, and Elipandus answered a conciliatory letter of
Alcuin in a passionate and angry tone. Felix remained until the
end of his life in A.D. 818 under the guardianship of the bishop
of Lyons. Leidrad’s successor, Agobard, found among his papers
undoubted evidence that to the end he was at heart an Adoptionist,
and from this took occasion to publish another controversial
tract. This was the very last of these productions. But in Spain
Adoptionism seems to have maintained its hold down to the second
half of the 9th century. At last about that time Paulus Alvarus
of Cordova (§ 90, 6) contended with a certain Joannes Spalensis
on account of his Adoptionist views. In the 12th century the
controversy again broke out on German soil (§ 102, 6).[261]
§ 91.2. =Controversy about the Procession of the Holy
Spirit.=--At a Synod at Gentiliacum in A.D. 767, held for
the purpose of meeting a Byzantine embassy about the iconoclast
controversy, the addition to the creed of the _Filioque_ was
spoken about (§ 67, 1). The result of the discussion is unknown.
In Charlemagne’s time Alcuin and Theodulf defended the Latin
doctrine in special treatises, and at a Synod at Friaul in
A.D. 791 Paulinus of Aquileia justified its adoption into
the creed and the Carolingian books (§ 92, 1). The discussion
was renewed when the Latin monks of Mount Olivet, blamed by
the Greeks because of the addition, appealed to the usage of
the Frankish church. Pope Leo III. communicated in regard to
this with Charlemagne, and a Council at Aachen in A.D. 809
defended the addition. But the pope, although not contesting
the correctness of the doctrine, disallowed the change in the
creed, and had two silver tablets erected in St. Peter’s in Rome
with the creed wanting the addition. This was evidently a damper
upon the ecclesiastico-political movements of the emperor.
§ 91.3. =The Eucharistic Controversy, A.D. 844.=--Vacillations
about the doctrine of the Supper (§ 58, 2) lasted down to the
9th century. Paschasius Radbertus, monk at Corbie, undertook
in A.D. 831, in his treatise _De Sanguine et corpore Domini_,
theologically to justify, and on all sides to develop the
doctrine of the Supper, which had long ago struck its roots
in the practice of the church and the faith of the people.
The air of genuine piety which meets us in this work impresses
us favourably, and it cannot be denied that he had a profound
perception of fulness, power, and depth of the Sacrament. It
was, therefore, quite in accordance with popular belief. He
could, also, refer to facts from the _Vitæ Sanctorum_, where
the inner _Veritas_ had come to outer manifestation. He thinks
that the fact that this did not always happen is to be accounted
for partly by this, that the Supper in its very nature is
a _Mysterium_ for faith and not a _Miraculum_ for unbelief,
partly by the divine condescendence which takes into account the
natural horror at flesh and blood, and would take away from the
heathen all occasion for blasphemy. At this time, A.D. 831, the
Scriptures were not appealed to. Meantime Radbertus was made
abbot of Corbie, and in this important position he revised his
work, and presented it to Charles the Bald in A.D. 844. The king
called upon the learned monk, =Ratramnus= of Corbie, to express
his opinion on the subject, and he was only too ready to do
an injury to his abbot. Without naming him, he contested his
doctrine in his treatise, _De corp. et sang. Domini ad Carolum
Calvum_, with bitter criticism, and subtly developed his own
view, according to which the body and blood of Christ are enjoyed
only _spiritualiter et secundum potentiam_. Rabanus Maurus,
Scotus Erigena, and Florus of Lyons also opposed the magical
transformation doctrine of Radbertus in favour of a merely
spiritual enjoyment. Hincmar and Haymo, on the other hand,
took the side of Radbertus, while Walafrid Strabo, and the able,
energetic Christian Druthmar, found in the idea of impanation
and consubstantiation a more fitting expression for the solemn
mystery. But Radbertus had spoken the word which gave clear
utterance to the ecclesiastical feeling of the age; the protest
of so many great authorities might delay, but could not destroy
its effects. Continuation, § 101, 2.
§ 91.4. =Controversy about the Conception of the Virgin.=--This
notion of the magical operation of the Divine prevailed with
Radbertus when soon afterwards he undertook in his own way,
and also in accordance with Ps. xxii. 10 and Jer. xxxi. 22,
in the tract, _De partu virginali_, to establish the opinion
already expressed by Ambrose and Jerome (§ 57, 2), that Mary
brought forth _utero clauso_, and without pain. Ratramnus also
has left a treatise on this theme: _De eo quod Christus ex
Virigine natus est_. He maintains equally with Radbertus that
during conception as well as in bearing, the Virgin did not
lose her virginity. But while Radbertus contended against those
who taught less than this, _i.e._, that though Mary conceived
as a virgin, she bore after the manner of all women, Ratramnus
directed his attack against those who affirmed more than that,
_i.e._, that Christ at His birth did not leave His mother’s womb
in the usual, natural manner, by His mother bearing Him. Further,
while the former was angry at the profaning of the mystery of
the birth of Christ, by ranking it under the laws of nature, the
latter emphasized the fact that in no case should it be regarded
as in itself ignominious to be placed under the laws of nature.
Finally, while Radbertus unconditionally repudiated the position,
_Vulvam aperuit_, Ratramnus felt compelled by Luke ii. 23 to
admit it in a certain sense. C. v. “_Utique vulvam aperuit,
non et clausam corrumperet, sed et per eam suæ nativitatis
ostium aperiret, sicut et in Ezech. xliv. 3 porta et clausa
describitur et tamen narratur Domino aperta; non quod liminis
sui fores dimoverit ad ejus egressum, sed quod sic clausa
patuerit dominanti_,” and c. viii. “_Exivit clauso sepulchro
(?) et ingressus foribus obseratis (Jo. xx. 9) ... ut et clausam
relinqueret et per eam transiret ... nec haureundo patefecit_.”
The polemic, therefore, was most probably occasioned not by
anything in the writings, but rather in their oral utterances.
Neither understood the other’s view, and the one drew consequences
from the other’s statements that were not warrantable. But when
Ratramnus pretends to be debating, not with his abbot but with an
unnamed German opponent, this can only be regarded as a literary
artifice.
§ 91.5. =The Predestinarian Controversy A.D. 847-868.=--The
earlier predestinarian controversy (§ 53, 5), was, so far
from being brought to a conclusion, that all the gradations
of doctrinal views, from that of Semi-Pelagianism to a doctrine
of predestination to condemnation that went far beyond Augustine,
could find representatives among the teachers of the church. In
the 9th century the controversy broke out in a passionate form.
=Gottschalk=, the son of Berno, a Saxon count, had been placed
by his parents when a child in the monastery of Fulda. A Synod
at Mainz in A.D. 829 allowed him to go forth, but the abbot of
Fulda at that time, Rabanus Maurus, got Louis the Pious to annul
this dispensation. Transferred to the monastery of Orbais, in
the diocese of Soissons, Gottschalk sought comfort in the study
of the writings of Augustine, and was an enthusiastic defender
of the doctrine of absolute predestination. In one point he
even went beyond Augustine himself, for he taught a two-fold
predestination (_Gemina prædestinatio_), a predestination to
salvation and a predestination to condemnation, while Augustine
had spoken of the latter mostly as a giving over to deserved
condemnation. He took advantage of two journeys into Italy in
A.D. 840 and A.D. 847 for spreading his doctrine. Impelled with
a vehement desire to make converts, he made an attempt upon
bishop Noting of Verona. Through him Rabanus, from A.D. 847
archbishop of Mainz, obtained information thereof, and issued
to Noting, as well as to Count Eberhard of Friaul, with whom
Gottschalk was living, threatening letters which distorted
Gottschalk’s doctrine in many particulars, and drew from it
unfair consequences, making the _Prædestinatio ad damnationem_
a _Prædestinatio ad peccatum_. Rabanus’s own doctrine
distinguished prescience and predestination, and placed the
condemnation of the wicked under the former point of view. At
the same time, in A.D. 848, he convened a Synod at Mainz, before
which Gottschalk stated his doctrine without reserve, in the
joyous conviction that it was in accordance with the doctrine
of the church. But the Council excommunicated him, and assigned
him for punishment to his metropolitan Hincmar of Rheims. Hincmar
had him anew condemned at the Synod of Quiersy in A.D. 849,
then, because he steadily refused to recant, had him savagely
scourged and consigned to imprisonment for life in the monastery
of Hautvilliers. Gottschalk offered to prove the justice of
his cause by submitting to an ordeal; but Hincmar, though in
other instances a defender of the ordeal, denounced this as the
proposal of a second Simon Magus. The inhuman treatment of the
poor monk, and the rejection of the doctrine of Augustine by two
church leaders, occasioned a mighty commotion in the Frankish
church, which was mainly directed against Hincmar. At first,
bishop Prudentius of Troyes took the condemned monk’s part. Then
Charles the Bald asked the opinions of Ratramnus of Corbie and
the abbot Servatus Lupus of Ferrières. Both of these took the
side of Gottschalk. Hincmar’s position threatened to become very
serious. He looked out for supporters, and succeeded in finding
champions in the deacon Florus of Lyons, the priest Amalarius of
Metz, and the learned Joannes Scotus Erigena. But the latter’s
advocacy was almost more dangerous to the metropolitan than the
charges of his accusers. For the speculative Irishman founded
his objections to the doctrine of predestination on the position,
unheard of before in the West, that evil is only a μὴ ὄν, and
condemnation therefore not a positive punishment of God, but
consisting only in the consciousness of a defect. Hincmar’s
position was now worse than ever, for his opponents made him
responsible for the heresies of Scotus. And not only an old
objector, Prudentius of Troyes in his _De prædest. c. Joh.
Scotu_, but even archbishop Wessilo of Sens and the deacon
Florus of Lyons, who had hitherto supported him, now put on
their armour against him. But Charles the Bald took the part
of the sorely-beset metropolitan, and summoned the national
Synod of Quiersy of A.D. 853, where in four articles (_Capitula
Carisiaca_), a modified Augustinianism, rejecting the _gemina
prædestinatio_, was set forth as the orthodox faith. The
Neustrian objectors were now compelled to keep silence, but
archbishop Remigius of Lyons set a Lothringian national Synod
of Valence of A.D. 855 over against the Neustrian Synod. This
Synod expressly condemned the decisions of the Synod of Quiersy,
together with the Scottish mixture (_pultus Scotorum_), and
laid down six conflicting articles as the standard of orthodoxy.
Finally the rulers of the West Franks combined their forces and
called an Imperial Synod at Savonnières, a suburb of Toul, in
A.D. 859. But harmony was not yet secured, and they were likely
to part with bitter feelings, when Remigius made the proposal to
reserve decision for a subsequent assembly to be convened in a
less agitated time, and meanwhile to maintain the peace. This
was agreed upon, and so the controversy put out of view, for
the proposed assembly was never brought about. Gottschalk, left
in the lurch by his former friends, now turned for help to the
powerful pope Nicholas I. The pope ordered Hincmar to answer
before the papal plenipotentiaries for his proceedings against
the monk at the Synod of Metz in A.D. 863 (§ 82, 7). Hincmar
preferred not to comply to this demand, and to his delight the
pope himself annulled the decisions of the Synod because his
legates had been bribed. Moreover the metropolitan succeeded by
intercession and well-planned letters in winning over the pope.
Thus then Gottschalk was cheated out of his last hope. For twenty
years he languished in prison, but with his latest breath he
rejected every proposal of recantation. He died in A.D. 868,
and by Hincmar’s orders was buried in unconsecrated earth.
§ 91.6. =The Trinitarian Controversy, A.D. 857.=--From his
prison Gottschalk had accused his metropolitan of a second
heresy. Hincmar had removed from a church hymn, _Te trina Deitas
unaque poscimus_, the expression, =trina Deltas=, as favouring
Arianism, and substituted the words, _sancta Deitas_. His
opponents therefore charged him with Sabellianism, and Ratramnus
made this accusation in a controversial tract no longer extant.
Ratramnus, on the other hand, to whom Hincmar applied, supported
the change, but would not commit himself to a written approval
of it, whereupon Hincmar himself undertook a defence of the
expression substituted in his treatise, _De una et non trini
Deitate_.[262]
§ 92. ENDEAVOURS AFTER REFORMATION.
The independence which Charlemagne gave to the German church first
awakened in it the consciousness of its vocation as a reformer.
This consciousness was maintained throughout the Middle Ages,
though hampered indeed by much narrowness, one-sidedness, and error.
Charlemagne himself stood first in the series of reformers with his
energetic protest against image worship. Louis the Pious too persevered
in this same direction, and encouraged Agobard of Lyons and Claudius of
Turin when they contested similar forms of ecclesiastical superstition.
§ 92.1. =The Carolingian Opposition to Image Worship,
A.D. 790-825.=--On the occasion of an embassy of the emperor
Constantinus Copronymus (§ 66, 2) Pepin the Short convened a
Synod at Gentiliacum in A.D. 767 (§ 91, 2) where the question
of image worship was dealt with. We have no further information,
as the acts of this Synod have been lost. Then in A.D. 790
Hadrian I. sent to Charlemagne the acts of the 7th occasional
Synod of Nicæa (§ 66, 3). Charles, as emperor-elect, regarded
himself as grievously wronged by the assumption of the Greeks,
who, without consulting the German court, sought to enact
laws that were wholly antagonistic to the Frankish practice.
He published under his own name a state paper in 4 bks., the
so-called _Libri Carolini_, in which the Byzantine proceedings
were censured in strong terms, the synodal acts refuted one by
one, every form of image worship denounced as idolatry, while at
the same time the position of the iconoclasts was repudiated and,
with reference to Gregory the Great (§ 57, 4), the usefulness
of images in quickening devotion, instructing the people and
providing suitable decoration for sacred places was admitted.
Veneration of saints, relics, and the cross is, on the other
hand, permitted. Charlemagne sent this writing to the pope,
who in the most courteous language wrote a refutation, which,
however, made no impression upon Charlemagne. On the contrary he
now hastened preparations for calling a great œcumenical Synod of
all German churches that would outdo the Synod of the Byzantine
court. Alcuin utilized his visit to England for securing a
representation at this Synod of the Anglo-Saxon church. The
Synod met at Frankfort in A.D. 794 and confirmed the positions
of the Caroline books. The pope found it prudent to yield to
the times and the people. Under Louis the Pious the matter was
brought forward anew on the occasion of an embassy from the
iconoclast emperor Michael Balbus. A national Synod at Paris
in A.D. 825 condemned image worship sharply, in opposition to
Hadrian I., and affirmed the positions of the Caroline books.
Pope Eugenius II. kept silent on this subject. In the Frankish
empire down to the 10th century no recognition was given to the
2nd Nicene Council, and official opposition was continued against
image worship.
§ 92.2. Soon after the Parisian council of A.D. 825, =Agobard
of Lyons= made his appearance with a powerful polemic: _Contra
superstitionem eorum, qui picturis et imaginibus sanctorum
adorationis obsequiem deferendum putant_. He goes much further
than the Caroline books, for not only does he regard it as
advisable, on account of the inevitable misuse on the part of
the people, to banish images entirely, but with image worship
he also rejects all adoration of saints, relics, and angels. Man
should put his trust in the omnipotent God alone, and worship
and reverence only the one Mediator, Christ. He comes forward
also as a reformer of the liturgy. He finds fault with all
sensuous additions to Divine service, would banish from it all
non-Biblical hymns, urges to earnest study of Scripture, contends
against the folly of the ordeal (_De Divinis Sententiis_), the
popular superstitions about witchcraft and weather omens (_Contra
insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis_), and the
idea that by presents to churches a stop can be put to epidemics
and pestilences. Also on inspiration he entertained very liberal
opinions (§ 90, 9). No one thought on account of these views to
charge him with heresy. =Claudius of Turin= went still further
than Agobard. By the help of Augustine he was able to grasp more
profoundly than any of his contemporaries the essential core of
saving truth, that man without any merit of works is justified
and saved by the grace of God in Christ alone. Louis the
Pious appointed him to the bishopric of Turin with the express
injunction that he should contend against image worship in his
Italian diocese. He found there image worship along with an
extravagant devotion to relics, crosses and pilgrimages carried
on to such a degree that he felt himself constrained reluctantly
because of the condition of affairs to cast images and crosses
out of the churches altogether. The popular excitement over this
proceeding rose to the utmost pitch, and his life was saved and
his office retained only through dread of the Frankish arms. When
pope Paschalis intimated to him his displeasure, he said the pope
is only to be honoured as apostolic, when he does the works of
an apostle, otherwise Matt. xxiii. 2-4 applies to him. Against
the views of his early scholar and friend the abbot Theodemir,
regarding monastic psalmody, he vindicated himself in A.D. 825
in his controversial tract _Apologeticus_, which is now known
only from the replies of his opponents. A Scotchman, Dungal,
teacher at Pavia, entered the lists against him and accused him
before the emperor, who, however, contented himself with calling
upon bishop Jonas of Orleans to refute the apologetical treatise.
This refutation appeared only after the death of Claudius. It
assumed the position of the Frankish church on the question of
image worship, as also Dungal had done.
SECOND SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GERMANO-ROMANIC CHURCH,
FROM THE 10TH TO THE 13TH CENTURY.
A.D. 911-1294.
I. The Spread of Christianity.
§ 93. MISSIONARY ENTERPRISES.
During this period the Christianizing of Europe was well nigh
finished. Only Lapland and Lithuania were reserved for the following
period. The method used in conversion was still the same. Besides
missionaries, warriors also extended the faith. Monasteries and
castles were the centres of the newly founded Christianity. Political
considerations and Christian princesses converted pagan princes;
their subjects followed either under violent pressure or with quiet
resignation, carrying with them, however, under the cover of a
Christian profession, much of their old heathen superstition. It
was the policy of the German emperors to make every effort to unite
the converted races under the German metropolitans, and to establish
this union. Thus the metropolitanate of Hamburg-Bremen was founded for
the Scandinavians and those of the Baltic provinces, that of Magdeburg
for the Poles and the Northern Slavs, that of Mainz for the Bohemians,
that of Passau and Salzburg for the Hungarians. But it was Rome’s
desire to emancipate them from the German clergy and the German state,
and to set them up as independent metropolitanates of a great family
of Christian nationalities recognising the pope as their spiritual
father (§ 82, 9). The Western church did now indeed make a beginning
of missionary enterprise, which extended in its range beyond Europe
to the Mongols of Asia and the Saracens of Africa, but throughout
this period it remained without any, or at least without any important,
result.
§ 93.1. =The Scandinavian Mission Field.=--The work of Ansgar
and Rimbert (§ 80) had extended only to the frontier provinces
of Jutland and to the trading ports of Sweden, and even the
churches founded there had in the meantime become almost extinct.
A renewal of the mission could not be thought of, owing to the
robber raids of =Normans= or =Vikings=, who during the ninth
and tenth centuries had devastated all the coasts. But it was
just those Viking raids that in another way opened a door again
for the entrance of missionaries into those lands. Many of the
home-going Vikings, who had been resident for a while abroad,
had there been converted to the Christian faith, and carried
back the knowledge of it to their homes. In France the Norwegians
under Rollo founded Normandy in A.D. 912. In the tenth century
the entire northern half of England fell into the hands of the
Danes, and finally, in A.D. 1013, the Danish King Sweyn conquered
the whole country. Both in France and in England the incomers
adopted the profession of Christianity, and this, owing to the
close connection maintained with their earlier homes, led to the
conversion of Norway and Denmark.
§ 93.2. In =Denmark=, Gorm the Old, the founder of the regular
Danish monarchy, makes his appearance toward the end of the
ninth century as the bitter foe of Christianity. He destroyed
all Christian institutions, drove away all the priests, and
ravaged the neighbouring German coasts. Then, in A.D. 934, the
German king Henry I. undertook a war against Denmark, and obliged
Gorm to pay tribute and to grant toleration to the Christian
faith. Archbishop Unni of Bremen then immediately began again
the mission work. With a great part of his clergy he entered
Danish territory, restored the churches of Jutland, and died in
Sweden in A.D. 936. Gorm’s son, Harald Blaatand, being defeated
in battle by Otto I. in A.D. 965, submitted to baptism. But his
son Sweyn Gabelbart, although he too had been baptized, headed
the reactionary heathen party. Harald fell in battle against
him in A.D. 986, and Sweyn now began his career as a bitter
persecutor of the Christians. Eric of Sweden, however, formerly
a heathen and an enemy of Christianity, drove him out in A.D. 980,
and at the entreaty of a German embassage tolerated the Christian
religion. After Eric’s death in A.D. 998, Sweyn returned. In
exile his opinions had changed, and now he as actively befriended
the Christians as before he had persecuted them. In A.D. 1013
he conquered all England, and died there in A.D. 1014. His son
Canute the Great, who died in A.D. 1036, united both kingdoms
under his sceptre, and made every effort to find in the profession
of a common Christian faith a bond of union between the two
countries over which he ruled. In place of the German mission
issuing from Bremen, he set on foot an English mission that had
great success. In A.D. 1026 by means of a pilgrimage to Rome,
prompted also by far-reaching political views, he joined the
Danish church in the closest bonds with the ecclesiastical centre
of Western Christendom. Denmark from this time onwards ranks as
a thoroughly Christianized land.
§ 93.3. In =Sweden=, too, Archbishop Unni of Bremen resumed
mission work and died there in A.D. 936. From this time the
German mission was prosecuted uninterruptedly. It was, however,
only in the beginning of the eleventh century, when English
missionaries came to Sweden from Norway with Sigurd at their
head, that real progress was made. By them the king Olaf
Skötkonung, who died in A.D. 1024, was baptized. Olaf and
his successor used every effort to further the interests of
the mission, which had made considerable progress in Gothland,
while in Swealand, with its national pagan sanctuary of Upsala,
heathenism still continued dominant. King Inge, when he refused
in A.D. 1080 to renounce Christianity, was pursued with stones
by a crowd of people at Upsala. His son-in-law Blot-Sweyn led
the pagan reaction, and sorely persecuted those who professed
the Christian faith. After reigning for three years, he was
slain, and Inge restored Christianity in all parts. It was,
however, only under St. Eric, who died in A.D. 1160, that the
Christian faith became dominant in Upper Sweden.[263]
§ 93.4. =The Norwegians= had, at a very early period, by means
of the adventurous raids of their seafaring youth, by means of
Christian prisoners, and also by means of intercourse with the
Norse colonies in England and Normandy, gained some knowledge
of Christianity. The first Christian king of Norway was Haco
the Good (A.D. 934-961), who had received a Christian education
at the English court. Only after he had won the fervent love
of his people by his able government, did he venture to ask for
the legal establishment of the Christian religion. The people,
however, compelled him to take part in heathen sacrifices;
and when he made the sign of the cross over the sacrificial
cup before he drank of it, they were appeased only by his
associating the action with Thor’s hammer. Haco could never
forgive himself this weakness and died broken-hearted, regarding
himself as unworthy even of Christian burial. Olaf Trygvesen
(A.D. 995-1000), at first the ideal of a Norse Viking, then
of a Norse king, was baptized during his last visit to England,
and used all the powerful influences at his command, the charm
and fascination of his personality, flattery, favour, craft,
intimidation and cruelty, to secure the forcible introduction
of Christianity. No foreigner was ever allowed to quit Norway
without being persuaded or compelled by him to receive baptism.
Those who refused, whether natives or foreigners, suffered
severe imprisonment and in many cases were put to death. He fell
in battle with the Danes. Olaf Haraldson the Fat, subsequently
known as St. Olaf (A.D. 1014-1030), followed in Trygvesen’s steps.
Without his predecessor’s fascinating manners and magnanimity,
but prosecuting his ecclesiastical and political ends with
greater recklessness, severity, and cruelty, he soon forfeited
the love of his subjects. The alienated chiefs conspired with
the Danish Canute; the whole country rose against him; he himself
fell in battle, and Norway became a Danish province. The crushing
yoke of the Danes, however, caused a sudden rebound of public
feeling in regard to Olaf. The king, who was before universally
hated, was now looked on as the martyr of national liberty and
independence. Innumerable miracles were wrought by his bones,
and even so early as A.D. 1031 the country unanimously proclaimed
him a national saint. The enthusiasm over the veneration of the
new saint increased from day to day, and with it the enthusiasm
for the emancipation of their native country. Borne along by
the mighty agitation, Olaf’s son, Magnus the Good, drove out the
Danes in A.D. 1035. Olaf’s canonization, though originating in
purely political schemes, had put the final stamp of Christianity
upon the land. The German national privileges, however, were
insisted upon in Norway over against the canon law down to the
13th century.[264]
§ 93.5. =In the North-Western Group of Islands=, the Hebrides,
the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faröe Isles, the sparse Celtic
population professing Christianity was, during the ninth century,
expelled by the pagan Norse Vikings, and among these Christianity
was first introduced by the two Norwegian Olafs. The first
missionary attempt in =Iceland= was made in A.D. 981 by the
Icelander Thorwald, who having been baptized in Saxony by a
Bishop (?) Frederick, persuaded this ecclesiastic to accompany
him to Iceland, that they might there work together for the
conversion of his heathen fellow countrymen. During a five years’
ministry several individuals were won, but by a decision of the
National Council the missionaries were forced to leave the island
in A.D. 958. Olaf Trygvesen did not readily allow an Icelander
visiting Norway to return without having been baptized, and twice
he sent formal expeditions for the conversion of Iceland. The
first, sent out in A.D. 996, with Stefnin, a native of Iceland,
at its head, had little success. The second, A.D. 997-999, was
led by Olaf’s court chaplain Dankbrand, a Saxon. This man, at
once warrior and priest, who when his sermons failed shrank not
from buckling on the sword, converted many of the most powerful
chiefs. In A.D. 1000 the Icelandic State was saved at the
last hour from a civil war between pagans and Christians which
threatened its very existence, by the adoption of a compromise,
according to which all Icelanders were baptized and only
Christian worship was publicly recognised, but idol worship
in the homes, exposure of children, and eating of horses’ flesh
was tolerated. But in A.D. 1016, as the result of an embassage
of the Norwegian king Olaf Haraldson, even these last vestiges
of paganism were wiped out.--=Greenland=, too, which had been
discovered by a distinguished Icelander, Eric the Red, and had
then been colonized in A.D. 985, owed its Christianity to Olaf
Trygvesen, who in A.D. 1000 sent the son of the discoverer,
Leif the Fortunate, with an expedition for its conversion. The
inhabitants accepted baptism without resistance. The church
continued to flourish there uninterruptedly for 400 years, and
the coast districts became rich through agriculture and trade.
But when in A.D. 1408 the newly elected bishop Andrew wished
to take possession of his see, he found the country surrounded
by enormous masses of ice, and could not effect a landing.
This catastrophe, and the subsequent incursions of the Eskimos,
seem to have led to the overthrow of the colony.--Continuation,
§ 167, 9.--Leif discovered on his expeditions a rich fertile
land in the West, which on account of the vines growing wild
there he called =Vineland=, and this region was subsequently
colonized from Iceland. In the twelfth century, in order to
confirm the colonists in the faith, a Greenland bishop Eric
undertook a journey to that country. It lay on the east coast
of North America, and is probably to be identified with the
present Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
§ 93.6. =The Slavo-Magyar Mission-field.=--Even in the previous
period a beginning had been made of the Christianizing of
=Bohemia= (§ 79, 3). After Wratislaw’s death his heathen widow
Drahomira administered the government in the name of her younger
son Boleslaw. Ludmilla, with the help of the clergy and the
Germans, wished to promote St. Wenzeslaw, the elder son, educated
by her, but she was strangled by order of Drahomira in A.D. 927.
Wenzeslaw, too, fell by the hand of his brother. Boleslaw now
thought completely to root out Christianity, but was obliged,
in consequence of the victory of Otho [Otto] I. in A.D. 950,
to agree to the restoration of the church. His son Boleslas
[Boleslaw] II., A.D. 967-999, contributed to its establishment
by founding the bishopric of Prague. The pope seized the
opportunity on the occasion of this founding of the bishopric
to introduce the Roman ritual (A.D. 973).[265]
§ 93.7. From Bohemia the Christian faith was carried to the
=Poles=. In A.D. 966 the Duke Micislas was persuaded by his
wife Dubrawka, a Bohemian princess, daughter of Boleslaw I.,
to receive baptism. His subjects were induced to follow his
example, and the bishopric of Posen was founded. The church
obtained a firm footing under his son, the powerful Boleslaw
Chrobry, A.D. 992-1025, who with the consent of Otto III. freed
the Polish church from the metropolitanate of Magdeburg, and
gave it an archiepiscopal see of its own at Gnesen (A.D. 1000).
He also separated the Poles from German imperial federation and
had himself crowned king shortly before his death in A.D. 1025.
A state of anarchy, which lasted for a year and threatened the
overthrow of Christianity in the land, was put an end to by his
grandson Casimir in A.D. 1039. Casimir’s grandson Boleslaw II.
gave to the Poles a national saint by the murder in A.D. 1079
of Bishop Stanislas [Stanislaus] of Cracow, which led to his
excommunication and exile.
§ 93.8. Christianity was introduced into =Hungary= from
Constantinople. A Hungarian prince Gylas received baptism
there about A.D. 950, and returned home with a monk Hierotheus,
consecrated bishop of the Hungarians. Connection with the Eastern
church, however, was soon broken off, and an alliance formed
with the Western church. After Henry I. in A.D. 933 defeated the
Hungarians at Keuschberg, and still more decidedly after Otto I.
in A.D. 955 had completely humbled them by the terrible slaughter
at Lechfelde, German influence won the upper hand. The missionary
labours of Bishop Piligrim of Passau, as well as the introduction
of Christian foreigners, especially Germans, soon gave to
Christianity a preponderance throughout the country over paganism.
The mission was directly favoured by the Duke Geysa, A.D. 972-997,
and his vigorous wife Sarolta, a daughter of the above-named
Gylas. The Christianizing of Hungary was completed by Geysa’s
son St. Stephen, A.D. 997-1038, who upon his marriage with
Gisela, the sister of the Emperor Henry II., was baptized,
a pagan reaction was put down, a constitution and laws were
given to the country, an archbishopric was founded at Gran
with ten suffragan bishops, the crown was put upon his head
in A.D. 1000 by Pope Sylvester II., and Hungary was enrolled
as an important member of the federation of European Christian
States. Under his successors indeed paganism once more rose in
a formidable revolt, but was finally stamped out. St. Ladislaw
[Ladislaus], A.D. 1077-1095, rooted out its last vestiges.
§ 93.9. Among the numerous =Wendish Races= in Northern and
North-Eastern Germany the chief tribes were the Obotrites in
what is now Holstein and Mecklenburg, the Lutitians or Wilzians,
between the Elbe and the Oder, the Pomeranians, from the Oder to
the Vistula, and the Sorbi, farther south in Saxony and Lusatia.
Henry I., A.D. 919-936, and his son Otto I., A.D. 936-973, in
several campaigns subjected them to the German yoke, and the
latter founded among them in A.D. 968 the archbishopric of
Magdeburg besides several bishoprics. The passion for national
freedom, as well as the proud contempt, illtreatment, and
oppression of the German margraves, rendered Christianity
peculiarly hateful to the Wends, and it was only after their
freedom and nationality had been completely destroyed and the
Slavic population had been outnumbered by German or Germanized
colonists, that the Church obtained a firm footing in their
land. A revolt of the =Obotrites= under Mistewoi in A.D. 983,
who with the German yoke abjured also the Christian faith, led
to the destruction of all Christian institutions. His grandson
Gottschalk, educated as a Christian in a German monastery, but
roused to fury by the murder of his father Udo, escaped from
the monastery in A.D. 1032, renounced Christianity, and set on
foot a terrible persecution of Christians and Germans. But he
soon bitterly repented this outburst of senseless rage. Taken
prisoner by the Germans, he escaped and took refuge in Denmark,
but subsequently he returned and founded in A.D. 1045 a great
Wendish empire which extended from the North Sea to the Oder. He
now enthusiastically applied all his energy to the establishment
of the church in his land upon a national basis, for which
purpose Adalbert of Bremen sent him missionaries. He was himself
frequently their interpreter and expositor. He was eminently
successful, but the national party hated him as the friend of
the Saxons and the church. He fell by the sword of the assassin
in A.D. 1066, and thereupon began a terrible persecution of the
Christians. His son Henry having been set aside, the powerful
Ranian chief Cruco from the island of Rügen, a fanatical enemy
of Christianity, was chosen ruler. At the instigation of Henry
he was murdered in his own house in A.D. 1115. Henry died in
A.D. 1127. A Danish prince Canute bought the Wendish crown from
Lothair duke of Saxony, but was murdered in A.D. 1131. This
brought the Wendish empire to an end. The Obotrite chief Niklot,
who died in A.D. 1161, held his ground only in the territory of
the Obotrites. His son Pribizlaw, the ancestor of the present
ruling family of Mecklenburg, by adopting Christianity in
A.D. 1164, saved to himself a part of the inheritance of his
fathers as a vassal under the Saxon princes. All the rest
of the land was divided by Henry the Lion among his German
warriors, and the depopulated districts were peopled with
German colonists.--In A.D. 1157 Albert the Bear, the founder
of the Margravate of Brandenburg, overthrew the dominion of
the =Lutitians= after protracted struggles and endless revolts.
He, too, drafted numerous German colonists into the devastated
regions.--The Christianizing of the =Sorbi= was an easier task.
After their first defeat by Henry I. in A.D. 922 and 927, they
were never again able to regain their old freedom. Alongside
of the mission of the sword among the Wends there was always
carried on, more or less vigorously, the mission of the Cross.
Among the Sorbi bishop Benno of Meissen, who died in A.D. 1107,
wrought with special vigour, and among the Obotrites the greatest
zeal was displayed by St. Vicelinus. He died bishop of Oldenburg
in A.D. 1154.
§ 93.10. =Pomerania= submitted in A.D. 1121 to the duke of
Poland, Boleslaw III., and he compelled them solemnly to promise
that they would adopt the Christian faith. The work of conversion,
however, appeared to be so unpromising that Boleslaw found none
among all his clergy willing to undertake the task. At last
in A.D. 1122, a Spanish monk Bernard offered himself. But the
Pomeranians drove him away as a beggar who looked only to his
own gain, for they thought, if the Christians’ God be really the
Lord of heaven and earth He would have sent them a servant in
keeping with His glorious majesty. Boleslaw was then convinced
that only a man who had strong faith and a martyr’s spirit,
united with an imposing figure, rank, and wealth, was fit for
the work, and these qualifications he found in bishop Otto
of Bamberg. Otto accepted the call, and during two missionary
journeys in A.D. 1124-1128 founded the Pomeranian church.
Following Bernard’s advice, he went through Pomerania on both
occasions with all the pomp of episcopal dignity, with a great
retinue and abundant stores of provisions, money, ecclesiastical
ornaments, and presents of all kinds. He had unparalleled success,
yet he was repeatedly well nigh obtaining the crown of martyrdom
which he longed for. The whole Middle Ages furnishes scarcely
an equally noble, pure, and successful example of missionary
enterprise. None of all the missionaries of that age presents so
harmonious a picture of firmness without obstinacy, earnestness
without harshness, gentleness without weakness, enthusiasm
without fanaticism. And never have the German and Slavic
nationalities so nobly, successfully, and faithfully practised
mutual forbearance as did the Pomeranians and their apostle.--The
last stronghold of Wendish paganism was the island of =Rügen=.
It fell when in A.D. 1168 the Danish king Waldemar I. with the
Christian Pomeranian and Obotrite chiefs conquered the island
and destroyed its heathen sanctuaries.
§ 93.11. =Mission Work among the Finns and Lithuanians.=--St. Eric
of Sweden in A.D. 1157 introduced Christianity into Finland by
conquest and compulsion. Bishop Henry of Upsala, the apostle of
the Finns, who accompanied him, suffered a martyr’s death in the
following year. The Finns detested Christianity as heartily as
they did the rule of the conquering Swedes, who introduced it,
and it was only after the third campaign which Thorkel Canutson
undertook in A.D. 1293 against Finland, that the Swedish rule
and the Christian faith were established, and under a vigorous
yet moderate and wise government the Finns were reconciled to
both.--=Lapland= came under the rule of Sweden in A.D. 1279, and
thereafter Christianity gradually found entrance. In A.D. 1335
bishop Hemming of Upsala consecrated the first church at Tornea.
§ 93.12. =Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland= were inhabited by
peoples belonging to the Finnic stem. Yet even in early times
people from the south and east belonging to the Lithuanian stem
had settled in Livonia and Courland, Letts and Lettgalls in
Livonia, and Semgalls and Wends in Courland. The first attempts
to introduce Christianity into these regions were made by Swedes
and Danes, and even under the Danish king Sweyn III., Eric’s son,
about A.D. 1048 a church was erected in Courland by Christian
merchants, and in Esthonia the Danes not long after built the
fortress of Lindanissa. The elevation of the bishopric of Lund
into a metropolitanate in A.D. 1098 was projected with a regard
to these lands. In A.D. 1171 Pope Alexander III. sent a monk,
Fulco, to Lund to convert the heathen and to be bishop of Finland
and Esthonia, but he seems never to have entered on his duties or
his dignity. Abiding results were first won by German preaching
and the German sword. In the middle of the 12th century merchants
of Bremen and Lübeck carried on traffic with towns on the banks
of the Dwina. A pious priest from the monastery of Segeberg in
Holstein, called Meinhart, undertook in their company under the
auspices of the archbishop of Bremen, Hartwig II., a missionary
journey to those regions in A.D. 1184. He built a church at
Üxküll on the Dwina, was recognised as bishop of the place
in A.D. 1186, but died in A.D. 1196. His assistant Dietrich
carried on the work of the mission in the district from Freiden
down to Esthonia. Meinhart’s successor in the bishopric was the
Cistercian abbot, Berthold of Loccum in Hanover. Having been
driven away soon after his arrival, he returned with an army
of German crusaders, and was killed in battle in A.D. 1198.
His successor was a canon of Bremen, Albert of Buxhöwden. He
transferred the bishop’s seat to Riga, which was built by him
in A.D. 1201, founded in A.D. 1202, for the protection of the
mission, the Order of the Brethren of the Sword (§ 98, 13),
amid constant battles with Russians, Esthonians, Courlanders
and Lithuanians erected new bishoprics in Esthonia (Dorpat),
Oesel, and Semgallen, and effected the Christianization of
nearly all these lands. He died in A.D. 1229. After A.D. 1219
the Danes, whom Albert had called in to his aid, vied with him
in the conquest and conversion of the Esthonians. Waldemar II.
founded Revel in A.D. 1219, made it an episcopal see, and did
all in his power to restrict the advances of the Germans. In
this he did not succeed. The Danes, indeed, were obliged to
quit Esthonia in A.D. 1257. After Albert’s death, however, the
difficulties of the situation became so great that Volquin, the
Master of the Order of the Sword, could see no hope of success
save in the union of his order with that of the Teutonic Knights,
shortly before established in Prussia. The union, retarded
by Danish intrigues, was not effected until A.D. 1237, when
a fearful slaughter of Germans by the Lithuanians had endangered
not only the existence of the Order of the Sword but even the
church of Livonia. Then, too, for the first time was Courland
finally subdued and converted. It had, indeed, nominally adopted
Christianity in A.D. 1230, but had soon after relapsed into
paganism. Finally in A.D. 1255 Riga was raised to the rank of
a metropolitanate, and Suerbeer, formerly archbishop of Armagh
in Ireland, was appointed by Innocent IV. archbishop of Prussia,
Livonia, and Esthonia, with his residence at Riga.
§ 93.13. The Old Prussians and Lithuanians also belonged to
the Lettish stem. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, first brought the
message of salvation to the =Prussians= between the Vistula and
Memel, but on the very first entrance into Sameland [Samland]
in A.D. 997 he won the martyr’s crown. This, too, was the fate
twelve years later of the zealous Saxon monk Bruno and eighteen
companions on the Lithuanian coast. Two hundred years passed
before another missionary was seen in Prussia. The first was
the Abbot Gothfried from the Polish monastery of Lukina; but in
his case also an end was soon put to his hopefully begun work, as
well as to that of his companion Philip, both suffering martyrdom
in A.D. 1207. More successful and enduring was the mission work
three years later of the Cistercian monk Christian from the
Pomeranian monastery of Oliva, in A.D. 1209, the real apostle of
the Prussians. He was raised to the rank of bishop in A.D. 1215,
and died in A.D. 1245. On the model of the Livonian Order of
the Brethren of the Sword he founded in A.D. 1225 the Order of
the Knights of Dobrin (_Milites Christi_). In the very first
year of their existence, however, they were reduced to the number
of five men. In union with Conrad, Duke of Moravia, whose land
had suffered fearfully from the inroads of the pagan Prussians,
Christian then called in the aid of the Teutonic Knights, whose
order had won great renown in Germany. A branch of this order
had settled in A.D. 1228 in Culm, and so laid the foundation of
the establishment of the order in Prussia. With the appearance
of this order began a sixty years’ bloody conflict directed to
the overthrow of Prussian paganism, which can be said to have
been effected only in A.D. 1283, when the greater part of the
Prussians had been slain after innumerable conflicts with the
order and with crusaders from Germany, Poland, Bohemia, etc.
Among the crowds of preachers of the gospel, mostly Dominicans,
besides Bishop Christian and the noble papal legate William,
bishop of Modena, the Polish Dominican Hyacinth, who died
in A.D. 1257, a vigorous preacher of faith and repentance,
deserves special mention. So early as A.D. 1243, William of
Modena had sketched an ecclesiastical organization for the
country, which divided Prussia into four dioceses, which were
placed in A.D. 1255 under the metropolitanate of Riga.
§ 93.14. The introduction of Christianity into =Lithuania= was
longest delayed. After Ringold had founded in A.D. 1230 a Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, his son Mindowe endeavoured to enlarge his
dominions by conquest. The army of the Prussian-Livonian Order,
however, so humbled him that he sued for peace and was compelled
to receive baptism in A.D. 1252. But no sooner had he in some
measure regained strength than he threw off the hypocritical
mask, and in A.D. 1260 appeared as the foe of his Christian
neighbours. His son Wolstinik, who had remained true to the
Christian faith, dying in A.D. 1266, reigned too short a time
to secure an influence over his people. With him every trace
of Christianity disappeared from Lithuania. Christians were
again tolerated in his territories by the Grand Duke Gedimin
(A.D. 1315-1340). Romish Dominicans and Russian priests vied
with one another under his successor Olgerd in endeavours to
convert the inhabitants. Olgerd himself was baptized according
to the Greek rite, but apostatised. His son Jagello, born
of a Christian mother, and married to the young Polish queen
Hedwig, whose hand and crown seemed not too dearly purchased by
submitting to baptism and undertaking to introduce Christianity
among his people, made at last an end to heathenism in Lithuania
in A.D. 1386. His subjects, each of whom received a woollen coat
as a christening gift, flocked in crowds to receive baptism. The
bishop’s residence was fixed at Wilna.
§ 93.15. =The Mongolian Mission Field.=--From the time of
Genghis Khan, who died in A.D. 1227, the princes of the =Mongols=,
in consistency with their principles as deists with little trace
of religion, showed themselves equally tolerant and favourable
to Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The Nestorians were very
numerous in this empire, but also very much deteriorated. In
A.D. 1240-1241 the Mongols, pressing westward with irresistible
force, threatened to overflow and devastate all Europe. Russia
and Poland, Silesia, Moravia, and Hungary had been already
dreadfully wasted by them, when suddenly and unexpectedly
the savage hordes withdrew. Innocent IV. sent an embassage of
Dominicans under Nicolas Ascelinus to the Commander Batschu
in Persia, and an embassage of Franciscans under John of
Piano-Carpini to the Grand Khan Oktaï, Genghis Khan’s successor,
to his capital Karakorum, with a view to their conversion and
to dissuade them from repeating their inroads. Both missions
were unsuccessful. Certain adventurers pretending to be bearers
of a message from Mongolia, told Louis IX. of France fabulous
stories of the readiness of the Grand Khan Gajuk and his princes
to receive Christianity, and their intention to conquer the Holy
Land for the Christians. He accordingly sent out two missions to
the Mongols. The first, in A.D. 1249 was utterly unsuccessful,
for the Mongols regarded the presents given as a regular tribute
and as a symbol of voluntary submission. The second mission in
A.D. 1253, to the Grand Khan Mangu, although under a brave and
accomplished leader, William of Ruysbroek, yielded no fruit;
for Mangu, instead of allowing free entrance into the land for
the preaching of the gospel, at the close of a disputation with
Mohammedans and Buddhists sent the missionaries back to Louis
with the threatening demand to tender his submission. After
Mangu’s death in A.D. 1257, the Mongolian empire was divided
into Eastern and Western, corresponding to China and Persia.
The former was governed by Kublai Khan, the latter by Hulagu
Khan.--Kublai Khan, the Emperor of =China=, a genuine type of
the religious mongrelism of the Mongolians, showed himself very
favourable to Christians, but also patronised the Mohammedans,
and in A.D. 1260 gave a hierarchical constitution and consolidated
form to Buddhism by the establishment of the first Dalai Lama. The
travels of two Venetians of the family of Polo led to the founding
of a Latin Christian mission in China. They returned from their
Mongolian travels in A.D. 1269. Gregory X. in A.D. 1272 sent
two Dominicans to Mongolia along with the two brothers, and the
son of one of them, Marco Polo, then seventeen years old. The
latter won the unreserved confidence of the Grand Khan, and was
entrusted by him with an honourable post in the government. On
his return in A.D. 1295 he published an account of his travels,
which made an enormous sensation, and afforded for the first time
to Western Europe a proper conception of the condition of Eastern
Asia.[266] A regular Christian missionary enterprise, however,
was first undertaken by the Franciscan Joh. de Monte-Corvino,
A.D. 1291-1328, one of the noblest, most intelligent, and most
faithful of the missionaries of the Middle Ages. After he had
succeeded in overcoming the intrigues of the numerous Nestorians,
he won the high esteem of the Grand Khan. In the royal city of
Cembalu or Pekin he built two churches, baptized about 6,000
Mongols, and translated the Psalter and the New Testament
into Mongolian. He wrought absolutely alone till A.D. 1303.
Afterwards, however, other brethren of his order came repeatedly
to his aid. Clement V. appointed him archbishop of Cembalu in
A.D. 1307. Every year saw new churches established. But internal
disturbances, under Kublai’s successor, weakened the power of
the Mongolian dynasty, so that in A.D. 1370 it was overthrown
by the national Ming dynasty. By the new rulers the Christian
missionaries were driven out along with the Mongols, and thus
all that they had done was utterly destroyed.--The ruler of
=Persia=, Hulagu Khan, son of a Christian mother and married
to a Christian wife, put an end in A.D. 1258 to the khalifate
of Bagdad, but was so pressed by the sultan of Egypt, that
he entered on a long series of negotiations with the popes
and the kings of France and England, who gave him the most
encouraging promises of joining their forces with his against
the Saracens. His successors, of whom several even formally
embraced Christianity, continued these negotiations, but obtained
nothing more than empty promises and protestations of friendship.
The time of the crusades was over, and the popes, even the most
powerful of them, were not able to reawaken the crusading spirit.
The Persian khans, vacillating between Christianity and Islam,
became more and more powerless, until at last, in A.D. 1387,
Tamerlane (Timur) undertook to found on the ruins of the old
government a new universal Mongolian empire under the standard
of the Crescent. But with his death in A.D. 1405 the dominion
of the Mongols in Persia was overthrown, and fell into the hands
of the Turkomans. Henceforth amid all changes of dynasties Islam
continued the dominant religion.
§ 93.16. =The Mission Field of Islam.=--The crusader princes
and soldiers wished only to wrest the Holy Land from the infidels,
but, with the exception perhaps of Louis IX., had no idea of
bringing to them the blessings of the gospel. And most of the
crusaders, by their licentiousness, covetousness, cruelty,
faithlessness, and dissensions among themselves, did much to
cause the Saracens to scorn the Christian faith as represented
by their lives and example. It was not until the 13th century
that the two newly founded mendicant orders of Franciscans
and Dominicans began an energetic but fruitless mission among
the Moslems of Africa, Sicily, and Spain. St. Francis himself
started this work in A.D. 1219, when during the siege of Damietta
by the crusaders he entered the camp of the Sultan Camel and
bade him kindle a fire and cause that he himself with one of
the Moslem priests should be cast into it. When the imam present
shrank away at these words, Francis offered to go alone into
the fire if the sultan would promise to accept Christianity
along with his people should he pass out of the fire uninjured.
The sultan refused to promise and sent the saint away unhurt
with presents, which, however, he returned. Afterwards several
Franciscan missions were sent to the Moslems, but resulted
only in giving a crowd of martyrs to the order. The Dominicans,
too, at a very early period took part in the mission to the
Mohammedans, but were also unsuccessful. The Dominican general
Raimund de Pennaforti [Pennaforte], who died in A.D. 1273,
devoted himself with special zeal to this task. For the training
of the brethren of his order in the oriental languages he founded
institutions at Tunis and Murcia. The most important of all these
missionary enterprises was that of the talented Raimund Lullus
of Majorca, who after his own conversion from a worldly life and
after careful study of the language, made three voyages to North
Africa and sought in disputations with the Saracen scholars to
convince them of the truth of Christianity. But his _Ars Magna_
(§ 103, 7), which with great ingenuity and enormous labour he had
wrought out mainly for this purpose, had no effect. Imprisonment
and ill-treatment were on all occasions his only reward. He died
in A.D. 1315 in consequence of the ill-usage which he had been
subjected.
§ 94. THE CRUSADES.[267]
The Arabian rulers had for their own interest protected the Christian
pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre. But even under the rule of the Fatimide
dynasty, early in the 10th century, the oppression of pilgrims began.
Khalif Hakim, in order that he might blot out the disgrace of being
born of a Christian mother, committed ruthless cruelties upon resident
Christians as well as upon the pilgrims, and prohibited under severe
penalties all meetings for Christian worship. Under the barbarous
Seljuk dynasty, which held sway in Palestine from about A.D. 1070,
the oppression reached its height. The West became all the more
concerned about this, since during the 10th century the idea that
the end of the world was approaching had given a new impulse to
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Sylvester II. had in A.D. 999
_ex persona devastatæ Hierosolymæ_ summoned Christendom to help in
this emergency. Gregory VII. seized anew upon the idea of wresting
the Holy Land from the infidels. He had even resolved himself to
lead a Christian army, but the outbreak of contentions with Henry IV.
hindered the execution of this plan. Meanwhile complaints by returning
pilgrims of intolerable ill-usage increased. An urgent appeal from
the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus gave the spark that lit the
combustible material that had been gathered throughout the West. The
imperial ambassadors accompanied Pope Urban II. to the Council of
Clermont in A.D. 1095, where the pope himself, in a spirited speech,
called for a holy war under the standard of the cross. The shout
was raised as from one mouth, “It is God’s will.” On that very day
thousands enlisted, with Adhemar, bishop of Puy, papal legate, at
their head, and had the red cross marked on their right shoulders.
The bishops returning home preached the crusade as they went, and in
a few weeks a glowing enthusiasm had spread throughout France down
to the provinces of the Rhine. Then began a movement which, soon
extending over all the West, like a second migration of nations,
lasted for two centuries. The crusades cost Europe between five and
six millions of men, and yet in the end that which had been striven
after was not attained. Its consequences, however, to Europe itself
were all the more important. In all departments of life, ecclesiastical
and political, moral and intellectual, civil and industrial, new
views, needs, developments, and tendencies were introduced. Mediæval
culture now reached the highest point of its attainment, and its
failure to transcend the past opened the way for the conditions
of modern society. And while on the other hand they afforded new
and extravagantly abundant nourishment for clerical and popular
superstition, in all directions, but specially in giving opportunity
to roguish traffic in relics (§ 104, 8; 115, 9), on the other hand
they had no small share in producing religious indifference and
frivolous free-thinking (§ 96, 19), as well as the terribly dangerous
growth of mediæval sects, which threatened the overthrow of church
and State, religion and morality (§ 108, 1, 4; 116, 5). The former
was chiefly the result of the sad conclusion of an undertaking of
unexampled magnitude, entered upon with the most glowing enthusiasm
for Christianity and the church; the latter was in great measure
occasioned by intercourse with sectaries of a like kind in the East
(§ 71).
§ 94.1. =The First Crusade, A.D. 1096.=--In the spring of
A.D. 1096 vast crowds of people gathered together, impatient
of the delays of the princes, and put themselves under the
leadership of Walter the Penniless. They were soon followed by
Peter of Amiens with 40,000 men. A legend, unworthy of belief,
credits him with the origin of the whole movement. According
to this story, the hermit returning from a pilgrimage described
to the holy father in vivid colours the sufferings of their
Christian brethren, and related how that Christ Himself had
appeared to him in a dream, giving him the command for the
pope to summon all Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulchre.
The legend proceeds to say that, by order of the pope, Peter
the Hermit then went through all Italy and France, arousing
the enthusiasm of the people. The hordes led by him, however,
after committing deeds of horrid violence on every side, while
no farther than Bulgaria, were reduced to about one half,
and the remnant, after Peter had already left them because of
their insubordination, was annihilated by the Turks at Nicæa.
Successive new crusades, the last of them an undisciplined mob
of 200,000 men, were cut down in Hungary or on the Hungarian
frontier. In August a regular crusading army, 80,000 strong,
under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine,
passing through Germany and Hungary, reached Constantinople.
There several French and Norman princes joined the army, till its
strength was increased to 600,000. After considerable squabbling
with the Byzantine government, they passed over into Asia. With
great labour and heavy loss Nicæa, Edessa, and Antioch were
taken. At last, on 15th July, 1099, amid shouts of, It is God’s
will, they stormed the walls of Jerusalem; lighted by torches
and wading in blood, they entered with singing of psalms into
the Church of the Resurrection. Godfrey was elected king. With
pious humility he declined to wear a king’s crown where Christ
had worn a crown of thorns. He died a year after, and his brother
Baldwin was crowned at Bethlehem. By numerous impropriations
crowds of greater and lesser vassals were gathered about the
throne. In Jerusalem itself a Latin patriarchate was erected,
and under it were placed four archbishoprics, with a corresponding
number of bishoprics. The story of these proceedings enkindled
new enthusiasm in the West. In A.D. 1101 three new crusades
of 260,000 men were fitted out in Germany, under Welf, duke
of Bavaria, and in Italy and in France. They marched against
Bagdad, in order to strike terror into the hearts of Moslems by
the terrible onslaught; the undisciplined horde, however, did
not reach its destination, but found a grave in Asia Minor.
§ 94.2. =The Second Crusade, A.D. 1147.=--The fall of Edessa in
A.D. 1146, as the frontier fortress of the kingdom, summoned the
West to a new effort. Pope Eugenius III. called the nations to
arms. Bernard of Clairvaux, the prophet of the age, preached
the crusade, and prophesied victory. =Louis VII. of France= took
the sign of the cross, in order to atone for the crime of having
burnt a church filled with men; and =Conrad III. of Germany=,
moved by the preaching of Bernard, with some hesitation followed
his example. But their stately army fell before the sword of the
Saracens, the malice of the Greeks, and internal disorders caused
by famine, disease, and hardships. Damascus remained unconquered,
and the princes returned humbled with the miserable remnant of
their army.
§ 94.3. =The Third Crusade, A.D. 1189.=--The kingdom of
Jerusalem before a century had past was in utter decay. Greeks
or Syrians and Latins had a deadly hatred for one another:
the vassals intrigued against each other and against the crown.
Licentiousness, luxury, and recklessness prevailed among the
people; the clergy and the nobles of the kingdom, but especially
the so called Pulleni,[268] descendants of the crusaders born in
the Holy Land itself, were a miserable, cowardly and treacherous
race. The pretenders to the crown also continued their intrigues
and cabals. Such being the corrupt condition of affairs, it was
an easy thing for the Sultan Saladin, the Moslem knight “without
fear and without reproach,” who had overthrown the Fatimide
dynasty in Egypt, to bring down upon the Christian rule in
Syria, after the bloody battle of Tiberias, the same fate.
Jerusalem fell into his hands in October, A.D. 1187. When this
terrible piece of news reached the West, the Christian powers
were summoned by Gregory VIII. to combine their forces in order
to make one more vigorous effort, Philip Augustus of France and
Henry II. of England forgot for a moment their mutual jealousies,
and took the cross from the hands of Archbishop William of Tyre,
the historian of the crusade. Next the =Emperor Frederick I.=
joined them, with all the heroic valour of youth, though in
years and experience an old man. He entered on the undertaking
with an energy, considerateness, and circumspection which
seemed to deserve glorious success. After piloting his way
through Byzantine intrigues and the indescribable fatigues of
a waterless desert, he led his soldiers against the well-equipped
army of the sultan at Iconium, which he utterly routed, and took
the city. But in A.D. 1190 the heroic warrior was drowned in an
attempt to ford the river Calycadnus. A great part of his army
was now scattered, and the remnant was led by his son Frederick
of Swabia against Ptolemais. At that point soon after landed
=Philip Augustus= and =Richard Cœur de Lion= of England, who
after his father’s death put himself at the head of an English
crusading army and had conquered Cyprus on the way. Ptolemais
(Acre) was taken in A.D. 1191. But the jealousies of the princes
interfered with their success. Frederick had already fallen, and
Philip Augustus under pretence of sickness returned to France;
Richard gained a brilliant victory over Saladin, took Joppa and
Ascalon, and was on the eve of marching against Jerusalem when
news reached him that his brother John had assumed the throne of
England, and that Philip Augustus also was entertaining schemes
of conquest. Once again Richard won a great victory before Joppa,
and Saladin, admiring his unexampled bravery, concluded with him
now, in A.D. 1192, a three years’ truce, giving most favourable
terms to the pilgrims. The strip along the coast from Joppa
to Acre continued under the rule of Richard’s nephew, Henry
of Champagne. But Richard was seized on his return journey and
cast into prison by Leopold of Austria, whose standard he had
grossly insulted before Ptolemais, and for two years he remained
a prisoner. After his release he was prevented from thinking of
a renewal of the crusade by a war with France, in which he met
his death in A.D. 1199.[269]
§ 94.4. =The Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1217.=--Innocent III. summoned
Christendom anew to a holy war. The kings, engaged in their own
affairs, gave no heed to the call. But the violent penitential
preacher, Fulco of Neuilly, prevailed upon the French nobles to
collect a considerable crusading army, which, however, instead
of proceeding against the Saracens, was used by the Venetian
Doge, Dandolo, in payment of transport, for conquering Zaras
in Dalmatia, and then by a Byzantine prince for a campaign
against Constantinople, where Baldwin of Flanders founded
a =Latin Empire=, A.D. 1204-1261. The pope put the doge and
the crusaders under excommunication on account of the taking
of Zaras, and the campaign against Constantinople was most
decidedly disapproved. Their unexpected success, however, turned
away his anger. He boasted that at last Israel, after destroying
the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, was again united to Judah,
and in Rome bestowed the pallium upon the first Latin patriarch
of Constantinople.--The =Children’s Crusade=, which in A.D. 1212
snatched from their parents in France and Germany 30,000 boys
and girls, had a most tragic end. Many died before passing
from Europe of famine and fatigue; the rest fell into the hands
of unprincipled men, who sold them as slaves in Egypt.--King
=Andrew II. of Hungary=, urged by Honorius III., led a new
crusading army to the Holy Land in A.D. 1217, and won some
successes; but finding himself betrayed and deserted by the
Palestinian barons, he returned home in the following year. But
the Germans under Leopold VII. of Austria, who had accompanied
him remained, and, supported by a Cologne and Dutch fleet,
undertook in A.D. 1218, along with the titular king John of
Jerusalem, a crusade =against Egypt=. Damietta was taken, but
the overflow of the Nile reservoirs placed them in such peril
that they owed their escape in A.D. 1221 only to the generosity
of the Sultan Camel.
§ 94.5. =The Fifth Crusade, A.D. 1228.=--The Emperor Frederick II.
had promised to undertake a crusade, but continued to make so many
excuses for delay that Gregory IX. (§ 96, 19) at last thundered
against him the long threatened excommunication. Frederick now
brought out a comparatively small crusading force. The Sultan
Camel of Egypt, engaged in war with his nephew, and fearing that
Frederick might attach himself to the enemy, freely granted him
a large tract of the Holy Land. At the Holy Sepulchre Frederick
placed the crown of Jerusalem, the inheritance of his new wife
Iolanthe, with his own hands on his head, since no bishop would
perform the coronation nor even a priest read the mass service
for the excommunicated king. He then returned home in A.D. 1229
to arrange his differences with the pope. The crusading armies
which Theobald, king of Navarre, in A.D. 1239, and Richard
Earl of Cornwall, in A.D. 1240, led against Palestine, owing
to disunion among themselves and quarrels among the Syrian
Christians, could accomplish nothing.
§ 94.6. =The Sixth, A.D. 1248, and Seventh, A.D. 1270,
Crusades.=--The zeal for crusading had by this time considerably
cooled. =St. Louis of France=, however, the ninth of that name,
had during a serious illness in A.D. 1244, taken the cross. At
this time Jerusalem had been conquered and subjected to the most
dreadful horrors at the hands of the Chowaresmians, driven from
their home by the Mongols, and now in the pay of Egyptian sultan
Ayoub. Down to A.D. 1247 the rule of the Christians in the Holy
Land was again restricted to Acre and some coast towns. Louis
could no longer think of delay. He started in A.D. 1248 with a
considerable force, wintered in Cyprus, and landed in Egypt in
A.D. 1249. He soon conquered Damietta, but, after his army had
been in great part destroyed by famine, disease and slaughter,
was taken prisoner at Cairo by the sultan. After the murder of
the sultan by the Mamelukes, who overthrew Saladin’s dynasty,
he fell into their hands. The king was obliged to deliver over
Damietta and to purchase his own release by payment of 800,000
byzantines. He sailed with the remnant of his army to Acre
in A.D. 1250, whence his mother’s death called him home in
A.D. 1254. But as his vow had not yet been fully paid, he sailed
in A.D. 1270 with a new crusading force to Tunis in order to
carry on operations from that centre. But the half of his army
was cut off by a pestilence, and he himself was carried away
in that same year. All subsequent endeavours of the popes to
reawaken an interest in the crusades were unavailing. Acre or
Ptolemais, the last stronghold of the Christians in the Holy
Land, fell in A.D. 1291.
§ 95. ISLAM AND THE JEWS IN EUROPE.
The Saracens (§ 81, 2) were overthrown in the 11th century by
the Normans. The reign of Islam in Spain too (§ 81, 1) came to an
end. The frequent change of dynasties, as well as the splitting up
of the empire into small principalities, weakened the power of the
Moors; the growth of luxurious habits in the rich and fertile districts
robbed them of martial energy and prowess. The Christian power also
was indeed considerably split up and disturbed by many internal feuds,
but the national and religious enthusiasm with which it was every
day being more and more inspired, made it invincible. Rodrigo Diaz,
the Castilian hero, called by the Moors the Cid, _i.e._ Lord, by the
Christians Campeador, _i.e._ champion, who died in A.D. 1099, was the
most perfect representative of Spanish Christian knighthood, although
he dealt with the infidels in a manner neither Christian nor knightly.
Also the Almoravides of Morocco, whose aid was called in in A.D. 1086,
and the Almohades, who had driven out these from Barbary in A.D. 1146,
were not able to stop the progress of the Christian arms. On the
other hand, neither the unceasing persecutions of the civil power,
nor innumerable atrocities committed on Jews by infuriated mobs, nor
even Christian theologians’ zeal for the instruction and conversion
of the Israelites, succeeded in destroying Judaism in Europe.
§ 95.1. =Islam in Sicily.=--The robber raids upon Italy
perpetrated by the Sicilian Saracens were put an end to by the
Normans who settled there in A.D. 1017. Robert Guiscard destroyed
the remnant of Greek rule in southern Italy, conquered the small
Longobard duchies there, and founded a Norman duchy of Apulia and
Calabria in A.D. 1059. His brother Roger, who died in A.D. 1101,
after a thirty years’ struggle drove the Saracens completely
out of Sicily, and ruled over it as a vassal of his brother
under the title of Count of Sicily. His son Roger II., who
died in A.D. 1154, united the government of Sicily and of
Apulia and Calabria, had himself crowned in A.D. 1130 king
of Sicily and Italy, and finally in A.D. 1139 conquered also
Naples. In consequence of the marriage of his daughter Constance
with Henry VI. the whole kingdom passed over in A.D. 1194 to
the Hohenstaufens, from whom it passed in A.D. 1266 to Charles
of Anjou; and from him finally, in consequence of the Sicilian
Vespers in A.D. 1282, the island of Sicily passed to Peter
of Arragon, the son-in-law of Manfred, the last king of the
Hohenstaufen line. The Normans and the Hohenstaufens granted
to the subject Saracens for the most part full religious liberty,
the Emperor Frederick recruiting from among them his bodyguard,
and they supplied the bravest soldiers for the Italian Ghibelline
war. For this purpose he was constantly drafting new detachments
from the African coast, as Manfred also had done. The endeavours
made by monks of the mendicant orders for the conversion of the
Saracens proved quite fruitless. It was only under the Spanish
rule that conversions were made by force, or persecution and
annihilation followed persistent refusal.
§ 95.2. =Islam in Spain.=--The times of Abderrhaman III.,
A.D. 912-961, and Hacem II., A.D. 961-976, were the most
brilliant and fortunate of the =Ommaiadean= khalifate. After
the death of the latter the chamberlain Almansor, who died in
A.D. 1002, reigned in the name of Khalif Hescham II., who was
little more than a puppet of the seraglio, and his rule was
glorious, powerful and wise. But interminable civil contentions
were the result of this disarrangement of government, and in
A.D. 1031, in consequence of a popular tumult, Abderrhaman IV.,
the last of the Ommaiades, took to flight, and voluntarily
resigned the crown. The khalifate was now broken up into as many
little principalities or emirships as there had been governors
before. Amid such confusions the Christian princes continued to
develop and increase their resources. Sancho the Great, king of
Navarre, A.D. 970-1035, by marriage and conquest united almost
all Christian Spain under his rule, but this was split up again
by being partitioned among his sons. Of these Ferdinand I., who
died in A.D. 1065, inherited Castile, and in A.D. 1037 added to
it Leon by conquest. With him begins the heroic age of Spanish
knighthood. His son Alfonso IV., who died in A.D. 1109, succeeded
in A.D. 1085 in taking from the Moors Toledo and a great part of
Andalusia. The powerful leader of the =Almoravides=, Jussuf from
Morocco, was now called to their aid by the Moors. On the plain
of Salacca the Christians were beaten in A.D. 1086, but soon
the victor turned his arms against his allies, and within
six years all Moslem Spain was under his government. His son
Ali, in a fearfully bloody battle at Ucles in A.D. 1107, cut
down the flower of the Castilian nobility; this marked the
summit of power reached by the Almoravides, and now their star
began slowly to pale. Alfonso I. of Arragon, A.D. 1105-1134,
conquered Saragossa in A.D. 1118, and other cities. Alfonso VII.
of Castile, A.D. 1126-1157, whose power rose so high that most
of the Christian princes in Spain acknowledged him as sovereign,
and that he had himself formally crowned emperor of Spain in
A.D. 1135, conducted a successful campaign against Andalusia, and
in A.D. 1144 forced his way down to the south coast of Granada.
Alfonso I. of Portugal, drove the Moors out of Lisbon; Raimard,
count of Barcelona, conquered Tortosa, etc. At the same time too
the government of the Almoravides was being undermined in Africa.
In A.D. 1146 Morocco fell, and with it North-western Africa,
into the hands of the =Almohades= under Abdelmoumen, while his
lieutenant Abu Amram at the same time conquered Moslem Spain and
Andalusia. Abdelmoumen’s son Jussuf himself crossed over into
Spain with an enormous force in order to extinguish the Christian
rule there, but fell in a battle at Santarem against Alfonso I.
of Portugal. His son Jacob avenged the disaster by the bloody
battle of Alarcos in A.D. 1195, where 30,000 Castilians were
left upon the field. When, notwithstanding the overthrow, the
Christians a few years later endeavoured to retrieve their loss,
Jacob’s successor Mohammed descended upon Spain with half a
million fanatical followers. The critical hour for Spain had
now arrived. The Christians had won time to come to agreement
among themselves. They fought with unexampled heroism on the
plain of Tolosa in A.D. 1212 under Alfonso VIII. of Castile.
The battlefield was strewn with more than 200,000 bodies of
the African fanatics. It was the death-knell of the rule of the
Almohad in Spain. Notwithstanding the dissensions and hostilities
that immediately broke out among the Christian princes, they
conquered within twenty-five years the whole of Andalusia. The
work of conquest was carried out mostly by Ferdinand III., the
saint of Castile, A.D. 1217-1254, and Jacob I., the conqueror
of Arragon, A.D. 1213-1276. Only in the southernmost district
of Spain a remnant of the Moslem rule survived in the kingdom
of Granada, founded in A.D. 1238 by the emir Mohammed Aben Alamar.
Here for a time the glories of Arabic culture were revived in
such a way as seemed like a magical restoration of the day of
the Ommaiades. In consequence of the marriage in A.D. 1469 of
Ferdinand of Arragon, who died in A.D. 1516, with Isabella of
Castile, these two most important Christian empires were united.
Soon afterwards the empire of Granada came to an end. On 2nd
January, A.D. 1492, after an ignominious capitulation, the
last khalif, Abu Abdilehi Boabdil, was driven out of the fair
(Granada), and a few moments later the Castilian banner waved
from the highest tower of the proud Alhambra. The pope bestowed
upon the royal pair the title of Catholic monarchs. The Moors who
refused to submit to baptism were expelled, but even the baptized,
the so-called Moriscoes, proved so dangerous an element in the
state that Philip III., in A.D. 1609, ordered them to be all
banished from his realm. They sought refuge mostly in Africa,
and there went over openly again to Mohammedanism, which they
had never at heart rejected.[270]
§ 95.3. =The Jews in Europe.=--By trade, money lending and
usury the Jews succeeded in obtaining almost sole possession
of ready money, which brought them often great influence with
the needy princes and nobles, but was also often the occasion
of sore oppression and robbery, as well as the cause of popular
hatred and violence. Whenever a country was desolated by a plague
the notion of well-poisoning by the Jews was renewed. It was told
of them that they had stolen the consecrated sacramental bread in
order to stick it through with needles, and Christian children,
that they might slaughter them at their passover festival. From
time to time this popular rage exploded, and then thousands of
Jews were ruthlessly murdered. The crusaders too often began
their feats of valour on Christian soil by the slaughter of Jews.
From the 13th century in almost all lands they were compelled
to wear an insulting badge, the so called Jews’ hat, a yellow,
funnel-shaped covering of the head, and a ring of red cloth on
the breast, etc. They were also compelled to herd together in
the cities in the so called Jewish quarter (Italian=Ghetto),
which was often surrounded by a special wall. St. Bernard and
several popes, Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III.,
etc., interested themselves in them, refused to allow them to
be violently persecuted, and pointed to their position as an
incontrovertible proof of the truth of the gospel to all times.
The German emperors also took the Jews under their special
protection, for they classed them, after the example of Vespasian
and Titus, among the special servants of the imperial chamber,
(_Servi camera nostræ speciales_).[271] In England and France
they were treated as the _mancipium_ of the crown. In Spain
under the Moorish rule they had vastly increased in numbers,
culture and wealth; also under the Christian kings they enjoyed
for a long time special privileges, their own tribunals, freedom
in the possession of land, etc., and obtained great influence as
ministers of finance and administration, and also as astrologers,
physicians, apothecaries, etc.; but by their usury and merciless
greed drew forth more and more the bitter hatred of the people.
Hence in the 14th century in Spain also there arose times of sore
oppression and persecution, and attempts at conversion by force.
And finally, in A.D. 1492, Ferdinand the Catholic drove more
than 400,000 Jews out of Spain, and in the following year 100,000
out of Sicily. But even the baptized Jews, the so-called “New
Christians,” who were prohibited from removing, fell under the
suspicion of secret attachment to the old religion, and many
thousands of them became victims of the Inquisition.--Many
apologetic and polemical treatises were composed for the purpose
of discussion with the Jews and for their instruction, but
like so many other formal disputations they did not succeed in
securing any good result, for the Jewish teachers were superior
in learning, acuteness, and acquaintance with the exposition
of Old Testament Scriptures, upon which in this discussion
everything turned. But an interesting example of a Jew earnestly
striving after a knowledge of the truth and working himself up to
a full conviction of the divinity of Christianity and the church
doctrine of that age, somewhere about A.D. 1150, is presented by
the story told by himself of the conversion of Hermann afterwards
a Premonstratensian monk in the monastery of Kappenberg in
Westphalia.[272] But on the other hand there are also isolated
examples of a passing over to Judaism as the result, it would
seem, of genuine conviction. The first known example of this
kind appears in A.D. 839, in the case of a deacon Boso, who after
being circumcised received the name Eleazar, married a Jewess,
and settled in Saracen Spain, where he manifested extraordinary
zeal in making converts to his new religion. A second case of
this sort is met with in the times of the Emperor Henry II.,
in the perversion of a priest Wecelinus. The narrator of this
story gives expression to his horror in the words, _Totus
contremisco et horrentibus pilis capitis terrore concutior_.
Also the Judaising sects of the Pasagians in Lombardy during
the 11th century (§ 108, 3) and the Russian Jewish sects of the
15th century (§ 73, 5) were probably composed for the most part
of proselytes to Judaism.[273]
II.--The Hierarchy, the Clergy, and the Monks.
§ 96. THE PAPACY AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
IN THE GERMAN NATIONALITIES.[274]
The history of the papacy during this period represents it in
its deepest shame and degradation. But after this state of matters
was put an end to by the founding of the Holy Roman Empire of German
nationalities, it sprang up again from its deep debasement, and reached
the highest point of power and influence. With the German empire,
to which it owed its salvation, it now carried on a life and death
conflict; for it seemed that it was possible to escape enslavement
under the temporal power of the emperor only by putting the emperor
under its spiritual power. In the conflict with the Hohenstaufens the
struggle reached its climax. The papacy won a complete victory, but
soon found that it could as little dispense with as endure the presence
of a powerful empire. For as the destruction of the Carolingian empire
had left it at the mercy of the factions of Italian nobles at the time
when this period opens, so its victory over the German empire brought
the papacy under the still more degrading bondage of French politics,
as is seen in the beginning of the next period. It had during this
transition time its most powerful props and advisers in the orders
of Clugny and Camaldoli (§ 98, 1). It had a standing army in the
mendicant orders, and the crusaders, besides the enthusiasm, which
greatly strengthened the papal institution, did the further service
of occupying and engrossing the attention of the princes.
§ 96.1. =The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I.,
† A.D. 973.=--Among the wild struggles of the Italian nobles
which broke out after the Emperor Arnulf’s departure (§ 82, 8),
the party of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany gained the
upperhand. His mistress Theodora, a well born and beautiful,
ambitious and voluptuous Roman, wife of a Roman senator, as
well as her like-minded daughters Marozia and Theodora, filled
for half a century the chair of St. Peter with their paramours,
sons and grandsons. These constituted the base and corrupt line
of popes known as the pornocracy. =Sergius III.=, A.D. 904-911,
Marozia’s paramour, starts this disgraceful series. After the
short pontificates of the two immediately following popes,
Theodora, because Ravenna was inconveniently distant for
the gratification of her lust, called John, the archbishop
of that place, to the papal chair under the title of =John X.=,
A.D. 914-928. By means of a successful crusade which he led in
person, he destroyed the remnant of Saracen robbers in Garigliano
(§ 81, 2), and crowned the Lombard king Bernard I., A.D. 916-924,
as emperor. But when he attempted to break off his disgraceful
relations with the woman who had advanced him, Marozia had him
cast into prison and smothered with a pillow. The two following
popes on whom she bestowed the tiara enjoyed it only a short time,
for in A.D. 931 she raised her own son to the papal throne in
the twentieth year of his age. His father was Pope Sergius, and
he assumed the name of =John XI.= But her other son Alberich,
who inherited the temporal kingdom from A.D. 932, restricted
this pope’s jurisdiction and that of his four successors to
the ecclesiastical domain. After Alberich’s death his son
Octavianus, an arch-profligate and blasphemer, though only in
his sixteenth year, united the papacy and the temporal power,
and called himself by the name of =John XII.= A.D. 955-963--the
first instance of a change of name on assuming the papal chair.
He would sell anything for money. He made a boy of ten years
a bishop; he consecrated a deacon in a stable; in hunting and
dice playing he would invoke the favour of Jupiter and Venus;
in his orgies he would drink the devil’s health, etc. Meantime
things had reached a terrible pass in Germany. After the death of
Louis the Child, the last of the German Carolingians, in A.D. 911,
the Frankish duke =Conrad I.=, A.D. 911-918, was elected king
of the Germans. Although vigorously supported by the superior
clergy, the Synod of Hohenaltheim in A.D. 915 threatening the
rebels with all the pains of hell, the struggle with the other
dukes prevented the founding of a united German empire. His
successor, the Saxon =Henry I.=, A.D. 919-936, was the first
to free himself from the faction of the clergy, and to grant to
the dukes independent administration of internal affairs within
their own domains. His greater son, =Otto I.=, A.D. 936-973,
by limiting the power of the dukes, by fighting and converting
heathen Danes, Wends, Bohemians and Hungarians, by decided action
in the French troubles, by gathering around him a virtuous German
clergy, who proved true to him and the empire, secured after long
continued civil wars a power and reputation such as no ruler in
the West since Charlemagne had enjoyed. Called to the help of the
Lombard nobles and the pope John XII. against the oppression and
tyranny of Berengarius [Berengar] II., he conquered the kingdom
of Italy, and was at Candlemas A.D. 962 crowned emperor by
the pope in St. Peter’s, after having really held this rank
for thirty years. Thus was the =Holy Roman Empire of German
Nationalities= founded, which continued for centuries to be
the centre around which the history of the church and the world
revolved. The new emperor confirmed to the pope all donations
of previous emperors with the addition of certain cities, without
detriment, however, to the imperial suzerainty over the patrimony
of St. Peter, and without lessening in any degree the imperial
privileges maintained by Charlemagne. The _Privilegium Ottonis_,
still preserved in the papal archives, and claiming to be an
authentic document, was till quite recently kept secret from
all impartial and capable investigators, so that the suspicion
of its spuriousness had come to be regarded as almost a
certainty. Under Leo XIII., however, permission was given to
a capable Protestant scholar, Prof. Sickel of Vienna, to make
a photographic facsimile of the document, the result of which
was that he became convinced that the document was not the
original but a contemporary official duplicate, a literally
faithful transcript on purple parchment with letters of gold
for solemn deposition in the grave of St. Peter. Its first
part describes the donations of the emperor, the second the
obligations of the pope in accordance with the _Constitutio
Romana_, § 82, 4.--But scarcely had Otto left Rome than the
pope, breaking his oath, conspired with his enemies, endeavoured
to rouse the Byzantines and heathen Hungarians against him,
and opened the gates of Rome to Adalbert the son of Berengarius
[Berengar]. Otto hastened back, deposed the pope at the synod
of Rome in A.D. 963, on charges of incest, perjury, murder,
blasphemy, etc., and made the Romans swear by the bones of
Peter never again to elect and consecrate a pope, without
having the emperor’s permission and confirmation. Soon after the
emperor’s departure, however, the newly elected pope =Leo VIII.=,
A.D. 963-965, had to betake himself to flight. John XII. returned
again to Rome, excommunicated his rival pope, and took cruel
vengeance upon the partisans of the emperor. On his death soon
afterwards, in A.D. 964, the Romans elected Benedict V. as
his successor; but he, when the emperor conquered Rome after a
stubborn resistance, was obliged to submit to humiliating terms.
Leo VIII. had in =John XIII.=, A.D. 965-972, a virtuous and
worthy successor. A new revolt of the Romans led soon after
his election to his imprisonment; but he succeeded in making
his escape in A.D. 966. Otto now for the third time crossed
the Alps, passed relentlessly severe sentences upon the guilty,
and had his son, now thirteen years of age, crowned in Rome as
Otto II., A.D. 967.
§ 96.2. =The Times of Otto II., III., A.D. 973-1002.=--After the
death of Otto I., since Otto II., A.D. 973-983, was restrained
from a Roman campaign in consequence of Cisalpine troubles,
the nobles’ faction under Crescentius, son of Pope John X.
and the younger Theodora, again won the upperhand. This party
had in A.D. 974 overthrown Pope =Benedict VI.=, A.D. 972-974,
appointed by Otto I., and cast him into prison. But their own
anti-pope Boniface VII. could not maintain his position, and
fled with the treasures of St. Peter to Constantinople. By means
of a compromise of parties =Benedict VII.=, A.D. 974-983, was
now raised to the papal chair and held possession in spite of
manifold opposition, till the arrival of the young emperor in
Italy in A.D. 980 obtained for him greater security. Otto II.
again restored the imperial prestige in Rome in A.D. 981, but
in A.D. 982 he suffered a complete defeat at the hand of the
Saracens. He died in the following year at Rome, after he had
in =John XIV.=, A.D. 983-984, secured the appointment of a pope
faithful to the empire. His son Otto III., three years old,
was at the council of state, held at Verona, by the princes
of Germany and Italy, there gathered together, elected king of
both kingdoms. During the German civil wars under the regency
of the Queen-mother Theophania, a Byzantine princess, and the
able Archbishop Willigis, of Mainz, who, through his firmness
and penetration saved the crown for the royal child Otto III.,
A.D. 983-1002, and maintained the existence and integrity of
the German empire, Rome and the papacy fell again under the
domination of the nobles, at whose head now stood the younger
Crescentius, a son of the above mentioned chief of the same
name. In A.D. 984 the anti-pope =Boniface VII.=, who had fled
to Constantinople, made his appearance in Rome, won a following
by Greek gold, got possession of John XIV. and had him cast
into prison, but was himself soon afterwards murdered. The new
pope =John XV.=, A.D. 985-996, who was thoroughly venal, was an
obedient tool of the tyranny of Crescentius, which, however, soon
became so intolerable to him, that he yearned for the restoration
of imperial rule under Otto III. At this same time great danger
threatened the imperial authority from France. Hugh Capet had,
after the death of the last Carolingian, Louis V., in A.D. 987,
taken possession for himself of the French crown. He insisted
upon John XV. deposing the archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who had
opened the gates of Rheims to his uncle Charles of Lorraine, the
brother of Louis V.’s father. The pope, who was then dependent
upon German power, hesitated. Hugh then had Arnulf deposed at
a synod at Rheims in A.D. 921, and put in his place Gerbert,
the greatest scholar (§ 100, 2) and statesman of that age. The
council quite openly declared the whole French church to be free
from Rome, whose bishops for a hundred years had been steeped
in the most profound moral corruption, and had fallen into the
most disgraceful servitude, and Gerbert issued a confession of
faith in which celibacy and fasting were repudiated, and only
the first four œcumenical councils were acknowledged. But the
plan was shattered, not so much through the apparently fruitless
opposition of the pope as through the reaction of the high church
party of Clugny and the popular esteem in which that party was
held. Gerbert could not maintain his position, and was heartily
glad when he could shake the dust of Rheims off his feet by
accepting an honourable call of the young emperor, Otto III.,
who in A.D. 997 opened new paths for his ambition by inviting
the celebrated scholar to be with him as his classical tutor.
Hugh’s successor Robert reinstated Arnulf in the see of Rheims.
John XV. called in Otto III. to his help against the intolerable
oppression of the younger Crescentius, but died before his
arrival in A.D. 996. Otto directed the choice of his cousin
Bruno, twenty-four years of age, the first German pope, who
assumed the name of =Gregory V.=, A.D. 996-999, and by him he
was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory was a man of an energetic,
almost obstinate character, thoroughly in sympathy with the views
of the monks of Clugny. The emperor having soon returned home,
Crescentius violated his oath and made himself again master of
Rome. Gregory fled to Pavia, where he held a synod in A.D. 997,
which thundered an anathema against the disturber of the Roman
church. Meanwhile Crescentius raised to the papal throne the
archbishop John of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to Otto III.,
under the title of John XVI. It was not till late in autumn
of that year that the emperor could hasten to the help of his
injured cousin. He then executed a fearfully severe sentence
upon the tyrant and his pope. The former was beheaded, and
his corpse dragged by the feet through the streets and then
hung upon a gallows; the latter, whom the soldiers had cruelly
deprived of his ears, tongue, and nose, was led through the
streets seated backward on an ass, with the tail tied in his
hands for reins.--From Pavia Gregory had issued a command to
Robert, the French king, to put away his queen Bertha, who was
related to him in the fourth degree, on pain of excommunication.
But he died a suspiciously sudden death before he could bring
down the pride of this king, which, however, his successor
accomplished.
§ 96.3. =Otto III.= now raised to the papal chair his teacher
Gerbert, whom he had previously made Archbishop of Ravenna, under
the title of =Sylvester II.=, A.D. 999-1003. Already in Ravenna
had Gerbert’s ecclesiastical policy been changed for the high
church views of his former opponents, and as pope he developed
an activity which marks him out as the worthy follower of his
predecessor and the precursor of a yet greater Gregory (VII.).
He energetically contended against simony, that special
canker of the church, and by sending the ring and staff to
his former opponent, Arnulf, made the first effort to assert
the papal claim to the exclusive investiture of bishops. But
he had previously, as tutor of Otto, by flattering his vanity,
inspired the imaginative, high-spirited youth with the ideal
of a restoration of the ancient glory of Rome and its emperors
exercising universal sway. And just with this view had Otto
raised him to the papal chair in order that he might have his
help. The pope did not venture openly to withdraw from this
understanding, for in the condition of Italy at that time in
a struggle with the emperor, the victory would be his in the
first instance, and that would be the destruction of the papal
chair. So there was nothing for it but by clever tacking in
spite of contrary winds of imperial policy, to make the ship of
the church hold on as far as possible in the high church course
and surround the emperor by a network of craft. The phantom
of a _Renovatio imperii Romani_ with the mummified form of the
Byzantine court ceremonial and the vain parade of a title was
called into being. On a pilgrimage to the grave of his saintly
friend Adalbert in Gnesen (§ 93, 13) the emperor emancipated
the Polish church from the German metropolitanate by raising
its see into an archbishopric. He also, in A.D. 1000, released
the Polish duke Boleslaw Chrobry (§ 93, 7), the most dangerous
enemy of Germany, who schemed the formation of a great Slavic
empire, from his fealty as a vassal of the German empire,
enlisting him instead as a “friend and confederate of the Roman
people” in his new fantastic universal empire. In the same
year, however, Sylvester, in the exercise of papal sovereignty,
conferred the royal crown on Stephen the saint of Hungary
(§ 93, 8), appointed the payment by him of a yearly tribute to
the papal vicar with ecclesiastical authority over his country,
and made that land ecclesiastically independent of Passau
and Salzburg by founding a separate metropolitanate at Gran.
Though Otto let himself be led in the hierarchical leading
strings by his papal friend, he yet made it abundantly evident
by bestowing upon his favourite pope eight counties of the States
of the Church, that he regarded these as merely a free gift of
imperial favour. He also lashed violently the extravagances as
well as the greed of the popes, and declared that the donation
of Constantine was a pure fabrication (§ 87, 4). The emperor,
however, had meanwhile thoroughly estranged his German subjects
and the German clergy by his un-German temperament. The German
princes denounced him as a traitor to the German empire. Soon
all Italy, even the much fondled Rome, rose in open revolt. Only
an early death A.D. 1002 saved the unhappy youth of twenty-two
years of age from the most terrible humiliation. With him, too,
the star of the pope’s fortunes went down. He died not long after
in A.D. 1003, and left in the popular mind the reputation of a
dealer in the black art, who owed his learning and the success
of his hierarchical career to a compact with the devil.
§ 96.4. =From Henry II. to the Synod at Sutri,
A.D. 1002-1046.=--After the death of Otto III., =Henry II.=,
A.D. 1002-1024, previously duke of Bavaria, a great-grandson of
Henry I. and as such the last scion of the Saxon line, obtained
the German crown--a ruler who proved one of the ablest that ever
occupied that throne. A bigoted pietist and under the power of
the priests, although pious-hearted according to the spirit of
the times and strongly attached to the church, and seeking in
the bishops supports of the empire against the relaxing influence
of the temporal princes, yet no other German emperor ruled over
the church to the same extent that he did, and no one ventured
so far as he did to impress strongly upon the church, by the most
extensive appropriation of ecclesiastical property, especially
of rich monasteries, that this was the shortest and surest way
of bringing about a much needed reformation. Meanwhile in Rome,
after the death of Otto III., Joannes Crescentius, the son of
Crescentius II., who was beheaded by order of Otto, assumed the
government, and set upon the chair of Peter creatures of his
own, John XVII., XVIII., and Sergius IV. But as he and his last
elected pope died soon after one another in A.D. 1012, the long
subjected faction of the Tusculan counts, successors of Alberich,
came to the front again, and chose as pope a scion of one
of their own families, =Benedict VIII.=, A.D. 1012-1024. The
anti-pope Gregory, chosen by the Crescentians, was obliged to
retire from the field. He sought protection from Henry II. But
this monarch came to an understanding with the incomparably
nobler and abler Benedict, received from him for himself and
his Queen Cunigunda, subsequently canonized by Innocent III.,
the imperial crown, in A.D. 1014, and continued ever after to
maintain excellent relations with him. These two, the emperor
and the pope, were on friendly terms with the monks of Clugny.
They both acknowledged the need of a thorough reformation of
the church, and both carried it out so far as this could be
done by the influence and example of their own personal conduct,
disposition, and character. But the pope had so much to do
fighting the Crescentians, then the Greeks and Saracens in
Italy, and the emperor in quelling internal troubles in his
empire and repelling foreign invasions, that it was only toward
the close of their lives that they could take any very decided
action. The pope made the first move, for at the Synod of Pavia
in A.D. 1018, he excommunicated all married priests and those
living in concubinage, and sentenced their children to slavery.
The emperor entertained a yet more ambitious scheme. He wished
to summon a Western œcumenical council at Pavia, and there to
engage upon the reformation of the whole church of the West.
But the death of the pope in A.D. 1024, which was followed in
a few months by the death of the emperor, prevented the carrying
out of this plan. After the death of the childless Henry II.,
=Conrad II.=, A.D. 1024-1039, the founder of the Franconian or
Salic dynasty, ascended the German throne. To him the empire
was indebted for great internal reforms and a great extension
of power, but he gave no attention to the carrying out of his
predecessor’s plans of ecclesiastical reformation. Still less,
however, was anything of the kind to be looked for from the
popes of that period. Benedict VIII. was succeeded by his brother
Romanus, under the name of =John XIX.=, A.D. 1024-1033, as void
of character and noble sentiments (§ 67, 2) as his predecessor
had been distinguished. When he died, Count Alberich of Tusculum
was able by means of presents and promises to get the Romans to
elect his son Theophylact, who, though only twelve years old,
was already practised in the basest vice. He took the name of
=Benedict IX.=, A.D. 1033-1048, and disgraced the papal chair
with the most shameless profligacy. The state of matters became
better under Conrad’s son, =Henry III.=, A.D. 1039-1056, who
strove after the founding of a universal monarchy in the sense
of Charlemagne, and by a powerful and able government he came
nearer reaching this end than any of the German emperors. He
was at the same time inspired with a zeal for the reformation
of the church such as none of his predecessors or successors,
with the exception of Henry II., ever showed. Benedict IX. was,
in A.D. 1044, for the second time driven out by the Romans. They
now sold the tiara to Sylvester III., who three months after
was driven out by Benedict. This pope now fell in love with his
beautiful cousin, daughter of a Tusculan count, and formed the
bold resolve to marry her. But the father of the lady refused
his consent so long as he was pope. Benedict now sold the papal
chair for a thousand pounds of silver to the archdeacon Joannes
Gratian. This man, a pious simple individual, in order to save
the chair of St. Peter from utter overthrow, took upon himself
the disgrace of simony at the bidding of his friends of Clugny,
among whom a young Roman monk called Hildebrand, son of poor
parents of Soana, in Tuscany, was already most conspicuous. The
new pope assumed the name of =Gregory VI.=, A.D. 1044-1046. He
wanted the talents necessary for the hard task he had undertaken.
Benedict having failed in carrying out his matrimonial plans,
again claimed to be pope, as did also Sylvester. Thus Rome
had at one and the same time, three popes, and all three were
publicly known to be simonists. The Clugny party cast off their
protégé Gregory, and called in the German emperor as saviour of
the church. Henry came and had all the the three popes deposed
at the =Synod at Sutri=, A.D. 1046. The Romans gave to him the
right of making a new appointment. It fell upon Suidger, bishop
of Bamberg, who took the name of =Clement II.=, and crowned
the king emperor on Christmas, A.D. 1046. The Romans were so
delighted at having order restored in the city, that they gave
over to the emperor with the rank of patrician the government
of Rome and the right of papal election for all time, and swore
never to consecrate a pope without the emperor’s concurrence.
Henry took the ex-pope Gregory along with him, back to Germany,
where he died in exile, at Cologne. Hildebrand, his chaplain,
had accompanied him thither, and after his death retired into
the monastery of Clugny.
§ 96.5. =Henry III. and his German Popes, A.D. 1046-1057.=--With
=Clement III.=, 1046-1047, begins a whole series of able German
popes, who, elected by Henry III., wrought under his protection
powerfully and successfully for the reform of the church. All
interested in the reformation, the brethren of Clugny, as well
as the disciples of Romuald and the settlers in Vallombrosa
(§ 98, 1), agreed that at the root of all the corruption of the
church of that age were _simony_, or obtaining spiritual offices
by purchase or bribery (Acts viii. 19), and _Nicolaitanism_
(§ 27, 8), under which name were included all fleshly lusts
of the clergy, marriage as well as concubinage and unnatural
vices. These two were, especially in Italy, so widely spread,
that scarcely a priest was to be found who had not been guilty
of both. Clement II., in the emperor’s presence, at a synod
in Rome in A.D. 1047, began the battle against simony. But
he died before the end of the year, probably by poison. While
Roman envoys presented themselves at the German court about
the election of a new pope, Benedict IX., supported by the
Tusculan party, again laid claim to the papal chair, and the
emperor had to utter the severest threats before the man of
his choice, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, was allowed to occupy
the papal chair as =Damasus II.= Twenty-three days afterwards,
however, he was a corpse. This cooled the ardour of German
bishops for election to so dangerous a position, and only after
long persuasion Bishop Bruno of Toul, the emperor’s cousin
and a zealous friend of Clugny, accepted the appointment, on
the condition that it should have the approval of the people
and clergy of Rome, which, as was to be expected, was given
with acclamation. He ascended the papal throne as Leo IX.,
A.D. 1049-1054. According to a later story conceived in the
interests of Hildebrandism, Bruno is said not only to have made
his definite acceptance of the imperial call dependent upon the
supplementary free election of people and clergy of Rome, but
also to have been prevailed upon by Hildebrand, who by his own
request accompanied him, to lay aside his papal ornaments, to
continue his journey in pilgrim garb, and to make his entrance
into the eternal city barefoot, so that the necessary sanction
of a formal canonical election might be given to the imperial
nomination. Leo found the papal treasures emptied to the last
coin and robbed of all its territorial revenues by the nobles.
But Hildebrand was his minister of finance, and soon improved
the condition of his exchequer. Leo now displayed an unexampled
activity in church reform and the purifying of the papacy. No
pope travelled about so much as he, none held as many synods
in the most distant places and various lands. The uprooting of
simony was in all cases the main point in their decrees. By bonds
of gratitude and relationship, but above all of common interests,
he was attached to the German emperor. He could not therefore
think of emancipating the papacy from the imperial suzerainty.
Practically Leo succeeded in clearing the Augean stable of the
Roman clergy, and filled vacancies with virtuous men brought
from far and near. In order to chastise the Normans, put by him
under ban because of their rapacity, he himself took the field
in A.D. 1053, when the emperor refused to do so, but was taken
prisoner after his army had been annihilated, and only succeeded,
after he had removed the excommunication, in getting them to kiss
his feet with the most profound devotion. He demanded from the
Greek emperor full restitution of the donation of Constantine,
so far as this was still in the possession of the Byzantines,
and his envoys at Constantinople rendered the split between the
Eastern and Western churches irreparable (§ 67, 3). Leo died in
A.D. 1054, the only pope for centuries whom the church honours as
a saint. A Roman embassy called upon the emperor to nominate a
new pope. He fixed upon Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstädt [Eichstadt],
who now ascended the papal throne as =Victor II.=, A.D. 1055-1057.
Here again monkish tales have transformed a single matter of fact
into a romance in the interests of their own party. The Romans
wished Hildebrand himself for their pope, but he was unwilling
yet to assume such a responsibility. He put himself, however,
at the head of an embassy which convinced the emperor of the
sinfulness of his former interferences in the papal elections,
and persuaded him to set aside the tyrannical power of his
patrician’s rank and to resign to the clergy and people their
old electoral rights. As candidate for this election, Hildebrand
himself chose bishop Gebhardt, the most trusted counsellor of
the emperor. After long opposition Henry’s consent was won to
this candidature, he even urged the bishop to accept it, who at
last submitted with the words: “Now so do I surrender myself to
St. Peter, soul and body, but only on the condition that you also
yield to him what belongs to him.” The latter, however, seems
not mere beating of the air, for the emperor restored to the
newly elected pope the patrimony of Peter in the widest extent,
and bestowed on him besides the governorship of all Italy.--Henry
died in A.D. 1056, after he had appointed his queen Agnes to the
regency, and had recommended her to the counsel and good offices
of the pope. But the pope’s days were already numbered. He died
in A.D. 1057. Hildebrand could not boast of having dominated him,
but the position of the powerful monk of Clugny under him had
become one of great importance.
§ 96.6. =The Papacy under the Control of Hildebrand,
A.D. 1057-1078.=--After Victor’s death the cardinals without
paying any regard to the imperial right, immediately elected
Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine, at that time abbot of Monte
Cassino, and Hildebrand travelled to Germany in order to
obtain the _post factum_ approval of the empress. =Stephen IX.=,
A.D. 1057-1058, for so Frederick styled himself, died before
Hildebrand’s return. The Tusculan party took advantage of
his absence to put forward as pope a partisan of their own,
Benedict X., A.D. 1058. But an embassy of Hildebrand’s to the
empress secured the succession to bishop Gerhard of Florence.
Benedict was obliged to withdraw, and Gerhard ascended the papal
throne as Nicholas II., A.D. 1058-1061. With him begins the
full development of Hildebrand’s greatness, and from this time,
A.D. 1059, when he became archdeacon of Rome, till he himself
mounted the papal chair, he was the moving spirit of the Romish
hierarchy. By his powerful genius in spite of all hindrances he
raised the papacy and the church to a height of power and glory
never attained unto before. He thus wrought on, systematically,
firmly, and irresistibly advancing toward a complete reformation
in ecclesiastical polity. Absolute freedom of the church from
the power and influence of the state, and in order to attain
this and make it sure, the dominion of the church over the
state, papal elections independent of any sort of temporal
influence, the complete uprooting of all simoniacal practices,
unrelenting strictness in dealing with the immorality of the
clergy, invariable enforcement of the law of celibacy, as the
most powerful means of emancipating the clergy from the world
and the state, filling the sacred offices with the most virtuous
and capable men, were some of the noble aims and achievements
of this reformation. Hildebrand sought the necessary secular
protection and aid for the carrying out of his plans among
the Normans. Nicholas II., on the basis of the donation of
Constantine, gave as a fief to their leader, Robert Guiscard
(§ 95, 1), the lordship of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, out of
which the Saracens had yet to be expelled, and exacted from him
the oath of a vassal, by which he bound himself to pay a yearly
tribute, to protect the papal chair against all encroachments
of its privileges, and above all to maintain the right of papal
elections by the “_meliores cardinales_.” Yet again, Nicholas,
when, at a later period, by the help of the Normans, he had
broken the power of the Tusculan nobles, issued a decree at
a Lateran synod at Rome, in A.D. 1059, by which papal elections
(§ 82, 4) were regulated anew. Of the two extant recensions
of this decree, which are distinguished as the papal and the
imperial, the former is now universally acknowledged to be
the more authentic form. According to it the election lies
exclusively with the Roman cardinal priests (§ 97, 1); to
the rest of the clergy as to the people there is left only
the right of acclamation, that brought no advantage, and to
the emperor, according to Boichorst, the right of concurrence
after the election and investiture, according to Granert, the
right of veto before the election. This decree, and not less
the league with the Normans, were open slights to the imperial
claims upon Italy and the papal chair. The empress therefore
convened about Easter, A.D. 1061, a council of German bishops, at
which Nicholas was deposed, and all his decisions were annulled.
Soon after the pope died. The Tusculan party, now joined with
the Germans under the Lombard chancellor Wibert, asked a new
pope from the empress. At the Council of Basel in A.D. 1061,
bishop Cadalus of Parma was appointed. He assumed the name
of Honorius II., A.D. 1061-1072. But Hildebrand had already
five weeks earlier in concert with the Margravine Beatrice
of Canossa, wholly on his own responsibility, chosen bishop
Anselm of Lucca, and had him consecrated as =Alexander II.=
A.D. 1061-1073. Honorius advanced to Rome, accompanied by
Wibert, and frequently in bloody conflicts conquered the
party of his opponent. Duke Godfrey the Bearded of Lorraine,
the husband of Beatrice, now appeared as mediator. He made
both popes retire to their dioceses and gave to the empress
the decision of the controversy. But meanwhile a catastrophe
occurred in Germany that led to the most important results.
Archbishop Anno of Cologne, standing at the head of a rising
of the princes, decoyed the young king of twelve years of age
on board a ship at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, and took him
to Cologne. The regency and the conduct of government were
now transferred to the German bishops collectively, but lay
practically in the hands of Anno, who meanwhile, however,
since A.D. 1063, found himself obliged to share the power with
Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. At a council held at Augsburg
in A.D. 1062, Alexander was acknowledged as the true pope, but
Honorius by no means resigned his claims. With a small army
he advanced upon Rome in A.D. 1064, seized fort Leo, which
had been built and fortified by Leo IV. for defence against
the Saracens, entrenched himself in the castle of St. Angelo,
and repeatedly routed his opponent’s forces. But Hildebrand
reminded the Normans of their oath of fealty. At a council
held at Mantua in A.D. 1064 (or 1067?) Alexander was once
again acknowledged, and Honorius, whose party the council
sought in vain to break up by force of arms, was again deposed.
The proud, ambitious and self-seeking priest of Cologne had
meanwhile been obliged to transfer to his northern colleague,
Adalbert of Bremen, the further education and training of
the young king, who, though only fifteen years old was now
proclaimed of age in A.D. 1065, as =Henry IV.=, A.D. 1056-1106.
If the bishop of Cologne injured the disposition of the royal
youth by his excessive harshness and severity, the bishop of
Bremen did him irreparable damage by allowing him unrestrained
indulgence in his evil passions.
§ 96.7. =Gregory VII., A.D. 1073-1085.=--Hildebrand had at last
brought the papacy to such a height of power that he was able
now to put the finishing stroke to his own work in his own name,
and so now he mounted the chair of the chief of the apostles,
as Gregory VII., elected and enthroned by a disorderly mob. The
Lombard and German bishops appealed to the emperor to have the
election declared invalid. But he being on all sides threatened
with wars and revolution, thought it advisable to forego the
assertion of his rights and to win the favour of the pope by a
letter full of devotion and humility. At the Roman Fast Synod of
A.D. 1074, Gregory renewed the old law of celibacy and rendered
it more strict, deposed all married priests or those who got
office through simony, and pronounced their priestly acts
invalid. The lower clergy, who were generally married, violently
opposed the measure, but Gregory’s stronger will prevailed. Papal
legates visited all lands, and, supported by the people, insisted
upon the strict observance of the papal decree. At the next
fast synod in A.D. 1075, the pope began the contest against the
usual investiture of the higher clergy by the temporal princes,
with ring and staff as symbols of episcopal office. Whoever
should accept ecclesiastical office from the hand of a layman
was to be deposed, and any potentate who should give investiture
should be put under the ban of the church. Here too he thundered
his anathema against the counsellors of Henry who should meanwhile
prove guilty of the sale of ecclesiastical offices. Henry, whose
hands were fully occupied with the rebellious Saxons, at first
dismissed his counsellors, but after the close of the wars he
reinstated them, and quite ignored the papal prohibition of
investiture. Gregory had for a while quite enough to do in Italy.
Cencius, the head of the nobles opposed to reform, fell upon
him on Christmas, A.D. 1075, during Divine service, and made
him prisoner, but the Romans rescued him, and Cencius had to
take to flight. On New Year’s Day, A.D. 1076, there appeared at
the royal residence at Goslar a papal embassy which threatened
the king with excommunication and deposition should he not
immediately break off all relations with the counsellors under
the ban, and reform his own infamous life. The king burst out
in furious rage. He heaped insults upon the legates, and at
the Synod of Worms, on 24th January, had the pope formally
deposed as a perjured usurper of the papal chair, a tyrant,
an adulterer and a sorcerer. The Lombard bishops, too, gave
their consent to this decree (§ 97, 5). At the next Roman Fast
Synod on 22nd February, the pope placed all bishops who had
taken part in these proceedings under ban, and at the same time
solemnly excommunicated and deposed the king, and released all
his subjects from the obligation of their oaths of allegiance.
Moreover he had the king’s ambassadors, whose life he had
preserved from the fury of those present at the meeting of
synod by his personal interference, cast into prison, and
then in the most contemptuous manner led through the streets.
The papal ban made a deep impression upon the German people
and princes. One bishop after another gave in, the Saxons
raised a new revolt, and at the princes’ conference at Tribur,
in October, A.D. 1076, the pope was invited to come personally
to Augsburg on 2nd February, to meet and confer with the princes
about the affairs of the king. It was resolved that if Henry
did not succeed by 22nd February, the first anniversary of the
ban, to get it removed, he should for ever forfeit the crown,
but that meanwhile he should reside at Spires and continue in
the exercise of all royal prerogatives.
§ 96.8. It was for the pope’s advantage to have the business
settled upon German soil with the greatest possible publicity.
Therefore he scornfully refused the humble petition of the king
to send him absolution from Rome, and hastened his preparations
for travelling to Augsburg. But Henry went forth to meet him on
the way. Shortly before Christmas he escaped from Spires with
his wife and child, and in spite of a severe winter crossed Mount
Cenis. The Lombards protected him in defying the pretensions
of the pope. But Henry’s whole attention was now directed to
overturning the machinations of the hostile German princes.
So he suddenly appeared at Canossa, where Gregory was staying
with the Margravine Matilda, daughter of Beatrice, a princess
enthusiastically attached to him and his ideal. This meeting
was unexpected and undesired by the pope. There during the cold
winter days, from 25th to 27th January, A.D. 1077, stood the son
of Henry III. barefoot in the courtyard of the castle of Canossa,
wearing a sackcloth shirt, fasting all day and supplicating
access to the proud monk. With inflexible severity the pope
refused, until at last the tears, entreaties, and reproaches
of the margravine overcame his obduracy. Henry promised to
submit himself to the future judgment of the pope in regard
to his reconciliation with the German princes, and was absolved.
Nevertheless the princes at the Assembly at Forcheim in March,
with the concurrence of the papal legate, elected a new king in
the person of Rudolph of Swabia, Henry’s brother-in-law. Roused
to fury, Henry now hastened back to Germany, where soon he
gathered round him a great army. Notwithstanding all pressure
brought to bear upon him, Gregory maintained for three years a
position of neutrality, but at last, in A.D. 1080, at the Roman
Fast Synod, where the envoys of the contending kings presented
their complaints, he renewed the excommunication and deposition
of Henry. Then the bishops of Henry’s party immediately met
at Brixen, and hurled the anathema and pronounced sentence of
deposition against Gregory, and elected as anti-pope Wibert,
formerly chancellor, then archbishop of Ravenna, who assumed
the title of Clement III., A.D. 1080-1100. After the death of
Rudolph in battle, at Merseburg, in A.D. 1080, Henry marched
across the Alps and appeared at Pentecost before the gates
of Rome, which were opened to him after a three years’ siege.
Clement III. then at Easter, A.D. 1084, set upon him and his
queen the imperial crown. Gregory had withdrawn to the Castle
of St. Angelo. Henry, however, was compelled by the appearance
of a new rival for the crown, Henry, Count of Luxemburg, to
return to Germany, and Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke, hastened
from the south to deliver the pope, which he accomplished only
after Rome had been fearfully devastated. Gregory died in the
following year, A.D. 1085, at Salerno. Gregory VII. also took
the field against the dissolute and prodigal king of France,
Philip I., and threatened him, because of simony, with interdict
and deposition. His success here, however, was comparatively
small. Philip avowedly submitted to the papal decree, but did
not in the least alter his conduct, and Gregory felt that it was
not prudent to push matters to an extremity. He showed himself
more indulgent toward the powerful William the Conqueror of
England, although this prince ruled the church of his dominions
with an iron hand, pronounced all church property to be freehold,
and was scarcely less guilty of simony than the kings of Germany
and France. Yet the pope himself, who hoped to secure the aid
of his arms against Henry IV., and sought therefore to dazzle
him with the prospect of the imperial throne, winked at his
delinquencies, and loaded him with expressions of his good-will.
The primate of England, too, the powerful Conqueror’s right-hand
supporter, Lanfranc of Canterbury, who bore a grudge against
Gregory because of his patronage of the heretic Berengarius
[Berengar] (§ 101, 2), showed no special zeal for the reforms
advocated by the pope. At a synod held at Winchester in A.D. 1076,
the law of celibacy was enforced, with this limitation, however,
that those of the secular clergy who were already married should
not be required to put away their wives, but no further marriages
among them were to be permitted.[275]
§ 96.9. =The Central Idea in Gregory’s Policy= was the
establishment of a universal theocracy, with the pope as
its one visible head, the representative of Christ upon earth,
who as such stands over the powers of the world. Alongside of
it, indeed, the royal authority was to stand independently as
one ordained of God, but it was to confine itself strictly to
temporal affairs, and to be directed by the pope in regard to
whatever might be partly within and partly without these lines.
All states bearing the Christian name were to be bound together
as members of one body in the great papal theocracy which had
superior to it only God and His law. The princes must receive
consecration and Divine sanction from the spiritual power;
they are “by the grace of God,” not immediately, however, but
only mediately, the church as the middle term stands between
them and God. The pope is their arbiter and highest liege lord,
whose decisions they are under obligation unconditionally to
obey. Royalty stands related to the papacy as the moon to the
sun, from which she receives her light and warmth. The church,
which lends to the power of the world her Divine authority, can
also withdraw it again when it is being misused. When this is
done, the obligation of subjects to obey also ceases. Gregory
began this gigantic work, not so much to raise himself personally
to the utmost pinnacle of power, but rather to save the church
from destruction. He certainly was not free from ambition
and the lust of ruling, but with him higher than all personal
interests was the idea of the high vocation of the church,
and to the realizing of it he enthusiastically devoted all
the energies of his life. On the other hand, he cannot escape
the reproach of having striven with carnal weapons for what he
called a spiritual victory, of having meted out unequal measures,
where his interests demanded it, in the exercise of his assumed
function as judge of kings and princes, and of having occupied
himself more with political schemes and intrigues than with the
ministry of the church of Christ. His whole career shows him to
have been a man of great self reliance, yet, on the other hand,
he was able to preserve the consciousness of the poor sinner who
seeks and finds salvation only in the mercy of Christ. The strict
morality of his life has been admitted even by his bitterest
foes. Not infrequently too did he show himself in advance of
his time in humanity and liberality of sentiment, as _e.g._
in the Berengarian controversy (§ 101, 2), and in his decided
disapproval of the prosecution of witches and sorcerers.[276]
§ 96.10. =Victor III. and Urban II., A.D. 1086-1099.=--Gregory VII.
was succeeded by the talented abbot of Monte Cassino, Desiderius,
under the title of =Victor III.=, A.D. 1086-1087. Only after
great pressure was brought to bear upon him did he consent to
leave the cloister, which under his rule had flourished in a
remarkable manner; but now aged and sickly, he only enjoyed
the pontificate for sixteen months. His successor was bishop
Odo, of Ostia, a Frenchman by birth, and a member of the Clugny
brotherhood, who took the name of =Urban II.=, A.D. 1088-1099.
For a long time he was obliged to give up Rome to the party of
the imperial anti-pope. But the enthusiasm with which the idea
of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre was taken up, which he proposed
to Western Christendom at the Council of Clermont, in A.D. 1095
(§ 94), secured for him the highest position in his time, and
made him strong enough to withstand the opposition of Philip I.,
king of France, whom he had put under ban at Clermont, on
account of his adulterous connection with Bertrada. Returning
to Italy from his victorious campaign through France, he was
able to celebrate Christmas once again in the Lateran at Rome
in A.D. 1096. His main supporters in the conflict against the
emperor were the powerful Margravine Matilda, and the emperor’s
most dangerous opponent in Germany, duke Welf of Bavaria, whose
son of the same name, then in his seventeenth year, was married
by the pope to the widowed Matilda, who was now forty years of
age, whence arose the first of the anti-imperial and strongly
papistical Welf or Guelph party in Germany and Italy. On the
other side the margravine succeeded in stirring up Conrad,
the son of Henry IV., to rebel against his father, and had him
crowned king in A.D. 1087. At Cremona this prince held the pope’s
stirrup, and took the oath of obedience to him. The emperor had
him deposed in A.D. 1098, and had his second son elected and
crowned as Henry V. Urban, who received on his death-bed the
news of the destruction of Jerusalem, died in A.D. 1099, and
his anti-pope Clement III., who had withdrawn to Ravenna, died
in the following year.
§ 96.11. =Paschalis II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II.,
A.D. 1099-1124.=--Urban’s successor, =Paschalis II.=,
A.D. 1099-1118, also a member of the Clugny brotherhood, at
once stirred up the fire of rebellion against the excommunicated
emperor, and favoured a conspiracy of the princes. The young
king, at the head of the insurgents, took his father prisoner,
and obliged him to abdicate in A.D. 1106. Six months afterwards
the emperor died. The church’s curse pursued even his corpse.
Twice interred in holy ground, first in the cathedral of Liège,
then in the cathedral of Spires, his bones were exhumed and
thrown into unconsecrated ground, until at last, in A.D. 1111,
his son obtained the withdrawal of the ban. At the Council
of Guastalla in A.D. 1106, Paschalis renewed the prohibition
of =Investiture=. But =Henry V.=, A.D. 1106-1125, concerned
himself as little about this prohibition as his father had done.
No sooner had he seated himself upon the throne in Germany than
he crossed the Alps to compel the pope to crown him emperor
and concede to him the right of investiture. The pope, who was
willing that the church should be poor if only she retained
her freedom, being now without counsel or help (for Matilda
was old and her warlike spirit was broken, and from the Normans
no assistance could be looked for), was driven in A.D. 1111, in
his perplexity to offer a compromise, whereby the emperor should
surrender investiture to the church, but on the other hand the
clergy should return to him all landed property and privileges
given them by the state since the times of Charlemagne, while
the Patrimony of Peter should continue the property of the
pope himself. On the basis of this agreement the coronation of
the emperor was to be celebrated in St. Peter’s on 12th Feb.,
A.D. 1111. But when after the celebration had begun the document
which set forth the compact was read, the prelates present in
the cathedral raised loud cries of dissent and demanded that it
should immediately be cancelled. The coronation was not proceeded
with, the pope and his cardinals were thrown into prison, and a
revolt of the Romans was suppressed. The pope was then compelled
to rescind the synodal decrees and formally to grant to the king
the right of investiture; he had also, after solemnly promising
never again to put the emperor under ban, to proceed with the
coronation. But Hildebrand’s party called the pope to account
for this betrayal of the church. A synod at Rome in A.D. 1112
declared the concessions wrung from him invalid, and pronounced
the ban against the emperor. The pope, however, remembering his
oaths, refused to confirm it, but it was nevertheless proclaimed
by his legate in the French and German synods. Matilda’s death
in A.D. 1115 called the emperor again to Italy. She had even in
the time of Gregory VII. made over all her goods and possessions
to the Roman Church; but she had the right of free disposal
only in regard to allodial property, not in regard to her feudal
territories. Henry, however, now laid claim to all her belongings.
At the Fast Synod of A.D. 1116 Paschalis asked pardon of God and
man for his sin of weakness, renewed and made more strict the
prohibition of investiture, but still stoutly refused to confirm
the ban of the emperor. In consequence of a rebellion of the
Romans he was obliged to take to flight, and he died in exile
in A.D. 1118. The high church party now chose =Gelasius II.=,
A.D. 1118-1119, but immediately after the election he was seized
by a second Cencius (see § 96, 7) on account of a private grudge,
fearfully maltreated and confined in chains within his castle.
The Romans indeed rescued him, but the emperor’s sudden arrival
in Rome led him, in order to avoid making inconvenient terms of
peace, to seek his own and the church’s safety in flight. The
people and nobles in concert with the emperor set up Gregory VIII.
as anti-pope. So soon as the emperor left Rome, Gelasius returned.
But Cencius fell upon him during Divine service, and only
with difficulty he escaped further maltreatment by flight
into France, where he died in the monastery of Clugny after a
pontificate of scarcely twelve months. The few cardinals present
at Clugny elected archbishop Guido of Vienne. He assumed the
title of =Calixtus II.=, A.D. 1119-1124. Pope and emperor met
together expressing desires for peace. But the auspiciously
begun negotiations never got beyond the statement of the terms
of contract, and ended in the pope renewing at the Council
of Rheims, in A.D. 1119, the anathema against the emperor and
anti-pope. Next year Calixtus crossed the Alps. He received
a hearty greeting in Rome. He laid siege to the anti-pope
in Sutri, took him prisoner, and after the most contumelious
treatment before the Roman mob, cast him into a monastic prison.
The investiture question, now better understood through learned
discussions on civil and ecclesiastical law, was at last
definitely settled in the =Worms Concordat=, as the result
of mutual concessions made at the National Assembly at Worms,
A.D. 1122. The arrangement come to was this: canonical election
of bishops and abbots of the empire by the diocesan clergy
and the secular nobles should be restored, and under imperial
inspection made free from all coercion, but in disputed elections
decisions should be given in accordance with the judgment of
the metropolitan and the rest of the bishops, the investing of
the elected with the sceptre in Germany before, in other parts
of the empire after, consecration, should belong to the emperor,
and investiture with ring and staff at the consecration should
belong to the pope. This agreement was solemnly ratified at the
=First Œcumenical Lateran Synod= in A.D. 1123.
§ 96.12. The contemporary =English Investiture Controversy=
was brought earlier to a conclusion. William the Conqueror had
unopposed put Norman prelates in the place of the English bishops,
and had homage rendered him by them, while they received from
him investiture with the ring and the staff. William Rufus, the
Conqueror’s son and successor, A.D. 1087-1100, a domineering and
greedy prince, after Lanfranc’s death in A.D. 1089 (§ 101, 1)
allowed the archbishopric of Canterbury to remain vacant for
four years, in order that he might himself enjoy the undisturbed
possession of the revenues. It was not till A.D. 1093, during
a severe illness and under fear of death, that he agreed to
bestow it upon Anselm, the celebrated Abbot of Bec (§ 101, 1, 3),
with the promise to abstain ever afterwards from simony. No
sooner had he recovered than he repented him of his promise.
He resumed his old practices, and even demanded of Anselm a
large sum for his appointment. For peace sake Anselm gave him
a voluntary present of money, but it did not satisfy the king.
When, in A.D. 1097, the archbishop asked permission to make a
journey to Rome in order to have the conflict settled there,
the king banished him. In Rome Anselm was honourably received
and his conduct was highly approved; but neither Urban II. nor
Paschalis II. could venture upon a complete breach with the
king. William the Conqueror’s third son, Henry I. Beauclerk,
A.D. 1100-1135, who, having also snatched Normandy from his
eldest brother Robert, needed the support of the clergy to
secure his position, agreed to the return of the exiled primate,
and promised to put a stop to every kind of simony; but he
demanded the maintenance of investiture and the oath of fealty
which Anselm now, in consequence of the decrees of a Roman
synod which he had himself agreed to, felt obliged to refuse.
Thus again the conflict was renewed. The king now confiscated
the goods and revenues of the see, and the archbishop was on the
point of issuing an excommunication against him, when at last an
understanding was come to in A.D. 1106, through the mediation of
the pope, according to which the crown gave up the investiture
with ring and staff, and the archbishop agreed to take the oath
of fealty.--In France, too, from the end of the 11th century,
owing to the pressure used by the high church reforming party,
the secular power was satisfied with securing the oath of
fealty from the higher clergy, without making further claim
to investiture.[277]
§ 96.13. =The Times of Lothair III. and Conrad III.,
A.D. 1125-1152.=--After the death of Henry V. without issue,
the Saxon =Lothair=, A.D. 1125-1137, was elected, and the
Hohenstaufen grandson of Henry IV. descended in the female
line was passed over. =Honorius II.=, A.D. 1124-1130, successor
of Calixtus II., hastened to confer the papal sanction upon
the newly elected emperor, who already upon his election had,
by accepting spiritual investiture before temporal investiture,
and a minimising of the oath of fealty by ecclesiastical
reservations, showed himself ready to support the claims
of the clergy. But neither ban nor the preaching of a crusade
against Count Roger II. of Sicily (§ 95, 1) could prevent him
from building up a powerful kingdom comprehending all Southern
Italy. The next election of the cardinals gives us two popes:
=Innocent II.=, A.D. 1130-1143, and Anacletus II., A.D. 1130-1138.
The latter, although not the pope of the majority, secured a
powerful support in the friendship of Roger II., whom he had
crowned king by his legate at Palermo. Innocent, on the other
hand, fled to France. There the two oracles of the age, the
abbot Peter of Clugny and Bernard of Clairvaux, took his side
and won for him the favour of all Cisalpine Europe. Both popes
fished for Lothair’s favour with the bait of the promise of
imperial coronation. A second edition of the Synod of Sutri
would probably have enabled a more powerful king to attain the
elevation of Henry III. But Lothair was not the man to seize the
opportunity. He decided in favour of the _protégé_ of Bernard,
led him back in A.D. 1133 to the eternal city, had himself
crowned emperor by him in the Lateran and invested with Matilda’s
inheritance, which was declared by the curialists a fief of
the empire. But Lothair’s repeated demands, that what had been
acquired by the Concordat of Worms should be renounced, were
set aside, through the opposition not so much of the pope as
of St. Bernard and St. Norbert (§ 98, 2). At the prayer of the
pope, who immediately after Lothair’s departure had been driven
out by Roger, and moved by the prophetic exhortations of Bernard,
the emperor prepared for a second Roman campaign in A.D. 1136.
Leaving the conquest of Rome to the eloquence of the prophet
of Clairvaux, he advanced from one victory to another until he
brought all Southern Italy under the imperial sway, and died on
his return homeward in an Alpine hut in the Tyrol. Fuming with
rage Roger now crossed over from Sicily and in a short time he
reconquered his southern provinces of Italy. The appointment,
however, of a new pope after the death of Anacletus miscarried,
and Innocent was able at the =Second Œcumenical Lateran Synod=
in A.D. 1139 to declare the schism at an end. The pope then
renewed the excommunication of Roger and pronounced an anathema
against the teachings of Arnold of Brescia (§ 108, 7), a young
enthusiastic priest of the school of Abælard, who traced all
ecclesiastical corruption back to the wealth of the church and
the secular power of the clergy. He next prepared himself for
war with Roger. That prince, however, waylaid him and had him
brought into his tent, where he and his sons cast themselves at
the holy father’s feet and begged for mercy and peace. The pope
could do nothing else than play the _rôle_ of the magnanimous
given him in this comedy. He had therefore to confirm the
hated Norman in the possession of the conquered provinces
as a hereditary monarchy with the ecclesiastical privilege
of a native legate, and, as some set off to comfort himself
with, the prince was to regard the territory as a fief of the
papal see. But still greater calamities befell this pope. The
republican freedom, which the cities of Tuscany and Lombardy
won during the 12th century, awakened also among the Romans
a love of liberty. They refused to render obedience in temporal
matters to the pope and established in the Capitol a popular
senate, which undertook the civil government in the name of
the Roman Commune. Innocent died during the revolution. His
successor =Cœlestine II.= held the pontificate for only five
months, and =Lucius II.=, after vainly opposing the Commune
for seven months, was killed by a stone thrown in a tumult.
=Eugenius III.=, A.D. 1145-1153, a scholar and friend of
St. Bernard, was obliged immediately after his election to
seek safety in flight. An agreement, however, was come to in
that same year: the pope acknowledged the government of the
Commune as legitimate, while it recognised his superiority and
granted to him the investiture of the senators. Yet, though
taken back three times to Rome, he could never remain there for
more than a few months. He visited France and Germany (Treves)
in A.D. 1147. In France he heard of the fall of Edessa. Supported
by the fiery zeal of Bernard, the summons to a second crusade
(§ 94, 2) aroused a burning enthusiasm throughout all the West.
But in Rome he was unable to offer any effectual resistance
to the demagogical preaching by which Arnold of Brescia from
A.D. 1146 had inflamed the people and the inferior clergy with
an ardent enthusiasm for his ideal constitution of an apostolic
church and a democratic state. Since this change of feeling
had taken place in Rome, both parties, that of the Capitol
as well as that of the Lateran, had repeatedly endeavoured
to win to their side the first Hohenstaufen on the German
throne, =Conrad III.=, A.D. 1138-1152, by promise of bestowing
the imperial crown. But Conrad, meanwhile otherwise occupied,
refrained from all intermeddling, and when at last he actually
started upon a journey to Rome death overtook him on the way.
§ 96.14. =The Times of Frederick I. and Henry VI.,
A.D. 1152-1190.=--The nephew and successor of Conrad III.,
=Frederick I. Barbarossa=, A.D. 1152-1190, began his reign with
the firm determination to realize fully the ideas of Charlemagne
(§ 82, 3) by his pope Paschalis III., whom at a later period,
in A.D. 1165, he had canonized. With profound contempt at heart
for the Roman democracy of his time, he concluded a compact
in A.D. 1153 with the papal see, which confirmed him in the
possession of the imperial crown and gave to the pope the
_Dominium temporale_ in the Church States. After the death
of Eugenius which soon followed, the aged =Anastasius IV.=
occupied the papal chair for a year and a half, a time of peace
and progress. He was succeeded by the powerful =Hadrian IV.=,
A.D. 1154-1159. He was an Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear, son
of a poor English priest, the first and, down to the present
time, the only one of that nation who attained the papal dignity.
He pronounced an interdict upon the Romans who had refused him
entrance into the inner part of the city and had treacherously
slain a cardinal. Rome endured this spiritual famine only for
a few weeks, and then purchased deliverance by the expulsion of
Arnold of Brescia, who soon thereafter fell into the hands of a
cardinal. He was indeed again rescued by force, but Frederick I.,
who had meanwhile in A.D. 1154 begun his first journey to
Rome, and on his way thither had humbled the proud Lombard
cities struggling for freedom, urged by the pope, insisted
that he should be surrendered up again, and subsequently gave
him over to the Roman city prefect, who, in A.D. 1155, without
trial or show of justice condemned him to be burnt and had
his ashes strewn upon the Tiber. In the camp at Sutri the pope
personally greeted the king who, after refusing for several days,
at length agreed to show him the customary honour of holding
his stirrup, doing it however with a very bad grace. Soon too
the senatorial ambassadors of the Roman people, who indulged in
bombastic, turgid declamation, presented themselves professing
their readiness on consideration of a solemn undertaking to
protect the Roman republic, and on payment of five thousand
pounds, to proclaim the German king from the Capitol Roman
emperor and ruler of the world. With a furious burst of anger
Frederick silenced them, and with scathing words showed them
how the witness of history pointed the contrast between their
miserable condition and the glory and dignity of the German name.
Yet on the day of the coronation, which they were not able to
prevent, the Romans took revenge for the insults he had heaped
upon them by an attack upon the papal residence in the castle
of Leo, and upon the imperial camp in front of the city, but
were repelled with sore loss. Soon thereafter, in A.D. 1155, the
emperor made preparations for returning home, leaving everything
else to the pope. The relations between the two became more
and more strained from day to day. The Lombards, too, once
again rebelled. Frederick therefore in A.D. 1158 made his second
expedition to Rome. On the Roncalian plains he held a great
assembly which laid down to the Lombards as well as to the pope
the imperial prerogatives. Hadrian would have given utterance to
his wrath by thundering an anathema, but he was restrained by the
hand of death.
§ 96.15. The cardinals of the hierarchical party elected
=Alexander III.=, A.D. 1159-1181, those of the imperial party,
Victor IV. A synod convened by the emperor at Pavia in A.D. 1160
decided in favour of Victor, who was now formally recognised.
Meanwhile Milan threw off the yoke that had been laid upon her.
After an almost two years’ siege the emperor took the city in
A.D. 1162 and razed it to the ground. From France whither he had
fled, Alexander, in A.D. 1163, launched his anathema against the
emperor and his pope. The latter died in A.D. 1164, and Frederick
had Paschalis III. († A.D. 1168) chosen his successor; but in
A.D. 1165, Alexander returning from France, pressed on in advance
of him and was acknowledged by the Roman senate. Now for the
third time in A.D. 1166, Frederick crossed the Alps. A small
detachment of troops that had been sent in advance to accompany
the imperial pope to Rome under the leadership of the archbishops
of Cologne and Mainz, in a bloody battle at Monte Porzio in
A.D. 1167 utterly destroyed a Roman army of twenty times its
size. Frederick then himself hasted forward. After an eight
days’ furious assault the fortress of Leo surrendered, and
Paschalis was able to perform the _Te Deum_ in St. Peter’s.
The Transtiberines, too, after Alexander had sought safety
in flight, soon took the oath of fealty to the emperor upon
a guarantee of imperial protection of their republic. But at
the very climax of his success “the fate of Sennacherib” befell
him. The Roman malaria during the hot August became a deadly
fever plague, thinned the lines of his army and forced him to
withdraw. So weakened was he that he could not even assert his
authority in Lombardy, but had to return to Germany in A.D. 1168.
The emperor’s disaster told also unfavourably upon the fortunes
of his pope, whose successor Calixtus III. was quite disregarded.
In A.D. 1174 Frederick again went down into Italy and engaged
upon a decisive battle with the confederate cities of Lombardy,
but in A.D. 1176 at Legnano he suffered a complete defeat,
in consequence of which he agreed at the Congress of Venice,
in A.D. 1177, to acknowledge the freedom of the Lombard
cities, abandoned the imperial claims upon Rome, and recognised
Alexander III., who was also present there, as the rightful
pope, kissing his feet and holding his stirrup according to
custom. Rome, which he had not seen for nearly eleven years,
would no longer shut her gates against the pope. Welcomed
by senate and people, he made his public entrance into the
Lateran in March A.D. 1178, where in the following year he
gathered together 300 bishops in the =Third Lateran Council=
(the 11th œcumenical), in order by their advice to heal the
wounds which the schism of the church had made. Here also,
in order to prevent double elections in time to come, it was
resolved that for a valid papal election two-thirds of the whole
college of cardinals must be agreed. The right of concurrence
assigned by the decree of Nicholas II. in A.D. 1059 to the people
and emperor was treated as antiquated and forgotten, and was not
even alluded to.
§ 96.16. Even before his victory over the powerful Hohenstaufen,
Alexander III. during his exile won a yet more brilliant success
in England. King Henry II., A.D. 1154-1189, wished to establish
again the supremacy of the state over church and clergy, and
thought that he would have a pliant tool in carrying out his
plans in =Thomas à Becket=, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury,
in A.D. 1162. But as primate of the English church, Thomas
proved a vigorous upholder of hierarchical principles. Instead
of the accommodating courtier, the king found the archbishop
immediately upon his consecration the bold asserter of the claims
of the church. The jovial man of the world became at once the
saintly ascetic. At a council at Tours in A.D. 1163, he returned
into the pope’s own hand the pallium with which an English
prince had invested him in name of the king, resigning also his
archiepiscopal dignity, that he might receive these directly as
a papal gift. Straightway began the conflict between the king
and his former favourite. Henry summoned a diet at Clarendon,
where he obtained the approval of the superior clergy for his
anti-hierarchical propositions; Thomas also for a time withstood,
promising at last, when urged on all sides, to assent to the
constitutions, but refusing to sign the document when it was
placed before him. The king now ordered a process of deposition
to be executed against him, and Thomas then fled to France,
where the pope was at that time residing. The pope released him
from his promise, condemned the Constitutions of Clarendon, and
threatened the king with anathema and interdict. At last, after
protracted negotiations, in A.D. 1170 by means of a personal
interview on the frontiers of Normandy, a reconciliation was
effected; by which, however, neither the king nor the archbishop
renounced their claims. Thomas now returned to England and
threatened with excommunication all bishops who should agree
to the Constitutions of Clarendon. Four knights seized upon an
unguarded word of the king which he had uttered in passion, and
murdered the archbishop at the altar in A.D. 1170. Alexander
canonized the martyr to Hildebrandism, and the king was so
sorely pressed by the pope, his own people and his rebellious
sons, that he consented to do penance humbly at the tomb of
his deadly sainted foe, and submitted to be scourged by the
monks. Becket’s bones, for which a special chapel was reared at
Canterbury, were visited by crowds of pilgrims until Henry VIII.,
when he had broken with Rome (§ 139, 4), formally arraigned
the saint as a traitor, had his name struck out of the calendar
and his ashes scattered to the winds.[278]--Thus by A.D. 1178
Alexander III. had risen to the summit of ecclesiastical power;
but in Rome itself as well as in the Church States, he remained
as powerless politically as before. Soon, therefore, after the
great council he again quitted the city for a voluntary exile,
and never saw it more. His three immediate successors, too,
=Lucius III.= († A.D. 1185), =Urban III.= († A.D. 1187), and
=Gregory VIII.= († A.D. 1187), were elected, consecrated and
buried outside of Rome. =Clement III.= († A.D. 1191) was the
first to enter the Lateran again in A.D. 1188, on the basis of
a compromise which acknowledged the republican constitution under
the papal superiority. Meanwhile Frederick I., without regarding
the protest of the pope as liege lord of the Sicilian crown, had
in A.D. 1186 consummated the fateful marriage of his son Henry
with Constance, the posthumous daughter of king Roger, and aunt
of his childless grandson William II. († A.D. 1194), and thus the
heiress of the great Norman kingdom of Italy. From the crusade
which he then undertook in A.D. 1189 Frederick never returned
(§ 94, 3). His successor, =Henry VI.=, A.D. 1190-1197, compelled
the new pope =Cœlestine III.=, A.D. 1191-1198, to crown him
emperor in A.D. 1191, conquered the inheritance of his wife,
pushed back the boundaries of the Church States to the very
gates of Rome, and asserted his imperial rights even over the
city of Rome itself. He pressed on to the realizing of the scheme
for making the German crown together with the imperial dignity
for ever hereditary in his house. The princes of the empire in
A.D. 1196 elected his son Frederick II., when scarcely two years
old, as king of the Romans. He then thought under the pretext
of a crusade to conquer Greece, to which he had laid groundless
claims of succession, but while upon the way his plans were
overthrown by his sudden death at Messina.
§ 96.17. =Innocent III., A.D. 1198-1216.=--After the death
of Alexander III. the power and reputation of the Holy See had
fallen into the lowest degradation. Then the cardinal deacon,
Lothair Count of Segni in Anagni, succeeded in A.D. 1198 in his
37th year, under the name of Innocent III., and raised the papacy
again to a height of power and glory never reached before. In
point of intellect and power of will he was not a whit behind
Gregory VII., while in culture (§ 102, 9), scholarship, subtlety
and adroitness he far excelled him. His piety, too, his moral
earnestness, his enthusiasm and devotion to the church and the
theocratical interest of the chair of St. Peter, were at least
as powerful and decidedly purer, deeper and more spiritual
than Gregory’s. And in addition to all these great endowments
he enjoyed an invariable good fortune which never forsook him.
His first task was the restoration of the Church States and
his political prestige in Rome. In both these directions he
was favoured by the sudden death of Henry VI. and the internal
disorders of the Capitoline government of that time. On the very
day of his enthronement the imperial prefect tendered him the
oath of fealty and the Capitol did homage to him as the superior.
And also before the second year had passed the Church States
in their fullest extent were restored by the expulsion of the
greater and smaller feudal lords who had been settled there
by Henry VI. Rome was indeed once more the scene of wild party
conflicts which forced the pope in A.D. 1203 to fly to Anagni.
He was able, however, to return in A.D. 1204 and to conclude
a definite and decisive peace with the Commune in A.D. 1205,
according to the terms of which the many-headed senate resigned,
and a single senator or podestà nominated by the pope was
entrusted with the executive authority. Meanwhile Innocent
had been gaining brilliant successes beyond the limits of the
States of the Church. These were won first of all in Sicily.
The widow of Henry VI. had her son Frederick of four years old,
after his father’s death, crowned king in Palermo. Unadvised
and helpless, pressed upon all sides, she sought protection
from Innocent, which he granted upon her renouncing the
ecclesiastical privileges previously claimed by the king
and making acknowledgment of the papal suzerainty. Dying in
A.D. 1198, Constance transferred to him the guardianship of her
son, and the pope justified the confidence placed in him by the
excellent and liberal education which he secured for his ward,
as well as by the zeal and success with which he restored rest
and peace to the land. In Germany, Philip of Swabia, Frederick’s
uncle, was appointed to carry on the government in the name
of his Sicilian nephew during his minority. The condition of
Germany, however, demanded the direct control of a firm and
vigorous ruler. The princes, therefore, insisted upon a new
election, for which Philip also now appeared as candidate. The
votes were split between two rivals; the Ghibellines voting
for Philip, A.D. 1198-1208, and the Guelph party for =Otto IV.=
of Brunswick, A.D. 1198-1218. The party of the latter referred
the decision to the pope. For three years he delayed giving
judgment, then he decided in favour of the Guelph, who paid
for the preference by granting all the demands of the pope,
and calling himself king by the grace of God and the pope. The
States of the Church were thus represented as including the Duchy
of Spoleto, and in the election of bishops the church was freed
from the influence of the state. By A.D. 1204, however, Philip’s
power and repute had risen to such a pitch that even the pope
found himself obliged to take into account the altered position
of matters. A papal court of arbitration at Rome to which both
claimants had agreed to submit, was on the point of giving its
decision unequivocally in favour of the Hohenstaufen, when the
murder of Philip by Otto of Wittelsbach, in A.D. 1208, rendered
it void. Otto IV. was now acknowledged by all, and in A.D. 1209
he was crowned by the pope after new concessions had been made.
But as Roman emperor he either would not or could not perform
what he had promised before and at his coronation. He took to
himself the possessions of Matilda as well as other parts of
the States of the Church, and was not prevented from pursuing
his victorious campaign in Southern Italy by the anathema which
Innocent thundered against him in A.D. 1210. Then Innocent called
to mind the old rights of his former pupil to the German crown,
and insisted that they should be given effect to. In A.D. 1212,
Frederick II., now in his eighteenth year, accepted the call, was
received in Germany with open arms, and was crowned in A.D. 1215
at Aachen. Otto could not maintain his position against him, and
so withdrew to his hereditary possessions, and died in A.D. 1218.
§ 96.18. King Philip Augustus II. of France, had in A.D. 1193
married the Danish princess Ingeborg, but divorced her in
A.D. 1196, and married the beautiful Duchess Agnes of Meran.
Innocent compelled him in A.D. 1200 to put her away by issuing
against him an interdict, but it was only in A.D. 1213 that
he again took back Ingeborg as his legitimate wife.--From far
off Spain the young king Peter of Arragon went in A.D. 1204 to
Rome, laid down his crown as a sacred gift upon the tomb of the
chief of the apostles, and voluntarily undertook the payment of
a yearly tribute to the Holy See. In the same year a crusading
army, by founding a Latin empire in Constantinople, brought
the schismatical East to the feet of the pope (§ 94, 4). In
England, when the archbishopric of Canterbury became vacant,
the chapter filled it by electing their own superior Reginald.
This choice they had soon cause to rue. They therefore annulled
their election, and at the wish of the usurping king John
Lackland made choice of John, bishop of Norwich. Innocent
refused to confirm their action, and persuaded certain members
of the chapter staying in Rome to choose the cardinal priest
Stephen Langton, whose election he immediately confirmed.[279]
When the king refused to recognise this appointment, and on an
interdict being threatened swore that he would drive all priests
who should obey it out of the country, the pope issued it in
A.D. 1208 against all England, excommunicated the king, and
finally, in A.D. 1212, released all his subjects from their
oath of allegiance and deposed the monarch, while he commissioned
Philip Augustus of France to carry the sentence into effect.
John, now as cringing and terrified as before he had been proud
and despotic, humbled himself in the dust, and at Dover, in
A.D. 1213, placed kingdom and crown at the feet of the papal
legate Pandulf, and received it from his hands as a papal fief,
undertaking to pay twice a year the tribute imposed. But in
A.D. 1214 the English nobles extorted from their cowardly tyrant
as a safeguard against lordly wilfulness and despotism the famous
_Magna Charta_, against which the pope protested, threatening
excommunication and promising legitimate redress of their
grievances, though in consequence of confusion caused by the
breaking out again of the civil wars he was unable to enforce
his protest. And now his days were drawing to an end. At the
famous =Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215=, more than 1,500
prelates from all the countries of Christendom, along with the
ambassadors of almost all Christian kings, princes and free
cities, gave him homage as the representative of God on earth,
as visible Head of the Church, and supreme lord and judge of all
princes and peoples. A few months later he died.--As in Italy and
Germany, in France and England, he had also in all other states
of the Christian world, in Spain and Portugal, in Poland, Livonia
and Sweden, in Constantinople and Bulgaria, shown himself capable
of controlling political as well as ecclesiastical movements,
arranging and smoothing down differences, organizing and putting
into shape what was tending to disorder. Some conception of his
activity may be formed from the 5,316 extant decretals of the
eighteen years of his pontificate.
§ 96.19. =The Times of Frederick II. and his Successors,
A.D. 1215-1268.=--=Frederick II.=,[280] A.D. 1215-1250, contrary
to the Hohenstaufen custom, had not only agreed to the partition
of Sicily from the empire in favour of his son Henry, but also
renewed the agreements previously entered into with the pope
by Otto IV. He even increased the papal possessions by ceding
Ancona, and still further at his coronation at Aachen he showed
his goodwill by undertaking a crusade. He also allowed this
same Henry who became king of Sicily as a vassal of the pope,
to be elected king of the Romans in A.D. 1220, and then began
his journey to Rome to receive imperial coronation. The new pope
=Honorius III.=, A.D. 1216-1227, formerly Frederick’s tutor and
even still entertaining for him a fatherly affection, exacted
from him a solemn renewal of his earlier promises. But instead
of returning to Germany, Frederick started for Sicily in order
to make it the basis of operations for the future carrying out
of the ideas of his father and grandfather. The peace-loving
pope constantly urged him to fulfil his promise of fitting out
a crusade. But it was only after his successor =Gregory IX.=,
A.D. 1227-1241, a high churchman of the stamp of Gregory VII.
and Innocent III., urged the matter with greater determination,
that Frederick actually embarked. He turned back, however,
as soon as an epidemic broke out in the ships, but he did
not himself escape the contagion, and died three days after.
In A.D. 1227 the pope had in a senseless passion hurled an
anathema against him, and, in an encyclical to all the bishops,
painted the emperor’s ingratitude and breach of faith in
the darkest colours. The emperor on his part, in a manifesto
justifying himself addressed to the princes and people of Europe,
had quite as unsparingly lashed the worldliness of the church,
the corruption, presumption and self-seeking of the papacy,
and then in A.D. 1228 he again undertook the postponed crusade
(§ 94, 5). The pope’s curse followed “the pirate” to the very
threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, and a papal crusading force
made a raid upon Southern Italy. Frederick therefore hastened
his return, landed in A.D. 1229 in Apulia, and entered into
negotiations for peace, to which, however, the pope agreed
only in A.D. 1230, when the emperor’s victoriously advancing
troops threatened him with the loss of the States of the Church.
In consequence of the pope’s continued difficulties with his
Romans, who drove him three times out of the city, Frederick
had frequent opportunities of showing himself serviceable
to the pope by giving direct aid or mediating in his favour.
Nevertheless he continually conspired with the rebellious
Lombards, and in A.D. 1239 renewed the ban against the emperor.
The pope who had hitherto only charged Frederick with a tendency
to freethinking, as well as an inclination to favour the Saracens
(§ 95, 1), and to maintain friendly intercourse with the Syrian
sultans, now accused him of flippant infidelity. The emperor,
it was said, had among other things declared that the birth of
the Saviour by a virgin was a fable, and that Jesus, Moses and
Mohammed were the three greatest impostors the world had ever
seen,--a form of unbelief which spread very widely in consequence
of the crusades. Manifestoes and counter-manifestoes sought to
outdo one another in their violence. And while the wild hordes
of the Mongols were overspreading unopposed the whole of Eastern
Europe, the emperor’s troops were victoriously pressing forward
to the gates of Rome, and his ships were preventing the meeting
of the council summoned against him by catching the prelates who
in spite of his prohibition were hastening to it. The pope died
in A.D. 1241, and was followed in seventeen days by his successor
Cœlestine IV.
§ 96.20. For almost two years the papal chair remained vacant.
Then this position was won by =Innocent IV.=, A.D. 1243-1254,
who as cardinal had been friendly to the emperor, but as pope
was a most bitter enemy to him and to his house. The negotiations
about the removal of the ban were broken off, and Innocent
escaped to France, where at the =First Lyonese or 13th Œcumenical
Council of A.D. 1245=, attended by scarcely any but Frenchmen
and Spaniards, he renewed the excommunication of the emperor,
and declared him as a blasphemer and robber of the church
deprived of his throne. Once again with the most abject humility
Frederick sued for reconciliation with the church. The pope,
however, wished not for reconciliation, but the destruction of
the whole “viper brood” of the Hohenstaufens. But the rival king,
Henry Raspe of Thuringia, set up by the papal party in Germany,
and William of Holland, who was put forward after his death in
A.D. 1247, could not maintain their position against Frederick’s
son, Conrad IV., who as early as A.D. 1235 had been elected
in place of his rebel brother Henry as king of the Romans.
Even in Italy the fortune of war favoured at first the imperial
arms. At the siege of Parma, which was disloyal, the tide began
to turn. The sorely pressed citizens made a sally in A.D. 1248,
while Frederick was away at a hunt, and roused to courage by
despair, put his army to flight. His brave son, Enzio, king of
Sardinia and governor of Northern Italy, fell in A.D. 1249 into
the hands of the Bolognese, and was subjected to a life-long
imprisonment. Frederick himself in A.D. 1250 closed his active
life in the south in the arms of his son Manfred. The pope then
returned to Italy, in order to take possession of the Sicilian
kingdom, which he claimed as a papal fief. But in A.D. 1251
=Conrad IV.=, summoned by Manfred, hasted thither from Germany,
subdued Apulia, conquered Naples, and was resolved to lay hands
on the person of the pope himself, who had also excommunicated
him, when his career was stopped by death in A.D. 1254, in
his twenty-sixth year. On behalf of Conrad’s two-year-old
son, Conradin, who had been born in Germany after his father’s
departure, Manfred undertook the regency in Southern Italy,
but found himself obliged to acknowledge the pope’s suzerainty.
Nevertheless the pope was determined to have him also overthrown.
Manfred, however, escaped in time to the Saracenic colony
of Luceria, and with its help utterly defeated the papal
troops sent out against him. Five days after Innocent IV.
died, =Alexander IV.=, A.D. 1254-1261, although without his
predecessor’s ability, sought still to continue his work. He
could not, however, either by ban or by war prevent Manfred,
who on the report of Conradin’s death had had himself crowned,
from extending the power and prestige of his kingdom farther and
farther into the north. =Urban IV.=, A.D. 1261-1264, a Frenchman
by birth, son of a shoemaker of Troyes, took up with all his
heart the heritage of hate against the Hohenstaufens, and in
A.D. 1263 invited Charles of Anjou, the youngest brother of
Louis IX. of France, to win by conquest the Sicilian crown.
While the prince was preparing for the campaign Urban died.
His successor, =Clement IV.=, A.D. 1265-1268, also a Frenchman,
could not but carry out what his predecessor had begun. Charles,
whom the Romans without the knowledge of the pope had elected
their senator, proceeded in A.D. 1265 into Italy, took the vassal
oath of fealty, and was crowned as Charles I., A.D. 1265-1285,
king of the two Sicilies. Treachery opened up his way into
Naples. Manfred fell in A.D. 1266 in the battle of Benevento;
and Conradin, whom the Ghibellines had called in as a deliverer
of Italy, after the disastrous battle of Tagliacozzo in A.D. 1268,
died on the scaffold in his sixteenth year.
§ 96.21. =The Times of the House of Anjou down to Boniface VIII.,
A.D. 1288-1294.=--The papacy had emerged triumphantly from
its hundred years’ struggle with the Hohenstaufens, and by
the overthrow of this powerful house Germany was thrown into
the utmost confusion and anarchy. But Italy, too, was now in
a condition of extreme disorder, and the unconscionable tyrants
of Naples subjected it to a much more intolerable bondage than
those had done from whom they pretended to have delivered it.
After the death of Clement IV. the Holy See remained vacant
for three years. The cardinals would not elect such a pope
as would be agreeable to Charles I. During this papal vacancy
Louis IX. of France, A.D. 1226-1270, fitted out the seventh
and last crusade (§ 94, 6), from which he was not to return.
As previously he had reformed the administration of justice,
he now before his departure introduced drastic reforms in the
ecclesiastical institutions of his kingdom, which laid the first
foundations of the celebrated “Gallican Liberties.” Clement IV.
gave occasion for such procedure on the part of the monarch
who was a model of piety after the standard of those times,
by claiming in A.D. 1266 for the papal chair the _plenaria
dispositio_ of all prebends and benefices. In opposition
to this assumption the king secured by a Pragmatic Sanction
of A.D. 1269 to all churches and monasteries of his realm
unconditional freedom of all elections and presentations
according to old existing rights, confirmed to them anew all
privileges and immunities previously granted them, forbade
every form of simony as a heinous crime, and prohibited all
extraordinary taxation of church property on the part of the
Roman curia.--At last the cardinals took courage and elected
=Gregory X.=, A.D. 1271-1276, an Italian of the noble house
of Visconti. The desolating interregnum in Germany was also
put an end to by the election of =Count Rudolf of Hapsburg=,
A.D. 1273-1291, as king of the Germans. At the =Second Lyonese
or 14th Œcumenical Council of A.D. 1274=, the worthy pope
continued his endeavours without avail to rouse the flagging
enthusiasm of the princes so as to get them to undertake another
crusade. The union with the Greek church did not prove of an
enduring kind (§ 67, 4). The constitution, too, sanctioned
at the council, which provided, in order to prevent prolonged
vacancies in the papal see, that the election of pope should
not only be proceeded with in immured conclaves in the place
where the deceased pope last resided with the curia, but also
(though this was again abrogated in A.D. 1351 by a decree of
Clement VI.) should be expedited by limiting the supply of food
after three days to one dish, after other five days to water,
wine, and bread. Yet this completely failed to secure the object
desired. More successful, however, were the negotiations carried
on at Lyons with the ambassadors of the new German king. Rudolf,
in entering upon his government, renewed all the concessions
made by Otto IV. and Frederick II., renounced all imperial claims
upon Rome and the States of the Church, with the exception of the
possessions of Matilda, and abandoned all pretension to Sicily.
The pope on his part acknowledged him as king of the Romans and
undertook to crown him emperor in Rome, where this agreement
was to be formally ratified and signed. But Gregory died before
arrangements had been completed.
§ 96.22. The three following popes, Innocent V., Hadrian V.,
and John XXI., died soon after one another. The last named,
previously known as Petrus [Peter] Hispanus, had distinguished
himself by his medical and philosophical writings. He was
properly the twentieth Pope John, but as there was a slight
element of uncertainty (§ 82, 6) he designated himself the
twenty-first. After a six months’ vacancy =Nicholas III.=,
A.D. 1277-1280, mounted the papal throne. By diplomacy he
secured the ratification of the still undecided concordat with
the German kingdom, and Rudolf, who had enough to do in Germany,
immediately withdrew from Italian affairs, even abandoning
his claims to imperial coronation. The powerful pope, whose
pontificate was marked by rapacity and nepotism, and who is
therefore put by Dante in hell, did not live long enough to
carry out his plans for the overthrow of the French yoke in
Italy. But he obliged Charles I. to resign his Roman senatorship,
and secretly encouraged a conspiracy of the Sicilians, which
under his successor =Martin IV.=, A.D. 1281-1285, a Frenchman
and a pliable tool of Charles, broke out in the terrible
“Sicilian Vespers” of A.D. 1282. The island of Sicily was
thereby rent from the French rule and papal vassalage, and in
a roundabout way the Hohenstaufens by the female line regained
the government of this part of their old inheritance (§ 95, 1).
Rome now again in A.D. 1284 shook off the senatorial rule which
Charles I. had meanwhile again assumed, and after his death
and that of Martin, which speedily followed, they transferred
this dignity to the new pope =Honorius IV.=, A.D. 1285-1287,
whose short but vigorous reign was followed by a vacancy of
eleven months. The Franciscan general then mounted the papal
throne as =Nicholas IV.=, A.D. 1288-1292. He filled up the
period of his pontificate with vain endeavours to revive the
spirit of the crusades and secure the suppression of heresy.
Violent party feuds of cardinals of the Orsini and Colonna
factions delayed the election of a pope after his death for
two years. They united at last in electing the most unfit
conceivable, Peter of Murrone (§ 98, 2), who, as =Cœlestine V.=
changed the monk’s cowl for the papal tiara, but was persuaded
after four months by the sly and ambitious Cardinal Cajetan
to resign. Cajetan now himself succeeded in A.D. 1294 as
Boniface VIII. The poor monk was confined by him in a tower,
where he died. He was afterwards canonized by Pope John XXII.
§ 96.23. =Temporal Power of the Popes.=--During the 12th and 13th
centuries, when the spiritual power of the papacy had reached its
highest point, the pope came to be regarded as the absolute head
of the church. Gregory VII. arrogated the right of confirming
all episcopal elections. The papal recommendations to vacant sees
(_Preces_, whence those so recommended were called _Precistæ_)
were from the time of Innocent III. transformed into mandates
(_Mandata_), and Clement IV. claimed for the papal chair
the right of a _plenario dispositio_ of all ecclesiastical
benefices. Even in the 12th century the theory was put forth
as in accordance with the canon law that all ecclesiastical
possessions were the property not of the particular churches
concerned but of God or Christ, and so of the pope as His
representative, who in administering them was responsible to
Him alone. Hence the popes, in special cases when the ordinary
revenues of the curia were insufficient, had no hesitation
in exercising the right of levying a tax upon ecclesiastical
property. They heard appeals from all tribunals and could
give dispensations from existing church laws. The right of
canonization (§ 104, 8), which was previously in the power of
each bishop with application simply to his own diocese, was
for the first time exercised with a claim for recognition over
the whole church by John XV., in A.D. 993, without, however,
any word of withdrawing their privilege from the bishops.
Alexander III. was the first to declare in A.D. 1170 that
canonization was exclusively the right of the papal chair. The
system of Gregory VII. made no claim of doctrinal infallibility
for the Holy See, though his ignorance of history led him to
suppose that no heretic had ever presided over the Roman church,
and his understanding of Luke xxii. 32 made him confidently
expect that none ever would. Innocent III., indeed, publicly
acknowledged that even the pope might err in matters of faith,
and then, but only then, become amenable to the judgment of
the church. And Innocent IV., fifty years later, taught that
the pope might err. It is therefore wrong to say, “I believe
what the pope believes;” for one should believe only what the
church teaches. Thomas Aquinas was the first who expressly
maintained the doctrine of papal infallibility. He says that
the pope alone can decide finally upon matters of faith, and that
even the decrees of councils only become valid and authoritative
when confirmed by him. Thomas, however, never went the length of
maintaining that the pope can by himself affirm any dogma without
the advice and previous deliberations of a council.--Kissing
the feet sprang from an Italian custom, and even an emperor
like Frederick Barbarossa humbled himself to hold the pope’s
stirrup. According to the _Donation of Constantine_ document
(§ 87, 4), Constantine the Great had himself performed this
office of equerry to Pope Sylvester. When the coronation of
the pope was introduced is still a disputed point. Nicholas I.
was, according to the _Liber pontificalis_, formally crowned on
his accession. Previously the successors of the apostles were
satisfied with a simple episcopal mitre (§ 84, 1), which on the
head of the crowned pope was developed into the tiara (§ 110, 15).
At the Lateran Council of A.D. 1059 Hildebrand is said to have
set upon the head of the new pope Nicholas II. a double crown to
indicate the council’s recognition of his temporal and spiritual
sovereignty. The papal granting of a golden rose consecrated by
prayer, incense, balsam and holy water to princes of exemplary
piety or even to prominent monasteries, churches, or cities,
conveying an obligation to make acknowledgment by a large money
gift, dates as far back as the 12th century. So far as is known,
Louis VII. was the first to receive it from Alexander III.
in A.D. 1163.--The popes appointed legates to represent them
abroad, as they had done even earlier at the synods held in the
East. Afterwards, when the institution came to be more fully
elaborated, a distinction was made between _Legati missi_ or
nuntios and _Legati nati_. The former were appointed as required
for diplomatic negotiations, visitation and organization of
churches, as well as for the holding of provincial synods, at
which they presided. They were called _Legati a latere_, if the
special importance of the business demanded a representation
from among the nearest and most trusted councillors of the pope,
_i.e._ one of the cardinals, as _Pontifices collaterales_. The
rank of _born_ legate, _Legatus natus_, on the other hand, was
a prelatic dignity of the highest order conferred once for all
by papal privilege, sometimes even upon temporal princes, who
had specially served the Holy See, as for example the king of
Hungary and the Norman princes of Italy (§ 96, 3, 13), which
made them permanently representatives of the pope invested with
certain ecclesiastical prerogatives.--Among the numerous literary
and documentary fictions and forgeries with which the Gregorian
papal system sought to support its ever-advancing pretensions to
authority over the whole church, is one which may be regarded as
the contemporary supplement to the work of the Pseudo-Isidore.
It is the production of a Latin theologian residing in the East,
otherwise unknown, who, at the time of the controversies waged
at the Lyonese Council of A.D. 1274 between the Greeks and
Latins (§ 67, 4), brought forth what professed to be an unbroken
chain of traditions from alleged decrees and canons of the most
famous Greek Councils, _e.g._ Nicæa, Chalcedon, etc., and church
fathers, most frequently from Cyril of Alexandria, the so-called
Pseudo-Cyril, in which the controverted questions were settled
in favour of the Roman pretensions, and especially the most
extreme claims to the primacy of the pope were asserted. It was
presented in A.D. 1261 to Urban IV., who immediately guaranteed
its genuineness in a letter to the emperor Michael Palæologus.
On its adoption by Thomas Aquinas, who diligently employed its
contents in his controversies against the Greeks as well as in
his dogmatic works, it won respect and authority throughout all
the countries of the West.
§ 97. THE CLERGY.
By tithes, legacies, donations, impropriations, and the rising value
of landed estates, the wealth of churches and monasteries grew from
year to year. In this way benefit was secured not only to the clergy
and the monks, but also in many ways to the poor and needy. The law
of celibacy strictly enforced by Gregory VII. saved the church from
the impoverishment with which it was beginning to be threatened by the
dividing or squandering of the property of the church upon the children
of the clergy. But while an absolute stop was put to the marriage
of the clergy, it tended greatly to foster concubinage, and yet more
shameful vices. Yet notwithstanding all the corruption that prevailed
among the clerical order it cannot be denied that the superior as well
as the inferior clergy embraced a great number of worthy and strictly
moral men, and that the sacerdotal office which the people could quite
well distinguish from the individuals occupying it, still continued to
be highly respected in spite of the immoral lives of many priests. Even
more hurtful to the exercise of their pastoral work than the immorality
of individual clergymen was the widespread illiteracy and gross
ignorance of Christian truth of those who should have been teachers.
§ 97.1. =The Roman College of Cardinals.=--All the clergy
attached to one particular church were called _Clerici cardinales_
down to the 11th century. But after Leo IX. had reformed and
re-organized the Roman clergy, and especially after Nicholas II.
in A.D. 1059 had transferred the right of papal election to
the Roman cardinals, _i.e._ the seven bishops of the Roman
metropolitan dioceses and to the presbyters and deacons of the
principal churches of Rome, the title of cardinal was given to
them at first by way of eminence and very soon exclusively. It
was not till the 13th century that it became usual to give to
foreign prelates the rank of Roman cardinal priests as a mark of
distinction. Under the name of the holy college the cardinals, as
the spiritual dignitaries most nearly associated with the pope,
formed his ecclesiastical and civil council, and were also as
such entrusted with the highest offices of state in the papal
domains. Innocent IV. at Lyons in A.D. 1245 gave to them as a
distinction the red hat; Boniface VIII. in A.D. 1297 gave them
the purple mantle that indicated princely rank. To these Paul II.
in A.D. 1464 added the right of riding the white palfrey with red
cloth and golden bridle; and finally, Urban VIII. in A.D. 1630
gave them the title “Eminence.” Sixtus V. in A.D. 1586 fixed
their number at seventy, after the pattern of the elders of
Israel, Exod. xxiv. 1, and the seventy disciples of Jesus,
Luke x. 1. The popes, however, took care to keep a greater
or less number of places vacant, so that they might have
opportunities of showing favour and bestowing gifts when
necessary. The cardinals were chosen in accordance with the
arbitrary will of the individual pope, who nominated them
by presenting them with the red hat, and installed them into
their high position by the ceremony of closing and opening the
mantle. From the time of Eugenius IV., A.D. 1431, the college
of cardinals put every newly elected pope under a solemn oath
to maintain the rights and privileges of the cardinals and not
to come to any serious and important resolution without their
advice and approval.
§ 97.2. =The Political Importance of the Superior Clergy= (§ 84)
reached its highest point during this period. This was carried
furthest in Germany, especially under the Saxon imperial dynasty.
On more than one occasion did the wise and firm policy of the
German clergy, splendidly organized under the leadership of
the primate of Mainz, save the German nation from overthrow
or dismemberment threatened by ambitious princes. This power
consisted not merely in influence over men’s minds, but also
in their position as members of the states of the empire and
territorial lords. Whether or not a warlike expedition was to
be undertaken depended often only on the consent or refusal of
the league of lords spiritual. It was the policy of the clergy to
secure a united, strong, well-organized Germany. The surrounding
countries wished to be included in the German league of churches
and states; not, however, as the emperor wished, as crown lands,
but as portions of the empire. Against expeditions to Rome, which
took the attention of German princes away from German affairs
and ruined Germany, the German clergy protested in the most
decided manner. They wished the chair of St. Peter to be free
and independent as a European, not a German, institution, with
the emperor as its supporter not its oppressor, but they manfully
resisted all the assumptions and encroachments of the popes.
One of the most celebrated of the German dignitaries of any age
was Bruno the Great, brother of the Emperor Otto I., equally
distinguished as a statesman and as a reformer of the church,
and the unwearied promoter of liberal studies. Chancellor under
his imperial brother from A.D. 940, he was his most trusted
counsellor, and was appointed by him in A.D. 953 Archbishop of
Cologne, and was soon after made Duke of Lorraine. He died in
A.D. 965. Another example of a German prelate of the true sort
is seen in Willigis of Mainz, who died in A.D. 1011, under the
two last Ottos and Henry II., whom he raised to the throne. The
good understanding that was brought about between this monarch
and the clergy of Germany was in great measure owing to the
wise policy of this prelate. Under Henry IV. the German clergy
got split up into three parties,--the papal party of Clugny
under Gebhard [Gebhardt] of Salzburg, including almost all
the Saxon bishops; an imperial party under Adalbert of Bremen,
who endeavoured with the emperor’s help to found a northern
patriarchate, which undoubtedly tended to become a northern
papacy; and an independent German party under St. Anno II.
of Cologne (§ 96, 6), in which notwithstanding much violence,
ambition, and self-seeking, there still survived much of the
spirit that had characterized the policy of the old German
bishops. Henry V., too, as well as the first Hohenstaufens,
had sturdy supporters in the German clergy; but Frederick II.
by his ill treatment of the bishops alienated their clergy from
the interest of the crown. The rise of the imperial dignitaries
after the time of Otto I., and the transference to them under
Otto IV. of the election of emperor raised the archbishops of
Mainz, Treves, and Cologne to the rank of spiritual electoral
princes as arch-chaplains or archchancellors. The Golden Bull
of Charles IV., in A.D. 1356 (§ 110, 4), confirmed and tabulated
their rights and duties.
§ 97.3. =The Bishops and the Cathedral Chapter.=--The
bishops exercised jurisdiction over all the clergy of their
diocese, and punished by deprivation of office and imprisonment
in monasteries. Especially questions of marriage, wills,
oaths, were brought before their tribunal. The German synodal
judicatures soon gave way before the Roman judiciary system. The
archdeacons emancipated themselves more and more from episcopal
authority and abused their power in so arbitrary a way that
in the 12th century the entire institution was set aside. For
the discharge of business episcopal officials and vicars were
then introduced. The _Chorepiscopi_ (§ 84) had passed out of
view in the 10th century. But during the crusades many Catholic
bishoprics had been founded in the East. The occupants of these
when driven away clung to their titles in hopes of better times,
and found employment as assistants or suffragans of Western
bishops. Thus arose the order of _Episcopi in partibus (sc.
infidelium)_ which has continued to this day, as a witness of
inalienable rights, and as affording a constant opportunity to
the popes of showing favour and giving rewards. For the exercise
of the archiepiscopal office, the Fourth Lateran Council of
A.D. 1215 made the receiving from the pope the pallium (§ 59, 7)
an absolutely essential condition, and those elected were obliged
to pay to the curia an arbitrary tax of a large amount called the
pallium fee. The canonical life (§ 84, 4) from the 10th century
began more and more to lose its moral weight and importance. Out
of attempts at reform in the 11th century arose the distinction
of _Canonici seculares_ and _regulares_. The latter lived in
cloisters according to monkish rules, and were zealous for the
good old discipline and order, but sooner or later gave way to
worldliness. The rich revenues of cathedral chapters made the
reversion of prebendal stalls the almost exclusive privilege of
the higher nobility, notwithstanding the earnest opposition of
the popes. In the course of the 13th century the cathedral clergy,
with the help of the popes, arrogated to themselves the sole
right of episcopal elections, ignoring altogether the claims
of the diocesan clergy and the people or nobles. The cathedral
clergy also made themselves independent of episcopal control.
They lived mostly outside of the cathedral diocese, and had
their canonical duties performed by vicars. The chapter filled
up vacancies by co-optation.
§ 97.4. =Endeavours to Reform the Clergy.=--As a reformer of the
English clergy, who had sunk very low in ignorance, rudeness and
immorality, the most conspicuous figure during the 10th century
was =St. Dunstan=. He became Archbishop of Canterbury in A.D. 959
and died in A.D. 988. He sought at once to advance the standard
of education among the clergy and to inspire the Church with a
higher moral and religious spirit. For these ends he laboured on
with an energy and force of will and an inflexible consistency
and strictness in the pursuit of his hierarchical ideals, which
mark him out as a Hildebrand before Hildebrand. Even as abbot
of the monastery of Glastonbury he had given a forecast of
his life work by restoring and making more severe the rule of
St. Benedict, and forming a brotherhood thoroughly disciplined
in science and in ascetical exercises, from the membership
of which, after he had become bishop of Worcester, then of
London, and finally primate of England and the most influential
councillor of four successive kings, he could fill the places of
the secular priests and canons whom he expelled from their cures.
As the primary condition of all clerical reformation he insisted
upon the unrelentingly consistent putting down of marriage
and concubinage among the priests.[281]--In the 11th century
=St. Peter Damiani= distinguished himself as a zealous supporter
of the reform party of Clugny in the struggle against simony,
clerical immorality, and the marriage of priests. This obtained
for him not only his position as cardinal-bishop of Ostia,
but also his frequent employment, as papal legate in serious
negotiations. In A.D. 1061 he resigned his bishopric and
retired into a monastery, where he died in A.D. 1072. His
friend Hildebrand, who repeatedly called him forth from his
retreat to occupy a conspicuous place among the contenders for
his hierarchical ideal, was therefore called by him his “holy
Satan.” He had indeed little interest in pressing hierarchical
and political claims, and was inclined rather to urge moral
reforms within the church itself. In his _Liber Gomorrhianus_
he drew a fearful picture of the clerical depravity of his
times, and that with a nakedness of detail which gave to
Pope Alexander II. a colourable excuse for the suppression
of the book. For himself, however, Damiani sought no other
pleasure than that of scourging himself till the blood flowed
in his lonely cell (§ 106, 4). His collected works, consisting
of epistles, addresses, tracts and monkish biographies,
were published at Rome in A.D. 1602 in 4 vols. by Cardinal
Cajetan.--In the 12th century St. Hildegard (§ 107, 1) and
the abbot Joachim of Floris, (§ 108, 5) raised their voices
against the moral degradation of the clergy, and among the men
who contributed largely to the restoring of clerical discipline,
the noble provost Geroch of Reichersberg in Bavaria, who died
in A.D. 1169 (§ 102, 5) and the canon Norbert, subsequently
archbishop of Magdeburg (§ 98, 2), are deserving of special
mention.--In the 13th century in England =Robert Grosseteste=
distinguished himself as a prelate of great nobility and
force of character. After being chancellor of Oxford he became
bishop of Lincoln, energetically reforming many abuses in his
diocese, and persistently contending against any form of papal
encroachment. He died in A.D. 1253.[282]
§ 97.5. =The Pataria of Milan.=--Nowhere during the 11th century
were simony, concubinage and priests’ marriages more general
than among the Lombard clergy, and in no other place was such
determined opposition offered to Hildebrand’s reforms. At the
head of this opposition stood Guido, archbishop of Milan, whom
Henry III. deposed in A.D. 1046. Against the papal demands,
he pressed the old claims of his chair to autonomy (§ 46, 1)
and renounced allegiance to Rome. The nobles and the clergy
supported Guido. But two deacons, Ariald and Landulf, about
A.D. 1057 formed a conspiracy among the common people, against
“the Nicolaitan sect” (§ 27, 8). To this party its opponents
gave the opprobrious name of Pataria, Paterini, from patalia,
meaning rabble, riffraff, or from Pattarea, a back street
of ill fame in Milan, the quarter of the rabble, where the
Arialdists held their secret meetings. They took the name
given in reproach as a title of honour, and after receiving
military organization from Erlembald, Landulf’s brother, they
opened a campaign against the married priests. For thirty years
this struggle continued to deluge city and country with blood.
§ 98. MONASTIC ORDERS AND INSTITUTIONS.
In spite of the great and constantly increasing corruption the
monastic idea during this period had a wonderfully rapid development,
and more persistently and successfully than ever before or since
the monks urged their claims to be regarded as “the knighthood of
asceticism.” A vast number of monkish orders arose, taking the place
for the most part of existing orders which had relaxed their rules.
These were partly reformed off-shoots of the Benedictine order, partly
new organizations reared on an independent basis. New monasteries
were being built almost every day, often even within the cities.
The reformed Benedictine monasteries clustered in a group around the
parent monastery whose reformed rule they adopted, forming an organized
society with a common centre. These groups were therefore called
Congregations. The oldest and, for two centuries, the most important,
of these congregations was that of the Brethren of Clugny, whose
ardent zeal for reform in the hierarchical direction was mainly
instrumental in raising again the church and the papacy out of that
degradation and corruption into which they had fallen during the
10th and 11th centuries. The otherwise less important order of the
Camaldolites was also a vigorous promoter of these movements. But
Clugny had in Clairvaux a rival which shared with it on almost equal
terms the respect and reverence of that age. The unreformed monasteries
of the Benedictines, on the other hand, still continued their easy,
luxurious style of living. They were commonly called the Black Monks
to distinguish them from the Cistercians who were known as the White
Monks. In order to prevent a constant splitting up of the monkish
fraternities, Innocent III. at the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215 forbade
the founding of new orders. Yet he himself took part in the formation
of the two great mendicant orders, and also the following popes issued
no prohibition.--The papacy had in the monkish orders its standing army.
It was to them, in a special manner, that Gregory’s system owed its
success. But they were also by far the most important promoters and
fosterers of learning, science, and art. The pope in various ways
favoured the emancipation of the monasteries from episcopal control,
their so-called _Exemption_; and conferred upon the abbots of famous
monasteries what was practically episcopal rank, with liberty to wear
the bishop’s mitre, so that they were called _Mitred Abbots_ (§ 84, 1).
The princes too classed the abbots in respect of dignity and order
next to the bishops; and the people, who saw the popular idea of the
church more and more represented in the monasteries, honoured them
with unmeasured reverence. From the 10th century the monks came to
be considered a distinct religious order (_Ordo religiosorum_). Lay
brethren, _Fratres conversi_, were now taken in to discharge the
worldly business of the monastery. They were designated _Fratres_,
while the others who received clerical ordination were addressed
as _Patres_. The monks rarely lived on good terms with the secular
clergy; for the former as confessors and mass priests often seriously
interfered with the rights and revenues of the latter.--Besides the
many monkish orders, with their strict seclusion, perpetual vows and
ecclesiastically sanctioned rule, we meet with organizations of a freer
type such as the Humiliati of Milan, consisting of whole families.
Of a similar type were the Beguines and Beghards of the Netherlands,
the former composed of women, the latter of men. These people abandoned
their handicraft and their domestic and civic duties for a monastic-like
mode of life retired from the world. The crusading enthusiasm also
occasioned a combination of the monastic idea with that of knighthood,
and led to the formation of the so-called Orders of Knights, which
with a Grandmaster and several Commanders, were divided into Knights,
Priests, and Serving Brethren.--Continuation, § 112.
§ 98.1. =Offshoots of the Benedictines.=
1. =The Brethren of Clugny.= Among the Benedictines, since
their reformation by the second Benedict (§ 85, 2) many
serious abuses had crept in. After the Burgundian Count
Berno, who died in A.D. 927, had done useful service by
restoring discipline and order in two monasteries of which
he was abbot, the Duke William of Aquitaine founded for him
a new institution. Thus arose in A.D. 910 the celebrated
monastery of Clugny, _Cluniacum_, in Burgundy, which the
founder placed under immediate papal control. Berno’s
successor Odo, who died in A.D. 942, abandoning the life
of a courtier on his recovery from a severe illness, made
it the head and heart of a separate Clugny-Congregation
as a branch of the Benedictine order. Strict asceticism,
a beautiful and artistic service, zealous prosecution of
science and the education of the young, with yet greater
energy in the promotion of a hierarchical reform of the
church as a whole, as well as an entire series of able
abbots, among whom Odilo († A.D. 1048), the friend of
Hildebrand, and Peter the Venerable († A.D. 1156) are
specially prominent, gave to this congregation, which
in the 12th century had 2,000 monasteries in France, an
influence quite unparalleled in this whole period. The
abbot of Clugny stood at the head, and appointed the priors
for all the other monasteries. Under the licentious Abbot
Pontius, who on account of his base conduct was deposed in
A.D. 1122, the order fell into decay, but rose again under
Peter the Venerable. Continuation, § 164, 2.
2. =The Congregation of the Camaldolites= was founded in
A.D. 1018 by the Benedictine Romuald, descended from the
Duke of Ravenna, at Camaldoli (_Campus Maldoli_), a wild
district in the Apennines. In A.D. 1086 a nunnery was placed
alongside of the monastery. The president of the parent
monastery at Camaldoli stood at the head of the whole order
as Major. The order carried out enthusiastically the high
church ideal of Clugny, and won great influence in its
time, although it by no means attained the importance of
the French order.
3. Twenty years later, in A.D. 1038, the Florentine Gualbertus
founded the =Order of Vallombrosa=, in a romantically
situated shady valley of the Apennines (_Vallis umbrosa_),
according to the rule of Benedict. This was the first of
all the orders to appoint lay brethren for the management
of worldly business, in order that the monks might observe
their vow of silence and strict seclusion. The parent
monastery attained to great wealth and reputation, but it
never had a great number of affiliated institutions.
4. =The Cistercians.= In A.D. 1098 the Benedictine abbot Robert
founded the monastery of Citeaux (_Cistercium_) near Dijon,
which as the parent monastery of the Congregation of the
Cistercians became the most formidable rival of Clugny. The
Cistercians were distinguished from the Brethren of Clugny
by voluntary submission to the jurisdiction of the bishops,
avoidance of all interference with the pastorates of others,
and the banishing of all ornaments from their churches
and monasteries. The order continued obscure for a while,
till St. Bernard (§ 102, 3), from A.D. 1115 abbot of the
monastery of Clairvaux (Claravallis), an offshoot of Citeaux,
by his ability and spirituality raised it far above all
other orders in the esteem of the age. In honour of him
the French Cistercians took the name of =Bernardines=.
The hostility between them and the Brethren of Clugny
was overcome by the personal friendship of Bernard and
Peter the Venerable. By the statutory constitution, the
so-called _Charta charitatis_, drawn up in A.D. 1119,
the administration of all the affairs of the order
was assigned to a general of the order, appointed by
the abbot of Citeaux, the abbots of the four chief
affiliated monasteries, and twenty other elected
representatives forming a high council. This council,
however, was answerable to the general assembly of all the
abbots and priors, which met at first yearly, but afterwards
every third year. The affiliated monasteries had a yearly
visitation of the abbot of Citeaux, but Citeaux itself was
to be visited by the four abbots just referred to. In the
13th century this order had 2,000 monasteries and 6,000
nunneries.
5. =The Congregation of Scottish Monasteries= in Germany
owed its origin to the persistent love of travel on the part
of Irish and Scottish monks, which during the 10th century
received a new impulse from the Danish invasions (§ 93, 1).
The first monastery erected in Germany for the reception
exclusively of Irish monks was that of St. Martin at Cologne,
built in the 10th century. Much more important, however, was
the Scottish monastery of St. James at Regensburg, founded
in A.D. 1067 by Marianus Scotus and two companions. It was
the parent monastery of eleven other Scottish cloisters in
South Germany. Old Celtic sympathies (§ 77, 8), which may have
originally bound them together, could not assert themselves
in the new home during this period as they did in earlier days;
and when Innocent III., at the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215,
sanctioned them as a separate congregation bound by the
Benedictine rule, there certainly remained no longer any
trace of Celtic peculiarities. They were distinguished at
first for strict asceticism, severe discipline and scientific
activity, but subsequently they fell lower than all the rest
in immorality and self-indulgence (§ 112).
§ 98.2. =New Monkish Orders.=--Reserving the great mendicant
orders, the following are the most celebrated among the vast
array of new orders, not bound by the Benedictine rule:
1. =The Order of Grammont= in France, founded by Stephen of
Ligerno in A.D. 1070. It took simply the gospel as its rule,
cultivated a quiet, humble and peaceable temper, and so by
the 12th century it had its very life crushed out of it by
the bold assumptions of its lay brethren.
2. =The Order of St. Anthony=, founded in A.D. 1095 by a
French nobleman of Dauphiny [Dauphiné], called Guaston,
in gratitude for the recovery of his son Guérin from the
so-called St. Anthony’s fire on his invoking St. Anthony.
He expended his whole property upon the restoring of a
hospital beside the church of St. Didier la Mothe, in a
chapel of which it was supposed the bones of Anthony lay,
and devoted himself, together with his son and some other
companions, to the nursing of the sick. At first merely a
lay fraternity, the members took in A.D. 1218 the monk’s
vow. Boniface VIII. made them canons under the rule of
St. Augustine (§ 45, 1). They were now called Antonians,
and devoted themselves to contemplation. The order spread
greatly, especially in France. They wore a black cloak with
a T-formed cross of blue upon the breast (Ezek. ix. 9) and a
little bell round the neck while engaged in collecting alms.
3. =The Order of Fontevraux= was founded in A.D. 1094 by
Robert of Arbrissel in Fontevraux (_Fons Ebraldi_) in
Poitou. Preaching repentance, he went through the country,
and founded convents for virgins, widows and fallen women.
Their abbesses, as representatives of the Mother of God, to
whom the order was dedicated, were set over the priests who
did their bidding.
4. =The Order of the Gilbertines= had its name from its
founder Gilbert, an English priest of noble birth. Here
too the women formed the main stem of the order. They were
the owners of the cloister property, and the men were only
its administrators. The monasteries of this order were
mostly both for men and women. It did not spread much
beyond England, and had at the time of the suppression
of the monasteries twenty-one well endowed convents, with
orphanages and houses for the poor and sick.
5. =The Carthusian Order= was founded in A.D. 1086 by Bruno
of Cologne, rector of the High School at Rheims. Disgusted
with the immoral conduct of Archbishop Manasseh, he retired
with several companions into a wild mountain gorge near
Grenoble, called Chartreuse. He enjoined upon his monks
strict asceticism, rigid silence, earnest study, prayer, and
a contemplative life, clothed them in a great coarse cowl,
and allowed them for their support only vegetables and bran
bread. Written statutes, _Consuetudines Cartusiæ_, which
soon spread over several houses of the Carthusians, were
first given them in A.D. 1134 by Guido, the fifth prior
of the parent monastery. A steward had management of the
affairs of the convent. Each ate in his own cell; only on
feast days had they a common meal. At least once a week they
fasted on salt, water and bread. Breaking silence, permitted
only on high festivals, and for two hours on Thursdays, was
punished with severe flagellation. Even the lay brethren
were treated with great severity, and were not allowed
either to sit or to cover their heads in the presence of
the brothers of the order. Carthusian nuns were added to
the order in the 13th century with a modified rule.
6. =The Premonstratensian Order= was founded in A.D. 1121
by Norbert, the only German founder of orders besides and
after Bruno. A rich, worldly-minded canon of Xanthen in
the diocese of Cologne, he was brought to another mind by
the fall of a thunderbolt beside him. He retired along with
several other like-minded companions into the rough valley
of Prémontré in the bishopric of Laon (_Præmonstratum_,
because pointed out to him in a vision). In his rule he
joined together the canonical duties with an extremely
strict monastic life. He appeared in A.D. 1126 as a preacher
of repentance at the Diet of Spires, was there elected
archbishop of Magdeburg, and made a most impressive entrance
into his metropolis dressed in his mendicant garb. His order
spread and established many convents both for monks and for
nuns.
7. =The Trinitarian Order=, _ordo s. Trinitatis de redemptione
captivorum_, was called into existence by Innocent III., and
had for its work the redemption of Christian captives.
8. =The Cœlestine Order= was founded by Peter of Murrone,
afterwards Pope Cœlestine V. (§ 96, 22). Living in a
cave of Mount Murrone in Apulia, under strict penitential
discipline and engaged in mystic contemplation, the fame
of his sanctity attracted to him many companions, with
whom in A.D. 1254 he established a monastery on Mount
Majella. Gregory X., in whose presence Peter, according
to his biographer, hung up his monkish cowl in empty space,
upon a sunbeam which he took for a cord stretching across,
instituted the order as Brethren of the Holy Spirit. But
when in A.D. 1294 their founder ascended the papal throne,
they took his papal name. This order, which gave itself up
entirely to extravagant mystic contemplation, spread over
Italy, France and the Netherlands.
§ 98.3. =The Beginnings of the Franciscan Order down to
A.D. 1219.=--The founder of this order was =St. Francis=, born
in A.D. 1182, son of a rich merchant of Assisi in Umbria. His
proper name was Giovanni Bernardone. The name of Francis is said
to have been given him on account of his early proficiency in the
French language; “Francesco”--the little Frenchman. As a wealthy
merchant’s son, he gave himself to worldly pleasures, but was
withdrawn from these, in A.D. 1207, by means of a severe illness.
A dream, in which he saw a multitude with the sign of the cross,
bearing weapons designed for him and his companions, led him to
resolve upon a military career. But a new vision taught him that
he was called to build up the fallen house of God. He understood
this of a ruined chapel of St. Damiani at Assisi, and began to
apply the proceeds of valuable cloth fabrics from his father’s
factory to its restoration. Banished for such conduct from his
father’s house, he lived for a time as a hermit, until the gospel
passage read in church of the sending forth of the disciples
without gold or silver, without staff or scrip (Matt. x.), fell
upon his soul like a thunderbolt. Divesting himself of all his
property, supplying the necessaries of life by the meanest forms
of labour, even begging when need be, he went about the country
from A.D. 1209, sneered at by some as an imbecile, revered
by others as a saint, preaching repentance and peace. In the
unexampled power of his self-denial and renunciation of the world,
in the pure simplicity of his heart, in the warmth of his love
to God and man, in the blessed riches of his poverty, St. Francis
was like a heavenly stranger in a selfish world. Wonderful,
too, and powerful in its influence was the depth of his natural
feeling. With the birds of the forest, with the beasts of the
field, he held intercourse in childlike simplicity as with
brothers and sisters, exhorting them to praise their Creator.
The paradisiacal relation of man to the animal world seemed to
be restored in the presence of this saint.--Very soon he gathered
around him a number of like-minded men, who under his direction
had decided to devote themselves to a similar vocation. For the
society of “_Viri pœnitentiales de civitate Assisii oriundi_”
thus formed Francis issued, in A.D. 1209, a rule, at the basis
of which lay a literal acceptance of the precepts of Christ to
His disciples, sent forth to preach the kingdom of God (Matt. x.;
Luke x.), along with similar gospel injunctions (Matt. xix. 21,
29; Luke vi. 29; ix. 23; xiv. 26), and then he went to Rome
to get for it the papal confirmation. The pope was, indeed,
unwilling; but through the pious man’s simplicity and humility
he was prevailed upon to grant his request. In later times this
incident was in popular tradition transformed into a legend,
representing the pope as at first bidding him go to attend the
swine, which the holy man literally obeyed. =Innocent III.= was
the more inclined to yield, owing to the painful experiences
through which the church had passed in consequence of its unwise
treatment of similar proposals made by the Waldensians thirty
years before. He therefore gave at least verbal permission to
Francis and his companions to live and teach according to this
rule. At the same time also Francis heartily responded to the
demand to place at the head of his rule the obligation to obey
and reverence the pope, and to conclude with a vow of the most
rigid avoidance of every kind of addition, abatement, or change.
There was no thought of founding a new monkish order, but only
of a free union and a wandering life, amid apostolic poverty,
for preaching repentance and salvation by word and example. On
entering the society the brothers were required to distribute all
their possessions among the poor, and dress in the poor clothing
of the order, consisting of a coarse cloak bound with a cord and
a capouch, to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God wherever
their master sent them, and to earn their livelihood by their
usual occupation, or any other servile work. In case of need they
were even to beg the necessaries of life. Thus mendicancy, though
only allowed in case of necessity, soon came to be transformed
by the lustre of the example of the poverty of Jesus and His
disciples and mother, who all had lived upon alms, and by the
idea of a twofold merit attaching to self-abnegation, inasmuch
as not only the receiver, by voluntarily submitting to the
disgrace which it involved in the eyes of the world, but also
the giver of alms, obtained before the judgment seat of God a
great reward. But neither as wages for work nor as alms were the
brothers permitted to accept money, but only the indispensable
means of life, while that which remained after their own wants
had been supplied was divided among the poor. From time to time
they withdrew, either singly or in little groups, for prayer,
contemplation, and spiritual exercises into deserts, caves,
or deserted huts; and annually at Pentecost they assembled for
mutual edification and counsel in the small chapel at Assisi,
dedicated to “Mary of the Angel,” given to St. Francis by the
Benedictines. This church, under the name of the _Portiuncula_,
became the main centre of the order, and all who visited it on
the day of its consecration received from the pope a plenary
indulgence. The number of the brothers meanwhile increased from
day to day. When representatives of all ranks in society and
of all the various degrees of culture sought admission, it soon
became evident that the obligation to preach, hitherto enjoined
upon all the members of the order, should be restricted to
those who were specially qualified for the work, and that the
rest should take care to carry out in their personal lives the
ideal of poverty, joined with loving service in institutions
for the poor, the sick, and the lepers. A further move in the
development of the order, tending to secure for it an independent
ecclesiastical position, was the admission into it of ordained
priests. Their missionary activity among Christian people was
restricted at first to Umbria and the neighbouring districts
of central Italy. But soon the thought of a missionary vocation
among the unbelievers got possession of the mind of the founder.
Even in A.D. 1212 he himself undertook for this purpose a journey
to the East, to Syria, and afterwards to Morocco; in neither case,
however, were his efforts attended with any very signal success.
In A.D. 1218, Elias of Cortona, with some companions, again took
up the mission to Syria, with equally little success; and in
A.D. 1219 five brethren were again sent to Morocco, and there
won the crown of martyrdom. In that same year, A.D. 1219, the
Pentecost assembly at Assisi passed the resolution to include
within the range of their call as itinerants the sending of
missions, with a “_minister_” at the head of each, into all
the Christian countries of Europe. They began immediately,
privileged with a papal letter of recommendation to the higher
secular clergy and heads of orders in France, to carry out the
resolution in France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany; while at the
same time Francis himself, accompanied by twelve brethren, again
turned his steps toward the East.
§ 98.4. =The Franciscans from A.D. 1219 to A.D. 1223.=--Soon
after the departure of St. Francis the report of his death
spread through Italy, and loosened the bonds which, by reason
of the obligation to render him obedience hitherto operative,
had secured harmony among the brethren. Francis had, on the
basis of Luke x. 7, 8, laid upon his companions only the commonly
accepted rules of fasting, but the observance of a more rigorous
fast required his own special permission. Now, however, some
rigorists, at a convention of the elders, gave expression to
the opinion, that the brethren should be enjoined to fast not
as hitherto, like all the rest of Christendom, only on two, but
on four, days of the week, a resolution which not only removed
the rule altogether from its basis in Luke x. 7, 8, but also
broke the solemn promise to observe the wish of Innocent III.,
incorporated in it, that in no particular should it be altered.
And while the rule forbade any intercourse with women, brother
Philip obtained a papal bull which appointed him representative
of the order of “poor women,” afterwards the Nuns of St. Clara,
founded in A.D. 1212 on the model of the Franciscan ideal
of poverty. Another brother, John of Capella, sought to put
himself at the head of an independent order of poor men and women.
Many such projects were being planned. So soon as news reached
Francis of these vagaries, he returned to Italy, accompanied
by his favourite pupil, the energetic, wise, and politic Elias
of Cortona, whose organizing and governing talent was kept
within bounds down to the founder’s death. Perceiving that all
these confusions had arisen from the want of a strictly defined
organization, legitimized by the pope and under papal protection,
Francis now endeavoured to secure such privileges for his order.
He therefore entreated Honorius III. to appoint Cardinal Ugolino
of Ostia, afterwards Pope Gregory IX., previously a zealous
promoter of his endeavours, as protector and governor of his
brotherhood; and he soon with a strong hand put a stop to all
secessionist movements in the community. A vigorous effort was
now made by the brotherhood, suggested and encouraged by the
papal chair, to carry out a scheme of transformation, by means
of which the order, which had hitherto confined itself to simple
religious and ascetic duties, should become an independent and
powerful monkish order, to place it “with the whole force of its
religious enthusiasm, with its extraordinary flexibility and its
mighty influences over the masses, at the service of the papacy,
and to turn it into a standing army of the pope, ever ready
to obey his will in the great movements convulsing the church
and the world of that time.” Honorius III. took the first step
in this direction by a bull addressed, in Sept., A.D. 1220, to
Francis himself and the superiors of his order, there styled
“_Ordo fratrum minorum_,” by which a novitiate of one year and
an irrevocable vow of admission were prescribed, the wearing of
the official dress made its exclusive privilege, and jurisdiction
given to its own tribunal to deal with all its members. Francis
was now also obliged, willing or unwilling, to agree to a revision
of his rule. This new rule was probably confirmed or at least
approved at the famous Pentecost chapter held at the Portiuncula
chapel in A.D. 1221, called the “_Mat Chapter_” (_C. storearum_),
because the brethren assembled there lived in tents made of
rush-mats.[283] It is, as Carl Müller has incontestably proved,
this same rule which was formerly regarded by all as the first
rule composed in A.D. 1209. The older rule, however, formed in
every particular its basis, and the enlargements and modifications
rendered necessary by the adoption of the new ideas appear so
evidently as additions, that the two different constituents
can even yet with tolerable certainty be distinguished from one
another, and so the older rule can be reconstructed. But the
development and modification of the order necessarily proceeding
in the direction indicated soon led to a gradual reformation
of the rule, which in this new form was solemnly and formally
ratified by Honorius III. in November, A.D. 1223, as possessing
henceforth definite validity. In it the requirement of the literal
acceptance of the commands of Jesus on sending out His disciples
in Matthew x. and Luke x. is no longer made the basis and pattern,
as in the two earlier rules, but all the stress is laid rather
upon the imitation of the lives of poverty led by Jesus and His
apostles; as an offset to the renunciation of all property, the
obligation to earn their own support by work was now set aside,
and the practice of mendicancy was made their proper object in
life, came indeed to be regarded as constituting the special
ideal and sanctity of the order, which in consequence was
now for the first time entitled to be called a =mendicant or
begging order=. At its head stood a _general-minister_, and all
communications between the order and the holy see were conducted
through a _cardinal-protector_. The mission field of the order,
comprising the whole world, was divided into _provinces_ with
a _provincial-minister_, and the provinces into _custodies_
with a _custos_ at its head.--Every third year at Pentecost
the general called together the provincials and custodes to
a general chapter, and the custodes assembled the brethren of
their dioceses as required in provincial and custodial chapters.
The dress of the order remained the same. The usual requirement
to go barefoot, however, was modified by the permission in cases
of necessity, on journeys and in cold climates, to wear shoes or
sandals.
§ 98.5. =The Franciscans from A.D. 1223.=--There was no mention
in the rule of A.D. 1223 of any sort of fixed place of abode
either in cloisters or in houses of their own. The life of the
order was thus conceived of as a homeless and possessionless
pilgrimage; and as for the means of life they were dependent on
what they got by begging, so also it was considered that for the
shelter of a roof they should depend upon the hospitable. The
gradual transition from a purely itinerant life had already begun
by the securing of fixed residences at definite points in the
transalpine district and first of all in Germany. After the first
sending forth of disciples in A.D. 1219, without much attention
to rule and without much plan, had run its course there with
scarcely any success, a more thoroughly organized mission, under
the direction of brother Cæsarius of Spires, consisting of twelve
clerical and thirteen lay brethren, including John v. Piano
Cupini, Thomas v. Celano, Giordano v. Giano, was sent by the
“_Mat Chapter_” of A.D. 1221 to Germany, which, strengthened by
oft-repeated reinforcements, carried on from A.D. 1228 a vigorous
propaganda in Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and Norway.
In accordance with the rule of A.D. 1223 Germany as forming
one province was divided into five custodies, but in A.D. 1230
into two distinct provinces, the Rhineland and Saxony, with a
corresponding number of custodies. Even more brilliant was the
success attending the mission to England in A.D. 1224. On their
missionary tours the brethren took up their residence temporarily
in hospitals and leper houses, or in hospitable parsonages and
private houses, and preached by preference in the open air, where
the people flocked around them in crowds, occasionally at the
invitation of a bishop or priest in the churches. Presents of
lands gave them the opportunity of erecting convents of their
own, with churches and burying-grounds for themselves, which,
placed under the charge of a guardian, soon increased in number
and importance. The begging, which was now made the basis of the
whole institution, was regulated by the principle, that, besides
the benefactions voluntarily paid into the cloister, monks sent
forth at particular terms, hence called Terminants[284] with
a beggar’s bag, should beg about for the necessaries of life.
With agriculture and industrial work, and generally all bodily
labour, the brothers had nothing to do. On the contrary, what
was altogether foreign to the intention of the founder and their
rules, and so originating not from within the order itself, but
from without, first of all by the admission of scientifically
cultured priests, a strong current set in in favour of scientific
studies, stimulated by their own personal ambition as well as
by rivalry with the Dominicans. These scholarly pursuits soon
yielded abundant fruit, which raised the reputation, power,
and influence of the order to such a height, that it has been
enabled to carry out in all details the task assigned it in
the papal polity. Architecture, painting, and poetry also found
among the members of the order distinguished cultivators and
ornaments.--Supported by accumulating papal privileges, which,
for example, gave immunity from all episcopal jurisdiction and
supervision, and allowed its clergy the right in all parts,
not only of preaching, but also of reading mass and hearing
confessions, and aided in its course of secularization by papal
modifications and alterations of its rule, which permitted the
obtaining and possessing rich cloister property, the order of
Minor Brothers or Minorites soon could boast of an extension
embracing several thousands of cloisters.--Francis, wasted by
long-continued sickness and by increasing infirmities, was found
dead, in A.D. 1226, stretched on the floor of the Portiuncula
chapel. Two years afterwards he was canonized by Gregory IX.,
and in A.D. 1230 there was a solemn translation of his relics to
the beautiful basilica built in his honour at Assisi. The legend,
that a seraph during his last years had imprinted upon him the
bloody wound-prints or stigmata of the Saviour was also turned
to account for the glorification of the whole order, which
now assumed the epithet “_seraphic_.”--The one who possessed
most spiritual affinity to his master of all the disciples of
St. Francis, and after him most famous among his contemporaries
and posterity, was =St. Anthony of Padua=. Born in A.D. 1195 at
Lisbon, when an Augustinian canon at Coimbra he was, in A.D. 1220,
received into the communion of the Minorites, when the relics of
the five martyrs of Morocco were deposited there, and thereupon
he undertook a mission to Africa. But a severe sickness obliged
him to return home, and driven out of his course by a storm, he
landed at Messina, from whence he made a pilgrimage to Assisi.
The order now turned his learning to account by appointing him
teacher of theology, first at Bologna, then at Montpellier. For
three years he continued as custos in the south of France, going
up and down through the land as a powerful preacher of repentance,
till the death of the founder and the choice of a successor
called him back to Italy. He died at Padua in A.D. 1231. The
pope canonized him in A.D. 1232, and in A.D. 1263 his relics were
enshrined in the newly built beautiful church at Padua dedicated
to him. Among the numerous tales of prodigies, which are said
to have accompanied his goings wherever he went, the best known
and most popular is, that when he could obtain no ready hearing
for his doctrine among men, he preached on a lonely sea-shore
to shoals of fishes that crowded around to listen. His writings,
sermons, and a biblical concordance, under the title _Concordantiæ
Morales SS. Bibliorum_, are often printed along with the _Letters,
Hymns, Testament_, etc., ascribed to St. Francis.--Among the
legends of the order still extant about the life of St. Francis
is the _Vita I._ of Thomas of Celano, written in A.D. 1229, the
oldest and relatively the most impartial. On the other hand, the
later biographies, especially that of the so-called _Tres socii_
and the _Vita II._ of Thomas, which has been made accessible by
the Roman edition of Amoni of 1880, written contemporaneously
somewhere about A.D. 1245, as well as that of St. Bonaventura
of A.D. 1263, recognised by the chapter of the order as the
only authoritative form of the legends, are all more or less
influenced by the party strifes that had arisen within its ranks,
while all are equally overladen with reports of miracles. In
A.D. 1399, by authority of the general chapter at Assisi, the
“_Liber Conformitatum_” of Bartholomew of Pisa pointed out forty
resemblances between Christ and St. Francis, in which the saint
has generally the advantage over the Saviour. In the Reformation
times an anonymous German version of this book was published by
Erasmus Alber with a preface by Luther, under the title, _Der
Barfüssermönche Eulenspiegel und Alkoran_, Wittenberg, 1542.
The most trustworthy contemporary source of information has been
only recently again rendered accessible to us in the _Memorabilia
de Primitiv. Fratrum in Teutoniam Missorum Conversatione et
Vita_ of the above-named Giordano of Giano, embracing the years
1207-1238, which G. Voigt discovered among his father’s papers,
and has published with a full and comprehensive introduction.
The Franciscans of Quaracchi near Florence have re-edited it
“after the unique Berlin manuscript,” as well as the supplementary
document, the _De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Anglia_, in the first
volume of their _Analecta Franciscana, Quar._, 1885.--Thode, in
his _Fr. v. A. und die Anfänge d. Kunst d. Renaissance in Ital._
(Berl., 1885), has described in a thorough and brilliant style
the mighty influence which St. Francis and his order exerted
upon the development of art in Italy, especially of painting
and architecture, as well as of poetry in the vernacular; for
he has shown how the peculiar and close relation in which the
saint stood to nature gave the first effective impulse to the
emancipation of art from the trammels of formalism, and how the
new artistic tendency, inspired by his spirit, was first given
expression to in the building and adorning of the basilica at
Assisi dedicated to him.[285]
§ 98.6. =Party Divisions within the Franciscan Order.=--That
the founder was by no means wholly in sympathy with the tendency
which prevailed in his order from A.D. 1221, and only tolerated
what he was no longer in a position to prevent, might have been
guessed from the fact that from that time he withdrew himself
more and more from the supreme direction of the order, and
made it over to =Elias of Cortona=, as his general-vicar, who
in existing circumstances was better fitted for the task. But
from his _Testament_ it appears quite evident that he strictly
adhered to the views of his early days, and even attempted a
last but fruitless reaction against the tendency to worldly
conformity that had set in. Thus, for example, it still puts all
the brethren under obligation to perform honourable labour, and
will allow them to beg only in case of necessity, but especially
forbids them most distinctly by their sacred vow of obedience
from asking any privilege from the papal chair, or altering
the simple literal meaning of the rule of the order, and of this
his last will and testament by addition, abatement, or change.
After his death, on 4th October, 1226, Elias retained in his
hand the regency till the next meeting of the Pentecost chapter;
but then he was deprived of office by the election of John Pareus
as general-minister, a member of the stricter party. Meanwhile
the increasing number and wealth of their cloisters and churches,
with their appurtenances, made it absolutely necessary that
the brethren should face the question how the holding of such
possessions was to be reconciled with the strict injunction of
poverty in the sixth chapter of their rule, according to which
“the brothers are to possess nothing of their own, neither a
house, nor an estate, nor anything whatsoever, but are to go
about for alms as strangers and pilgrims in this world.” At
the next general chapter, in A.D. 1230, this question came up
for discussion, along with that of the validity of the testament
above referred to. When they could not agree among themselves, it
was decided, in spite of all the protestations of the general, to
request by a deputation the advice of the pope, Gregory IX., on
this and certain other disputed questions. With reference to the
testament, the pope declared that its demands, because issued
without the consent and approval of the general chapter, could
not be binding upon the order. With reference to the property
question, he repudiated the rendering of the rule in such
a way as if in this, just as in all other orders, only the
possession of property on the part of individual brothers was
forbidden; but the membership of the order as a whole could not
be prevented from holding property, as directly contrary to the
literal statements of the rule, without, however, entering upon
the question as to whose property the movables and immovables
standing really at the call of the order were to be considered.
And as he had at an earlier date, on the occasion of sending a
new Minorite mission to Morocco, granted as a privilege to the
order to take alms in money, which was allowed by the rule only
for the support of sick brethren, for the reason that without
money they would not be able there to procure the necessaries
of life, so he now extended this permission for other purposes
essential to the good of the order, _e.g._ building and
furnishing of cloisters and churches, as not contrary to the
rule, if the collecting and spending of the money is carried on,
not by members of the order, but by procurators chosen for the
work. It was probably to this victory of the lax party that Elias
owed his elevation at the next election, in A.D. 1332, to the
office of general. It also enabled him to maintain his position
for seven years, during which he showed himself particularly
active and efficient, not only as general of the order, but also
in political negotiations with the princes of Italy, especially
as mediator between the pope and the emperor, Gregory IX. and
Frederick II. But his government of the order in a despotic
and lordly manner, and his reckless endeavours to conform
to worldly customs, intensified the bitterness of his pious
opponents, and his growing friendliness with the emperor lost
him the favour of the pope. And so it came about that his
overthrow was accomplished at the general chapter in Rome,
in A.D. 1239. He now openly passed over into the service of the
emperor, against whom the ban had anew been issued, accompanied
him on his military campaigns, and inveighed unsparingly against
the pope in public speeches. As partisan of the banned emperor,
already _de jure_ excommunicated, the ban was pronounced against
him personally in A.D. 1244, and he was expelled from the
order. He died in A.D. 1253, reconciled with the church after
a penitential recantation and apology. His four immediate
successors in the generalship all belonged to the strict party;
but the growing estrangement of the order from the interests
and purposes of the curia, especially too its relations to
the _Evangelium æternum_, pronounced heretical in A.D. 1254
(§ 108, 5), produced a reaction, in consequence of which the
general, John of Parma, was deprived of office in A.D. 1257.
With his successor, St. Bonaventura, the opposition succeeded
to the undisputed control of the order. The difficult question,
how the really pre-eminently rich cloister property was to
be reconciled with the rule of the order requiring absolute
abandonment of all possessions, found now among the preponderating
lax party, the so-called =Fratres de communitate=, its solution
in the assertion, that the goods in their hands had been bestowed
upon them by the donors only in usufruct, or even that they
were presented not so much to the order, as rather to the
Romish Church, yet with the object of supporting the order.
Nicholas III., in A.D. 1279, legitimated the theory, for he
decided the question in dispute in his bull _Exiit qui seminat_,
by saying that it is allowed to the disciples of St. Francis to
hold earthly goods in usufruct, but not in absolute possession,
as this is demanded by the example of Christ and His apostles.
But now arose a new controversy, over the form and measure
of using with a distinction of a _usus moderatus_ and a _usus
tenuis_ or _pauper_, the latter permitting no store even of
the indispensable necessaries of life beyond what is absolutely
required to satisfy present needs. Those, on the other hand,
who were dissatisfied with the principles affirmed in the papal
bull, the =Spirituales= or _Zelatores_, with Peter John de
Oliva and Ubertino de Casale at their head, assumed an attitude
of open, fanatical opposition to the papacy, identifying it
with antichrist (§ 108, 6). A section of them, which, besides
the points about poverty, took offence at the lax party also
over questions of clothing reform, obtained permission from
Cœlestine V., in A.D. 1294, to separate from the main body
of the order, and, under the name of =Cœlestine Eremites=, to
form an independent communion with a general of their own. They
settled for the most part in Greece and on the islands of the
Archipelago. Boniface VIII., in A.D. 1302, peremptorily insisted
upon their return to the West and to the present order. But as
he died soon after, even those who had returned continued their
separate existence and their distinctive dress.--Continuation,
§ 112, 2.
§ 98.7. =The Dominican or Preaching Order.=--=St. Dominic=,
to whom this order owes its origin, was born, in A.D. 1170,
at Calaruega, in Old Castile, of a distinguished family (De
Guzman?). As a learned Augustinian canon at Osma, he had already
wrought zealously for the conversion of Mohammedans and heretics,
when Bishop Diego of Osma, entrusted in A.D. 1204, by King
Alphonso VIII. with obtaining a bride for his son Ferdinand,
took him as one of his travelling retinue. The sudden death
of the bride, a Danish princess, rendered the undertaking
nugatory. On their homeward journey they met at Montpellier
with the Cistercian mission, sent out for the conversion of
the Albigensians (§ 109, 1), the utter failure of which had
become already quite apparent. Dominic, inflamed with holy zeal,
prevailed upon his bishop to enter along with himself upon the
work already almost abandoned in despair; and after the bishop’s
early death, in A.D. 1206, he carried on the enterprise at his
own hand. For Albigensian women, converted by him, he founded a
sort of conventual asylum at Prouille, and a house at Toulouse,
which was soon afterwards gifted to him, became the first
centre where his disciples gathered around him, whence by-and-by
they removed into the cloister of St. Romanus, assigned to them
by Bishop Fulco. During the Albigensian crusade, the thought
ripened in his mind that he might secure a firmer basis and
more powerful support for his enterprise by founding a new,
independent order, whose proper and exclusive task should be the
combating and preventing of heresy by instruction, preaching, and
disputation. In order to obtain for this proposal ecclesiastical
sanction, he accompanied his patron, Bishop Fulco of Toulouse,
in A.D. 1215, to the Fourth Lateran Council at Rome. But pope and
council seemed little disposed to favour his idea. The former,
indeed, sought rather to persuade him to join some existing
ecclesiastical institution, and carry out his scheme under its
organization. Consequently Dominic, with his sixteen companions,
resolved to adopt the rule of St. Augustine, augmented by several
Præmonstratensian articles. When, however, Honorius III. had
ascended the papal chair, Dominic hastened again to Rome, and
in A.D. 1216 obtained from this pope without difficulty what
Innocent III. had refused him, namely, permission to found a new,
independent order, with the privilege of preaching and hearing
confession everywhere. Then, and also subsequently, he preached
frequently with great acceptance to those living in the papal
palace, and thus an opportunity was afforded of establishing the
office of a _magister sacri palatii_, or papal court preacher,
which was immediately occupied, and has ever since continued to
be held, by a Dominican. At a later period the supreme censorship
of books was also assigned to this same official. The first
general chapter of the order met at Bologna in A.D. 1220. There
the vow of poverty, which was hitherto insisted upon only in
the sense of all the earlier orders as a mere abandonment of
property on the part of individuals, was put in a severer form,
so that even the order as such kept itself free from every kind
of possession of earthly goods and revenues, except the bare
cloister buildings, and exhorted all its adherents to live
only on begged alms. Thus the Dominicans, even earlier than the
Franciscans, whose rule then permitted begging only in case of
need, constituted themselves into a regular mendicant order.
Dominic, however, chose voluntary poverty for himself and
his disciples, not like St. Francis simply for the purpose of
securing personal holiness, but rather only to obtain a perfectly
free course for his work in the salvation of others. The official
designation, “=Ordo fratrum Prædicatum=,” was also fixed at this
chapter.[286] At the second general chapter, in A.D. 1221, there
were already representatives from sixty cloisters out of eight
provinces. Dominic died soon after, at Bologna, on 6th August,
1221, uttering anathemas against any one who should corrupt his
order by bestowing earthly goods upon it. He was canonized by
Gregory IX. in A.D. 1233. His immediate successor, Jordanus,
wrote his first biography, adorned, as we might expect, with
endless miracles.
§ 98.8. According to the constitutional rules of the order,
collected and revised by the third general of the order,
Raimund de Pennaforte, about A.D. 1238, the general who stands
at the head of the whole order, residing at Rome, _magister
generalis_, is elected to office for life at the general chapter
held annually at Pentecost, and he nominates his own _socii_ as
advisory assistants. The government of the provinces is conducted
by a provincial chosen every four years by the provincial chapter,
assisted by four advisory _definitores_, and each cloister elects
its own prior. The mode of life was determined by strict rules,
severe fasts were enjoined, involving strict abstinence from
the use of flesh, and during particular hours of the day absolute
silence had to be observed. In the matter of clothing, only
woollen garments were allowed. The dress consisted of a white
frock with white scapular and a small peaked capouch; but outside
of the cloister a black cloak with capouch was worn over it. From
the favourite play upon the name Dominican, _Domini canes_, in
contrast to the dumb dogs of Isaiah lvi. 10, the order adopted
as its coat of arms a dog with the torch of truth in its mouth.
The special vocation of the order as preachers and opponents of
heresy required a thorough scientific training. Every province
of the order was therefore expected to have a seminary capable
of giving a superior theological education to the members of
the order, to which they gave the name of a _studium generale_,
borrowed from the universities, although the predicate was
here used in a sense much more restricted (comp. § 99, 3).
But ambitious desires for scientific reputation incited them
to obtain authority for instituting theological chairs in the
University of Paris, the most celebrated theological seminary
of that age. The endeavour was favoured by a conflict of Queen
Blanca with the Parisian doctors, in consequence of which they
left the city and for a time gathered their students around
them partly at Rheims, partly at Angers, while the Dominicans,
encouraged by the bishop, established their first chair in the
vacant places in A.D. 1230. The Franciscans too accomplished
the same end about this time. The old professors on their return
used every means in their power to drive out the intruders, but
were completely beaten after almost thirty years of passionate
conflict, and the nurture of scholastic theology was henceforth
all but a monopoly of the two mendicant orders (§ 103, 3).
The art of ecclesiastical architecture and painting, which
during this age reached a hitherto unattained degree of
perfection, found many of its most distinguished ornaments
and masters in the preaching order. And in zeal for missions
to the Mohammedans and the heathen the Franciscans alone could
be compared with them. But the order reached the very climax
of its reputation, influence, and power when Gregory IX., in
A.D. 1232, assigned to it exclusive control of the inquisition
of heretics (§ 109, 2).--The veneration of the devout masses of
the people, who preferred to confide their secret confessions to
the itinerant monks, roused against both orders the hatred of the
secular clergy, the preference shown them by the popes awakened
the envy of the other orders, and their success in scientific
pursuits brought down upon them the ill-will of the learned.
Circumstances thus rendered it necessary for a long time that
the two orders should stand well together for united combat and
defence. But after all those hindrances had been successfully
overcome, the rivalry that had been suppressed owing to temporary
community of interests broke out all the more bitterly in the
endeavour to secure world-wide influence, intensified by opposing
philosophico-dogmatic theories (§ 113, 2), as well as by the
difference in the interpretation and explanation of the doctrine
of poverty, in regard to which they strove with one another
in the most violent and passionate manner (§ 112, 2). From
having in their hands the administration of the Inquisition
the preaching order obtained an important advantage over the
Minorites; while these, on the other hand, were far more popular
among the common people than the proud, ambitious Dominicans,
who occupied themselves with high civil and ecclesiastical
politics as counsellors and confessors of the princes and the
nobles.--Continuation, § 112, 4.
§ 98.9. To each of the =two mendicant orders= there was at an
early date attached a female branch, which was furnished by the
saint who founded the original order with a rule adapting his
order’s ideal of poverty to the female vocation, and therefore
designated and regarded as his “second order.”
1. The female conventual asylum, founded in A.D. 1206 at
Prouille, may be considered the first cloister of =Dominican
nuns=. The principal cloister and another institution,
however, was the convent of _San Sisto_ in Rome, given
to St. Dominic for this purpose by Honorius III. In all
parts of Christendom where the preaching order settled
there now appeared female cloisters under the supervision
and jurisdiction of its provincial superior, with seclusion,
strict asceticism, passing their time in contemplation, and
conforming as closely as possible to the mode of life and
style of clothing prescribed for the male cloisters. This
institution was presided over by a prioress.
2. The order of the =Nuns of St. Clara=, as “_the second
order of St. Francis_,” was founded by =St. Clara of
Assisi=. Born of a distinguished family, endowed with
great physical beauty, and destined to an early marriage,
in her eighteenth year, in A.D. 1212, she was powerfully
impressed by the teaching of St. Francis, so that she
resolved completely to abandon the world and its vanities.
She proved the earnestness of her resolve by obeying the
trying requirement of the saint to go through the streets
of the city clad in a penitent’s cloak, begging alms for
the poor. On Palm Sunday at the Portiuncula chapel she took
at the hand of her chosen spiritual father the three vows.
Her younger sister Agnes, along with other maidens, followed
her example. Francis assigned to this union of “poor women”
as a conventual residence the church of St. Damiani restored
by him, from which they were sometimes called the _Nuns
of St. Damiani_. When in A.D. 1219 St. Francis undertook
his journey to the east, he commended them to the care
of Cardinal Ugolino, who prescribed for them the rule of
the Benedictine nuns; but after the saint’s return they so
incessantly entreated him to draw up a rule for themselves,
that he at last, in A.D. 1224, prepared one for them and
obtained for it the approval of the pope. Clara died in
A.D. 1253, and was canonized by Innocent IV. in A.D. 1255.
Her order spread very widely in more than 2,000 cloisters,
and can boast not only of having received 150 daughters of
kings and princes, but also of having enriched heaven with
an immense number of beatified and canonized virgins.
§ 98.10. =The other Mendicant Orders.=--The brilliant success
of the Franciscans and Dominicans led other societies, either
previously existing, or only now called into being, to adopt the
character of mendicants. Only three of them succeeded, though in
a much less degree than their models, in gaining position, name
and extension throughout the West. The first of these was the
=Carmelite Order=. It owed its origin to the crusader Berthold,
Count of Limoges, who in A.D. 1156 founded a monastery at
the brook of Elias on Mount Carmel, to which in A.D. 1209
the patriarch of Jerusalem prescribed the rule of St. Basil
(§ 44, 3). Hard pressed by the Saracens, the Carmelites
emigrated in A.D. 1238 to the West, where as a mendicant
order, under the name of _Frates Mariæ de Monte Carmelo_, with
unexampled hardihood they repudiated their founder Berthold, and
maintained that the prophet Elias had been himself their founder,
and that the Virgin Mary had been a sister of their order. What
they most prided themselves on was the sacred scapular which the
Mother of God herself had bestowed upon Simon Stock, the general
of the order in A.D. 1251, with the promise that whosoever should
die wearing it should be sure of eternal blessedness. Seventy
years later, according to the legends of the order, the Virgin
appeared to Pope John XXII. and told him she descended every
Saturday into purgatory, in order to take such souls to herself
into heaven. In the 17th century, when violent controversies
on this point had arisen, Paul V. authenticated the miraculous
qualities of this scapular, always supposing that the prescribed
fasts and prayers were not neglected. Among the Carmelites,
just as among the Franciscans, laxer principles soon became
current, causing controversies and splits which continued down
to the 16th century (§ 149, 6).--=The Order of Augustinians=
arose out of the combination of several Italian monkish societies.
Innocent IV. in A.D. 1243 prescribed to them the rule of
St. Augustine (§ 45, 1) as the directory of their common life.
It was only under Alexander IV. in A.D. 1256 that they were
welded together into one order as _Ordo Fratrum Eremitarum
S. Augustini_, with the duties and privileges of mendicant
monks. Their order spread over the whole West, and enjoyed
the special favour of the papal chair, which conferred
upon its members the permanent distinction of the office
of sacristan to the papal chapel and of chaplain to the Holy
Father (Continuation, § 112, 5).--Finally, as the fifth in the
series of mendicant orders, we meet with the =Order of Servites=,
_Servi b. Virg._, devoted to the Virgin, and founded in A.D. 1233
by seven pious Florentines. It was, however, first recognised as
a mendicant order by Martin V., and had equal rank with the four
others granted it only in A.D. 1567 by Pius V.
§ 98.11. =Penitential Brotherhoods and Tertiaries of the
Mendicant Orders.=--Carl Müller was the first to throw light
upon this obscure period in the history of the Franciscans. The
results of his investigations are essentially the following: In
consequence of the appearance of St. Francis as a preacher of
repentance and of the kingdom of God there arose a religious
movement which, not merely had as its result the securing of
numerous adherents to the association of Minor Brethren directed
by himself, as well as to the society of “_poor women_” attaching
itself to St. Clara, but also awakened in many, who by marriage
and family duties were debarred from entering these orders, the
desire to lead a life of penitence and asceticism removed from
the noisy turmoil of the world in the quiet of their own homes
while continuing their industrial employments and the discharge
of civil duties. As originating in the movement inaugurated by
St. Francis, these “_Fratres pœnitentiæ_” designated themselves
“_the third order of St. Francis_,” and as such made the claim
that they should not be disturbed in their retired penitential
life to engage upon services for the State, military duty, and
so forth. In this way they frequently came into conflict with
the civil courts. Although in this direction powerfully supported
by the papal curia, the brotherhoods were just so much the less
able to press their claim to immunity in proportion as they
spread and became more numerous throughout the cities of Italy,
and the greater the rush into their ranks became from day to
day from all classes, men and women, married and unmarried.
The right of spiritual direction and visitation of them was
assigned in A.D. 1234 by Gregory IX. to the bishops; but in
A.D. 1247 Innocent IV., at the request of the Minorites, issued
an ordinance according to which this right was to be given to
them, but they were not able in any case to carry it out. Not
only the secular clergy were opposed, but they were vigorously
aided in their resistance by the Dominicans.--In A.D. 1209, at
the beginning of the Albigensian crusade, St. Dominic had founded,
at Toulouse, an association of married men and women under the
name of _Militia Christi_, which, recognisable by the wearing
of a common style of dress, undertook to vindicate the faith
of the church against heretics, to restore again any goods that
had wrongfully been appropriated by them, to protect widows
and orphans, etc. This _Militia_ migrated from France to Italy.
Although originally founded for quite different purposes than
the Penitential brotherhoods, it had the same privileges as these
enjoyed conferred upon it by the popes, and assimilated itself
largely to these in respect of mode of life and ascetic practices,
and practically became amalgamated with them. But still the
Penitential brotherhoods always formed a neutral territory, upon
which, according to circumstances, sometimes the secular clergy,
and sometimes one or other of the two mendicant orders, but much
more frequently the Minorite clergy, exercised visitation rights.
The first attempt at effecting a definite separation arose
from the Dominicans, whose seventh general, Murione de Zamorra,
prescribed a rule to those Penitential brotherhoods which were
more closely related to his order. Upon their adopting it they
were loosed from the general society as “_Fratres de Pœnitentia_”
=S. Dominici=, and described as exclusively attached to the
preaching order. In A.D. 1288, however, Jerome of Arcoli, the
former general of the Franciscans, ascended the papal throne as
Nicholas IV., and now used all means in his power to secure to
his own order the supremacy in every department. In the following
year, A.D. 1289, he issued the bill _Supra montem_, in which he
prescribed (_statuimus_) a rule of his own for all Penitential
brotherhoods; and then, since on this point, out of regard
for the powerful Dominican order, he did not venture to do
more than simply recommend, added the advice (_consulimus_),
that the visitation and instruction of these should be assigned
to the Minorite superiors, giving as a reason that all these
institutions owed their origin to St. Francis. Against both
the prescription and the advice, however, the bishops, as well
in the interest of their own prerogatives as for the protection
of their clergy, threatened in vocation and income, raised
a vigorous and persistent protest, which at last, however,
succumbed before the supreme power of the pope and the marked
preference on the part of the people for the clergy of the
orders. Those brotherhoods which adopted the rule thus obtruded
on them stood now in the position of rivals, alongside of those
of St. Dominic, as “_Fratres de pœnitentia_” =S. Francisci=.
The Dominican Penitentials afterwards adopted the name and
character of a “_third order of St. Dominic_” or “_Tertiaries_.”
In the Franciscan legends, however, the rule drawn up by
Nicholas IV. soon came to be represented as the one prescribed
to the Penitentials on their first appearance in A.D. 1221 by
St. Francis himself, only ratified anew by the pope, and has
been generally regarded as such down to our own day.--The rapid
growth in power and influence which the two older mendicant
orders owe to the Tertiary Societies, induced also the later
mendicant orders to produce an imitation of them within the range
of their activity. Crossing the Alps the Penitential brotherhoods
found among these orders, on this side, an open door,--the
Franciscan brothers being especially numerous,--and entered
into peculiarly intimate relations with the Beghard societies
which had sprung up there, forming, like them, associations of
a monastic type.
§ 98.12. =Working Guilds of a Monkish Order.=--(1) During the
11th century, midway between the strictly monastic and secular
modes of life, a number of pious artisan families in Milan,
mostly weavers, under the name of =Humiliati=, adopted a communal
life with spiritual exercises, and community of handicraft and
of goods. Whatever profit came from their work was devoted to
the poor. The married continued their marriage relations after
entering the community. In the 12th century, however, a party
arose among them who bound themselves by vows of celibacy, and
to them were afterwards attached a congregation of priests. Their
society was first acknowledged by Innocent III. in A.D. 1021.
But meanwhile many of them had come under the influence of
Arnold (§ 108, 6), and so had become estranged from the Catholic
church. At a later period these formed a connection with the
French Waldensians, the _Pauperes de Lugduno_, adopted their
characteristic views, and for the sake of distinction took the
name of _Pauperes Italici_ (§ 108, 12).--Related in every respect
to the Lombard Humiliati, but distinguished from them by the
separation of the sexes and a universal obligation of celibacy,
were the communities of the =Beguines= and =Beghards=. Priority
of origin belongs to the Beguines. They took the three monkish
vows, but only for so long as they belonged to the society. Hence
they could at any time withdraw, and enter upon marriage and
other relations of social life. They lived under the direction
of a lady superior and a priest in a so-called Beguine-house,
_Curtis Beguinarum_, which generally consisted of a number of
small houses connected together by one surrounding wall. Each
had her own household, although on entrance she had surrendered
her goods over to the community and on withdrawing she received
them back. They busied themselves with handiwork and the
education of girls, the spiritual training of females, and
sewing, washing and nursing the poor in the houses of the city.
The surplus of income over expenditure was applied to works of
benevolence. Every Beguine house had its own costume and colour.
These institutions soon spread over all Belgium, Germany, and
France. The first Beguine house known to us was founded about
1180 at Liège, by the famous priest and popular preacher, Lambert
la Bèghe, _i.e._ the Stammerer. Hallmann thinks that the name
of the society may have been derived from that of the preacher.
Earlier writers, without anything to support them but a vague
similarity of sound, were wont to derive it from Begga, daughter
of Pepin of Landen in the 7th century. Most likely of all,
however, is Mosheim’s derivation of it from “beggan,” which means
not to pray, “beten,” a praying sister, but to beg, as the modern
English, and so proves that the institute originally consisted
of a collection of poor helpless women. We may compare with this
the designation “Lollards,” § 116, 3.--After the pattern of the
Beguine communities there soon arose communities of men, Beghards,
with similar tendencies. They supported themselves by handicraft,
mostly by weaving. But even in the 13th century corruption and
immorality made their appearance in both. Brothers and sisters of
the New (§ 108, 4) and of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5), Fratricelli
(§ 112, 2) and other heretics, persecuted by the church, took
refuge in their unions and infected them with their heresies.
The Inquisition (§ 109, 2) kept a sharp eye on them, and many
were executed, especially in France. The 15th General Council
at Vienna, in A.D. 1312, condemned eight of their positions
as heretical. There was now a multitude of Beguine and Beghard
houses overthrown. Others maintained their existence only by
passing over to the Tertiaries of the Franciscans. Later popes
took the communities that were free from suspicion under their
protection. But even among these many forms of immorality broke
out, concubinage between Beguines and Beghards, and worldliness,
thus obliging the civil and ecclesiastical authorities again
to step in. The unions still remaining in the time of the
Reformation were mostly secularized. Only in Belgium have
a few Beguine houses continued to exist to the present day
as institutions for the maintenance of unmarried women of the
citizen class.[287]
§ 98.13. =The Spiritual Order of Knights.=--The peculiarity of
the Order of Knights consists in the combination of the three
monkish vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience with the vow
to maintain a constant struggle with the infidels. The most
important of these orders were the following.
1. =The Templars=, founded in A.D. 1118 by Hugo de Payens
and Godfrey de St. Omer for the protection of pilgrims in
the Holy Land. The costume of the order was a white mantle
with a red cross. Its rule was drawn up by St. Bernard,
whose warm interest in the order secured for it papal
patronage and the unanimous approbation of the whole West.
When Acre fell in A.D. 1291 the Templars settled in Cyprus,
but soon most of them returned to the West, making France
their headquarters. They had their name probably from a
palace built on the site of Solomon’s temple, which king
Baldwin II. of Jerusalem assigned them as their first
residence.[288]--Continuation, § 112, 7.
2. =The Knights of St. John= or Hospitallers, founded by
merchants from Amalfi as early as the middle of the
11th century, residing at first in a cloister at the
Holy Sepulchre, were engaged in showing hospitality to
the pilgrims and nursing the sick. The head of the order
Raimund du Puy, who occupied this position from A.D. 1118,
added to these duties, in imitation of the Templars, that
of fighting against the infidels. They carried a white cross
on their breast, and a red cross on their standard. Driven
out by the Saracens, they settled in Rhodes in A.D. 1310,
and in A.D. 1530 took possession of Malta.[289]
3. =The Order of Teutonic Knights= had its origin from a
hospital founded by citizens of Bremen and Lübeck during
the siege of Acre in A.D. 1120. The costume of the knights
was a white mantle with a black cross. Subsequently the
order settled in Prussia (§ 93, 13), and in A.D. 1237
united with the order of the Brothers of the Sword, which
had been founded in Livonia in A.D. 1202 (§ 93, 12). Under
its fourth Grandmaster, the prudent as well as vigorous
Hermann v. Salza, A.D. 1210-1239, it reached the summit
of its power and influence.
4. =The Knights of the Cross= arose originally in Palestine
under the name of the Order of Bethlehem, but at a later
period settled in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Poland.
There they adopted the life of regular canons (§ 97, 5)
and devoted themselves to hospital work and pastoral duties.
They are still to be found in Bohemia as holders of valuable
livings, with the badge of a cross of red satin.
In =Spain=, too, various orders of spiritual knights arose under
vows to fight with the Moors (§ 95, 2). The two most important
were the =Order of Calatrava=, founded in A.D. 1158 by the
Cistercian monk Velasquez for the defence of the frontier city
Calatrava, and the =Order of Alcantara=, founded in A.D. 1156 for
a similar purpose. Both orders were confirmed by Alexander III.
and gained great fame and still greater wealth in the wars
against the Moors. Under Ferdinand the Catholic the rank of
Grandmaster of both orders passed over to the crown. Paul III.
in A.D. 1540 released the knights from the vow of celibacy, but
obliged them to become champions of the Immaculate Conception of
the Virgin. Both orders still exist, but only as military orders
of merit.
§ 98.14. =Bridge-Brothers and Mercedarians.=--The name of
Bridge Brothers, _Frères Pontifex_, _Fratres Pontifices_, was
given to a union founded under Clement III., in Southern France,
in A.D. 1189, for the building of hospices and bridges at points
where pilgrims crossed the large rivers, or for the ferrying
of pilgrims over the streams. As a badge they wore a pick upon
their breast. Their constitution was modelled upon that of
the Knights of St. John, and upon their gradual dissolution
in the 13th century most of their number went over to that
order.--Petrus [Peter] Nolescens, born in Languedoc, of noble
parents and military tutor of a Spanish prince, moved by what
he had seen of the sufferings of Christian slaves at the hand
of their Moorish masters, and strengthened in his resolve by
an appearance of the Queen of Heaven, founded in A.D. 1228 the
knightly order of the =Mercedarians=, _Mariæ Virg. de mercede
pro redemptione Captivorum_. They devoted all their property
to the purchase of Christian captives, and where such a one was
in danger of apostatising to Islam and the money for redemption
was not procurable, they would even give themselves into slavery
in his place. When in A.D. 1317 the Grand Commandership passed
over into the hands of the priests, the order was gradually
transformed into a monkish order. After A.D. 1600, in consequence
of a reform after the pattern of the rule of the Barefoots,
it became a mendicant order, receiving the privileges of other
begging fraternities from Benedict XIII. in A.D. 1725. The order
proved a useful institution of its time in Spain, France and
Italy, and at a later period also in Spanish America.
III. Theological Science and its Controversies.
§ 99. SCHOLASTICISM IN GENERAL.[290]
The scientific activity of the Middle Ages received the name of
=Scholasticism= from the cathedral and cloister schools in which it
originated (§ 90, 8). The Schoolmen, with their enthusiasm and devotion,
their fidelity and perseverance, their courage and love of combat, may
be called the knights of theology. Instead of sword and spear they used
logic, dialectic and speculation; and profound scholarship was their
breastplate and helmet. Ecclesiastical orthodoxy was their glory
and pride. Aristotle, and also to some extent Plato, afforded them
their philosophical basis and method. The Fathers in their utterances,
_sententiæ_, the Councils in their dogmas and canons, the popes in
their decretals, yielded to this Dialectic Scholasticism theological
material which it could use for the systematising, demonstrating, and
illustrating of the Church doctrine. If we follow another intellectual
current, we find the Mystical Scholasticism taking up, as the highest
task of theology, the investigating and describing of the hidden life
of the pious thinker in and with God according to its nature, course,
and results by means of spiritual contemplation on the basis of one’s
individual experience. Dogmatics (including Ethics) and the Canon
Law constituted the peculiar field of the Dialectic Theology of the
Schoolmen. The standard of dogmatic theology during the 12th century
was the Book of the Sentences of the Lombard (§ 102, 5); that of the
Canon Law the Decree of Gratian. Biblical Exegesis as an independent
department of scientific study stood, indeed, far behind these two,
but was diligently prosecuted by the leading representatives of
Scholasticism. The examination of the simple literal sense, however,
was always regarded as a secondary consideration; while it was esteemed
of primary importance to determine the allegorical, tropological, and
anagogical signification of the text (§ 90, 9).
§ 99.1. =Dialectic and Mysticism.=--With the exception
of the speculative Scotus Erigena, the Schoolmen of the
Carlovingian Age were of a practical turn. This was changed
on the introduction of Dialectic in the 11th century. Practical
interests gave way to pure love of science, and it was now the
aim of scholars to give scientific shape and perfect logical form
to the doctrines of the church. The method of this =Dialectic
Scholasticism= consisted in resolving all church doctrines into
their elementary ideas, in the arranging and demonstrating of
them under all possible categories and in the repelling of all
possible objections of the sceptical reason. The end aimed at was
the proof of the reasonableness of the doctrine. This Dialectic,
therefore, was not concerned with exegetical investigations
or Scripture proof, but rather with rational demonstration.
Generally speaking, theological Dialectic attached itself to
the ecclesiastical system of the day as positivism or dogmatism;
for, appropriating Augustine’s _Credo ut intelligam_, it made
faith the principal starting point of its theological thinking
and the raising of faith to knowledge the end toward which it
laboured. On the other hand, however, scepticism often made its
appearance, taking not faith but doubt as the starting point
for its inquiries, with the avowed intention, indeed, of raising
faith to knowledge, but only acknowledging as worthy of belief
what survived the purifying fire of doubt.--Alongside of this
double-edged Dialectic, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in
alliance with it, we meet with the =Mystical Scholasticism=,
which appealed not to the reason but to the heart, and sought
by spiritual contemplation rather than by Dialectic to advance
at once theological science and the Christian life. Its object
is not Dogmatics as such, not the development of _Fides quæ
creditur_, but life in fellowship with God, the development of
_Fides qua creditur_. By contemplative absorption of the soul
into the depth of the Divine life it seeks an immediate vision,
experience and enjoyment of the Divine, and as an indispensable
condition thereto requires purity of heart, the love of God
in the soul and thorough abnegation of self. What is gained
by contemplation is made the subject of scientific statement,
and thus it rises to speculative mysticism. Both contemplation
and speculative mysticism in so far as their scientific
procedure is concerned are embraced under the name of scholastic
mysticism. The practical endeavour, however, after a deepening
and enhancing of the Christian life in the direction of a
real and personal fellowship with God was found more important
and soon out-distanced the scientific attempt at tabulating
and formulating the facts of inner experience. Practical
mysticism thus gained the ascendency during the 12th, 13th
and 14th centuries, and formed the favourite pursuit of the
numerous inmates of the nunneries (§ 107).
§ 99.2. =The Philosophical Basis of Dialectic Scholasticism= was
obtained mainly from the Aristotelian philosophy, which, down to
the end of the 12th century, was known at first only from Latin
renderings of Arabic and even Hebrew translations, and afterwards
from Latin renderings of the Greek originals (§ 103, 1).
Besides Aristotle, however, Plato also had his enthusiastic
admirers during the Middle Ages. The study of the writings of
Augustine and the Areopagite (§ 90, 7) led back again to him,
and the speculative mystics vigorously opposed the supremacy
of Aristotle.--At the outset of the philosophical career of
scholasticism in the 11th century we meet with the controversy
of Anselm and Roscellinus [Roscelin] about the relations of
thinking and being or of the idea and the substance of things
(§ 101, 3). =The Nominalists=, following the principles of the
Stoics, maintained that General Notions, _Universalia_, are mere
abstractions of the understanding, _Nomina_, which as such have
no reality outside the human mind, _Universalia =post= res_.
=The Realists=, on the contrary, affirmed the reality of General
Notions, regarding them as objective existences before and
apart from human thinking. But there were two kinds of realism.
The one, based on the Platonic doctrine of ideas, taught that
General Notions are really existent before the origin of the
several things as archetypes in the Divine reason, and then
also in the human mind before the contemplation of the things
empirically given, _Universalia =ante= res_. The other, resting
on Aristotle’s doctrine, considered them as lying in the things
themselves and as first getting entrance into the human mind
through experience, _Universalia =in= rebus_. The Platonic
Realism thought to reach a knowledge of things by pure thought
from the ideas latent in the human mind; the Aristotelian, on the
other hand, thought to gain a knowledge of things only through
experience and thinking upon the things themselves.--Continuation,
§ 103, 1.
§ 99.3. =The Nurseries of Scholasticism.=--The work previously
done in cathedrals and cloister schools was, from about the
12th century, taken up in a more comprehensive and thorough
way by the =Universities=. They were, as to their origin,
independent of church and state, emperor and pope. Here and
there famous teachers arose in the larger cities or in connection
with some celebrated cloister or cathedral school. Youths from
all countries gathered around them. Around the teacher who first
attracted attention others gradually grouped themselves. Teachers
and scholars organized themselves into a corporation, and thus
arose the University. By this, however, we are to understand
nothing less than a _Universitas litterarum_, where attention
was given to the whole circle of the sciences. For a long time
there was no thought of a distribution into faculties. When the
multitude of teachers and students demanded a distribution into
several corporations, this was done according to nations. The
name signifies the _Universitas magistrorum et scholarium_
rather than an articulated whole. The study here pursued was
called _Studium generale_ or _universale_, because the entrance
thereto stood open to every one. At first each university
pursued exclusively and in later times chiefly some special
department of science. Thus, _e.g._ theology was prosecuted in
Paris and Oxford and subsequently also in Cologne, jurisprudence
in Bologna, Medicine in Salerno. The first university that
expressly made provision for teaching all sciences was founded
at Naples in A.D. 1224 with imperial munificence by Frederick II.
The earliest attempt at a distribution of the sciences among
distinct faculties was occasioned by the struggle between the
university of Paris and the mendicant monks (§ 103, 1), who
separated themselves from the other theological teachers and
as members of a guild formed themselves in A.D. 1259 into a
theological faculty. The number of the students, among whom
were many of ripe years, was immensely great, and in some of
the most celebrated universities reached often to ten or even
twenty thousand. There was a ten years’ course prescribed for
the training of the monks of Clugny: two years’ _Logicalia_,
three years’ _Literæ naturales et philosophicæ_, and five
years’ Theology. The Council at Tours in A.D. 1236 insisted
that every priest should have passed through a five years’
course of study.[291]
§ 99.4. =The Epochs of Scholasticism.=--The intellectual work
of the theologians of the Middle Ages during our period ran its
course in four epochs, the boundaries of which nearly coincide
with the boundaries of the four centuries which make up that
period.
1. From the 10th century, almost completely destitute of any
scientific movement, the so-called _Sæculum obscurum_, there
sprang forth the first buds of scholarship, without, however,
any distinct impress upon them of scholasticism.
2. In the 11th century scholasticism began to show itself, and
that in the form of dialectic, both sceptical and dogmatic.
3. In the 12th century mysticism assumed an independent place
alongside of dialectic, carried on a war of extermination
against the sceptical dialectic, and finally appeared in a
more peaceful aspect, contributing material to the positive
dogmatic dialectic.
4. In the 13th century dialectic scholasticism gained the
complete ascendency, and reached its highest glory in the
form of dogmatism in league with mysticism, and never, in
the persons of its greatest representatives, in opposition
to it.
§ 99.5. =The Canon Law.=--After the Pseudo-Isidore (§ 87, 2)
many collections of church laws appeared. They sought to render
the material more complete, intentionally or unintentionally
enlarging the forgeries and massing together the most
contradictory statements without any attempt at comparison
or sifting. The most celebrated of these were the collections
of bishops Burchard of Worms about A.D. 1020, Anselm of Lucca,
who died in A.D. 1086, nephew of the pope of the same name,
Alexander II., and Ivo of Chartres, who died in A.D. 1116. Then
the Camaldolite monk =Gratian= of Bologna undertook not only
to gather together the material in a more complete form than
had hitherto been done, but also to reconcile contradictory
statements by scholastic argumentation. His work appeared about
A.D. 1150 under the title _Concordantia discordantium canonum_,
and is commonly called _Decretum Gratiani_. A great impulse was
given to the study of canon law by means of this work, especially
at Bologna and Paris. Besides the _Legists_, who taught the Roman
law, there now arose numerous _Decretists_ teaching the canon
law and writing commentaries on Gratian’s work. Gregory IX.
had a new collection of Decrees of Councils and Decretals in
five books, the so-called _Liber extra Decretum_, or shortly
_Extra_ or _Decretum Gregorii_, drawn up by his confessor and
Grand-Penitentiary, the learned Dominican Raimundus [Raimund]
de Pennaforti [Pennaforte], and sent it in A.D. 1234 to the
University of Bologna. Boniface VIII. in A.D. 1298 added to
this collection in five parts his _Liber Sextus_, and Clement V.
in A.D. 1314 added what are called after him the _Clementinæ_.
From that time down to A.D. 1483 the decretals of later popes
were added as an appendix under the name _Extravagantes_,
and with these the _Corpus juris canonici_ was concluded.
An official edition was begun in A.D. 1566 by the so-called
_Correctores Romani_, which in A.D. 1580 received papal sanction
as authoritative for all time to come.[292]
§ 99.6. The Schoolmen as such contributed nothing to =Historical
Literature=. Histories were written not in the halls of the
universities but in the cells of the monasteries. Of these
there were three kinds as we have already seen in § 90, 9. For
workers in the department of Biblical History, see § 105, 5;
and of Legends of the Saints, § 104, 8. For ancient Church
History Rufinus and Cassiodorus were the authorities and the
common text books (§ 5, 1). An interesting example of the manner
in which universal history was treated when mediæval culture
had reached its highest point, is afforded by the _Speculum
magnum s. quadruplex_ of the Dominican =Vincent of Beauvais=
(_Bellovacensis_). This treatise was composed about the middle
of the 13th century at the command of Louis IX. of France as
a hand-book for the instruction of the royal princes. It forms
an encyclopædic exposition of all the sciences of that day in
four parts, _Speculum historiale_, _naturale_, _doctrinale_,
and _morale_. The _Speculum doctrinale_ breaks off just at
the point where it should have passed over to theology proper,
and the _Speculum morale_ is a later compilation by an unknown
hand.[293]
§ 100. THE _SÆCULUM OBSCURUM_: THE 10TH CENTURY.[294]
In contrast to the brilliant theological scholarship and the
activity of religious life in the 9th century, as well as to the
remarkable culture and scientific attainments of the Spanish Moors
with their world-renowned school at Cordova, the darkness of the
10th century seems all the more conspicuous, especially its first
half, when the papacy reached its lowest depths, the clergy gave way
to unblushing worldliness and the church was consumed by the foulest
corruption. During this age, indeed, there were gleams of light even
in Italy, but only like a will o’ the wisp rising from swampy meadows,
a fanatical outburst on behalf of ancient classic paganism. The
literature of this period stood in direct and avowed antagonism to
Christian theology and the Christian church, and commended a godless
frivolity and the most undisguised sensuality. A grammarian Wilgard
of Ravenna taught openly that Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal were better
and nobler than Paul, Peter, and John. The church had still so much
authority as to secure his death as a heretic, but in almost all the
towns of Italy he had sympathisers, and that among the clergy as well
as among laymen. It was only by the influence of the monks of Clugny,
the reformatory ascetic efforts of Romuald (§ 98, 1) and St. Nilus the
Younger, a very famous Greek recluse of Gaeta, who died in A.D. 1005,
aided by the reformatory measures for the purification of the church
taken by the Saxon emperors, that this unclean spirit was gradually
driven out. The famous endeavours of Alfred the Great and their
temporary success were borne to the grave along with himself. From
A.D. 959 however, Dunstan’s reformation awakened anew in England
appreciation of a desire for theological and national culture. The
connection of the imperial house of Otto with Byzantium also aroused
outside of Italy a longing after old classical learning. The imperial
chapel founded by the brother of Otto I., Bruno the Great (§ 97, 2),
became the training school of a High-German clergy, who were there
carefully trained as far as the means at the disposal of that age
permitted, not only in politics, but also in theological and classical
studies.
§ 100.1. The degree to which =Classical Studies= were pursued
in Germany during the period of the Saxon imperial house is shown
by the works of the learned nun =Roswitha= of Gandersheim, north
of Göttingen, who died about A.D. 984. The first edition of her
works, which comprise six dramas on biblical and ecclesiastical
themes in the style of Terence, in prose interspersed with
rhymes, also eight legends, a history of Otto I., and a history
of the founding of her cloister in leonine hexameters, was
issued by the humanist Conrad Celtes, with woodcuts by Dürer
in A.D. 1501.--=Notker Labeo=, president of the cloister
school of St. Gall, who died in A.D. 1022, enriched the old
German literature by translations of the Psalms, of Aristotle’s
_Organon_, the _Moralia_ of Gregory the Great, and various
writings of Boethius [Boëthius].--In =England= the educational
efforts of =St. Dunstan= (§ 97, 4) were powerfully supported
by Bishop =Ethelwold= of Winchester, who quite in the spirit of
Alfred the Great (§ 90, 10) wrought incessantly with his pupils
for the extension and enrichment of the Anglo-Saxon literature.
Of his scholars by far the most famous was =Aelfric=, surnamed
Grammaticus, who flourished about A.D. 990. He wrote an
Anglo-Saxon Grammar, prepared a collection of homilies for all
the Sundays and festivals and a free translation from sermons of
the Latin Fathers, translated also the Old Testament heptateuch,
and wrote treatises on other portions of Scripture and on
biblical questions.[295]
§ 100.2. =Italy= produced during the second half of the century
many theologians eminent and important in their day. =Atto=,
bishop of Vercelli, who died about A.D. 960, distinguished
himself by his exegetical compilations on Paul’s epistles, and
as a homilist and a vigorous opponent of the oppressors of the
church during these rough times. Still more important was his
younger contemporary =Ratherius=, bishop of Verona, afterwards
of Liège, but repeatedly driven away from both, who died A.D. 974.
A strict and zealous reformer of clerical morals, he insisted
upon careful study of the Bible, and wrought earnestly against
the unblushing paganism of the Italian scholars of his age
as well as against all kinds of hypocrisy, superstition, and
ecclesiastical corruptions. This, and also his attachment to
the political interests of the German court, exposed him to
much persecution. Among his writings may be named _De contemptu
canonum_, _Meditationes cordis_, _Apologia sui ipsius_, _De
discordia inter ipsum et clericos_.--In =France= we meet with
=Odo of Clugny=, who died in A.D. 942, famed as a hymn writer
and homilist, and, in his _Collationum Ll. iii._, as a zealous
reprover of the corrupt morals of his age. In England and France,
=Abbo of Fleury= taught toward the end of the century. From
England, where he had been induced to go by St. Dunstan, he
returned after some years to his own cloister of Fleury, and by
his academic gifts raised its school to great renown. He wrote on
astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and history. He also composed
a treatise on dialectics, in which he makes his appearance as
the first and most eminent precursor of the Schoolmen. Chosen
abbot of his monastery and exercising strict discipline over his
monks, he suffered a martyr’s death by the hand of a murderer in
A.D. 1004.--=Gerbert of Rheims=, afterwards Pope Sylvester II.
(§ 96, 3, 4), during his active career lived partly in France,
partly in Italy. Distinguished both for classical and Arabic
scholarship, he shone in the firmament of this dark century
as it was passing away († A.D. 1003) like a star of the first
magnitude in theology, mathematics, astronomy, and natural
science, while by the common people he was regarded as a magician.
Under him the school of Rheims reached the summit of its fame.
§ 101. THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.
During the 11th century, with the moral and spiritual elevation of
the church, eager attention was again given to theological science. It
was at first mainly prosecuted in the monasteries of the Cistercians
and among the monks of Clugny, but afterwards at the seminaries which
arose toward the end of the century. The dialectic method won more
and more the upper hand in theology, and in the Eucharist controversy
between Lanfranc and Berengar, as well as in the controversy between
Anselm and Gaunilo about the existence of God, and between Anselm and
Roscelin about the Trinity, Dogmatism obtained its first victory over
Scepticism.
§ 101.1. =The Most Celebrated Schoolmen of this Century.=
1. =Fulbert= opens the list, a pupil of Gerbert, and
from A.D. 1007 Bishop of Chartres Before entering on
his episcopate he had founded at Chartres a theological
seminary. His fame spread over all the West, so that pupils
poured in upon him from every side.
2. The most important of these was =Berengar of Tours=,
afterwards a canon and teacher of the cathedral school
of his native city, and then again archdeacon at Angers.
He died in A.D. 1088. The school of Tours rose to great
eminence under him.
3. =Lanfranc=, the celebrated opponent of the last-named,
was abbot of the monastery of Bec in Normandy, and from
A.D. 1070 Archbishop of Canterbury (§ 96, 8). He died in
A.D. 1089. He wrote against Berengar _Liber de corpore et
sanguine Domini_.
4. Bishop =Hildebert of Tours=, who died in A.D. 1134, famous
as a writer of spiritual songs, was a pupil of Berengar.
But he avoided the sceptical tendencies of his teacher, and,
warned of the danger of dialectic and following the mystical
bent of his mind, he applied himself to the cultivation of
a life of faith, so that St. Bernard praised him as _tantam
columnam ecclesiæ_.
5. The monastic school of Bec, which Lanfranc had rendered
celebrated, reached the summit of its fame under his pupil
=Anselm of Canterbury=, who far excelled his teacher in
genius as well as in importance for theological science.
He was born in A.D. 1033 at Aosta in Italy, educated in the
monastery of Bec, became teacher and abbot there, was raised
in A.D. 1093 to the archiepiscopal chair of Canterbury, and
died in A.D. 1109. As a churchman he courageously defended
the independence of the church according to the principles
of Hildebrand (§ 96, 12). As a theologian he may be ranked
in respect of acuteness and profundity, speculative talent
and Christian earnestness, as a second Augustine, and
on the theological positions of that Father he based his
own. Though carrying dialectic even into his own private
devotions, there was yet present in him a vein of religious
mysticism. According to him faith is the condition of true
knowledge, _Fides præcedit intellectum_; but it is also with
him a sacred duty to raise faith to knowledge, _Credo ut
intelligam_. Only he who in respect of endowment and culture
is not capable of this intellectual activity should content
himself with simple _Veneratio_. His _Monologium_ contains
discussions on the nature of God, his _Proslogium_ proves
the being of God; his three books, _De fide Trinitatis et
de incarnatione Verbi_, develop and elaborate the doctrine
of the Trinity and Christology; while the three dialogues
_De veritate_, _De libero arbitrio_, and _De casu diaboli_
treat of the object, and the tract _Cur Deus homo?_ treats
of the subject, of soteriology. The most able, profound,
and impressive of all his writings is the last-named,
which proves the necessity of the incarnation of God in
Christ for the reconciliation of man with God. It was an
epoch-making treatise in the historical development of the
church doctrine of satisfaction on Pauline foundations.[296]
Anselm took part in the controversy of the Greeks by his
work _De processione Spiritus_ (§ 67, 4). He discussed the
question of predestination in a moderate Augustinian form in
the book, _De concordia præscientæ et prædest. et gratiæ Dei
cum libero arbitrio_. In his _Meditationes_ and _Orationes_
he gives expression to the ardent piety of his soul, as also
in the voluminous collection (426) of his letters.[297]
6. =Anselm of Laon=, surnamed Scholasticus, was the pupil
of Anselm of Canterbury. From A.D. 1076 he taught with
brilliant success at Paris, and thus laid the first
foundation of its university. Subsequently he returned
to his native city Laon, was made there archdeacon and
Scholasticus, and founded in that place a famous theological
school. He died in A.D. 1117. He composed the _Glossa
interlinearis_, a short exposition of the Vulgate between
the lines, which with Walafrid’s _Glossa ordinaria_
(§ 90, 4), became the favourite exegetical handbook of
the Middle Ages.
7. =William of Champeaux=, the proper founder of the University
of Paris, had already taught rhetoric and dialectic for
some time with great success in the cathedral school, when
the fame of the theological school of Laon led him to the
feet of Anselm. In A.D. 1108 he returned to Paris, and
had immense crowds listening to his theological lectures.
Chagrined on account of a defeat in argument at the hand
of Abælard, one of his own pupils, he retired from public
life into the old chapel of St. Victor near Paris, and there
founded a monastery under the same name for canons of the
rule of St. Augustine. He died in A.D. 1121 as Bishop of
Chalons.
8. The abbot =Guibert of Nogent=, in the diocese of Laon,
who died about A.D. 1124, a scholar of Anselm at Bec,
was a voluminous writer and, with all his own love of
the marvellous, a vigorous opponent of all the grosser
absurdities of relic and saint worship. He wrote a useful
history of the first crusade, and a work important in
its day entitled, _Liber quo ordine sermo fieri debeat_.
His great work was one in four books, _De pignoribus
Sanctorum_, against the abuses of saint and relic worship,
the exhibition of pretended parts of the Saviour’s body,
_e.g._ teeth, pieces of the foreskin, navel cord, etc.,
against the translation or distribution of the bodies
of saints, against the fraud of introducing new saints,
relics, and legends.
§ 101.2. =Berengar’s Eucharist Controversy,
A.D. 1050-1079.=--Berengar of Tours elaborated a theory of the
eucharist which is directly antagonistic to the now generally
prevalent theory of Radbert (§ 91, 3). He taught that while the
elements are changed and Christ’s body is really present, neither
the change nor the presence is substantial. The presence of His
body is rather the existence of His power in the elements, and
the change of the bread is the actual manifestation of this power
in the form of bread. The condition however of this power-presence
is not merely the consecration but also the faith of the receiver.
Without this faith the bread is an empty and impotent sign.
Such views were publicly expressed by him and his numerous
followers for a long while without causing any offence. But
when he formally stated them in a letter to his friend Lanfranc
of Bec, this churchman became Berengar’s accuser at the Synod
of Rome in A.D. 1050. The synod condemned him unheard. A second
synod of the same year held at Vercelli, before which Berengar
was to have appeared but could not because he had meanwhile
been imprisoned in France, in an outburst of fanatical fury
had the treatise of Ratramnus on the eucharist, wrongly ascribed
to Erigena, torn up and burnt, while Berengar’s doctrine was
again condemned. Meanwhile Berengar was by the intervention of
influential friends set at liberty and made the acquaintance of
the powerful papal legate Hildebrand, who, holding by the simple
Scripture doctrine that the bread and wine of the sacrament
was the body and blood of Christ, occupied probably a position
intermediate between Radbert’s grossly material and Berengar’s
dynamic hypothesis. Disinclined to favour the fanaticism of
Berengar’s opponents, Hildebrand contented himself with exacting
from him at the Synod of Tours in A.D. 1054 a solemn declaration
that he did not deny the presence of Christ in the Supper, but
regarded the consecrated elements as the body and blood of Christ.
Emboldened by this decision and still always persecuted by his
opponents as a heretic, Berengar undertook in A.D. 1059 a journey
to Rome, in order, as he hoped, by Hildebrand’s influence to
secure a distinct papal verdict in his favour. But there he found
a powerful opposition headed by the passionate and pugnacious
Cardinal Humbert (§ 67, 3). This party at the Lateran Council
in Rome in A.D. 1059, compelled Berengar, who was really very
deficient in strength of character, to cast his writings into
the fire and to swear to a confession composed by Humbert which
went beyond even Radbert’s theory in the gross corporeality of
its expressions. But in France he immediately again repudiated
this confession with bitter invectives against Rome, and
vindicated anew against Lanfranc and others his earlier views.
The bitterness of the controversy now reached its height.
Hildebrand had meanwhile, in A.D. 1073, himself become pope.
He vainly endeavoured to bring the controversy to an end by
getting Berengar to accept a confession couched in moderate
terms admitting the real presence of the body and blood in the
Supper. The opposite party did not shrink from casting suspicion
on the pope’s own orthodoxy, and so Hildebrand was obliged, in
order to avoid the loss of his great life work in a mass of minor
controversies, to insist at a second synod in Rome in A.D. 1079
upon an unequivocal and decided confession of the substantial
change of the bread. Berengar was indiscreet enough to refer
to his private conversations with the pope; but now Gregory
commanded him at once to acknowledge and abjure his error.
With fear and trembling Berengar obeyed, and the pope dismissed
him with a safe conduct, distinctly prohibiting all further
disputation. Bowed down under age and calamities, Berengar
withdrew to the island of St. Come, near Tours, where he lived
as a solitary penitent in the practice of strict asceticism, and
died at a great age in peace with the church in A.D. 1088. His
chief work is _De Cœna S. adv. Lanfr._--Continuation, § 102, 5.
§ 101.3. =Anselm’s Controversies.=
I. On the basis of his Platonic realism, Anselm of Canterbury
constructed the ontological proof of the being of God, that
there is given in man’s reason the idea of the most perfect
being to whose perfection existence also belongs. When he
laid this proof before the learned world in his _Monologium_
and _Proslogium_, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who
was a supporter of Aristotelian realism, opposed him, and
acutely pointed out the defects of this proof in his _Liber
pro insipiente_. He so named it in reference to a remark
of Anselm, who had said that even the _insipiens_ who,
according to Psalm xiv. 1, declares in his heart that there
is no God, affords thereby a witness for the existence of
the idea, and consequently also for the existence of God.
Anselm replied in his _Apologeticus c. Gaunilonem_. And
there the controversy ended without any definite result.
II. Of more importance was Anselm’s controversy with
=Roscelin=, the Nominalist, canon of Compiègne. He in
a purely nominalistic fashion understood the idea of the
Godhead as a mere abstraction, and thought that the three
persons of the Godhead could not be _una res_, οὐσία, as
then they must all at once have been incarnate in Christ.
A synod at Soissons in A.D. 1092 condemned him as a
tritheist. He retracted, but afterwards reiterated his
earlier views. Anselm then, in his tract _De fide Trinitatis
et de incarnatione Verbi contra blasphemias Rucelini_,
proved that the drift of his argumentation tended toward
tritheism, and vindicated the trinitarian doctrine of the
church. For more than two centuries Nominalism was branded
with a suspicion of heterodoxy, until in the 14th century
a reaction set in (§ 113, 3), which restored it again to
honour.
§ 102. THE TWELFTH CENTURY.
In the 12th century dialectic and mysticism are seen contending
for the mastery in the department of theology. On the one side
stands Abælard, in whom the sceptical dialectic had its most
eminent representative. Over against him stands St. Bernard as
his most resolute opponent. Theological dialectic afterwards assumed
a pre-eminently dogmatic and ecclesiastical character, entering into
close relationship with mysticism. While this movement was mainly
carried on in France, where the University of Paris attracted teachers
and scholars from all lands, it passed over from thence into Germany,
where Provost Gerhoch and his brother Arno gave it their active support
in opposition to that destructive sort of dialectic that was then
spreading around them. Although the combination of dogmatic dialectic
and mysticism had for a long time no formal recognition, it ultimately
secured the approval of the highest ecclesiastical authorities.
§ 102.1. =The Contest on French Soil.=
I. =The Dialectic Side of the Gulf.=--=Peter Abælard=, superior
to all his contemporaries in acuteness, learning, dialectic
power, and bold freethinking, but proud and disputatious,
was born at Palais in Brittany in A.D. 1079. His first
teacher in philosophy was Roscelin. Afterwards he entered
the school of William of Champeaux at Paris, the most
celebrated dialectician of his times. Having defeated
his master in a public disputation, he founded a school at
Melun near Paris, where thousands of pupils flocked to him.
In order to be nearer Paris, he moved his school to Corbeil;
then to the very walls of Paris on Mount St. Genoveva;
and ceased not to overwhelm William with humiliations,
until his old teacher retreated from the field. In order
to secure still more brilliant success, he began to study
theology under the Schoolman Anselm of Laon. But very soon
the ambitious scholar thought himself superior also to this
master. Relying upon his dialectical endowments, he took
a bet without further preparation to expound the difficult
prophet Ezekiel. He did it indeed to the satisfaction of
scholars, but Anselm refused to allow him to continue his
lectures. Abælard now returned to Paris, where he gathered
around him a great number of enthusiastic pupils. Canon
Fulbert appointed him teacher of his beautiful and talented
niece Heloise. He won her love, and they were secretly
married. She then denied the marriage in order that he
might not be debarred from the highest offices of the
church. Persisting in this denial, her relatives dealt
severely with her, and Abælard had her placed in the nunnery
of Argenteuil. Fulbert in his fury had Abælard seized during
the night and emasculated, so that he might be disqualified
for ecclesiastical preferment. Overwhelmed with shame, he
fled to the monastery of St. Denys, and there in A.D. 1119
took the monastic vow. Heloise took the veil at Argenteuil.
But even at St. Denys Abælard was obliged by the eager
entreaties of former scholars to resume his lectures. His
free and easy treatment of the church doctrine and his
haughty spirit aroused many enemies against him, who at
the Synod of Soissons in A.D. 1121 compelled him before the
papal legate to cast into the fire his treatise _De Unitate
et Trinitate divina_, and had him committed to a monastic
prison. By the intercession of some friends he was soon
again set free, and returned to St. Denys. But when he
made the discovery that Dionysius at Paris was not the
Areopagite the persecution of the monks drove him into
a forest near Troyes. There too his scholars followed him
and made him resume his lectures. His colony grew up under
his hands into the famous abbey of the Paraclete. Finding
even there no rest, he made over the abbey of the Paraclete
to Heloise, who had not been able to come to terms with
her insubordinate nuns at Argenteuil. He himself now became
abbot of the monastery of St. Gildasius at Ruys in Brittany,
and, after in vain endeavouring for eight years to restore
the monastic discipline, he again in A.D. 1136 resumed
his office of teacher and lectured at St. Genoveva near
Paris with great success. He wrote an ethical treatise,
“_Scito te ipsum_,” issued a new and enlarged edition of
his _Theologia christiana_, now extant as the incomplete
_Introductio ad theologiam_ in three books, and composed
a _Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judæum et Christianum_, in
which the heathen philosophers and poets of antiquity are
ranked almost as high as the prophets and apostles. In _Sic
et Non_, “Yes and No,” a collection of extracts from the
Fathers under the various heads of doctrine contradictory
of one another, the traditional theology was held up to
contempt.
§ 102.2.
=Abælard= maintained, in opposition to the
Augustinian-Anselmian theory, that faith preceded
knowledge, that only what we comprehend is to be believed.
He did indeed intend that his dialectic should be used not
for the overthrow but for the establishment of the church
doctrine. He proceeded, however, from doubt as the principle
of all knowledge, regarding all church dogmas as problems
which must be proved before they can be believed: _Dubitando
enim ad inquisitionem venimus, inquirendo veritatem
percipimus_. He thus reduced faith to a mere probability
and measured the content of faith by the rule of subjective
reason. This was most glaring in the case of the trinitarian
doctrine, which with him approached Sabellian modalism. God
as omnipotent is to be called Father, as all wise the Son,
as loving and gracious the Spirit; and so the incarnation
becomes a merely temporal and dynamic immanence of the Logos
in the man Jesus. The significance of the ethical element
in Christianity quite overshadowed that of the dogmatic. He
taught that all fundamental truths of Christianity had been
previously proclaimed by philosophers and poets of Greece
and Rome, who were scarcely less inspired than the prophets
and apostles, the special service of the latter consisting
in giving currency to these truths among the uncultured. He
turns with satisfaction from the theology of the Fathers to
that of the apostles, and from that again to the religion of
Jesus, whom he represents rather as a reformer introducing
a pure morality than as a founder of a religious system.
Setting aside Anselm’s theory of satisfaction, he regards
the redemption and reconciliation of man as consisting in
the awakening in sinful man, by means of the infinite love
displayed by Christ’s teaching and example, by His life,
sufferings and death upon the cross, a responding love of
such fulness and power, that he is thereby freed from the
dominion of sin and brought into the glorious liberty of
the children of God.[298]--Abælard’s fame and following
grew in a wonderful manner from day to day; but also
powerful opponents dragged his heresies into light and
vigorously combated them. The most important of these were
the Cistercian monk William of Thierry and St. Bernard, who
called attention to the dangerous tendency of his teaching.
St. Bernard dealt personally with the heretic, but when
he failed in converting him, he appeared in A.D. 1141 at
the Synod of Sens as his accuser. The synod condemned as
heretical a series of statements culled from his writings
by Bernard. Abælard appealed to the pope, but even his
friends at Rome, among whom was Card. Guido de Castella,
afterwards Pope Cœlestine II., could not close their
eyes to his manifest heterodoxies. His friendship for
Arnold of Brescia also told against him at Rome (§ 108, 7).
Innocent II. therefore excommunicated Abælard and his
supporters, condemned his writings to be burnt and himself
to be confined in a monastery. Abælard found an asylum
with the abbot Peter the Venerable of Clugny, who not
only effected his reconciliation with Bernard, but also,
on the ground of his _Apologia s. Confessio fidei_, in
which he submitted to the judgment of the church, obtained
permission from the pope to pass his last days in peace at
Clugny. During this time he composed his _Hist. calamitatum
Abælardi_, an epistolary autobiography, which, though
not free from vanity and bitterness, is yet worthy to be
ranked with Augustine’s “Confessions” for its unreserved
self-accusation and for the depth of self-knowledge which
it reveals. He died in A.D. 1142, in the monastery of
St. Marcellus at Chalons, where he had gone in quest of
health. He was buried in the abbey of the Paraclete, where
Heloise laid on his coffin the letter of absolution of Peter
of Clugny. Twenty-two years later Heloise herself was laid
in the same quiet resting place.[299]
§ 102.3.
II. =The Mystic Side of the Gulf.=--Abælard’s most famous
opponent was =St. Bernard of Clairvaux= (§ 98, 1), born
in A.D. 1091 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, died in
A.D. 1153, a man of such extraordinary influence on his
generation as the world seldom sees. Venerated as a miracle
worker, gifted with an eloquence that carried everything
before it (_doctor mellifluus_), he was the protector and
reprover of the Vicar of God, the peacemaker among the
princes, the avenger of every wrong. His genuine humility
made him refuse all high places. His enthusiasm for the
hierarchy did not hinder him from severely lashing clerical
abuses. It was his word that roused the hearts of men
throughout all Europe to undertake the second crusade,
and that won many heretics and schismatics back to the
bosom of the church. Having his conversation in heaven,
leading a life of study, meditation, prayer, and ecstatic
contemplation, he had also dominion over the earth, and by
counsel, exhortation, and exercise of discipline exerted
a quickening and healthful influence on all the relations
of life. His theological tendency was in the direction
of contemplative mysticism, with hearty submission to the
doctrine of the church. Like Abælard, but from the opposite
side, he came into conflict with the theory of Anselm;
for the ideal of theology with him was not the development
of faith into knowledge by means of thought, but rather
the enlightenment of faith in the way of holiness. Bernard
was not at all an enemy of science, but he rather saw in
the dialectical hair-splitting of Abælard, which grudged
not to cut down the main props of saving truth for the
glorification of its own art, the overthrow of all true
theology and the destruction of all the saving efficacy of
faith. Heart theology founded on heart piety, nourished and
strengthened by prayer, meditation, spiritual illumination
and holiness, was for him the only true theology. _Tantum
Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Orando facilius quam
disputando et dignius Deus quæritur et invenitur._ The Bible
was his favourite reading, and in the recesses of the forest
he spent much time in prayer and study of the Scriptures.
But in ecstasy (_excessus_) which consists in withdrawal
from sensible phenomena and becoming temporarily dead to
all earthly relations, the soul of the pious Christian
is able to rise into the immediate presence of God, so
that “_more angelorum_” it reaches a blessed vision and
enjoyment of the Divine glory and that perfect love which
loves itself and all creatures only in God. Yet even he
confesses that this highest stage of abstraction was only
attained unto by him occasionally and partially through
God’s special grace. Bernard’s mysticism is most fully set
forth in his eighty-six Sermons on the first two chapters
of the Song of Solomon and in the tract _De diligendo Deo_.
In his controversy with Abælard he wrote his _Tractatus de
erroribus Petri Abælardi_. To the department of dogmatics
belongs _De gratia et libero arbitrio_; and to that of
history, the biography of his friend Malachias (§ 149, 5).
The most important of his works is _De Consideratione_,
in 5 bks., in which with the affection of a friend, the
earnestness of a teacher, and the authority of a prophet,
he sets before Pope Eugenius III. the duties and dangers
of his high position. He was also one of the most brilliant
hymn writers of the Middle Ages. Alexander III. canonized
him in A.D. 1173, and Pius VIII. in A.D. 1830 enrolled him
among the _doctores ecclesiæ_ (§ 47, 22 c).--Soon after the
controversy with Abælard had been brought to a close by the
condemnation of the church, Bernard was again called upon
to resist the pretensions of dialectic. Gilbert de la Porrée
(Porretanus), teacher of theology at Paris, who became
Bishop of Poitiers in A.D. 1142 and died in A.D. 1154,
in his commentary on the theological writings of Boëthius
(§ 47, 23) ascribed reality to the universal term “God”
in such a way that instead of a Trinity we seemed to have
a Quaternity. At the Synod of Rheims, A.D. 1148, under
the presidency of Pope Eugenius III., Bernard appeared as
accuser of Porretanus. Gilbert’s doctrine was condemned,
but he himself was left unmolested.[300]
§ 102.4.
III. =Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Mysticism.=--At the
school of the monastery of St. Victor in Paris, founded
by William of Champeaux after his defeat at the hands
of Abælard, an attempt was made during the first half of
the 12th century to combine mysticism and dialectic in the
treatment of theology. The peaceable heads of this school
would indeed have nothing to do with the speculations of
Abælard and his followers which tended to overthrow the
mysteries of the faith. But the mystics of St. Victor
made an important concession to the dialecticians by
entering with as much energy upon the scientific study
and construction of dogmatics as they did upon the devout
examination of Scripture and mystical theology. They
exhibited a speculative power and a profundity of thought
that won the hearty admiration of the subtlest of the
dialecticians. By far the most celebrated of this school
was =Hugo of St. Victor=. Descended from the family
of the Count of Halberstadt, born in A.D. 1097, nearly
related to St. Bernard, honoured by his contemporaries
as _Alter Augustinus_ or _Lingua Augustini_, Hugo was one
of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages. Having
enjoyed a remarkably complete course of training, he was
enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of science, and,
endowed with rich and deep spirituality, he exerted a most
healthful and powerful influence upon his own and succeeding
ages, although church and science had to mourn their loss by
his early death in A.D. 1141. In his _Eruditio didascalica_
we have in 3 bks. an encyclopædic sketch of all human
knowledge as a preparation to the study of theology, and
in other 3 bks. an introduction to the Bible and church
history.[301] His _Summa sententiarum_ is an exposition of
dogmatics on patristic lines, an ecclesiastical counterpart
of Abælard’s _Sic et Non_. The ripest and most influential
of all his works, and the most independent, is his _De
sacramentis christ. fidei_, in 2 bks., in which he treats
of the whole contents of dogmatics from the point of view
of the Sacraments (§ 104, 2). His exegetical works are less
important and less original. His mysticism is set forth _ex
professo_ in his _Soliloquium de arrha animæ_ and in the
series of three tracts, _De arca morali_, _De arca mystica_,
and _De vanitate mundi_. He makes Noah’s ark the symbol of
the church as well as of the individual soul which journeys
over the billows of the world to God, and, by the successive
stages of _lectio_, _cogitatio_, _meditatio_, _oratio_,
and _operatio_ reaches to _contemplatio_ or the vision of
God.--Hugo’s pupil, and from A.D. 1162 the prior of his
convent, was the Scotchman =Richard St. Victor=, who died
in A.D. 1173. With less of the dialectic faculty than
his master--though this too is shown in his 6 bks. _De
trinitate_, a scholastic exposition of the _Cognitio_
or _Fides quæ creditur_--he mainly devoted his energies
to the development on the mystico-contemplative side of
the “_Affectus_” or _Fides qua creditur_, which aims at
the vision and enjoyment of God. This he represents as
reached by the three stages of contemplation, distinguished
as _mentis dilatatio_, _sublevatio_, and _alienatio_.
Among his mystical tracts, mostly mystical expositions
of Scripture passages, the most important are, _De
præparatione animæ ad contemplationem, s. de xii.
patriarchis_, and the 4 bks. _De gratia contemplationis
s. de arca mystica_. These are also known as _Benjamin
minor_ and _B. major_. In Richard there appears the first
indications of a misunderstanding with the dialecticians
which, among the late Victorines, and especially in the
case of Walter of St. Victor, took the form of vehement
hostility.
§ 102.5.
IV. =Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Dialectics.=--After
Abælard’s condemnation theological dialectics came more
and more to be associated with the church doctrine and to
approach more or less nearly to a friendly alliance with
mysticism. Hugo’s writings did much to bring this about.
The following are the most important Schoolmen of this
tendency.
1. The Englishman =Robert Pulleyn=, teacher at Oxford
and Paris, afterwards cardinal and papal chancellor
at Rome, who died about A.D. 1150. His chief work is
_Sententiarum Ll. VIII._ Though very famous in its day,
it was soon cast into the shade by the Lombard’s work.
2. =Petrus [Peter] Lombardus [Lombard]=, born at Novara
in Lombardy, a scholar of Abælard, but powerfully
influenced by St. Bernard and Hugo St. Victor, was
Bishop of Paris from A.D. 1159 till his death in
A.D. 1164. He published a dogmatic treatise under
the title of _Sententiarum Ll. IV._; of which Bk. 1
treated of God, Bk. 2 of Creatures, Bk. 3 of Redemption,
Bk. 4 of the Sacraments and the Last Things. For
centuries this was the textbook in theological
seminaries and won for its author the designation
of _Magister Sententiarum_. He himself compared this
gift laid on the altar of the church to the widow’s
mite, but the book attained a place of supreme
importance in mediæval theology, had innumerable
commentaries written on it and was officially authorized
as the theological textbook by the Lateran Council of
A.D. 1215. It is indeed a well arranged collection of
the doctrinal deliverances of the Fathers, in which
apparent contradictions are dialectically resolved, with
great skill, and wrought up together into an articulate
system, but from want of independence and occasional
indecision or withholding of any definite opinion, it
falls behind Hugo’s _Summa_ and Robert’s _Sentences_.
It had this advantage, however, that it gave freer scope
to scholars and teachers, and so was more stimulating as
a textbook for academic use. The Lombard’s works include
a commentary on the Psalms and _Catenæ_ on the Pauline
Epistles.
3. The Frenchman =Peter of Poitiers= (_Pictaviensis_), one
of the ablest followers of the Lombard, was chancellor
of the University of Paris toward the end of the century.
He wrote 5 bks. of Sentences or Distinctions, which in
form and matter are closely modelled on the work of his
master.
4. The most gifted of all the Summists of the 12th
century was the German =Alanus ab Insulis=, born at
Lille or Ryssel, lat. _Insulæ_. After teaching long
at Paris, he entered the Cistercian order, and died
at an advanced age at Clairvaux in A.D. 1203. A man
of extensive erudition and a voluminous writer, he was
called _Doctor universalis_. He wrote an allegorical
poem _Anticlaudianus_, which describes how reason and
faith in union with all the virtues restore human nature
to perfection. His _Regulæ de s. theologia_ give a
short outline of theology and morals in 125 paradoxical
sentences which are tersely expounded. A short but able
summary of the Christian faith is given in the 5 bks.
_De arte catholicæ fidei_. This work is characterized
by the use of a mathematical style of demonstration,
like that of the later school of Wolf, and an avoidance
of references to patristic authorities, which would have
little weight with Mohammedans and heretics. He is thus
rather an opponent than a representative of dialectic
scholasticism. The _Summa quadripartita c. Hæreticos
sui temporis_ ascribed to him was written by another
Alanus.
§ 102.6. =The Controversy on German Soil.=--The provost
=Gerhoch= and his brother, the dean =Arno= of Reichersberg
in Bavaria, were representatives of the school of St. Victor
as mediators between dialectics and mysticism. In A.D. 1150
Gerhoch addressed a memorial to Eugenius III., _De corrupto
ecclesiæ statu_, and afterwards he published _De investigatione
Antichristi_. He found the antichrist in the papal schisms of
his times, in the ambition and covetousness of popes, in the
corruptibility of the curia, in the manifold corruptions of the
church, and especially in the spread of a dialectic destructive
of all the mysteries of the faith. The controversy in which
both of these brothers took most interest was that occasioned
by the revival of Adoptionism in consequence of the teaching
of French dialecticians, especially Abælard and Gilbert. It
led to the formulating of the Christological doctrine in such
a form as prepared the way for the later Lutheran theories
of the _Communicatio idiomatum_ and the _Ubiquitas corporis
Christi_ (§ 141, 9).--In South Germany, conspicuously in the
schools of Bamberg, Freisingen, and Salzburg, the dialectic of
Abælard, Gilbert, and the Lombard was predominant. Its chief
representatives were =Folmar of Triefenstein= in Franconia and
Bishop =Eberhard of Bamberg=. The controversy arose over the
doctrine of the eucharist. Folmar had maintained like Berengar
that not the actually glorified body of Christ is present in
the sacrament, but only the spiritual substance of His flesh
and blood, without muscles, sinews and bones. Against this gross
Capernaitic view (John vi. 52, 59) Gerhoch maintained that the
eucharistic body is the very resurrection body of Christ, the
substance of which is a glorified corporeity without flesh and
blood in a carnal sense, without sinews and bones. The bishop
of Bamberg took offence at his friend’s bold rejection of the
doctrine approved by the church, and so Folmar modified his
position to the extent of admitting that there was on the altar
not only the true, but also the whole body in the perfection
of its human substance, under the form of bread and wine.
But nevertheless both he and Abælard adhered to their radical
error, a dialectical dismemberment of the two natures of Christ,
according to which the divinity and humanity, the Son of God and
the Son of man, were two strictly separate existences. Christ,
they taught, is according to His humanity Son of God in no other
way than a pious man is, _i.e._ by adoption; but according to His
Divine nature He is like the Father omnipresent, omnipotent, and
omniscient. In respect of His human nature it must still be said
by Him, “My Father is greater than I.” He dwells, however, bodily
in heaven, and is shut in by and confined to it. Only His Divine
nature can claim _Latria_ or _adoratio_, worship. Only _Dulia,
cultus_, reverence, such as is due to saints, images, and relics,
should be given to His body and blood upon the altar. Gerhoch’s
doctrine of the Supper, on the other hand, is summed up in
the proposition: He who receives the flesh of the Logos (_Caro
Verbi_) receives also therewith the Logos in His flesh (_Verbum
carnis_). Folmar and Eberhard denounced this as Eutychian heresy.
A conference at Bamberg in A.D. 1158, where Gerhoch stood alone
as representative of his views, ended by his opponents declaring
that he had been convicted of heresy. In A.D. 1162 a Council
at Friesach in Carinthia, under the presidency of Archbishop
Eberhard of Salzburg, reached the same conclusion.
§ 102.7. =Theologians of a Pre-eminently Biblical and
Ecclesiastico-Practical Tendency.=
1. =Alger of Liège=, teacher of the cathedral school there,
was one of the most important German theologians in the
beginning of the 12th century. He resigned his appointment
in A.D. 1121, to spend his last years in the monastery of
Clugny, in order to enjoy the company and friendship of
its abbot, Peter the Venerable; and there he died about
A.D. 1130. The school of Liège, in which he had himself
been trained up in the high church Cluniac doctrine there
prevalent, flourished greatly during his rule of twenty
years. His chief works are _De Sacramentis corporis et
sanguinis Domini_ in 3 bks., distinguished by acuteness
and lucidity, and a controversial tract on the lines of
Radbert against Berengar’s doctrine condemned by the church.
In his _De misericordia et justitia_ he treats of church
discipline with circumspection, clearness, and decision.
2. =Rupert of Deutz=, more than any mediæval scholar before
or after, created an enthusiasm for the study of Scripture
as the people’s book for all times, the field in which the
precious treasure is hid, to be found by any one whose eyes
are made sharp by faith. He was a contemporary and fellow
countryman of Alger, and died in A.D. 1135. Though he
refers to the Hebrew and Greek texts, he cares less for
the literal than for the speculative-dogmatic and mystical
sense discovered by allegorical exegesis. In his principal
work, _De trinitate et operilus ejus_, he sets forth in
3 bks. the creation work of the Father, in 30 bks. the
revealing and redeeming work of the Son, from the fall
to the death of Christ, and in the remaining 9 books the
sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, from the resurrection
of Christ to the general resurrection. He maintains in
opposition to Anselm (who was afterwards followed by Thomas
Aquinas) that Christ would have become incarnate even if
men had not sinned (a view which appears in Irenæus, and
afterwards in Alexander Hales, Duns Scotus, John Wessel,
and others). In regard to the Lord’s Supper he maintained
the doctrine of consubstantiation, and he taught like pope
Gelasius (§ 58, 2) that the relation of the heavenly and
earthly in the eucharist is quite analogous to that of the
two natures in Christ.[302]
3. The Benedictine =Hervæus= in the cloister of Bourg-Dieu,
who died about A.D. 1150, was distinguished for deep piety
and zealous study of Scripture and the fathers. He wrote
commentaries on Isaiah and on the Pauline Epistles, the
latter of which was ascribed to Anselm and so published
among his works.
§ 102.8.
4. =John of Salisbury=, _Johannes Parvus Sarisberiensis_,
was a theologian of a thoroughly practical tendency, though
a diligent student of Abælard and an able classical scholar,
specially familiar with the writings of Cicero. As the
trusted friend of Hadrian IV. he was often sent from England
on embassies to the pope. In Becket’s struggle against the
encroachments of the Crown upon the rights of the church
(§ 96, 16) he stood by the primate’s side as his faithful
counsellor and fellow soldier, wrote an account of his
life and martyrdom, and laboured diligently to secure his
canonization. He was made Bishop of Chartres in A.D. 1176,
and died there in A.D. 1180. His works, distinguished
by singularly wide reading and a pleasing style, are
pre-eminently practical. In his _Policraticus s. de
nugis Curialium et vestigiis Philosophorum_ he combats
the _nugæ_ of the hangers on at court with theological
and philosophical weapons in a well balanced system of
ecclesiastico-political and philosophico-theological
ethics. His _Metalogicus_ in 4 bks. is a polemic against
the prostitution of science by the empty formalism of the
schoolmen. His 329 Epistles are of immense importance for
the literary and scientific history of his times.
5. =Walter of St. Victor=, Richard’s successor as prior
of that monastery, makes his appearance about A.D. 1130,
as the author of a vigorous polemic against dialectic
scholasticism, in which he combats especially Christological
heresies and spares the idolized Lombard just as little
as the condemned Abælard.[303] He combats with special
eagerness a new heresy springing from Abælard and developed
by the Lombard which he styles “Nihilism,” because by
denying the independence of the human nature of Christ
it teaches that Christ in so far as He is man is not an
_Aliquid_, _i.e._ an individual.
6. =Innocent III.= is deserving of a place here both on
account of his rich theological learning and on account
of the earnestness and depth of the moral and religious
view of life which he presents in his writings. The most
celebrated of these are _De contemtu mundi_ and 6 bks.
_Mysteria evang. legis ac sacramenti Eucharistitæ_, and
during his pontificate, his epistles and sermons.
§ 102.9. =Humanist Philosophers.=--While Abælard was striving
to prove Christianity the religion of reason, and for this was
condemned by the church, his contemporary =Bernard Sylvester=,
teacher of the school of Chartres, a famous nursery of classical
studies, was seeking to shake himself free of any reference to
theology and the church. Satisfied with Platonism as a genuinely
spiritual religion, and feeling therefore no personal need of the
church and its consolations, he carefully avoided any allusion
to its dogmas, and so remained in high repute as a teacher
and writer. His treatise, _De mundi universitates. Megacosmus
et Microcosmus_, in dialogue form discussing in a dilettante,
philosophizing style natural phenomena, half poetry, half prose,
was highly popular in its day. It fared very differently with
his accomplished and like-minded scholar =William of Conches=.
The vehemence with which he declared himself a Catholic Christian
and not a heathen Academic aroused suspicion. Though in his
_Philosophia mundi_, sometimes erroneously attributed to Honorius
of Autun, he studiously sought to avoid any contradiction of the
biblical and ecclesiastical theory of the world, he could not
help in his discussion of the origin of man characterizing the
literal interpretation of the Scripture history of creation as
peasant faith. The book fell into the hands of the abbot William
of Thierry, who accused its author to St. Bernard. The opposition
soon attained to such dimensions that he was obliged to publish
a formal recantation and in a new edition to remove everything
objectionable.
§ 103. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
Scholasticism took a new departure in the beginning of the
13th century, and by the middle of the century it reached its climax.
Material for its development was found in the works of Aristotle and
his Moslem expositors, and this was skilfully used by highly gifted
members of the Franciscan and Dominican orders so that all opposition
to the scholastic philosophy was successfully overborne. The Franciscans
Alexander of Hales and Bonaventura stand side by side with the brilliant
Dominican teachers Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. As reformers
of the scholastic philosophy from different points of view we meet with
Raimund Lull and Roger Bacon. There were also numerous representatives
of this simple biblical and practical tendency devoted to Scripture
study and the pursuit of the Christian life; and during this period we
find the first developments of German mysticism properly so called.
§ 103.1. =The Writings of Aristotle and his Arabic
Interpreters.=--Till the end of the 12th century Aristotle was
known in the Christian West only through Porphyry and Boëthius.
This philosophy, however, from the 9th century was diligently
studied in Arabic translations of the original text (§ 72) by
Moslem scholars of Bagdad and Cordova, who wrote expositions and
made original contributions to science. The most distinguished
of these, besides the logicians Alkindi in the 9th, and Alfarabi
in the 10th century, were the supernaturalistic Avicenna of
Bokhara, † A.D. 1037 Algazel of Bagdad, inclined to mysticism or
sufism, † A.D. 1111, and the pantheistic-naturalistic Averroes
of Cordova, † A.D. 1198. The Moors and Spanish Jews were also
devoted students of the peripatetic philosophy. The most famous
of these was Maimonides, † A.D. 1204, who wrote the rationalistic
work _More Nebochim_. On the decay of Arabic philosophy in Spain,
Spanish Jews introduced the study of Aristotle into France.
Dissatisfied with Latin translations from the Arabic, they
began in A.D. 1220 to make translations directly from the Greek.
Suspicions were now aroused against the new gospel of philosophy.
At a Synod in Paris A.D. 1209 (§ 108, 4) the physical writings
of Aristotle were condemned and lecturing on them forbidden.
This prohibition was renewed in A.D. 1215 by the papal legate
and the metaphysics included. But no prohibition of the church
could arrest the scientific ardour of that age. In A.D. 1231
the definitive prohibition was reduced to a measure determining
the time to be devoted to such studies, and in A.D. 1254 we
find the university prescribing the number of hours during
which Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics should be taught.
Some decades later the church itself declared that no one should
obtain the degree of master who was not familiar with Aristotle,
“_the precursor of Christ in natural things as John Baptist was
in the things of grace_.” This change was brought about by the
belief that not Aristotle but Erigena was the author of all the
pantheistic heresies of the age (§§ 90, 7; 108, 4), and also
by the need felt by the Franciscans and Dominicans for using
Aristotelian methods of proof in defence of the doctrine of the
church. Philosophy, however, was now regarded by all theologians
as only the handmaid of theology. Even in the 11th century Petrus
[Peter] Damiani had indicated the mutual relation of the sciences
thus: _Debet velut ancilla dominæ quodam famulatus obsequio
subservire, ne si præcedit, oberret_.[304]
§ 103.2. On account of their characteristic tendencies Avicenna
was most popular with the Schoolmen and after him Algazel, while
Averroes, though carefully studied and secretly followed by
some, was generally regarded with suspicion and aversion. Among
his secret admirers was Simon of Tournay, about A.D. 1200, who
boasted of being able with equal ease to prove the falseness
and the truth of the church doctrines, and declared that Moses,
Christ, and Mohammed were the three greatest deceivers the world
had ever seen. The Parisian scholars ascribed to Averroes the
=Theory of a twofold Truth=. A positive religion was required
to meet the religious needs of the multitude, but the philosopher
might reach and maintain the truth independently of any revealed
religion. In the Christian West he put this doctrine in a less
offensive form by saying that one and the same affirmation might
be theologically true and philosophically false, and _vice versa_.
Behind this, philosophical scepticism as well as theological
unbelief sought shelter. Its chief opponents were Thomas Aquinas
and Raimund Lull, while at a later time Duns Scotus and the
Scotists were inclined more or less to favour it.
§ 103.3. =The Appearance of the Mendicant Orders.=--The
Dominican and Franciscan orders competed with one another in
a show of zeal for the maintenance of the orthodox doctrine,
and each endeavoured to secure the theological chairs in the
University of Paris, the principal seat of learning in those
days. They were vigorously opposed by the university corporation,
and especially by the Parisian doctor William of St. Amour,
who characterized them in his tract _De periculis novissimorum
temporum_ of A.D. 1255 as the precursors of antichrist. But
he was answered by learned members of the orders, Albert the
Great, Aquinas, and Bonaventura, and finally, in A.D. 1257, all
opposition on the part of the university was checked by papal
authority and royal command. The Augustinians, too, won a seat
in the University of Paris in A.D. 1261.--The learned monks gave
themselves with enthusiasm to the new science and applied all
their scientific gains to polemical and apologetical purposes.
They diligently conserved all that the earlier Fathers down to
Gregory the Great had written in exposition of the doctrine and
all that the later Fathers down to Hugo St. Victor and Peter
the Lombard had written in its defence. But what had been simply
expressed before was now arranged under elaborate scientific
categories. The Summists of the previous century supplied
abundant material for the work. Their _Summæ sententiarum_,
especially that of the Lombard, became the theme of innumerable
commentaries, but besides these, comprehensive original works
were written. These were no longer to be described as _Summæ
sententiarum_, but assumed with right the title of _Summæ
theologiæ_ or _theologicæ_.
§ 103.4. =Distinguished Franciscan Schoolmen.=--=Alexander
of Hales=, trained in the English cloister of Hales, _doctor
irrefragabilis_, was the most famous teacher of theology in
Paris, where in A.D. 1222 he entered the Seraphic Order. He
died in A.D. 1245. As the first church theologian who, without
the excessive hair-splitting of later scholastics, applied the
forms of the peripatetic philosophy to the scientific elaboration
of the doctrinal system of the church, he was honoured by his
grateful order with the title of _Monarcha theologorum_, and is
still regarded as the first scholastic in the strict sense of the
word. His _Summa theologica_, published at Nuremberg in A.D. 1482
in 4 folio vols. was accepted by his successors as the model of
scientific method and arrangement. The first two vols. treat of
God and His Work, the Creature; the third, of the Redeemer and
His Work; the fourth, of the Sacraments of the O. and N.T. The
conclusion, which is not extant, treated of _Præmia salutis
per futuram gloriam_. Each of these divisions was subdivided
into a great number of _Quæstiones_, these again into _Membra_,
and these often into _Articuli_. The question at the head of
the section was followed by several answers affirmative and
negative, some of which were entitled _Auctoritates_ (quotations
from Scripture, the Fathers, and the teachers of the church),
some _Rationes_ (dictates of the Greek, Arabian, and Jewish
philosophers), and finally, his own conclusion. Among the
authorities of later times, Hugo’s dogmatic works (§ 102, 4)
occupy with him the highest place, but he seems to have had no
appreciation of his mystical speculations.--His most celebrated
disciple =John Fidanza=, better known as =Bonaventura=, had a
strong tendency to mysticism. Born at Bagnarea in the district
of Florence in A.D. 1221, he became teacher of theology in
Paris in A.D. 1253, general of his order in A.D. 1257, was made
Cardinal-bishop of Ostia by Gregory X. in A.D. 1273, and in the
following year was a member of the Lyons Council, at which the
question of the reunion of the churches was discussed (§ 67, 4).
He took an active part in the proceedings of that council,
but died before its close in A.D. 1274. His aged teacher
Alexander had named him a _Verus Israelita, in quo Adam non
peccasse videtur_. Later Franciscans regarded him as the noblest
embodiment of the idea of the Seraphic Order next to its founder,
and celebrated the angelic purity of his personality by the
title _doctor seraphicus_. Sixtus IV. canonized him in A.D. 1482,
and Sixtus V. edited his works in 8 fol. vols. in A.D. 1588, and
gave him in A.D. 1587 the sixth place in the rank of _Doctores
ecclesiæ_ as the greatest church teacher of the West. Like
Hugo, he combined the mystical and doctrinal sides of theology,
but like Richard St. Victor inclined more to the mystical. His
greatest dogmatic work is his commentary in 2 vols. fol. on the
Lombard. His able treatise, _De reductione artium ad theologiam_,
shows how theology holds the highest place among all the sciences.
In his _Breviloquium_ he seeks briefly but with great expenditure
of learning to prove that the church doctrine is in accordance
with the teachings of reason. In the _Centiloquium_, consisting
of 100 sections, he treats summarily of the doctrines of Sin,
Grace, and Salvation. In the _Pharetra_ he gives a collection
of the chief authorities for the conclusions reached in the
two previously named works. The most celebrated of his mystical
treatises are the _Diætæ salutis_, describing the nine days’
journey (_diætæ_) in which the soul passes from the abyss of
sin to the blessedness of heaven, and the _Itinerarium mentis
in Deum_, in which he describes as a threefold way to the
knowledge of God a _theologia symbolica_ (=_extra nos_),
_propria_ (=_intra nos_) and _mystica_ (=_supra nos_), the
last and highest of which alone leads to the beatific vision
of God.
§ 103.5. =Distinguished Dominican Schoolmen.=--(1) =Albert
the Great=, the oldest son of a knight of Bollstadt, born in
A.D. 1193, at Laningen in Swabia, sent in A.D. 1212, because too
weak for a military career, to the University of Padua, where he
devoted himself for ten years to the diligent study of Aristotle,
entered then the Dominican order, and at Bologna pursued with
equal diligence the study of theology in a six years’ course.
He afterwards taught the regular curriculum of the liberal arts
at Cologne and in the cloisters of his order in other German
cities; and after taking his doctor’s degree at Paris, he taught
theology at Cologne with such success that the Cologne school,
owing to the crowds attracted to his lectures, grew to the
dimensions of a university. In A.D. 1254 he became provincial of
his order in Germany, was compelled in A.D. 1260 by papal command
to accept the bishopric of Regensburg, but returned to Cologne in
A.D. 1262 to resume teaching, and died there in A.D. 1280, in his
87th year. His amazing acquirements in philosophical, theological,
cabalistic, and natural science won for him the surname of the
Great, and the title of _doctor universalis_. Since the time
of Aristotle and Theophrastus there had been no investigator in
natural science like him. Traces of mysticism may be discovered
in his treatise _Paradisus animæ_, and in his commentary on
the Areopagite. Indeed from his school proceeded the greatest
master of speculative mysticism (§ 114, 1). His chief work in
natural science is the _Summa de Creaturis_, the fantastic and
superstitious character of which may be seen from the titles
of its several books: _De virtutibus herbarum, lapidum, et
animalium_, _De mirabilibus mundi_, and _De secretis mulierum_.
He wrote three books of commentaries on the Lombard, and
two books of an independent system of dogmatics, the _Summa
theologica_. The latter treatise, which closely follows the
work of Alexander of Hales, is incomplete.[305]
§ 103.6. The greatest and most influential of all the Schoolmen
was the _Doctor angelicus_, =Thomas Aquinas=. Born in A.D. 1227,
son of a count of Aquino, at his father’s castle of Roccasicca,
in Calabria, he entered against his parents’ will as a novice
into the Dominican monastery at Naples. Removed for safety to
France, he was followed by his brothers and taken back, but two
years later he effected his escape with the aid of the order, and
was placed under Albert at Cologne. Afterwards he taught for two
years at Cologne, and was then sent to win his doctor’s degree at
Paris in A.D. 1252. There he began along with his intimate friend
Bonaventura his brilliant career. It was not until A.D. 1257,
after the opposition of the university to the mendicant orders
had been overcome, that the two friends obtained the degree of
doctor. Urban IV. recalled him to Italy in A.D. 1261, where he
taught successively in Rome, Bologna, Pisa, and Naples. Ordered
by Gregory to take part in the discussions on union at the Lyons
Council, he died suddenly in A.D. 1274, soon after his return
to Naples, probably from poison at the hand of his countryman
Charles of Anjou, in order that he might not appear at the
council to accuse him of tyranny. John XXII. canonized him in
A.D. 1323, and Pius V. gave him the fifth place among the Latin
_doctores ecclesiæ_.--Thomas was probably the most profound
thinker of the century, and was at the same time admired as
a popular preacher. He had an intense veneration for Augustine,
an enthusiastic appreciation of the church doctrine and the
philosophy which are approved and enjoined by this great Father.
He had also a vein of genuine mysticism, and was distinguished
for warm and deep piety. He was the first to give the papal
hierarchical system of Gregory and Innocent a regular place
in dogmatics. His _Summa philosophiæ contra Gentiles_, is a
Christian philosophy of religion, of which the first three books
treat of those religious truths which human reason of itself may
recognise, while the fourth book treats of those which, because
transcending reason though not contrary to it, _i.e._ doctrines
of the incarnation and the trinity, can be known only by Divine
revelation. He wrote two books of commentaries on the Lombard.
By far the most important work of the Middle Ages is his _Summa
theologica_, in three vols., in which he gives ample space to
ethical questions. His polemic against the Greeks is found in
the section in which he defines and proves the primacy of the
pope, basing his arguments on ancient and modern fictions and
forgeries (§ 96, 23), which he, ignorant of Greek and deriving
his knowledge of antiquity wholly from Gratian’s decree, accepted
_bona fide_ as genuine. His chief exegetical work is the _Catena
aurea_ on the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, translated into
English by Dr. Pusey, in 8 vols., Oxf., 1841, ff. In commenting
on Aristotle Thomas, unlike Albert, neglected the treatises on
natural science in favour of those on politics.--The Dominican
order, proud of having in it the greatest philosopher and
theologian of the age, made the doctrine of Thomas in respect
of form and matter the authorized standard among all its members
(§ 113, 2), and branded every departure from it as a betrayal
not only of the order but also of the church and Christianity.
The other monkish orders, too, especially the Augustinians,
Cistercians, and Carmelites, recognised the authority of the
Angelical doctor. Only the Franciscans, moved by envy and
jealousy, ignored him and kept to Alexander and Bonaventura,
until the close of the century, when, in Duns Scotus (§ 113, 1),
they obtained a brilliant teacher within their own ranks, whom
they proudly thought would prove a fair rival in fame to the
great Dominican teacher.[306]
§ 103.7. =Reformers of the Scholastic Method.=--=Raimund Lull=,
a Catalonian nobleman of Majorca, born in A.D. 1234, roused
from a worldly life by visions, gave himself to fight for Christ
against the infidels with the weapons of the Spirit. Learning
Arabic from a Saracen slave, he passed through a full course of
scholastic training in theology and entered the Franciscan order.
Constrained in the prosecution of his mission to seek a simpler
method of proof than that afforded by scholasticism, he succeeded
by the help of visions in discovering one by which as he and
his followers, the Lullists, thought, the deepest truths of all
human sciences could be made plain to the untutored human reason.
He called it the _Ars Magna_, and devoted his whole life to its
elaboration in theory and practice. Representing fundamental
ideas and their relations to the objects of thought by letters
and figures, he drew conclusions from their various combinations.
In his missionary travels in North Africa (§ 93, 16) he used his
art in his disputations with the Saracen scholars, and died in
A.D. 1315 in consequence of ill treatment received there, in
his 81st year. Of his writings in Latin, Catalonian, and Arabic,
numbering it is said more than a thousand, 282 were known in
A.D. 1721 to Salzinger of Mainz, but only 45 were included in
his edition of the collected works.
§ 103.8. =Roger Bacon=, an English monk, contemporary with
Lull, worked out his reform in a sounder manner by going back
to the original sources and thus obtaining deliverance from
the accumulated errors of later times. He appealed on matters
of natural science not to corrupt translations but to the
original works of Aristotle, and on matters of theology, not
to the Lombard but to the Greek New Testament. He prosecuted
his studies laboriously in mathematics and the Greek language.
Roger was called by his friends _Doctor mirabilis_ or _profundus_.
He was a prodigy of learning for his age, more in the department
of physics than in those of philosophy and theology. He was
regarded, however, by his own order as a heretic, and imprisoned
as a trafficker in the black arts. Born in A.D. 1214 at Ilchester,
he took his degree of doctor of theology at Paris, entered
the Franciscan order, and became a resident at Oxford. Besides
diligent study of languages, which secured him perfect command
of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, he busied himself with
researches and experiments in physics (especially optics),
chemistry, and astronomy. He made several important discoveries,
_e.g._ the principle of refraction, magnifying glasses, the
defects of the calendar, etc., while he also succeeded in making
a combustible material which may be regarded as the precursor
of gunpowder. He maintained the possibility of ships and land
vehicles being propelled most rapidly without sails, and without
the labour of men or animals. Yet he was a child of his age, and
believed in the philosopher’s stone, in astrology, and alchemy.
Thoroughly convinced of the defects of scholasticism, he spoke
of Albert the Great and Aquinas as boys who taught before they
learnt, and especially reproached them with their ignorance
of Greek. With an amount of brag that smacks of the empiric
he professed to be able to teach Hebrew in three days and Greek
in the same time, and to give a full course of geometry in seven
days. With fearless severity he lashed the corruptions of the
clergy and the monks. Only one among his companions seems to
have regarded Roger, notwithstanding all his faults, as a truly
great man. That was Clement IV. who, as papal legate in England,
had made his acquaintance, and as pope liberated him from
prison. To him Roger dedicated his _Opus majus s. de emendandis
scientiis_. At a later period the general of the Franciscan order,
with the approval of Nicholas IV., had him again cast into prison,
and only after that pope’s death was he liberated through the
intercession of his friends. He died soon after in A.D. 1291.[307]
§ 103.9. =Theologians of a Biblical and Practical Tendency.=
1. =Cæsarius of Heisterbach= near Bonn was a monk, then prior
and master of the novices of the Cistercian monastery there.
He died in A.D. 1230. His _Dialogus magnus visionum et
miraculorum_ in 12 bks., one of the best specimens of the
finest culture and learning of the Middle Ages, in the
form of conversation with the novices, gives an admirable
and complete sketch of the morals and manners of the times
illustrated from the history and legends of the monks,
clergy, and people.
2. His younger contemporary the Dominican =William Peraldus=
(Perault), in his _Summa virtutum_ and _Summa vitiorum_,
presents a summary of ethics with illustrations from life
in France. He died about A.D. 1250, as bishop of Lyons.
3. =Hugo of St. Caro= (St. Cher, a suburb of Vienne),
a Dominican and cardinal who died in A.D. 1263, gives
evidence of careful Bible study in his _Postilla in univ.
Biblia juxta quadrupl. sensum_ (a commentary accompanying
the text) and his _Concordantiæ Bibliorum_ (on the Vulgate).
To him we are indebted for our division of the Scriptures
into chapters. At the request of his order he undertook a
correction of the Vulgate from the old MSS.
4. =Robert of Sorbon= in Champagne, who died in A.D. 1274, was
confessor of St. Louis and teacher of theology at Paris. He
urged upon his pupils the duty of careful study of the Bible.
In A.D. 1250 he founded the Sorbonne at Paris, originally
a seminary for the education and support of the poorer
clergy who aspired to the highest attainments in theology.
Its fame became so great that it rose to the rank of a full
theological faculty, and down to its overthrow in the French
Revolution it continued to be the highest tribunal in France
for all matters pertaining to religion and the church.
5. =Raimund Martini=, Dominican at Barcelona, who died after
A.D. 1284, was unweariedly engaged in the conversion of Jews
and Mohammedans. He spoke Hebrew and Arabic as fluently as
Latin, and wrote _Pugio fidei contra Mauros et Judæos_.[308]
§ 103.10. =Precursors of the German Speculative Mystics.=--=David
of Augsburg=, teacher of theology and master of the novices in
the Franciscan monastery at Augsburg, deserves to be named first,
as one who largely anticipated the style of speculative mysticism
that flourished in the following century (§ 114). His writings,
partly in Latin, partly in German, are merely ascetic directories
and treatises of a contemplative mystical order, distinguished
by deep spirituality and earnest, humble piety. The German works
especially are models of a beautiful rhythmical style, worthy of
ranking with the finest creations of any century. He is author
of the important tract, _De hæresi pauperum de Lugduno_, in which
the pious mystic shows himself in the less pleasing guise of a
relentless inquisitor and heresy hunter.--A brilliant and skilful
allegory, =The Daughter of Zion=, the human soul, who, having
become a daughter of Babylon, went forth to see the heavenly
King, and under the guidance of the virgins Faith, Hope, Love,
Wisdom, and Prayer attained unto this end, was first written in
Latin prose; but afterwards towards the close of the 13th century
a free rendering of it in more than 4,000 verses was published
by the Franciscan Lamprecht of Regensburg. Its mysticism is like
that of St. Bernard and Hugo St. Victor.--In speculative power
and originality the Dominican =Theodorich of Freiburg=, _Meister
Dietrich_, a pupil of Albert the Great, far excelled all the
mystics of this century. About A.D. 1280 he was reader at Treves,
afterwards prior at Würzburg, took his master’s degree and taught
at Paris, A.D. 1285-1289. About A.D. 1320, however, along with
Meister Eckhart (§ 114, 1), he fell under suspicion of heresy,
and nothing further is known of him. Among his still unpublished
writings, mostly on natural and religious philosophy, the most
important is the book _De beatifica visione Dei per essentiam_,
which marks him out as a precursor of the Eckhart speculation.--On
Female Mystics, see § 107.
IV. The Church and the People.
§ 104. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND ART.
Public worship had for a long time been popularly regarded as
a performance fraught with magical power. The ignorant character of
the priests led to frequent setting aside of preaching as something
unessential, so that the service became purely liturgical. But now
popes and synods urged the importance of rearing a race of learned
priests, and the carefully prepared and eloquent sermons of Franciscans
and Dominicans found great acceptance with the people. The Schoolmen
gave to the doctrine of the sacraments its scientific form. The
veneration of saints, relics, and images became more and more the
central point of worship. Besides ecclesiastical architecture, which
reached its highest development in the 13th century, the other arts
began to be laid under contribution to beautify the ceremonial, the
dresses of the celebrants, and the inner parts of the buildings.
§ 104.1. =The Liturgy and the Sermon.=--The Roman =Liturgy= was
universally adopted except in Spain. When it was proposed at
the Synod of Toledo in A.D. 1088 to set aside the old Mozarabic
liturgy (§ 88, 1), the people rose against the proposal, and the
ordeals of combat and fire decided in favour of retaining the
old service. From that time both liturgies were used side by
side. The Slavic ritual was abandoned in Moravia and Bohemia
in the 10th century. The language of the church services
everywhere was and continued to be the Latin. The quickening
of the monkish orders in the 11th century, especially the
Cluniacs and Cistercians, but more particularly the rise of
the Franciscans and Dominicans in the 13th century, gave a great
impulse to preaching. Almost all the great monks and schoolmen
were popular preachers. The crowds that flocked around them
as they preached in the vernacular were enormous. Even in the
regular services the preaching was generally in the language
of the people, but quotations from Scripture and the Fathers,
as a mark of respect, were made in Latin and then translated.
Sermons addressed to the clergy and before academic audiences
were always in Latin.--As a preacher of repentance and of the
crusades, Fulco of Neuilly, † A.D. 1202, regarded by the people
as a saint and a miracle worker, had a wonderful reputation
(§ 94, 4). Of all mediæval preachers, however, none can be
compared for depth, spirituality, and popular eloquence with
the Franciscan =Berthold of Regensburg=, pupil and friend of
David of Augsburg (§ 103, 10), one of the most powerful preachers
in the German tongue that ever lived. He died in A.D. 1272. He
wandered from town to town preaching to crowds, often numbering
100,000 men, of the grace of God in Christ, against the abuse
of indulgences and false trust in saints, and the idea of the
meritoriousness of pilgrimages, etc. His sermons are of great
value as illustrations of the strength and richness of the old
German language. Roger Bacon too (§ 103, 8), usually so chary
of praise, eulogises _Frater Bertholdus Alemannus_ as a preacher
worth more than the two mendicant orders together.
§ 104.2. =Definition and Number of the Sacraments=
(§§ 58; 70, 2).--Radbert acknowledged only two: Baptism
including confirmation, and the Lord’s Supper. Rabanus Maurus
by separately enumerating the bread and the cup, and counting
confirmation as well as baptism, made four. Hugo St. Victor again
held them to be an indefinite number. But he distinguished three
kinds: those on which salvation depends, Baptism, Confirmation,
and the Supper; those not necessary and forming important aids
to salvation, sprinkling with holy water, confession, extreme
unction, marriage, etc.; those necessary for particular callings,
the ordination of priests, sacred vestments. Yet he prepared the
way for the final ecclesiastical conception of the sacraments,
by placing its _Elementa Corporalia_ under the threefold
category as _divinam gratiam ex similitudine repræsentantia_,
_ex institutione significantia_, and _ex consecratione
continentia_. Peter the Lombard took practically the same
view, but fixed the number of the Sacraments at seven: Baptism,
Confirmation (§ 35, 4), the Supper, Penance, Extreme Unction,
Marriage, and Ordination (§ 45, 1). This number was first
officially sanctioned by the Florentine Council of A.D. 1439
(§ 67, 6). Alexander of Hales gave a special rank to Baptism
and the Supper, as alone instituted by Christ, while Aquinas
gave this rank to all the seven. All the ecclesiastical
consecrations and benedictions were distinguished from the
sacraments as _Sacramentalia_.--The Schoolmen distinguished
the sacraments of the O.T., as _ex opera operante_, _i.e._
efficacious only through faith in a coming Redeemer, from
the sacraments of the N.T. as _ex opera operato_, _i.e._ as
efficacious by mere receiving without the exercise of positive
faith on the part of all who had not committed a mortal sin.
Against old sectaries (§§ 41, 3; 63, 1) and new (§§ 108, 7, 12)
the scholastic divines maintained that even unworthy and
unbelieving priests could validly dispense the sacraments,
if only there was the _intentio_ to administer it in the form
prescribed by the church.[309]
§ 104.3. =The Sacrament of the Altar.=--At the fourth Lateran
Council of A.D. 1215 the doctrine of Transubstantiation was
finally accepted (§ 101, 2). The fear lest any of the blood
of the Lord should be spilt led to the withholding from the
12th century of the cup from the laity, and its being given
only to the priests. If not the cause, then the consequence,
of this was that the priests were regarded as the only full and
perfect partakers of the Lord’s table. Kings at their coronation
and at the approach of death were sometimes by special favour
allowed to partake of the cup. The withdrawal of the cup from
the laity was dogmatically justified, specially by Alex. of
Hales, by the doctrine of _concomitantia_, _i.e._ that in the
body the blood was contained. Fear of losing any fragment also
led to the substitution of wafers, _the host_, for the bread
that should be broken.--A consecrated host is kept in the
_Tabernaculum_, a niche in the wall on the right of the high
altar, in the so-called _liburium_ or _Sanctissimum_, _i.e._
a gold or silver casket, often ornamented with rich jewels. It
is taken forth, touched only by the priests, and exhibited to
the kneeling people during the service and in solemn processions.
§ 104.4. =Penance.=--Gratian’s decree (§ 99, 5) left it to
the individual believer’s decision whether the sinner could
be reconciled to God by heart penitence without confession. But
in accordance also with the teaching of the Lombard, confession
of mortal sins (Gal. v. 19 ff. and Cor. v. 9 f.), or, in case
that could not be, the desire at heart to make it, was declared
indispensable. The forgiveness of sins was still, however,
regarded as God’s exclusive prerogative, and the priest could
bind and loose only in regard to the fellowship of the church
and the enjoyment of the sacraments. Before him, however,
Hugo St. Victor had begun to transcend these limits; for he,
distinguishing between the guilt and the punishment of the
sinner, ascribed indeed to God alone the absolution from the
guilt of sin on the ground of sincere repentance, but ascribed
to the exercise of the priestly function, the absolution from the
punishment of eternal death, in accordance with Matthew xviii. 18
and John xx. 23. Richard St. Victor held that the punishment
of eternal death, which all mortal sins as well as venial sins
entail, can be commuted into temporal punishment by priestly
absolution, atoned for by penances imposed by the priests, _e.g._
prayers, fastings, alms, etc.; whereas without such satisfaction
they can be atoned for only by the pains of purgatory (§ 61, 4).
Innocent III., at the fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, had
the obligation of confession of all sins raised into a dogma,
and obliged all believers under threat of excommunication to
make confession at least once a year, as preparation for the
Easter communion. The Provincial Synod at Toulouse in A.D. 1229
(§ 109, 2) insisted on compulsory confession and communion three
times a year, at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The three
penitential requirements, enforced first by Hildebert of Tours,
and adopted by the Lombard, _Contritio cordis_, _Confessio oris_,
and _Satisfactio operis_ continued henceforth in force. But
Hugo’s and Richard’s theory of absolution displaced not only
that of the Lombard, but, by an extension of the sacerdotal
idea to the absolution of the sinner from guilt, led to the
introduction of a full-blown theory of indulgence (§ 106, 2).
As the ground of the scientific construction given it by the
Schoolmen of the 13th century, especially by Aquinas, the
Catholic Church doctrine of penance received its final shape
at the Council of Florence in A.D. 1439. Penance as the fourth
sacrament consists of hearty repentance, auricular confession,
and satisfaction; it takes form in the words of absolution,
_Ego te absolvo_; and it is efficacious for the forgiveness of
sins. Any breach of the secrecy of the confessional was visited
by the fourth Lateran Council with excommunication, deposition,
and lifelong confinement in a monastery. The exaction of a
confessional fee, especially at the Easter confession, appears
as an increment of the priest’s income in many mediæval documents.
Its prohibition by several councils was caused by its simoniacal
abuse. By the introduction of confessors, separate from the local
clergy, the custom fell more and more into disuse.
§ 104.5. =Extreme Unction.=--Although as early as A.D. 416
Innocent I. had described anointing of the sick with holy oil
(Mark vi. 13; Jas. v. 14) as a _Genus Sacramenti_ (§ 61, 3),
extreme unction as a sacrament made little progress till the
9th century. The Synod of Chalons in A.D. 813 calls it quite
generally a means of grace for the weak of soul and body. The
Lombard was the first to give it the fifth place among the seven
sacraments as _Unctio extrema_ and _Sacramentum exeuntium_,
ascribing to it _Peccatorum remissio et corporalis infirmitatio
alleviatus_. Original sin being atoned for by baptism, and actual
sins by penance, Albert the Great and Aquinas describe it as the
purifying from the _Reliquiæ peccatorum_ which even after baptism
and penance hinder the soul from entering into its perfect rest.
Bodily healing is only a secondary aim, and is given only if
thereby the primary end of spiritual healing is not hindered.
It was long debated whether, in case of recovery, it should be
repeated when death were found approaching, and it was at last
declared to be admissible. The Council of Trent defines _Extreme
Unction_ as _Sacr. pœnitentiæ totius vitæ consummativum_. The
form of its administration was finally determined to be the
anointing of eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands, as well as
(except in women) the feet and loins, with holy oil, consecrated
by the bishop on Maundy Thursday. Confession and communion
precede anointing. The three together constitute the _Viaticum_
of the soul in its last journey. After receiving extreme unction
recipients are forbidden again to touch the ground with their
bare feet or to have marital intercourse.
§ 104.6. =The Sacrament of Marriage= (§ 89, 4).--When marriage
came generally to be regarded as a sacrament in the proper sense,
the laws of marriage were reconstructed and the administration
of them committed to the church. It had long been insisted upon
by the church with ever-increasing decidedness, that the priestly
benediction must precede the marriage ceremonial, and that bridal
communion must accompany the civil action. Hence marriage had to
be performed in the immediate vicinity of a church, _ante ostium
ecclesiæ_. As another than the father often gave away the bride,
this position of sponsor was claimed by the church for the priest.
Marriage thus lost its civil character, and the priest came to
be regarded as performing it in his official capacity not in name
of the family, but in name of the church. Christian marriage in
the early times required only mutual consent of parties (§ 39, 1),
but the Council of Trent demanded a solemn agreement between
bride and bridegroom before the officiating priest and two or
three witnesses. In order to determine more exactly hindrances
to marriage (§ 61, 2) it was made a law at the second Lateran
Council in A.D. 1139, and confirmed at the fourth in A.D. 1215,
that the parties proposing to marry should be proclaimed in
church. To each part of the sacrament the _character indelibilis_
is ascribed, and so divorce was absolutely forbidden, even
in the case of adultery (in spite of Matt. v. 32 and xix. 9),
though _separatio a mensa et toro_ was allowed. Innocent III.
in A.D. 1215 reduced the prohibited degrees from the seventh
to the fourth in the line of blood relationship (§ 61, 2).
§ 104.7. =New Festivals.=--The worship of Mary (§ 57, 2)
received an impulse from the institution of the Feast of the
Birth of Mary on 8th of September. To this was added in the
south of France in the 12th century, the Feast of the =Immaculate
Conception= on the 8th December. Radbert (§ 91, 4) by his
doctrine of _Sanctificatio in utero_ gave basis to the theory
of the Virgin’s freedom from original sin in her conception
and bearing. Anselm of Canterbury, however, taught in _Cur Deus
Homo?_ ii. 16, that Mary was conceived and born in sin, and that
she like all others had sinned in Adam. Certain canons of Lyons,
in A.D. 1140, revived Radbert’s theory, but raised the _Sanctif.
in utero_ into the _Immaculata conceptio_. St. Bernard protested
against the doctrine and the festival; sinless conception is a
prerogative of the Redeemer alone. Mary like us all was conceived
in sin, but was sanctified before the birth by Divine power,
so that her whole life was faultless; if one imagines that Mary’s
sinless conception of her Son had her own sinless conception
as a necessary presupposition, this would need to be carried
back _ad infinitum_, and to festivals of Immaculate Conceptions
there would be no end. This view of a _Sanctificatio in utero_,
with repudiation of the _Conceptio immaculata_, was also
maintained by Alex. of Hales, Bonaventura, Albert the Great,
and Aquinas. The feast of the Conception, with the predicate
“immaculate” dropped, gradually came to be universally observed.
The Franciscans adopted it in this limited sense at Pisa, in
A.D. 1263, but when, beginning with Duns Scotus (§§ 113, 112),
the doctrine of the immaculate conception came to be regarded
as a distinctive dogma of the order, the Dominicans felt
called upon to offer it their most strenuous opposition.[310]
(Continuation, § 112, 4.)--To the feast of All Saints, on
1st November, the Cluniacs added in A.D. 998, the feast of
=All Souls= on 2nd November, for intercession of believers
on behalf of the salvation of souls in purgatory. In the
12th century the =Feast of the Trinity= was introduced on
the Sunday after Pentecost. Out of the transubstantiation
doctrine arose the =Corpus Christi Festival=, on the Thursday
after Trinity. A pious nun of Liège, Juliana, in A.D. 1261,
saw in a vision the full moon with a halo around it, and an
inward revelation interpreted this phenomenon to indicate that
the festal cycle of the church still wanted a festival in honour
of the eucharist. Urban IV. gave effect to this suggestion in
A.D. 1264, avowedly in consequence of the miracle of the mass
of Bolsena. A priest of Bolsena celebrating mass spilt a drop
of consecrated wine, which left a blood-red stain on the corporal
or pall (§ 60, 5), in the form of a host. The festival did not
come into favour till Clement V. renewed its institution at
the Council of Vienne, in A.D. 1311. The church, by order
of John XXIII. in A.D. 1316, celebrated it by a magnificent
procession, in which the _liburium_ was carried with all pomp.
§ 104.8. =The Veneration of Saints= (§ 88, 4).--The numerous
=Canonizations=, from the 12th century exclusively in the
hands of the popes, gave an impulse to saint worship. It was
the duty of _Advocatus diaboli_ to try to disprove the reports
of virtues and miracles attributed to candidates. The proofs
of holiness adduced were generally derived from thoroughly
fabulous sources. The introduction of the name of accepted
candidates into the canon of the mass gave rise to the term
canonization. =Beatification= was a lower degree of honour,
often a preliminary to canonization at a later period. It
carried with it the veneration not of the whole church, but
of particular churches or districts. The Dominican Jacobus
a Voragine, who died in A.D. 1298, in his _Legenda aurea_
afforded a pattern for numerous late legends of the saints.
A Parisian theologian who styled it _Legenda ferrea_, was
publicly expelled from his office. The =Veneration of Mary=,
to whom were rendered _Hyperdoulia_ in contradistinction from
the _Doulia_ of the saints, not only among the people, but with
the most cultured theologians, publicly and privately, literally
and figuratively, in prose and poetry, was almost equal to the
worship rendered to God, and indeed often overshadowed it. The
angel’s salutation (Luke i. 28) was in every prayer. Its frequent
repetition led to the use of the _Rosary_, a rose wreath for the
most blessed of women. The great rosary attributed to St. Dominic
has fifteen decades, or 150 smaller pearls of Mary, each of which
represents an _Ave Maria_, and after every ten there is a greater
Paternoster pearl. The small or common rosary has only five
decades of beads of Mary with a Paternoster bead for each decade.
Thrice repeated it forms the so-called _Psalter of Mary_. The
first appearance of the rosary in devotion was with the monk
Macarius in the 4th century, who took 300 stones in his lap,
and after every Paternoster threw one away. The rosary devotion
is also practised by Moslems and Buddhists. In cloisters,
Saturday was usually dedicated to the Mother of God, and
was begun by a special _Officium S. Mariæ_. May was called
the month of Mary.--In the 11th century no further trace is
found of the Frankish opposition to =Image Worship= (§ 92, 1).
But this in no way hindered the growth of =Relic Worship=.
Returning crusaders showered on the West innumerable relics,
which notwithstanding many sceptics were received generally
with superstitious reverence. Castles and estates were
often bartered for pretended relics of a distinguished
saint, and such treasures were frequently stolen at the
risk of life. No story of a trafficker in relics was too
absurd to be believed.--=Pilgrimages=, especially to Rome
and Palestine, were no less in esteem among the Western
Christians of the 10th century during the Roman pornocracy
(§ 96, 1) or the tyranny of the Seljuk dynasty in Palestine
(§ 94). The expectation of the approaching end of the world,
rather gave them an impulse during this century, which reached
its fullest expression in the crusades.--Continuation, § 115, 9.
§ 104.9. The earliest trace of a commemoration of =St. Ursula
and her 11,000 Virgins= is met with in the 10th century.
Excavations in the _Ager Ursulanus_ near Cologne in A.D. 1155
led to the discovery of some thousand skeletons, several of
them being those of males, with inscribed tablets, one of the
fictitious inscriptions referring to an otherwise unknown pope
Cyriæus. St. Elizabeth of Schönau (§ 107, 1) at the same time
had visions in which the Virgin gave her authentic account of
their lives. Ursula, the fair daughter of a British king of
the 3rd century, was to have married a pagan prince; she craved
three years’ reprieve and got from her father eleven ships, each
with an equipment of a thousand virgins, with which she sailed
up the Rhine to Basel, and thence with her companions travelled
on foot a pilgrimage to Rome. On her return, in accordance with
the Divine instruction, Pope Cyriæus accompanied her, whose
name was on this account struck out of the list by the offended
cardinals; for as Martinus Polonus says, _Credebant plerique
eum non propter devotionem sed propter obtectamenta virginum
papatum dimississe_. Near Cologne they met the army of the Huns,
by whom they were all massacred, at last even Ursula herself
on her persistent refusal to marry the barbaric chief.--In
the absence of any historical foundations for this legend,
an explanation has been attempted by identifying Ursula with
a goddess of the German mythology. An older suggestion is
that perhaps an ancient inscription may have given rise to
the legend.[311]
§ 104.10. =Hymnology.=--The Augustan age of scholasticism
was that also of the composition of Latin hymns and sequences
(§ 88, 2). The most distinguished sacred poets were Odo of
Clugny, king Robert of France (_Veni, sancte Spiritus, et
emitte_), Damiani, Abælard, Hildebert of Tours, St. Bernard,
Adam of St. Victor,[312] Bonaventura, Aquinas, the Franciscan
Thomas of Celano, A.D. 126O (_Dies iræ_), and Jacopone da Todi,
† A.D. 1306 (_Stabat mater dolorosa_). The latter, an eccentric
enthusiast and miracle-working saint, called himself “_Stultus
propter Christum_.” Originally a wealthy advocate, living a life
of revel and riot, he was led by the sudden death of his young
wife to forsake the world. He courted the world’s scorn in the
most literal manner, appearing in the public market bridled like
a beast of burden and creeping on all fours, and at another time
appearing naked, tarred and feathered at the marriage of a niece.
But he glowed with fervent love for the Crucified and a fanatical
veneration for the blessed Virgin. He also fearlessly raised his
voice against the corruption of the clergy and the papacy, and
vigorously denounced the ambition of Boniface VIII. For this he
was imprisoned and fed on bread and water. When tauntingly asked,
“When wilt thou come out?” he answered in words that were soon
fulfilled, “So soon as thou shall come down.” =Sacred Poetry= in
the vernacular was used only in extra-ecclesiastical devotions.
The oldest German Easter hymn belongs to the 12th century.[313]
The Minnesingers of the 13th century composed popular songs
of a religious character, especially in praise of Mary; there
were also sacred songs for travellers, sailors, soldiers, etc.
Heretics separated from the church and its services spread their
views by means of hymns. St. Francis wrote Italian hymns, and
among his disciples Fra Pacifico, Bonaventura, Thomas of Celano,
and Jacopone followed worthily in his footsteps.
§ 104.11. =Church Music= (§ 88, 2).--The Gregorian _Cantus
firmus_ soon fell into disfavour and disuetude. The rarity,
costliness, and corruption of the antiphonaries, the difficulty
of their notation and of their musical system, and the want of
accurately trained singers, combined to bring this about. Singers
too had often made arbitrary alterations. Hence alongside of the
_Cantus firmus_ there gradually grew up a _Discantus_ or _Cantus
figuratus_, and instead of singing in unison, singing in harmony
was introduced. Rules of harmony, concord, and intervals were
now elaborated by the monk Hucbald of Rheims about A.D. 900,
while the German monk Reginus about A.D. 920 and the abbot Opo
of Clugny did much for the theory and practice of music. In place
of the intricate Gregorian notation the Tuscan Benedictine Guido
of Arezzo, A.D. 1000-1050, introduced the notation that is still
used, which made it possible to write the harmony along with
the melody, counterpoint, _i.e._ _punctum contra punctum_. The
discoverer of the measure of the notes was Franco of Cologne
about A.D. 1200. The organ was commonly used in churches. The
Germans were the greatest masters in its construction and in
the playing of it.--Continuation, § 115, 8.
§ 104.12. =Ecclesiastical Architecture.=--Church building, which
the barbarism of the 10th century, and the widespread expectation
of the coming end of the world had restrained, flourished during
the 11th century in an extraordinary manner. The endeavour to
infuse the German spirit into the ancient style of architecture
gave rise to the =Romance Style of Architecture=, which prevailed
during the 12th century. It was based upon the structure of
the old basilicas, the most important innovation being the
introduction of the vaulted in place of the flat wooden roof,
which made the interior lighter and heightened the perspective
effect. The symbolical and fanciful ornamentation was also richly
developed by figures from the plants and animals of Germany, from
native legends. Towers were also added as fingers pointing upward,
sometimes over the entrance to the middle aisle or at both sides
of the entrance, sometimes over the point where the nave and
transepts intersected one another, or on both sides of the choir.
The finest specimens of this style were the cathedrals of Spires,
Mainz, and Worms. But alongside of this appeared the beginnings
of the so-called =Gothic Architecture=, which reached its height
in the 13th and 14th centuries. Here the German ideas shook
themselves free from the bondage of the old basilica style.
Retaining the early ground plan, its pointed arch admitted
of development in breadth and height to any extent. The pointed
arch was first learnt from the Saracens, but its application to
the Gothic architecture was quite original, because it was not as
with the Saracens decorative, but constructive. The blank walls
were changed into supporting pillars, and became a magnificent
framework for the display of ingenious window architecture. A
rich stone structure rose upon the cruciform ground plan, and
the powerful arches towered up into airy heights. Tall tapering
pillars symbolized the heavenward strivings of the soul. The
rose window over the portal as the symbol of silence teaches that
nothing worldly has a voice there. The gigantic peaked windows
send through their beautifully painted glass a richly coloured
light full on the vast area. Everything in the structure points
upward, and this symbolism is finally expressed in the lofty
towers, which lose themselves in giddy heights. The victory over
the kingdom of darkness is depicted in the repulsive reptiles,
demonic forms, and dragon shapes which are made to bear up the
pillars and posts, and to serve as water carriers. The wit of
artists has made even bishops and popes perform these menial
offices, just as Dante condemned many popes to the infernal
regions.[314]
§ 104.13. The most famous architects were Benedictines. The
master builder along with the scholars trained by him formed
independent corporations, free from any other jurisdiction.
They therefore called themselves “=Free Masons=,” and erected
“=Lodges=,” where they met for consultation and discussion. From
the 13th century these lodges fell more and more into the hands
of the laity, and became training schools of architecture. To
them we are largely indebted for the development of the Gothic
style. Their most celebrated works are the Cologne cathedral
and the Strassburg minster. The foundation of the former was
laid under Archbishop Conrad of Hochsteden in A.D. 1248; the
choir was completed and consecrated in A.D. 1322 (§ 174, 9).
Erwin of Steinbach began the building of the Strassburg minster
in A.D. 1275.
§ 104.14. =Statuary and Painting.=--Under the Hohenstaufens
=statuary=, which had been disallowed by the ancient church,
rose into favour. Its first great master in Italy was Nicola
Pisano, who died in A.D. 1274. Earlier indeed a statuary school
had been formed in Saxony, of which no names but great works
have come down to us. The goldsmith’s craft and metallurgy were
brought into the service of the church by the German artists,
and show not only wonderful technical skill, but also high
attainment in ideal art. In =Painting= the Byzantines taught
the Italians, and these again the Germans. At the beginning
of the 13th century there was a school of painting at Pisa and
Siena, claiming St. Luke as its patron, and seeking to impart
more life and warmth to the stiff figures of the Byzantines.
Their greatest masters were Guido of Siena and Giunta of Pisa,
and the Florentine Cimabue, † A.D. 1300. Mosaic painting mostly
on a golden ground was in favour in Italy. Painting on glass
is first met with in the beginning of the 11th century in the
monastery of Tegernsee in Bavaria, and soon spread over Germany
and all over Europe.[315]--Continuation, § 115, 13.
§ 105. NATIONAL CUSTOMS AND THE NATIONAL LITERATURE.
It was an age full of the most wonderful contradictions and
anomalies in the life of the people, but every phenomenon bore
the character of unquestionable power, and the church applied the
artificer’s chisel to the unhewn marble block. In club law the most
brutal violence prevailed, but bowed itself willingly or unwillingly
before the might of an idea. The basest sensuality existed alongside
of the most simple self-denial and renunciation of the world, the most
wonderful displays of self-forgetting love. The most sacred solemnities
were parodied, and then men turned in awful earnest to manifest the
profoundest anxiety for their soul’s salvation. Alongside of unmeasured
superstition we meet with the boldest freethinking, and out of the
midst of widespread ignorance and want of culture there radiated forth
great thoughts, profound conceptions, and suggestive anticipations.
§ 105.1. =Knighthood and the Peace of God.=--Notwithstanding
its rude violence there was a deep religious undertone in
knighthood, which came out in Spain in the war with the Saracens,
and throughout Europe in the crusades. What princes could not do
to check savagery was to some extent accomplished by the church
by means of the injunction of the Peace of God. In A.D. 1034
the severity of famine in France led to acts of cannibalism
and murder, which the bishops and synods severely punished. In
A.D. 1041 the bishops of Southern France enjoined the Peace of
God, according to which under threat of anathema all feuds were
to be suspended from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, as the
days of the ascension, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
At a later council at Narbonne in A.D. 1054, Advent to Epiphany,
Lent to eight days after Easter, from the Sunday before Ascension
to the end of the week of Pentecost, as well as the ember days
and the festivals of Mary and the Apostles, were added. Even on
other days, churches, cloisters, hospitals, and churchyards, as
well as priests, monks, pilgrims, merchants, and agriculturists,
in short, all unarmed men, and, by the Council of Clermont,
A.D. 1095, even all crusaders, were included in the peace of
God. Its healthful influence was felt even outside of France,
and at the 3rd Lateran Council in A.D. 1179 Alexander III. raised
it to the rank of a universally applicable law of the church.
§ 105.2. =Popular Customs.=--Superstition resting on old
paganism introduced a Christian mythology. In almost all
the popular legends the devil bore a leading part, and he
was generally represented as a dupe who was cheated out of
his bargain in the end. The most sacred things were made the
subjects of blasphemous parodies. On =Fool’s Festival= on New
Year’s day in France, mock popes, bishops, and abbots were
introduced and all the holy actions mimicked in a blasphemous
manner. Of a similar nature was the _Festum innocentum_ (§ 57, 1)
enacted by schoolboys at Christmas. Also at Christmas time the
so-called =Feast of Asses= was celebrated. At Rouen dramatic
representation of the prophecies of Christ’s birth were given;
at Beauvais, the flight into Egypt. This relic of pagan license
was opposed by the bishops, but encouraged by the lower clergy.
After bishops and councils succeeded in banishing these fooleries
from consecrated places they soon ceased to be celebrated. Under
the name of =Calends=, because their gatherings were on the
Calends of each month, brotherhoods composed of clerical and
lay members sprang up in the beginning of the 13th century
throughout Germany and France, devoting themselves to prayer
and saying masses for living and deceased members and relatives.
This pious purpose was indeed soon forgotten, and the meetings
degenerated into riotous carousings.
§ 105.3. =Two Royal Saints.=--=St. Elizabeth=, daughter of
Andrew II. of Hungary, married in her 14th year to St. Louis IV.,
Landgrave of Thuringia, was made a widow in her 20th year
by the death of her husband in the crusade of Frederick II.
in A.D. 1227, and thereafter suffered many privations at the
hand of her brother-in-law. Her father confessor inspired her
with a fanatical spirit of self denial. She assumed in Marburg
the garb of the Franciscan nuns, took the three vows, and retired
into a house of mercy, where she submitted to be scourged by
her confessor. There she died in her 24th year in A.D. 1231.
Her remains are credited with the performance of many miracles.
She was canonized by Gregory IX., in A.D. 1235, and in the
14th century the order of Elizabethan nuns was instituted for
ministering to the poor and sick.[316]--=St. Hedwig=, aunt of
Elizabeth, married Henry duke of Silesia, in her 12th year.
After discharging her duties of wife, mother, and princess
faithfully, she took along with her husband the vow of chastity,
and out of the sale of her bridal ornaments built a nunnery at
Trebnitz, where she died in A.D. 1243 in her 69th year. Canonized
in A.D. 1268, her remains were deposited in the convent church,
which became on that account a favourite resort of pilgrims.
§ 105.4. =Evidences of Sainthood.=
1. =Stigmatization.= Soon after St. Francis’ death in A.D. 1226,
the legend spread that two years before, during a forty days’
fast in the Apennines, a six-winged seraph imprinted on his
body the nail prints of the wounded Saviour. The saint’s
humility, it was said, prevented him speaking of the miracle
except to those in closest terms of intimacy. The papal bull
canonizing the saint, however, issued in A.D. 1228, knows
nothing of this wonderful occurrence. What was then told of
the great saint was subsequently ascribed to about 100 other
ascetics, male and female. Some sceptical critics attributed
the phenomenon to an impressionable temperament, others
again accounted for all such stories by assuming that they
were purely fabulous, or that the marks had been deceitfully
made with human hands. Undoubtedly St. Francis had made
those wounds upon his own body. That pain should have been
felt on certain occasions in the wounds may be accounted for,
especially in the case of females, who constituted the great
majority of stigmatized individuals, on pathological grounds.
2. =Bilocation.= The Catholic Church Lexicon, published in
A.D. 1882 (II. 840), maintains that it is a fact universally
believed that saints often appeared at the same time at
places widely removed from one another. Examples are given
from the lives of Anthony of Padua, Francis Xavier, Liguori,
etc. This is explained by the supposition that either God
gives this power to the saint or sends angels to assume his
form in different places.
§ 105.5. =Religious Culture of the People.=--Unsuccessful
attempts were made by the Hohenstaufens to institute a public
school system and compulsory education. Waldensians and such
like (§ 108) obtained favour by spreading instruction through
vernacular preaching, reading, and singing. The Dominicans took
a hint from this. The Council of Toulouse, A.D. 1229 (§ 109, 2),
forbade laymen to read the Scriptures, even the Psalter and
Breviary, in the vulgar tongue. Summaries of the Scripture
history were allowed. Of this sort was the =Rhyming Bible=
in Dutch by Jacob of Maërlant, † A.D. 1291, which gives in
rhyme the O.T. history, the Life of Jesus, and the history of
the Jews to the destruction of Jerusalem. In the 13th century
=Rhyming Legends= gave in the vernacular the substance of the
Latin Martyrologies. The oldest German example in 3 bks. by
an unknown author contains 100,000 rhyming lines, on Christ
and Mary, the Apostles and the saints in the order of the
church year. Still more effectively was information spread
among the people during the 11th and subsequent centuries
by the performance of =Sacred Plays=. From simple responsive
songs they were developed into regular dramas adapted to
the different festivals. Besides historical plays which were
called =Mysteries==_ministeria_ as representations of the
_Ministri eccl._, there were allegorical and moral plays called
=Moralities=, in which moral truths were personified under the
names of the virtues and vices. The numerous pictures, mosaics,
and reliefs upon the walls helped greatly to spread instruction
among the people.[317]
§ 105.6. =The National Literature= (§ 89, 3).--_Walter v. d.
Vogelweide_, † A.D. 1230, sang the praises of the Lord, the
Virgin, and the church, and lashed the clerical vices and
hierarchical pretensions of his age. The 12th century editor
of the pagan _Nibelungenlied_ gave it a slightly Christian
gloss. _Wolfram of Eschenbach_, however, a Christian poet
in the highest sense, gave to the pagan legend of Parcival
a thoroughly Christian character in the story of the Holy
Grail and the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur. His
antipodes as a purely secular poet was _Godfrey of Strassburg_,
whose Tristan and Isolt sets forth a thoroughly sensual picture
of carnal love; yet as the sequel of this we have a strongly
etherealized rhapsody on Divine love conceived quite in the
spirit of St. Francis.--The sprightly songs of the _Troubadours_
of Southern France were often the vehicle of heretical sentiments
and gave expression to bitter hatred of the Romish Babylon.[318]
§ 106. CHURCH DISCIPLINE, INDULGENCES, AND ASCETICISM.
The ban, directed against notorious individual sinners and foes
of the church, and the interdict, directed against a whole country,
were formidable weapons which rarely failed in accomplishing their
purpose. Their foolishly frequent use for political ends by the popes
of the 13th century was the first thing that weakened their influence.
The penitential discipline of the church, too (§ 104, 4), began to
lose its power, when outward works, such as alms, pilgrimages, and
especially money fines in the form of indulgences were prescribed as
substitutes for it. Various protests against prevailing laxity and
formality were made by the Benedictines and by new orders instituted
during the 11th century. Strict asceticism with self-laceration and
mortification was imposed in many cloisters, and many hermits won
high repute for holiness. The example and preaching of earnest monks
and recluses did much to produce a revival of religion and awaken
a penitential enthusiasm. Not satisfied with mortifying the body by
prolonging fasts and watchings, they wounded themselves with severe
scourgings and the wearing of sackcloth next the skin, and sometimes
also brazen coats of mail, heavy iron chains, girdles with pricks, etc.
§ 106.1. =Ban and Interdict.=--From the 9th century a
distinction was made between _Excommunicatio major_ and
_minor_. The latter, inflicted upon less serious offences
against the canon law, merely excluded from participation in
the sacrament. The former, called =Anathema=, directed against
hardened sinners with solemn denunciation and the church’s
curse, involved exclusion from all ecclesiastical communion
and even refusal of Christian burial. Zealots who slew such
excommunicated persons were declared by Urban II. not to be
murderers. Innocent III., at the 4th Lateran Council A.D. 1215,
had all civil rights withdrawn from excommunicates and their
goods confiscated. Rulers under the ban were deposed and
their subjects released from their oath of allegiance. Bishops
exercised the right of putting under ban within their dioceses,
and the popes over the whole church.--The =Interdict= was first
recognised as a church institution at the Synod of Limoges in
A.D. 1031. While it was in force against any country all bells
were silenced, liturgical services were held only with closed
doors, penance and the eucharist administered only to the dying,
none but priests, mendicant friars, strangers, and children
under two years of age received Christian burial, and no one
could be married. Rarely could the people endure this long. It
was therefore a terrible weapon in the hands of the popes, who
not infrequently exercised it effectually in their struggles
with the princes of the 12th and 13th centuries.
§ 106.2. =Indulgences.=--The old German principle of
composition (§ 89, 5), and the Gregorian doctrine of purgatory
(§ 61, 4), formed the bases on which was reared the ordinance
of indulgences. The theory of the monks of St. Victor of the
12th century regarding penitential satisfaction (§ 104, 4),
gave an impetus to the development of this institution of
the church. It copestone was laid in the 13th century by the
formulating of the doctrine of the superabundant merit of
Christ and the saints (_Thesaurus supererogationis Christi
et perfectorum_) by Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and
Aquinas. The members of the body of Christ could suffer and
serve one for another, and thus Aquinas thought the merits of
one might lessen the purgatorial pains of another. Innocent III.,
in A.D. 1215, allowed to bishops the right of limiting the pains
of purgatory to forty days, but claimed for the pope exclusively
the right of giving full indulgence (_Indulgentia plenaria_).
Clement VI. declared that the pope as entrusted with the keys
was alone the dispenser of the _Thesaurus supererogationis_.
Strictly indulgence was allowed only to the truly penitent,
as an aid to imperfect not a substitute for non-existent
satisfaction. This was generally ignored by preachers of
indulgences. This was specially the case in the times of the
crusaders. Popes also frequently gave indulgences to those who
simply visited certain shrines.
§ 106.3. =The Church Doctrine of the Hereafter.=--All who
had perfectly observed every requirement of the penances
and sacraments of the church to the close of their lives
had the gates of =Heaven= opened to them. All others passed
into the =Lower World= to suffer either positively=_sensus_,
inexpressible pains of fire, or negatively=_damnum_, loss of
the vision of God. There are four degrees corresponding to
four places of punishment. =Hell=, situated in the midst
of the earth, _abyssus_ (Rev. xx. 1), is place and state of
eternal punishment for all infidels, apostates, excommunicates,
and all who died in mortal sin. The next circle is the purifying
fire of =Purgatory=, or a place of temporary punishment positive
or negative for all believing Christians who did not in life
fully satisfy the three requirements of the sacrament of penance
(§ 104, 4). The =Limbus infantum= is a side chamber of purgatory,
where all unbaptized infants are kept for ever, only deprived
of blessedness in consequence of original sin. Then above this
is the =Limbus Patrum=, “Abraham’s bosom,” where the saints of
the Old Covenant await the second coming of Christ.
§ 106.4. =Flagellation.=--From the 8th century discipline was
often exercised by means of scourging, administered by the
confessor who prescribed it. In the 11th century voluntary
=Self-Flagellation= was frequently practised not only as
punishment for one’s own sin, but, after the pattern of Christ
and the martyrs, as atonement for sins of others. It originated
in Italy, had its great patron in Damiani (§ 97, 4), and was
earnestly commended by Bernard, Norbert, Francis, Dominic,
etc. It is reported of St. Dominic that he scourged himself
thrice every night, first for himself, and then for his living
companions, and then for the departed in purgatory. The zealous
Franciscan preachers were mainly instrumental in exerting an
enthusiasm for self-mortification among the people (§ 98, 4).
About A.D. 1225, Anthony of Padua attracted crowds who went
about publicly lashing themselves while singing psalms. Followers
of Joachim of Floris (§ 108, 5) as =Flagellants= rushed through
all Northern Italy in great numbers during A.D. 1260, preaching
the immediate approach of the end of the world.[319]
§ 107. FEMALE MYSTICS.
Practical mysticism which concerned itself only with the
salvation of the soul, had many representatives among the women of
the 12th and 13th centuries. Among them it was specially characterized
by the prevalence of ecstatic visions, often deteriorating into
manifestations of nervous affections which superstitious people
regarded as exhibitions of miraculous power. Examples are found
in all countries, but especially in the Netherlands, and the Rhine
provinces, in France, Alsace and Switzerland, in Saxony and Thuringia.
Those whose visions pointed to the inauguration of reforms are of
particular interest to us, as they often had a considerable influence
on the subsequent history of the church.
§ 107.1. =Two Rhenish Prophetesses of the 12th
Century.=--=St. Hildegard= was founder and abbess of a
cloister near Bingen on the Rhine, where she died in A.D. 1178
in her 74th year. Grieving over clerical and papal corruptions,
she had apocalyptic visions of the antichrist, and travelled
far and engaged in an extensive correspondence in appealing for
radical reforms. St. Bernard and pope Eugenius III. who visited
Treves in A.D. 1147 acknowledged her prophetic vocation, and
the people ascribed to her wonderful healing power.--Hildegard’s
younger contemporary was the like-minded =St. Elizabeth
of Schönau=, abbess of the neighbouring convent of Schönau,
who died in A.D. 1165. Her prophecies were mostly of the
apocalyptic-visionary order, and in them with still greater
severity she lashed the corruptions of the clergy. She also
gave currency to the legend of St. Ursula (§ 104, 9).
§ 107.2. =Three Thuringian Prophetesses of the
13th Century.=--=Mechthild of Magdeburg=, after thirty years
of Beguine life, wrote in a beautiful rhythmical style in German
her “Light of Deity,” setting forth the sweetness of God’s love,
the blessedness of glorified saints, the pains of purgatory and
hell, and denouncing with great moral earnestness the corruptions
of the clergy and the church, and depicting with a poet’s or
prophet’s power the coming of the last day. Influenced by the
apocalyptic views of Joachim of Floris (§ 108, 5), she also gives
expression to a genuinely German patriotism. With her it is a new
preaching order that leads to victory against antichrist, and the
founder of this order, who meets a martyr’s death in the conflict,
is a son of the Roman king. In contrast with Joachim, she thus
makes the German empire not a foe but the ally of the church.
Mechthild’s prophecies largely influenced Dante, and even
her name appears in that of his guide Matilda.--=Mechthild of
Hackeborn=, who died in A.D. 1310, in her _Speculum spiritualis
gratiæ_ published her visions of a reformatory and eschatological
prophetic order, more subjective and personal than those of the
former.--=Gertrude the Great=, who died in A.D. 1311, is more
decidedly a reformer than either of the Mechthilds or any other
woman of the Middle Ages. A diligent inquirer into the depths
of Scripture, she renounced the veneration usually shown to Mary,
the saints, and relics, repudiated all the ideas of her age
regarding merits, ceremonial exercises, and indulgences, and
in the exercise of simple faith trusted only to the grace of
God in Christ. She seems to belong to the 16th rather than to
the 13th century. Her visions, too, are more of a spiritual kind.
V. Heretical Opposition to Ecclesiastical Authority.
§ 108. THE PROTESTERS AGAINST THE CHURCH.
Mediæval endeavours after reform, partly proceeded from within the
church itself in attempts to restore apostolic purity and simplicity,
partly from without on the part of those who despaired of any good
coming out of the church, and who therefore warred bitterly against
it. Such attempts were often lost amid the vagaries of fanaticism and
heresy, which soon threatened the foundation of the social fabric, and
often came into collision with the State. Most widely spread and most
radical were the numerous dualistic sects of the Cathari. Montanist
fanaticism was revived in apocalyptic prophesyings. There were
also pantheistic sects, and among the Pasagians a sort of Ebionism
reappeared. Another group of sects originated through reformatory
endeavours of individual men, who perceiving the utter corruption
of the church of their day, sought salvation in a revolutionary
overthrow of all ecclesiastical institutions and repudiated often
the truth with the error which was the object of their hate. The only
protesting church of a thoroughly sensible evangelical sort was that
of the Waldensians.
§ 108.1. =The Cathari.=--Opposition to hierarchical pretensions
led to the spread of sects, especially in Northern Italy and
France, from the 11th century. Hidden remnants of Old Manichæan
sects got new courage and ventured into the light during the
period of the crusades. In France they were called Tisserands,
because mostly composed of weavers. In Italy they were called
Patareni or Paterini, either from the original meaning of
the word, rabble, riff-raff (§ 97, 5), or because they so
far adopted the attitude of the Pasaria of Milan, as to offer
lay opposition to the local clergy, or because of the frequent
use of the Paternoster. Of later origin are the names Publicani
and Bulgări, given as opprobrious designations to the Paulicians.
The most widely current name of Cathari, from early times a
favourite title assumed by rigorist sects (§ 41, 3), had its
origin in the East. In France they were called Albigensians,
from the province of Albigeois, which was their chief seat in
Southern France.--Of the =Writings of the Cathari= we possess
from the end of the 13th century a Provençal translation of the
N.T., free from all falsification in favour of their sectarian
views. Their tenets are to be learnt only from the polemical
writings of their opponents, Alanus ab Insulis (§ 102, 5), the
Dominican Joh. Moneta, about A.D. 1240, and Rainerius, Sacchoni,
Dominican and inquisitor, about A.D. 1250.
§ 108.2. Besides their opposition to the hierarchy, all these
sects had in common a dualistic basis to their theological
systems. They held in a more or less extreme form the following
doctrines: The good God who is proclaimed in the N.T. created
in the beginning the heavenly and invisible world, and peopled
it with souls clothed in ethereal bodies. The earthly world, on
the other hand, is the work of an evil spirit, who is held up
as object of worship in the O.T. Entering the heavenly world
he succeeded in seducing some of its inhabitants, whom he, when
defeated by the archangel Michael, took with him to earth, and
there imprisoned in earthly bodies, so as to make return to their
heavenly home impossible. Yet they are capable of redemption,
and may, on repentance and submission to purificatory ordinances,
be again freed from their earthly bonds and brought home again
to heaven. For this redemption the good God sent “the heavenly
man” Jesus (1 Cor. xv. 47) to earth in the appearance of man to
teach men their heavenly origin and the means of restoration.
The Cathari rejected the O.T., but accepted the N.T., which they
read in the vernacular. Marriage they regarded as a hindrance to
Christian perfection. They treated with contempt water baptism,
the Supper, and ordination, as well as all veneration of saints
and relics, and tolerated no images, crosses, or altars. Prayer,
abstinence, and baptism of the Spirit were regarded as the only
means of salvation. Preaching was next to prayer most prominent
in their public services. They also laid great stress upon
fasting, genuflection, and repetitions of stated formulæ,
especially the Lord’s Prayer. Their members were divided into
_Cregentz_ (_credentes_ or catechumens) and _Bos homes_ or
_Bos crestias_ (_boni homines, boni Christiani_=_perfecti_ or
_electi_). A lower order of the catechumens were the _Auditores_.
These were received as _Credentes_ after a longer period of
training amid various ceremonies and repetition of the Lord’s
prayer, etc. The order of the _Perfecti_ was entered by spiritual
baptism, the _Consolamentum_ or communication of the Holy Spirit
as the promised Comforter, without which no one can enjoy eternal
life. Even opponents such as St. Bernard admit that there was
great moral earnestness shown by some of them, and many met a
martyr’s death with true Christian heroism. Symptoms of decay
appeared in the spread among them of antinomian practices. This
moral deterioration showed itself as a radical part of this
system in the so-called =Luciferians= or devil worshippers,
whose dualism, like that of the Euchites and Bogomils (§ 71),
led to the adoption of two Sons of God. Lucifer the elder,
wrongly driven from heaven, is the creator and lord of this
earthly world, and hence alone worshipped in it. His expulsion
(Isa. xiv. 12) is carried out by the younger son, Michael, who
will, however, on this account, whenever Lucifer regains heaven,
be sent with all his company into eternal punishment. Of an
incarnation of God, even of a docetic kind, they know nothing.
They regarded Jesus as a false prophet who was crucified on
account of the evil he had done.--Catharist sects suspected
of Manichæan tendencies were discovered here and there during
the 11th century. In the following century their number had
increased enormously, and they spread over Lombardy and Southern
France, but were also found in Southern Italy, in Germany,
Belgium, Spain, and even in England. They had a pope residing
in Bulgaria, twelve magistri and seventy-two bishops, each with
a _Filius major_ and _minor_ at his side. In A.D. 1167 they
were able to muster an œcumenical Catharist Council at Toulouse.
Neither clemency nor severity could put them down. St. Bernard
prevailed most by the power of his love, and subsequently learned
Dominicans had more effect with their preaching and disputations.
They found abundant opportunity of displaying their hatred of
the papacy during the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.
In spite of terrible persecution, which reached its height in
the beginning of the 13th century in the Albigensian crusade
(§ 109, 1), remnants of them were found down into the 14th century.
§ 108.3. The small sect of the =Pasagians= in Lombardy during
the 12th century, protesting against the Manichæan depreciation
of the O.T. of the Catharists, adopted views of a somewhat
Ebionite character. With the exception of sacrifice, they
enforced all the old ceremonial observances, even circumcision,
and held an Arian or Ebionite theory of the Person of Christ.
Their name meaning “passage,” seems to refer to pilgrimages to
the Holy Land, and possibly from this a clue to their origin may
be obtained.
§ 108.4. =Pantheistic Heretics.=
1. =Amalrich of Bena= taught first philosophy, then theology,
at Paris in the end of the 12th century. In A.D. 1204
Innocent III. called him to account for his proposition,
Christian in sound, but probably pantheistically intended,
that no one could be saved who is not a member in Christ’s
body, and obliged him to retract. His death occurred soon
after, and some years later we find traces of a pantheistic
sect founded on the alleged doctrines of Amalrich vigorously
propagated by his disciple William the goldsmith. God had
previously appeared as Father incarnate in Abraham, and
as Son in Christ, and now henceforth as the Holy Spirit
in every believer, who therefore in the same sense as Christ
is God. As such, too, he is without sin, and what to others
would be sin is not so to him. In the age of the Son the
Mosaic law lost its validity, and in that of the Spirit,
the sacraments and services of the new covenant. God has
always been all in all. We find him in Ovid as well as in
Augustine, and the body of Christ is in common bread as well
as in the consecrated wafer on the altar. Saint worship is
idolatry. There is no resurrection; heaven and hell exist
only in the imagination of men. Rome is Babylon, and the
pope is antichrist; but to the king of France, after the
overthrow of antichrist, shall the kingdoms of the earth
be subject, etc. A synod at Paris in A.D. 1209 condemned
William and nine priests to be burnt, and four other priests
to imprisonment for life, and ordered that Amalrich’s
bones should be exhumed and scattered over an open field.
Regarding the physical works of Aristotle as the source of
this heresy, the council also prohibited all lectures upon
these (§ 103, 1). This was seen to be a mistake, and so
in A.D. 1225 Honorius III. fixed on the true culprit and
condemned the _De divisione naturæ_ of Erigena (§ 90, 6).
The penalties inflicted did not by any means lead to the
rooting out of the sect. During the whole 13th century it
continued to spread from Paris over all eastern France as
far as Alsace, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and in
the 14th century reached its highest development in the
pantheistic-libertine doctrines of the Brothers and Sisters
of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5). We never again meet with the
name of Amalrich, and the sects were never called after him.
2. =David of Dinant= at the same time with Amalrich taught
philosophy and theology in the University of Paris. He
also lived for a long while at the papal court in Rome,
high in favour with Innocent III. as a subtle dialectician.
The Synod of Paris of A.D. 1209, which passed judgment on
the Amalricians, pronounced David a heretic and ordered his
works to be burnt. He avoided personal punishment by flight.
The central point of his system was the assumption of a
single eternal substance without distinctions, from which
God, spirit (νοῦς), and matter (ὕλη) sprang as the three
principles of all later forms of existences (_corpora_,
_animæ_, and _substantiæ æternæ_). God is regarded as the
_primum efficiens_, matter as the _primum suscipiens_, and
spirit as the medium between the two. David’s scholars never
formed a sect and never had any connection apparently with
the followers of Amalrich.
3. =The Ortlibarians= were a sect condemned by Innocent III.,
followers of a certain Ortlieb of Strassburg about A.D. 1212.
They held the world to be without beginning. They looked
upon Jesus as the son of Joseph and Mary, sinless like all
other children, but raised to be son of God only through
illumination from the doctrines of their sect, which had
existed from the earliest times. They admitted the gospel
story of Christ’s life, sufferings, and resurrection, not,
however, in a literal but only in a moral and mystical
acceptation. The consecrated host was but common bread,
and in it was the body of the Lord. A Jew entering their
sect needed not to be baptized, and fellowship with them
was sufficient to secure salvation. There is no resurrection
of the flesh; man’s spirit alone is immortal. After the
last judgment, which will come when pope and emperor are
converted to their views and all opposition is overcome,
the world will last for ever, and men will be born and die
just as now. They professed a strictly ascetic life, and
many of them fasted every second day.
§ 108.5. =Apocalyptic Heretics.=--The Cistercian abbot =Joachim
of Floris=, who died in A.D. 1202, with his notions of the so
called “_Everlasting Gospel_,” as a reformer and as one inclined
to apocalyptic prophecy, followed in the footsteps of Hildegard
of Bingen and Elizabeth of Schönau (§ 107, 1). His prophetic
views spread among the Franciscans and were long unchallenged.
In A.D. 1254 the University of Paris, warning against the begging
monks (§ 103, 3), got Alexander IV. to condemn these views as set
forth in commentaries on Isaiah and Jeremiah ascribed to Joachim,
but now found to be spurious. Preger doubts but, Reuter maintains
the genuineness of the three tracts grouped under the title of
the _Evangelium æternum_. The main points in his theory seem
to have been these: There are three ages, that of the Father
in the O.T., of the Son in the N.T., and of the Holy Spirit in
the approaching fulness of the kingdom of God on earth. Of the
apostles, Peter is representative of the first age, Paul of the
second, and John of the third. They may also be characterized as
the age of the laity, the clergy, and the monks, and compared in
respect of light with the stars, the moon, and the sun. The first
six periods of the N.T. age are divided (after the pattern of
the forty-two generations of Matt. i. and the forty-two months
or 1260 days of Rev. xi. 2, 3) into forty-two shorter periods of
thirty years each, so that the sixth period closes with A.D. 1260,
and then shall dawn the Sabbath period of the New Covenant as the
age of the Holy Spirit. This will be preceded by a short reign
of antichrist as a punishment for the corruptions of the church
and clergy. By the labours of the monks, however, the church is
at last purified and brought forth triumphant, and the life of
holy contemplation becomes universal. The germs of antichrist
were evidently supposed to lie in the Hohenstaufen empire of
Frederick I. and Henry VI. The commentaries on Isaiah and
Jeremiah went so far as to point to the person of Frederick II.
as that of the antichrist.
§ 108.6. =Ghibelline Joachites= in Italy, mostly recruited
from the Franciscans, sided with the emperor against the pope
and adopted apocalyptic views to suit their politics, and
regarded the papacy as the precursor of antichrist. One of
their chiefs, Oliva, who died in A.D. 1297, wrote a _Postilla
super Apoc._, in which he denounced the Roman church of his
day as the Great Whore of Babylon, and his scholar Ubertino of
Casale saw in the beast that rose out of the sea (Rev. xiii.)
a prophetic picture of the papacy.--In Germany these views
spread among the Dominicans during the 13th century, especially
in Swabia. The movement was headed by one Arnold. who wrote an
_Epistola de correctione ecclesiæ_ about A.D. 1246. He finds in
Innocent IV. the antichrist and in Frederick II. the executioner
of the Divine judgment and the inauguration of the reformation.
Frederick’s death, which followed soon after in A.D. 1250, and
the catastrophe of A.D. 1268 (§ 96, 20), must have put an end
to the whole movement.
§ 108.7. =Revolutionary Reformers.=
1. The =Petrobrusians=, whose founder, =Peter of Bruys=,
was a pupil of Abælard and a priest in the south of France,
repudiated the outward or visible church and sought the
true or invisible church in the hearts of believers. He
insisted on the destruction of churches and sanctuaries
because God could be worshipped in a stable or tavern, burnt
crucifixes in the cooking stove, eagerly opposed celibacy,
mass, and infant baptism, and after a twenty years’ career
perished at the stake about A.D. 1126 at the hands of a
raging mob. One of Peter’s companions, =Henry of Lausanne=,
whose fiery eloquence had been influential in inciting to
reform, succeeded to the leadership of the Petrobrusians,
who from him were called =Henricians=. St. Bernard succeeded
in winning many of them back. Henry was condemned to
imprisonment for life, and died in A.D. 1149.
2. =Arnold of Brescia=, who died in A.D. 1155, a preacher
of great moral and religious earnestness, addressed himself
to attack the worldliness of the church and the papacy.
Except in maintaining that sacraments dispensed by unworthy
priests have no efficacy, he does not seem to have deviated
from the church doctrine. Officiating as reader in his
native town, his bishop complained of him as a heretic
to the second Lateran Council of A.D. 1139. His views
were condemned, and he himself was banished and enjoined
to observe perpetual silence. He now went to his teacher
Abælard in France. Here St. Bernard accused him at the synod
convened against Abælard at Sens in A.D. 1141 (§ 102, 2) as
“the armour-bearer” of this “Goliath-heretic,” and obtained
the condemnation of both. He was then excommunicated
by Innocent II. and imprisoned in a cloister. Arnold,
however, escaped to Switzerland, where he lived and taught
undisturbed in Zürich for some years, till Bishop Hermann
of Constance, at the instigation of the Saint of Clairvaux,
threatened him with imprisonment or exile. He was now taken
under the protection of Guido de Castella, Abælard’s friend
and patron, and accompanied him to Bohemia and Moravia.
On Guido’s elevation as Cœlestine II. to the papal chair
in A.D. 1143, Arnold returned to his native land. From
A.D. 1146 we find him in Rome at the head of the agitation
for political and ecclesiastical freedom. For further
details of his history, see § 96, 13, 14. A party of
so-called Arnoldists occupied itself long after his death
with the carrying out of his ecclesiastico-political ideal.
§ 108.8.
3. The so called =Pastorelles= were roused to revolution by
the miseries following the crusades. An impulse was given
to the sect by the news of the imprisonment of St. Louis
(§ 94, 6). A Cistercian =Magister Jacob= from Hungary
appeared in A.D. 1251 with the announcement that he had
seen the Mother of God, who gave him a letter calling upon
the pastors to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. Those who have
heard the Christmas message are called of God to undertake
the great work which neither the corrupt hierarchy nor the
proud, ambitious nobles were able to perform; but before
them, the poor shepherds, the sea will open a way, so that
they may hasten with dry feet to the release of king Louis.
His fanatical harangues soon gathered immense crowds of
common people around him, estimated at about 100,000 men.
But instead of going to the Holy Land, they first gave
vent to their wrath against the clergy, monks, and Jews
at home by murdering, plundering, and ill treating them
in all manner of ways. The queen-mother Blanca, favourable
at first, now used all her power against them. Jacob was
slain at Bourges, his troops scattered, and their leaders
executed.
4. In the =Apostolic Brothers= we have a blending of Arnoldist
and Joachist tendencies. Their founder, =Gerhard Segarelli=,
an artisan of Parma, was moved about A.D. 1260 by the sight
of a picture of the apostles in their poverty to go about
preaching repentance and calling on the church to return to
apostolic simplicity. He did not question the doctrine of
the church. Only when Honorius in A.D. 1286 and Nicholas IV.
in A.D. 1290 took measures against them did they openly
oppose the papacy and denounce the Roman church as the
apocalyptic Babylon. Segarelli was seized in A.D. 1294
and perished in the flames with many of his followers in
A.D. 1300. =Fra Dolcino=, a younger priest, now took the
leadership, and roused great enthusiasm by his preaching
against the Roman antichrist. He bravely held his ground
with 2,000 followers for two years in the recesses of the
mountains, but was reduced at last in A.D. 1307 by hunger,
and died like his predecessor at the stake. He distinguished
four stages in the historical development of the kingdom
of God on earth. The first two are those of the Father
and the Son in the O.T. and the N.T. The third begins
with Constantine’s establishment of the Christian empire,
advanced by the Benedictine rule and the reforms of the
Franciscans and Dominicans, but afterwards falling into
decay. The fourth era of complete restoration of the
apostolic life is inaugurated by Segarelli and Dolcino.
A new chief sent of God will rule the church in peace, and
the Holy Spirit will never leave the restored communion of
His saints. Remnants of the sect were long in existence in
France and Germany, where they united with the Fraticelli
and Beghards. Even in A.D. 1374 we find a synod at Narbonne
threatening them with the severest punishments.
§ 108.9. =Reforming Enthusiasts.=
1. A certain =Tanchelm= about A.D. 1115 preached in the
Netherlands against the corruptions of the church. He
claimed like honour with Christ as being assisted by the
same Spirit, is said to have betrothed himself to the
Virgin Mary, and to have been killed at last in A.D. 1124
by a priest.
2. A Frenchman, =Eon de Stella= of Brittany, hearing in
a church the words “_per =Eum= qui venturus est judicare
vivos et mortuos_,” and understanding it of his own name,
went through the country preaching, prophesying, and working
miracles. He secured many followers, and when persecuted,
fled to the woods. He denied the Divine institution of
the hierarchy, denounced the Roman church as false because
of the wicked lives of the priests, rejected the doctrine
of a resurrection of the body, denied that marriage was
a sacrament, and regarded the communication of the Spirit
by imposition of hands the only true baptism. In A.D. 1148
troops were sent against him, and he and many of his
followers were taken prisoners. His adherents were burnt,
but Eon was brought before a synod at Rheims, where he
answered the question of the pope Eugenius III., “Who art
thou?” by saying _Is qui venturus est_, etc. He was then
pronounced deranged and delivered over to the custody of
the archbishop.
§ 108.10. =The Waldensians.=
1. =Their Origin.=--A citizen of Lyons, named Valdez
(Valdesius, Waldus, the Christian name of Peter, given
to him first 120 years later, is quite unsupported), who
had become rich by the practice of usury, an occupation
condemned by the church, was about A.D. 1173 deeply
impressed by reading the legend of St. Alexius, and was
in his spiritual anxiety directed by a theologian to the
words of Christ to the rich young ruler in Matthew xix. 21.
Making over to his wife only his landed property, and
distributing all the rest of his possessions among the
poor, and then, for further instruction in regard to the
imitation of Christ required of him, having applied himself
to the study of the gospels, the Psalter, and other biblical
books, and a selection of classical passages translated for
his use by two friendly priests out of the writings of the
Fathers into the Romance dialect, he founded in A.D. 1177,
in company with certain men and women, who were prepared
like himself to abandon the world and all its goods,
a society for preaching the gospel among the people. In
accordance with the Lord’s command to the seventy disciples
(Luke x. 1-4), they went forth two and two in apostolic
costume, in woollen penitential garments, without staff
or scrip, their feet protected with merely wooden sandals
(_sabatas, sabots_), preaching repentance, and proclaiming
the gospel message of salvation throughout the land, in
order to bring back again among the people the Christian
life in its purity and simplicity. The Archbishop of
Lyons prohibited their preaching; but they referred to
Acts v. 29, and appealed, praying for a confirmation of
their association, to the Third Lateran Council of A.D. 1179,
under Alexander III., which, however, scornfully dismissed
their appeal. As they nevertheless still continued to preach,
Pope Lucius III., at the Council of Verona, in A.D. 1184,
laid them under the ban. They had hitherto no intention
of offering any sort of opposition to the doctrine,
worship, or constitution of the Catholic church. Even the
Catholic authorities did not so much take offence at what
they preached but rather only at this, that they without
ecclesiastical call and authority had assumed the function
of preaching. Innocent III., also, admitted the imprudence
of his predecessor, and favoured the plan of a Waldensian
who had left his brethren to transform the association of
the _Pauperes de Lugduno_ into the monastic-like lay union
of _Pauperes Catholici_, to which in A.D. 1208 he assigned
the duties of preaching, expounding Scripture, and holding
meetings for edification under episcopal supervision. But
this concession came too late. Since the church had itself
broken off the fetters which had previously bound them to
the traditional faith of the Catholic church, the Leonists
had gone too far upon the path of evangelical freedom to
be satisfied with any such terms. Innocent now renewed the
ban against them at the Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215.
Of the later life and work of the founder we know with
certainty only this, that he made extensive journeys in
the interests of his cause. Even during his lifetime (he
died probably about A.D. 1217) the members (_socii_) of
the society (_Societas Valdesiana_) founded by him had
spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of the
south of France, the east of Spain, the north of Italy,
and the south of Germany, and had even crossed the Channel
into England. They were named, in accordance with their
fundamental principle, as well as from the starting
point of their apostolic mission, _Pauperes de Lugduno_
or _Leonistæ_=from Lyons, also from the covering of
their feet, _Sabatati_; but they styled themselves among
one another _fratres_ and _sorores_, and their adherents
among the people _amici_ and _amicæ_; while the Catholic
polemical writers, who for a similar class among the
Cathari had employed the distinctive terms _Perfecti_
and _Credentes_, made use of these designations in
treating of the Waldensians. The latter continue “in
the world,” that is, in the exercise of their family
duties, and the discharge of civil obligations, and all
the positions and entanglements connected therewith;
while the former devoted themselves to a celibate life,
to absolute poverty, to incessant preaching from place to
place, and to unconditional refusal of all oathtaking, and
a literal acceptance of all the precepts of the Sermon on
the Mount, involving the rejection of any sort of fixed
residence, and on the basis of Luke x. 7, 8, any handiwork
that would earn for them the necessaries of life. They
had their own _ministri_ for the administration of the
sacraments; but these were elected only _ad tempus_,
namely once a year, simply for the discharge of that duty.
At the head of the whole community down to his death stood
the founder himself. He led the entire movement, received
new members into the _societas_, and chose and ordained
the _ministri_.--The two most important sources for the
primitive history of the Waldensian movement, mutually
supplementing one another, are, the _Chronicon Laudunense_
of an unnamed canon of Laon in the _Mon. Germ. Scrr._
xxvi. 447, and the tract _De Septem Donis Spir. S._ of the
inquisitor Stephen de Borbone, who died A.D. 1261, which is
given in full in _de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques_, etc.,
Paris, 1877.
§ 108.11.
2. =Their Divisions.=--One of the oldest, most important,
and most reliable sources of information regarding the
affairs of the old Waldensians was first published by
Preger in 1875, in his _Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Waldensier
im MA._, namely, an epistle embodied by the “_anonymous
writer of Passau_” in his heretic catalogue, from the
“Poor Men of Italy” to their fellow believers in Germany,
_ad Leonistas in Alamannia_, in which they give a report of
the proceedings at a convention held at Bergamo in A.D. 1218,
with the deputies from “_the ultramontane_,” that is, the
French, “Poor Men.” On the basis of this communication
Preger has contested the view that the “Poor Men of Italy”
were the Waldensians, and traces their origin rather to
the working men’s association of the _Humiliati_ that
had already sprung up in the eleventh century (§ 98, 7),
which having even before this, by adopting Arnoldist ideas,
become estranged from the Catholic church, came also into
connection with Valdez, appropriated many of his opinions,
and then entered into fraternal relations with the French
Waldesians. This theory, as also no less the explanations
connected therewith of the constitutional and doctrinal
differences of the two parties, has been proved by Carl
Müller in his _Die Waldensier u. ihre einzelne Gruppen
bis Auf d. 14. Jhd._ to be in many particulars untenable,
and he has shown that the Waldensian origin of “the Poor
Men of Lombardy” is witnessed to even by this epistle.
The results of his researches are in the main as follows:
The movement set on foot in A.D. 1177 by Valdez of Lyons
in the direction of an apostolic walk and conversation was
transplanted at a very early period into northern Italy,
and found there a favourable reception, especially in the
ranks of the Humiliati. These, too, as well as Valdez, in
A.D. 1179, approached Alexander III. with the prayer to
authorize their entering on such a vocation, but were also
immediately repulsed, attached themselves then to the “Poor
Men of Lyons,” submitting to the monarchical rule of their
founder, and along with them, in A.D. 1184, fell under the
papal ban. Yet among the Lombards a strong craving after
greater independence and freedom soon found expression,
which asserted itself most decidedly in the claim to the
right of their own independent choice and ordination of
lifelong organs of government for their society, as well
as for priestly services, which, however, Valdez, fearing
a dissolution of the whole society from the granting of
such partial independence, answered with a decided refusal.
With equal decision did he insist upon the disbanding of
those workmen’s associations for common production, which
the Lombards, as formerly the Humiliati, formed from the
laymen belonging to them, and forbade them even engaging
in any handicraft which they had hitherto pursued alongside
of their spiritual vocations, as inconsistent with the
apostolic life according to the prescriptions of Christ in
Luke x. Thus it came about, in consequence of the unyielding
temper of both parties, that there was a formal split; for
the Lombards appointed their own independent _præpositus_,
who, just like their _ministri_ charged with the conduct
of worship, held office for life. In the course of the year
the split widened through the adoption of other divergences
on the part of the Lombards. Yet after the death of the
founder, about A.D. 1217 they entered upon negotiations
about a reunion, which found a hearty response also among
the French. By means of epistolary explanations a basis
for union in regard to those questions which had occasioned
the separation had already been attained unto. The French
granted to the Lombards independent election and ordination
of their ministers for church government and worship, and
allowed the appointment to be for life, while they also
agreed to the continuance of their workmen’s associations.
In May, A.D. 1218, six brethren from the two parties were
at Bergamo appointed to draw up definite terms of peace,
and to secure a verbal explanation of other less important
differences, which was also accomplished without difficulty.
The whole peace negotiations, however, were ultimately
shattered over two questions, which first came to the front
during the verbal explanations: (i.) Over the question of
the felicity of the deceased founder, which the Lombards
were disposed to affirm only conditionally, _i.e._ in case
he had been penitent before his death for the sins of which
he had been guilty through his intolerant treatment of them,
while the French would have it affirmed unconditionally;
and (ii.) over the controversy about the validity of the
dispensation of the sacrament of the altar by an unworthy
person. On both sides they were thoroughly agreed in
saying that not the priest, but the omnipotence of God,
changed bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper into the body
and blood of Christ. But while the French drew from this
the conclusion that even an unworthy and wicked priest
could truly and effectually administer the sacrament, the
Italians persisted in the contrary opinion, and quoted
Scripture and the writings of the Fathers to prove the
correctness of their views.
§ 108.12.
3. =Attempts at Catholicizing.=--On the origin, character,
and task of the _Pauperes Catholici_ referred to above,
the epistles of Pope Innocent III. regarding them afford
us pretty accurate and detailed information. The first
impulse toward their formation was given by a disputation
with the French Waldensians held by Bishop Diego of Osma
at Pamiers in A.D. 1206, by means of which he succeeded,
aided by the powerful co-operation of his companion
St. Dominic, in persuading a number of the heretics to
return to the obedience of the Catholic church. Among
those converted on that occasion was the Spaniard Durandus
of Osca (Huesca), who now laid before the pope the plan
of forming from among the converted Waldensians a society
of Catholic Poor Men under the oversight of the bishops,
which, by appropriating and carrying out all the fundamental
principles of the Waldensian system--apostolic poverty,
apostolic dress, apostolic life, and apostolic vocation,
according to Luke x.--would not only paralyse or outbid
the ministry of the heretical Poor Men among the people,
but would also open up the way for their own return and
attachment again to the church. The pope approved of his
plan, and confirmed the union founded by him in A.D. 1208.
The undertaking of Durandus seems to have been from the
first not altogether without success in the direction
intended. At least we find that Bernard Primus was
encouraged one and a half years later to found a second
similar society on essentially the same basis, which
Innocent III. approved and confirmed. This later association
was distinguished from the earlier only in this, that it
allowed its members, besides their itinerant preaching
and pastoral work, to engage also in their own handicraft.
We are now led, by this difference, to the conclusion that,
as the institution of Durandus issued from the bosom of the
French Waldensians, that of Bernard had its origin among
the groups of the Poor Men of Lombardy. This supposition
is further confirmed when we observe that the latter, in
drawing up its Catholic confession of faith, expressly
abjures the formerly cherished conviction of the inefficacy
of sacramental actions performed by unworthy priests.
But the reason why both these unions, notwithstanding
papal approval and support, failed to exert any permanent
influence is to be sought pre-eminently in this, that,
tainted as their reputation was with the memory of their
former heresy, they were soon far outrun and overshadowed
by the two great mendicant orders, which wrought with
ampler means and appliances in the same direction.
§ 108.13.
4. =The French Societies.=--What these found fault with
in the Catholic church was, not its dogmatics, to which,
with the single exception of the doctrine of purgatory
and all therewith connected, indulgence, masses for souls,
foundations, alms, and works of piety on behalf of the dead,
they firmly adhered; nor yet its liturgical institutions,
which, with the exception of masses for souls, they left
untouched; nor yet its hierarchical constitutions _per
se_, for they transferred its leading principles into
their own organization: but it was simply this, that its
clergy had become guilty of the deadly sin of assuming and
exercising the apostolic prerogative without undertaking
the obligations of apostolic poverty, the apostolic life,
and the apostolic vocation, which alone warranted such
assumption. But as they thus, nevertheless, firmly adhered
to the Catholic principle of the validity of a sacrament
administered even by an unworthy person, if only he had
authority for doing so from the church, they could allow
themselves, and specially their lay adherents, to take
part in all Catholic services and acts of worship, without
regarding themselves or their followers as under obligation
to yield obedience to the pope and the bishops, or to
recognise their spiritual jurisdiction, authority to
inflict punishment, and right of arbitrary legislation
in regard to fasts, festivals, impediments to marriage,
etc.--As to the organization of the society, it is now
perfectly clear that there was a threefold division of
offices: bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Reception into
the _Societas Fratrum_ was consummated by the imparting
of the ordination of deacon. This, however, was preceded
by a longer or shorter novitiate, _i.e._ a period of trial
and preparation for the apostolic vocation of preaching.
The entrance into this novitiate (_conversio_) required
the surrender of all property for the benefit of the poor,
and on the part of those already married the abandonment
of every form of marital relationship; and on reception
into the brotherhood the vow of obedience to the superiors
was exacted, as well as a vow of celibacy and chastity.--To
the bishop, who as such was also called _minister_ and
_major_ or _majoralis_, belonged the right to administer
the sacraments of penance and ordination, as well as the
consecration of the eucharistic elements; he might preach
wherever he chose, and he assigned to presbyters and deacons
their spheres of labour. The presbyters, in addition to
preaching, also heard confessions, imposed penance, and
granted absolution, but did not administer the punishments
imposed, for this was the exclusive function of the
bishop.--The deacons were only to preach, but not to
hear confession, and their special duty consisted in
collecting contributions for the support of the brethren.
That also women, on the basis of Titus ii. 3, 4, were
admitted into these societies is an undoubted fact. Their
position was essentially the same as that of the deacons;
but the number of preaching sisters continued always
relatively small.--After the death of the founder the
society once a year chose from among the existing bishops
two _rectores_, who now together administered that supreme
government and high priesthood which had previously been
exercised by the founder alone. It was, however, by-and-by
found desirable to revert to the older monarchical
constitution, but all through the 13th century this
office was held only by a yearly tenure. The retiring
bishops, however, received for life the rank and title
of _major_. But even over the rector stood the _commune_
or _congregatio_; _i.e._ the general chapter assembled
once or twice in the year, in which the brethren of all
the three orders had a seat and vote. The obligation
to wear the apostolic dress, persistence in which would
have in a very short time thrown all the brethren into
the Moloch arms of the Inquisition, was abandoned soon
after the erection of that tribunal in A.D. 1232.--The
lay adherents attracted by the preaching and pastoral
activity of the brethren, the so-called _Amici, Fautores,
Receptatores_, were not organized as exclusive and
independent communities, because their continued
participation in the services and sacraments of the
Catholic church was regarded as permissible. On the
other hand, they maintained, as far as possible, regular
intercourse with the brethren, who in various styles of
dress visited them secretly, preached to them, exhorted
and instructed them, prayed with them and said grace at
their tables, heard their confessions, imposed penances
and granted absolution, uttering the formula of absolution,
however, not in the language of an absolute judicial
proclamation, but as a supplication and fervent desire.
The _Amici_ were allowed to make their Easter confession
and observance of the Supper at the Catholic service. The
brethren had of course also an independent celebration
of the Lord’s Supper, which occurred only once a year,
on Maundy Thursday, but was confined as a rule to the
brothers and sisters there assembled. The profound
acquaintance with Holy Scripture, especially the New
Testament, not only among the preaching “brothers,” but
also among their “friends,” many of whom knew by heart
a large portion of the New Testament, was the subject of
general remark and the occasion of astonishment. Besides
Holy Scripture, the selection of patristic passages used
by Valdez and the _Moralia_ of Gregory the Great were in
high repute as means of instruction and edification.--The
systematic efforts put forth from A.D. 1232 for the
uprooting and extirpating of heresy wrought effectually
among the French Waldensian “brethren” and “friends.” The
remnants of them that survived the persecution were driven
farther and farther into the remotest valleys of the western
and eastern spurs of the Cottian Alps, into Dauphiné
and Provence on the French side, and into Piedmont on
the Italian side.--The most important sources are: _Adv.
Valdens. sectam_, of Bernard Abbot of Fonscalidus, who
died in A.D. 1193; _Doctrina de Moda Procedendi a Hæret._
of the Inquisition at Carcassone and Toulouse of A.D. 1280;
the _consultatio_ of Arch. Peter Amelius of Narbonne and
the provincial synods held under him in A.D. 1243, 1244;
and the recently published _Practica Inquisition._ of the
inquisitor Bernard Guidonis of A.D. 1321.--Continuation,
§ 119, 9A.
§ 108.14.
A representation of the origin and character of the old
Waldensian movement completely different from that given
in the sources mentioned and used in the preceding sections,
especially in reference to the French societies, has
been current since the middle of the 16th century in the
modern Waldensian tradition, and by means of falsified or
misunderstood documents has been repeated by most Protestant
historians down to and including U. Hahn. The investigations
of Dieckhoff and Herzog first demolished for ever those
fabulous creations of Waldensian mythology, though more
recent Waldensian writers, _e.g._ Hudry-Ménos, but not
Comba, seek still tenaciously to assert their truth.
According to these traditions, long before the days of
Waldus of Lyons there were Waldensian, _i.e._ Vallensian
communities in the valleys of Piedmont, the “Israel of
the Alps,” the bearers of pure gospel truth, whose origin
was to be traced back at least to Claudius of Turin, while
others fondly carried it back to the Apostle Paul, who on
his journey to Spain (Rom. xv. 24) may have also visited
the Piedmontese valleys. It was to them that Peter of
Lyons owed his spiritual awakening and his surname of
Waldus, _i.e._ the Waldensian. For proof of this assertion
we are referred to a pretty copious manuscript literature
said to be old Waldensian, written in a peculiar Romance
dialect, deposited in the libraries of Geneva, Dublin,
Cambridge, Zürich, Grenoble, and Paris. Upon close and
unprejudiced examination of these literary pieces, of
which the oldest portion cannot possibly claim an earlier
date than the beginning of the 14th century, it has become
quite apparent that these, in so far as they are not
fabrications or interpolations, do not afford the least
grounds for justifying those Waldensian fantasies. This
view is further corroborated by the fact, that the most
careful and thorough investigator in this department, Carl
Müller, confidently maintains the conviction and shows
the basis on which it rests, “that the whole so-called
Waldensian literature of the pre-Hussite period has been
without exception derived from Catholic and not from
Waldensian sources.” The falsifications in this reputed
old Waldensian group of writings referred to, by means
of interpolation, omission, and alteration in the tracts
belonging to that collection, as well as the forging
of new writings, and that simply for the purpose of
vindicating for their society the mythical fame of
a primitive, independent, and ever pure evangelical
church, first found place after the Protestantizing
of the Romance or Piedmontese Waldensians, and were
thereafter successfully turned to account _bona_ or
_mala fide_ by their historians, Perrin, Leger, Muston,
Monastier, etc. In the _Nobla laiczon_ (=_lectio_),
_e.g._ a religious doctrinal poem, in the statement of
_vv._ 6, 7, that since the origin of the New Testament
writings 1,400 years had passed (mil e 4 cent anz) the
figure 4 was erased, so that it might appear to be an
ascertained fact that in A.D. 1100, seventy years before
the appearance of Waldus, there were already Waldensian
communities in existence. But when, in A.D. 1862, the
Morland manuscripts, which had been lost for 200 years,
were again discovered in Cambridge library, there was
found among them a copy of the _Nobla laiczon_, in which
before the word _cent_ an erasure was observable, in
which the outlines of the loop of the Arabic numeral 4
were still clearly discernible. In another piece contained
in this collection the passage referred to was quoted
as “mil e CCCC anz.” Hussite writings translated from
the Bohemian were also palmed off as genuine Waldensian
works of the earlier centuries, and were in addition
provided with the corresponding date. A manuscript of the
New Testament at Zürich was assigned to the 12th century;
but on more careful scrutiny it was shown that the writer
must have had before him the Greek Testament of Erasmus.
But the most glaring case of falsification is seen in
the “Waldensian Confession of Faith,” first adduced by
Perrin as evidence of the faith of the old Waldensians,
to which a later hand had ascribed as the date of its
composition the year 1120. It copies almost word for
word the utterances of Bucer as given in Morel’s report
of his negotiations with that divine and Œcolampadius.
In this way a new stamp has been put upon the doctrinal
articles of the old Waldensians.[320]
§ 108.15.
5. =The Lombard-German Branch.=--In regard to the Lombards
themselves, since the epistle of Bergamo we have only
scanty reports, and these are found in the treatise of
Monata, of 1240, _Adv. Catharos et Valdenses_, and in
the _Summa de Catharis et Leonistis_ of the Dominican
inquisitor Rainerius Sacchoni, of 1250. We have ampler
accounts, however, from their German mission-field, which
had already extended so far as to stretch from the Rhine
provinces into Austria. From the time of the unsuccessful
endeavours at Bergamo to effect a union between the two
principal groups, there was, so far as we are aware, no
further intercourse between the two. On the other hand,
the German Waldensians during the 13th and 14th centuries
maintained a pretty regular communication with their
Italian brethren.--In general, too, the Lombards continued,
along with their German offspring, to hold firmly by the
fundamental tenets of the primitive Waldensian faith. Their
preaching brothers and sisters were also called in Germany
_Meister_ (_magistri_) and _Meïsterinnen_, the men also
_Apostles_ and _Twelve-Apostles_, or, since also there,
next to preaching, they had as their most essential and
important spiritual function the administration of the
sacrament of penance, _Beichtiger_ (_bihter_), confessors.
The view that had been already so vigorously maintained
at Bergamo, that a priest guilty of mortal sin, and
such in their eyes were all Catholic priests, could not
efficaciously administer any sacrament, led them naturally
to assume a much freer attitude toward the Catholic church,
which summed itself up in the radical principle, that
everything connected with that church which cannot be shown
from the New Testament to have been expressly taught and
enjoined by Christ or His apostles, is to be set aside as
an unevangelical human addition. This position however was
insisted upon by them less in criticism and confutation of
the church doctrine than in opposition to the practices of
the church as a whole. In consequence of this criticism,
they, transcending far the mere negations of the French,
rejected not only all church festivals, beyond the simple
Sunday festival, not only all processions and pilgrimages,
all ceremonies, candles, incense, holy water, images,
liturgical dress and cloths, all consecrations and blessing
of churches, bells, burying grounds, candles, ashes, palms,
robes, salt, water, etc., but also the centre and climax
of all Catholic worship, the mass; not only of purgatory
and everything in church practice that had sprung from it,
not only ban and interdict, but also invocation of saints,
image and relic worship, etc. Yet all the masters did
not go equally far in this negative direction. Especially
during the second half of the 13th century a remarkable
reaction set in against the severity and exclusiveness
of that negation, because increasing persecution obliged
them to withdraw into secrecy as much as possible with
their confession and their specifically Waldensian forms
of worship, or to suspend their services altogether, and
indeed, to save themselves from the suspicion of heresy,
to allow to themselves and their lay adherents liberty
to engage in the services of the Catholic church, and to
submit to the indispensable demands of the church, such
as the attendance at mass, making confession, and taking
the communion at Easter. They held indeed firmly by the
principle, _Quod sacerdos in mortali peccato sacramentum
non possit conficere_, but they comforted themselves by
the assurance already expressed at Bergamo, that the Lord
Himself directly gives to the worthy communicant who, in
case of need, receives the sacrament from the hand of an
unworthy priest, what by him cannot be communicated, for
the transubstantiation is effected not _in manu indigne
conficientis_, but _in ore digne sumentis_. Thus during
the times of oppression they kept their own observance of
the supper quite in abeyance, the dispensation of which
was not among them, as among the French, restricted to
the masters; but on this account they laid all the greater
weight on the necessity of confession to their own clergy as
those who could alone give absolution. Also the prohibition
of all oaths as well as bloodshedding, therefore also of
military service, and the acceptance of magisterial and
judicial offices, was strictly adhered to.--A peculiar
adaptation of the Roman Catholic tradition of the baptism
and donation of Constantine, which seems to have found
no acceptance among the French, became a favourite legend
among all the Lombard and German Waldensians. According
to it the ancient church had existed for three hundred
years in apostolic humility, simplicity, and poverty.
But when the Roman bishop Sylvester was endowed by the
emperor Constantine the Great with such superabundance of
worldly might, riches, and honour, the period of general
decline from the apostolic pattern set in. Only one of
his fellow clergy protested, and was, when all enticements
and threatenings proved of no avail, driven away along
with his adherents. The latter increased and spread
by-and-by over the earth. After a violent persecution,
which had almost cut off all of them, Peter Waldus made
his appearance with his companion, John of Lyons, as
the restorer of the apostolic life and calling, etc. To
this there was subsequently attached another legend. The
brethren had previously based their right to discharge
all priestly functions with the greatest confidence simply
on their apostolic life, and so they could not conceal
from themselves at a later period the fact that the want
of continued apostolic succession, on which the Catholic
church rested the claims of their priests, would place the
Waldensian masters very much in the shade as compared with
the Catholics. They began, therefore, not only to claim that
their founder Waldus had been previously a Roman presbyter,
but also to devise the fable of a bishop or even a cardinal
of the Romish church, through whose favour that defect had
been overcome.--Continuation, § 119, 9.
§ 108.16.
6. =Relations between the Waldensians and Older and
Contemporary Sects.=--Owing to the extraordinarily lively
and zealous propagandist activity of the sects at the
time of the origin and early development of the Waldensian
movement, there can scarcely be a doubt that the latter,
after it had freed itself from all obligation of obedience
to the pope and bishops, and had been driven out by them,
must at various points have come into close relations with
the other sects which, like it, had risen in rebellion
against the papacy and the hierarchy, and like it had been
persecuted by these. The numerous sect of the Cathari holds
a conspicuous position in this connection. That Waldus and
his companions must have decidedly repudiated the dualistic
principles which all these otherwise greatly diverging
Catharist sects had in common is indeed quite self-evident;
but this by no means prevented them from recognising
and appropriating such particular institutions, forms
of organization or modes of worship, peculiar moral
requirements, etc., practised by them as might seem fitted
to further their own ends. And that this actually was done,
many noticeable points of agreement between the two plainly
indicate. Thus on both sides we find a similar division of
members, the _Perfecti_ and _Credentes_ corresponding to
the _Fratres_ and _Amici_, and the kind of spiritual care
which the former took of the latter, the grace at table
said by the itinerant preachers, the importance attached to
the possession and use of bread that had been blessed by the
brethren, the frequent use by both of the Lord’s Prayer, the
rejection of purgatory and everything connected therewith,
also the prohibition of swearing and of military service,
the refusal of the magisterial _jus gladii_, etc. On the
other hand, however, it is more than probable that at last
the remnants of the Cathari which escaped the Inquisition
in great part had found refuge among the Waldensians in the
valleys of the Cottian Alps, and there became assimilated
and amalgamated with them (§ 119, 9A).--Further, the
assumption that the Lombard Waldensians had first reached
the principle by which they are distinguished from their
French brethren, about the incapacity of unworthy priests
for dispensing the sacraments, from outside influences,
perhaps from the Arnoldists, is raised almost to a certainty
by the statement made by their deputies at Bergamo in
A.D. 1218, that they had even themselves in earlier times
held the opposite view.--Even the pantheistic tendency of
an Amalrich and the Brethren of the New Spirit may have
found entrance among the German Waldensians, and have there
given origin to the sect of the Ortlibarians.
§ 109. THE CHURCH AGAINST THE PROTESTERS.
The church was by no means indifferent to the spread of those
heresies of the 11th and 12th centuries, which called in question
its own very existence. Even in the 11th century she called in the
aid of the stake as a type of the fire of hell that would consume
the heretics, and against this only one voice, that of Bishop Wazo
of Liège († A.D. 1048), was raised. In the 12th century protesting
voices were more numerous: Peter the Venerable (§ 98, 1), Rupert of
Deutz, St. Hildegard, St. Bernard, declared sword and fire no fit
weapons for conversion. St. Bernard showed by his own example how by
loving entreaty and friendly instruction more might be done than by
awakening a fanatical enthusiasm for martyrdom. But hangmen and stakes
were more easily produced than St. Bernards, of whom the 12th and
13th centuries had by no means a superabundance. By-and-by Dominic
sent out his disciples to teach and convert heretics by preaching and
disputation; as long as they confined themselves to these methods they
were not without success. But even they soon found it more congenial
or more effective to fight the heretics with tortures and the stake
rather than with discussion and discourse. The Albigensian crusade
and the tribunal of the Inquisition erected in connection therewith
at last overpowered the protesters and drove the remnants of their
sects into hiding. In the administration of punishment the church
made no distinction between the various sects; all were alike who
were at war with the church.
§ 109.1. =The Albigensian Crusade, A.D. 1209-1229.=--Toward the
end of the 12th century sects abounded in the south of France.
Innocent III. regarded them as worse than the Saracens, and in
A.D. 1203 sent a legate, Peter of Castelnau, with full powers to
secure their extermination. But Peter was murdered in A.D. 1208,
and suspicion fell on Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse. A crusade
under Simon de Montfort was now summoned against the sectaries,
who as mainly inhabiting the district of Albigeois were now
called =Albigensians=. A twenty years’ war was carried on with
mad fanaticism and cruelty on both sides, in which guilty and
innocent, men, women, and children were ruthlessly slain. At
the sack of Beziers with 20,000 inhabitants the papal legate
cried, “Slay all, the Lord will know how to seek out and save
His own.”[321]
§ 109.2. =The Inquisition.=--Every one screening a heretic
forfeited lands, goods, and office; a house in which such a
one was discovered was levelled to the ground; all citizens
had to communicate thrice a year, and every second year to
renew their oath of attachment to the church, and to refuse
all help in sickness to those suspected of heresy, etc. The
bishops not showing themselves zealous enough in enforcing
these laws, Gregory IX. in A.D. 1232 founded the Tribunal of
the Inquisition, and placed it in the hands of the Dominicans.
These as _Domini canes_ subjected to the most cruel tortures all
on whom the suspicion of heresy fell, and all the resolute were
handed over to the civil authorities, who readily undertook their
execution.[322]--Continuation § 117, 2.
§ 109.3. =Conrad of Marburg and the Stedingers.=--The first
Inquisitor of Germany, the Dominican =Conrad of Marburg=, also
known as the severe confessor of St. Elizabeth (§ 105, 3), after
a three years’ career of cruelty was put to death by certain
of the nobles in A.D. 1233. _Et sic_, say the Annals of Worms,
_divino auxilio liberata est Teutonia ab isto judicio enormi
et inaudito_. He was enrolled by Gregory IX. among the martyrs.
Perhaps wrongly he has been blamed for Gregory’s crusade of
A.D. 1234 against the =Stedingers=. These were Frisians of
Oldenburg who revolted against the oppression of nobles and
priests, refused socage and tithes, and screened Albigensian
heretics. The first crusade failed; the second succeeded and
plundered, murdered, and burned on every hand. Thousands of the
unhappy peasants were slain, neither women nor children were
spared, and all prisoners were sent to the stake as heretics.
_THIRD SECTION._
HISTORY OF THE GERMANO-ROMANIC CHURCH IN THE
14TH AND 15TH CENTURIES (A.D. 1294-1517).
I. The Hierarchy, Clergy, and Monks.
§ 110. THE PAPACY.[323]
From the time of Gelasius II. (§ 96, 11) it had been the custom of
the popes whenever Italy became too hot for them to fly to France, and
from France they had obtained help to deliver Italy from the tyranny of
the latest representatives of the Hohenstaufens. But when Boniface VIII.
dared boldly to assert the universal sovereignty of the papacy even
over France itself, this presumption wrought its own overthrow. The
consequence was a seventy years’ exile of the papal chair to the
banks of the Rhone, with complete subjugation under French authority.
Under the protection of the French court, however, the popes found
Avignon a safe asylum, and from thence they issued the most extravagant
hierarchical claims, especially upon Germany. The return of the papal
court to Rome was the occasion of a forty years’ schism, during which
two popes, for a time even three, are seen hurling anathemas at one
another. The reforming Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel sought
to put an end to this scandal and bring about a reformation in the head
and the members. The fathers in these councils, however, in accordance
with the prevalent views of the age, maintained the need of one visible
head for the government of the church, such as was afforded by the
papacy. But the corruptions of the papal chair led them to adopt the
old theory that the highest ecclesiastical authority is not the pope
but the voice of the universal church expressed in the œcumenical
councils, which had jurisdiction over even the popes. The successful
carrying out of this view was possible only if the several national
churches which had come now more decidedly than ever to regard
themselves as independent branches of the great ecclesiastical
organism, should heartily combine against the corrupt papacy. But
this they did not do. They were contented with making separate attacks,
in accordance with their several selfish interests. Hence papal craft
found little difficulty in rendering the strong remonstrances of these
councils fruitless and without result. The papacy came forth triumphant,
and during the 15th century, the age of the Renaissance, reached a
degree of corruption and moral turpitude which it had not approached
since the 10th century. The vicars of God now used their spiritual
rank only to further their ambitious worldly schemes, and by the most
scandalous nepotism (the so-called nephews being often bastards of the
popes, who were put into the highest and most lucrative offices) as
well as by their own voluptuousness, luxury, revelry, and love of war,
brought ruin upon the church and the States of the Church.
§ 110.1. =Boniface VIII. and Benedict XI.,
A.D. 1294-1304.=--=Boniface VIII.=, A.D. 1294-1303 (§ 96, 22),
was not inferior to his great predecessor in political talents
and strength of will, but was destitute of all spiritual
qualities and without any appreciation of the spiritual
functions of the papal chair, while passionately maintaining
the most extravagant claims of the hierarchy. The opposition
to the pope was headed by two cardinals of the powerful Colonna
family, who maintained that the abdication of Cœlestine V.
was invalid. In A.D. 1297 Boniface stripped them of all their
dignities, and then they appealed to an œcumenical council as
a court of higher jurisdiction. The pope now threatened them
and their supporters with the ban, fitted out a crusade against
them, and destroyed their castles. At last after a sore struggle
Palæstrina, the old residence of their family, capitulated. Also
the Colonnas themselves submitted. Nevertheless in A.D. 1299 he
had the famous old city and all its churches and palaces levelled
to the ground, and refused to restore to the outlawed family
its confiscated estates. Then again the Colonnas took up arms,
but were defeated and obliged to fly the country, while the
pope forbade under threat of the ban any city or realm to give
refuge or shelter to the fugitives. But neither his anathema
nor his army was able to keep the rebellious Sicilians under
papal dominion. Even in his first contest with the French king,
=Philip IV. the Fair=, A.D. 1285-1314, he had the worst of
it. The pope had vainly sought to mediate between Philip and
Edward I. of England, when both were using church property in
carrying on war with one another, and in A.D. 1295 he issued
the bull _Clericis laicos_, releasing subjects from their
allegiance and anathematizing all laymen who should appropriate
ecclesiastical revenues and all priests who should put them to
uses not sanctioned by the pope. Philip then forbade all payment
of church dues, and the pope finding his revenues from France
withheld, made important concessions in A.D. 1297 and canonized
Philip’s grandfather, Louis IX. His hierarchical assumptions
in Germany gave promise of greater success. After the first
Hapsburger’s death in A.D. 1291, his son Albert was set aside,
and Adolf, Count of Nassau, elected king; but he again was
overthrown and Albert I. crowned in A.D. 1298. Boniface summoned
Albert to his tribunal as a traitor and murderer of the king,
and released the German princes from their oaths of allegiance
to him. Meanwhile, during A.D. 1301, Boniface and Philip were
quarrelling over vacant benefices in France. The king haughtily
repudiated the pretensions of the papal legate and imprisoned
him as a traitor. Boniface demanded his immediate liberation,
summoned the French bishops to a council at Rome, and in the
bull _Ausculta fili_ showed the king how foolish, sinful, and
heretical it was for him not to be subject to the pope. The
bull torn from the messenger’s hands was publicly burnt, and
a version of it probably falsified published throughout the
kingdom along with the king’s reply. All France rose in revolt
against the papal pretensions, and a parliament at Notre Dame in
Paris A.D. 1302, at which the king assembled the three estates of
the empire, the nobles, the clergy, and (for the first time) the
citizens, it was unanimously resolved to support Philip and to
write in that spirit to Rome, the bishops undertaking to pacify
the pope, the nobles and citizens making their complaint to the
cardinals. The king expressly forbade his clergy taking any part
in the council that had been summoned, which, however, met in the
Lateran, in Nov., 1302. From it Boniface issued the famous bull
_Unam Sanctam_, in which, after the example of Innocent III.
and Gregory IX., he set forth the doctrine of the two swords,
the spiritual wielded _by_ the church and the temporal _for_
the church, by kings and warriors indeed, but only according
to the will and by the permission of the spiritual ruler. That
the temporal power is independent was pronounced a Manichæan
heresy; and finally it was declared that no human being could
be saved unless he were subject to the Roman pontiff. King and
parliament now accused the pope of heresy, simony, blasphemy,
sorcery, tyranny, immorality, etc., and insisted that he should
answer these charges before an œcumenical council. Meanwhile, in
A.D. 1303, Boniface was negotiating with king Albert, and got him
not only to break his league with Philip, but also to acknowledge
himself a vassal of the papal see. The pope had all his plans
laid for launching his anathema against Philip, but their
execution was anticipated by the king’s assassins. His chancellor
Nogaret and Sciarra, one of the exiled Colonnas, who, with the
help of French gold, had hatched a conspiracy among the barons,
attacked the papal palace and took the pope prisoner while he
sat in full state upon his throne. The people indeed rescued
him, but he died some weeks after in a raging fever in his
80th year. Dante assigns him a place in hell. In the mouth of
his predecessor Cœlestine V. have been put the prophetic words,
_Ascendisti ut vulpes, regnatis ut leo, morieris ut canis_.[324]
His successor =Benedict XI.=, A.D. 1303, 1304, would have
willingly avenged the wrongs of Boniface, but weak and
unsupported as he was he soon found himself obliged, not
only to withdraw all imputations against Philip, who always
maintained his innocence, but also to absolve those of the
Colonnas who were less seriously implicated.
§ 110.2. =The Papacy during the Babylonian Exile,
A.D. 1305-1377.=--After a year’s vacancy the papal chair
was filled by Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux,
a determined supporter of Boniface, who took the name of
=Clement V.=, A.D. 1305-1314. He refused to go to be enthroned
at Rome, and forced the cardinals to come to Lyons, and finally,
in A.D. 1309, formally removed the papal court to Avignon, which
then belonged to the king of Naples as Count of Provence. At
this time, too, Clement so far yielded to Philip’s wish to have
Boniface condemned and struck out of the list of popes, as to
appoint two commissions to consider charges against Boniface,
one in France and the other in Italy. Most credible witnesses
accused the deceased pope of heresies, crimes, and immoralities
committed in word and deed mostly in their presence, while the
rebutting evidence was singularly weak. A compromise was effected
by Clement surrendering the Templars to the greedy and revengeful
king. In the bull _Rex gloriæ_ of A.D. 1311 he expressly declares
that Philip’s proceeding against Boniface was _bona fide_,
occasioned by zeal for church and country, cancels all Boniface’s
decrees and censures upon the French king and his servants, and
orders them to be erased from the archives. =The 15th œcumenical
Council of Vienne in A.D. 1311= was mainly occupied with the
affairs of the Templars, and also with the consideration of the
controversies in the Franciscan order (§ 112, 2).--=Henry VII.=
of Luxemburg was raised to the German throne on Albert’s death
in A.D. 1208 in opposition to Philip’s brother Charles. Clement
supported him and crowned him emperor, hoping to be protected by
him from Philip’s tyranny. At Milan in A.D. 1311 Henry received
the iron crown of Lombardy; but at Rome the imperial coronation
was effected in A.D. 1312, not in St. Peter’s, the inner city
being held by Robert of Naples, papal vassal and governor of
Italy, but only in the Lateran at the hands of the cardinals
commissioned to do so. The emperor now, in spite of all papal
threats, pronounced the ban of the empire against Robert,
and in concert with Frederick of Sicily entered on a campaign
against Naples, but his sudden death in A.D. 1313 (according
to an unsupported legend caused by a poisoned host) put an end
to the expedition. Clement also died in the following year; and
to him likewise has Dante assigned a place in hell.
§ 110.3. After two years’ murderous strife between the Italian
and French cardinals, the French were again victorious, and
elected at Lyons =John XXII.=, A.D. 1316-1334, son of a shoemaker
of Cahors in Gascony, who was already seventy-two years old.
He is said to have sworn to the Italians never to use a horse
or mule but to ride to Rome, and then to have taken ship
on the Rhone for Avignon, where during his eighteen years’
pontificate he never went out of his palace except to go into
the neighbouring cathedral. Working far into the night, this
seemingly weak old man was wont to devote all his time to his
studies and his business. The weight of his official duties
will be seen from the fact that 60,000 minutes, filling 59 vols.
in the papal archives, belong to his reign.--In Germany, after
the death of Henry VII. there were two rivals for the throne,
=Louis IV. the Bavarian=, A.D. 1314-1347, and Frederick III.
of Austria. The pope, maintaining the closest relations with
Robert of Anjou, his feudatory as king of Naples and his
protector as Count of Provence, and esteeming his wish as
a command, refused to acknowledge either, declared the German
throne still vacant, and assumed to himself the administration
of the realm during the vacancy. At Mühldorf in A.D. 1322
Louis conquered his opponent and took him prisoner. He sent
a detachment of Ghibellines over the Alps, while he made himself
master of Milan and put an end to the papal administration
in Northern Italy. The pope in A.D. 1323 ordered him within
three months to cease discharging all functions of government
till his election as German king should be acknowledged and
confirmed by the papal chair. Louis first endeavoured to come to
an understanding with the pope, but soon employed the sharp pens
of the Minorites, who in May, 1324, drew up a solemn protest
in which the king, basing his claims to royalty solely on the
election of the princes and treating the pope as one who had
forfeited his chair in consequence of his heresies (§ 112, 2),
appealed from this false pope to an œcumenical council and a
future legitimate pope. John now thundered an anathema against
him, declared that he was deprived of all his dignities, freed
his subjects from their allegiance, forbade them, under pain
of anathema, to obey him, and summoned all European potentates
to war against the excommunicated monarch. Louis now sought
Frederick’s favour, and in A.D. 1325 shared with him the royal
dignity. In Milan in A.D. 1327 he was crowned king of Lombardy,
and in A.D. 1328 in Rome he received the imperial crown from
the Roman democracy. Two bishops of the Ghibelline party gave
him consecration, and the crown was laid on his head by Sciarra
Colonna in the name of the Roman people. In vain did the pope
pronounce all these proceedings null and void. The king began a
process against the pope, deposed him as a heretic and antichrist,
and finally condemned him to death as guilty of high treason,
while the mob carried out this sentence by burning the pope
in effigy upon the streets. The people and clergy of Rome, in
accordance with an old canon, elected a new pope in the person
of a pious Minorite of the sect of the Spirituales (§ 112, 2),
who took the name of Nicholas V. Louis with his own hand placed
the tiara on his head, and was then himself crowned by him. All
this glory, however, was but short lived. An unsuccessful and
inglorious war against Robert of Naples and a consequent revolt
in Rome caused the emperor in A.D. 1328, with his army and his
pope, amid the stonethrowing of the mob, to quit the eternal city,
which immediately became subject to the curia. He did not fare
much better in Tuscany or Lombardy; and thus the Roman expedition
ended in failure. Returning to Munich, Louis endeavoured in vain
amid many humiliations to move the determined old man at Avignon.
But Nicholas V., the most wretched of all the anti-popes, went
to Avignon with a rope about his neck in A.D. 1328, cast himself
at the pope’s feet, was absolved, and died a prisoner in the
papal palace in A.D. 1333. Next year John died. Notwithstanding
the expensive Italian wars 25,000,000 gold guldens was found in
the papal treasury at his death.--Roused by his opposition to
the stricter party among the Franciscans (§ 112, 2), its leaders
lent all their influence to the Bavarian and supported the charge
of heresy against the pope. Against John’s favourite doctrine
that the souls of departed saints attain to the vision of God
only after the last judgment, these zealots cited the opinions
of the learned world (§ 113, 3), with the University of Paris
at its head. Philip VI. of France was also in the controversy
one of his bitterest opponents, and even threatened him with
the stake. Pressed on all sides the pope at last in A.D. 1333
convened a commission of scholars to decide the question, but
died before its judgment was given. His successor hasted to
still the tumult by issuing the story of a deathbed recantation,
and gave ecclesiastical sanction to the opposing view.
§ 110.4. =Benedict XII.=, A.D. 1334-1342, would probably have
yielded to the urgent entreaties of the Romans to return to Rome
had not his cardinals been so keenly opposed. He then built a
palace at Avignon of imposing magnitude, as though the papacy
were to have an eternal residence there. Louis the Bavarian
retracted his heretical sentiments in order to get the ban
removed and to obtain an orderly coronation. The first diet of
the electoral union was held at Rhense near Mainz, in A.D. 1338,
where it was declared that the election of a German king and
emperor was, by God’s appointment, the sole privilege of the
elector-princes, and needed not the confirmation or approval
of the pope. This encouraged Louis to assert anew his imperial
pretensions. Benedict’s successor =Clement VI.=, A.D. 1342-1352,
added by purchase in A.D. 1348 the city of Avignon to the county
of Venaissin, which Philip III. had gifted to the papal chair in
A.D. 1273. Both continued in the possession of the Roman court
till A.D. 1791 (§ 165, 13). Louis, now at feud with some of the
powerful German nobles, sought to make terms of peace with the
new pope. But Clement was not conciliatory, and made the unheard
of demand that Louis should not only annul all his previous
ordinances, but also should in future issue no enactment in
the empire without permission of the papal see; and on Maunday
Thursday, A.D. 1346, he pronounced him without title or dignity
and called upon the electors to make a new choice, which, if
they failed to do, he would proceed to do himself. As fittest
candidate he recommended Charles of Bohemia, who was actually
chosen by the five electors who answered the summons, under the
title of =Charles IV.=, A.D. 1346-1378, and had his election
confirmed by the pope. The new emperor solemnly promised never
to set foot on the domains of the Roman church without express
papal permission, and to remain in Rome only so long as was
required for his coronation. Louis died before he was able to
engage in war with his rival, and when, six months later, the
next choice of Louis’ party also died, Charles was acknowledged
without a dissentient voice. He was crowned emperor in Rome
by a cardinal appointed by Innocent VI., in A.D. 1355. Without
doing anything to restore the imperial prestige in Italy, Charles
went back like a fugitive to Germany, despised by Guelphs and
Ghibellines. But in the following year, at the Diet of Nuremberg,
he passed a new imperial law in the so called Golden Bull of
A.D. 1356, according to which the election of emperor was to
be made at Frankfort, by three clerical electors (Mainz, Cologne,
and Treves) and four temporal princes (Bohemia, the Palatine of
the Rhine, Saxony, and Brandenburg), and he appeased the pope’s
wrath by various concessions to the curia and the clergy.
§ 110.5. The famous Rienzi was made apostolic notary by
Clement VI. in A.D. 1343, and as tribune of the people headed
the revolt against the barons in A.D. 1347. Losing his popularity
through his own extravagances he was obliged to flee, and being
taken prisoner by Charles at Prague, he was sent to Avignon in
A.D. 1350. Instead of the stake with which Clement had threatened
him, =Innocent VI.=, A.D. 1352-1362, bestowed senatorial rank
upon him, and sent him to Rome, hoping that his demagogical
talent would succeed in furthering the interests of the papacy.
He now once more, amid loud acclamations, entered the eternal
city, but after two months, hated and cursed as a tyrant, he was
murdered in A.D. 1354, while attempting flight.--By A.D. 1367
things had so improved in Rome that, notwithstanding the
opposition of king and court and the objections of luxurious
cardinals unwilling to quit Avignon, =Urban V.=, A.D. 1362-1370,
in October of that year made a triumphal entrance into Rome
amid the jubilations of the Romans. Charles’ Italian expedition
of the following year was inglorious and without result. The
disquiet and party strifes prevailing through the country made
the position of the pope so uncomfortable, that notwithstanding
the earnest entreaty of St. Bridget (§ 112, 8), who threatened
him with the Divine judgment of an early death in France, he
returned in A.D. 1370 to Avignon, where in ten weeks the words
of the northern prophetess were fulfilled. His successor was
=Gregory XI.=, A.D. 1370-1378. Rome and the States of the Church
had now again become the scene of the wildest anarchy, which
Gregory could only hope to quell by his personal presence. The
exhortations of the two prophetesses of the age, St. Bridget and
St. Catherine (§ 112, 4), had a powerful influence upon him, but
what finally determined him was the threat of the exasperated
Romans to elect an anti-pope. And so in spite of the renewed
opposition of the cardinals and the French court, the curia
again returned to Rome in A.D. 1377; but though the rejoicing
at the event throughout the city was great, the results were by
no means what had been expected. Sick and disheartened, the pope
was already beginning to speak of going back to Avignon, when
his death in A.D. 1378 put an end to his cares and sufferings.
§ 110.6. =The Papal Schism and the Council of Pisa.=--Under
pressure from the people the cardinals present in Rome almost
unanimously chose the Neapolitan archbishop of Bari, who took
the name of =Urban VI.=, A.D. 1378-1389. His energies were
mainly directed to the emancipating of the papal chair from
French interference and checking the abuses introduced into
the papal court during the Avignon residence; but the impatience
and bitterness which he showed in dealing with the greed, pomp,
and luxury of the cardinals roused them to choose another pope.
After four months, they met at Fundi, declared that the choice
of Urban had been made under compulsion, and was therefore
invalid. In his place they elected a Frenchman, Robert, cardinal
of Geneva, who was enthroned under the name of Clement VII.,
A.D. 1378-1394. The three Italians present protested against
this proceeding and demanded, but in vain, the decision of a
council. Thus began the greatest and most mischievous =papal
schism=, A.D. 1378-1417. France, Naples, and Savoy at once, and
Spain and Scotland somewhat later, declared in favour of Clement;
while the rest of Western Europe acknowledged Urban. The two
most famous saints of the age, St. Catherine and St. Vincent
Ferrér (§ 115, 2), though both disciples of Dominic, took
different sides, the former as an Italian favouring Urban,
the latter as a Spaniard favouring Clement. Failing to secure
a footing in Italy, Clement took possession of the papal castle
at Avignon in A.D. 1379. The schism lasted for forty years,
during which time =Boniface IX.=, A.D. 1389-1404, =Innocent VII.=,
A.D. 1404-1406, and =Gregory XII.=, A.D. 1406-1415, elected
by the cardinals in Rome, held sway there in succession, while
at Avignon on Clement’s death his place was taken by the Spanish
cardinal Pedro de Luna as Benedict XIII., A.D. 1394-1424. The
Council of Paris of A.D. 1395 recommended the withdrawal of both
popes and a new election, but Benedict insisted upon a decision
by a two-thirds majority in favour of one or other of the two
rivals. An =œcumenical council at Pisa=, in A.D. 1409, dominated
mainly by the influence of Gerson (§ 118, 4), who maintained that
the authority of the councils is superior to that of the pope,
made short work with both contesting popes, whom it pronounced
contumacious and deposed. After the cardinals present had bound
themselves by an oath that whosoever of them might be chosen
should not dissolve the council until a reform of the church
in its head and members should be carried out, they elected
a Greek of Candia in his seventieth year, Cardinal Philangi,
who was consecrated as =Alexander V.=, A.D. 1409-1410, and for
three years the council continued to sit without effecting any
considerable reforms. The consequence was that the world had the
edifying spectacle of three contemporary popes anathematizing
one another.
§ 110.7. =The Council of Constance and Martin V.=--Alexander V.
died after a reign of ten months by poison administered, as
was supposed, by Balthasar Cossa, resident cardinal legate
and absolute military despot, suspected of having been in
youth engaged in piracy. Cossa succeeded, as =John XXIII.=,
A.D. 1410-1415. He was acknowledged by the new Roman king,
=Sigismund=, A.D. 1411-1437, and soon afterwards, in A.D. 1412,
by Ladislas [Ladislaus] of Naples, so that Gregory XII. was thus
deprived of his last support. The University of Paris continued
to demand the holding of a council to effect reforms. Sigismund,
supported by the princes, insisted on its being held in a
German city. Meanwhile Ladislas [Ladislaus] had quarrelled
with the pope, and had overrun the States of the Church and
plundered Rome in A.D. 1413, and John was obliged to submit
to Sigismund’s demands, He now summoned the =16th œcumenical
Council of Constance=, A.D. 1414-1418 (§ 119, 5). It was the
most brilliant and the most numerously attended council ever
held. More than 18,000 priests and vast numbers of princes,
counts, and knights, with an immense following; in all about
100,000 strangers, including thousands of harlots from all
countries, and hordes of merchants, artisans, showmen, and
players of every sort. Gerson and D’Ailly, the one representing
European learning, the other the claims of the Gallican church
(§ 118, 4), were the principal advisers of the council. The
decision to vote not individually but by nations (Italian,
German, French, and English) destroyed the predominance of
the Italian prelates, who as John’s creatures were present
in great numbers. Terrified by an anonymous accusation, which
charged the pope with the most heinous crimes, he declared
himself ready to withdraw if the other two popes would also
resign, but took advantage of the excitement of a tournament
to make his escape disguised as an ostler. Sigismund could with
difficulty keep the now popeless council together. John, however,
was captured, seventy-two serious charges formulated against
him, and on 26th July, A.D. 1415, he was deposed and condemned
to imprisonment for life. He was given up to the Count Palatine
Louis of Baden, who kept him prisoner in Mannheim, and afterwards
in Heidelberg. Meanwhile the leader of an Italian band making use
of the name of Martin V. purchased his release with 3,000 ducats.
He now submitted himself to that pope, and was appointed by him
cardinal-bishop of Tuscoli, and dean of the sacred college, but
soon afterwards died in Florence, in A.D. 1419. Gregory XII. also
submitted in A.D. 1415, and was made cardinal-bishop of Porto.
Benedict, however, retired to Spain and refused to come to
terms, but even the Spanish princes withdrew their allegiance
from him as pope. The cardinals in conclave elected the crafty
Oddo Colonna, who was consecrated as =Martin V.=, A.D. 1417-1431.
There was no more word of reformation. With great pomp the
council was closed, and indulgence granted to its members. As
the whole West now recognised Martin as the true pope the schism
may be said to end with his accession, though Benedict continued
to thunder anathemas from his strong Spanish castle till his
death in A.D. 1424, and three of his four cardinals elected as
his successor Clement VIII. and the fourth another Benedict XIV.
Of the latter no notice was taken, but Clement submitted in
A.D. 1429, and received the bishopric of Majorca.--Martin V.
on entering Rome in A.D. 1420 found everything in confusion
and desolate. By his able administration a change was soon
effected, and the Rome of the Renaissance rose on the ruins
of the mediæval city.[325]
§ 110.8. =Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basel.=--Martin V.
commissioned Cardinal Julian Cesarini to look after the
Hussite controversy in the =Basel Council=, A.D. 1431-1449.
His successor =Eugenius IV.=, A.D. 1431-1447, confirmed this
appointment. After thirteen months he ordered the council to
meet at Bologna, finding the heretical element too strong in
Germany. The members, however, unanimously refused to obey.
Sigismund, too, protested, and the council claimed to be
superior to the pope. The withdrawal of the bull within sixty
days was insisted upon. As a compromise, the pope offered to
call a new council, not at Bologna, but at Basel. This was
declined and the pope threatened with deposition. A rebellion,
too, broke out in the States of the Church; and in A.D. 1433
Eugenius was completely humbled and obliged to acquiesce in the
demands of the council. One danger was thus averted, but he was
still threatened by another. In A.D. 1434 Rome proclaimed itself
a republic and the pope fled to Florence. The success of the
democracy, however, was now again of but short duration. In
five months Rome was once more under the dominion of the pope.
Negotiations for union with the Greeks were begun by the pope
at =Ferrara= A.D. 1438. A small number of Italians under the
presidency of the pope here assumed the offices of an œcumenical
council, those at Basel being ordered to join them, the Basel
Council being suspended, and the continuance of that council
being pronounced schismatical. Julian, now styled “_Julianus
Apostata II._,” with almost all the cardinals, betook himself
to Ferrara. Under the able cardinal Louis d’Aleman (§ 118, 4),
archbishop of Arles, some still continued the proceedings of
the council at Basel, but in consequence of a pestilence they
moved, in A.D. 1439, to =Florence=. A union with the Greeks was
here effected, at least upon paper. The Basel Council banned by
the pope, deposed him, and in A.D. 1439 elected a new pope in
the person of Duke Amadeus of Savoy, who on his wife’s death
had resigned his crown to his son and entered a monkish order.
He called himself Felix V. Princes and people, however, were
tired of rival papacies. Felix got little support, and the
council itself soon lost all its power. Its ablest members one
after another passed over to the party of Eugenius. In A.D. 1449
Felix resigned, and died in the odour of sanctity two years
afterwards.[326]
§ 110.9. Only =Charles VII.= of France took advantage of the
reforming decree of Basel for the benefit of his country. He
assembled the most distinguished churchmen and scholars of his
kingdom at Bourges, and with their concurrence published, in
A.D. 1438, twenty-three of the conclusions of Basel that bore on
the Gallican liberties under the name of the =Pragmatic Sanction=,
and made it a law of his realm. For the rest he maintained an
attitude of neutrality towards both popes, as also shortly before
the electors convened at Frankfort had done. Those assembled at
the Diet of Mainz in A.D. 1439 recognised the reforming edicts
of Basel as applying to Germany. =Frederick IV.=, A.D. 1439-1493,
who as emperor is known as Frederick III., under the influence of
the cunning Italian Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (§ 118, 6), though
at first in the opposition, went over to the side of Eugenius IV.
in A.D. 1446 upon receiving 100,000 guldens for the expenses of
an expedition to Rome and certain ecclesiastical privileges for
his Austrian subjects. Some weeks later the electors of Frankfort
took the same steps, stipulating that Eugenius should recognise
the decrees of the Council of Constance and the reforming decrees
of Basel, and should promise to convene a new free council in
a German city to bring the schism to an end, which if he failed
to do they would quit him in favour of Basel. But at the diet,
held in September of that year at Frankfort, the legates of the
pope and of the king succeeded by diplomatic arts in coming to
an understanding with the electors met at Mainz. Thus it happened
that in the so-called =Frankfort Concordat of the Princes= a
compromise was effected, which Eugenius confirmed in A.D. 1447,
with a careful explanation to the effect that none of these
concessions in any way infringed upon the rights and privileges
of the Holy See. In the following year Frederick in name of the
German nation concluded with Eugenius’ successor, Nicholas V.,
the =Concordat of Vienna=, A.D. 1448. The advantages gained by
the German church were quite insignificant. Frederick received
imperial rank as reward for the betrayal of his country, and was
crowned in Rome, in A.D. 1452, as the last German emperor.
§ 110.10. =Nicholas V., Calixtus III., and Pius II.,
A.D. 1447-1464.=--With =Nicholas V.=, A.D. 1447-1455, a
miracle of classical scholarship and founder of the Vatican
Library, the Roman see for the first time became the patron of
humanistic studies, and under this mild and liberal pope the
secular government of Rome was greatly improved. The conquest of
Constantinople by the Turks, in A.D. 1453, produced excitement
throughout the whole of Europe. The eloquence of the pope
roused the crusading spirit of Christendom, and oratorical
appeals were thundered from the pulpits of all churches and
cathedrals. But the princes remained cold and indifferent.
After Nicholas, a Spaniard, the cardinal Alphonso Borgia, then
in his seventy-seventh year, was raised to the papal chair as
=Calixtus III.=, A.D. 1455-1458. Hatred of Turks and love of
nephews were the two characteristics of the man. Yet he could
not rouse the princes against the Turks, and the fleet fitted out
at his own cost only plundered a few islands in the Archipelago.
Calixtus’ successor was Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the able and
accomplished apostate from the Basel reform party, who styled
himself, with intended allusion to Virgil’s “_pius Æneas_,”
=Pius II.=, A.D. 1458-1464. The pope’s Ciceronian eloquence
failed to secure the attendance of princes at the Mantuan
Congress, summoned in A.D. 1459 to take steps for the equipment
of a crusade. A war against the Turks was indeed to have been
undertaken by emperor Frederick III., and a tax was to have been
levied on Christians and Jews for its cost; but neither tax nor
crusade was forthcoming. Pius demanded of the French ambassadors
a formal repudiation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and
when they threatened the calling of an œcumenical council, he
issued the bull _Execrabilis_, which pronounced “the execrable
and previously unheard of” enormity of an appeal to a council to
be heresy and treason. In A.D. 1461 the pope, by a long epistle,
attempted the conversion of Mohammed II., the powerful conqueror
of Constantinople. As the discovery of the great alum deposit
at Rome in A.D. 1462 was attributed to miraculous direction, the
pope was led to devote its rich resources to the fitting out of
a crusade against the Turks. He wished himself to lead the army
in person, in order to secure victory by uplifted hands, like
Moses in the war with Amalek. But here again the princes left him
in the lurch. Coming to Ancona in A.D. 1464 to take ship there
upon his great undertaking, only his own two galleys were waiting
him. After long weary waiting, twelve Venetian ships arrived,
just in time to see the pope prostrated with fever and excitement.
§ 110.11. =Paul II., Sixtus IV. and Innocent VII.,
A.D. 1464-1492.=--Among the popes of the last forty years of
the 15th century =Paul II.=, A.D. 1464-1471, was the best,
though vain, sensual, greedy, fond of show, and extravagant.
He was impartial in the administration of justice, free from
nepotism, and always ready to succour the needy. His successor,
=Sixtus IV.=, A.D. 1471-1484, formerly Franciscan general,
was one of the most wicked of the occupants of the chair of
Peter. His appeal for an expedition against the Turks finding no
response outside of Italy, his love of strife found gratification
in fomenting internal animosities among the Italian states.
In favour of a nephew he sought the overthrow in A.D. 1478 of
the famous Medici family in Florence. Julian was murdered, but
Lorenzo escaped, and the archbishop, as abettor of the crime,
was hanged in his official robes. The pope placed the city
under ban and interdict. It was only the conquest of Otranto in
A.D. 1480, and the terror caused by the landing of the Turks in
Italy, that moved him to make terms with Florence. His nepotism
was most shamelessly practised, and he increased his revenues
by taxing the brothels of Rome. His powerful government did
something towards the improvement of the administration of
justice in the Church States and his love of art beautified
the city. In A.D. 1482 Andrew, archbishop of Crain, a Slav by
birth and of the Dominican order, halted at Basel on his return
from Rome, where he had been as ambassador for Frederick, and,
with the support of the Italian league and the emperor, issued
violent invectives against the pope, and summoned an œcumenical
council for the reform of the church in its head and members. The
pope ordered his arrest and extradition, but this the municipal
authorities refused. After a volley of bulls and briefs, charges
and appeals, and after innumerable embassies and negotiations
between Basel, Vienna, Innsbrück, Florence, and Rome, in which
the emperor abandoned the archbishop and the papal legates
dangled an interdict over Basel, the authorities decided to
imprison the objectionable prelate, but refused to deliver him
up. After eleven months’ imprisonment, however, he was found
hanged in his cell in A.D. 1484. Sixtus had died three months
before and Basel was absolved by his successor =Innocent VIII.=,
A.D. 1484-1492. In character and ability he was far inferior to
his predecessor. The number of illegitimate children brought by
him to the Vatican gave occasion to the popular witticism: “_Octo
Nocens genuit pueros totidemque puellas, Hunc merito poterit
dicere Roma patrem_.” The mighty conqueror of half the world,
Mohammed II., had died in A.D. 1481. His two sons contested
for the throne, and Bajazet proving successful committed the
guardianship of his brother to the Knights of St. John in Rhodes.
The Grandmaster transferred his prisoner, in A.D. 1489, to the
pope. Innocent rewarded him with a cardinalate, and Bajazet
promised the pope not only continual peace, but a yearly
tribute of 40,000 ducats. He also voluntarily presented his
holiness with the spear which pierced the Saviour’s side. All
this, however, did not prevent the pope from repeatedly but
ineffectually seeking to rouse Christendom to a crusade against
the Turks. To this pope also belongs the odium of familiarizing
Europe with witch prosecutions (§ 117, 4).[327]
§ 110.12. =Alexander VI., A.D. 1492-1503.=--The Spanish cardinal
Roderick Borgia, sister’s son of Calixtus III., purchased the
tiara by bribing his colleagues. In him as Alexander VI. we have
a pope whose government presents a scene of unparalleled infamy,
riotous immorality, and unmentionable crimes, of cruel despotism,
fraud, faithlessness, and murder, and a barefaced nepotism, such
as even the city of the popes had never witnessed before. He
had already before his election five children by a concubine,
Rosa Vanossa, four sons and one daughter, Lucretia, and his one
care was for their advancement. His favourite son was Giovanni,
for whom while cardinal he had purchased the rank of a Spanish
grandee, with the title Duke of Gandia, and when pope he bestowed
on him, in A.D. 1497, the hereditary dukedom of Benevento. But
eight days after his corpse with dagger wounds upon it was taken
out of the Tiber. The pope exclaimed, “I know the murderer.”
Suspicion fell first upon Giovanni Sforsa of Pesaro, Lucretia’s
husband, who had charged the murdered man with committing incest
with his sister, but afterwards upon Cardinal Cæsar Borgia, the
pope’s second son, who was jealous of his brother because of the
favour shown him by Lucretia and by her father. Alexander’s grief
knew no bounds, but sought escape from it by redoubled love to
the suspected son. In A.D. 1498 the papal bastard resigned the
cardinalate as an intolerable burden, married a French princess,
and was made hereditary duke of Romagna. Suddenly at the same
time, and in the same manner, in A.D. 1503, father and son took
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
v. Watt, who zealously advanced the interests of the Reformation
by word, writing, and action. John Karsler, who had studied
theology in Wittenberg in A.D. 1522, and was then obliged,
in order to avoid reading the mass, to learn and practise the
trade of a saddler, preached the gospel here in the Trades’
Hall in his saddler’s apron in A.D. 1524, and took the office
of reformed pastor and Latin preceptor in A.D. 1537. He died in
A.D. 1574 as President of St. Gall. In =Schaffhausen= Erasmus
Ritter, called upon to oppose in discussion the reformed pastor
Hofmeister, owned himself defeated, and joined the reform party.
In the canton =Vaud= Thos. Platter, the original and learned
sailor, afterwards rector of the high school at Burg, laid the
foundations of the Reformation. In =Appenzel= and =Glarus= the
work gradually advanced. But in the Swiss midlands the nobles
raised opposition in behalf of their revenues, and the people
of Berg, whose whole religion lay in pilgrimages, images, and
saints, constantly opposed the introduction of the new views.
Lucerne and Freiburg were the main bulwarks of the papacy in
Switzerland.
§ 130.5. =Anabaptist Outbreak, A.D. 1525.=--In Switzerland,
though the reformers there had taken very advanced ground,
a number of ultra-reformers arose, who thought they did not
go far enough. Their leaders were Hätzer (§ 148, 1), Grebel,
Manz, Röublin, Hubmeier, and Stör. They began disturbances
at Zolticon near Zürich. Hubmeier held a council at Waldshut,
Easter Eve, A.D. 1525, and was rebaptized by Röublin. During
Easter week 110 received baptism, and subsequently more than
300 besides. The Basel Canton, where Münzer had been living,
broke out in open revolt against the city. St. Gall alone
had 800 Anabaptists. Zürich at Zwingli’s request at once took
decided measures. Many were banished, some were mercilessly
drowned. Bern, Basel, and St. Gall followed this example.[367]
§ 130.6. =Disputation at Baden, A.D. 1526.=--The reactionary
party could not decline the challenge to a disputation, but
in the face of all protests it was determined to be held in
the Catholic district of Baden. The champions and representatives
of the cantons and bishops appeared there in May, A.D. 1526,
Faber and Eck leading the papists and Haller of Bern and
Œcolampadius of Basel representing the party of reform. Zwingli
was forbidden by the Zürich council to attend, but he was kept
daily informed by Thos. Platter. Eck’s theses were combatted one
after another. It lasted eight days. Eck outcried Œcolampadius’
weak voice, but the latter was immensely superior in intellectual
power. At last Thomas Murner (§ 125, 4) appeared with forty
abusive articles against Zwingli. Œcolampadius and ten of
his friends persisted in rejecting Eck’s theses; all the
rest accepted them. The Assembly of the States pronounced
the reformers heretics, and ordered the cantons to have them
banished.
§ 130.7. =Disputation at Bern, A.D. 1528.=--The result of
the Bern disputation was ill received by the democrats of
Bern and Basel. A final disputation was arranged for at
=Bern=, which was attended by 350 of the clergy and many
noblemen. Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Haller, Capito, Bucer,
and Farel were there. It continued from 7th to 27th January,
A.D. 1528. The Catholics were sadly wanting in able disputants,
and they sustained an utter defeat. Worship and constitution
were radically reformed. Cloisters were secularized; preachers
gave their official oath to the civil magistrates. There were
serious riots over the removal of the images. The valuable
organ in the minster of St. Vincent was broken up by the
ruthless iconoclasts. A political reformation was carried
out along with the religious, and all stipendiaries received
their warning.
§ 130.8. =Complete Victory of the Reformation at Basel, St. Gall,
and Schaffhausen, A.D. 1529.=--The Burgomaster von Watt brought
to =St. Gall= the news of the victorious issue of the disputation
at Bern. This gave the finishing blow to the Catholic party.
Thus in A.D. 1528, certainly not without some iconoclastic
excesses, the Reformation triumphed.--In =Basel=, the council
was divided, and so it took but half measures. On Good Friday,
A.D. 1528, some citizens broke the images in St. Martin’s
Church. They were apprehended. But a rising of citizens obliged
the council to set them free, and several churches from which
the images had been withdrawn were given over to the reformers.
In December, A.D. 1528, the trades presented a petition asking
for the final abolition of idolatry. The Catholic party and
the reformed took to arms, and a civil war seemed imminent.
The council, however, succeeded in quelling the disturbance
by announcing a disputation where the majority of the citizens
should decide by their votes. But the Catholic minority
protested so energetically that the council had again recourse
to half measures. The dissatisfaction of the reformed led
to an explosion of violent image breaking in Lent, A.D. 1529.
Huge bonfires of images and altars were set a blaze. The strict
Catholic members of the council fled, the rest quelled the
revolt by an unconditional surrender. Even Erasmus gave way
(§ 120, 6). Œcolampadius had married in A.D. 1528. He died
in A.D. 1531. In =Schaffhausen= up to A.D. 1529 matters were
undecided, but the proceedings at Basel and Bern gave victory
to the reformed party. The drama here ended with a double
marriage. The abbot of All Saints married a nun, and Erasmus
Ritter married the abbot’s sister. Images were removed without
tumult and the mass abolished.
§ 130.9. =The first Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1529.=--In the five
forest cantons the Catholics had the upper hand, and there every
attempted political as well as religious reform was relentlessly
put down. Zürich and Bern could stand this no longer. Unterwalden
now revolted, and found considerable support in the other four
cantons, and the position of the cities became serious. The
forest cantons now turned to Austria, the old enemy of Swiss
freedom, and concluded at Innsbrück in A.D. 1529 a formal league
with King Ferdinand for mutual assistance in matters touching
the faith. Trusting to this league, they increased their cruel
persecutions of the reformed, and burnt alive a Zürich preacher,
Keyser, whom they had seized on the public highway on neutral
territory. Then the Zürichers rose up in revolt. With their
decided preponderance they might certainly have crushed the
five cantons, and then all Switzerland would have surrounded
Zwingli in the support of reform. But Bern was jealous of
Zürich’s growing importance, and even many Zürichers for fear
of war urged negotiations for peace with the old members of the
league. Thus came about the First Treaty of Cappel in A.D. 1529.
The five cantons gave up the Austrian league document to be
destroyed, undertook to defray the costs of the war, and agreed
that the majority in each canton should determine the faith of
that canton. As to freedom of belief it was only said that no
party should make the faith of the other penal. This was less
than Zwingli wished, yet it was a considerable gain. Thurgau,
Baden, Schaffhausen, Solothurn, Neuenburg, Toggenburg, etc.,
on the basis of this treaty, abolished mass, images, and altars.
§ 130.10. =The Second Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1531.=--Even
after the treaty the five cantons continued to persecute
the reformed, and renewed their alliance with Austria. Their
undue preponderance in the assembly led Zürich to demand a
revision of the federation. This led the forest cantons to
increase their cruelties upon the reformed. Zürich declared
for immediate hostilities, but Bern decided to refuse all
commercial intercourse with the five cantons. At the diet at
Lucerne, the five cantons resolved in September, A.D. 1531,
to avert famine by immediately declaring war. They made their
arrangements so secretly that the reformed party was not the
least prepared, when suddenly, on the 9th October, an army of
8,000 men, bent on revenge, rushed down on the Zürich Canton.
In all haste 2,000 men were mustered, who were almost annihilated
in the battle of Cappel on 11th October. There, too, Zwingli
fell. His body was quartered and burnt, and the ashes scattered
to the winds. Zürich and Bern soon brought a force of 20,000
men into the field, but the courage of their enemies had grown
in proportion as all confidence and spirit departed from the
reformed. Further successes led the forest cantons, which had
hitherto acted only on the defensive, to proceed on the offensive,
and the reformed were constrained to accept on humbling terms
the Second Treaty of Cappel of A.D. 1531. This granted freedom
of worship to the reformed in their own cantons, but secured the
restoration of Catholicism in the five cantons. The defeated had
also to bear the costs of the war, and to renounce their league
with Strassburg, Constance, and Hesse. The hitherto oppressed
Catholic minority began now to assert itself on all hands, and
in many places were more or less successful in securing the
ascendency. So it was in Aargau, Thurgau, Rapperschwyl, St. Gall,
Rheinthal, Solothurn, Glarus, etc.
§ 131. THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSY, A.D. 1525-1529.[368]
Luther in his “Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” of A.D. 1520,
had, in opposition to prevailing views, which made the efficacy of the
sacraments dependent on the objective receiving without regard to the
faith of the receiver, _opus operatum_, pressed forward the subjective
side in a somewhat extreme manner. During the earlier period of
his career as a reformer, and indeed even at a later period, as his
letter to the men of Strassburg shows, he was in danger of going to
the extreme of overlooking or denying the real objective and Divine
contents of the sacrament. But decided as the opposition was to the
scholastic theory of transubstantiation, and convinced as he was that
the bread and wine were to be regarded as mere symbols, the text of
Scripture seemed clearly to say to him that he must recognise there
the presence of the true body and blood of Christ. His anxiety to
avoid the errors of the fanatics, and his simple acceptance of the
word of Scripture, led him to that conviction which inspired him to
the end, that IN, WITH, and UNDER the bread and wine the true body
and blood of the Lord are received, by believers unto salvation, by
unbelievers unto condemnation.
=Carlstadt= (§ 124, 3) had denied utterly the presence of the
body and blood of the Lord in the sacrament. He sought to set
aside the force of the words of institution by giving to τοῦτο
an absurd meaning: Christ had pointed to His own present body,
and said, “This here is My body, which in death I will give
for you, and in memory thereof eat this bread.” When Carlstadt,
expelled from Saxony, came to Strassburg, he sought to interest
the preachers there, Bucer and Capito, in himself and his
sacramental view. But Luther was not moved by their attempts
at conciliation. =Zwingli=, too, took the side of Carlstadt.
In essential agreement with Carlstadt, but putting the matter
on another basis, Zwingli interpreted the words of institution,
“This is,” by “This signifies,” and reduced the significance
of the sacrament to a symbolical memorial of Christ’s suffering
and death. In an epistle to the Lutheran Matthew Alber at
Reutlingen in A.D. 1524 he set forth this theory, and sided
with Carlstadt against Luther. He developed his views more
fully in his dogmatic treatise, _Commentarius de vera et falsa
relig._, A.D. 1525, where he characterizes Luther’s doctrine
as an _opinio non solum rustica sed etiam impia et frivola_.
=Œcolampadius=, too, took part in the controversy as supporter
of his friend Zwingli when attacked by Bugenhagen, and wrote in
A.D. 1525 his _De genuina verborum Domini, Hoc est corpus meum,
expositione_. He wished to understand the σῶμα of the words of
institution as equivalent to “sign of the body.” Œcolampadius
laid his treatise before the Swabian reformers Brenz and Schnepf;
but these, in concert with twelve other preachers, answered in
the _Syngramma Suevicum_ of A.D. 1525 quite in accordance with
Luther’s doctrine. The controversy continued to spread. Luther
first openly appeared against the Swiss in A.D. 1526 in his
“Sermon on the Sacrament against the Fanatics,” and to this
Zwingli replied. Luther answered again in his tract, “That
the words, This is My body, stand firm;” and in A.D. 1528 he
issued his great manifesto, “Confession in regard to the Lord’s
Supper” (§ 144, 2, note). Notwithstanding the endeavours of the
Strassburgers at conciliation the controversy still continued.
Zwingli’s statement was the shibboleth of the Swiss Reformation,
and was adopted also in many of the upland cities. Strassburg,
Lindau, Meiningen, and Constance accepted it; even in Ulm,
Augsburg, Reutlingen, etc., it had its supporters.--Continuation,
§ 132, 4.
§ 132. THE PROTEST AND CONFESSION OF THE EVANGELICAL NOBLES,
A.D. 1527-1530.
For three years after the diet at Spires in A.D. 1526 no public
proceedings were taken on religious questions. The success of the
Reformation however during these years roused the Catholic party to
make a great effort. At the next diet at Spires, in A.D. 1529, the
Catholics were in the majority, and measures were passed which, it
was hoped, would put an end to the Reformation. The evangelicals
tabled a formal protest (hence the name Protestants), and strove
hard to have effect given to it. The union negotiations with the
Swiss and uplanders were not indeed successful, but in the Augsburg
Confession of A.D. 1530 they raised before emperor and empire a
standard, around which they henceforth gathered with hearty goodwill.
§ 132.1. =The Pack Incident, A.D. 1527, 1528.=--In A.D. 1527
dark rumours of dangers to the evangelicals began to spread.
The landgrave, suspecting the existence of a conspiracy of the
German Catholic princes, gave to an officer in Duke George’s
government, Otto von Pack, 10,000 florins to secure documents
proving its existence. He produced one with the ducal seal,
which bound the Catholic princes of Germany to fall upon
the elector’s territories and Hesse, and to divide the lands
among them, etc. The landgrave was all fire and fury, and
even the Elector John joined him in a league to make a vigorous
demonstration against the purposed attack. But Luther and
Melanchthon pressed upon the elector our Lord’s words, “All
they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” and
convinced him that he ought to abide the attack and restrict
himself to simple defence. The landgrave, highly offended
at the failure of his project, sent a copy of the document
to Duke George, who declared the whole affair a tissue of
lies. Philip had begun operations against the elector, but
was heartily ashamed of himself when he came to his sober
senses. Pack when interrogated became involved in contradictions,
and was found to be a thoroughly bad subject, who had been
before convicted of falsehood and intrigues. The landgrave
expelled him from his territories. He wandered long a homeless
exile, and at last, in A.D. 1536, was executed by Duke George’s
orders in the Netherlands. All this seriously injured the
interests of the gospel. Mutual distrust among the Protestant
leaders continued, and sympathy was created for the Catholic
princes as men who had been unjustly accused.
§ 132.2. =The Emperor’s Attitude, A.D. 1527-1529.=--The
faithlessness of the king of France and the ratification of
the League of Cognac (§ 126, 6) led to very strained relations
between the pope and the emperor. Old Frundsberg raised an
army in Germany, and the German peasants, without pay or reward,
crossed the Alps, burning with desire to humiliate the pope.
On 6th May, A.D. 1527, the imperial army of Spaniards and
Germans stormed Rome. The so-called sack of Rome presented
a scene of plunder and spoliation scarcely ever paralleled.
Clement VII., besieged in St. Angelo, was obliged to surrender
himself prisoner. But once again Germany’s hopes were cast
to the ground by the emperor. Considering the opinion that
prevailed in Spain, and influenced by his own antipathy to the
Saxon heresy, besides other political combinations, he forgot
that he had been saved by Lutheran soldiers. In June, A.D. 1528,
at Barcelona, he concluded a peace with the pope and promised
to use his whole power in suppressing heresy. By the Treaty of
Cambray, in July, A.D. 1529, the French war also was finally
brought to a conclusion. In this treaty both potentates promised
to uphold the papal chair, and Francis I. renewed his undertaking
to furnish aid against heretics and Turks. Charles now hastened
to Italy to be crowned by the pope, meaning then by his personal
attentions to settle the affairs of Germany.
§ 132.3. =The Diet at Spires, A.D. 1529.=--In the end of
A.D. 1528 the emperor issued a summons for another diet at
Spires, which met on 21st Feb., A.D. 1529. Things had changed
since A.D. 1526. The Catholics were roused by the Pack episode,
halting nobles were terrorized by the emperor, the prelates
were present in great numbers, and the Catholics, for the
first time since the Diet at Worms, were in a decided majority.
The proposition of the imperial commissioners to rescind the
conclusions of the diet of A.D. 1526 was adopted by a majority,
and formulated as the diet’s decision. No innovations were to
be introduced until at least a council had been convened, mass
was everywhere to be tolerated, the jurisdiction and revenues
of the bishops were in all cases to be fully restored. It was
the death-knell of the Reformation, as it gave the bishops
the right of deposing and punishing preachers at their will.
As Ferdinand was deaf to all remonstrances, the evangelicals
presented a solemn protest, with the demand that it should
be incorporated in the imperial statute book. But Ferdinand
refused to receive it. The =Protestants= now took no further
steps, but drew up a formal statement of their case for the
emperor, appealed to a free council and German national assembly,
and declared their constant adherence to the decisions of the
previous diet. This document was signed by the Elector of Saxony,
the Landgrave of Hesse, George of Brandenburg, the two dukes
of Lüneburg, and Prince Wolfgang of Anholt [Anhalt]. Of the
upland cities fourteen subscribed it.
§ 132.4. =The Marburg Conference, A.D. 1529.=--The Elector of
Saxony and Hesse entered into a defensive league with Strassburg,
Ulm, and Nuremberg at Spires. The theologians present agreed
only with hesitation to admit the Zwinglian Strassburg. The
landgrave at the same time formed an alliance with Zürich,
which attached itself to the interests of Francis I. of
France. Thus began the most formidable coalition which had
ever yet been formed against the house of Austria. But one
point had been overlooked which broke it all up again, _viz._
the religious differences between the Lutheran and Zwinglian
confessions. Melanchthon returned to Wittenburg [Wittenberg]
with serious qualms of conscience; Luther had declared against
any league, most of all against any fraternising with the
“Sacramentarians,” and the elector to some extent agreed with
him. Even the Nuremberg theologians had their scruples. The
proposed league was to have been ratified at Rotach in June.
The meeting took place, but no conclusion was reached. The
landgrave was furious, but the elector was resolute. Philip
now summoned leading theologians on both sides to a =conference
at Marburg= in his castle, which lasted from 1st till 3rd Oct.,
A.D. 1529. On the one side were Luther, Melanchthon, Justus
Jonas, from Wittenberg, Brenz from Swabia, and Osiander from
Nuremberg; on the other side, Zwingli from Zürich, Œcolampadius
from Basel, Bucer and Hadio [Hedio] from Strassburg. After, by
the landgrave’s well-meant arrangement, Zwingli had discussed
privately with Melanchthon, and Luther with Œcolampadius, during
the first day, the public conference began on the second. First
of all several points were discussed on the divinity of Christ,
original sin, baptism, the word of God, etc., in reference
to which suspicions of Zwingli’s orthodoxy had been current
in Wittenberg. On all these Zwingli willingly abandoned his
peculiar theories and accepted the doctrines of the œcumenical
church. But his views of the Lord’s Supper he stoutly maintained.
He took his stand upon John vi. 63, “The flesh profiteth
nothing;” but Luther wrote with chalk on the table before
him, “This is My body,” as the word of God which no one may
explain away. No agreement could be reached. Zwingli declared
that notwithstanding he was ready for brotherly fellowship,
but this Luther and his party unanimously refused. Luther said,
“You are of another spirit than we.” Still Luther had found
his opponents not so bad as he expected, and also the Swiss
found that Luther’s doctrine was not so gross and capernaitic
as they had imagined. They agreed on fifteen articles, in
the fourteenth of which they determined on the basis of the
œcumenical church doctrine to oppose the errors of Papists
and Anabaptists, and in the fifteenth the Swiss admitted that
the true body and blood of Christ are in the sacrament, but
they could not admit that they were corporeally in the bread
and wine. Three copies of these Marburg articles were signed
by the theologians present.--Continuation, § 133, 8.
§ 132.5. =The Convention of Schwabach and the Landgrave
Philip.=--A convention met at Schwabach in Oct., A.D. 1529,
at which a confession of seventeen articles was proposed
to the representatives of the Swiss, but rejected by them.
Meanwhile the imperial answer to the decisions of the diet
had arrived from Spain, containing very ungracious expressions
against the Protestants. The evangelical nobles sent an embassy
to the emperor to Italy; but he refused to receive the protest,
and treated the ambassadors almost as prisoners. They returned
to Germany with a bad report. Hitherto there had been only a
defensive federation against attacks of the Swabian League or
other Catholic princes. Luther’s hope that the emperor might
yet be won was shattered. The question now was, what should be
done if an onslaught upon the reformed should be made by the
emperor himself. The jurists indeed were of opinion that the
German princes were not unconditionally subject to the emperor;
they too have authority by God’s grace, and in the exercise of
this are bound to protect their subjects. But Luther did not
hesitate for a moment to compare the relation of the elector
to the emperor with that of the burgomaster of Torgau to the
elector; for he maintained the idea of the empire as firmly
as that of the church. He insisted that the princes should not
withstand the emperor, and that they should bear everything
patiently for God’s sake. Only if the emperor should proceed
to persecute their own subjects for their faith should
they renounce their obedience. The landgrave’s negotiations
with Zwingli also led to no result. For political purposes,
notwithstanding the opposition of Wittenberg, there was formed a
coalition of all the Protestants of the north with the exception
of Denmark, extending also to the south and embracing even
Venice and France. The Swiss would stop the way of the emperor
over the Alps; Venice would be of service with her fleet, and
the most Christian king of France was to be summoned as the
protector of political and religious freedom of Germany. But
these fine plans were seen to be vain dreams when the time for
putting them in practice came round.
§ 132.6. =The Diet of Augsburg, A.D. 1530.=--From Boulogne,
where the pope crowned him, the emperor summoned a diet to
meet at Augsburg, at which for the first time in nine he was
to be personally present. He would once again seek to induce
the Protestants quietly to return to the old faith, and so
his missive was very conciliatory. But before its arrival new
irritations had arisen at Augsburg. The Elector John allowed
the preachers accompanying him, Spalatin and Agricola, to
engage freely in preaching. The emperor was greatly displeased
at this, and sent him a request to withdraw this permission,
which, however, he did not regard. On 15th June, accompanied
by the papal legate Campegius (§ 126, 2, 3), he made a brilliant
entrance, the Protestants, on the ground of 2 Kings v. 17, 18,
offering no opposition to all the civil and ecclesiastical
reception ceremonies. This gave the emperor greater confidence
in renewing the demand to stop the preaching. But the Protestants
stood firm, and Margrave George called down the unmeasured
wrath of the emperor by his decided but humble declaration,
that before he would deny God’s word, he would kneel where
he stood and have his head struck off. Just as decidedly he
refused the emperor’s call to join the Corpus Christi procession
on the following day, even with the addition that it was “to the
glory of Almighty God.” At last they yielded the matter of the
preaching so far as to discontinue it during the emperor’s stay,
on the other party undertaking to discontinue controversial
discourses. On 20th June the diet opened. The matter of the
Turkish war was on the emperor’s motion postponed, to allow
of the thorough discussion of the religious questions.
§ 132.7. =The Augsburg Confession, 25th June, A.D. 1530.=--In
view of the diet the evangelical theologians prepared for the
elector a short confession in the form of a revision of the
seventeen Schwabach Articles, the so called Torgau Articles.
Melanchthon employed the days that preceded the opening of
the diet in drawing up on the basis of the Torgau Articles,
in constant correspondence with the evangelical theologians,
the =Augsburg Confession=, _Confessio Augustana_. This concise,
clear, and decided though temperate document received the hearty
approval of Luther, who, as still under the ban, was kept back
by the elector at Coburg. It contained twenty-one _Articuli
fidei præcipui_, and also seven _Articuli in quibus recensentur
abusus mutati_. On 24th June the Protestants said they desired
their confession to be publicly read. But it was with difficulty
that they obtained the emperor’s consent to allow its being read
on the 25th June, and even then not in the public hall, but in
a much smaller episcopal chapel, where only members of the diet
could find room. The two chancellors of the electorate, Baier
and Brück, appeared, the one with a German, the other with
a Latin copy of the confession. The emperor wished the Latin,
but the elector insisted that on German soil the German copy
should be read. When this was done Dr. Brück handed both copies
to the emperor, who kept the Latin one and gave the German one
to the Elector of Mainz. Both were subscribed by Elector John,
Margrave George, Duke Ernest of Lüneburg, Landgrave Philip,
Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, and the cities of Nuremberg and
Reutlingen. The confession made a favourable impression
on many of the assembled princes, and many prejudices were
dissipated; while the evangelicals were greatly strengthened by
the unanimous confession of their faith before the emperor and
the empire. The Catholic theologians Faber, Eck, Cochlæus, and
Wimpina were ordered by the emperor to controvert the confession.
Meanwhile Melanchthon entered into negotiations with the legate
Campegius, in which his love of peace went so far as to withdraw
all demands for marriage of the clergy, and the giving of the
cup to the laity, and to allow the ecclesiastical jurisdiction
of the bishops, reserving the question about the mass to the
decision of a council. But these weak concessions found little
or no favour among the other Protestants, and the legate could
make no binding engagement until he consulted Rome. On 3rd Aug.
the confutation of the Catholic theologians was read. The
emperor declared that it maintained the views by which he
would stand. He expected the princes would do the same. He
was defender of the Church, and was not disposed to suffer
ecclesiastical schism in Germany. The Protestants demanded for
closer inspection a copy of the confutation. This was refused.
The landgrave now left the diet. To the elector he said that
he gave over to him and to God’s word body and goods, land
and people; and to the representatives of the cities he wrote:
“Say to the cities that they are not women, but men. There is
no fear; God is on our side.” The zealous Papist Duke William of
Bavaria declared to Eck, “If I hear well, the Lutherans sit upon
the Scripture and we alongside of it.” The cities siding with
Zwingli, Strassburg, Memmingen, Constance, and Lindau, presented
their own confession drawn up by Bucer and Capilo [Capito], the
_Confessio Tetrapolitana_. In its eighteenth article it taught
that Christ gives in the sacrament His true body and His true
blood to be eaten and drunk for the feeding of the soul. The
emperor had a Catholic reply read, with which he expressed
satisfaction. Luther had meanwhile from Coburg supported those
contending for the confession by prayer, counsel, and comfort.
He preached frequently, wrote many letters, negotiated with
Bucer (§ 133, 8), wrought at the translation of the prophets,
and composed several evangelical works of edification.
§ 132.8. =The Conclusions of the Diet of Augsburg.=--The firm
bright spirit of the minority made it seem to the Catholic
majority too considerable to allow of an open breach. A further
attempt was therefore made to reach some agreement. A commission
was appointed, comprising from either side two princes, two
doctors of canon law, and three theologians. On the twenty-one
doctrinal articles, with the exception of that on the sacraments,
they were practically agreed, but the Protestants were called
upon to abandon everything in regard to constitution and customs.
Thus the attempt failed. Five imperial cities took the side
of the emperor, the rest attached themselves to the Protestant
princes. The Protestants wished to read Melanchthon’s apology
for the Augsburg Confession against the charge of the Catholic
confutation, but the emperor with unbending stubbornness refused.
This was the most decided piece of work Melanchthon ever did.
At the close of the diet, 22nd Sept., the Protestant princes
were informed that time for reflection would be allowed them
till 15th April of the following year; meanwhile they should
not enforce any innovations and should allow confession and
the mass in their territories. The early calling of a council
was expressly promised. The princes of the church had all their
rights restored. The emperor declared his firm determination to
enforce in its full rigour the edict of Worms, and commissioned
the public prosecutor to proceed against the disobedient even
to the length of putting them under the ban. The judicature was
formally and expressly empowered to carry out the conclusions
of the diet. Finally, the emperor expressed the wish that on
account of his frequent absence his brother Ferdinand should
be chosen King of Rome. The election was accordingly soon
carried out at Frankfort; but the elector lodged a protest
against it.
§ 133. INCIDENTS OF THE YEARS A.D. 1531-1536.
The Protestants now made an earnest effort to effect a union by
forming in A.D. 1531 the Schmalcald League. To this decided action
and the political difficulties of the emperor we owe the Peace of
Nuremburg [Nuremberg] of A.D. 1532. The bold step of the landgrave
freed Württemberg from the Austrian yoke and papal oppression. At
the same time the Reformation triumphed in Anhalt, Pomerania, and
several Westphalian cities. All Westphalia might have been one but
for the Anabaptists. Bucer’s unwearied efforts at last succeeded by
the Wittenberg concordat in opening the way for the Schmalcald League
into the cities of the Uplands. The league now comprised an imposing
array of powerful members.
§ 133.1. =The Founding of the Schmalcald League,
A.D. 1530, 1531.=--The conferring upon the court of justiciary
the power to execute the decrees of the Diet of Augsburg was
most dangerous to the Protestants. For protection against this
design, the Protestant nobles at a convention at Schmalcald in
Dec., A.D. 1530, formed the bold resolution, that all should
stand as one in resisting every attack of the court. But when
the question came to be discussed, whether in case of need they
should go the length of armed resistance to the emperor opinion
was divided. The views of the jurists finally prevailed over
those of the theologians, and the elector insisted on a league
against every aggressor, even should it be the emperor himself.
At a new convention at Schmalcald in March, A.D. 1531, a league
on these terms was concluded for six years. The members of it
were the electorate of Saxony, Hesse, Lüneburg, Anhalt, Mansfeld,
and eleven cities.
§ 133.2. =The Peace of Nuremberg, A.D. 1532.=--The energetic
combination of the Protestants had now rendered them formidable,
and the Sultan Soliman was threatening a new attack. If the
Protestants were to be conquered, an agreement must be come
to with the Turks; if the Turks were to be humbled, a peaceable
settlement with the Protestants was indispensable. Ferdinand’s
policy at first inclined to the latter direction, and by his
advice the emperor summoned a diet at Regensburg, and till the
meeting forbade any prosecutions on the basis of the decrees of
the Diet of Augsburg. But soon the catastrophe in Switzerland
(§ 130, 10) changed Ferdinand’s policy. It seemed to him now
the fittest time to deal a similar blow to the evangelicals in
Germany. He therefore sent an embassy to the sultan, empowered
to make the most humiliating conditions of peace. But Soliman
rejected all proposals with scorn, and in April, A.D. 1532,
advanced with an army of 300,000 men. Meanwhile the Diet of
Regensburg had opened on 17th April, A.D. 1532. The Protestants
no longer presented a humble petition, as they had done two
years before, but they firmly made their demands. There was
no longer talk of compromise or suffrance. They demanded
peace in matters of religion; the annulling of all religious
prosecutions; and, finally, a free general council, where
matters should be decided solely by God’s word. So long as
Ferdinand had any hope of getting a favourable answer from
the Turks, he would not seriously consider proposals for peace.
But when that hope was shattered, and Soliman’s terrible host
approached, there was no time to lose. At Nuremberg the peace
was concluded on 23rd July, A.D. 1532. The faithful elector
was allowed to see the happy day, but died in that same year.
He was succeeded by his son, =John Frederick the Magnanimous=,
A.D. 1532-1547. A noble army was soon raised from the imperial
guards. Soliman suffered various misfortunes on land and water,
and withdrew without accomplishing anything. The emperor now
went to Italy, and insisted on the pope calling a general
council. But the pope thought the time had not come for that.
Also the annulling of prosecutions promised in the treaty
remained long unfulfilled. Pending prosecutions, mostly about
restitution of ecclesiastical goods and jurisdiction, were
pronounced to be not matters of religion, but of spoliation
and breach of the peace. The Protestants made a formal complaint
in Jan., A.D. 1534. This was disregarded, and arrangements
were being made to put certain nobles under the ban when events
occurred at Württemberg which changed the aspect of affairs.
§ 133.3. =The Evangelization of Württemberg,
A.D. 1534, 1535.=--The Swabian League in the interest of
Austria had obtained the banishment of Duke Ulrich in A.D. 1528,
and frustrated every attempt to secure his return. His son
Christopher had been educated at the court of Ferdinand,
and in A.D. 1532 accompanied the emperor to Spain. He made
his escape into the Alps, and publicly claimed his German
inheritance. The Landgrave Philip, Ulrich’s personal friend,
had long resolved to reconquer Württemberg for him. At last,
in the spring of A.D. 1534, with aid of French gold, he carried
out his plan. At Laufen Ferdinand’s army was almost annihilated,
and he himself was obliged in the Peace of Cadau of A.D. 1534
to restore Ulrich to Württemberg as an under-feudatory, but
with seat and vote in the imperial diet, and to allow him a
free hand in carrying out the Reformation in his territory.
Luther’s views had from the first found hearty reception in
Württemberg. The oldest and most distinguished of the Swabian
reformers, whose reputation had spread far beyond Württemberg,
was John Brenz (§§ 131, 1; 132, 4; 135, 2; 136, 6, 8). He
was preacher in Swabian Halle from A.D. 1522, provost in
Stuttgart from A.D. 1553, and died in A.D. 1570. But Ferdinand’s
government had stretched its arm so far as to visit with death
all manifestations of sympathy with the Reformation. All the
more rapidly did the work of evangelization now proceed. Ulrich
brought with him Ambrose Blaurer, a disciple of Zwingli and
friend of Bucer, and Erhard Schnapf, a decided supporter of
Luther; to the former he assigned the evangelization of the
upper, and to the latter the evangelization of the lower
division of his territories. Both had agreed in accepting
a common formula of Reformation principles. By the founding
of the University of Tübingen, organized after the pattern
of Marburg, Ulrich rendered important service to the cause
of Protestant learning. Several neighbouring courts and cities
were encouraged to follow Württemberg’s example.
§ 133.4. =The Reformation in Anhalt and Pomerania,
A.D. 1532-1534.=--Wolfgang of =Anhalt= had at an early date
introduced the Reformation on the banks of the Saale and into
Zerbst. Another prince of Anhalt, George, at first an opponent
of Luther, but converted by means of his writings, began in
A.D. 1532 the Reformation of the country east of the Elbe. And
when the Bishop of Brandenburg refused to ordain his married
priests, he sent them to be ordained by Luther in Wittenberg.
Much more violent was the Reformation of =Pomerania=. Nobles
and clergy sought to rouse the people against Lutheranism.
Prince Barnim was an ardent supporter of Luther, but his brother
George was bitterly opposed. On George’s death, his son Philip
joined with Barnim in introducing the Reformation into the land.
At the Assembly of Treptow, in Dec., A.D. 1534, they presented
a scheme of Reformation, which the nobles heartily accepted. It
was carried into operation by Bugenhagen by a church visitation
after the pattern of that of Saxony.
§ 133.5. =The Reformation in Westphalia, A.D. 1532-1534.=--In
the Westphalian cities much was accomplished by Luther’s hymns.
Pideritz, priest of =Lamgo=, was a supporter of Eck; but wishing
to see the working of the new views for himself, he went to
Brunswick, and returned to inaugurate the Reformation in his
own city. At =Soest=, the Catholic council condemned to death
a workman who had spoken of it with disrespect. Two blundering
attempts were made upon the scaffold, and the victim at last
was conducted home by the crowd in triumph. He died next day.
The council precipitately fled from the city. And thus in July,
A.D. 1533, Catholicism lost its last prop in that place. In
=Paderborn=, where liberty of preaching had been enjoyed, the
Elector of Cologne (§ 135, 7) had some of the leading Lutherans
imprisoned; and when some on the rack confessed to a treasonable
correspondence with the Landgrave of Hesse, of which they had
been falsely accused, he condemned them to death. But moved
by the request of an old man to share their death, and by
the weeping of the wives and maidens, Hermann spared their
lives. In =Münster=, Luther’s doctrines were preached as early
as A.D. 1531 by Rottmann, and soon the evangelicals won the
ascendency, so that council and clergy left the city. The Bishop
of Waldeck, after an unsuccessful attempt by force of arms, was
obliged in A.D. 1533 to grant unconditional religious freedom.
The neighbouring cities were about to follow the example of
the capital, when a catastrophe occurred which resulted in the
complete restoration of Catholicism.
§ 133.6. =Disturbances at Münster, A.D. 1534, 1535.=--Rottmann
had added to his Zwinglian creed the renunciation of infant
baptism, and prepared the way for Anabaptist excesses. John
of Leyden appeared in A.D. 1534, gained great popularity as
a preacher, and the council was weak enough to grant legal
recognition to the fanatics. Mad enthusiasts flocked into the
city. One of their prophets proclaimed it as God’s will that
unbelievers should be expelled. This was done on 27th February,
A.D. 1534. Seven deacons divided what was left among the
believers. In May the bishop laid siege to the city. This had
the effect of confining the mad disorder to Münster. After the
destruction of all images, organs, and books, with exception
only of the Bible, community of goods was introduced. John of
Leyden got the council set aside as required by his revelations,
and appointed a theocratic government of twelve elders, who
took their inspiration from the prophet. He proclaimed polygamy,
himself taking seventeen wives, while Rottmann contented himself
with four. In vain did the moral conscience of the inhabitants
protest. The objectors were executed. One of his fellow prophets
proclaimed John king of the whole world. He set up a showy
and expensive establishment, and committed the most frightful
abominations. He regarded himself as called to inaugurate the
millennium, sent out twenty-eight apostles to extend his kingdom,
and named twelve dukes who should rule the world under him.
The besiegers made an unsuccessful attempt in August, A.D. 1534,
to storm the city. Had not aid been sent them before the end
of the year from Hesse, Treves, Cleves, Mainz, and Cologne,
they would have been obliged to raise the siege. Even then they
could only think of reducing the city by famine. It was already
in great straits. On St. John’s night, A.D. 1535, a deserter
led the troops to the walls. After a stubborn resistance the
Anabaptists were beaten. Rottmann threw himself into the hottest
of the fight, and there perished. John, with his chief officers,
was taken prisoner, put to death with frightful tortures on
22nd Jan., A.D. 1536, and then hung in chains from St. Lambert’s
tower. Catholicism was thus restored to absolute supremacy.
§ 133.7. =Extension of the Schmalcald league, A.D. 1536.=--A
war with France had broken out in A.D. 1536, which taxed all
the emperor’s resources. Francis I. had made a league with
Soliman for a combined attack upon the emperor. Instead therefore
of punishing the Protestant princes for their proceedings in
Württemberg, he was obliged to do all he could to conciliate
them, as Francis was bidding for their alliance. Ferdinand
therefore, from the summer of A.D. 1535, sought to ingratiate
himself with the Protestants. In November he received a visit
of the elector in Vienna, and granted the extension of the Peace
of Nuremberg to all nobles who since its ratification had become
Protestants. The elector then went to an assembly at Schmalcald,
where the Schmalcald League was extended for ten years, the
French embassy dismissed, and the opposition to Austria abandoned.
On the basis of the Vienna compact Württemberg, Pomerania, Anhalt,
and several cities were added to the league. Signature of the
Augsburg Confession was the indispensable condition of reception.
Bucer managed to win over the upland cities to accept this
condition.
§ 133.8. =The Wittenberg Concordat of A.D. 1536.=--Bucer and
ultimately Œcolampadius, made such concessions on the doctrine
of the sacraments as satisfied Luther, but they were rejected
by Bullinger of Zürich. In December, A.D. 1535, there was a
conference at Cassel between Bucer and Melanchthon. A larger
conference was afterward held at Wittenberg, at which Bucer
and Capito from Strassburg, and eight other distinguished
theologians from the uplands, were present. As they accepted
the formula “in, with, and under,” the only question remaining
was whether unbelievers partook of the body of Christ. They
admitted this in regard to the unworthy, but not, as Luther
wished, in regard to the godless and unbelieving. Luther was
satisfied. On 25th May, A.D. 1536, Melanchthon composed the
“Wittenberg Concord,” which was signed by all, and ratified
by the common partaking of the sacrament. In consequence of
this union effort, three of the Swiss theologians, Bullinger,
Myconius, and Grynæus seceded, and produced the _Confessio
Helvetica prior_, in which the Zwinglian doctrine of the
sacraments was moderately but firmly maintained.
§ 134. INCIDENTS OF THE YEARS A.D. 1537-1539.
Clement VII. made many excuses for postponing the calling of a
council. At last, in A.D. 1533, he declared himself willing to do
so in the course of the year; but he required of the Protestants
unconditional acceptance of its decisions, to which they would not
agree. His successor, Paul III., A.D. 1534-1549, called one to meet
at Mantua in A.D. 1537. Luther composed for it as a manifesto the
Schmalcald Articles; but finally the Protestants renewed their demand
for a free council in a German city. In A.D. 1538 the Catholic nobles
concluded the Holy Alliance at Nuremberg for carrying out the decrees
of the Diet of Augsburg; but the political difficulties of the emperor
compelled him to make new concessions to the Protestants in the
Frankfort Interim of A.D. 1539. But in the same year the duchy of
Saxony and the electorate of Brandenburg went over to the Reformation.
By the beginning of A.D. 1540 almost all North Germany was won. Duke
Henry of Brunswick alone held out for the old faith.
§ 134.1. =The Schmalcald Articles, A.D. 1537.=--In A.D. 1535
Paul III. sent his legate Vergerius (§ 139, 24) into Germany
to fix a place of meeting for the council. At Wittenberg he
conferred with Luther and Bugenhagen, who scarcely expecting
the council were indifferent as to the place. The council was
formally summoned to meet at Mantua on May 23rd, A.D. 1537. At
a diet at Schmalcald in Feb., A.D. 1537, the Protestants stated
their demands. Luther, by the elector’s orders, had drawn up
the articles of which the council must treat. These Schmalcald
Articles are distinctly polemical, and indicate boldly the
limits of the papal hierarchy demanded by evangelicals. The
first part states briefly four uncontested positions on the
Trinity and the Person of Christ; the second part deals with
the office and work of Christ or our redemption, and marks
abruptly the points of difference between the two confessions;
the third part treats of those points which the council may
further discuss. In the second part Luther unconditionally
rejected the primacy of the pope, as not of Divine right and
inconsistent with the character of a true evangelical Church.
When the articles had been subscribed by the theologians,
Melanchthon added under his name: “As to the pope, I hold
that if he will not oppress the gospel, for the sake of the
peace and unity of those Christians who are or may be under
him, his superiority over bishops _jure humano_ might be allowed
by us.” Melanchthon’s tracts on “The Power of the Pope” and the
“Jurisdiction of Bishops” were also subscribed by the theologians
and added to the Schmalcald Articles. It was then decided that
in order to secure a free Christian council it must be held in
a German city. The elector even made the bold proposal to have
a counter-council summoned, say, at Augsburg, by Luther and his
fellow bishops.
§ 134.2. =The League of Nuremberg, A.D. 1538.=--The Protestant
princes were astonished at the close of the Schmalcald
convention to be told by Vice-Chancellor Held, on behalf
of the emperor, that he did not recognise the Peace of
Cadau or the Vienna Compact, and that the prosecutions
would be resumed. They therefore resumed their old attitude
of opposition. But Held visited all the Catholic courts in
order to complete the formation of a Catholic league for
the suppression of Protestantism. Ferdinand, who knew well
that Held exceeded his instructions, was very angry, for the
emperor was in the greatest straits, but he could not offer
direct opposition without offending the Catholic princes. So
on July 10th, A.D. 1538, the Holy Alliance was actually formed
at Nuremberg, embracing George of Saxony, Albert of Brandenburg,
Henry and Eric of Brunswick, King Ferdinand, and the Archbishop
of Salzburg. The Schmalcald nobles prepared to meet force with
force. A general bloody engagement seemed unavoidable.
§ 134.3. =The Frankfort Interim, A.D. 1539.=--As the emperor
needed help against Soliman, he recalled Held, and sent in
his place John, formerly Archbishop of Leyden. The electors
of Brandenburg and the Palatinate went as mediators with the
new envoy to Frankfort, where negotiations were opened with
the Protestants present, who demanded an unconditional, lasting
peace, and a judiciary court with Protestant as well as Catholic
members. These demands were at first refused, but pressing
need obliged the emperor to reopen negotiations, proposing
that a diet should be held, consisting of learned theologians
and simple, peaceable laymen, to effect a final union of
Christians in faith and worship. He would also grant suspension
of all proceedings against the Protestants for eighteen months.
The Protestants accepted in this “Frankfort Interim” what had
been greatly sought for at the Diet of Nuremberg. It was a
victory of the Schmalcald over the Nuremberg League. The public
confidence in Protestantism grew, and the cause rapidly spread
into new regions.
§ 134.4. =The Reformation in Albertine Saxony, A.D. 1539.=--Duke
George of Saxony, A.D. 1500-1539, was a devoted adherent of the
old faith. Of his four sons only one survived, and he almost
imbecile. He had him married, but he died two months after
the marriage. The old prince was in perplexity, for his brother
Henry, an ardent supporter of the Reformation, was his next
heir. He could ill brook the idea of having the whole work of
his life immediately undone. On the day of the death of his last
son he proposed to his nobles a scheme of succession, according
to which his brother Henry should succeed him only if he joined
the Nuremberg League; otherwise it should go to the emperor
or the King of Rome. Duke Henry rejected the proposal, and
Duke George died before he could produce another scheme. With
loud rejoicing the people received their new prince, and their
allegiance was sworn to him at Leipzig. Luther was there, for
the first time for twenty years, and preached with extraordinary
success. The Reformation proceeded rapidly throughout the whole
district. The King of Rome wished indeed to question George’s
claim, but the Schmalcald League resolved to stand by him, so
that Ferdinand thought it prudent to take no further steps.
§ 134.5. =The Reformation in Brandenburg and Neighbouring
States, A.D. 1539.=--Henry of Neumark joined the Schmalcald
League, and introduced the Reformation into his territories;
but his brother Joachim II. of Brandenburg, A.D. 1535-1571,
for several years adhered to the old faith without forbidding
evangelical preaching, which gradually made an impression on
his own mind. In the beginning of A.D. 1539, with the approval
of his nobles, he gave his adhesion to the reformed doctrines.
The city of Berlin asked for communion in both kinds, and a
considerable section of the nobles of Brandenburg expressed a
hearty longing for the pure gospel. On November 1st, A.D. 1539,
Joachim assembled all the preachers of his land in the Nicolai
Church at Spandau, the Bishop of Brandenburg held the first
evangelical communion, and the whole court and many knights
received the communion in both kinds. The people followed the
example of the prince. Joachim sketched a service which let
several of the old ceremonies remain, but justification by
faith was the central point of the doctrine, and communion
in both kinds the centre of the worship. The Duchess Elizabeth
of Calenberg-Brunswick followed her brother’s example. After
the death of her husband Eric, who was otherwise minded, she
exercised her influence as regent for the spread of the reformed
religion. The Cardinal-archbishop and Elector of Mainz, Albert
of Brandenburg, sought to preserve his archiepiscopal diocese of
Magdeburg, but his constant calls for money would be responded
to only on condition that he granted liberty of preaching. At
his Halle residence he made vigorous resistance, but there too
was obliged to yield. Before his eyes, Justus Jonas, Luther’s
most trusted friend and fellow labourer, Prof. and Provost of
Wittenberg since A.D. 1521, carried on the work of Reformation
in the city. The cardinal, in a rage, left Halle and the “idol
of Halle” (§ 123, 8) for Mainz.--Mecklenburg also about this
time adopted the evangelical constitution, mainly promoted by
one of its princes, Magnus Bishop of Schwerin. The Abbess of
Quedlinburg, Anna von Stolberg, had not ventured, so long as
Duke George of Saxony lived, to bring forward her evangelical
confession; but now without opposition she reformed her convent
and the city.
§ 135. UNION ATTEMPTS OF A.D. 1540-1546.
The Frankfort Interim revived the idea of a free union among those
who in the main agreed upon matters of faith and worship. With the
object of realizing this idea a whole series of religious conferences
were held. But near as its realization at one time seemed to be all
the measures taken proved one after another abortive, because the
emperor would not recognise the conclusions of any conference at
which a papal legate was not present. And just at this time, when
the imposing might of the Protestant nobles excited the brightest
hopes, the Protestant princes themselves laid the grounds of their
deepest humiliation: the landgrave by his double marriage, and the
elector by his quarrels with the ducal Saxon court.
§ 135.1. =The Double Marriage of the Landgrave,
A.D. 1540.=--Landgrave Philip of Hesse had married Christina,
a daughter of the deceased Duke George of Saxony. Various causes
had led to an estrangement between them, and a strong sensuous
nature, which he had been unable to control, had driven him to
repeated acts of unfaithfulness. His conscience reproved him;
he felt himself unworthy to be admitted to communion, great
as his desire for it was, and doubted of his soul’s salvation.
From regard to his wife he could not think of a divorce. Then
came the idea, suggested by the O.T. polygamy that had not been
abrogated in the N.T., that with consent of his wife he might
enter into a regular second marriage with Margaret von der Saale,
one of his sister’s lady’s-maids. In Nov., A.D. 1539, he sent
Bucer to Wittenberg in order to get the advice of Luther and
Melanchthon. The alternative was either continued adultery, or
an honourable married life with a second wife taken with consent
of the first. Luther and Melanchthon entreated him earnestly
for his own and for the gospel’s sake to avoid this terrible
scandal, but haltingly admitted that the latter alternative
was less heinously wicked than the former. They added, however,
that in order to avoid scandal the marriage should be private,
and their answer regarded not as a theological opinion, but
confidential counsel. The landgrave had the marriage consummated
in May, A.D. 1540. But the story soon spread. The court of
Albertine Saxony was deeply incensed, the elector beside
himself with rage, the theologians in most extreme embarrassment.
Melanchthon started to attend a religious conference at Hagenau,
but the excitement over the unhappy business prostrated him
on a sick-bed at Weimar. The emperor threatened Philip with
the infliction of capital punishment, which by the law of the
empire was attached to the crime of bigamy. At last the elector
called a convention of Saxon and Hessian theologians at Eisenach
to consult about the matter. Luther refused to treat it as a
question of law, and demanded absolute privacy as the condition
of permission. Among the opponents of the Reformation, it was
Duke Henry of Brunswick who insisted upon exacting the utmost
penalties of the law. He indeed was least fitted by his own
character to assume the part of defender of morals. It was
well known that he was then living in adultery with Eva von
Trott, after her pretended death and burial. In his perplexity,
Philip turned to the imperial chancellor Granvella, who was
willing to intercede for him, but on conditions to which the
landgrave could not accede. At last, at the Diet of Regensburg,
in A.D. 1541, Philip undertook to further the imperial interests
and to join no union in any way inimical to these; and upon
these terms the emperor agreed to grant him a full indemnity.
§ 135.2. =The Religious Conference at Worms,
A.D. 1540.=--Negotiations for peace with France having failed,
the emperor still required the support of the Protestant
party. He therefore agreed to the holding of a religious
conference at =Worms=, in order to reach if possible a good
mutual understanding on the basis of Holy Scripture. It was
held in Nov., A.D. 1540, under the presidency of Granvella.
On one side were Melanchthon, Bucer, Capito, Brenz, and Calvin;
on the other, Eck, Gropper, canon of Cologne, the Spaniard
Malvenda, etc. But the emperor had insisted on the papal
nuncio Marone taking part, and this, contrary to his intention,
brought the whole affair to naught. For Marone first of all
presented a number of formal objections, and when at last,
in Jan., A.D. 1541, the conference began, and awakened the
utmost apprehensions for the papacy, he rested not till
Granvella, even before the first article on original sin had
been discussed, dissolved the conference in the name and by
command of the emperor. But the emperor did not give up the
idea of conciliation, and called a diet at Regensburg, at
which the negotiations were to be renewed.
§ 135.3. =The Religious Conference at Regensburg,
A.D. 1541.=--The diet at Regensburg was opened on April 5th,
A.D. 1541. The emperor, anxious to reach a peaceable conclusion,
named as members of the conference Eck, Gropper, and Julius
von Pflugk, Dean of Meissen, on the one side; and Melanchthon,
Bucer, and Pistorius, on the other side; with Granvella and
Frederick, count-palatine, as presidents. The nuncio Contarini
was representative of the curia. By such a gathering the emperor
hoped to reach the wished for conclusion. In Italy (§ 139, 22)
there had sprung up a number of men well instructed in Scripture,
who sought to reform the doctrine of the church by adopting the
principle of justification by faith without touching the primacy
of the pope and the whole hierarchical system. Contarini was one
of the leaders of this party. He had come to an understanding
with the emperor that justification by faith, the use of
the cup in communion by the laity, and marriage of priests
should be allowed for Germany, and that, on the other hand,
the Protestants were to agree to the primacy of the pope. The
_justitia imputativa_ was acknowledged by both parties; and
even when Contarini, on the basis of that imputation, insisted
upon a _justitia inhærens_, _i.e._ not merely a declaring but
a making righteous, seeing that he grounded it solely on the
merits of Christ, the Protestants acquiesced. Differences arose
over the doctrine of the church, which were reserved for another
occasion. And now they came to the sacrament of the altar.
Communion in both kinds was agreed to by both; but trouble
arose over the word transubstantiation. Not only Eck, who had
opposed all concessions, but even Contarini, who had his orders
from Rome, would not yield. No more would the Protestants.
The conference had therefore to be dissolved. The emperor
wished both parties to accept the articles agreed on as
a common standard, and to have toleration granted upon the
disputed points; but the Catholic majority would not agree
to this. The Regensburg Interim, therefore, as the decision
of the diet is usually called, extends the Nuremberg Peace
(§ 133, 2) to all presently members of the Schmalcald League,
and enforced upon Protestants only the accepted articles.
§ 135.4. =The Regensburg Declaration, A.D. 1541.=--The emperor,
in order to satisfy the naturally dissatisfied Protestants,
made a special declaration, annulling the prosecutions decree
of the Augsburg Diet and relieving the adherents of the Augsburg
Confession from all disabilities. Also the injunction that no
one should withhold their dues from the clergy was extended
to the Protestant ministers. But on the very day when the
declaration was issued the emperor held a private session
with the Catholic majority, in which the Nuremberg League was
renewed and the pope received into it. Thus he hoped to receive
help from all parties and to ward off internecine conflict till
a more convenient season. He concluded a separate treaty with
the landgrave and the Elector Joachim II., both undertaking
to support imperial interests. The elector expressly promised
not to join the Schmalcald League; and the landgrave promised
to oppose all consorting of the league not only with foreign
powers (England and France), but also with the Duke of Cleves,
with whom the emperor had a standing feud. In return the
landgrave was granted an amnesty for all previous delinquencies
and undisturbed liberty in matters of religion. The emperor’s
negotiations with the Elector of Saxony broke down over the
Cleves dispute, for the Duke of Cleves was his brother-in-law.
§ 135.5. =The Naumburg Bishopric, A.D. 1541, 1542.=--Since
A.D. 1520 the Lutheran doctrines had spread in the diocese
of Naumburg. When the bishop died, in A.D. 1511, the chapter
elected the learned and mild provost Julius von Pflugk. But
the elector regarded it as proper in a Lutheran state to have a
Lutheran bishop, and so refused to confirm Pflugk’s appointment,
and had Nic. von Arnsdorf (§ 127, 4) ordained bishop by Luther,
in A.D. 1542, “without chrism, butter, suet, lard, tar, grease,
incense, and coals.” The civil administration of the diocese was
committed to an electoral officer; Arnsdorf was satisfied with
the small income of 600 florins and the rest of the revenues
were applied to pious uses. After the battle of Mühlberg,
in A.D. 1547, Arnsdorf was expelled and Pflugk restored. On
his death in 1564, the chapter, though then Lutheran, did not
restore Arnsdorf, but gave over the administration to a Saxon
prince. The elector’s violent procedure in this case caused
great offence to the Albertine court. Duke Henry had died in
A.D. 1541, and was succeeded by his son Maurice. The elector
and the young duke quarrelled over a question of jurisdiction,
and it was only with great difficulty that Luther and the
landgrave managed to effect a peaceful solution of the dispute.
But the mutual estrangement and rivalry between the courts soon
afterwards broke out in a violent form.
§ 135.6. =The Reformation in Brunswick and the Palatinate,
A.D. 1542-1546.=--Duke Henry of Brunswick accused the city
of Goslar of the destruction of two monasteries, and in spite
of all the concessions to Protestants the court pronounced
the ban against the city, and empowered Henry to carry it
out. The elector and the landgrave, acting for the Schmalcald
League in defence of the city, entered Henry’s territory in
A.D. 1542 and conquered it. The gospel was now preached, and an
evangelical constitution was given to Brunswick by Bugenhagen.
This completed the conquest of North Germany for the gospel.--In
South Germany Regensburg received the Reformation in A.D. 1542;
but Bavaria, owing to Ferdinand’s influence, gave no place to
the heretics. In the Upper Palatinate evangelical preachers
had for a long time been tolerated. The young prince of
the Neuburg Palatinate in A.D. 1543 called Osiander from
Nuremburg [Nuremberg], and joined the Schmalcald League.
The Elector-palatine Louis died in A.D. 1543. His brother
Frederick II., who succeeded him was not unfavourable to the
Reformation, and formally introduced it into his dominions in
A.D. 1546. Even in Austria evangelical views made such advance
that Ferdinand neither could nor would attempt those violent
measures that he had previously tried.
§ 135.7. =The Reformation in the Electorate of Cologne,
A.D. 1542-1544.=--Hermann von Weid (§ 133, 5), Archbishop and
Elector of Cologne, now far advanced in life, by the study of
Luther’s Bible had convinced himself of the scripturalness of
the Augsburg Confession. He resolved to reform his province
in accordance with God’s word. At the Bonn Assembly of March,
A.D. 1542, he made known his plan, and found himself supported
by his nobles. He invited Bucer to inaugurate the work, and
he was soon joined by Melanchthon. In July, A.D. 1543, the
elector laid before the nobles his Reformation scheme, and
they unanimously accepted it. The cathedral chapter and the
university opposed it in the interests of the papacy; also
the Cologne council from fear of losing their authority.
Nevertheless the movement advanced, and it was hoped that the
opposition would gradually be overcome. Cologne was to remain
after as before an ecclesiastical principality, but with an
evangelical constitution. The Bishop of Münster prepared to
follow the example, and had the work in Cologne been lasting,
certainly many others would have pursued the same course.
§ 135.8. =The Emperor’s Difficulties, A.D. 1543, 1544.=--Soliman
in A.D. 1541 had overrun Hungary, converted the principal
church into a mosque, and set a pasha over the whole land,
which now became a Turkish province. Aid against the Turks
was voted at a diet at Spires in the beginning of A.D. 1542,
and the Protestants were left unmolested for five years after
the conclusion of the war. The campaign against the Turks led
by Joachim II. was unsuccessful. Meanwhile new troubles arose
with France, and Soliman prepared for a second campaign.
The emperor now summoned a diet to meet at Nuremberg, Jan.,
A.D. 1543. Ferdinand was willing to grant to the Protestants
the Regensburg Declaration, but William of Bavaria would rather
see the whole world perish or the crescent ruling over all
Germany. In summer of A.D. 1543 the emperor was beset with
dangers from every side; France attacked the Netherlands,
Soliman conquered Grau, the Danes closed the Sound against
the subjects of the emperor, a Turco-French fleet held sway
in the Mediterranean and had already taken Nizza, and the
Protestants were assuming a threatening attitude. Christian III.
of Denmark and Gustavus Vasa of Sweden asked to be received
into the Schmalcald League. The Duke of Cleves, too, broke
his truce. This roused the emperor most of all. He rushed down
upon Cleves and Gelderland, and conquered them, and restored
Catholicism. The emperor’s circumstances now improved: Cleves
was quieted; Denmark and England came to terms with him. But
his most dangerous enemies, Soliman and Francis I., were still
in arms. He could not yet dispense with the powerful support
of the Protestants.
§ 135.9. =Diet at Spires, A.D. 1544.=--In order to get
help against the Turks and French, at the Diet of Spires,
in Feb., A.D. 1544, the emperor relieved the Protestants of
all disabilities, promised a genuine, free Christian council
to settle matters in dispute, and, in case this should not
succeed, in next autumn a national assembly to determine
matters definitely without pope or council. The emperor promised
to propose a scheme of Reformation, and invited the other nobles
to bring forward schemes. After such concessions the Protestants
went in heartily with the emperor’s political projects. He
wished first of all help against the French. In the same year
the emperor led against France an army composed mostly of
Protestants, and in Sept., A.D. 1544, obliged the king to
conclude the Peace of Crespy. The Turks had next to be dealt
with, and the Protestants were eager to show their devotion
to the emperor. In prospect of the national assembly the
Elector of Saxony set his theologians to the composition of
a plan of Reformation. This document, known as the “Wittenberg
Reformation,” allows to the prelates their spiritual and civil
functions, their revenues, goods, and jurisdiction, the right
of ordination, visitation, and discipline, on condition that
these be exercised in an evangelical spirit.
§ 135.10. =Differences between the Emperor and the Protestant
Nobles, A.D. 1545, 1546.=--The pope by calling a council to
meet at Trent sowed seeds of discord between the emperor and
the Protestants. The emperor’s proposals of reform were so
far short of the demands of the Protestants that they were
unanimously rejected. The Reformation movement in Cologne had
seriously imperilled the imperial government of the Netherlands.
An attempt of Henry to reconquer Brunswick was frustrated by the
combined action of the Landgrave of Hesse and the Duke of Saxony.
Frederick II., elector-palatine, began to reform his provinces
and to seek admission to the Schmalcald League. Four of the
six electors had gone over, and the fifth, Sebastian, who after
Albert’s death in A.D. 1545 had been, by Hessian and Palatine
influence, made Elector of Mainz, had just resolved to follow
their example. All these things had greatly irritated the
emperor. He concluded a truce with the Turks in Oct., A.D. 1545,
and arranged with the pope, who pledged his whole possessions
and crown, for the campaign against the heretics. On 13th Dec.,
A.D. 1545, the pope opened the =Council of Trent=, and made
it no secret that it was intended for the destruction of the
Protestants. The emperor attempted to get the Protestants to
take part. In Jan., A.D. 1546, a conference was held in which
Cochlæus (§ 129, 1) and others met with Bucer, Brenz, and Major;
but it was soon dissolved, owing to initial differences. The
horrible fratricide committed at Neuburg upon a Spaniard, Juan
Diaz, showed the Protestants how good Catholics thought heretics
must be dealt with. The murderer was seized, but by order of the
pope to the Bishop of Trent set again at liberty. He remained
unpunished, but hanged himself at Trent A.D. 1551.
§ 135.11. =Luther’s Death, A.D. 1546.=--Luther died at Eisleben
in his 63rd year on 18th Feb., 1546. During his last years he
was harassed with heavy trials. The political turn that affairs
had taken was wholly distasteful to him, but he was powerless to
prevent it. In Wittenberg itself much was done not in accordance
with his will. Wearied with his daily toils, suffering severe
pain and consequent bodily weakness, he often longed to die
in peace. In the beginning of A.D. 1546 the Counts of Mansfeld
called him to Eisleben in order to compose differences between
them by his impartial judgment. In order to perform this
business he spent the three last weeks of his life in his
birthplace, and, with scarcely any previous illness, on the
night of the 18th Feb., he peacefully fell asleep in Jesus.
His body was taken to Wittenberg and there buried in the
castle church.
§ 136. THE SCHMALCALD WAR, THE INTERIM, AND THE COUNCIL,
A.D. 1546-1551.
All attempts at agreement in matters of religion were at an end.
The pope, however, had at last convened a council in a German city.
The emperor hoped to conciliate the Protestants by bringing about
a reformation after a fashion, removing many hierarchical abuses,
conceding the marriage of the clergy, the cup to the laity, and even
perhaps accepting the doctrine of justification. But he soon came to
a rupture with the Protestants, and war broke out before the Schmalcald
Leaguers were prepared for it. Their power, however, was far superior
to that of the emperor; but through needless scruples, delays, and
indecision they let slip the opportunity of certain victory. The power
of the league was utterly destroyed, and the emperor’s power reached
the summit of its strength. All Southern Germany was forced to submit
to the hated interim, and in North Germany only the outlawed Magdeburg
ventured to maintain, in spite of the emperor, a pure Protestant
profession.
§ 136.1. =Preparations for the Schmalcald War, A.D. 1546.=--In
consequence of variances among the members of the league the
emperor conceived a plan of securing allies from among the
Protestants themselves by a judicious distribution of favours.
The Margrave Hans of Cüstrin and Duke Eric of Brunswick, the
one cousin, the other son-in-law, of the exiled and imprisoned
Duke of Wolfenbüttel, were ready to take part in war against the
robbers of their friend’s dominions. Much more eager, however,
was the emperor to win over the young Duke Maurice of Saxony. He
tempted him with the promise of the electorate and the greater
part of the elector’s territory, and was successful. The emperor
could not indeed formally release any of them from submission
to the council, but he promised in any case to reserve for
their countries the doctrine of justification, the cup in lay
communion, and the marriage of priests. Now when he was sure
of Maurice the emperor proceeded openly with his preparations,
and made no secret of his intention to punish those princes who
had despised his imperial authority and taken to themselves the
possessions of others. The Schmalcald Leaguers could no longer
deceive themselves, and so they began their preparations.
With such an open breach the Diet of Regensburg ended in June,
A.D. 1546.
§ 136.2. =The Campaign on the Danube, A.D. 1546.=--Schärtlin,
at the head of a powerful army, could have attacked the emperor
or taken the Tyrol; but the council of war, listening to William
of Bavaria, who professed neutrality, and hoping to win over
Ferdinand, foolishly ordered delay. Thus the emperor gained
time to collect an army. On 20th June, A.D. 1546, he issued
from Regensburg a ban against the Landgrave Philip and the
Elector John Frederick as oath-breaking vassals. These princes
at the head of their forces had joined Schärtlin at Donauwörth
[Donauwört]. Papal despatches fell into their hands, in which
the pope proclaimed a crusade for the rooting out of heretics,
promising indulgence to all who would aid in the work. Fatal
indecision still prevailed in the council of war, and winter
came on without a battle being fought. The news that Maurice
had taken possession of the elector’s domains led the landgrave
and the ex-elector to return home, and Schärtlin, for want of
money and ammunition, was unable to face a winter campaign in
Franconia. Thus the whole country lay open to the emperor. One
city after another accepted terms more or less severe. In the
beginning of A.D. 1547 he was master of all Southern Germany.
Now at last he put an end to the Cologne movement (§ 135, 7).
The pope had issued the ban against the archbishop in A.D. 1546,
and now the emperor had the former coadjutor proclaimed
archbishop and elector, in spite of the opposition of the
nobles. Hermann was willing to secure the religious peace of
his dominions by resignation, but this was refused, and being
too weak to offer resistance, he resigned unconditionally. Thus
the Rhine provinces were irretrievably lost to Protestantism.
§ 136.3. =The Campaign on the Elbe, A.D. 1547.=--After rapidly
reconquering his own territories, the Elector John Frederick
hastened with a considerable army to meet his enemy. At Mühlberg
he suddenly came upon the emperor’s forces. There scarcely was
a battle. His comparatively small armament melted away before
the superior numbers of the imperial host, and the elector was
taken prisoner on 24th April, A.D. 1547. He had already been
sentenced to death as a rebel and heretic. It was deemed more
prudent to require of him only the surrender of his fortresses.
The pious prince willingly resigned all temporal dignities, but
in matters of religion he was inflexible. He was sentenced to
life-long imprisonment and his possessions were mostly given
to Maurice. The Landgrave Philip, for want of money, ammunition,
and troops, had been prevented from doing anything. The news
of John Frederick’s misfortunes brought him almost to despair.
Too powerless to offer opposition, he surrendered at discretion
to the emperor. He was to prostrate himself before the emperor,
surrender all his fortresses, neither now nor in future suffer
enemies of the emperor in his lands, and for all his life to
renounce all leagues, to liberate Henry of Brunswick and restore
him to his dominions. The ceremony of prostration was performed
at Halle on 19th July. The two electors with the landgrave
then went by invitation to a supper with the Duke of Alba.
After supper the duke declared the landgrave his prisoner.
The elector’s remonstrances then with Alba and next day with
the imperial councillors were all in vain. The emperor was
equally deaf to all representations.
§ 136.4. =The Council of Trent, A.D. 1545-1547.=--The Council
of Trent opened in Dec., A.D. 1545 (§ 149, 2). At the outset,
contrary to the emperor’s wishes, the pope laid down conditions
that excluded Protestants from taking part in it. Scripture and
tradition were first discussed. The O.T. Apocrypha (§§ 59, 1;
161, 8) had equal authority assigned it with the other books
of the O. and N.T., and the Vulgate was declared to be the
only authentic text for theological discussions and sermons.
Tradition was placed on equal terms alongside of Scripture,
but its contents were carefully defined. Original sin was
extinguished by baptism, and after baptism there is only
actual transgression. The scholastic doctrine of justification
was sanctioned anew, but accommodated as far as possible to
Scripture phraseology; justification is the inward actual change
of a sinner into a righteous man, not merely the forgiveness
of sins, but pre-eminently the sanctification and renewal of
the inner man. It is effected, not so much by the imputation
of Christ’s merits, as by the infusion of habitual righteousness,
which enables men to win salvation by works. It is not forensic,
but a physical act of God, is wrought not once for all, and not
by faith alone, but gradually by the free co-operation of the
man. The emperor, who saw in these decisions the overthrow of
his attempts at conciliation, was highly displeased, and wished
at least to postpone their promulgation. The pope obeyed for
a time; but when the emperor threatened to interfere in the
proceedings of the council, he had the decrees published, Jan.,
A.D. 1547, and some weeks after, on the plea of a dangerous
plague having broken out, removed the council to Bologna, where
for the time proceedings were suspended.
§ 136.5. =The Augsburg Interim, A.D. 1548.=--At a diet
at Augsburg in Sept., A.D. 1547, the Protestants declared
themselves willing to submit to a council meeting again at
Trent, and beginning afresh; but as the pope refused this,
the emperor was obliged to plan an interim, which should form
a standard for all parties till a settlement at a proper council
should be reached. It granted the cup to the laity and marriage
of priests, but held by the Tridentine doctrine of justification.
It represented the pope as simply the highest bishop, in whom
the unity of the church is visibly set forth. The right of
interpreting Scripture was given exclusively to the church.
The sacraments were enumerated as seven, and the doctrine
of transubstantiation emphatically maintained. The duty of
fasting, and seeking the intercession of the mother of God
and the saints, observing all Catholic ceremonies of worship,
processions, festivals, etc., was strictly insisted upon. The
emperor was satisfied, and so too some of the Protestant princes.
Maurice, however, felt that his people would not agree to its
adoption. He gave at last a half assent, which the emperor
accepted as approval. The emperor took no notice of those who
opposed it, the presence of his Spaniards in their dominions
would prevent all trouble. The emperor was not strong enough
to force the Catholic nobles to accept his interim, and so its
observance was to be binding only on the Protestants. Landgrave
Philip, whose power was for ever broken, gave in, but nothing
in the world would induce the noble John Frederick to submit.
The pope too refused persistently to recognise the interim, and
only in Aug., A.D. 1549, did he allow the bishops to agree to
the concessions made by it to the Protestants.
§ 136.6. =The Execution of the Interim= had on all sides to
be compulsorily enforced. Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm were one
after another coerced into adopting it. Constance resisted,
was put under the ban, and lost all privileges, till at last
instead of the interim the papacy found entrance, and evangelical
Protestantism got its death-blow. The other cities submitted to
the inevitable. All preachers refusing the interim were exiled
and persecuted. Over 400 true servants of the word wandered with
wives and children through South Germany homeless and without
bread. Frecht of Ulm was taken in chains to the emperor’s camp.
Brenz, one of the most determined opponents of the interim,
during his wanderings often by a miracle escaped capture. Much
more lasting was the opposition in North Germany. In Magdeburg,
still lying under the imperial ban, the fugitive opponents of
the interim gathered from all sides, and there alone was the
press still free in its utterances against the interim. A
flood of controversial tracts, satires, and caricatures were
sent out over all Germany. In Hesse and Brandenburg the princes
were unable to enforce the obnoxious measures; still less could
Maurice do so in the electorate.
§ 136.7. =The Leipzig or Little Interim, A.D. 1549.=--Maurice
in his difficulties sent for Melanchthon. Since the death
of Luther and the overthrow of John Frederick of Saxony,
Melanchthon’s tendency to yield largely for peace’ sake had
lost its wholesome checks. In writing to the minister Carlowitz,
the bitterest foe of Luther and the elector, he even went so far
as to complain of Luther’s combativeness. The result of various
negotiations was the drawing up of a document at the assembly in
Leipzig, 22nd December, A.D. 1548, by the Wittenberg theologians
in accordance with the views of Melanchthon. This modified
interim became the standard for religious practice in Saxony,
and a directory of worship in harmony with it was drawn up
by the theologians, and published in July, A.D. 1549. Calvin
and Brenz wrote letters that cut Melanchthon to the heart.
The measure was everywhere viewed by zealous Lutherans with
indignation, and the Interim of Leipzig was even more hateful
to the people than that of Augsburg. Imprisonment and exile
were vigorously carried out by means of it, yet the revolution
and ferment continued to increase.--The Leipzig Interim treated
Romish customs and ceremonies almost as things indifferent,
passed over many less essential doctrinal differences, and
gave to fundamental differences such a setting as might
be applied equally to the pure evangelical doctrine as to
that of the Augsburg Interim. The evangelical doctrine of
justification was essentially there, but it was not decidedly
and unambiguously expressed; and still less were Romish errors
sharply and unmistakably repudiated. Good works were said to
be necessary, but not in the sense that one could win salvation
by means of them. Whether good works in excess of the law’s
demands could be performed was not explicitly determined. On
church and hierarchy, the positions of the Augsburg Interim
were simply restated. To the pope as the highest bishop, as well
as to the other bishops, who performed their duties according
to God’s will for edification and not destruction, all churchmen
were to yield obedience. The seven sacraments were acknowledged,
though in another than the Romish sense. In the mass the Latin
language was again introduced. Images of saints were allowed,
but not for worship; so too the festivals of Mary and of _Corpus
Christi_, but without processions, etc.
§ 136.8. =The Council again at Trent, A.D. 1551.=--In September,
A.D. 1549, Paul III. dissolved the council at Bologna, where it
had done nothing. His successor, =Julius III.=, A.D. 1550-1555,
the nominee of the imperial party, acceded to the emperor’s
wishes to have the council again held at Trent. The Protestant
nobles declared their willingness to recognise it, but demanded
the cancelling of the earlier proceedings, a seat and vote for
their representatives. This the emperor was prepared to grant,
but the pope and prelates would not agree. The council began
its proceedings on 1st May, A.D. 1551, with the doctrine of
the Lord’s Supper. Meanwhile the Protestants prepared a new
confession, which might form the basis of their discussions
in the council. Melanchthon, who was beginning to take courage
again, sketched the _Confessio Saxonica_, or, as it has been
rightly named, the _Repetitio Confessionis Augustanæ_, in which
no trace of the indecision and ambiguity of the Leipzig Interim
is to be found. The pure doctrine is set forth firmly, with even
a polemical tone, though in a moderate and conciliatory manner.
Brenz, who had been in hiding up to this time, by order of Duke
Christopher of Württemberg, sketched for a like purpose the
“Württemberg Confession.” In November, A.D. 1551, the first
Protestants, lay delegates from Württemberg and Strassburg,
appeared in Trent. They were followed in January by Saxon
statesmen. On 24th January, A.D. 1552, these laid their
credentials before the council, but, notwithstanding all
the effort of the imperial commissioners, they could not gain
admission. In March the Württemberg and Strassburg theologians
arrived, with Brenz at their head, and Melanchthon, with two
Leipzig preachers, was on the way, when suddenly Maurice put
an end to all their well concerted plans.
§ 137A. MAURICE AND THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG A.D. 1550-1555.
In the beginning of A.D. 1550 the affairs of the Reformation were
in a worse condition than ever before. In the fetters of the interim,
it was like a felon on whom the death sentence was about to be passed.
Then just at the right time appeared the Elector Maurice as the man
who could break the fetters and lead on again to power and honour.
His betrayal of the cause had brought Protestantism to the verge of
destruction; his betrayal of the emperor proved its salvation. The
Compact of Passau guaranteed to Protestants full religious liberty
and equal rights with Catholics until a new council should meet. The
Religious Peace of Augsburg removed even this limitation, and brought
to a conclusion the history of the German Reformation.
§ 137.1. =The State of Matters in A.D. 1550.=--It was a doleful
time for Germany. The emperor at the height of his power was
laying his plans for securing the succession in the imperial
dignity to his son Philip of Spain. In a bold, autocratic
spirit he trampled on all the rights of the imperial nobles,
and contrary to treaty he retained the presence of Spanish
troops in the empire, which daily committed deeds of atrocious
violence. The deliverance of the landgrave was stubbornly
refused, though all the conditions thereof were long ago
fulfilled. Protestant Germany groaned under the yoke of the
interim; the council would only confirm this, if not rather
enforce something even worse. Only one bulwark of evangelical
liberty stood in the emperor’s way, the brave, outlawed
Magdeburg. But how could it continue to hold out? Down to
autumn, A.D. 1552, all attempts to storm the city had failed.
Then Maurice undertook, by the order of the emperor and at the
cost of the empire, to execute the ban.
§ 137.2. =The Elector Maurice, A.D. 1551.--Maurice had lost the
hearts of his own people, and was regarded with detestation by
the Protestants of Germany, and notwithstanding imperial favour
his position was by no means secure. Yet he was too much of the
German and Protestant prince to view with favour the emperor’s
proceedings, while he felt indignant at the illegal detention
of his father-in-law. In these circumstances he resolved to
betray the emperor, as before he had betrayed to him the cause
of Protestantism. A master in dissimulation, he continued the
siege of Magdeburg with all diligence, but at the same time
joined a secret league with the Margrave Hans of Cüstrin and
Albert of Franconian Brandenburg, as also with the sons of the
landgrave, for the restoration of evangelical and civil liberty,
and entered into negotiations with Henry II. of France, who
undertook to aid him with money. Magdeburg at last capitulated,
and Maurice entered on 4th November, A.D. 1551. Arrears of
pay formed an excuse for not disbanding the imperial troops,
and, strengthened by the Magdeburg garrison and the auxiliary
troops of his allies, he threw off the mask, and issued public
proclamations in which he brought bitter charges against the
emperor, and declared that he could no longer lie under the
feet of priests and Spaniards. The emperor in vain appealed for
help to the Catholic princes. He found himself without troops
or money at Innsbrück, which could not stand a siege, and every
road to his hereditary territories seemed closed, for where
the leagued German princes were not the Ottomans on sea and
the French on land were ready to oppose him. Maurice was already
on the way to Innsbrück “to seek out the fox in his hole.” But
his troops’ demands for pay detained him, and the emperor gained
time. On a cold, wet night he fled, though not yet recovered
from fever, over the mountains covered with snow, and found
refuge in Villach. Three days after Maurice entered Innsbrück;
the council had already dissolved.
§ 137.3. =The Compact of Passau, A.D. 1552.=--Before the
flight of the emperor from Innsbrück, Maurice had an interview
with Ferdinand at Linz, where, besides the liberation of the
landgrave, he demanded a German national assembly for religious
union, and till it met unconditional toleration. The emperor,
notwithstanding all his embarrassments, would not listen to the
proposal. Negotiations were reopened at Passau, and Maurice’s
proposals were in the main accepted. Ferdinand consented, but
the emperor would not. Ferdinand himself travelled to Villach
and employed all his eloquence, but unconditional toleration
the emperor would not grant. His stubbornness conquered; the
majority gave in, and accepted a compact which gave to the
Protestants a full amnesty, general peace, and equal rights,
till the meeting of a national or œcumenical council, to be
arranged for at the next diet. Meanwhile the emperor had made
great preparations. Frankfort was his main stronghold, and
against it Maurice now advanced, and began the siege. Matters
were not promising, when the Passau delegate appeared in his
camp with the draft of the terms of peace. Had he refused his
signature, the ban would have been pronounced against him,
and his cousin would have been restored to the electorate.
He therefore subscribed the document. With difficulty Ferdinand
secured the subscription of the emperor, who believed himself
to be sufficiently strong to carry on the battle. The two
imprisoned princes were now at last liberated, and the preachers
exiled by the interim were allowed to return. John Frederick
died in A.D. 1554, and the Landgrave Philip in A.D. 1567.
§ 137.4. =Death of Maurice, A.D. 1553.=--The Margrave Albert
of Brandenburg had been Maurice’s comrade in the Schmalcald
war, and with him also he turned against the emperor. But after
the ratification of the Passau Compact, to which he was not a
party, Albert continued the war against the prelates and their
principalities. He now fell out with Maurice, and was taken into
his service by the emperor, who not only granted him an amnesty
for all his acts of spoliation and breaches of the truce, but
promised to enforce recognition of him from all the bishops.
Albert therefore helped the emperor against the French, and
then carried his conquests into Germany. Soon an open rupture
occurred between him and Maurice. In the battle of Sievershausen
Maurice gained a brilliant victory, but received a mortal wound,
of which he died in two days. Albert fled to France. The rude
soldier was broken down by misfortune, the religious convictions
of his youth awakened, and the composition of a beautiful and
well-known German hymn marks the turning point in his life.
He died in A.D. 1557.--The year 1554 was wholly occupied with
internal troubles. A desire for a lasting peace prevailed, and
the calamities of both parties brought Protestants and Catholics
nearer to one another. Even Henry of Brunswick was willing to
tolerate Protestantism in his dominions.
§ 137.5. =The Religious Peace of Augsburg, A.D. 1555.=--When
the diet met at Augsburg in February, A.D. 1555, the emperor’s
power was gone. To save his pride and conscience he renounced
all share in its proceedings in favour of his brother.
The Protestant members stood well together in claiming
unconditional religious freedom, and Ferdinand inclined
to their side. Meanwhile Pope Julius died, and the cardinals
Morone and Truchsess hasted from the diet to Rome to take part
in the papal election. The Catholic opposition was thus weakened
in the diet. The Protestants insisted that the peace should
apply to all who might in future join this confession. This
demand gave occasion to strong contests. At last the simple
formula was agreed upon, that no one should be interfered with
on account of the Augsburg Confession. But a more vehement
dispute arose as to what should happen if prelates or spiritual
princes should join the Protestant party. This was a vital
question for Catholicism, and acceptance of the Protestant
view would be its deathblow. It was therefore proposed that
every prelate who went over would lose, not only his spiritual
rank, but also his civil dominion. But the opposition would
not give in. Both parties appealed to Ferdinand, and he
delayed giving a decision. Advice was also asked about the
peace proclamation. The Protestants claimed that the judges
of the imperial court should be sworn to observe the Religious
Peace, and should be chosen in equal numbers from both religious
parties. On 30th Aug. Ferdinand stated his resolution. As
was expected, he went with the Catholics in regard to prelates
becoming Protestants, but, contrary to all expectations, he
also refused lasting unconditional peace. On this last point,
however, he declared himself on 6th Sept. willing to yield
if the Protestants would concede the point about the prelates.
They sought to sell their concession as dearly as possible
by securing to evangelical subjects of Catholic princes the
right to the free exercise of their religion. But the Catholic
prelates, on the ground of the territorial system (§ 126, 6)
advocated by the Protestants themselves, would not give in.
It was finally agreed that every noble in matters of religion
had territorial authority, but that subjects of another faith,
in case of the free exercise of their religion being refused,
should have guaranteed unrestricted liberty to withdraw without
loss of honour, property, or freedom. On 25th Sept., A.D. 1555,
the decrees of the diet were promulgated. The Reformed were
not included in the Religious Peace; this was first done in
the Peace of Westphalia (§ 153, 2).
§ 137B. GERMANY AFTER THE RELIGIOUS PEACE.
The political importance of the Protestant princes was about equal
to that of the Catholics; the Electors of Cologne, Mainz, and Treves
were not more powerful than those of Saxony, the Palatinate, and
Brandenburg; and the great array of Protestant cities, with almost
all the minor princes, were not behind the combined forces of Austria
and Bavaria. The maintenance of the peace was assigned to a legally
constituted corporation of Catholic and Protestant nobles, which held
power down to A.D. 1806. The hope of reaching a mutual understanding
on matters of religion was by no means abandoned, but the continuance
of the peace was to be in no way dependent upon its realization. A new
attempt to effect a union, which like all previous efforts ended in
failure, was soon made in the Worms Consultation. Equally unsuccessful
was a union project of the emperor Ferdinand I. Protestantism could get
no more out of the Catholic princes. A second attempt to protestantize
the Cologne electorate broke down as the first had done (§ 136, 2).
§ 137.6. =The Worms Consultation, A.D. 1557.=--Another effort
was made after the failure of the council in the interests of
union. Catholic and Protestant delegates under the presidency
of Pflugk met at Worms in A.D. 1557. At a preliminary meeting
the princes of Hesse, Württemburg [Württemberg], and the
Palatinate adopted the Augsburg Confession as bond of union
and standard for negotiations. The Saxon delegates insisted
upon a distinct repudiation of the interim and the insertion
of other details, which gave the Catholics an excuse for putting
an end to the negotiations. They had previously expressly
refused to acknowledge Scripture as the unconditional and
sole judge of controversies, as that was itself a matter in
dispute (§ 136, 4).
§ 137.7. =Second Attempt at Reformation in the Electorate of
Cologne, A.D. 1582.=--The Archbishop and Elector of Cologne,
Gebhard Truchsess of Waldburg went over in A.D. 1582 to the
Protestant Church, married the Countess Agnes of Mansfeld,
proclaimed religious freedom, and sought to convert his
ecclesiastical principality into a temporal dominion. His
plan was acceptable to nobles and people, but the clergy of
his diocese opposed it with all their might. The pope thundered
the ban against him, and Emperor Rudolph II. deposed him. The
Protestant princes at last deserted him, and the newly elected
archbishop, Duke Ernest of Bavaria, overpowered him by an armed
force. The issue of Gebhard’s attempt struck terror into other
prelates who had been contemplating similar moves.
§ 137.8. =The German Emperor.=--=Ferdinand I.=, A.D. 1556-1564,
conciliatory toward Protestantism, thoroughly dissatisfied
with the Tridentine Council, once and again made attempts to
secure a union, which all ended in failure. =Maximilian II.=,
A.D. 1564-1576, imbued by his tutor, Wolfgang Severus, with an
evangelical spirit, which was deepened under the influence of
his physician Crato von Crafftheim (§ 141, 10), gave perfect
liberty to the Protestants in his dominions, admitted them
to many of the higher and lower offices of state, kept down
the Jesuits, and was prevented from himself formally going
over to Protestantism only by his political relations with
Spain and the Catholic princes of the empire. These relations,
however, led to the adoption of half measures, out of which
afterwards sprang the Thirty Years’ War. His son =Rudolph II.=,
A.D. 1576-1612, educated by Jesuits at the Spanish court, gave
again to that order unlimited scope, injured the Protestants on
every side, and was only prevented by indecision and cowardice
from attempting the complete suppression of Protestantism.
§ 138. THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.[369]
In French Switzerland the Reformation appeared somewhat later,
but in essentially the same form as in German Switzerland. Its special
character was given it by Farel and Viret, the predecessors of Calvin.
The powerful genius of Calvin secured for his views victory over
Zwinglianism in Switzerland, and won the ascendency for them in the
other Reformed Churches.
§ 138.1. =Calvin’s Predecessors, A.D. 1526-1535.=--=William
Farel=, the pupil and friend of the liberal exegete Faber
Stapulensis (§ 120, 8), was born in A.D. 1489 at Gap in
Dauphiné. When in A.D. 1521 the Sorbonne condemned Luther’s
doctrines and writings, he was obliged, as a suspected adherent
of Luther, to quit Paris. He retired to Meaux, where he was
well received by Bishop Briçonnet, but so boldly preached
the reformed doctrines, that even the bishop, on renewed
complaints being made, neither could nor would protect him.
He then withdrew to Basel (§ 130, 3). His first permanent
residence was at Neuchatel, where in November, A.D. 1530,
the Reformation was introduced by his influence. He left
Neuchatel in A.D. 1532 in order to work in Geneva. But the
civil authorities there could not protect him against the
bishop and clergy. He was obliged to leave the city, but
Saunier, Fromant, and Olivetan (§ 143, 5) continued the work
in his spirit. A revolution took place; the bishop thundered
his ban against the refractory council, and the senate replied
by declaring his office forfeited. Farel now returned to Geneva,
A.D. 1535, and there accompanied him =Peter Viret=, afterwards
the reformer of Lausanne. Viret was born at Orbe in A.D. 1511,
and had attached himself to the Protestant cause during his
studies in Paris. He therefore had also been obliged to quit
the capital. He retired to his native town, and sought there
diligently to spread the knowledge of the gospel. The arrival
of these two enthusiastic reformers in Geneva led to a life
and death struggle, from which the evangelicals went forth
triumphant. As the result of a public disputation in August,
A.D. 1535, the magistracy declared in their favour, and
Farel gave the movement a doctrinal basis by the issuing
of a confession. In the following year Calvin was passing
through Geneva. Farel adjured him in God’s name to remain
there. Farel indeed needed a fellow labourer of such genius
and power, for he had a hard battle to fight.
§ 138.2. =Calvin before his Genevan Ministry.=--=John Calvin=,
son of diocesan procurator Gerhard Cauvin, was born on 10th July,
A.D. 1509, at Noyou in Picardy. Intended for the church, he was,
from his twelfth year, in possession of a benefice. Meeting with
his relation Olivetan, he had his first doubts of the truth of
the Catholic system awakened. With his father’s consent he now
turned to the study of law, which he eagerly prosecuted for
four years at Orleans and Bourges. At Bourges, Melchior Wolmar,
a German professor of Greek, exercised so powerful an influence
over him, especially through the study of the Scriptures, that
he decided, after the death of his father, to devote himself
exclusively to theology. With this intention he went to Paris
in A.D. 1532, and there enthusiastically adopted the principles
of the Reformation. The newly appointed rector of the university,
Nic. Cop, had to deliver an address on the Feast of All Saints.
Calvin prepared it for him, and expressed therein such liberal
and evangelical views, as had never before been uttered in that
place. Cop read it boldly, and escaped the outburst of wrath
only by a timely flight. Calvin, too, found it prudent to quit
Paris. The bloody persecution of the Protestants by Francis I.
led him at last to leave France altogether. So he went, in
A.D. 1535, to Basel, where he became acquainted with Capito
and Grynæus. In the following year he issued the first sketch
of the _Institutio Religionis Christianæ_. It was made as
a defence of the Protestants of France, persecuted by Francis
on the pretext that they held Anabaptist and revolutionary
views. He therefore dedicated the book to the king, with a
noble and firm address. He soon left Basel, and went to the
court of the evangelical-minded Duchess Renata of Ferrara
(§ 139, 22), in order to secure her good offices for his fellow
countrymen suffering for their faith. He won the full confidence
of the duchess, but after some weeks was banished the country
by her husband. On his journey back to Basel, Farel and Viret
detained him in Geneva in A.D. 1536, and declared that he was
called to be a preacher and teacher of theology. On 1st October,
A.D. 1536, the three reformers, at a public disputation in
Lausanne, defended the principles of the Reformation. Viret
remained in Lausanne, and perfected the work of Reformation
there. As a confession of faith, a catechism, not in dialogue
form, was composed by Calvin as a popular summary of his
_Institutio_ in the French language, and was sworn to, in
A.D. 1536, by all the citizens of Geneva. The _Catechismus
Genevensis_, highly prized in all the Reformed churches, was
a later redaction, which appeared first in French in A.D. 1542,
and then in Latin, in A.D. 1545.[370]
§ 138.3. =Calvin’s First Ministry in Geneva, A.D. 1536-1538.=--In
Geneva, as in other places, there sprang up alongside of the
Reformation, and soon in deadly opposition to it, an antinomian
libertine sect, which strove for freedom from all restraint
and order (§ 146, 4). In the struggle against this dangerous
development, which found special favour among the aristocratic
youth of Geneva, Calvin put forth all the power of his logical
mind and unbending will, and sought to break its force by
the exercise of an excessively strict church discipline. He
created a spiritual consistory which arrogated to itself the
exclusive right of church discipline and excommunication, and
wished to lay upon the magistrates the duty of inflicting civil
punishments on all persons condemned by it. But not only did
the libertine sections offer the most strenuous opposition,
but also the magistrates regarded with jealousy and suspicion
the erection of such a tribunal. Magistrates and libertines
therefore combined to overthrow the consistory. A welcome
pretext was found in a synod at Lausanne in A.D. 1538, which
condemned the abolition of all festivals but the Sundays,
the removal of baptismal fonts from the churches, and the
introduction of leavened bread at the Lord’s Supper by the
Genevan church as uncalled for innovations. The magistrates
now demanded the withdrawal of these, and banished the preachers
who would not obey. Farel went to Neuchatel, where he remained
till his death in A.D. 1565; Calvin went to Strassburg, where
Bucer, Capito, and Hedio gave him the office of a professor
and preacher. During his three years’ residence there Calvin,
as a Strassburg delegate, was frequently brought into close
relationship with the German reformers, especially with
Melanchthon (§§ 134, 135). But he ever remained closely
associated with Geneva, and when Cardinal Sadolet (§ 139, 12)
issued from Lyons in A.D. 1539 an appeal to the Genevese to
return to the bosom of the Romish church, Calvin thundered
against him an annihilating reply. His Genevan friends, too,
spared no pains to win for him the favour of the council and
the citizens. They succeeded all the more easily because since
the overthrow of the theocratic consistory the libertine party
had run into all manner of riotous excesses. By a decree of
council of 20th Oct., A.D. 1540, Calvin was most honourably
recalled. After long consideration he accepted the call in
Sept., A.D. 1541, and now, with redoubled energy, set himself
to carry out most strictly the work that had been interrupted.
§ 138.4. =Calvin’s Second Ministry in Geneva,
A.D. 1541-1564.=--Calvin set up again, after his return, the
consistory, consisting of six ministers and twelve lay elders,
and by it ruled with almost absolute power. It was a thoroughly
organized inquisition tribunal, which regulated in all details
the moral, religious, domestic, and social life of the citizens,
called them to account on every suspicion of a fault, had the
incorrigible banished by the civil authorities, and the more
dangerous of them put to death. The Ciceronian Bible translator,
Sebastian Castellio, appointed rector of the Genevan school by
Calvin, got out of sympathy with the rigorous moral strictures
and compulsory prescriptions of matters of faith under the
Calvinistic rule, and charged the clergy with intolerance and
pride. He also contested the doctrine of the descent into hell,
and described the Canticles as a love poem. He was deposed,
and in order to escape further penalties he fled to Basel in
A.D. 1544. A libertine called Gruet was executed in A.D. 1547,
because he had circulated an abusive tract against the clergy,
and blasphemous references were found in his papers; _e.g._
that Christianity is only a fable, that Christ was a deceiver
and His mother a prostitute, that all ends with death, that
neither heaven nor hell exists, etc. The physician, Jerome
Bolsec, previously a Carmelite monk in Paris, was imprisoned
in A.D. 1551, and then banished, because of his opposition
to Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. He afterwards returned
to the Romish church, and revenged himself by a biography
of Calvin full of spiteful calumnies. On the execution of
Servetus in A.D. 1533, see § 148, 2. Between the years 1542
and 1546 there were in Geneva, with a population of only
20,000, no less than fifty-seven death sentences carried out
with Calvin’s approval, and seventy-six sentences of banishment.
The magistrates faithfully supported him in all his measures.
But under the inquisitorial reign of terror of his consistory,
the libertine party gained strength for a vehement struggle,
and among the magistrates, from about A.D. 1546, there arose
a powerful opposition, and fanatical mobs repeatedly threatened
to throw him into the Rhone. This struggle lasted for nine
years. But Calvin abated not a single iota from the strictness
of his earlier demands, and so great was the fear of his
powerful personality that neither the rage of riotous mobs
nor the hostility of the magistracy could secure his banishment.
In A.D. 1555 his party again won the ascendency in the elections,
mainly by the aid of crowds of refugees from France, England,
and Scotland, who had obtained residence and thus the rights of
citizens in Geneva. From this time till his death on 27th March,
A.D. 1564, his influence was supreme. The impress of his strong
mind was more and more distinctly stamped upon every institution
of the commonwealth, the demands of his rigorous discipline were
willingly and heartily adopted as the moral code, and secured
for Geneva that pre-eminence which for two centuries it retained
among all the Reformed churches as an honourable, pious, and
strictly moral city. In spite of a weak body and frequent
attacks of sickness Calvin, during the twenty-three years of
his two residences in Geneva, performed an amazing amount of
work. He had married in A.D. 1540, at Strassburg, Idaletta de
Bures, the widow of an Anabaptist converted by him. His wife
died in A.D. 1549. He preached almost daily, attended all
the sittings of the consistory and the preachers’ association,
inspired all their deliberations and resolutions, delivered
lectures in the academy founded by his orders in A.D. 1559,
composed numerous doctrinal, controversial, and apologetical
works, conducted an extensive correspondence, etc.
§ 138.5. =Calvin’s Writings.=--The most important of the
writings of Calvin is his already mentioned _Institutio
Religionis Christianæ_, of which the best and most complete
edition appeared in A.D. 1559, a companion volume to
Melanchthon’s _Loci_, but much more thorough and complete
as a formal and scientific treatise. In this work Calvin
elaborates his profound doctrinal system with great speculative
power and bold, relentless logic, combined with the peculiar
grace of a clear and charming style. Next in order of importance
came his commentaries on almost all the books of Scripture.
Here also he shows himself everywhere possessed of brilliant
acuteness, religious geniality, profound Christian sympathy,
and remarkable exegetical talent, but also a stickler for
small points or seriously fettered by dogmatic prejudices.
His exegetical productions want the warmth and childlike
identification of the commentator with his text, which in
so high a degree distinguishes Luther, while in form they are
incomparably superior for conciseness and scientific precision.
In the pulpit Calvin was the same strict and consistent logician
as in his systematic and polemical works. Of Luther’s popular
eloquence he had not the slightest trace.[371]
§ 138.6. =Calvin’s Doctrine.=--Calvin set Zwingli far below
Luther, and had no hesitation in characterizing the Zwinglian
doctrine of the sacraments as profane. With Luther, who highly
respected him, he never came into close personal contact, but
his intercourse with Melanchthon had a powerful influence upon
the latter. But decidedly as he approached Luther’s doctrine,
he was in principle rather on the same platform with Zwingli.
His view of the Protestant principles is essentially Zwinglian.
Just as decidedly as Zwingli had he broken with ecclesiastical
tradition. In the doctrine of the person of Christ he inclined
to Nestorianism, and could not therefore reach the same
believing fulness as Luther in his doctrine of the Lord’s
Supper. He taught, as Berengar before had done, that the
believer by means of faith partakes in the sacrament only
spiritually, but yet really, of the body and blood of the
Lord, through a power issuing from the glorified body of Christ,
whereas the unbeliever receives only bread and wine. In his
doctrine of justification he formally agrees with Luther, but
introduced a very marked difference by his strict, almost Old
Testament, legalism. His predestination doctrine goes beyond
even that of Augustine in its rigid consistency and unbending
severity.[372]
§ 138.7. =The Victory of Calvinism over Zwinglianism.=--By
his extensive correspondence and numerous writings Calvin’s
influence extended far beyond the limits of Switzerland. Geneva
became the place of refuge for all who were exiled on account
of their faith, and the university founded there by Calvin
furnished almost all Reformed churches with teachers, who
were moulded after a strict Calvinistic pattern. Bern, not
uninfluenced by political jealousies, showed most reluctance
in adopting the Calvinistic doctrine. Zürich was more compliant.
After Zwingli’s death, =Henry Bullinger= stood at the head
of the Zürich clergy. With him Calvin entered into doctrinal
negotiations, and succeeded in at last bringing him over to
his views of the Lord’s Supper. In the _Consensus Tigurinus_
of A.D. 1549, drawn up by Calvin, a union was brought about on
a Calvinistic basis; but Bern, where the Zwinglians contending
with the Lutheranised friends of Calvin had the majority,
refused subscription. The _Consensus pastorum Genevensium_,
of A.D. 1554, called forth by the conflict with Bolsec,
in which the predestination doctrine of Calvin had similar
prominence, not only Bern, but also Zürich refused to accept.
Yet these two confessions gradually rose in repute throughout
German Switzerland. Even Bullinger’s personal objection
to the predestination doctrine was more and more overcome
from A.D. 1556 by the influence of his colleague Peter
Martyr (§ 139, 24), though he never accepted the Calvinistic
system in all its severity and harshness. When even the
Elector-palatine Frederick III. (§ 144, 1) wished to lay
a justificatory confession before the Diet of Augsburg in
A.D. 1566, which threatened to exclude him from the peace
on account of his going over to the Reformed church, Bullinger,
who was entrusted with its composition, sent him, as an appendix
to the testament he had composed, a confession, which came
to be known as the _Confessio Helvetica posterior_ (§ 133, 8).
This confession, not only obtained recognition in all the Swiss
cantons, with the exception of Basel, which likewise after
eighty years adopted it, but also gained great consideration
in the Reformed churches of other lands. Its doctrine of
the sacraments is Calvinistic, with not unimportant leanings
toward the Zwinglian theory. Its doctrine of predestination
is Calvinism, very considerably modified.
§ 138.8. =Calvin’s Successor in Geneva.=--=Theodore Beza= was
from A.D. 1559 Calvin’s most zealous fellow labourer, and after
his death succeeded him in his offices. He soon came to be
regarded at home and abroad with something of the same reverence
which his great master had won. He died in A.D. 1605. Born in
A.D. 1519 of an old noble family at Vezelay in Burgundy, he
was sent for his education in his ninth year to the humanist
Melchior Wolmar of Orleans, and accompanied his teacher when
he accepted a call to the Academy of Bourges, until in A.D. 1534
Wolmar was obliged to return to his Swabian home to escape
persecution as a friend and promoter of the Reformation. Beza
now applied himself to the study of law at the University of
Orleans, and obtained the rank of a licentiate in A.D. 1539.
He then spent several years in Paris as a man of the world,
where he gained the reputation of a poet and wit, and wasted
a considerable patrimony in a loose and reckless life. A secret
marriage with a young woman of the city in humble circumstances,
in A.D. 1544, put an end to his extravagances, and a serious
illness gave a religious direction to his moral change. He had
made the acquaintance of Calvin at Bourges, and in A.D. 1543 he
went to Geneva, was publicly married, and in the following year
received, on Viret’s recommendation, the professorship of Greek
at Lausanne. Thoroughly in sympathy with all Calvin’s views,
he supported his doctrine of predestination against the attacks
of Bolsec, justified the execution of Servetus in his tract _De
hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis_, zealously befriended
the persecuted Waldensians, along with Farel made court to the
German Protestant princes in order to secure their intercession
for the French Huguenots, and negotiated with the South German
theologians for a union in regard to the doctrine of the
supper. In A.D. 1558 Calvin called him to Geneva as a preacher
and professor of theology in the academy erected there. In
A.D. 1559 he vindicated Calvin’s doctrine of the supper against
Westphal’s attacks (§ 141, 10) in pretty moderate language; but
in A.D. 1560 he thundered forth two violent polemical dialogues
against Hesshus (§ 144, 1). The next two years he spent in
France (§ 139, 14) as theological defender and advocate of
the Huguenots. After Calvin’s death the whole burden of the
government of the Genevan church fell upon his shoulders, and
for forty years the Reformed churches of all lands looked with
confidence to him as their well-tried patriarch. Next to the
church of Geneva, that of his native land lay nearest to his
heart. Repeatedly we find him called to France to direct the
meetings of synod. But scarcely less lively was the interest
which he took in the controversies of the German Reformed
with their Lutheran opponents. At the Religious Conference of
Mömpelgard, which the Lutheran Count Frederick of Württemberg
called in A.D. 1586, to make terms if possible whereby the
Calvinistic refugees might have the communion together with
their Lutheran brethren, Beza himself in person took the field
in defence of the palladium of Calvinistic orthodoxy against
Andreä, whose theory of ubiquity (§ 141, 9, 10) he had already
contested in his writings. Very near the close of his life the
Catholic Church, through its experienced converter of heretics,
Francis de Sales (§ 156, 1), made a vain attempt to win him back
to the Church in which alone is salvation. To a foolish report
that this effort had been successful Beza himself answered in
a satirical poem full of all his youthful fire.[373]
§ 139. THE REFORMATION IN OTHER LANDS.
The need of reform was so great and widespread, that the movement
begun in Germany and Switzerland soon spread to every country in
Europe. The Catholic Church opposed the Reformation everywhere with
fire and sword, and succeeded in some countries in utterly suppressing
it; while in others it was restricted within the limits of a merely
tolerated sect. The German Lutheran Confession found acceptance
generally among the Scandinavians of the north of Europe, the Swiss
Reformed among the Romanic races of the south and west; while in the
east, among the Slavs and Magyars, both confessions were received.
Calvin’s powerful personal influence had done much to drive the
Lutheran Confession out of those Romance countries where it had
before obtained a footing. The presence of many refugees from the
various western lands for a time in Switzerland, as well as the
natural intercourse between it and such countries as Italy and France,
contributed to the same result. But deeper grounds than these are
required to account for this fact. On the one hand, the Romance people
are inclined to extremes, and they found more thorough satisfaction
in the radical reformation of Geneva than in the more moderate
reformation of Wittenberg; and, on the other hand, they have a love
for democratic and republican forms of government which the former,
but not the latter, gratified.--Outside of the limits of the German
empire the Lutheran Reformation first took root, from A.D. 1525,
in Prussia, the seat of the Teutonic Knights (§ 127, 3); then in the
Scandinavian countries. In Sweden it gained ascendency in A.D. 1527,
and in Denmark and Norway in A.D. 1537. Also in the Baltic Provinces
the Reformation had found entrance in A.D. 1520; by A.D. 1539 it had
overcome all opposition in Livonia and Esthonia, but in Courland it
took other ten years before it was thoroughly organized. The Reformed
church got almost exclusive possession of England in A.D. 1562,
of Scotland in A.D. 1560, and of the Netherlands in A.D. 1579. The
Reformed Confession obtained mere toleration in France in A.D. 1598;
the Reformed alongside of the Lutheran gained a footing in Poland
in A.D. 1573, in Bohemia and Moravia in A.D. 1609, in Hungary in
A.D. 1606, and in Transylvania in A.D. 1557. Only in Spain and Italy
did the Catholic Church succeed in utterly crushing the Reformation.
Some attempts to interest the Greek church in the Lutheran Confession
were unsuccessful, but the remnants of the Waldensians were completely
won over to the Reformed Confession.
§ 139.1. =Sweden.=--For fifty years Sweden had been free from
the Danish yoke which had been imposed upon it by the Calmar
union of A.D. 1397. The higher clergy, who possessed two-thirds
of the land, had continuously conspired in favour of Denmark.
The Archbishop of Upsala, Gustavus Trolle, fell out with the
chancellor, Sten Sture, and was deposed. Pope Leo X. pronounced
the ban and interdict against Sweden. Christian II. of Denmark
conquered the country in A.D. 1520, and in the frightful
massacre of Stockholm during the coronation festivities, in
spite of his sworn assurances, 600 of the noblest in the land,
marked out by the archbishop as enemies of Denmark, were slain.
But scarcely had Christian reached home when =Gustavus Vasa=
landed from Lübeck, whither he had fled, drove out the Danes,
and was elected king, A.D. 1523. In his exile he had become
favourably inclined to the Reformation, and now he joined the
Protestants to have their help against the opposing clergy.
=Olaf Peterson=, who had studied from A.D. 1516 in Wittenberg,
soon after his return home, in A.D. 1519, began as deacon
in Strengnæs, along with =Lawrence Anderson=, afterwards
administrator of the diocese of Strengnæs, to spread the
reformed doctrines. Subsequently they were joined by Olaf’s
younger brother, =Laurence Peterson=. During the king’s absence
in A.D. 1524, two Anabaptists visited Stockholm, and even the
calm-minded Olaf was for a time carried away by them. The king
quickly suppressed the disturbances, and entered heartily upon
the work of reformation. Anderson, appointed chancellor by Vasa,
in A.D. 1526 translated the N.T., and Olaf with the help of
his learned brother undertook the O.T. The people, however,
still clung to the old faith, till at the Diet of =Westnæs=,
in A.D. 1527, the king set before them the alternative of
accepting his resignation or the Reformation. The people’s love
for their king overcame all clerical opposition. Church property
was used to supply revenues to kings and nobles, and to provide
salaries for pastors who should preach the gospel in its purity.
The Reformation was peacefully introduced into all parts of
the land, and the diets at Örebro, in A.D. 1529, 1537, and
at Westnæs, in A.D. 1544, carried out the work to completion.
The new organization adopted the episcopal constitution, and
also in worship, by connivance of the people, many Catholic
ceremonies were allowed to remain. Most of the bishops accepted
the inevitable. The Archbishop Magnus of Upsala, papal legate,
went to Poland, and Bishop Brask of Linköping fled with all the
treasures of his church to Danzig. Laurence Peterson was made
in A.D. 1531 first evangelical Archbishop of Upsala, and married
a relative of the royal house. But his brother Olaf fell into
disfavour on account of his protest against the king’s real or
supposed acts of rapacity. He and Anderson, because they had
failed to report a conspiracy which came to their knowledge in
the confessional, were condemned to death, but were pardoned
by the king. Gustavus died in A.D. 1560. Under his son Eric
a Catholic reaction set in, and his brother John III., in
A.D. 1578, made secret confession of Catholicism to the Jesuit
Possevin, urged thereto by his Catholic queen and the prospect
of the Polish throne. John’s son Sigismund, also king of
Poland, openly joined the Romish Church. But his uncle Charles
of Sodermanland, a zealous Protestant, as governor after John’s
death, called together the nobles at Upsala in A.D. 1593, when
the Latin mass-book introduced by John was forbidden, and the
acknowledgment of the Augsburg Confession was renewed. But as
Sigismund continued to favour Catholicism, the peers of the
realm declared, in A.D. 1604, that he had forfeited the throne,
which his uncle now ascended as Charles IX.--The Reformation
had been already carried from Sweden into =Finland=.[374]
§ 139.2. =Denmark and Norway.=--=Christian II.=, nephew of the
Elector of Saxony and brother-in-law of the Emperor Charles V.,
although he had associated himself with the Romish hierarchy in
Sweden for the overthrow of the national party, had in Denmark
taken the side of the Reformation against the clergy, who were
there supreme. In A.D. 1521 he succeeded in getting Carlstadt
to come to his assistance, but he was soon forced to quit the
country. In A.D. 1523 the clergy and nobles formally renounced
their allegiance, and gave the crown to his uncle =Frederick I.=,
Duke of Schleswig and Holstein. Christian fled to Saxony,
was there completely won over to the Reformation by Luther,
converted also his wife, the emperor’s sister, and had the
first Danish N.T., by Hans Michelson, printed at Leipzig and
circulated in Denmark. To secure the emperor’s aid, however,
he abjured the evangelical faith at Augsburg in A.D. 1530.
In the following year he conquered Norway, and bound himself
on his coronation to maintain the Catholic religion. But in
A.D. 1532 he was obliged to surrender to Frederick, and spent
the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in prison, where
he repented his apostasy, and had the opportunity of instructing
himself by the study of the Danish Bible.--Frederick I. had
been previously favourable to the Reformation, yet his hands
were bound by the express terms of his election. His son
Christian III. unreservedly introduced the Reformation into
his duchies. In this he was encouraged by his father. In
A.D. 1526 he openly professed the evangelical faith, and
invited the Danish reformer =Hans Tausen=, a disciple of
Luther, who had preached the gospel amid much persecution
since A.D. 1524, to settle as preacher in Copenhagen. At a
diet at Odensee [Odense] in A.D. 1527 he restricted episcopal
jurisdiction, proclaimed universal religious toleration, gave
priests liberty to marry and to leave their cloisters, and thus
laid the foundations of the Reformation. Tausen in A.D. 1530
submitted to the nobles his own confession, _Confessio Hafinca_,
and the Reformation rapidly advanced. Frederick died in A.D. 1533.
The bishops now rose in a body, and insisted that the estates
should refuse to acknowledge his son =Christian III.= But when
the burgomaster of Lübeck, taking advantage of the anarchy,
plotted to subject Denmark to the proud commercial city, and
in A.D. 1534 actually laid siege to Copenhagen, the Jutland
nobles hastened to swear fealty to Christian. He drove out the
Lübeckers, and by A.D. 1536 had possession of the whole land.
He resolved now to put an end for ever to the machinations of
the clergy. In August, A.D. 1536, he had all bishops imprisoned
in one day, and at a diet at Copenhagen had them formally
deposed. Their property fell into the royal exchequer, all
monasteries were secularized, some presented to the nobles,
some converted into hospitals and schools. In order to complete
the organization of the church Bugenhagen was called in in
A.D. 1537. He crowned the king and queen, sketched a directory
of worship, which was adopted at the =Diet of Odensee [Odense]=
in A.D. 1539, and returned to Wittenberg in A.D. 1542. In place
of bishops Lutheran superintendents were appointed, to whom
subsequently the title of bishop was given, and the Augsburg
Confession accepted as the standard. The Reformation was
contemporaneously introduced into =Norway=, which acknowledged
the king in A.D. 1536. The Archbishop of Drontheim, Olaf
Engelbrechtzen, fled with the church treasures to the Netherlands.
=Iceland= stood out longer, but yielded in A.D. 1551, when the
power of the rebel bishops was broken.[375]
§ 139.3. =Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia.=--Livonia had
seceded from the dominion of the Teutonic knights in A.D. 1521,
and under the grand-master Walter of Plattenburg assumed the
position of an independent principality. In that same year a
Lutheran archdeacon, =Andr. Knöpken=, expelled from Pomerania,
came to Riga, and preached the gospel with moderation. Soon
after Tegetmaier came from Rostock, and so vigorously denounced
image worship that excited mobs entered the churches and tore
down the images; yet he was protected by the council and the
grand-master. The third reformer =Briesmann= was the immediate
scholar of Luther. The able town clerk of Riga, Lohmüller,
heartily wrought with them, and the Reformation spread through
city and country. At Wolmar and Dorpat, in A.D. 1524, the work
was carried on by Melchior Hoffmann, whose Lutheranism was
seriously tinged with Anabaptist extravagances (§ 147, 1).
The diocese of Oesel adopted the reformed doctrines, and at
the same time a Lutheran church was formed in Reval. After
strong opposition had been offered, at last, in A.D. 1538,
Riga accepted the evangelical confession, joined the Schmalcald
League, and in a short time all Livonia and Esthonia accepted
the Augsburg Confession. Political troubles, occasioned
mainly by Russia, obliged the last grand-master, =Kettler=,
in A.D. 1561 to surrender Livonia to Sigismund Augustus of
Poland, but with the formal assurance that the rights of the
evangelicals should be preserved. He himself retained Courland
as an hereditary duchy under the suzerainty of Poland, and
gave himself unweariedly to the evangelical organization of
his country, powerfully assisted by Bülau, first superintendent
of Courland.--The Lutheran church of Livonia had in consequence
to pass through severe trials. Under Polish protection a Jesuit
college was established in Riga in A.D. 1584. Two city churches
had to be given over to the Catholics, and Possevin conducted
an active Catholic propaganda, which was ended only when Livonia,
in A.D. 1629, as also Esthonia somewhat earlier, came under the
rule of Sweden. In consequence of the Norse war both countries
were incorporated into the Russian empire, and by the Peace
of Nystadt, of A.D. 1721, its Lutheran church retained all its
privileges, on condition that it did not interfere in any way
with the Greek Orthodox Church in the province. In A.D. 1795
Courland also came under Russian sway, and all these are now
known as the Baltic Provinces.
§ 139.4. =England.=[376]--=Henry VIII.=, A.D. 1509-1547, after
the literary feud with Luther (§ 125, 3), sought to justify his
title, “Defender of the Faith,” by the use of sword and gibbet.
Luther’s writings were eagerly read in England, where in many
circles Wiclif’s movements were regarded with favour, and two
noble Englishmen, John Fryth and William Tyndal, gave to their
native land a translation of the N.T. in A.D. 1526. Fryth was
rewarded with the stake in A.D. 1533, and Tyndal was beheaded
in the Netherlands in A.D. 1535.[377] But meanwhile the king
quarrelled with the pope. On assuming the government he had
married Catharine of Arragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic
and Isabella, six years older than himself, the widow of his
brother Arthur, who had died in his 16th year, for which he
got a papal dispensation on the ground that the former marriage
had not been consummated. His adulterous love for Anne Boleyn,
the fair maid of honour to his queen, and Cranmer’s biblical
opinion (Lev. xviii. 16; xx. 21) convinced him in A.D. 1527
of the sinfulness of his uncanonical marriage. Clement VII.,
at first not indisposed to grant his request for a divorce,
refused after he had been reconciled to the emperor, Catharine’s
nephew (§ 132, 2). Thoroughly roused, the king now threw off
the authority of the pope. Convocation was forced to recognise
him in A.D. 1531 as head of the English Church, and in 1532
Parliament forbade the paying of annats to the pope. In
the same year Henry married Anne, and had a formal divorce
from Catharine granted by a spiritual court. Parliament in
A.D. 1534 formally abolished papal jurisdiction in the land,
and transferred all ecclesiastical rights and revenues to the
king. The venerable Bishop Fisher of Rochester and the resolute
chancellor, Sir Thomas More (§ 120, 7), in A.D. 1535 paid the
price of their opposition on the scaffold. Now came the long
threatened ban. Under pretext of a highly necessary reform no
less than 376 monasteries were closed during the years 1536-1538,
their occupiers, monks and nuns, expelled, and their rich
property confiscated.[378] Nevertheless in doctrine the king
wished to remain a good Catholic, and for this end passed in
the Parliament of A.D. 1539 the law of the Six Articles, which
made any contradiction of the doctrines of transubstantiation,
the withholding of the cup, celibacy of the clergy, the mass,
and auricular confession, a capital offence. Persecution raged
equally against Lutherans and Papists, sometimes more against
the one, sometimes more against the other, according as he
was moved by his own caprice, or the influence of his wives
and favourites of the day. On the one side, at the head of
the Papists, stood Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Bonner,
Bishop of London; and on the other, Thomas Cranmer, whom the
king had raised in A.D. 1533 to the see of Canterbury, in order
to carry out his reforms in the ecclesiastical constitution.
But Cranmer, who as the king’s agent in the divorce negotiations
had often treated with foreign Protestant theologians, and at
Nuremberg had secretly married Osiander’s niece, was in heart
a zealous adherent of the Swiss Reformation, and furthered as
far as he could with safety its introduction into England. Among
other things, he secured the introduction in A.D. 1539, into
all the churches of England, of an English translation of the
Bible, revised by himself. He was supported in his efforts by
the king’s second wife, Anne Boleyn; but she, having fallen
under suspicion of unfaithfulness, was executed in A.D. 1536.
The third wife, Jane Seymour, died in A.D. 1537 on the death
of a son. The fourth, Anne of Cleves, was after six months, in
A.D. 1540, cast aside, and the promoter of the marriage, the
chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, was brought to the scaffold. The
king now in the same year married Catharine Howard, with whom
the Catholic party got to the helm again, and had the Act of
the Six Articles rigorously enforced. But she, too, in A.D. 1543,
was charged with repeated adulteries, and fell, together with
her friends and those reputed as guilty with her, under the
executioner’s axe. The sixth wife, Catharine Parr, who again
favoured the Protestants, escaped a like fate by the death of
the tyrant.[379]
§ 139.5. =Edward VI.=, A.D. 1547-1553, son of Henry VIII. and
Jane Seymour, succeeded his father in his tenth year. At the
head of the regency stood his mother’s brother, the Duke of
Somerset. =Cranmer= had now a free hand. Private masses and
image worship were forbidden, the supper was administered in
both kinds, marriage of priests was made legitimate, and a
general church visitation appointed for the introduction of
the Reformation. Gardiner and Bonner, who opposed these changes,
were sent to the Tower. Somerset corresponded with Calvin, and
invited at Cranmer’s request distinguished foreign theologians
to help in the visitation of the churches. Martin Bucer and Paul
Fagius from Strassburg came to Cambridge, and Peter Martyr to
Oxford.[380] Bernardino Ochino was preacher to a congregation
of Italian refugees in London. A commission under Cranmer’s
presidency drew up for reading in the churches a collection
of _Homilies_, for the instruction of the young a _Catechism_,
and for the service a liturgy mediate between the Catholic
and Protestant form, the so-called _Book of Common Prayer_
of A.D. 1549; but from the second edition of which were left
out chrism and exorcism, auricular confession, anointing the
sick, and prayer for the dead. Then followed, in A.D. 1553,
a confession of faith, consisting of forty-two articles,
drawn up by Cranmer and Bishop Ridley of Rochester, which
was distinctly of the reformed type, and set forward the
ecclesiastical supremacy of the king as an article of faith.
The young king, who supported the Reformation with all his heart,
died in A.D. 1553, after nominating as his successor Jane Grey,
the grand-daughter of a sister of his father. Not she, however,
but a fanatical Catholic, =Mary=, A.D. 1553-1558, daughter of
Henry VIII. and Catharine of Spain, actually ascended the throne.
The compliant Parliament now abrogated all the ecclesiastical
laws of Edward VI., which it had itself sanctioned, reverted
to Henry’s law of the Six Articles, and entrusted Gardiner
as chancellor with its execution. The Protestant leaders
were thrown into the Tower, the bones of Bucer and Fagius
were publicly burnt, married priests with wives and children
were driven in thousands from the land. In the following
year, A.D. 1554, Cardinal Reginald Pole, who had fled during
Henry’s reign, returned as papal legate, absolved the repentant
Parliament, and received all England back again into the fold
of the Romish church.[381] The noble and innocent Lady Jane
Grey, only in her sixteenth year, though she had voluntarily
and cheerfully resigned the crown, was put to death with her
husband and father. In the course of the next year, A.D. 1555,
Bishops Ridley, Latimer, Ferrar, and Hooper with noble constancy
endured death at the stake.[382] In prison, Cranmer had renounced
his evangelical faith, but abundantly atoned for this weakness
by the heroic firmness with which he retracted his retractation,
and held the hand which had subscribed it in the flames, that
it might be first consumed. He suffered in A.D. 1556.--The
queen had married in A.D. 1554 Philip II. of Spain, eleven
years her junior, and when in A.D. 1555 he returned to Spain,
she fell into deep melancholy, and under its pressure her
hatred of Protestantism was shown in the most bloody and
cruel deeds. A heretic tribunal, after the fashion of the
Spanish Inquisition, was created, which under the presidency
of the “Bloody Bonner,” consigned to the flames crowds of
confessors of the gospel, clergymen and laymen, men and women,
old and young. After the persecution had raged for five years,
“Bloody Mary” died of heart-break and dropsy.[383]
§ 139.6. =Elizabeth=, A.D. 1558-1603, the daughter of Anne
Boleyn, though previously branded by the Parliament as a bastard,
now ascended the throne unopposed as the last living member
of the family of Henry VIII. Educated under the supervision
of Cranmer in the Protestant faith of her mother, she had been
obliged during the reign of her sister outwardly to conform
to the Romish church. She proceeded with great prudence and
moderation; but when Paul IV. pronounced her illegitimate, and
the Scottish princess Mary Stuart, grand-daughter of Henry’s
sister, assumed the title of queen of England, Elizabeth more
heartily espoused the cause of Protestantism. In A.D. 1559 the
Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity, which reasserted the
royal supremacy over the national church, prescribed a revision
of the _Book of Common Prayer_, which set aside the prayer
for deliverance from the “detestable enormities” of the papacy,
etc., and practically reproduced the earlier, less perfect
of the Prayer Books of Edward VI., while every perversion to
papacy was threatened with confiscation of goods, imprisonment,
banishment, and in cases of repetition with death, as an
act of treason. At the head of the clergy was Matthew Parker,
consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by some bishops exiled
under Mary. He had formerly been chaplain to Anne Boleyn.
Under his direction Cranmer’s forty-two articles were reduced
to thirty-nine, giving a type of doctrine midway between
Lutheranism and Calvinism; these were confirmed by convocation
in A.D. 1562, and were adopted as a fundamental statute
of England by Act of Parliament in A.D. 1571. This brings
to a close the first stage in the history of the English
Reformation,--the setting up by law of the Anglican State
Church with episcopal constitution, with apostolical succession,
under royal supremacy, as the Established Church.[384] (For the
Puritan opposition to it see § 143, 3.) The somewhat indulgent
manner in which the Act of Uniformity was at first enforced
against the Catholics encouraged them more and more in attempts
to secure a restoration. Even in A.D. 1568 William Allen founded
at Douay a seminary to train Catholic Englishmen for a mission
at home, and Gregory XIII. some years later, for a similar
purpose, founded in Rome the “English College.” His predecessor,
Pius V., had in A.D. 1570 deposed and issued the ban against
the queen, and threatened all with the greater excommunication
who should yield her obedience. Parliament now punished every
withdrawal from the State church as high treason. Day and night
houses were searched, and suspected persons inquisitorially
examined by torture, and if found guilty they were not
infrequently put to death as traitors.[385]--Continuation,
§§ 153, 6; 154, 3.
§ 139.7. =Ireland.=--Hadrian IV., himself an Englishman
(§ 96, 14), on the plea that the donation of Constantine
(§ 87, 4) embraced also the “islands,” gave over Ireland
to King Henry II. as a papal fief in A.D. 1154. Yet the king
only managed to conquer the eastern border, the _Pale_, during
the years 1171-1175. Henry VIII. introduced the Reformation
into this province in A.D. 1535, by the help of his Archbishop
of Dublin, George Brown. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the
Crown was proclaimed, monasteries closed and their property
impropriated, partly divided among Irish and English peers.
But in matters of faith there was little change. More opposition
was shown to the sweeping reformation of faith and worship
of Edward VI. The bishops, Brown included, resisted, and
the inferior clergy, who now were required to read the
Book of Common Prayer in a language to most of them strange,
diligently fostered the popular attachment to the old faith.
The ascension of Queen Mary therefore was welcomed in Ireland,
while Elizabeth’s attempt to reintroduce the Reformation met
with opposition. Repeated outbreaks, in which also the people
of the western districts took part, ended in A.D. 1601 in
the complete subjugation of the whole island. By wholesale
confiscation of estates the entire nobility was impoverished
and the church property was made over to the Anglican clergy;
but the masses of the Irish people continued Catholic, and
willingly supported their priests out of their own scanty
resources.[386]--Continuation, § 153, 6.
§ 139.8. =Scotland.=--Patrick Hamilton, who had studied
in Wittenberg and Marburg, first preached the gospel in
Scotland, and died at the stake in his twenty-fourth year
in A.D. 1528.[387] Amid the political confusions of the regency
during the minority of James V., A.D. 1513-1542, a sister’s son
of Henry VIII. of England, the Reformation obtained firm root
among the nobles, who hated the clergy, and among the oppressed
people, notwithstanding that the bishops, with David Beaton,
Archbishop of St. Andrew’s at their head, sought to crush it
by the most violent persecution. When Henry VIII. called on his
nephew to assist him in his Reformation work, James refused, and
yielding to Beaton’s advice formed an alliance with France and
married Mary of Guise. This occasioned a war in A.D. 1540, the
disastrous issue of which led to the king’s death of a broken
heart. According to the king’s will Beaton was to undertake the
regency, for Mary Stuart was only seven days old. But the nobles
transferred it to the Protestant Earl of Arran, who imprisoned
Beaton and had the royal child affianced to Henry’s son Edward.
Beaton escaped, by connivance of the queen-mother got possession
of the child, and compelled the weak regent, in A.D. 1543, to
abjure the English alliance. The persecution of the Protestants
by fire and sword now began afresh. After many others had fallen
victims to his persecuting rage, Beaton had a famous Protestant
preacher, George Wishart, burnt before his eyes; but was soon
after, in A.D. 1546, surprised in his castle and slain. When
in A.D. 1548 Somerset, the English regent after Henry’s death,
sought to renew negotiations about the marriage of Mary, now
five years old, with Edward VI., her mother had her taken
for safety to France, where she was educated in a convent and
affianced to the dauphin, afterwards Francis II. By hypocritical
acts she contrived to have the regency transferred in A.D. 1554
from Arran to herself. For two years the Reformation progressed
without much opposition. In December, A.D. 1557, its most
devoted promoters made a “covenant,” pledging themselves
in life and death to advance the word of God and uproot the
idolatry of the Romish church. The queen-regent, however, after
the marriage of her daughter with the dauphin in A.D. 1558,
felt herself strong enough to defy the Protestant nobles. The
old strict laws against heretics were renewed, and a tribunal
established for the punishment of apostatizing priests. The last
victim of the persecution was Walter Mill, a priest eighty-two
years old, who died at the stake at Perth (?) in A.D. 1559.[388]
The country now rose in open revolt. The regent was thus
obliged to make proclamation of universal religious toleration.
But instead of keeping her promise to have all French troops
withdrawn, their number was actually increased after Francis II.
ascended the French throne. Elizabeth, too, was indignant at
the assumption by the French king and queen of the English
royal title, so that she aided the insurgents with an army
and a fleet. During the victorious progress of the English
the regent died, in A.D. 1560. The French were obliged to
withdraw, and the victory of the Scotch Protestants was
decisive.
§ 139.9. There was one man, whose unbending opposition to the
constitution, worship, doctrine, and discipline of the Church
of Rome, manifested with a rigid determination that has scarcely
ever been equalled, left its indelible impress upon the Scottish
Reformation. =John Knox=, born in A.D. 1505, was by the study
of Augustine and the Bible led to adopt evangelical views, which
in A.D. 1542 he preached in the south of Scotland. Persecuted
in consequence by Archbishop Beaton, he joined the conspirators
after that prelate’s assassination, in A.D. 1546, was taken
prisoner, and in A.D. 1547 served as slave in the French galleys.
The ill treatment he thus endured developed his naturally
strong and resolute character and that fearlessness which
so characterized all his subsequent life. By English mediation
he was set free in A.D. 1549, and became in A.D. 1551 chaplain
to Edward VI., but took offence at the popish leaven allowed
to remain in the English Reformation, and consequently declined
an offered bishopric. When the Catholic Mary ascended the throne
in A.D. 1553, he fled to Geneva, where he enjoyed the closest
intimacy with Calvin, whose doctrine of predestination, rigid
presbyterianism, and rigorous discipline he thoroughly approved.
After presiding for some time over a congregation of English
refugees at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, he returned in A.D. 1555
to Scotland, but in the following year accepted a call to
the church of English refugees at Geneva that had meanwhile
been formed. The Scottish bishops, who had not ventured to
touch him while present, condemned him to death after his
departure, and burned him in effigy. But Knox kept up a lively
correspondence with his native land by letters, proclamations,
and controversial tracts, and with the help of several
friends translated the Scriptures into English. In A.D. 1558
he published with the title, “The First Blast of the Trumpet
against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” the most violent
of all his controversial works, directed mainly against the
English Queen Mary, who was now dead. It roused against him
the unconquerable dislike of her successor, and increased
the hatred of the other two Maries against him to the utmost
pitch. Yet he accepted the call of the Protestant lords, and
returned next year to Scotland, and was the heart and soul
of the revolution that soon thereafter broke out. Images and
mass-books were burnt, altars in churches broken in pieces,
and 150 monasteries were destroyed; for said Knox, “If the
nests be pulled down, the crows will not come back.” After
the death of the regent in A.D. 1560, the Parliament proclaimed
the abolition of the papacy, ratified the strictly Calvinistic
_Confessio Scotica_, and forbade celebrating the mass on
pain of death. Then in December, the first _General Assembly_
prescribed, in the “First Book of Discipline,” a strictly
presbyterial constitution under Christ as only head, with
a rigidly puritan order of worship (§ 163, 3).
§ 139.10. In Aug., A.D. 1561, Queen =Mary Stuart=, highly
cultured and high-spirited, returned from France to Scotland,
a young widow in her 19th year. Brought up in a French convent
in fanatical attachment to the Romish Church, and at the French
court, with absolutist ideas as well as easy-going morals, the
severe Calvinism and moral strictness of Scottish Puritanism
were to her as distasteful as its assertion of political
independence. At the instigation of her half-brother James
Stuart, whom she raised to the earldom of Moray, and who was
head of the ministry as one of the leaders of the reformed
party, she promised on her arrival not to interfere with the
ecclesiastical arrangements of the country, but refused to
give royal sanction to the proceedings of A.D. 1560, held
Catholic service in her court chapel, and on all hands favoured
the Romanists. By her marriage, in A.D. 1565, with the young
Catholic Lord Darnley, grandson by a second marriage of her
grandmother Margaret of England, who now assumed the title of
king, Moray was driven from his position, and the restoration
of Catholicism was vigorously and openly prosecuted by
negotiations with Spain, France, and the pope. The director
of all those intrigues was the Italian musician David Rizzio,
who came to the country as papal agent, and had become Mary’s
favourite and private secretary. The rudeness and profligacy
of the young king had soon estranged from him the heart of the
queen. He therefore took part in a conspiracy of the Protestant
lords, promising to go over to their faith. Their first victim
was the hated Rizzio. He was fallen upon and slain on 9th March,
A.D. 1566, while he sat beside the queen, already far advanced
in pregnancy. Darnley soon repented his deed, was reconciled to
the queen, fled with her to the Castle of Dunbar, and an army
gathered by the Protestant Earl of Bothwell soon suppressed
the rising. The rebels and assassins were at Mary’s entreaty
almost all pardoned. Darnley, now living in mortal enmity with
the heads of the Protestant nobility, and again on bad terms
with the queen, fell sick in Dec., A.D. 1566, at Glasgow. On
his sick-bed a reconciliation with his wife was effected, and
apparently in order that she might the better nurse him, he was
brought to a villa near Edinburgh. But on the night of 9th Feb.,
A.D. 1567, while Mary was present at the marriage of a servant,
the house with its inhabitants was blown up by an explosion
of gunpowder. Public opinion charged Bothwell and the queen
with contriving the horrible crime. Bothwell was tried, but
acquitted by the lords. Suspicion increased when soon after
Bothwell carried off the queen to his castle, and married her
on 15th May. In the civil war that now broke out Mary was taken
prisoner, and on 24th July obliged to abdicate in favour of her
one-year old son James VI., for whom Mary undertook the regency.
Bothwell fled to Denmark, where he died in misery and want;
but Mary was allowed to escape from prison by the young George
Douglas. He also raised on her behalf a small army, which,
however, in May, A.D. 1568, was completely destroyed by Moray
at the village of Langside. The unhappy queen could now only
seek protection with her deadly enemy Elizabeth of England,
who, after twenty years’ imprisonment, sent her to the scaffold
in A.D. 1587, on the plea that she was guilty of murdering her
own husband and of high treason in plotting the death of the
English queen.--Mary’s guilt would be conclusively established,
if a correspondence with Bothwell, said to have been found in
her desk, should be accepted as genuine. But all her apologists,
with apparently strong conviction, have sought to prove that
these letters are fabrications of her enemies. The thorough
investigation given to original documents, however, by Bresslau
[Breslau], has resulted in recognising only the second of these
as a forgery, and so proving, not indeed Mary’s complicity in
the murder of her husband, but her adulterous love for Bothwell,
and showing too that her apparent reconciliation with Darnley
on his sick-bed was only hypocritical.[389]
§ 139.11. The young queen had at first sought to win by her
fair speeches the bold and influential reformer =John Knox=,
who was then preacher in Edinburgh. But his heart was cased
in sevenfold armour against all her flatteries, as afterwards
against her threats; even her tears found him as stern and
cold as her wrath. When he called an assembly of nobles to put
a stop to the Catholic worship introduced by her at court, he
was charged with high treason, but acquitted by the lords. The
marriage with Darnley and all that followed from this unhappy
union only increased his boldness. He publicly preached without
reserve against the papacy and the light carriage of the
queen, on the outbreak of the civil war urged her deposition,
and demanded her execution for adultery and the murder of her
husband. The assassination of Regent Moray in A.D. 1570 threw
the country into further confusion, which was only overcome
by his third successor, Morton. The fugitive Knox now returned
to Edinburgh, and soon after died, on 24th Nov., A.D. 1572.
Of his extant writings the most important is his “History
of the Reformation,” reaching down to A.D. 1567. Morton’s
vigorous government completely destroyed Mary’s party, but
also restricted the pretensions of Presbyterianism. After
his overthrow in A.D. 1578, =James VI.=, now in his 12th year,
himself undertook the government at the head of a council
of state. His weakness of character showed itself in his
vacillating between an alliance with Catholic Spain and one
with Protestant England, as well as between secret favouring
of Catholicism and open endeavouring to supersede puritan
Presbyterianism by Anglican-Protestant episcopacy. In A.D. 1584
the parliament, enlarged by the introduction of the lower
orders of the nobility, so defined the royal supremacy as to
deprive the Presbyterian church of several of her rights and
privileges. But in A.D. 1592 the king was obliged absolutely
to restore these. After Elizabeth’s death in A.D. 1603, as the
great-grandson of Henry VII., he united the kingdoms of England
and Scotland under the title of James I.[390]--Continuation,
§ 153, 6.
§ 139.12. =The Netherlands.=--By the marriage of Mary of
Burgundy, the heiress of Charles the Bald, with Maximilian I.,
in A.D. 1478, the Netherlands passed over to the house of
Hapsburg, and after Maximilian’s death, in A.D. 1519, went
to his grandson Charles V. Even in the previous period the
ground was broken in these regions for the introduction of
the Reformation of the 16th century by means of the Brothers
of the Common Life (§ 112, 9) and the Dutch precursors of
the Reformation (§ 119, 10), working as they did among an
intrepid and liberty loving people. The writings of Luther
were introduced at a very early date into Holland, and the
first martyrs from the Lutheran Confession (§ 128, 1) were
led to the stake at Antwerp, in A.D. 1523. The alliance
with France and Switzerland, however, was the occasion of
subsequently securing the triumph of the Reformed Confession
(see § 160, 1). But fanatical Anabaptists soon followed in the
wake of the reform movement, and sent forth their emissaries
into Germany and Switzerland. As the emperor had here an
authority as absolute as his heart could desire, he proceeded
to execute unrelentingly the edict of Worms, and multitudes of
witnesses for the gospel as well as fanatical sectaries were put
to death by the sword and at the stake. Still more dreadful was
the havoc committed by the Inquisition after Charles’ abdication,
in A.D. 1555, under his son and successor =Philip II.= of Spain,
which had for its aim the overthrow alike of ecclesiastical and
political liberty. In order the more successfully to withstand
the Reformation, the four original bishoprics were increased by
the addition of fourteen new bishoprics, and three were raised
into archbishoprics, Utrecht, Mechlin, and Cambray. But even
these measures failed in securing the end desired, because the
Dutch, even those who hitherto had remained faithful to the
Romish Church, saw in them simply an instrument for advancing
Spanish despotism.--In A.D. 1523 Luther’s translation of the N.T.
had already been rendered into Dutch and printed at Amsterdam.
In A.D. 1545 Jacob van Liesfield translated the whole Bible, and
was for this sent to the scaffold in A.D. 1545. A Calvinistic
symbol was set forth in A.D. 1562 in the Belgic Confession. The
league formed by the nobles, in A.D. 1566, to offer resistance
to the tyranny of the Spaniards, to which their oppressors gave
the contemptuous designation of the Beggars--a name which they
themselves adopted as a title of honour--increased in strength
and importance from day to day, and the people, thirsting for
revenge, tore down churches, images, and altars. The prudent
regent, however, =Margaret of Parma=, Philip’s half-sister,
would have been more successful in preventing an outburst of
rebellion by her conciliatory manœuvres, had her brother given
her greater freedom of action. Instead of doing so he sent
to her aid, in A.D. 1587, the terrible =Duke of Alva=, with
a standing army of 10,000 Spaniards. The “Bloody Council”
instituted by him for stamping out the revolt now began its
horrible proceedings, sending thousands upon thousands to
the rack and the scaffold. The regent, protesting against
such acts, demanded her recall, and Alva was put in her place.
The bloody tribunal moved now from city to city; all the
leading throughfares were covered with victims hanging from
gibbets, and when Alva at last, in A.D. 1573, was at his own
request recalled, he could boast of having carried out in six
years 18,600 executions. Meanwhile the great =Prince of Orange,
William the Silent=, formerly royal governor of the Dutch
Provinces, but since A.D. 1568 a fugitive under the ban, had
now openly signified his adhesion to Protestantism, and in 1572
placed himself at the head of the revolt. After gaining several
victories by land and by sea, he succeeded, in the so called
_Pacification of Ghent_, of A.D. 1576, in uniting almost all
the provinces, Protestant and Catholic, under a resolution to
exercise toleration to one another and show resistance to the
common foe. The new governor, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma,
managed indeed to detach the southern Catholic provinces from
the league, but all the more closely did the seven northern
provinces bind themselves together in the Union of Utrecht of
A.D. 1579, promising to fight to the end for their religious
and political liberty. William’s truest friend, counsellor,
and director of his political actions, since the formation
of the league of A.D. 1566, was =Philip van Marnix=, Count
of St. Aldegonde. He had drawn up the articles of the league,
and was equally celebrated as a statesman and soldier, and as
theologian, satirist, orator, and poet. He was pre-eminently
an ardent patriot, and an enthusiastic adherent of Calvin’s
Reformation. He had been himself a pupil of the great Genevan.
Besides a spirited material version of the Psalter, his chief
satirico-theological work was “The Beehive of the Holy Roman
Church,” written in the Flemish dialect.--After William’s
assassination by the hand of a Catholic, in A.D. 1584, he
was succeeded by his son =Maurice=, who after long years of
bloody conflict succeeded, in A.D. 1609, in completely freeing
his country from the Spanish yoke.[391]
§ 139.13. =France.=--The Reformation in France had its beginning
from Wittenberg, but subsequently the Genevan reformers obtained
a dominating influence. Even in A.D. 1521, the Sorbonne issued
a _Determinatio super doctr. Luth._, pronouncing Luther’s
teaching and writings heretical, which Melanchthon in the
same year answered with unusual vigour in his _Apologia adv.
furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum decretum_. Everything
depended upon the attitude which the young king =Francis I.=,
A.D. 1515-1547, might assume in reference to the various
religious parties. His love of humanist studies, now flourishing
in France, whose zealous promoter and protector he was against
the attacks of the scholastic Sorbonne (§ 120, 8), as well as
the traditional policy of his family in ecclesiastical matters
since the time of St. Louis (§ 96, 21), seemed to favour the
hope that he would not prove altogether hostile to the ideas
of the Reformation. But even as early as A.D. 1516 he had,
in his concordat with the pope (§ 110, 14), surrendered the
acquisitions of the Basel Council by the revocation of the
Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., and in this way, by the
right given him to nominate all the bishops and abbots, he
obtained a power over all the clergy of his realm which was
too much in accordance with his dynastic ideas to allow of
his sacrificing it in favour of the Lutheran autonomy in the
management of the church, let alone the yet more radical demands
of the Calvinistic constitution. Even in his antagonism to the
emperor (§§ 126, 5, 6; 133, 7), which led him to befriend in
a very decided manner the German Protestants, his interests
crossed one another, inasmuch as he required to retain the
goodwill of the pope. Suppression of Protestantism in his own
land and the fostering of it in Germany were thus the aims of
his crooked policy. He did indeed for a time entertain the idea
of introducing a moderate Reformation into France after the
Erasmian model, in order to secure closer attachment to and
union with German Protestantism. He entered into negotiations
with Philip the Magnanimous, and had Melanchthon invited in
A.D. 1535 to attend a conference on these matters in France.
Melanchthon was not indisposed to go, but was interdicted
by his prince the elector, who feared lest he might make
too great concessions. And just about this time fanatically
violent pamphlets and placards were published, which were even
thrown into the royal apartments, and thus the anger of the king
was roused to the utmost pitch. The persecutions, which, from
A.D. 1524, had already brought many isolated witnesses to the
scaffold and the stake, now assumed a systematic and general
character. In A.D. 1535, an Inquisition tribunal was set up,
with members nominated by the pope, and as supplementary thereto
there was instituted in the Parliament of Paris the so-called
_chambre ardente_: the former drew up the process against
the heretics, the latter pronounced and executed the sentence.
Thousands of heroic confessors died under torture, on the
gallows, by sword, or by fire. Under =Henry II.=, A.D. 1547-1559,
who continued his father’s crooked policy, the _chambre ardente_
became more and more active, and the cruelty of the persecution
increased. Among the sworn foes of the Reformation, Diana
of Poitiers, an old love of his father’s, had for a time the
greatest influence over the king. He raised her to the rank
of duchess. With diabolic satisfaction she gloated upon the
spectacle of _autos-de-fé_ carried out at her request, and
enriched herself with the confiscated goods of the victims.
Side by side with her, inspired by a like hate of Protestantism,
stood the great marshal and all-powerful minister of state,
the Constable Montmorency. These two were further backed up
by all the influence of the powerful ducal family of the Guises,
a branch of a Lorraine house naturalized in France, consisting
of six brothers, at their head the two eldest, the Cardinal
Charles of Lorraine, Archbishop of Rheims, who died in A.D. 1574,
and Francis, the conqueror of Calais. The least influential in
the league at that time was the queen, Catharine de Medici.
§ 139.14. In spite of all persecutions, the Reformed church
made rapid progress, especially in the southern districts. Its
adherents came to be known by the name of =Huguenots=, meaning
originally Leaguers, Covenanters, on account of their connection
with Geneva. A popular etymology of the word derives it from the
nightly assemblies in a locality haunted by the spirit of King
Hugo. Calvin and Beza, as sons of France, assisted the young
church with counsel and help. But even within the bounds of
the kingdom it had very important political supporters. Certain
members of the house of Bourbon, a powerful branch of the royal
family, Anton, who married the brilliant heiress of Navarre,
Jeanne d’Albret, and his brother Louis de Condé, had attached
themselves to the Protestant cause. Also other distinguished
personages, _e.g._ the noble Admiral Gaspard de Coligny,
a nephew of Montmorency, and several prominent members of
Parliament, were enthusiastically devoted to Protestantism,
and, withdrawing from the frivolous and licentious court,
gave to the profession of the reformed faith a wide reputation
for strict morality and deep piety. The first general synod of
the reformed church was held in Paris from 25th to 28th May,
A.D. 1559. It adopted a Calvinistic symbol, the _Confessio
Gallicana_, and, as a directory for the constitution and
discipline of the church, forty articles, also inspired by
the spirit of Calvin.--Henry II. was followed in succession
by his three sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, all of whom
died without issue. Under =Francis II.=, A.D. 1559, 1560,
who ascended the throne in his sixteenth year, the two Guises,
the uncles of his queen Mary Stuart, held unlimited sway and
gave abundance of work to the _chambre ardente_. A conspiracy
directed against them in A.D. 1560 led to the execution of
1,200 persons implicated in it. Even the two Bourbons were
cast into prison, and the younger condemned to death. The king’s
early death, however, prevented the execution of the sentence.
The queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, now succeeded in breaking
off the yoke of the Guises and securing to herself the regency
during the minority of her son =Charles IX.=, A.D. 1560-1574.
But the attempts of the Guises to undermine her authority
obliged her to seek supporters meanwhile among the Protestants.
Coligny was able in A.D. 1560 to demand religious toleration
of the imperial Parliament, and succeeded at last so far that
in A.D. 1561 an edict was issued abolishing capital punishment
for heresy. In order to bring about wherever that was possible
an understanding between the two great religious parties, a
five weeks’ religious conference was held in September of that
same year in the Abbey of Poissy, near Paris, to which on the
evangelical side Beza from Geneva and Peter Martyr from Zürich,
besides many other theologians, were invited. On the Catholic
side, the Cardinal of Lorraine represented the doctrine of
his church, and subsequently also the general of the Jesuits,
Lainez. The proceedings, in which Beza’s learning, eloquence,
and praiseworthy courtesy toward his opponents had great weight,
were concentrated on the doctrines of the Church and the Lord’s
Supper, but yielded no result. In order that they might be able
to inflame the Lutherans and the Reformed against one another,
the Catholics endeavoured to bring forward supporters of the
Augsburg Confession into the discussions on those points. Five
German theologians were actually brought forward, among them
Jac. Andreä of Württemberg, but too late to take part in the
conference. On 17th January, A.D. 1562, the regent issued an
edict, by which the Protestants were allowed to hold religious
services outside of the towns, and also to have meetings of
synod under the supervision of royal commissioners.
§ 139.15. The rage of the Guises and their fanatical party
at this edict knew no bounds. Francis of Guise swore to cut
it up with his sword, and on 1st March, A.D. 1562, at Passy
in Champagne, he fell upon the Huguenots assembled there for
worship in a barn, and slew them almost to a man. At Cahors,
a Huguenot place of worship was surrounded by a Catholic mob
and set on fire. None of those gathered together there survived,
for those who escaped the flames were waylaid and murdered. At
Toulouse, the oppressed Protestants, with wives and children,
to the number of 4,000, had betaken themselves to the capitol.
They were promised a free outlet, and were then slaughtered,
because no one, it was said, should keep his word with a heretic
(§ 200, 3). Louis Condé summoned his fellow Protestants to take
up arms in their own defence against such atrocities, entrenched
himself in Orleans, and obtained, by the help of the Landgrave
Philip of Hesse, German auxiliaries. The Guises, on the other
hand, won over to their side the king and his mother. And now
the strict legitimist Coligny placed himself at the head of
the Huguenot movement. The battle of Dreux in Dec., A.D. 1562,
resulted unfavourably to the Protestants, but during the siege
of Orleans Francis of Guise was assassinated by a Huguenot
nobleman. The regent now, in the peace edict of Amboise,
of 19th Nov., A.D. 1563, allowed to the Protestants liberty
of worship except in certain districts and cities, of which
Paris was one. After securing emancipation from the yoke of the
Guises, however, she soon began openly to show her old hatred
of the Protestants. She joined in a league with Spain for the
extirpating of heresy, restricted in A.D. 1564 by the Edict of
Roussillon her previous concessions, and laid incessant plots in
order to effect the capture or murder of the two great leaders
of the Huguenot party. The threatening incursions of the Duke
of Alva upon the neighbouring provinces of the Netherlands, in
A.D. 1567, occasioned the outbreak of the second religious war.
The projected removal of the court to Monceaux fell through
indeed, in consequence of the hasty flight of the king to Paris,
but the overthrow of the royal army in the battle of St. Denys,
in Nov., A.D. 1567, in which Montmorency fell, as well as the
reinforcement of the Huguenot army by an auxiliary corps under
the leadership of John Casimir, the prince of the Palatinate,
led Catharine to conclude the Peace of Longjumeau, of March,
A.D. 1568, which guaranteed anew all previous concessions.
But when the persecution of the Huguenots was continued in
numberless executions, before the year was out they had again,
for the third time, to have recourse to arms. England supported
them with money and ammunition, and Protestant Germany gave
them 11,000 auxiliaries; while Spain helped their opponents.
Louis Condé fell by the hand of an assassin in A.D. 1569, but
the Huguenots had so evidently the best of it, that the king
and his mother found themselves obliged to grant them complete
liberty of conscience and of worship in the peace treaty of
St. Germain-en-Laye, on 8th of Aug., A.D. 1570, excepting in
Paris and in the immediate surroundings of the palace. As a
guarantee for the treaty, four strongholds in southern France
were surrendered to them. It was further stipulated, in order
to confirm for ever the good undertaking, that Henry of Navarre,
son of Jeanne d’Albret, should marry Margaret, the sister of
Charles IX.
§ 139.16. At the marriage, consummated on 18th of August,
A.D. 1572, subsequently known as the =Bloody Marriage=, the
chiefs of the Huguenot party were gathered together at Paris.
Jeanne d’Albret had died at the court, probably by poison, on
9th June, and Coligny had been fatally wounded by a shot on
22nd August. On the night of St. Bartholomew, between the 23rd
and 24th August, the castle bell tolled. This was the concerted
signal for the destruction of all the Huguenots present in Paris.
For four days the carnage was unweariedly carried on by the
city militia appointed for the purpose, the royal Swiss guards,
and crowds of fanatical artisans. Coligny fell praying amid the
blows of his murderers. No Huguenot was spared, neither children,
nor women, nor the aged. Their princely chiefs, Henry of Navarre
and Henry Condé, the son of Louis, were offered the choice
between death and taking part in the celebration of mass. They
decided for the latter. Meanwhile messengers had hasted into the
provinces with the death-warrants, and there the slaughter began
afresh. The whole number of victims is variously estimated at
from 10,000 to 100,000; in Paris alone there fell from 1,000
to 10,000.--The death decree was not indeed so much the result
of long planned and regularly conceived conspiracy, as a sudden
resolve suggested by political circumstances. The queen-mother
was at variance with her son with respect to his anti-Spanish
policy, which had always inclined him favourably to Coligny;
and so, in concert with her favourite son, Henry of Anjou, she
succeeded in dealing a deadly stroke at the great admiral by the
hand of an assassin. The king swore to take fearful vengeance on
the unknown perpetrators of this crime. Catharine now made every
effort to avert the threatened blow. She managed to convince the
king, by means of her fellow conspirators, that the Huguenots
regarded him as an accomplice in the perpetrating of the outrage,
and that so his life was in danger because of them. He now swore
by God’s death that not merely the chiefs, to whom Catharine
and her auxiliaries had directed special attention, but all the
Huguenots in France, should die, in order that not one should
remain to bring this charge against him. On the other hand,
it is all but certain that the thought of such a diabolical
deed had previously suggested itself, if indeed expression
had not been explicitly given to it. To the Spanish and Romish
courts, the French government represented the deed as an _acte
prémédité_, to the German court as an _acte non prémédité_. But
even before this a letter from Rome to the Emperor Maximilian II.
(§ 137, 8) had contained the following: “_At that hour_
(referring to the marriage festivities) _when all the birds
are in the cage, they can seize upon them altogether, and can
have any one that they desire_.” He was profoundly excited about
the villany of the transaction, while Philip II. of Spain on
hearing of it is said to have laughed for the first time in his
life. Pope Gregory XIII. indeed feared the worst consequences,
but soon changed his mind, and had Rome illuminated, all the
bells rung, the cannons fired, a _Te Deum_ performed, processions
made, and a medal struck, with the inscription, _Ugonottorum
strages_. He instructed the French ambassador to inform his king
that this performance was a hundred times more grateful to him
than fifty victories over the Turks.[392]
§ 139.17. The dreadful deed, however, completely failed in
accomplishing the end in view. Even after 100,000 had been
slaughtered there still remained more than ten times that
number of Huguenots, who, in possession of their strongholds,
occupied positions of great strategical importance. After
a brief breathing time of peace, therefore, they were able,
on five occasions, in A.D. 1573, 1576, 1577, 1580, to renew
the religious civil war, when once and again the truce had
been broken by the Catholics. Charles IX. was succeeded by
Catharine’s favourite son, =Henry III.=, A.D. 1574-1589, who,
joining the most shameless immorality to the narrowest bigotry
and asceticism (§ 149, 17), was no way behind his brother in
dissoluteness, and was still more conspicuous for dastardliness
and cowardice. Henry Condé had, just immediately after Charles’s
death, abjured again the Catholic confession, and put himself at
the head of the Huguenot revolt. Henry of Navarre rejoined his
old friends two years later, after having in the meantime vied
with his brother-in-law and his incestuous wife in frivolity
and immorality. He was able to take part successfully in the
fifth religious war, in which the Huguenots, supported once
more by the German auxiliaries under the Count-palatine John
Casimir, secured such advantages, that the court, in the Treaty
of Beaulieu, of A.D. 1576, were obliged to grant them complete
religious freedom and a larger number of strongholds. But now
Henry of Guise, in concert with his brothers Louis, cardinal and
Archbishop of Rheims, and Charles, Duke of Mayenne, formed the
Holy League, which he compelled the king to join, and renewed
the war with increased vigour. In the eighth war since A.D. 1584,
which on the part of the Guises was really as much directed
against the king’s Huguenot policy as against the Huguenots
themselves, Henry was obliged, by the Treaty of Nemours, of
A.D. 1585, to declare that the Protestants were deprived of
all rights and privileges. In the battle of Coutras, however,
in A.D. 1587, Henry of Navarre annihilated the opposing forces.
But as he failed to follow up the advantages then secured, the
Guises again recruited their strength to such a degree that they
were able openly to work for the dethronement of the king. Henry
could save himself only by the murder of both the elder Guises
at the Diet of Blois. There was now no alternative left him
but to cast himself into the arms of the Huguenots, and on this
account, at the siege of the capital, he was murdered by the
Dominican Clement. Henry of Navarre, as the only legitimate heir,
now ascended the throne as =Henry IV.=, A.D. 1589-1610. After a
hard struggle, lasting for four years, in which he was supported
by England and Germany, while his opponents, headed by the Duke
of Mayenne, were aided with money and men by Spain, Savoy, and
the pope, he at last decided, in A.D. 1593, to pass over to
Catholicism, because, as he said, “Paris is well worth a mass.”
He secured, however, for his former co-religionists, by the
=Edict of Nantes=, of 13th April, A.D. 1598, complete liberty
of holding religious services in all the cities where previously
there had been reformed congregations, as well as thorough
equality with the Catholics in all civil rights and privileges,
especially in regard to eligibility for all civil and military
offices. The fortresses and strongholds hitherto held by them
were to be left with them for eight years, and in the Parliament
a special “Chamber of the Edict” was instituted, with eight
Catholic and eight Protestant members. But, on the other hand,
they continued to be under the Catholic marriage laws, were
obliged to cease from work on the Catholic festivals, and to
pay tithes to the Catholic clergy. After a stubborn resistance
on the part of the Parliament of Paris, the university, and
the Sorbonne, as well as on that of the bishops, the king, in
February, A.D. 1599, secured the incorporation of the edict
among the laws of France. On 14th May, A.D. 1610, he was struck
down by the dagger of the Feuillant Ravaillac, a fanatical
Jesuit. Notwithstanding his many moral shortcomings, France
has rightly celebrated him as one of the greatest and best
of her kings. With wisdom, prudence, and humanity he wrought
unweariedly for the advancement of a commonwealth that had
been reduced to the lowest depths. He protected the Protestants
in the enjoyment of privileges guaranteed to them, and though
he did indeed put upon his old Huguenot friends some gentle
pressure to get them to follow his example, he yet honoured
those who steadfastly refused. His minister Sully, although
it is supposed that he had felt obliged to advise the king
to go over to Catholicism, stood himself unhesitatingly true
to his profession of the Huguenot faith, while he retained
the king’s confidence, and proved his most faithful adviser
and administrator during all the negotiations of peace and war.
Philip du Plessis Mornay, on the other hand, distinguished even
more as a statesman, diplomatist, and field marshal than as
a theologian and author,[393] but above all as a Christian and
a man in the noblest sense of the word, who, in the belief that
evangelical truth would, even in the Catholic church, assert
its conquering power, had agreed with the Catholic League to
instruct the king in the Catholic faith, and had thus made
the act of apostasy appear to him less offensive. But just
because the mere presence of a friend of high moral character
and true religious principles acted as too sharp a sting to
the king’s conscience, he had to submit to be relegated to an
honorary post as governor of Saumur, where he became founder
of the famous academy which Louis XIV. suppressed in A.D. 1685.
Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, too, distinguished as a brave
warrior in the army of the Huguenots, as well as a historian,
poet, and satirist, stood high in favour with the king, though
Henry, often roused by his unbending pride, repeatedly expelled
him from the court. After Henry’s death D’Aubigné returned to
Geneva, where he died in A.D. 1630.[394]
§ 139.18. =Poland.=--The Reformation had been introduced
into Poland first of all by the exiled Bohemian Brethren,
and Luther’s writings soon after their appearance were eagerly
read in that region. =Sigismund I.=, A.D. 1506-1548, opposed it
with all his might. It met with most success in Prussian Poland.
Dantzig, in A.D. 1525, drove out the Catholic council. Sigismund
went down there himself, had several citizens executed, and
restored the old mode of worship in A.D. 1526. But scarcely had
he left the town when it again went back to the profession of
the Lutheran faith. Elbing and Thorn followed its example. In
Poland proper also the new doctrines made way. In spite of all
prohibitions many young Poles flocked to Wittenberg, and brought
away from it to their native country a glowing enthusiasm for
Luther and his teaching. The Swiss Confession had already found
entrance there, and the persecutions which Ferdinand of Austria
carried on after the Schmalcald war in Bohemia and Moravia
led great numbers of Bohemian Brethren to cross over into the
Polish territories. =Sigismund Augustus=, A.D. 1548-1572, was
personally favourable to the Reformation. He studied Calvin’s
“Institutes,” received letters from him and from Melanchthon,
and, in accordance with the decisions of a national assembly
at Petrican in A.D. 1555 demanded of the pope a national council,
as well as permission for the marriage of priests, the communion
in both kinds, the celebration of mass in the vernacular, and
abolition of annats. The pope naturally refused to yield, but
in A.D. 1556 sent into the country a legate of a despotic and
violent temper, called Aloysius Lippomanus, who was replaced
in A.D. 1563 by the bland and eloquent Commendone. Both were
powerfully supported in their struggle against heresy by the
fanatically Catholic cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of
Ermeland. The Protestant nobility then recalled, in A.D. 1556,
their celebrated countryman =John à Lasco=, who twenty years
before had, on account of his evangelical faith, resigned his
office as provost of Gnesen and left his fatherland. He had
meanwhile taken part in the Reformation of East Friesland, and
had acted for several years as preacher at Emden. After that,
he had gone, at the call of Cranmer, in A.D. 1550, to England;
upon the death of Edward VI., along with a part of his London
flock of foreign exiles, had sought refuge in Denmark, which,
however, was refused on account of his attachment to Zwingli’s
doctrine; and at last settled down at Frankfort-on-the-Maine as
pastor to a congregation of French, English, and Dutch exiles.
After his return home he endeavoured to bring about a union of
the Lutherans and Reformed, in concert with several friends made
a translation of the Bible, and died in A.D. 1560. At a =general
synod at Sendomir=, in A.D. 1570, a union was at last effected
between the three dissentient parties, by which the Lutheran
doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was acknowledged, yet in so
indefinite a form that Calvin’s view might also be entertained.
The Lutheran opposition at the synod had been suppressed by
urgent entreaty, but afterwards broke out again in a still more
violent form. At the Synod of Thorn, in A.D. 1595, the Lutheran
pastor Paul Gericke was the leader of it; but one of the nobles
present held a dagger to his heart, and the synod suspended him
from his office as a disturber of the peace. Sigismund Augustus
had meanwhile died, in A.D. 1572. During the interregnum that
followed, the Protestant nobles formed a confederation, which
before the election of a new king succeeded in obtaining
a comprehensive religious peace, the =Pax dissidentium of
A.D. 1573=, by means of which Catholics and Protestants were
for all time to live together in peace and enjoy equal civil
rights. The newly elected king, =Henry of Anjou=, sought to
avoid binding himself by oath to the observance of this peace,
but the imperial marshal addressed him in firm and decided
language, _Si non jurabis, non regnabis_. In the following
year, however, the new king left Poland in order to mount the
French throne as Henry III. =Stephen Bathori=, A.D. 1576-1586,
swore without hesitation to observe the peace, and kept
his oath. Under his successor, Sigismund III., a Swedish
prince, A.D. 1587-1632, the Protestants had to complain of
the infringement of many of their rights, which from this time
down to the overthrow of the Polish kingdom, in A.D. 1772, they
never again enjoyed.[395]--Continuation, § 164, 4.
§ 139.19. =Bohemia and Moravia.=--The numerous Bohemian and
Moravian Brethren (§ 119, 8), at whose head was the elder Luke
of Prague, greeted the appearance of Luther with the most hopeful
joy. By messages and writings, however, which in A.D. 1522-1524
were interchanged between them, some important diversities of
view were discovered. Luke disliked Luther’s realistic theory
of the Lord’s Supper, continued to hold by the seven sacraments,
rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took
special offence at Luther’s view of Christian freedom, which
seemed to him to want the necessary rigour of the apostolic
discipline of the life and to under-estimate the importance
and worth of celibacy and virginity. Luther, on the other hand,
charged them with a want of grasp of the doctrine and a Novatian
over-estimation of mere outward exercises and discipline. And so
these negotiations ended in mutual recrimination, and only after
Luke’s death, in A.D. 1528, and the glorious Diet of Augsburg,
in A.D. 1530, were they reopened. The Lutheranizing tendency,
for which especially the two elders John Roh and John Augusta
laboured, now gained the upper hand for two decades. In
A.D. 1532 the Brethren presented to the Margrave George of
Brandenburg an apology of the doctrine and customs, which was
printed at Wittenberg, and had a preface by Luther, in which he
expressed himself in very favourable terms about the doctrine
of the “Picards,” and only objected to their spiritualizing
tendency, of which their doctrine of the supper and of baptism
was not altogether free, inasmuch as they, while practising
infant baptism, required that each one should on reaching
maturity take the vows upon himself and have baptism repeated.
Still more favourably did he speak of their confession presented
in A.D. 1535 to King Ferdinand, in which they had left out
the rebaptizing, substituting for it the solemn imposition of
hands as confirmation. When the Brethren at Luther’s request
had modified the two articles at which he took offence,
their unsatisfactory theory of justification, and that of
the wholesomeness, though not necessity, of clerical celibacy,
he declared himself thoroughly satisfied, and at their last
personal conference, in A.D. 1542, he stretched his hand
over the table to Augusta and his companions as the pledge
of indissoluble brotherly fellowship, although not agreed in
regard to various matters of constitution and discipline. The
refusal of the Brethren to fight against their German fellow
Protestants in the Schmalcald war led to their king Ferdinand
upon its close issuing some penal statutes against them. Driven
away into exile in A.D. 1548, many of them went to Poland, the
larger number to Prussia, from whence they returned to their
native land in A.D. 1574. Meantime matters had there in many
respects taken an altogether new turn. In the later years of his
reign Ferdinand had become more favourable to the evangelical
movement in his hereditary dominions, and Maximilian II.,
A.D. 1564-1576, gave it an absolutely free course (§ 137, 8).
Thus the Brethren could not only go on from day to day
increasing in numbers and in influence, but alongside of them
there grew up a genuine Lutheran community and an independent
Calvinist body. The Crypto-calvinism which was also at the
same time gaining the victory in Saxony (§ 141, 10) cast its
shadow upon the Lutheranizing movement among the Brethren. And
this movement told all the more against the Lutheran party there
from the circumstance that at an earlier period there had been
powerful influences at work, inspired by a national Bohemian
spirit, to resist German interference in matters of religion.
Since the death of the elder Luke the national party had
succeeded more and more in working back to the genuine Bohemian
constitution, discipline, and confession of their fathers. At
the head of this movement stood John Blahoslaw, from A.D. 1553
deacon of Jungbunzlau, after Luke of Prague and before
Amos Comenius (§ 167, 2) the most important champion of the
Bohemian-Moravian Confession. To him chiefly are the Brethren
indebted for the high development of literary and scientific
activity which they manifested during the second half of
the century, and his numerous writings, but pre-eminently
his translation of the N.T., proved almost as influential and
epoch-making for the Bohemian language as Luther’s translation
of the Bible did for the written language of Germany. Himself
one of the ablest among the very numerous writers of spiritual
songs in Bohemian, he was the restorer of the simple and
majestic Bohemian chorales. As he had himself, in A.D. 1568,
translated the N.T. from the original Greek text, he also
undertook, with the help of several younger men of noble
gifts, a similar translation of the O.T. and a commentary on
the whole Bible. But he died in A.D. 1571, in his forty-eighth
year, before the issue of his great work, upon the inception
of which he had expended so much thought and care. This great
undertaking was completed and published in six volumes between
A.D. 1579-1593. The strong spiritual affinity between the
society of the Brethren and the Calvinistic church, especially
in its doctrine of the supper and in its zeal for rigid church
discipline, was meanwhile again brought into prominence, and
had led to a more and more decided loosening of attachment
to the Lutheran church, and, in spite of the antagonism of
its episcopalianism to the Calvinistic presbyterianism, to the
formation of closer ties with Calvinism. But now, on the other
hand, the common danger that threatened them from Rudolph II.,
who had been king of Bohemia from A.D. 1575, at the instigation
of Jesuits through the Spanish court, led all non-Catholics,
of whatever special confession, to draw as closely together as
possible. Thus a league came to be formed in the same year in
which the Brethren were far outnumbered by Lutherans, Reformed,
and Calixtines (§ 119, 7), by means of which, in the _Confessio
Bohemica_ of A.D. 1575, a common symbol was drawn up, and all
the four parties were placed under the management of a common
consistory. But when, after Maximilian’s death, Rudolph II.
proceeded more and more rigorously in his efforts to completely
suppress all heresy, the Bohemians rose with one heart, and
at last, in A.D. 1609, extorted from him the rescript which
gave them absolute religious liberty according to the Bohemian
Confession, a common consistory of their own, and an academy
at Prague. Bohemia was now an almost completely evangelical
country, and scarcely a tenth part of its inhabitants
professed attachment to the Catholic faith.[396]--Continuation,
§§ 153, 2; 167, 2.
§ 139.20. =Hungary and Transylvania.=--From A.D. 1524, Martin
Cyriaci, a student of Wittenberg, wrought in =Hungary= for
the spread of the true doctrine. King Louis II. threatened its
adherents with all possible penalties. But in A.D. 1526 he fell
in battle against the Turks at Mohacz. The election of a new
king resulted in two claimants taking possession of the field;
Ferdinand of Austria secured a footing in the western, and
the Woiwode John Zapolya in the eastern provinces. Both sought
to suppress the Reformation, in order to win over the clergy
to support them. But it nevertheless gained the ascendency,
favoured by the political confusions of the time. =Matthias
Devay=, a scholar of Luther, and for a time a resident in
his house, from A.D. 1521 preached the gospel at Ofen, having
been called thither by several of the leading inhabitants on
Melanchthon’s recommendation, and in A.D. 1533 had a Hungarian
translation of the Pauline epistles printed at Cracow. In
A.D. 1541 Erdösy issued the complete New Testament, which was
also the first book printed in Hungary. At a synod at Erdöd, in
A.D. 1545, twenty-nine ministers drew up a confession of faith
in twelve articles, in agreement with the Augsburg Confession.
But also the Swiss doctrine had now found entrance, and won
more and more adherents from day to day. These adopted at a
council at Czengar, in A.D. 1557, a Calvinistic confession,
with decided repudiation of the Zwinglian as well as the
Lutheran theory of the Lord’s Supper, describing the latter
as an _insania sarcophagica_. The government of Maximilian II.
did not interfere with the progress of the Reformation; but when
Rudolph II. attempted to interfere with violent measures, the
Protestants rose in revolt under Stephen Bocskai, and compelled
the king to grant them complete religious liberty by the Vienna
Peace of A.D. 1606. Among the native Hungarians the Reformed
confession prevailed, but the German residents remained true
to Lutheranism. (Continuation § 153, 3.)--As early as A.D. 1521
merchants had brought into =Transylvania= from Hermanstadt
copies of Luther’s writings. King Louis II. of Hungary, however,
carried his persecution of the evangelicals even into this
territory, which was continued after his death by Zapolya.
In A.D. 1529, however, Hermanstadt ventured to expel all
adherents of the Romish church from within its walls. In
Cronstadt, the work of the Reformation was carried on from
A.D. 1533 by =Jac. Honter=, who had studied at Basel. Since
Zapolya through an agreement with Ferdinand, in A.D. 1538,
was assured of possession for his lifetime of Transylvania,
he acted more mildly toward the Protestants. After his death
the monk Martinuzzi, as Bishop of Grosswardein, assumed the helm
of affairs for Zapolya’s son during his minority, oppressing the
Protestants with bloody persecutions, while Isabella, Zapolya’s
widow, was favourable to them. Martinuzzi therefore handed over
the country to Ferdinand, but was assassinated in A.D. 1551.
After some years Isabella returned with her son, and a =national
assembly at Clausenburg=, in A.D. 1557, gave an organization
to the country as an independent principality, and proclaimed
universal religious liberty. The Saxon population continued
attached to the Lutheran confession, and the Czecks and Magyars
preferred to adopt the Reformed.[397]
§ 139.21. =Spain.=--The connection brought about between Spain
and Germany through the election of =Charles V.= as emperor led
to the very early introduction into the Peninsula of Luther’s
doctrine and writings. Indeed many of the theologians and
statesmen who went in Charles’ train into Germany returned
with evangelical convictions in their hearts, as, _e.g._, the
Benedictine Alphonso de Virves, the fiery Ponce de la Fuente,
both court chaplains of the emperor, and his private secretary
Alphonso Valdez. A layman, Roderigo de Valer, by earnest study
of the Bible attained unto a knowledge of the gospel, and became
the instrument of leading many others into the way of salvation.
The Inquisition confiscated his goods and condemned him to
wear the _san benito_ (§ 117, 2). Juan Gil, a friend of Valer,
Bishop of Tortosa, founded a society for the study of the
Bible. The Inquisition deposed him, and only Charles’ favour
protected him from the stake; but subsequently his bones were
dug up and burnt. Many other prelates also, such as Carranza
of Toledo, Guerrero of Granada, Guesta of Leon, Carrubias of
Ciudad Roderigo, Agostino of Lerida, Ayala of Segovia, etc.,
admitted the necessity for a thoroughgoing revision of doctrine,
without detaching themselves from the pope and the Romish church;
and in this direction they laboured with zeal and success amid
the threatenings of the Inquisition. The first Protestant martyr
in Spain was Francisco san Romano, a merchant who had become
acquainted with Luther’s doctrine at Antwerp. He was led to the
stake at Valladolid, in A.D. 1544. Francis Enzina, in A.D. 1543,
translated the New Testament. He was cast into prison, and the
book prohibited. A complete Spanish Bible was printed by Cassiod.
de Reyna at Basel, in A.D. 1569. In Seville and Valladolid first
of all, and at a later period also in many other Spanish cities,
evangelical congregations held secret services. Even so soon as
about A.D. 1550, the Reformation movement threatened to become
so general and widespread, that a Spanish historian of that age,
Ilesca, in his history of the popes, expresses the conviction
that all Spain would have become overrun with heresy if the
Inquisition had delayed for three months longer to put an
end to the pestilence. But it now applied that remedy in the
largest and strongest doses possible. The measures of the
Inquisition were specially prompt and vigorous during the
reign of =Philip II.=, A.D. 1555-1598. Scarcely a year passed
in which there were not at each of the twelve Inquisition courts
one or more great _autos-de-fé_, in which crowds of heretics
were burnt. And the remedy was effectual. After two decades
the evangelical movement was stamped out. How determinedly the
crusade was carried out is shown by the proceedings in the case
of the Archbishop of Toledo, Barthol. Carranza. This prelate had
published a “Commentary on the Catechism,” in which he expressed
a wish to see “the ancient spirit of our forefathers and of
the early church revived in its simplicity and purity.” The
grand-inquisitor discerned therein Lutheran heresy, and though
he bore one of the highest positions in the Spanish church,
Carranza was kept close prisoner for eight years in the dungeons
of the Inquisition, and after he had at last reached the pope
with his appeal, he was kept for nine years in the castle of
St. Angelo at Rome. There at last, upon his abjuring sixteen
heretical propositions, especially about justification, saint
and image worship, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment
in the Dominican cloister at Orvieto, but died some weeks after,
in A.D. 1576, in his seventy-third year. At the Quemadero,
the scene of the _autos-de-fé_ of the Madrid Inquisition court,
there were till quite recently discernible the traces of the
human hecatombs that had there been offered up to the insatiable
Moloch of religious fanaticism. The official newspaper of the
capital of the 12th April, A.D. 1869, reports how on the removal
of the soil for the purpose of lengthening a street, the grim
geological archives of the burnings of the Inquisition were laid
bare, while with horrifying minuteness it proceeds to describe
the maximum reached, and the gradual diminution of these papal
atrocities.[398]
§ 139.22. =Italy.=--The Reformation made progress in Italy
in various directions. A large number of the humanists
(§ 120, 1) had in a self-sufficient paganism lost all interest
in Christianity, and were just as indifferent toward the
Reformation as toward the old church; but another section were
inclined to favour a reformation after the style of Erasmus.
Both remained in outward connection with the old church. But
besides these there were many learned men of a more decided
tendency, some of them attempting reforms at their own hand,
and so not infrequently rejecting fundamental doctrines of
Christianity, such as the various Anti-trinitarians of that age
(§ 148), some who attached themselves to the German, but more
frequently to the Swiss reformers. Both brought the reforming
ideas before the people by preaching and writing. Almost all the
works of the German and Swiss reformers were immediately after
their publication circulated in Italy in translations, and under
the shield of anonymity scattered broadcast through the land,
before the Inquisition laid hold upon them. Among the princely
supporters of the Reformation movement, the most prominent was
Renata of Este, Duchess of Ferrara, and sister-in-law of the
French king Francis, distinguished as much for piety as for
culture and learning. Her court was a place of refuge and a
rallying point for French and Italian exiles. Calvin stayed
some weeks with her in A.D. 1536, and confirmed her in her
evangelical faith by personal conversation, and subsequently
by epistolary correspondence. Her husband, Hercules of Ferrara,
whom she married in A.D. 1534, at first let her do as she liked,
but in A.D. 1536 expelled Calvin from his dominions, and had his
wife confined, in A.D. 1554, as an obstinate Lutheran heretic,
in the old castle of Este. Still she was allowed to return
to her husband after she had brought herself to confess to a
Romish priest. But when after his death, in A.D. 1560, Alphonso,
her son, put before her the alternative of either recanting
her faith or leaving the country, she returned to France, and
there openly made profession of her faith and attached herself
to the Huguenots. Francis of Guise was her son-in-law, and she
was subjected on account of her Protestantism to the incessant
persecutions of the Guises. She died in A.D. 1575.--We have
seen already, in § 135, 3, that the idea had been mooted of
a propaganda of Catholic Christians in Italy. With a strong
and lively conviction of the importance of the doctrine of
justification by faith they made it the central point of
religious life and knowledge, and thus, without directly
opposing it, they inspired new life into the Catholic church.
The first germ of this movement appeared in the so-called
_Oratory of Divine Love_, an association formed in the beginning
of A.D. 1520 at Rome, after the apostolic model, for mutual
religious edification, consisting of fifty or sixty young, eager
men, mostly of the clerical order. One of the original founders
was Jac. Sadolet, who in this spirit expounded the Epistle
to the Romans. To it also belonged such men as the founder
of the Theatine order (§ 149, 7), Cajetan of Thiene, and John
Pet. Caraffa, Bishop of Chieta, and afterwards Pope Paul IV.,
who sought the church’s salvation rather in the practice of
a rigorous inquisitorial discipline. The sack of Rome (§ 132, 2)
broke up this association in A.D. 1527, but spread its efforts
over all Italy. The fugitive English cardinal, Reginald Pole,
attached himself in Venice to the party of Sadolet. In Ferrara
there was Italy’s most famous poetess, Vittoria Colonna; at
Modena the Bishop Morone, who, although as papal legate in
Germany, a zealous defender of the papal claims (§§ 135, 2;
137, 5), yet in his own diocese even subsequently aided the
evangelical tendencies of his companions with much ardour, and
hence under Paul IV. was cast into the Inquisition, to come out
only under Pius V., after undergoing a three years’ imprisonment.
In Naples there was Juan Valdez, Alphonso’s brother, secretary
of the Spanish viceroy of Naples, and author of the “One Hundred
and Ten Divine Considerations,” as well as a book of Christian
doctrine for the young in the Spanish language. In Siena there
was Aonio Paleario, professor of classical literature, famous as
poet and orator. In Rome there was the papal notary Carnesecchi,
formerly the personal friend of Clement VII. In other places
there were many more. The most conspicuous representative of
the party was the Venetian Gasparo Contarini (§ 135, 3), who
died in A.D. 1542.
§ 139.23. The tendency of the thought of these men is most
clearly and fully set forth in the little work, “The Benefit
of Christ’s Death.” At Venice, where it first appeared in
A.D. 1542, within six years 60,000 copies of this tract were
issued, and afterwards innumerable reprints and translations of
it were circulated. Since Aonio Paleario had written, according
to his own statement, a tract of a similar character, he came
to be generally regarded as its author, until Ranke discovered
a notice among the acts of the Inquisition, according to which
the heretical jewel was to be assigned to a monk of San Severino
in Naples, a disciple of Juan Valdez, and afterwards Benrath
succeeded in proving his name to be Don Benedetto of Mantŏva.
The conciliatory spirit of these friends of moderate reform
gave grounds for large expectation, all the more that Paul III.
seemed all through his life to favour the movement. He nominated
Contarini, Sadolet, Pole, and Caraffa cardinals, instituted
in A.D. 1536 a _congregatio præparatoria_, and made Contarini
the representative of the curia at the religious Conference of
Regensburg in A.D. 1541 (§ 135, 3), which sought to bring about
the conciliation of the German Protestants. But just about this
time, probably not without the co-operation of the Jesuit order
founded in A.D. 1540, a split occurred which utterly blasted all
these grand expectations. The zeal of Caraffa set himself at the
head of the opposition, and Paul III., in accordance with his
proposal in his bull _Licet ab initio_ of A.D. 1542, reorganized
the defunct Roman Inquisition after the Spanish model as the
central institution for the uprooting of the Protestant heresy.
This “Holy Office” henceforth pursued its violent career under
the pontificate of Caraffa himself, who mounted the papal
throne in A.D. 1555 as Paul IV. Subsequently, too, under the
obstinate, fanatical, and hence canonized monkish pope Pius V.,
from A.D. 1566 every suspicion of Protestantism was rigorously
and mercilessly punished with imprisonment, torture, the
galleys, the scaffold, and the stake. So energetically was the
persecution carried out against the adherents and the patrons
of the Reformation, that by the end of the century no trace of
its presence was any longer to be found within the bounds of
Italy. One of the last victims of this persecution was Aonio
Paleario. After he had been for three years in the prisons of
the Inquisition, he was strangled and then burnt. A similar
fate had previously befallen Carnesecchi. How thoroughgoing
and successful the Holy Office was in the suppression of
books suspected of a heretical taint appears from the war of
extermination carried on against that _liber perniciosissimus_,
“On the Benefit of Christ’s Death.” In spite of the hundred
thousand copies of the book that had been in circulation, the
Inquisition so carefully and consistently pursued its task
of extirpation, that thirty years after its appearance it was
no longer to be found in the original and after a hundred no
translation even was supposed to exist. In Rome alone a pile
of copies were burnt which reached to the height of a house. In
A.D. 1853 a copy of the original was found in Cambridge, and was
published in London, 1855, with an English translation made by
the Duke of Devonshire in A.D. 1548.[399]
§ 139.24. Among the Italian reformers who shook themselves
entirely free from the papacy, and only by flight into foreign
lands escaped prison, torture, and the stake, the following are
the most important.
1. =Bernardino Ochino=, from A.D. 1538 general of the
Capuchins, became by his glowing eloquence one of the
most popular of Italian preachers. The study of the Bible
had led him to accept the doctrine of justification when,
in A.D. 1536, he was called to Naples as Lenten preacher.
He was there brought into close contact with Juan Valdez,
who confirmed him in his evangelical tendencies, and made
him acquainted with the writings of the German reformers.
In order to escape arrest and the Inquisition, he fled
in A.D. 1542 to Geneva, and wrought successively at Basel,
Augsburg, Strassburg, and London. After the death of
Edward VI. he was obliged to make his escape from England,
went as preacher to Zürich, adopted Socinian views,
and even justified polygamy. He was consequently deposed
from his office, fled to Poland, and died in Moravia in
A.D. 1565.[400]
2. =Peter Martyr Vermilius=, an Augustinian monk and popular
preacher. The study of the writings of Erasmus, Zwingli,
and Bucer led him to quit the Catholic church. He fled to
Zürich, became professor in Strassburg, and on Cranmer’s
invitation came to England, where he was made professor
in Oxford. When Mary came to the throne, he returned to
Strassburg, and died as professor at Zürich in A.D. 1562.
3. =Peter Paul Vergerius= in A.D. 1530 accompanied Campegius
to the Diet of Augsburg as papal legate (§ 132, 6); was
sent again, in A.D. 1535, to Germany by Paul III., in
order to get the German princes to agree to the holding
of the council at Mantua (§ 134, 1), and on this point he
conferred personally but unsuccessfully with Luther. On
his return home, in A.D. 1536 the pope conferred upon him,
in recognition of his faithful service, the bishopric of
his native city, Capo d’Istria. In A.D. 1540 we find him
again present during the religious conference at Worms
(§ 135, 2), where his conciliatory efforts called down on
him the displeasure of the pope and the suspicion of his
enemies as a secret adherent of Luther. In order to clear
himself of suspicion he studied Luther’s writings with the
intention of controverting them, but had his heart opened
to gospel truths, and was obliged to betake himself to
flight. At Padua the dreadful end of the jurist Speira,
who had abjured his evangelical convictions, and feeling
that he had committed the unpardonable sin died amid the
most fearful agonies of conscience, made an indelible
impression upon him. He now, in A.D. 1548, formally joined
the evangelical church, wrought for a long time in the
country of the Grisons, not as a member of the Reformed but
of the Lutheran church, and died as professor at Tübingen
in A.D. 1565.
4. The Piedmontese =Cœlius Secundus Curio= was the youngest
of a family of twenty-three, and was early left an orphan.
He studied at Turin, where an Augustinian monk, Jerome
Niger, made him acquainted with the writings of Luther and
others. Unweariedly devoted to spreading the gospel in the
various cities of Italy, he was repeatedly subjected by
the persecution of the Inquisition to severe imprisonment,
but always managed to escape in almost a miraculous way.
At last he found, in A.D. 1542, on the recommendation of
the Duchess Renata, an asylum in Switzerland, first of all
in Bern; then he taught in Lausanne for four years, and
in Basel for twenty-two. He died at Basel in A.D. 1569.
His latitudinarian theology gave no offence among the
liberal-minded folk of Basel, but he was looked upon
with much displeasure by the theologians of Geneva, whose
prosecutions of heretics he had condemned; and even from
Tübingen, Vergerius, who had been his intimate friend,
brought the charge of Pelagianism against him.
5. =Galeazzo Carraccioli=, Marquis of Vico, on his mother’s
side a nephew of Paul IV., was led by intercourse with
Juan Valdez and the preaching of Peter Martyr to abandon
the gay, worldly life of the Neapolitan court for one of
religious earnestness and devotion, and by means of a visit
to Germany in company with the emperor he was confirmed in
his evangelical convictions. In order to be able to live
in the undisturbed profession of his faith, he fled, in
A.D. 1551, to Geneva. Neither the tears nor the curses of
his aged father, who had hurried after him to that place,
nor the promise of indulgence from his papal uncle, nor
the complaining, the tears, and despair of his tenderly
loved wife and children, whom at great risk he had visited
at Vico in A.D. 1558, were able to shake the steadfastness
of his faith. But equally in vain were his incessant
entreaties and tears to induce his wife and children to
come and join him on some neutral territory, where he might
be allowed to follow the evangelical and they the Catholic
confession. On the ground of this obstinate and persistent
refusal, the Genevan consistory, with Calvin at its head,
at last granted him the divorce that he claimed, and in
A.D. 1560 Carraccioli entered into a second marriage. Down
to his death, in A.D. 1586, by his active and industrious
life he afforded a pattern, and by his successful labours
he proved a powerful support to the Italian congregation
in Geneva, whose pastor, Balbani, raised to him a well
deserved memorial in the history of his life, which he
published in Geneva in A.D. 1587.
6. To the sketch of these noble reformers we may now add the
name of a woman who is well deserving of a place alongside
of them for her singular classical culture, her rich poetic
endowment, and her noble and beautiful life. Fulvia Olympia
Morata, of Ferrara, in her sixteenth year began to deliver
public lectures in her native city, where she enjoyed the
friendship and favour of the Duchess Renata. She married
a German physician, Andrew Grunthler, went with him to
his home at Schweinfurt, and there attached herself to
the Protestant church. When that city was plundered by
the Margrave Albert in A.D. 1553 (§ 137, 4), they lost all
their property. She died in A.D. 1555 at Heidelberg, where
Grunthler had been appointed professor of medicine.[401]
§ 139.25. =The Protestantizing of the Waldensians=
(§ 108, 10).--The news of the Reformation caused great
excitement among the Waldensians. Even as early as A.D. 1520
the Piedmontese _barba_, or minister, Martin of Lucerne,
undertook a journey to Germany, and brought back with him
several works of the reformers. In A.D. 1530 the French
Waldensians sent two delegates, George Morel and Peter Masson,
who conferred verbally and in writing with Œcolampadius at
Basel, and with Bucer and Capito at Strassburg. The result
was, that in A.D. 1532 a synod was held in the Piedmontese
village of Chauvoran, in the valley of Angrogna, at which
the two Genevan theologians Farel and Saunier were present. A
number of narrow-minded prejudices that prevailed among the old
Waldensians were now abandoned, such as the prohibition against
taking oaths, the holding of magisterial offices, the taking of
interest, etc.; and several Catholic notions to which they had
formerly adhered, such as auricular confession, the reckoning
of the sacraments as seven, the injunction of fasts, compulsory
celibacy, the doctrine of merits, etc., were abandoned as
unevangelical, while the Reformed doctrine of predestination
was adopted. On this foundation the complete Protestantizing
of the whole Waldensian community now made rapid progress, but
called down upon them from every side bloody persecutions. In
Provence and Dauphiné there were, in A.D. 1545, four thousand
murdered, and twenty-two districts devastated with fire. Their
remnants got mixed up with the French Reformed. When the
Waldensian colonies in Calabria were told of the Protestantizing
of their Piedmontese brethren, they sent, in A.D. 1559,
a delegate to seek a pastor for them from Geneva. Ludovico
Pascale, by birth a Piedmontese Catholic, who had studied
theology at Geneva, was selected for this mission; but soon
after his arrival he was thrown into prison at Naples, and
from thence carried off to Rome, where in A.D. 1560 he went
with all the martyr’s joy and faith to the stake erected for
him by the Inquisition. In the trials of this man Rome for
the first time came to understand the significance and the
attitude of the Calabrian colonies, and now the grand-inquisitor,
Alexandrini, with some Dominicans, was sent for their conversion
or extermination. The flourishing churches were in A.D. 1561
completely rooted out, amid scenes of almost incredible
atrocity. The men who escaped the stake were made to toil
in the Spanish galleys, while their wives and children were
sold as slaves. In Piedmont, the duke, after vain military
expeditions for their conversion, which the Waldensians, driven
to arms had successfully withstood, was obliged to allow them,
in the Peace of Cavour of A.D. 1561, a restricted measure of
religious liberty. But when the violent attempts to secure
conversions did not cease, they bound themselves together, in
A.D. 1571, in the so-called “Union of the Valleys,” by which
they undertook to defend one another in the exercise of their
evangelical worship.--Continuation, § 153, 5.
§ 139.26. =Attempt at Protestantizing the Eastern Church.=--The
opposition to the Roman papacy, which was common to them and the
eastern church, led the Protestants of the West to long for and
strive after a union with those who were thus far agreed with
them. A young Cretan, =Jacob Basilicus=, whom Heraclides, prince
of Samos and Paros, had adopted, on his travels through Germany,
Denmark, and Sweden had come into friendly relations with
Melanchthon and others of the reformed party, and attempted,
after he entered upon the government of his two islands in
A.D. 1561, to introduce a reformation of the local church
according to evangelical principles. But he was murdered in
A.D. 1563, and with him every trace of his movement passed
away.--In A.D. 1559 a deacon from Constantinople, =Demetrius
Mysos=, spent some months with Melanchthon at Wittenburg
[Wittenberg], and took with him a Greek translation of the
Augsburg Confession, of which, however, no result ever came.
At a later period, in A.D. 1573, the Tübingen theologians,
Andreä, Luc. Osiander, and others, reopened negotiations with
the patriarch Jeremiah II. (§ 73, 4), through a Lutheran pastor,
Stephen Gerbach, who went to Constantinople in the suite of
a zealous Protestant nobleman, David of Ungnad, ambassador
of Maximilian II. The Tübingen divines sent with him a Greek
translation of the Augsburg Confession, composed by Mart.
Crusius, with a request for his judgment upon it. The patriarch,
in his reply in A.D. 1576, expressed himself candidly in regard
to the errors of the book. The doctors of Tübingen wrote in
vindication of their formula, and in a second answer, in
A.D. 1579, the patriarch reiterated the objections stated in
the first. After a third interchange of letters he declined all
further discussion, and allowed a fourth epistle, in A.D. 1581,
to remain unanswered.--Continuation, § 152, 2.
II. The Churches of the Reformation.
§ 140. THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF THE
LUTHERAN CHURCH.[402]
In the Lutheran Church, that specifically German type of Christianity
which from the days of Charlemagne was ever panting after independent
expression reached its maturity and full development. The sacred
treasure of true catholicity, which the church of early times had
nurtured in the form of Greek-Roman culture, is taken over freed from
excrescences, and enriched by those acquisitions of the Middle Ages
that had stood the proof. Its vocation was to set forth the “happy
mean” between the antagonistic ecclesiastical movements and struggles
of the West, and to give its strength mainly to the development of
sound doctrine. And if it has not exerted an equal influence in all
departments, paying most attention to the worship and least to matters
of constitution, it cannot, on the other hand, be denied that even
in those directions an effort has been made to modify the violent
contradiction of extremes (§ 142, 1, 2).
=The Mediate and Mediating Attitude of the Lutheran Church=
shows itself in its fundamental conception of the essence of
Christianity as the union of the Divine and human, of which the
prototype is found in the Person of Christ, and illustrations of
it in the Scriptures, the church, the sacraments, the Christian
life, etc. In the varied ways in which this union is conceived
of lies the deepest and most inward ground of the divergence
that exists between the three western churches. The Catholic
church wishes to _see_ the union of the Divine and human;
the Lutheran, wishes to _believe_ it; the Reformed, wishes to
_understand_ it. The tendency prevails in the Catholic church
to confound these two, the Divine and the human, and that indeed
in such a way that the human loses its human character, and its
union with the Divine is regarded as constituting identity. The
Reformed church, again, is prone to separate the two, to look
upon the Divine by itself and the human by itself, and to regard
the union as a placing of the one alongside of the other, as
having not an objective but a merely subjective, not a real but
a merely ideal, connection. But the Lutheran church, guarding
itself against any confusion as well as any separation of the
two elements, had sought to view the union as the most vital,
rich, and inward communion, interpenetration, and reciprocity.
In the view of the Catholic church the human and earthly, which
is so often a very imperfect vehicle of the Divine, in which the
Divine often attained to a very incomplete development, is to be
regarded as in and by itself already the Divine. So is it in the
idea of the church, and hence the doctrine of a merely external
and visible church, which as such is only the channel of
salvation. So is it in the historical development of the church,
and hence the absolute authority of tradition and the reversal
of the true relations between Scripture and tradition. So too
is it with the doctrine of the sacraments, and hence the idea
of an _opus operatum_ and of transubstantiation. So in regard
to the priesthood, hence hierarchism; so in regard to the idea
of sanctification, and hence semipelagianism and the doctrine
of merits. Thoroughly antagonistic to all this was the view of
the Reformed church. It was inclined rather to sever completely
the Divine in Christianity from its earthly, visible vehicle,
and to think of the operation of the Divine upon man as merely
spiritual and communicated only through subjective faith.
It renounced all tradition, and thereby broke off from all
historical development, whether normal or abnormal. In its
doctrine of Scripture, the literal significance of the word
was often exalted above the spirit; in its doctrine of the
church, the significance of the visible church over that of the
invisible. In its doctrine of the Person of Christ, the human
nature of the glorified Saviour was excluded from a personal
full share in all the attributes of His divinity. In the
doctrine of the sacraments, supernatural grace and the earthly
elements were separated from one another; and in the doctrine
of predestination the Divine foreknowledge of man’s volitions
was isolated, etc. The Lutheran church, on the other hand, had
at least made the effort to steer between those two extremes,
and to bind into a living unity the truth that lies at the
foundation of both. In the Scripture it wishes as little to
see the spirit without the word, as the word without the spirit;
in history it recognises the rule and operation of the Spirit
of God within the human and ecclesiastical developments; and it
rejects only the false tradition which has not had its growth
organically from Holy Scripture, but rather contradicts it.
In its doctrine of the church it holds with equal tenacity to
the importance of the visible church and that of the invisible.
In its doctrine of the Person of Christ it affirms the perfect
humanity and the perfect divinity in the living union and richly
communicating reciprocity of the two natures. In its doctrine
of the sacraments it gives full weight as well to the objective
Divine fact which heavenly grace presents in earthly elements
as to the subjective condition of the man, to whom the sacrament
will prove saving or condemning according as he is a believer
or an unbeliever. And, finally, it expresses the belief that
in the Divine decree the apparent contradiction between God’s
foreknowledge and man’s self-determination is solved, while it
regards predestination as conditioned by the foreknowledge of
God; whereas Calvinism reverses that relation.
§ 141. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE
LUTHERAN CHURCH.[403]
Even during Luther’s lifetime, but much more after his death,
various doctrinal controversies broke out in the Lutheran church.
They arose for the most part upon the borderlands either of Calvinism
or of Catholicism, and were generally occasioned by offence taken at
the attitude of the more stiff and dogged of Luther’s adherents by
those of the Melanchthonian or Philippist school, who had irenical
and unionistic feelings in regard to both sides. The scene of these
conflicts was partly in the electorate of Albertine Saxony and in the
duchy of Ernestine Saxony. Wittenberg and Leipzig were the headquarters
of the Philippists, and Weimar and Jena of the strict Lutherans.
There was no lack on either side of rancour and bitterness. But if
the Gnesio-Lutherans went far beyond the Melanchthonians in stiffnecked
irreconcilableness, slanderous denunciation, and outrageous abuse, they
yet showed a most praiseworthy strength of conviction, steadfastness,
and martyrlike devotion; whereas their opponents not infrequently laid
themselves open to the charge, on the one hand, of a pusillanimous and
mischievous pliability, and, on the other hand, of using unworthy means
and covert, deceitful ways. Their controversies reached a conclusion
after various alternations of victory and defeat, with often very
tragic consequences to the worsted party, in the composition of a new
confessional document, the so called _Formula Concordiæ_.
§ 141.1. =The Antinomian Controversy=, A.D. 1537-1541,
which turned upon the place and significance of the law under
the Christian dispensation, lay outside the range of the
Philippist wranglings. =John Agricola=, for a time pastor
in his native town of Eisleben, and so often called Master
Eisleben, in A.D. 1527 took offence at Melanchthon for having
in his visitation articles (§ 127, 1) urged the pastors so
earnestly to enjoin upon their people the observance of the
law. He professed, indeed, for the time to be satisfied with
Melanchthon’s answer, which had also the approval of Luther,
but soon after he had, in A.D. 1536, become a colleague of both
in Wittenberg, he renewed his opposition by publishing adverse
theses. He did not contest the pedagogical and civil-political
use of the law outside of the church, but starting from the
principle that an enjoined morality could not help man, he
maintained that the law has no more significance or authority
for the Christian, and that the gospel, which by the power
of Divine love works repentance, is alone to be preached.
Melanchthon and Luther, on the contrary, held that anguish
and sorrow for sin are the fruits of the law, while the saving
resolution to reform is the effect of the gospel, and insisted
upon a continued preaching of the law, because from the
incompleteness of the believer’s sanctification in this world
a daily renewing of repentance is necessary. After several years
of oral and written discussion, Agricola took his departure from
Wittenberg in A.D. 1540, charging Luther with having offered him
a personal insult, and was made court preacher at Berlin, where,
in A.D. 1541, having discovered his error, he repudiated it in
a conciliatory exposition. The reputation in which he was held
at the court of Brandenburg led to his being at a subsequent
period made a _collaborateur_ in drawing up the hated Augsburg
Interim (§ 136, 5). As his antinomianism every now and again
cropped up afresh, the _Formula Concordiæ_ at last settled
the controversy by the statement that we must ascribe to
the law, not only a _usus politicus_ and _usus elenchticus_
for terrorizing and arresting the sinner, but also a _usus
didacticus_ for the sanctifying of the Christian life.
§ 141.2. =The Osiander Controversy, A.D. 1549-1556.=--Luther
had, in opposition to the Romish doctrine of merits, defined
justification as purely an act of God, whose fruit can be
appropriated by man only by the exercise of faith. But he
distinguished from justification as an act of God _for_ man,
sanctification as the operation of God _in_ man. The former
consists in this, that Christ once for all has offered Himself
up on the cross for the sins of the whole world, and that
now God ascribes the merit of the sacrificial death of Christ
for every individual as though it had been his own, _i.e._
juridically; the believer is thus declared, but not made
righteous. The believer, on the ground of his having been
declared righteous, is made righteous by means of a sanctifying
process penetrating the whole earthly life and constantly
advancing, but in this world never absolutely perfect, which
is effected by the communication of the new life which Christ
has created and brought to light. =Andrew Osiander= proposed
a theory that diverged from this doctrine, and inclined
toward that set forth in the Tridentine Council (§ 136, 4),
but distinguished from the Romish view by decided attachment
to the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone.
He had been from A.D. 1522 pastor and reformer at Nuremberg,
and had proclaimed his ideas without thereby giving offence.
This first happened when, after his expulsion from Nuremberg
on account of the interim, he had begun to announce his
peculiar doctrine in the newly founded University of Königsberg,
where he had been appointed professor by Duke Albert of
Prussia in A.D. 1549 (§ 126, 4). Confounding sanctification
with justification, he wished to define the latter, not
as a declaring righteous but as a making righteous, not as
a juridical but as a medicinal act, wrought by an infusion,
_i.e._ a continuous influx of the righteousness of Christ.
The sacrificial death of Christ is for him only the negative
condition of justification, its positive condition rests upon
the incarnation of Christ, the reproduction of which in the
believer is justification, which is therefore to be referred not
to the human but rather to the Divine nature in Christ. Along
with this, he also held by the conviction that the incarnation
of God in Christ would have taken place in order to complete
the creation of the image of God in man even had the fall
never happened. The main point of his opposition was grounded
upon this: that he believed the juridical theory to have
overlooked the religious subjective element, which, however, is
still present in faith as the subjective condition of declaring
righteous. The keen and bitter controversy over these questions
spread from the university among the clergy, and thence to the
citizens and families, and soon came to be carried on on both
sides with great passionateness and heat. The favour publicly
shown to Osiander by the duke, who set him as Bishop of Samland
at the head of the Prussian clergy, increased the bitterness
felt toward him by his opponents. Among these was Martin
Chemnitz, a scholar of Melanchthon, and from A.D. 1548 rector
of the High School at Königsberg. Also Professor Joachim Mörlin,
a favourite pupil of Luther, Francis Staphylus, who afterwards
went back to the Romish church (§ 137, 8), and Francis Stancarus
of Mantua, a man who bears a very bad reputation for his
fomenting of quarrels, were among Osiander’s most inveterate
foes. Stancarus carried his opposition to Osiander so far
as to maintain that Christ has become our righteousness only
in respect of His human nature. The opinions received from
abroad were for the inmost part against Osiander. John Brenz,
of Württemburg [Württemberg], however, clined rather to favour
Osiander’s view than that of his opponents, while Melanchthon,
in giving utterance to the Wittenberg opinion, endeavoured by
removing misunderstandings to reconcile the opposing parties,
but on the main point decided against him. Even Osiander’s death
in A.D. 1552 did not put an end to the controversy. At the head
of his party now appeared the court preacher, John Funck, who,
standing equally high in favour with the duke, filled all
positions with his own followers. In his overweening conceit
he mixed himself up in political affairs, and put himself in
antagonism with the nobles and men of importance in the State.
A commission of investigation on the Polish sovereignty at
their instigation found him guilty of high treason, and had
him beheaded in A.D. 1566. The other Osiandrianists were deposed
and exiled. Mörlin, from A.D. 1533 general superintendent of
Brunswick, was now honourably recalled as Bishop of Samland,
reorganized the Prussian church, and in conjunction with
Chemnitz, who had been from A.D. 1554 preacher in Brunswick,
where he died in A.D. 1586 as general superintendent, composed
for Prussia a new doctrinal standard in the _Corpus doctrinæ
Pruthenicum_ of A.D. 1567.[404]
§ 141.3. Of much less importance was the =Æpinus Controversy=
about Christ’s descent into hell, which John Æpinus, first
Lutheran superintendent at Hamburg, in his exposition of the
16th Psalm, in A.D. 1542, interpreted, after the manner of the
Reformed theologians, of His state of humiliation, and as the
completion of the passive obedience of Christ in the endurance
of the pains of hell; whereas the usual Lutheran understanding
of it was, that it referred to Christ’s triumphing over the
powers of hell and death in His state of exaltation. An opinion
sent from Wittenberg, in A.D. 1550, left the matter undetermined,
and even the Formula of Concord was satisfied with teaching
that Christ in His full personality descended into hell in
order to deliver men from death and the power of the devil.--An
equally peaceful settlement was brought about in the =Kargian
Controversy=, A.D. 1563-1570, about the significance of the
active obedience of Christ, which the pastor of Anspach, George
Karg or Parsimonius, for a long time made a subject of dispute;
but afterwards he retracted, being convinced of his error by the
Wittenberg theologians.
§ 141.4. =The Philippists and their Opponents.=--Not long after
the Augsburg Confession had been accepted as the common standard
of the Lutheran church two parties arose, in which tendencies of
a thoroughly diversant character were gradually developed. The
real basis of this opposition lay in the diverse intellectual
disposition and development of the two great leaders of the
Reformation, which the scholars of both inherited in a very
exaggerated form. Melanchthon’s disciples, the so-called
Philippists, strove in accordance with their master’s example
to make as much as possible of what they had in common, on the
one hand, with the Reformed and, on the other hand, with the
Catholics, and to maintain a conciliatory attitude that might
aid toward effecting union. The personal friends, scholars,
and adherents of Luther, on the contrary, for the most part
more Lutheran than Luther himself, emulating the rugged decision
of their great leader and carrying it out in a one-sided manner,
were anxious rather to emphasise and widen as far as possible
the gulf that lay between them and their opponents, Reformed
and Catholics alike, and thus to make any reconciliation and
union by way of compromise impossible. Luther attached himself
to neither of these parties, but tried to restrain both from
rushing to extremes, and to maintain as far as he could the
peace between them.--The modification of strict Augustinianism
which Melanchthon’s further study led him to adopt in the
editions of his _Loci_ later than A.D. 1535 was denounced by
the strict Lutherans as Catholicizing, but still more strongly
did they object to the modification of the tenth article of the
Augsburg Confession which he introduced into a new rendering
of it, the so-called _Variata_, in A.D. 1540. In its original
form it stood thus: _Docent, quod corpus et sanguis Domini
vere adsint et distribuantur vescentibus in cœna Domini et
improbant secus docentes_. For these words he now substituted
the following: _Quod cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur corpus
et sanguis Christi vescentibus in cœna Domini_. This statement
was indeed by no means Calvinistic, for instead of _vescentibus_
the Calvinists would have said _credentibus_. Yet the arbitrary
and in any case Calvinizing change amazed the strict Lutherans,
and Luther himself bade its author remember that the book
was not his but the church’s creed. After Luther’s death the
Philippist party, in the Leipzig Interim of A.D. 1519, made
several other very important concessions to the Catholics
(§ 136, 7), and this led their opponents to denounce them as
open traitors to their church. Magdeburg, which stubbornly
refused to acknowledge the interim, became the city of refuge
for all zealous Lutherans; while in opposition to the Philippist
Wittenberg, the University of Jena, founded in A.D. 1548 by the
sons of the ex-elector John Frederick according to his desire,
became the stronghold of strict Lutheranism. The leaders on
the Philippist side were Paul Eber, George Major, Justus Menius,
John Pfeffinger, Caspar Cruciger, Victorin Strigel, etc. At
the head of the strict Lutheran party stood Nicholas Amsdorf
and Matthias Flacius. The former lived, after his expulsion
from Naumburg (§ 135, 5), an “exul Christi,” along with the
young dukes at Weimar. On account of his violent opposition to
the interim, he was obliged, in A.D. 1548, to flee to Magdeburg,
and after the surrender of the city he was placed by his ducal
patrons in Eisenach, where he died in A.D. 1565. The latter,
a native of Istria, and hence known as Illyricus, was appointed
professor of the Hebrew language in Wittenberg in A.D. 1544,
fled to Magdeburg in A.D. 1549, from whence he went to Weimar
in A.D. 1556, and was called to Jena in A.D. 1557.
§ 141.5. =The Adiaphorist Controversy=, A.D. 1548-1555, as
to the permissibility of Catholic forms in constitution and
worship, was connected with the drawing up of the Leipzig
Interim. That document described most of the Catholic forms
of worship as _adiaphora_, or matters of indifference, which,
in order to avoid more serious dangers, might be treated
as allowable or unessential. The Lutherans, on the contrary,
maintained that even a matter in itself unessential under
circumstances like the present could not be treated as
permissible. From Magdeburg there was poured out a flood
of violent controversial and abusive literature against the
Wittenberg renegades and the Saxon apostates. The altered
position of the latter from A.D. 1551 hushed up in some measure
the wrath of the zealots, and the religious Peace of Augsburg
removed all occasion for the continuance of the strife.
§ 141.6. =The Majorist Controversy, A.D. 1551-1562.=--The
strict Lutherans from the passing of the interim showed toward
the Philippist party unqualified disfavour and regarded them
with deep suspicion. When in A.D. 1551, George Major, at that
time superintendent at Eisleben, in essential agreement with
the interim, one of whose authors he was, and with Melanchthon’s
later doctrinal views, maintained the position, that good
works are necessary to salvation, and refused to retract
the statement, though he somewhat modified his expressions
by saying that it was not a _necessitas meriti_, but only
a _necessitas conjunctionis s. consequentiæ_; and when also
Justus Menius, the reformer of Thuringia, superintendent
at Gotha, vindicated him in two tractates,--Amsdorf in the
heat of the controversy set up in opposition the extreme
and objectionable thesis, that good works are injurious to
salvation, and even in A.D. 1559 justified it as “a truly
Christian proposition preached by St. Paul and Luther.”
Notwithstanding all the passionate bitterness that had mixed
itself up with the discussion, the more sensible friends of
Amsdorf, including even Flacius, saw that the ambiguity and
indefiniteness of the expression was leading to error on both
sides. They acknowledged, on the one hand, that only faith,
not good works in themselves, is necessary to salvation, but
that good works are the inevitable fruit and necessary evidence
of true, saving faith; and, on the other hand, that not good
works in themselves, but only trusting to them instead of
the merits of Christ alone, can be regarded as injurious to
salvation. Major for the sake of peace recalled his statement
in A.D. 1562.
§ 141.7. =The Synergistic Controversy,
A.D. 1555-1567.=--Luther in his controversy with Erasmus
(§ 125, 3), as well as Melanchthon in the first edition of his
_Loci_, in A.D. 1521, had unconditionally denied the capacity
of human nature for independently laying hold upon salvation,
and taught an absolute sovereignty of Divine grace in conversion.
In his later edition of the _Loci_, from A.D. 1535, and in
the Augsburg Confession of A.D. 1540, however, Melanchthon
had admitted a certain co-operation or synergism of a remnant
of freewill in conversion, and more exactly defined this in
the edition of the _Loci_ of A.D. 1548 as the ability to lay
hold by its own impulse of the offered salvation, _facultas se
applicandi ad gratiam_; and though even in the Leipzig Interim
of A.D. 1549 the Lutheran shibboleth _solê_ was constantly
recurring, it was simply with the object of thoroughly excluding
any claim of merit on man’s part in conversion. Luther with
indulgent tolerance had borne with the change in Melanchthon’s
convictions, and only objected to the incorporation of it
in the creed of the church. But from the date of the interim
the suspicion and opposition of the strict Lutherans increased
from day to day, and burst forth in a violent controversy when
John Pfeffinger, superintendent at Leipzig, also one of the
authors of the detested interim, published, in A.D. 1555, his
_Propositiones de libero arbitrio_, in defence of Melanchthon’s
synergism. The leaders of the Gnesio-Lutherans, Arnsdorf in
Eisenach, Flacius in Jena, and Musacus in Weimar, felt that
they durst not remain silent, and so they maintained, as alone
the genuine Lutheran doctrine, that the natural man cannot
co-operate with the workings of Divine grace upon him, but
can only oppose them. By order of the Duke John Frederick
they prepared at Weimar, in A.D. 1559, as a new manifesto of
the restored Lutheranism, a treatise containing a refutation
of all the heresies that had hitherto cropped up within the
Lutheran church. One of those invited to take part in the work,
Victorin Strigel, professor at Jena, was made to suffer for
the sympathy which he evinced for synergism by enduring close
and severe imprisonment. The duke, however, soon again became
more favourable to Strigel, who in A.D. 1560 vindicated himself
at a public disputation in Weimar against Flacius, and was soon
afterwards called to Leipzig. When in A.D. 1561 the duke set up
a consistory in Weimar, and transferred to it the right hitherto
exclusively exercised in Jena of ecclesiastical excommunication
and the censorship of theological books, and the Flacian party
opposed this “Cæsaro-papism” with unmeasured violence, all the
adherents of the party were driven out of Jena and out of the
whole territory, and their places filled with Melanchthonians.
This victory of Philippism, however, was of but short duration.
In order to regain the lost electoral rank, the duke allowed
himself to be beguiled into taking part in the so-called
Grumbach affair. He was cast into the imperial prison, and
his brother John William, who now assumed the government,
hastened, in A.D. 1567, to restore the overthrown theological
party. Even in electoral Saxony interest in the Catholicizing
synergism, at least, after Melanchthon’s death, in A.D. 1560,
was gradually lost sight of in proportion as the controversy
about the Calvinistic doctrine of the Lord’s Supper gradually
gained prominence.
§ 141.8. =The Flacian Controversy about Original Sin=,
A.D. 1560-1575.--In the heat of the controversy with Strigel
at the conference at Weimar, in A.D. 1560, Flacius had
committed himself to the statement that original sin in man
is not something accidental, but something substantial. His
own friends now urged him to retract this proposition, which
his opponents had branded as Manichæan. Its author had not
indeed intended it in the bad sense which it might be supposed
to bear. Flacius, however, was of a character too dogged and
obstinate to agree to recall what he had uttered. Expelled
with the rest of the Lutherans in A.D. 1562, and not recalled
with them in A.D. 1567, he wandered without any fixed place of
abode, driven away from almost every place that he entered, until
shortly before his death he recalled his overhasty expression.
He died in the hospital at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, in A.D. 1575.
In him a powerful character and an amazing wealth of learning
were utterly lost in consequence of unpropitious circumstances,
which were partly his fault and partly his misfortune.
§ 141.9. =The Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.=--The
union effected by the Wittenberg Concord of A.D. 1536 (§ 133, 8)
with the South German cities, which originally favoured Zwinglian
views, had been in many cases threatening to dissolve again,
and the attacks of the men of Zürich obliged Luther in A.D. 1544
to compose his last “Confession of the Holy Sacrament against
the Fanatics.” The breach with the Zwinglians was now seen
to be irreparable, but it appeared as if it were yet possible
to come to an understanding with the more profound theory
of the Lord’s Supper set forth by Calvin. To carry out this
union was a thought very dear to the heart of Melanchthon. He
had the conviction, not indeed that the Lutheran doctrine of
the real presence of the body and blood in the bread and wine
is erroneous, but rather that by the Calvinistic doctrine of
a spiritual enjoyment of the body and blood of Christ in the
supper by means of faith no essential element of religious truth
was lost, and so he sought thereby to get over the difference
in confession and doctrine. But with this explanation the
strict Lutherans were by no means satisfied, and long continued
and extremely passionate discussions were carried on in the
various Lutheran countries, especially in Lower Saxony, in
the Palatinate, and in the electorate. But the controversy
was not restricted to the question of the supper; it rather
went back upon a deeper foundation. Luther, carrying out the
principles of the third and fourth œcumenical councils, had
taught that the personal connection of the two natures in Christ
implies a communication of the attributes of the one to the
other, _communicatio idiomatum_, that therefore Christ, since
He has by His ascension entered again upon the full exercise
of His attributes, is, as God-Man, even in respect of His body,
omnipresent, _ubiquitas corporis Christi_, and refused to allow
himself to be perplexed by the incomprehensibility for the human
understanding of an omnipresent body. It is here that we come
upon the radical distinction between Luther’s view and that of
Zwingli and Calvin, according to which the body of Christ cannot
be at one and the same time in heaven at God’s right hand and
on the earth in bread and wine. But Calvin, as well as Zwingli,
from his very intellectual constitution, could only regard
the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of the glorified body
of Christ as an utter absurdity, and so, repudiating the
_communicatio idiomatum_, he taught that the glorification
of Christ’s body is restricted to its transfiguration, and
that now in heaven, as before upon the earth, it can be present
only in one place. A necessary consequence of this view was the
rejection of His corporeal presence in the supper, and at the
very most the admission of a communication in the sacrament to
believers of a spiritual influence from the glorified body of
Christ.--The ablest vindicator of the Lutheran doctrine of the
supper in this aspect of its development was the Württemberg
reformer John Brenz (§ 133, 3). In the _Syngramma Suevicum_
of A.D. 1525 (§ 131, 1), he has taken his place most decidedly
on the side of Luther, and this he had also done again,
in A.D. 1529, at the Marburg Conference (§ 132, 4). Then
in A.D. 1559, as provost in Stuttgart, in consequence of the
doubtful attitude of a Swabian pastor on the question of the
supper, he summoned a synod at Stuttgart, before which he laid
a confession which expressed the doctrine of the supper and the
ubiquity in strict accordance with Lutheran views. In defence
of the idea of ubiquity he quoted Ephesians iv. 10, as affording
sufficient Scripture support. The synod unanimously adopted
it, and the duke gave approval to this _Confessio et doctr.
theologor. et ministror. Verbi Dei in Ducatu Wirtb. de vera
præsentia Corp. et sang, J. Chr. in Cœna Domini_, by ordering
that all preachers should adopt it, and that it should
have symbolic authority throughout the Württemberg church.
Melanchthon, who had hitherto been on particularly intimate
terms with Brenz, was very indignant at this “unseasonable”
creed-making in “barbarous Latin.” Brenz, however, would not
be deterred from giving more adequate expression and development
to the objectionable dogma, and for this purpose published,
in A.D. 1560, his book, _De personali unione duarum natur.
in Christo_.
§ 141.10. =Cryptocalvinism in its First Stage,
A.D. 1552-1574.=--The struggle of the Gnesio-Lutherans
against Calvin’s doctrine of the supper, and the secret favour
shown toward it by several Lutheran theologians, was begun in
A.D. 1552 by Joachim Westphal, pastor in Hamburg. Calvin and
Bullinger were not slow in giving him a sharp rejoinder. In
a yet more violent form the dispute broke out in Bremen, where
the cathedral preacher Hardenberg, and in Heidelberg, where the
deacon Klebitz, entered the lists against the Lutheran dogma.
In both cases the struggle ended in the defeat of Lutheranism
(§ 144, 1, 2). In Wittenberg, too, the Philippists George Major,
Paul Eber, Paul Crell, etc., supported by the very influential
court physician of the electoral court of Saxony, Caspar Peucer,
Melanchthon’s son-in-law, from A.D. 1559 successfully advanced
the interests of Cryptocalvinism. Melanchthon himself, however,
was not to live to see the troubles that arose over this,
a truly gracious dispensation of Providence on behalf of a
man already sorely borne down and trembling with hypochondriac
fears, to have him thus delivered _a rabie theologicorum_.
He died on 19th April, A.D. 1560. While the Elector Augustus,
A.D. 1553-1586, intended that his Wittenberg should always be
the main stronghold of strict Lutheranism, the Philippists were
always coming forward with more and more boldness, and sought
to prepare the way for themselves by getting all places filled
with members of their party. They persuaded the elector to give
a nominative authority throughout Saxony to a collection of
Melanchthonian doctrinal and confessional documents compiled
by them, _Corpus doctrinæ Philippicum s. Misnicum,_ 1560.
The Wittenberg Catechism, _Catechesis, etc., ad usum scholar.
puerilium_, 1571, set forth a doctrine of the sacraments
and the person of Christ so manifestly Calvinistic, that
even the elector was obliged to give way on account of the
strong objections brought against it. The Philippists, however,
succeeded in satisfying him by the _Consensus Dresdensis_,
of 10th Oct., A.D. 1571, to this extent, that after the death
of Duke John William, in the exercise of his authority as regent,
he was induced to expel the Lutheran zealots Wigand and Hesshus
from Jena, and in A.D. 1573 had more than a hundred clergymen
of the duchy of Saxony deposed. In Breslau their interests were
also zealously advanced by the influential imperial physician,
John Krafft, to whom the Emperor Maximilian II. had granted
a patent of nobility in A.D. 1568, with the new name of Crato
von Crafftheim. Another Silesian physician, Joachim Curæus,
also a scholar of Melanchthon, published in A.D. 1574, without
any indication of author’s name, place of publication, or date
of issue, his _Exegesis perspicua controversiæ de cœna_, which
represented Melanchthon’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper as the
only tenable one, controverted that of the Lutherans as popish,
eulogized that of the Reformed church as one most honouring to
God, and urgently counselled union with the Calvinists. The warm
recommendation of this treatise on the part of the Wittenberg
Philippists, however, rather contributed to its failure. For
now, at last, even the elector had become convinced of the
danger that threatened Lutheranism through hints given him by
the princes, and information obtained from intercepted letters.
The Philippists were banished, their chiefs thrown into prison,
Peucer being confined for twelve years, A.D. 1574-1586. A
thanksgiving service in all the churches and memorial medal
celebrated the rooting out in A.D. 1574 of Calvinism, and the
final victory of restored Lutheranism.--In Denmark, Nicholas
Hemming, pastor and professor at Copenhagen, distinguished
alike by adequate scholarship and rich literary activity,
and by mildness and temperateness of character, and hence
designated the Preceptor of Denmark, was the recognised
head of the Melanchthonian school. As a decided opponent
of the doctrine of ubiquity, though otherwise on all points,
and especially in his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, a
good Lutheran, he fell under the suspicion of the German
Gnesio-Lutherans as a Cryptocalvinist, and was accordingly
opposed by them. In A.D. 1579, by order of the Elector Augustus,
his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark removed him from his
offices in Copenhagen, appointing him to a canonry in the
cathedral at Roeskilde, where in A.D. 1600 he died.
§ 141.11. =The Frankfort Compact, A.D. 1558, and the Naumburg
Assembly of Princes, A.D. 1561.=--After the disgraceful issue
of the Worms Conference of A.D. 1557 (§ 137, 6), the Protestant
princes, the electors Augustus of Saxony, Joachim of Brandenburg,
and Ottheinrich of the Palatinate, with Philip of Hesse,
Christopher of Württemberg, and the Count-palatine Wolfgang,
who were gathered together about the Emperor Ferdinand,
consulted as to the means which they should employ to insure
and confirm the threatened unity of the evangelical church
of Germany. The result of their deliberations was, that they
agreed to sign a statement drawn up by Melanchthon and known
by the name of the =Frankfort Compact=, in which they declared
anew their unanimous attachment to the doctrine set forth in
the _Augustana_, the _Variata_, and the _Saxonica_ (§ 136, 8),
and in regard to controversial questions that had been discussed
within the church expressed themselves in moderate terms as
inclined to the views of Melanchthon. The Flacian party in
Jena hastened to set forth their opposing sentiments in the
manifesto of A.D. 1559, already referred to, in which the strict
Gnesio-Lutheranism was laid down in the hardest and boldest
manner possible.--The divisions that arose within the Lutheran
church after Melanchthon’s death and the imminent reassembling
of the Tridentine Council led the evangelical princes of Germany,
who, with the exception of Philip of Hesse, all belonged to a
new generation, once more to put forth every effort to restore
unity by adoption of a common evangelical confession. At the
=Assembly of Princes= appointed to meet for this purpose at
=Naumburg= in A.D. 1561, most of them appeared personally.
There was no thought of preparing a new confession, because
it was feared that in those times of agitation it might be
impossible to draw up such a document, or that, even if they
succeeded in doing so, it might not close the breach, but
rather widen it. Thus the only alternative remaining was
to attempt the healing of the schism by reverting to the
standpoint of the Augsburg Confession. But then the question
arose whether the original form of statement of A.D. 1530,
or its later elaboration of A.D. 1540, should be taken as the
basis of union negotiations.--This at least was to be said in
favour of the latter, that it had been unanimously adopted as
the common confession of all the evangelicals of Germany at the
peace Conference of Worms in A.D. 1540, where even Calvin had
signed it, and at Regensburg in A.D. 1541 (§ 135, 2, 3); and
now Philip of Hesse and Frederick III. of the Palatinate came
forward decidedly in its favour. But all the more persistently
did the Duke John Frederick of Saxony oppose it, and make every
endeavour to get the rest of the princes to give their votes
in favour of the Augsburg Confession of A.D. 1530. But the
duke’s further wish to have added to it the Schmalcald Articles
found very little favour. Finally a compromise was effected, in
accordance with which, in a newly drawn up preface, the Apology
of the _Augustana_, as well as the edition of A.D. 1540, was
acknowledged, while the Schmalcald Articles, as well as the
_Confessio Saxonica_ (§ 136, 8) and the Frankfort Compact, were
passed over in silence. John Frederick now demanded the adoption
of an express condemnation of the Calvinising Sacramentarians.
This led to a hot discussion between him and his father-in-law,
the elector-palatine. He took his departure on the following
day without having received his dismissal, leaving behind him
a sharply worded protest. Ulrich of Mecklenburg also refused
to subscribe, but allowed himself at last to be persuaded into
doing so. At the sixteenth session two papal legates personally
delivered to the princes a brief inviting them to attend the
council. This latter, however, was returned unopened when they
discovered in the address the usual but artfully concealed
formula “_dilecto filio_.” Also the demand of the imperial
embassy accompanying the legates to take part in the council
was determinedly rejected, because that would mean not revision
but simply a continuation of the previous sessions of the
council, at which the evangelical doctrine had already been
definitely condemned.
§ 141.12. =The Formula of Concord, A.D. 1577.=--Already for
a long time had the learned chancellor Jac. Andreä of Tübingen
wrought unweariedly for the restoration of peace among the
theologians of the Lutheran church. In order also to win over
the general membership in favour of peace, he attempted in
six popular discourses, delivered in A.D. 1573, to instruct
them in reference to the points in dispute and proper means
for overcoming these differences. He was so successful in his
efforts, that he soon ventured to propose that these lectures
should be made the basis of further negotiations. But when
Martin Chemnitz, the most distinguished theologian of his
age, pronounced them unsuitable for that purpose, Andreä
wrought them up anew in accordance with Chemnitz’s critical
suggestions into the so called “Swabian Concord.” But even
in this form they did not satisfy the theologians of Lower
Saxony. The Swabian theologians, however, in their criticisms
and emendations, had answered various statements in it, and
in A.D. 1576 they produced a new union scheme, drafted by
Luc. Osiander, called the “_Maulbronn Formula_.” The Elector
Augustus of Saxony then summoned a theological convention
at Torgau, at which, besides Andreä and Chemnitz, there were
also present Chytræus from Rostock, as well as Körner and
Andr. Musculus from Frankfort-on-the-Oder. They wrought up
the material thus accumulated before them into the “Book
of Torgau,” of A.D. 1576. In regard to this book also the
evangelical princes delivered numerous opinions, and now
at last, in obedience to the order of the princes, Andreä,
Chemnitz, Selnecker (§ 142, 4), Chytræus, Musculus, and Körner
retired into the cloister of Berg at Magdeburg in order to make
a final revision of all that was before them. Thus originated,
in A.D. 1577, the Book of Berg or the =Formula of Concord=, in
two different forms, first in the most compressed style possible
in what is known as the _Epitome_, and then more completely
in the document known as the _Solida declaratio_. This document
dealt with all the controverted questions that had been agitated
since A.D. 1530 in twelve articles. It set forth the doctrine
of the Person of Christ, giving prominence to the theory of
ubiquity, as the basis of the doctrine of the supper, leaving
it, however, undetermined in accordance with the teaching of
Brenz, whether the ubiquity is to be regarded as an absolute
or as a relative one, if only it be maintained that Christ
in respect of His human nature, therefore in respect of His
body, is present “_ubicunque velit_,” more particularly in
the holy supper. An opportunity was also found in treating
of the synergistic questions to set forth the doctrine of
predestination, although within the Lutheran church no real
controversy on this subject had ever arisen. Luther, who at
first (§ 125, 3) had himself given expression to a particularist
doctrine of election, had gradually receded from that position.
It was so too with Melanchthon, only with this important
difference, that whereas Luther, afterwards as well as before,
excluded every sort of co-operation of man in conversion,
Melanchthon felt himself obliged to admit a certain degree
of co-operation, which even the censure of Calvin himself could
not lead him to repudiate. When now the Formula of Concord,
rejecting synergism in the most decided manner, affirmed that
since the fall there was in men not even a spark remaining,
_ne scintillula quidem_, of spiritual power for the independent
free appropriation of offered grace, it had gone over from the
platform of Melanchthon to that which Calvin, following the
course of hard, logical consistency, had been driven to adopt,
in the assertion of a doctrine of absolute predestination. The
formula was thus in the main in agreement with the speculation
of Calvin. But it declined to accept the conclusions arrived
at in Calvinism by declaring that while man indeed of himself
wanted the power to lay hold upon Divine grace and co-operate
with it in any way, he was yet able to withstand it and refuse
to accept it. In this way it was able to hold by the express
statements of Scripture which represent God as willing that
all men should be saved, and salvation as an absolute work of
grace, but condemnation as the consequence of man’s own guilt.
It regards the salvation of men as the only object of Divine
predestination, condemnation as merely an object of the Divine
foreknowledge.--At a later period an attempt was made to set
at rest the scruples that prevailed here and there by securing
at Berg, in February, A.D. 1580, the adoption of an addition
to it in the form of a _Præfatio_ drawn up by Andreä as a final
determination of the controversy. The character of this new
symbolical document, in accordance with its occasion and its
aim, was not so much that of a popular exposition for the church,
but rather that of a scientific theological treatise. For that
period of excitement and controversy it is quite remarkable
and worthy of high praise for its good sense, moderation, and
circumspection, as well as for the accuracy and clearness with
which it performed its task. The fact that nine thousand of the
teachers of the church subscribed it affords sufficient proof
of it having fulfilled the end contemplated. Denmark and Sweden,
Holstein, Pomerania, Hesse, and Anhalt, besides eight cities,
Magdeburg, Dantzig, Nuremberg, Strassburg, etc., refused to
sign from various and often conflicting motives. In A.D. 1581
Frederick II. of Denmark is said indeed to have thrown it
into the fire. Yet in later years it was adopted in not a
few of these regions, _e.g._ in Sweden, Holstein, Pommerania
[Pomerania], etc. The Elector Augustus of Saxony, in the Book
of Concord, brought out a collection of all general Lutheran
confessional writings which, signed by fifty-one princes and
thirty-five cities, was solemnly promulgated on the anniversary
of the Augsburg Confession, 25th June, A.D. 1580. By this means
the whole Lutheran church of Germany obtained a common _corpus
doctrinæ_, and the numerous collections of confessional and
doctrinal documents acknowledged by the church, which hitherto
separate national churches had drawn up for this purpose,
henceforth lost their authority.
§ 141.13. =Second Stage of Cryptocalvinism, A.D. 1586-1592.=--Yet
once more the Calvinising endeavours of the Philippists were
renewed in the electorate of Saxony under Augustus’ successor
Christian I., who had obtained this position in A.D. 1586,
through his relationship with the family of the count-palatine.
His chancellor Nicholas Crell filled the offices of pastors
and teachers with men of his own views, abolished exorcism at
baptism, and had even begun the publication of a Bible with
a Calvinising commentary when Christian died, in A.D. 1591.
The Duke Frederick William of Altenburg, as regent during the
minority, immediately re-introduced strict Lutheranism, and,
preparatory to a church visitation, had a new anti-Calvinistic
standard of doctrine compiled in the so called =Articles of
Visitation= of A.D. 1592, which all civil and ecclesiastical
officers in Saxony were required to accept. In short, clear,
and well defined theses and antitheses the doctrinal differences
on the supper, the Person of Christ, baptism, and election were
there set forth. In reference to baptism, the anti-Calvinistic
doctrine was promulgated, that regeneration takes place through
baptism, and that therefore every baptized person is regenerate.
The most important among the compilers of these Articles
of Visitation was Ægidius Hunnius, shortly before called to
Wittenberg, after having, from A.D. 1576 to 1592, as professor
at Marburg, laboured with all his might in opposition to
the Calvinising of Hesse. He had also, by his defence of the
doctrine of ubiquity, in his “Confession of the Doctrine of
the Person of Christ” in German, in A.D. 1577, and his Latin
treatise, “_Libelli IV. de pers. Chr. ejusque ad dexteram
sedentes divina majestate_,” in A.D. 1585, shown himself
an energetic champion of strict Lutheranism. He died in
A.D. 1603.--The unfortunate chancellor Crell, however, who
had made himself hateful to the Lutherans as the promoter and
chief instigator of all the Calvinising measures of the deceased
elector, and yet more so by his energetic interference with
the usurpations of the nobles, suffered an imprisonment of ten
years in the fortress of Königstein, and was then, after a trial
conducted in the most arbitrary manner, declared to be a traitor
and an enemy of the public peace, and executed in A.D. 1601.
§ 141.14. =The Huber Controversy, A.D. 1588-1595.=--Samuel
Huber, reformed pastor in the Canton Bern, became involved
in a controversy with Wolfgang Musculus over the doctrine of
election. Going even beyond the Lutheran doctrine, he affirmed
that all men are predestinated to salvation, although through
their own fault not all are saved. Banished from Bern in
A.D. 1588, after a disputation with Beza, he entered the
Lutheran church and became pastor at Württemberg. Here he
charged the Professor Gerlach with Cryptocalvinism, because
he taught that only believers are predestinated to salvation.
The controversy was broken off by his call to Wittenberg.
But even his Wittenberg colleagues, Polic. Leyser and Ægidius
Hunnius, fell under the suspicion of Cryptocalvinism, and were
accordingly opposed by him. When all disputation and conferences
had failed to get him to abandon his doctrine, and parties
began to be formed among the students, he was, in A.D. 1594,
removed from Wittenberg. With increasing rancour he continued
the controversy, and wandered about Germany for many years in
order to secure a following for his theory, but without success.
He died in A.D. 1624.
§ 141.15. =The Hofmann Controversy in Helmstadt,
A.D. 1598.=--The great influence which the study of the
Aristotelian philosophy in connection with that of humanism
obtained in the Julius University founded at Helmstadt in
A.D. 1576, seemed to its theological professor, Daniel Hofmann,
to threaten injury to theological study, and to be prejudicial
to pure Lutheran doctrine. He therefore attached himself to
the Romists (§ 143, 6), and took advantage of the occasion
of the conferring of doctor’s degrees to deliver a violent
invective against the incursions of reason and philosophy into
the region of religion and revelation. In consequence of this
his philosophical colleagues complained of him to the senate as
a reproacher of reason, and as one injurious to their faculty.
That court obliged him to retract and apologise, and then
deprived him of his office as professor of theology.
§ 142. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP, LIFE, AND SCIENCE IN THE
LUTHERAN CHURCH.
In reference also to the ecclesiastical constitution, by holding
firmly to the standpoint and to the working out of the system which it
had sketched out in its confession and doctrinal teaching, the Lutheran
church sought to mediate between extremes, although, amid the storms
from without and from within by which it was threatened, it was just
at this point that it was least successful. It reflected its character
more clearly and decidedly in its order of worship than in its
constitution.--The Reformation at last relaxed that hierarchical ban
which for centuries had put an absolute restraint upon congregational
singing, and had excluded the use of the vernacular in the services
of the church. Even within the limits of the Reformation era, the
German church song attained unto such a wonderful degree of excellence,
as affords the most convincing evidence of the fulness, power, and
spirituality, the genuine elevation and fresh enthusiasm, of the
spiritual life of that age. The sacred poetry of the church is the
confession of the Lutheran people, and has accomplished even more
than preaching for extending and deepening the Christian life of the
evangelical church. No sooner had a sacred song of this sort burst
forth from the poet’s heart, than it was everywhere taken up by the
Christian people of the land, and became familiar to every lip. It
found entrance into all houses and churches, was sung before the doors,
in the workshops, in the market-places, streets, and fields, and won
at a single blow whole cities to the evangelical faith.--The Christian
life of the people in the Lutheran church combined deep, penitential
earnestness and a joyfully confident consciousness of justification by
faith with the most nobly steadfast cheerfulness and heartiness natural
to the German citizen. Faithful attention to the spiritual interests
of their people, vigorous ethical preaching, and zealous efforts to
promote the instruction of the young on the part of their pastors,
created among them a healthy and hearty fear of God, without the
application of any very severe system of church discipline, a thorough
and genuine attachment to the church, strict morality in domestic
life, and loyal submission to civil authority.--Theological science
flourished especially at the universities of Wittenberg, Tübingen,
Strassburg, Marburg, and Jena.
§ 142.1. =The Ecclesiastical Constitution.=--As a mean between
hierarchism and Cæsaro-papism, between the intrusion of the
State into the province of the church, and the intrusion of
the church into the province of the State, the ecclesiastical
constitution of the Lutheran church was theoretically right
in the main, though in practice and even in theory many defects
might be pointed out. It presented at least a protest against
all commingling or subordinating of one or the other in these
two spheres. Owing to the urgent needs of the church, the
princes and magistrates, in the character of emergency-bishops,
undertook the supreme administration and management of
ecclesiastical affairs, and transferred the exercise of these
rights and duties to special boards called consistories, made
up of lay and clerical members, which were to have jurisdiction
over the clergy, the administration of discipline, and the
arranging and enforcing of the marriage laws. What had been
introduced simply as a necessity in the troubled condition of
the church in those times came gradually to be claimed as a
prescriptive right. According to the _Episcopal System_, the
territorial lord as such claimed to rank and act as _summus
episcopus_. After introducing some cautious modifications that
were absolutely indispensable, the canon law actually left
the foundation of jurisprudence untouched. The restoration of
the biblical idea of a universal priesthood of all believers
would not tolerate the retaining of the theory of an essential
distinction between the clergy and the laity. The clergy were
properly designated the servants, _ministri_, of the church,
of the word, of the altar, and all restrictions that had been
imposed upon the clergy, and distinguished them as an order,
were removed. Hierarchical distinctions among the clergy
were renounced, as opposed to the spirit of Christianity;
but the advantage of a superordination and subordination
in respect of merely human rights, in the institution of
such offices as those of superintendents, provosts, etc.,
was recognised.--Ecclesiastical property was in many cases
diverted from the church and arbitrarily appropriated by the
greed and rapacity of princes and nobles, but still in great
part, especially in Germany, it continued in the possession
of the church, except in so far as it was applied to the
endowment of schools, universities, and charitable institutions.
The monasteries fell under a doom which by reason of their
corruptions they had richly deserved. A restoration of such
establishments in an evangelical spirit was not to be thought
of during a period of convulsion and revolution.--Continuation,
§ 165, 5.
§ 142.2. =Public Worship and Art.=--While the Roman Catholic
order of worship was dominated almost wholly by fancy and
feeling, and that of the reformed church chiefly by the reason,
the Lutheran church sought to combine these two features in
her services. In Romish worship all appealed to the senses,
and in that of the Calvinistic churches all appealed to the
understanding; but in the Lutheran worship both sides of human
nature were fully recognised, and a proportionate place assigned
to each. The unity of the church was not regarded as lying in
the rigid uniformity of forms of worship, but in the unity of
the confession. Altars ornamented with candles and crucifixes,
as well as all the images that might be in churches, were
allowed to remain, not as objects of worship, but rather to
aid in exciting and deepening devotion. The liturgy was closely
modelled upon the Romish ritual of the mass, with the exclusion
of all unevangelical elements. The preaching of the word was
made the central point of the whole public service. Luther’s
style of preaching, the noble and powerful popularity of
which has probably never since been equalled, certainly
never surpassed, was the model and pattern which the other
Lutheran preachers set before themselves. Among these,
the most celebrated were Ant. Corvin, Justus Jonas, George
Spalatin, Bugenhagen, Jerome Weller, John Brenz, Veit Dietrich,
J. Mathesius, Martin Chemnitz. It was laid down as absolutely
essential to the idea of public worship, that the congregation
should take part in it, and that the common language of the
people should be exclusively employed. The adoration of the
sacrament on the altar, as well as the Romish service of the
mass, were set aside as unevangelical, and the sacrament of
the supper was to be administered to the whole congregation in
both kinds. On the other hand, it was admitted that baptism was
necessary, and might and should be administered in case of need
by laymen. The customary formulary of exorcism in baptism was
at first continued without dispute, and though Luther himself
attached no great importance to it, yet every attempt to secure
its discontinuance was resisted by the later Gnesio-Lutherans as
savouring of Cryptocalvinism. Yet it should be remembered that
such orthodox representatives of Lutheranism as Hesshus, Ægidius
Hunnius, and Martin Chemnitz, as well as afterwards John Gerhard,
Quenstedt, and Hollaz, were only in favour of its being allowed,
but not of its being regarded as necessary. Spener again
declared himself decidedly in favour of its being removed,
and in the eighteenth century it passed without any serious
opposition into disuse throughout almost the whole of the
Lutheran church, until re-introduced in the nineteenth century
by the Old Lutherans (§ 176, 2).--The church festivals were
restricted to celebrations of the facts of redemption; only
such of the feasts of Mary and the saints were retained as had
legitimate ground in the Bible history; _e.g._ the days of the
apostles, the annunciation of Mary, Michael’s Day, St. John’s
Day, etc. Art was held by Luther in high esteem, especially
music. Lucas Cranach, who died in A.D. 1553, Hans Holbein,
father and son, and Albert Dürer, who died in A.D. 1528, placed
their art as painters at the service of the gospel, and adorned
the churches with beautiful and thoughtful pictures.
§ 142.3. =Church Song.=--The character common to the sacred
songs of the Lutheran church of the sixteenth century is
that they are thoroughly suited for congregational purposes,
and are truly popular. They are songs of faith and the creed,
with a clear impress of objectivity. The writers of them do
not describe their subjective feelings, nor their individual
experiences, but they let the church herself by their mouths
express her faith, her comfort, her thanksgiving, and adoration.
But they are also genuinely songs of the people; true, simple,
hearty, bright, and bold in expression, rapid in movement,
no standing still and looking back, no elaborate painting
and describing, no subtle demonstrating and teaching. Even in
outward form they closely resemble the old German epics and
the popular historical ballad, and were intended above all
not merely to be read, but to be sung, and that by the whole
congregation. The ecclesiastical authorities began to introduce
hymn-books into the several provinces toward the end of the
seventeenth century. Previously there had only been private
collections of sacred songs, and the hymns were distinguished
only by the words of the opening line; and so widely known were
they, that the mentioning of them was sufficient to secure the
hymn so designated being sung by the congregation present at the
public service.--The sacred songs of the Reformation age possess
all these characteristics in remarkable degree. Among all the
sacred poets of that time =Luther= stands forth pre-eminent.
His thirty-six hymns or sacred poems belong to five different
classes.
1. There are free translations of Latin hymns: “Praised be
Thou, O Jesus Christ;” “Thou who art Three in unity;”
“In our true God we all believe;” “Lord God, we praise
do Thee;” “In the midst of life we are aye in death’s
embraces;” “Come God, Creator, Holy Ghost,” etc.
2. There are reproductions of original German songs: “Death
held our Lord in prison;” “Now pray we to the Holy Ghost;”
“God the Father with us be;” “Let God be praised, blessed,
and uplifted.”
3. We have also paraphrastic renderings of certain psalms:
“Ah, God in heaven, look down anew” (Ps. xii.); “Although
the mouth say of the unwise” (Ps. xiv.); “Our God, He
is a castle strong” (Ps. xlvi.); “God, unto us right
gracious be” (Ps. lxvii.); “Had God not been with us
this time” (Ps. cxxiv.); “From trouble deep I cry to
Thee” (Ps. cxxx.), etc.
4. We have also songs composed on particular Scripture themes:
“There are the holy ten commands;” “To Isaiah the prophet
this was given” (Isa. vi.); “From heaven on high I come to
you” (Luke ii.); “To Jordan, where our Lord has gone,” etc.
5. There are, finally, poems original in form and contents:
“Dear Christians, let us now rejoice;” “Jesus Christ, our
Saviour true;” “Lord, keep us by Thy word in hope.”[405]
After Luther, the most celebrated hymn-writers in the Lutheran
church of the sixteenth century are =Paul Speratus=, reformer
in Prussia, who died in A.D. 1554; =Nicholas Decius=, first
a monk, then evangelical pastor at Stettin about A.D. 1524.
=Paul Eber=, professor and superintendent in Wittenberg, who
died in A.D. 1569, author of the hymns, “When in the hour of
utmost need;” “Lord Jesus Christ, true Man and God;” and one of
which our well-known “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,” is a
paraphrase.[406] Hans Sachs, shoemaker in Nuremberg, who died in
A.D. 1567, wrote during the famine in that city in A.D. 1552 the
hymn, “Why art thou thus cast down, my heart?” =John Schneesing=,
pastor in Gothaschen, who died in A.D. 1567, wrote “Lord Jesus
Christ, in Thee alone.” =John Mathesius=, rector and deacon
in Joachimsthal, who also delivered sermons on Luther’s life,
died in A.D. 1565, wrote a beautiful morning hymn, and other
sweet sacred pieces. =Nicholas Hermann=, who died in A.D. 1561,
precentor at Joachimsthal, wrote out Mathesius’ sermons in hymns,
“The happy sunshine all is gone,” the burial hymn, “Now hush
your cries, and shed no tear,” etc. =Michael Weisse= closes the
series of hymn-writers of the Reformation age. He was a German
pastor in Bohemia, translator and editor of the sacred songs of
the Bohemian Hussites, and died in A.D. 1540. He wrote “Christ
the Lord is risen again,” and the burial hymn to which Luther
added a verse, “Now lay we calmly in the grave.”[407]
§ 142.4. In the period immediately following, from A.D. 1560
to A.D. 1618, we meet with many poetasters who write on sacred
themes in doggerel rhymes. Even those who are poets by natural
endowment, and inspired with Divine grace, are much too prolific;
but they have bequeathed to us a genuine wealth of beautiful
church songs, characterized by healthful objectivity, childlike
simplicity, and a singular power of appealing to the hearts of
the great masses of the people. But a tendency already begins to
manifest itself in the direction of that excessive subjectivity
which was the vice of hymn-writers in the succeeding period;
the doctrinal element too becomes more and more prominent,
as well as application to particular circumstances and occasions
in life; but the objective confession of faith is always still
predominant. Among the sacred poets of this period the most
important are =Bartholmaus Ringwaldt=, pastor in Brandenburg,
who died in A.D. 1597, author of “’Tis sure that awful time will
come;” =Nicholas Selnecker=, at last superintendent in Leipzig,
who died in A.D. 1592, as Melanchthon’s scholar suspected at
one time of Cryptocalvinism, but, after he had taken part in
the composition of the Formula of Concord, the object of the
most bitter hatred and constant persecution on the part of the
Cryptocalvinists of Saxony: he wrote, “O Lord my God, I cry to
Thee;” =Martin Schalling=, pastor at Regensburg and Nuremberg,
who died in A.D. 1608, wrote, “Lord, all my heart is fixed on
Thee;” =Martin Böhme= or Behemb, pastor in Lusatia, who died in
A.D. 1621, author of “Lord Jesus Christ, my Life, my Light.” The
series closes with =Philip Nicolai=, a violent and determined
opponent of Calvinism, who was latterly pastor in Hamburg, and
died in A.D. 1608. His vigorous and rhythmical poetry, with its
deep undertone of sweetness, is to some extent modelled on the
Song of Songs. He wrote “Awake, awake, for night is flying;” the
chorale in Mendelssohn’s “St. Paul,” “Sleepers, wake, a voice is
calling,” is a rendering of the same piece.--Continuation,
§ 159, 3.
§ 142.5. =Chorale Singing.=--The congregational singing, which
the Reformation made an integral part of evangelical worship,
was essentially a reproduction of the Ambrosian mode (§ 59, 5)
in a purer form and with richer fulness. It was distinguished
from the Gregorian style preeminently by this, that it
was not the singing of a choir of priests, but the popular
singing of the whole congregation. The name chorale singing,
however, was still continued, and has come to be the
technical and appropriate designation of the new mode. It is
further distinguished from the Gregorian mode by this other
characteristic, that instead of singing in a uniform monotone
of simple notes of equal length, it introduces a richer rhythm
with more lively modulation. And, finally, it is characterized
by the introduction of harmony in place of the customary unison.
But, on the other hand, the chorale singing may be regarded as
a renewal of the old _cantus firmus_, while at the same time
it sets aside the secular music style and the artificialities
of counterpoint and the elaborate ornamentation with which the
false taste of the Middle Ages had overlaid it. The congregation
sang the _cantus firmus_ or melody in unison, the singers in the
choir gave it the accompaniment of a harmony. The organ during
the Reformation age was used for support, and accompanied only
in elaborate, high-class music. But the melody was pitched in
a medium key, which as the leading voice was called _Tenor_.
The melodies for the new church hymns were obtained, partly by
adaptation of the old tunes for the Latin hymns and sequences,
partly by appropriation of popular mediæval airs, especially
among the Bohemian Brethren, partly also and mainly by the
free use of the popular song tunes of the day, to which no one
made any objection, since indeed the spiritual songs were often
parodies of the popular songs whose airs were laid hold upon
for church use. The few original melodies of this age were for
the most part composed by the authors of the hymns themselves
or by the singers, and were the outflow of the same inspiration
as had called forth the poems. They have therefore been rarely
equalled in impressiveness, spiritual glow, and power by any
of the more artistic productions of later times. Acquaintance
with the new melodies was spread among the people by itinerant
singers, chorister boys in the streets, and the city cornet
players. From the singers or those who adapted the melodies are
to be distinguished the composers, who as technical musicians
arranged the harmony and set it in a form suitable for church
use. =George Rhaw=, precentor in Leipzig, afterwards printer in
Wittenberg, and =Hans Walter=, choirmaster to the elector, both
intimate friends of Luther, were amongst the most celebrated
composers of their day. The evangelical church music reaches
its highest point of excellence toward the end of the sixteenth
century. The great musical composer, =John Eccart=, who was
latterly choirmaster in Berlin, and died in A.D. 1611, was
the most active agent in securing this perfection of his art.
In order to make the melody clearer and more distinctly heard,
it was transferred from the middle voice, the tenor, to the
higher voice or treble. The other voices now came in as simple
concords alongside of the melody, and the organ, which had now
been almost perfected by the introduction of many important
improvements, now came into general use with its pure, rich,
and accurate full harmony, as a support and accompaniment of
the congregational singing. The distinction too between singers
and composers passed more and more out of view. The skilled
artistic singing was thus brought into closer relations with
the congregational singing, and the creative power, out of which
an abundant supply of original melodies was produced, grew and
developed from year to year.
§ 142.6. =Theological Science.=--Inasmuch as the Reformation had
its origin in the word of God, and supported itself upon that
foundation alone the theologians of the Reformation were obliged
to give special attention to biblical studies. John Förster, who
died in A.D. 1556, and John Avenarius, who died in A.D. 1576,
both of Wittenberg, compiled Hebrew lexicons, which embodied
the results of independent investigations. =Matthias Flacius=,
in his _Clavis Scr. s._, provided what for that time was a
very serviceable aid to the study of Scripture. The first part
gives in alphabetical order an explanation of Scripture words
and forms of speech, the second forms a system of biblical
hermeneutics. Exegesis proper found numerous representatives.
Luther himself beyond dispute holds the front rank in this
department. After him the most important Lutheran exegetes
of that age are for the New Testament, Melanchthon; Victorin
Strigel, who wrote _Hyponm. in Novum Testamentum_; Flacius,
with his _Glossa compendiaria in Novum Testamentum_; Joachim
Camerarius, with his _Notationes in Nov. Testamentum_; =Martin
Chemnitz=, with his _Harmonia IV. Evangeliorum_, continued by
Polic. Leyser, and completed at last by John Gerhard: for the
Old Testament, especially =John Brenz=, whose commentaries are
still worthy of being consulted. Of less consequence are the
numerous commentaries of the comprehensive order, compiled by
the once scarcely less influential David Chytræus of Rostock,
who died in A.D. 1600. The series of Lutheran dogmatists
opens with =Melanchthon=, who published his _Loci communes_
in A.D. 1521. =Martin Chemnitz=, in his _Loci theologici_,
contributed an admirable commentary to Melanchthon’s work,
and it soon became the recognised standard dogmatic treatise
in the Lutheran church. In A.D. 1562 he published his _Examen
Conc. Trident._, in which he combated the Romish doctrine
with as much learning and thoroughness as good sense, mildness,
and moderation. Polemical theology was engaged upon with
great vigour amid the many internal and external controversies,
conducted often with intense passion and bitterness. In the
department of church history we have the gigantic work of
the Magdeburg centuriators, the result of the bold scheme of
=Matthias Flacius=. By his _Catalogus testium veritatis_ he
had previously advanced evidence to show that at no point in
her history had the church been without enlightened and pious
heroes of faith, who had carried on the uninterrupted historical
continuity of evangelical truth, and so secured an unbroken
succession from the early apostolic church till that of the
sixteenth century.--Continuation, § 159, 4.
§ 142.7. =German National Literature.=--The Reformation occurred
at a time when the poetry and national literature of Germany was
in a condition of profound prostration, if not utter collapse.
But it brought with it a reawakening of creative powers in
the national and intellectual life of the people. Under the
influence and stimulus of Luther’s own example there arose
a new prose literature, inspired by a broad, liberal spirit,
as the expression of a new view of the world, which led the
Germans both to think and teach in German. It was mainly the
intellectual friction from the contact of one fresh mind with
another in regard to questions agitated in the Reformation
movement that gave to the satirical writings of the age that
brilliancy, point, and popularity which in the history of German
literature was not attained before and never has been reached
since. In innumerable fugitive sheets, in the most diverse forms
of style and language, in poetry and prose, in Latin and German,
these satires poured forth contempt and scorn against and in
favour of the Reformation. As we have on the Catholic side
Thomas Murner (§ 125, 4), and on the Reformed side Nicholas
Manuel (§ 130, 4), so we have on the Lutheran side =John
Fischart=, far excelling the former two, and indeed the greatest
satirist that Germany has yet produced. To him we are mainly
indebted for the almost incessant stream of anonymous satires
of the sixteenth century. He belonged, like Sebastian Brandt and
Thomas Murner, to Strassburg, was for a long time advocate at
the royal court of justice at Spires, and died in A.D. 1589. His
satirical vein was exercised first of all upon ecclesiastical
matters: “The Night Raven (_Rabe_) and the Hooded Crow,” against
a certain J. Rabe, who had become a Roman Catholic. “On the
Pretty Life of St. Dominic and St. Francis,” an abusive effusion
against the Dominicans and Francisans [Franciscan]. “The Beehive
of the Romish Swarm,” the best known of all his satires, an
independent and original working up of the theme of the book
bearing the same name by Philip von Marnix (§ 139, 12). “The
Four-horned Bat of the Jesuits,” in rhyme, the most stinging,
witty, and scathing satire which has ever been written against
the Jesuits. Then he turned his attention to secular subjects.
His “Beehive” may be regarded as a companion piece to Murner’s
“Lutheran Buffoon;” but excelling this passionately severe
production in spirit, wit, and bright, laughing sarcasm, it is
as certain to win the pre-eminence and be awarded the victory.
Among the secular poets of that century the shoemaker of
Nuremberg, =Hans Sachs=, who died in A.D. 1576, an admirable
specimen of the Lutheran burgher, holds the first rank.
As a minstrel he is almost as unimportant as any of his
contemporaries, but conspicuously excelling in the poetic
rendering of many tales, legends, and traditions by his naïve
drollery, honest good-heartedness, and fresh, lively vigour
and style. He left behind him 208 comedies and tragedies,
1,700 humorous tales, 4,200 lays and ballads. He gave a bright
and cheery greeting to the Reformation in A.D. 1523 in his poem,
“The Wittenberg Nightingale,” and by this he also contributed
very much to further and recommend the introduction of the
teachings of the Reformation among his fellow citizens.
§ 142.8. For =Missions to the Heathen= very little was done
during this period. The reason of this indeed is not far to
seek. The Lutheran church felt that home affairs had the first
and in the meantime an all-engrossing claim upon her attention
and energies. She had not the call which the Roman Catholic
church had, in consequence of political and mercantile relations
with distant countries, to prosecute missions in heathen
lands, nor had she the means for conducting such enterprises
as those on which the monkish orders were engaged. Yet we
find the beginnings of a Lutheran mission even in this early
period, for Gustavus Vasa of Sweden founded, in A.D. 1559,
an association for carrying the gospel to the neglected and
benighted Lapps.[408]
§ 143. THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCH.
The close connection which all Lutheran national churches had obtained
in their possession of one common confession was wanting to the Reformed
church, inasmuch as there each national church had drawn up its own
confession. The victory of Calvinistic dogmatic over the Zwinglian in
the Swiss mother church (§ 138, 7) was not without influence upon the
other Reformed national churches; and Calvinism, partly in its entire
stringency and severity, partly in a form more or less modified, without
expressing itself in one common symbol, formed henceforth a bond of
union and a common standard for attacks on Lutheran dogmatics. Quite
similar was the origin of the divergence that arose between Zwinglianism
and Calvinism in the department of the ecclesiastical constitution. In
this case also the victory was with the Calvinistic organization. Its
ideal embraced the restoration of the primitive apostolic presbyterial
and synodal constitution, together with the church’s unconditional
independence of the State. This proved much more acceptable than the
theory which, under Zwingli’s auspices, had been adopted in German
Switzerland, according to which church government and the administration
of discipline were put in the hands of the Christian civil magistrates.
A rigid system of ecclesiastical penitential discipline, however, was on
all sides applied to the public and private lives of all church members.
Under such discipline the community came generally to present a picture
of singularly pure and correct morality, and not infrequently we see
exhibited a remarkable development of high moral character. It fostered
the noble confidence of the martyr spirit, which indeed only too often
ran out into extremes and made an unjustifiable use of Old Testament
precedents and patterns.--In reference to worship, the Reformed church,
with its simplest possible form of service, stripped of all pomp and
ceremony, presents the most thorough and marked contrast to the gorgeous
and richly ceremonial worship of the Roman Catholic church.--Yet the
episcopal Anglican national church (§ 139, 6), in almost all particulars
relating to constitution, worship, discipline, and customs, completely
severed its connection with the distinctive characteristics of the
Reformed church, and allied itself to the traditional forms and
ceremonies of the Roman Catholic church. On the other hand, in reference
to dogma it approaches in its mediating attitude nearer in several
respects to the view of the Lutheran church. But all the more rigidly
and exclusively did the Puritans who separated themselves from the
Anglican church, as well as the strict Presbyterian church of Scotland,
appropriate, and even carry out to further extremes, the rigorism of
the Genevan model in regard both to worship and to doctrine.
§ 143.1. =The Ecclesiastical Constitution.=--Just as in the
Lutheran church, the ecclesiastical leaders had been driven
by necessity to submit to the so-called _super-episcopate_
of the princes, it also happened here in German Switzerland
that, under pressure of circumstances, this power, as well as
church discipline and infliction of ecclesiastical censures,
was put in the hands of the magistrates. By order of Zwingli
and Œcolampadius there were founded in Zürich, in A.D. 1528,
and in Basel in A.D. 1530, synods to be held yearly for church
visitation. These were to be attended by all the pastors of
the city and district, and one or more honourable men should
be appointed from each congregation, in order to take up
and dispose of any complaints that might be made against the
life and doctrine of their pastors. But the intention of both
reformers to give this institution a controlling influence
in church government and ecclesiastical organization was
thwarted in consequence of the jealousy with which the ruling
magistrates clung to the authority that had been assigned
them in ecclesiastical matters. In Geneva, on the contrary,
Calvin’s unbending energy succeeded, after long and painful
contendings (§ 138, 3, 4), in transferring from the magistrates
the government of the church, together with church discipline
and the imposition of censures, to which here also they laid
claim, to a consistory founded by him, composed of six pastors
and twelve lay elders or presbyters, which was supreme in its
own domain, and free from all interference on the part of the
civil authorities, while the magistrates were bound to execute
civil penalties upon those excommunicated by the ecclesiastical
tribunal. The introduction of this presbyterial constitution
into Reformed national churches of large extent must have
contributed to their further extension and to the maintenance
of the national church unity. At the head of each congregation
now stood a presbytery, called in French _consistoire_, composed
of pastor and elders, the latter having been chosen either
directly by the congregation, or by the local magistrate in
accordance with the votes of the congregation, subsequently they
were also allowed to add to their own number. Then, again, the
presbyters of a particular circuit were grouped into so-called
_classes_, with a moderator chosen for the occasion; and then,
also, an annual classical synod, consisting of one pastor
and one lay elder chosen from each of the presbyteries. In a
similar way, at longer intervals, or just as necessity called
for it, provincial synods were convened, composed of deputies
from several classical synods; and from its members were
chosen representatives to the general or national synod, which
constituted the highest legislative authority for the whole
national church.[409]
§ 143.2. =Public Worship.=--Zwingli wished at first to do
away with church bells, organ playing, and church psalmody,
and even Calvin would not tolerate altars, crucifixes, images,
and candles in the churches. These he regarded as contrary
to the Divine law revealed in the decalogue, inasmuch as
the commandment that properly stood second as a distinct and
separate statute, though it had slipped out of the enumeration
usual among the Catholics and Lutherans, was understood to
forbid the use of images. The churches were reduced to bare and
unadorned places for prayer and assembly rooms for preaching,
and simple communion tables took the place of altars. Kneeling,
as savouring of ceremonialism, was discountenanced; the breaking
of bread was again introduced in the administration of the
Lord’s Supper as forming an important part of the symbolism;
private confession was abolished; exorcism at baptism, as well
as baptism in emergencies as a necessary thing, was discontinued;
the liturgy was reduced to simple prayers spoken, not sung,
and from a literalist purism the usual _Vater unser_ was changed
into _Unser Vater_. The festivals were reduced to the smallest
number possible, and only the principal Christian feasts were
celebrated, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost; while the Sunday
festival was observed with almost the Old Testament strictness
of Sabbath keeping.--In securing the introduction of psalmody
into the worship of the German Reformed church, John Zwick,
pastor at Constance, who died in A.D. 1542, was particularly
active. In A.D. 1536 he published a small psalmody, with some
Bible psalms set to Lutheran melodies. At Calvin’s request,
Clement Marot set a good number of the Psalms to popular French
airs in A.D. 1541-1543; Beza completed it, and then Calvin
introduced this French psalter into the church of Geneva. Claude
Goudimel (§ 149, 15) in A.D. 1562 published sixteen of these
psalms with four-part harmonies. He was murdered in the massacre
of St. Bartholomew at Lyons, in A.D. 1572. A professor of law at
Königsberg, Ambrose Lobwasser, in A.D. 1573 made an arrangement
of the Psalter in the German language after the style of
Marot. This psalter, notwithstanding its poetical deficiencies,
continued in use for a long time in Germany and Switzerland.
Zwingli’s aversion to congregational singing was given effect
to only in Zürich, but even there the service of praise was
introduced by a decree of the council in A.D. 1598. In the other
German Swiss cantons they did not confine themselves to the use
of the Psalms, but adopted unhesitatingly spiritual songs by
both Reformed and Lutheran poets. Among the former, who neither
in number nor in ability could approach the latter, the most
important were John Zwick and Ambrose Blaurer (§ 133, 3). It
was only in the seventeenth century that the Lutheran sister
church abandoned her rigid adherence to the exclusive use of
Lobwasser’s psalms in congregational singing, when the rise of
Pietism, and afterwards the spread of rationalism, overcame this
narrow-mindedness.[410]
§ 143.3. =The English Puritans.=--The Reformation under
Elizabeth (§ 139, 6), with its Lutheranizing doctrinal
standpoint and Catholicizing forms of constitution and worship,
had been sanctioned in A.D. 1559 by the Act of Uniformity
in the exercise of the royal supremacy that was claimed over
the whole ecclesiastical institutions of the country. But
the Protestants who had fled from the persecutions of Bloody
Mary and had returned in vast troops when Elizabeth ascended
the throne brought with them from their foreign resorts,
in Switzerland from Geneva, Zürich, Basel, in Germany from
Strassburg, Frankfort, Emden, entirely different notions about
the nature of genuine evangelical Christianity; and now with
all the assumption of confessors they sought to have these ideas
realized in their native land. Inspired for the most part with
the rigorist spirit of the Genevan Reformation, they desired,
instead of the royal supremacy, to have the independence
of the church proclaimed, and instead of the hierarchical
episcopal system a presbyterial constitution with strict church
discipline, arranged in accordance with the Genevan model.
They also gave a one-sided prominence to the formal principle
of the Holy Scripture, adhered rigidly to the doctrinal theory
of Calvin and to a mode of worship as bare as possible, stripped
of every vestige of popish superstition, such as priestly dress,
altars, candles, crucifixes, sign of the cross, forms of prayer,
godfathers, confirmation, kneeling at the sacrament, bowing the
head at the mention of the name of Jesus, bells, organs, etc.
On account of their opposition to the Act of Uniformity, these
were designated Nonconformists or Dissenters. They were also
called =Puritans=, because they insisted upon an organization
of the church purified from every human invention, and ordered
strictly in accordance with the word of God. Their principles,
which were enunciated first of all in private conventicles,
found a very wide acceptance amongst ministers and people.
This movement proved too strong to be suppressed, even by the
frequent deprivation and banishment of the ministers, or the
fining and imprisonment of their adherents. Amid the severity
of persecution and oppression Puritanism continued to grow,
and in A.D. 1572 numerous separatist congregations provided
themselves with a presbyterial and synodal constitution;
the former for the management of the affairs of particular
congregations, the latter for the settlement of questions
affecting the whole church. Specially offensive to the
queen, and therefore strictly forbidden by her and rigorously
suppressed, were the prophesyings introduced into many English
churches after the pattern of the prophesyings of the church
of Zürich. These were week-day meetings of the congregation,
at which the Sunday sermons were further explained and
illustrated from Scripture by the preachers, and applied to
the circumstances and needs of the church of that day.[411]
§ 143.4. Even before the sixteenth century had come to an end
an ultra-puritan tendency had been developed, the adherents
of which were called Brownists, from their leader Robert Brown.
As chaplain of the Duke of Norfolk, he was brought into contact
at Norwich with Dutch Anabaptist refugees; and stirred up by
them, he began a violent and bitter polemic, not only against
the Cæsaro-papism and episcopacy of the State church, but also
against the aristocratic element in the presbyterial and synodal
constitution. He taught that church and congregation were to be
completely identified; that every separate congregation, because
subject to no other authority than that of Christ and His word,
has the right of independently arranging and administering its
own affairs according to the decisions of the majority. Having
been cast into prison, but again liberated through the powerful
influence of his friends, he retired in A.D. 1581 to Holland,
and founded a small congregation there at Middleburg in Zealand.
When this soon became reduced to a mere handful, he returned
to England in A.D. 1589, and there renewed his agitation; but
afterwards submitted to the hierarchical State church, and
died in A.D. 1630 in the enjoyment of a rich living. After his
apostasy, the jurist Henry Barrow took his place as leader of
the Brownists, who still numbered many thousands, and were now
called after him Barrowists. Persecuted by the government and
harassed by severe measures from A.D. 1594, whole troops of them
retreated to the Netherlands, where in several of the principal
cities they formed considerable congregations, and issued, in
A.D. 1598, their first symbolical document, “The Confession of
Faith of certain English People exiled.”--The second founder of
the party, a more trustworthy leader and more vigorous apologist,
was the pastor John Robinson, who, in A.D. 1608, with his
Norwich congregation settled at Amsterdam, and in A.D. 1610
moved to Leyden. He died in A.D. 1625. The fundamental points
in the constitution under his leadership were these:
1. Complete equality of all the members of the church among
themselves, and consequently the setting aside of all
clerical prerogatives;
2. Thorough subordination of the college of presbyters to
the will of the majority of the congregation, from which
circumstance they obtained the name of =Congregationalists=;
and
3. The perfect autonomy of separate congregations and their
independence alike of every civil authority and of every
synodal judicature, from which characteristic they obtained
the name of =Independents=.
Synodal assemblies were allowed merely for the purpose of mutual
consultation and advice, and when so restricted were regarded
as beneficial. With this end in view a _Congregational board_
was appointed to sit in London, which formed a common centre
of union. And as in constitution, so also in worship there was
a complete breach made with all the traditions and developments
of church history. With the exception of Sunday all feast
days were abolished. In the assemblies for public worship each
individual had the right of free speech for the edification
of the congregation. All liturgical formularies and prescribed
prayers, even the Lord’s Prayer not excepted, were set aside, as
hindering the mission of the Holy Spirit in the congregation.--In
order to preserve for their descendants the sacred heritage of
their faith, and their native English language and nationality,
and in order to save them from the moral dangers to which they
were exposed in large cities, but to an equal extent at least
inspired by the wish to break new ground for the kingdom of God
in the New World, many of their families set out, in A.D. 1620,
from Holland for North America, and there, as “Pilgrim Fathers,”
amid indescribable hardships, established a colony in the wastes
of Massachusetts, and laid the foundations of that Congregational
denomination which has now grown into so powerful and influential
a church.[412]
§ 143.5. =Theological Science.=--In A.D. 1523, the grand
council at Zürich set up the peculiar institution of prophesying
(1 Cor. xiv. 29) or biblical conferences. Pastors along with
students, as well as certain scholars specially called for
the purpose, were required to meet together every morning,
with the exception of Sundays and Fridays, in the choir of the
cathedral, where, after a short opening prayer, public exegetical
expositions of the Old Testament were given in the regular order
of books and chapters, with a strict and detailed comparison
of the Vulgate, the LXX. and the original text; and then at the
close one of the professors stated the results of the conference
in a practical discourse for the edification of the congregation.
At a later period theological studies flourished at Geneva and
Basel, in the French church at the academy of Saumur and the
theological seminaries of Montauban, Sedan, and Montpellier.
=Sebastian Münster=, formerly at Heidelberg, afterwards at Basel,
issued, in A.D. 1523, a complete Hebrew lexicon. The Zürich
theologians, Leo Judä and others, in A.D. 1524-1529 translated
Luther’s Bible into the Swiss dialect, making, however, an
independent revision in accordance with the original text. At
the instigation of the Waldensians, =Robert Olivetan= of Geneva
(§ 138, 1) undertook, in A.D. 1535, a translation of the Holy
Scriptures from the original into the French language; but in
so far as the New Testament is concerned he followed almost
literally the translation of Faber (§ 120, 8). In subsequent
editions it was in various particulars greatly improved,
although even to this day it remains very unsatisfactory.
=Theodore Beza= gave an improved recension of the New Testament
text and a new Latin translation of it. Sebastian Münster edited
the Old Testament text with an independent Latin translation.
Also =Leo Judä= in Zürich undertook a similar work, for which
he was well qualified by a competent knowledge of languages.
=Sebastian Castellio= in Geneva endeavoured to make the prophets
and apostles speak in classical Latin and in full Ciceronian
periods. Most successful was the Latin translation of the
Old Testament which =Immanuel Tremellius= at Heidelberg, in
connection with his son-in-law =Francis Junius=, produced.
=John Piscator=, dismissed from Heidelberg under the Elector
Louis VI. (§ 144, 1), from A.D. 1584 professor in the academy
founded at Herborn during that same year, published a new
German translation of the Bible, which was authoritatively
introduced into the churches at Bern and in other Reformed
communities. Commentators on Holy Scripture were also numerous
during this age. Besides =Calvin=, who far outstrips them
all (§ 138, 5), the following were distinguished for their
exegetical performances: Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Conrad Pellican
(§ 120, 4 footnote), Theodore Beza, Francis Junius, John
Piscator, John Mercer, and the Frenchman Marloratus.--As
a dogmatist =Calvin=, again beyond all question occupies the
very front rank. In speculative power and thorough mastery
of his materials he excels all his contemporaries. Leo Judä’s
catechisms, two in German and one in Latin, in which the
scholar puts the question and the teacher gives the answer and
explanation, continued long in use in the Zürich church. Among
the German Reformed theologians =Andrew Hyperius= of Marburg,
who died in A.D. 1564, takes an honourable place as an exegete
by his expositions of the Pauline epistles, as a dogmatist by
his _Methodus theologiæ_, as a homilist by his _De formandis
concionibus s._, and as the first founder of theological
encyclopædia by his _De recte formando theolog. studio_.--The
pietistic efforts of the English Puritan party found a fit
nursery in the University of Cambridge, where =William Whitaker=,
who died in A.D. 1598, the author of _Catechismus s. institutio
pietatis_, and especially =William Perkins=, who died in
A.D. 1602, author of _De casibus conscientiæ_, besides many
other English works of edification, laboured unweariedly in
endeavouring to infuse a pious spirit into the theological
studies. Both were also eager and enthusiastic supporters of
the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination; but the attempt,
through the “Nine Lambeth Articles,” laid before Archbishop
Whitgift in his palace in A.D. 1598, and accepted and approved
by him, to make this doctrine an absolute doctrinal test for
the university was frustrated by the decided veto of Queen
Elizabeth.--Continuation, § 160, 6.
§ 143.6. =Philosophy.=--For the formal scientific construction
of systematic theology the Aristotelian dialectic, as the
heritage bequeathed by the mediæval scholasticism, continued
to exercise upon the occupants of the Reformed professorial
chairs, as well as in Lutheran seminaries, a dominating
influence far down into the seventeenth century. To emancipate
philosophy, and with it also in the same degree theology,
from these fetters, which hindered every free movement, and
inaugurate a simpler scientific method, was an attempt made
first of all by =Peter Ramus=, who from A.D. 1551 was professor
of dialectic and rhetoric in Paris, distinguished also as
a polyhistor, humanist, and mathematician, and diligent in
disseminating his views from the platform and by the press.
As he had openly declared himself a Calvinist, he had repeatedly
to seek refuge in flight. After a long residence in Switzerland
and Germany, where he gained many adherents, who were known
by the name of Ramists, he thought that after the Peace of
St. Germain (§ 139, 15), in A.D. 1571, he might with safety
return to Paris; but there, in A.D. 1572, he fell a victim to
Romish fanaticism on the night of St. Bartholomew.--Continuation,
§ 163, 1.
§ 143.7. The Reformed church made =one missionary= attempt in
A.D. 1557. A French adventurer, Villegagnon, laid before Admiral
Coligny a plan for the colonization of the persecuted Huguenots
in Brazil. With this proposal there was linked a scheme for
conducting a mission among the heathen aborigines. He sailed
under Coligny’s patronage in A.D. 1555 with a number of Huguenot
artisans, and founded Fort Coligny at Rio de Janeiro. At
his request Calvin sent him two Geneva pastors in A.D. 1557.
The intolerable tyranny which Villegagnon exercised over the
unprotected colonists, the failure of their efforts among the
natives, famine, and want impelled them in the following year
to seek again their native shores, which they reached after
a most disastrous voyage. All were not able to secure a place
in the returning ships, and even of those who started several
died of starvation on the way.--Continuation, § 161, 7.[413]
§ 144. CALVINIZING OF GERMAN LUTHERAN NATIONAL CHURCHES.
The Cryptocalvinist controversies conducted with such party violence
proved indeed in vain so far as winning over to Philippist Calvinism
the Lutheran church as a whole was concerned (§ 141, 10, 13); but
they did not succeed in hindering, but rather fostered and advanced,
the public adoption of the Reformed Confession on the part of several
national churches in Germany or their being driven by force to
accept the Calvinistic constitution and creed. The first instance
of a procedure of this sort is to be found in the Palatinate. It was
followed by Bremen, Anhalt, and in the beginning of the next century
by Hesse Cassel and the electoral dynasty of Brandenburg (§ 154, 3).
§ 144.1. =The Palatinate, A.D. 1560.=--Tilemann Hesshus,
formerly the scholar and devoted admirer of Melanchthon, had
been banished by the magistrates as a disturber of the peace
from Goslar, and then from Rostock, on account of his reckless
and severe administration of church discipline. At Melanchthon’s
recommendation, the Elector Ottheinrich of the Palatinate called
him as professor and general superintendent to Heidelberg, in
A.D. 1558. Here he came into collision with his deacon William
Klebitz. The latter had produced, on the occasion of his
receiving his bachelor’s degree, a thesis in which he vindicated
a Calvinizing theory of the Lord’s Supper, whereupon Hesshus
condemned and suspended him, in A.D. 1559. But Klebitz would not
move. Passion on both sides developed into senseless fury, which
found expression in the pulpit and at the altar. The new elector,
Frederick III. the Pious, A.D. 1559-1576, sent both into exile,
and obtained an opinion from Melanchthon, which advised him to
hold by the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians x. 16, “the bread is
the communion of the body of Christ.” The elector, who had long
been favourably inclined to the Reformed doctrine and worship,
now introduced, in A.D. 1560, into all the churches of his
domains a Reformed order of service, had altars, baptismal
fonts, images, and even organs removed from the churches,
filled the professors’ chairs with foreign Calvinistic teachers,
and in A.D. 1562 had the “Heidelberg Catechism” composed by two
Heidelberg professors, Zach. Ursinus and Gaspar Olevianus, for
use in the schools throughout his territories.[414] In respect
of that simplicity which befits a popular manual, in power
and spirituality, it is not to be compared to Luther’s “Short
Catechism,” but it is certainly distinguished by learning,
theological genius, Christian fervour, and moderate, peaceful
spirit, and deserves in an eminent degree the acceptance which
it has found, not only among the German, but also among the
foreign Reformed churches. Calvin’s doctrine of predestination
is avoided, and his theory of the Lord’s Supper is taught in a
form approaching as near as possible to the Lutheran view, but
the Roman Catholic mass is characterized as execrable idolatry.
The introduction of this catechism, however, completed the
severance of the Palatinate from the Lutheran church. Brenz
in Stuttgart attacked its doctrine of the supper; Bullinger
in Zürich and Beza in Geneva defended it with passionate
eagerness; and the conference arranged by the elector to
be held at Maulbronn, in A.D. 1564, between the theologians
of the Palatinate and of Württemberg, during its six days’
discussions increased the bitterness of parties, and made
the split perpetual. The Lutheran German states, irritated
by the secession of the elector, complained of him to the Diet
of Augsburg, in A.D. 1564, that he had broken the religious
Peace of Augsburg by the forcible introduction of Calvinism. He
answered in defence, that he had not himself read Calvin’s works,
and was therefore not in a position to know what Calvinism was;
that at Naumburg, in A.D. 1561 (§ 141, 11), he had subscribed
the _Augustana_, more correctly the _Variata_, and still adhered
to the confession he then made. The diet then did not venture to
interfere with him, and was satisfied with a simple expression
of disapproval. By the introduction of presbyteries by the order
of the elector, in A.D. 1570, for the administration of church
discipline, Olevianus embroiled himself in controversy with the
electoral councillor and professor of medicine at Heidelberg,
Thomas Erastus (§ 117, 4), who would much rather have the Zürich
church order introduced (§ 143) than the Zwinglian theory of
the supper. This idea he very persistently pressed, but without
success. Although himself a member of the ecclesiastical council,
he yet fell under its ban, along with Neuser and Sylvanus
(§ 148, 3) as suspected of unitarianism, but this charge has
never been proved against him. In A.D. 1510 he settled in Basel,
and died there, in A.D. 1583, as professor of moral philosophy.
His controversial treatise, “_Explicatio gravissimæ quæstionis,
utrum excommunicatio mandato nitatur divino, an excogitata
sit ab hominibus_,” was published after his death. Beza
answered in two dissertations: “_De presbyteriis_” and “_De
excommunicatione_.” Notice of his theory was now taken in
England and Scotland, and among the names of sects in these
countries during the seventeenth century we find that of
Erastians. At this very day all subordinating of church
government under the authority of the State is commonly styled
Erastianism.[415]--The reign of Louis VI., A.D. 1576-1583,
a zealous friend of the Formula of Concord, was of too short
duration to secure the complete restoration of Lutheranism
throughout his dominions. The count-palatine, John Casimir,
who conducted the government as regent during the minority,
systematically drove out all Lutheran pastors and trained up
his ward Frederick IV. in Calvinism.--Continuation, § 153, 3.
§ 144.2. =Bremen, A.D. 1562.=--In Bremen the cathedral
preacher, Albert Rizæus von Hardenberg, long lay under
suspicion of favouring the Zwinglian theory of the sacraments.
He publicly repudiated the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of
the body of Christ, which his colleague John Timann had defended
in his treatise, “_Farrago sententiarum ... de cœna Domini_,”
of A.D. 1555. Upon this there began a lively controversy between
them. All the pastors took Timann’s side, but Hardenberg had
a powerful supporter in the burgomaster Daniel van Büren, and
an opinion obtained from Melanchthon in A.D. 1557 also favoured
him by counselling concession. Through his refusal to subscribe
a confession of faith in reference to the supper submitted
to him by the council, the excitement in Bremen was increased,
and spread from thence over all the provinces of Lower Saxony.
Timann died in A.D. 1557. His place as champion of the Lutheran
doctrine of the supper was taken by Hesshus, who had been driven
out of Heidelberg in A.D. 1559, and had almost immediately
afterward been called to Bremen. He challenged Hardenberg to
a public disputation, which, however, did not come off, because
the new Archbishop of Bremen, Duke George of Brunswick-Lüneberg
[Lüneburg], forbade Hardenberg to take part in it, and instead
of this brought the matter before the league of the cities of
Lower Saxony. The league held a provincial diet at Brunswick,
in A.D. 1561, where Hardenberg was removed from his office, yet
without detracting from his honour. He went now to Oldenburg,
and died in A.D. 1574 as pastor at Emden. Hesshus had left
Bremen in A.D. 1560, having accepted a call to Magdeburg,
and from thence continued his controversy with Hardenberg. His
successor in Bremen, Simon Musæus, no less passionately than he
insisted upon the expulsion of all adherents of Hardenberg, and
had indeed managed to get the council to agree to the proposal
when things took a turn in an altogether different direction.
Büren, in spite of all opposition, became the chief burgomaster
in A.D. 1562. Musæus and other twelve pastors were now expelled,
and also the councillors who were in favour of Lutheranism felt
that they could do nothing else than quit the city. By foreign
mediation an understanding was come to in A.D. 1568, by which
those who had been driven out were allowed to return to the city,
but not to their offices. All the churches of Bremen, with the
exception of the cathedral, which obtained a Lutheran pastor
again in A.D. 1568, continued in the possession of the Reformed
party.--But Hesshus was in A.D. 1562 expelled also from
Magdeburg, as well as afterwards from his position as court
preacher in Neuburg, in A.D. 1569, and from his professorship
at Jena in A.D. 1573 (§ 141, 10), on account of his passionate
and violent polemics. He was also expelled from his bishopric
of Samland, in A.D. 1577, as a teacher of error, because he had
ascribed omnipotence, etc., to the human nature of Christ _etiam
in abstracto_. He died in A.D. 1588 as professor in Helmstadt.
§ 144.3. =Anhalt, A.D. 1597.=--After the death of Prince
Joachim Ernest four Anhalt dynasties were formed by his sons,
Dessau, Bemburg, Köthen, Zerbst. John George, first head of
the family of Anhalt-Dessau, reigned on behalf of his brothers,
who had not yet come of age, from A.D. 1587 till A.D. 1603,
and married a daughter of John Casimir, the count-palatine.
After having refused to sign the Formula of Concord, he began
the Calvinization of the land in A.D. 1589 by striking out
the exorcism, and then, in A.D. 1596, he put the Reformed
church order in place of the Lutheran. Soon after this Luther’s
catechism was set aside, and in A.D. 1597 a document was
produced, consisting of twenty-eight Calvinistic articles with
a modified doctrine of predestination, which all the pastors
under pain of banishment from the country, were required to
subscribe. The most active agents in this movement were Caspar
Peucer (§ 141, 10), who had been expelled from Wittenberg,
and the superintendent Wolfgang Amling of Zerbst. In A.D. 1644,
however, Anhalt-Zerbst returned to the old Lutheran Confession,
under Prince John, who had been trained up by his mother in the
Lutheran faith.
III. THE DEFORMATION.
§ 145. CHARACTER OF THE DEFORMATION.
That in a spiritual movement so powerful as that which the Reformation
called forth enthusiasts and extremists of various sorts should seek to
push forward their fancies and vagaries is nothing more than might have
been expected. But that such excrescences are not to be charged against
the Reformation, as constituting an essential part of it, may be shown
from the way in which the Reformation and the Deformation are constantly
put in antagonism with one another. The starting point is clearly
the same in the one case as in the other; namely, opposition to and
revolt against the debased condition of the church of the age. But the
Reformation distinguishes itself completely from the very first from
the Deformation, often joins its forces even with those of Catholicism
in order to secure the overthrow of what it regarded as a false and
dangerous development; and so generally we find the champions of that
movement manifesting as bitter a hatred toward the Protestant reformers
as toward the Romanists. Its origin is to be explained by the tendency
inherent in human nature, when once embarked on a course of opposition,
to rush to the extreme of radicalism, which showed itself in this case
partly in the form of rationalism, partly in the form of mysticism. The
Reformation recognised the word of God in Holy Scripture as the only
rule and standard in matters of religion, and as a judge and arbiter
over tradition. The rationalistic spirit in the deformatory movement,
on the other hand, subordinates Holy Scripture to reason, and estimates
revealed truth in accordance with the supposed requirement of logical
thought. The Reformation offers opposition to the Catholic deification
of the church, but the Deformation goes the length of contesting the
divinity of Christ (Antitrinitarians and Unitarians). On the other
hand, the mystical side of the Deformation, which not infrequently
amounts to a more or less clearly expressed pantheism, may be regarded
as an extreme and exaggerated statement of the reformers’ demand for
a more spiritual conception of the religious life in opposition to the
externalism of Romanism. It places alongside of the word as expressed
in Holy Scripture what it calls an inner illumination by the Holy
Spirit as an equally high or even a higher kind of revelation, despises
the sacraments, as well as all public or external forms of Divine
worship. A third deformatory tendency, and that indeed which during
the Reformation era was most powerful, is represented by Anabaptism.
The ultra-reformatory endeavours of the movement aimed, not only
at directing the private and ecclesiastical life of the individual
Christian, but also at reconstructing, according to what it regarded
as the apostolic standard, the whole fabric of the social and civil
life. It derived its name from the demand for rebaptism which was made
as a consequence of the denial of the usefulness and validity of infant
baptism. This was, indeed, the one common term of its confession, in
which its members, giving way in many directions to individualistic
subjective peculiarities, were required to agree. Adult baptism was
thus made the characteristic note of their community as a distinct sect.
The Catholic notions prevailing during the Middle Ages as to
the manner in which heretics ought to be treated were so firmly
held by the Protestants, that even Calvin without hesitation,
in A.D. 1553, delivered over one who denied the doctrine of
the Trinity (§ 148, 2) to be punished by the civil authorities.
Their sentence of death by fire at the stake was carried out
under his sanction and that of almost all the notable reformers
of the day, Bullinger and Farel, Beza and Viret, Œcolampadius,
Bucer, and Peter Martyr, even Melanchthon and Urbanus Rhegius.
At an earlier period indeed Luther had occasionally, roused to
indignation by what he beheld of the horrors of the Inquisition,
opposed the idea that heretics as such should be punished with
torture and death, and gradually he secured the victory in
Protestant theory and practice for the view that heretics as
such should neither be compelled to retract nor be put to death,
but rather should be brought to a better mind and put out of the
way of doing harm by imprisonment or banishment.
§ 146. MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM.
Besides the true evangelical mysticism within the church, which
Luther throughout his whole life esteemed very highly as a deepening
of the Christian religious life, and which the Lutheran church had
never ruled out of its pale, an unevangelical as well as thoroughly
anti-ecclesiastical mysticism broke out at a very early period in
quite a multitude of different forms. In the case of Schwenkfeld this
tendency, though characterized by very decided hostility to the church,
occupied an advantageous position, as well by the attitude which it
assumed to theology as from the quiet and sober manner in which it
conducted its propaganda. Agrippa and Paracelsus are representatives
of a mysticism with a basis in natural philosophy, which was wrought
out into fantastic forms by Valentine Weigel in his theosophy.
Sebastian Franck drew his mysticism from the fountains of Eckhart’s
and Tauler’s writings; and Giordano Bruno, by his wild, almost
delirious mysticism, culminating in the boldest pantheism, won for
himself the fiery stake. The French _Libertins spirituels_ embraced
a sublime antinomian pantheism, while the Familists, who appeared at
a later period in England, were banded together in the service of an
apotheosis of love like the members of one family.
§ 146.1. =Schwenkfeld and his Followers.=--Among the mystics of
the Reformation period hostile to the church, Caspar Schwenkfeld,
a Silesian nobleman of an old family, of the line of Ossingk,
holds a prominent and honourable place as a man of deep and
genuine piety. At first he attached himself with enthusiasm
to the Wittenberg Reformation; but as it advanced his heart,
which was exclusively set upon an inward, mystical Christianity,
became dissatisfied. In A.D. 1525 he met personally with Luther
at Wittenberg. The friendly relations that were maintained
there, notwithstanding all the divergences that became apparent
on fundamental matters and in the way of looking at things,
soon gave place on Schwenkfeld’s side to open antagonism. He
expressed himself strongly in reference to his dissatisfaction
with the Wittenberg reformers, saying that he would rather
join the papists than the Lutherans. Even in A.D. 1528 he had
been expelled from his native land, and now began operations
at Strassburg, where Bucer opposed him; and then, in A.D. 1534,
in Swabia, where he encountered the vigorous opposition
of Jac. Andreä. In every place he set himself in direct
antagonism, not only to the German, but also to the Swiss
reformers, and engaged in incessant controversies with the
theologians, working steadily in the interests of a reformation
in accordance with his own peculiar views. He died in A.D. 1561
at Ulm, and left behind him in Swabia and Silesia a handful of
followers, who, in A.D. 1563, issued a complete edition of the
“Christian Orthodox Books and Writings of the Noble and Faithful
Man, Caspar Schwenkfeld,” in four folio volumes. Expelled from
Silesia in A.D. 1728, many of them fled into the neighbouring
state of Lausitz, others to Pennsylvania in North America, where
they found some small communities. What Schwenkfeld so keenly
objected to in the Lutheran Reformation was nothing else than
its firm biblico-ecclesiastical objectivity. Luther’s adherence
to the unconditional authority of the word of God he declared
to be a worship of the letter. He himself gave to the inner word
of God’s Spirit in men a place superior to the outward word of
God in Scripture. All external institutions of the church met
with his most uncompromising opposition. In a manner similar
to that of Osiander (§ 141, 2), he identified justification and
sanctification, and explained it as an incarnation of Christ
in the believer. Rejecting the doctrine of the _communicatio
idiomatum_, he taught a thorough “deifying of the flesh of
Christ,” having its foundation in the birth by the Virgin Mary,
regenerated in faith and completed by suffering, death, and
resurrection; so that in His state of exaltation His Divine
and human natures are perfectly combined into one. Infant
baptism he condemned, and affirmed that a regenerate person
can live without sin. In the Lord’s Supper according to him
everything depended upon the inward operation of the Spirit.
The bread in the sacrament is only a symbol of the spiritual
truth that Christ is the true bread for the soul. He laid
special emphasis on John vi. 51, and regarded the τοῦτο of the
words of institution not as the subject but as the predicate:
“My body is this;” _i.e._ is bread unto eternal life.[416]
§ 146.2. =Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Weigel.=--=Agrippa von
Nettesheim=, who died in A.D. 1535, a man of extensive and
varied scholarship, who boasted of his knowledge of secret
things, led an exceedingly changeful and adventurous career
as a statesman and soldier, taught medicine, theology, and
jurisprudence, lashed the monks with his biting satires,
so that they had him persecuted as a heretic, contended against
the belief in witchcraft, exposed mercilessly in his treatise
_De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum_ the weak points of
the dominant scholasticism, and in opposition to it wrought
out in his book _De occulta philosophia_ his own system of
cabbalistic mystical philosophy.--A man of a quite similar
type was the learned Swiss physician Philip Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombastus =Paracelsus= of Hohenheim, who
died in A.D. 1541; a man of genius and a profound thinker, but
with an ill-regulated imagination and an over-luxuriant fancy,
which led him to profess that he had found the solution of all
the mysteries of the Divine nature, as well as of terrestrial
and super-terrestrial nature, and that he had discovered
the philosopher’s stone. These two continued to retain their
position within the limits of the Catholic church.--=Valentine
Weigel=, on the contrary, who died in A.D. 1588, was a Lutheran
pastor at Schopau in Saxony, universally respected for his
consistent, godly character and his earnest, devoted labours.
His mystico-theosophical tendency, influenced by Tauler and
Paracelsus, came to be fully understood only long after his
death by the publication of his practical works, “Church and
House Postils on the Gospels,” “A Book on Prayer,” “A Directory
for Attaining the Knowledge of all things without Error,” etc.;
and down to the nineteenth century he had many followers among
the quiet and contemplative throughout the land. While utterly
depreciating as well the theology of the church as all sorts
of external forms in worship, he placed all the more weight
upon the inner light and the anointing with the Spirit of God,
without which all teaching and prayer will be vain. In man he
sees a microcosmus of the universe, and man’s growth in holiness
he regarded as a continuation of the incarnation of God in him.
He still allowed a place to the doctrine of the church as an
allegorical shell for the knowledge of the soul to God and
the world, and from this it may be explained how he was able
unhesitatingly to subscribe the Formula of Concord. Bened.
Biedermann, who was for a long time his deacon, and then
his successor in the pastoral office, sympathised with his
master’s views, and subsequently made vigorous attempts to
disseminate them in his writings. On this account he was deposed
in A.D. 1660.[417]
§ 146.3. =Franck, Thamer, and Bruno.=--=Sebastian Franck= of
Donauwört, in Swabia, a learned printer and voluminous writer
in German and Latin, for some time also a soap-boiler, had
attached himself enthusiastically to the Reformation, which for
several years he served as an evangelical pastor. Subsequently,
however, he broke off from it, condemned and abused with sharp
criticism and biting satire all the theological movements of
his age, demanded unrestricted religious liberty, defended the
Anabaptists against the intolerance of the theologians, and
sought satisfaction for himself in a mysticism tending toward
pantheism constructed out of Erigena, Eckhart, and Tauler.
Among his theologico-philosophical writings, the most important
are the “Golden Ark, or Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,”
and especially the 280 spirited “Paradoxa, _i.e._ Wonderful
Words out of Holy Scripture.” Against what he regarded as
the idolatrous worship of the letter in Luther’s theology he
directed “The Book sealed with Seven Seals.” In unreconciled
contradictions collected in this tract out of Scripture he
thinks to be able to prove that God Himself wished to warn us
against the deifying of the letter. The letter is the devil’s
seat, the sword of antichrist; he has the letter on his side,
the spirit against him. With the letter the old Pharisees
slew Christ, and their modern representatives are doing the
same to-day. The letter killeth, the spirit alone giveth life.
He also attached very little importance to the sacrament and
external ordinances. He makes no distinction, or at most only
one of degree, between God and nature. God, God’s Word, God’s
Son, the Holy Spirit, and nature are with him only various
aspects or manifestations of the same power, which is all
in all; and his theory of evil inclines strongly to dualism.
On the other side, he deserves the heartiest recognition as
a German prose writer in respect of the purity, copiousness,
and refinement of his style, and as the author of the first
text books of history and geography in the German language.
After a changeful and eventful life in several cities of South
Germany, having been expelled successively from Nuremberg,
Strassburg, and Ulm, he died at Basel in A.D. 1542.--A career
in every point resembling his was that of =Theobald Thamer=, of
Alsace. After having sat at the feet of Luther in Wittenberg as
an enthusiastic disciple, he took up an attitude of opposition
to the Reformation by giving absolute determining authority to
the subjective principle of conscience, and by the rejection of
the Lutheran doctrine of justification. He went over ultimately
to the Roman Catholic church in A.D. 1557, to seek there
the peace of soul that he had lost, and died as professor
of theology at Freiburg, in A.D. 1569.--A far more powerful
thinker than either of these two was the Italian Dominican monk,
=Giordano Bruno= of Nola. His violent and abusive invectives
against monkery, transubstantiation, and the immaculate
conception obliged him, in A.D. 1580, to flee to Geneva.
From thence he betook himself to Paris, where he delivered
lectures on the _ars magna_ of Lullus (§ 103, 7); afterwards
spent several years in London engaged in literary work, from
A.D. 1586 to A.D. 1588 taught at Wittenberg, and on leaving
that place delivered an impassioned eulogy on Luther. After
a further continued life of adventure during some years
in Germany, he returned to Italy, and was burnt in Rome in
A.D. 1600 as a heretic. A complete edition of his numerous
writings in the Italian language does not exist. These are
partly allegorico-satirical, partly metaphysical, on the idea
of the Divine unity and universality, in which the poetical
and philosophical are blended together. He adopted the doctrine
of God set forth by Nicholas of Cusa (§ 113, 6), representing
the deity as at once the maximum and the minimum, and carried
out this idea to its logical conclusion in pantheism. Bruno
deserves special recognition as a consistent protester against
the geocentric theories of ecclesiastical scholastic science,
and for this merits a place among the first apologists of the
Copernican system.[418]
§ 146.4. =The Pantheistic Libertine Sects of the Spirituals=
in France, reminding us in theory and practice of the mediæval
Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5), had their
origin in the Walloon provinces of the Netherlands. As early as
A.D. 1529 a certain Coppin preached their gospel in his native
city of Lille or Ryssel. Quintin and Pocquet, both from the
province of Hennegau, transplanted it to France in A.D. 1530.
At the court of the liberal-minded and talented Queen Margaret
of Navarre (§ 120, 8), they found at first a hearty welcome, and
from this centre carried on secretly a successful propaganda,
until Calvin’s influence over the queen, as well as his
energetic polemic, “Against the Fantastic and Mad Sect of the
Libertines, who call themselves Spirituals, A.D. 1545,” put
a stop to their further progress. The contemporary =Libertines
of Geneva= (§ 138, 3, 4), who rose up against the rigoristic
church discipline of Calvin, are not to be confounded with these
Netherland-French Libertines, although their apostle Pocquet
also lived and laboured for a long time in Geneva. The impudent
immorality of the Genevan Libertines was quite different
from the moral levity of the _Spirituels_, which had always a
spiritualistic-pantheistic significance, their characteristics
consisting rather in a broad denial of and contempt for
Christian doctrines and the facts of gospel history.
§ 146.5. Under the name of =Familists=, _Familia charitatis_,
Henry Nicolai or Nicholas of Münster, who had previously
been closely related to David Joris (§ 148, 1), founded a
new mystical sect in England during the reign of Elizabeth.
They were distinguished from the Anabaptists by treating with
indifference the question of infant baptism. Nicholas appeared
as the apostle of love in and through which the mystical
deification of man is accomplished. Although uneducated, he
composed several works, and in one of these designated himself
as “endowed with God in the spirit of His love.” His followers
have been charged with immoral practices, and the doctrine has
been ascribed to them that Christ is nothing more than a Divine
condition communicating itself to all the saints.[419]
§ 147. ANABAPTISM.[420]
The fanatical ultra-reforming tendencies which characterize the later
so called Anabaptism, first made their appearance within the area of the
Saxon reformation. They now broke forth in wild revolutionary tumults,
and were fundamentally the same as the earlier Wittenberg exhibitions
(§ 124). In this instance, too, passionate opposition was shown to
the continuance of infant baptism, without, however, proceeding so far
as decidedly to insist upon rebaptism, and making that a common bond
and badge to distinguish and hold together separate communities of
their own, inspired by that fundamental tendency. This was done first
in A.D. 1525 among the representatives of ultra-reform movements, who
soon secured a position for themselves on Swiss soil. And thus, while
in central Germany this movement was being utterly crushed in the
Peasant War, Switzerland became the nursery and hotbed of Anabaptism.
Its leaders when driven out spread through southern and south-eastern
Germany as far as the Tyrol and Moravia, and founded communities in all
the larger and in many of the smaller towns. And although in A.D. 1531
the Anabaptists, with the exception of some very small and insignificant
remnants, were rooted out of Switzerland, yet in A.D. 1540 they were
able to send out a new colony to settle in Venice, in order to carry on
the work of proselytising in Italy.--Chiefly through the instrumentality
of the south German apostles, Anabaptist communities and conventicles
were sown broadcast over the whole of the north-west as far as the
Baltic and the North Sea. And even as early as the beginning of
A.D. 1530 there issued from the Netherlands an independent movement
of a peculiarly violent, fanatical, and revolutionary character, which
spread far and wide. In A.D. 1534, John of Leyden set up his Anabaptist
kingdom in Münster with endless glitter and display, and sent out
messengers over all the world to gather the “people of God” together
into the “new Zion.” The unfortunate termination of his short reign,
however, had a sobering influence upon the excited enthusiasts, so that
they resolved to abandon those revolutionary and socialistic tendencies,
to which their brethren in south and east Germany had never given way,
or, if at all, only in isolated cases where they had been carried away
by chiliastic expectations. Yet were they in the north as well as in
the south, afterwards as well as before, mercilessly persecuted on
all hands, almost as severely by the Protestant as by the Catholic
governments, and often imprisoned in crowds, banished, scourged,
drowned, hanged, beheaded, burnt. Under all these tribulations they
developed a truly wonderful persistency of belief, and exhibited a
heroic martyr spirit. To collect their scattered remnants, and to save
them from destruction by a calm and sensible reformation, was the work
to which from A.D. 1536 Menno Simons unweariedly applied himself.
§ 147.1. =The Anabaptist Movement in General.=--The name of
Anabaptists has always been repudiated by those so designated as
a calumnious nickname and term of reproach. And, in fact, it is
clearly inadequate, inasmuch as it does not characterize either
the regulating principle or the essential core and nature of
the aim of the party, which had been already fully developed
before rebaptism had been set up as a term of membership.
Within their own constituted congregations no second baptism
found place, but only one baptism of adults on the ground of
a personal profession of faith. Nevertheless, the rejected
designation had, at the time at which it had originated, this
justification, that then all the members of this community
actually were rebaptizers or had been rebaptized; and the
introduction of a second baptism, as it was the result and
consequence of their fundamental principle, became also the
occasion, means, and basis for their incorporation into an
independent denomination.--The representatives of the Anabaptist
movement showed their ultra-reforming character by this, that
while at one with Luther and Zwingli in seeking the overthrow
of all views and practices of the Roman Catholic church regarded
by them as unevangelical, they characterized the position of the
reformers as a halting half way, and so denounced them as still
deeply rooted in the antichristian errors of the papacy. And
because the reformers firmly repudiated them, and vigorously
opposed and refused to countenance those radical demands and
fanatical chiliastic expectations of theirs that went so much
further, they turned upon them and their reformed institutions
often with a fury and bitterness even more intense than they
manifested to their Romish opponents. Most offensive to them
was the attitude of the reformers toward the civil authorities.
They were especially indignant at the reformers for not
rejecting with scorn the help of magistrates in carrying out
the Reformation movement, for recognising, not only the right,
but the duty of civil rulers to co-operate in the reconstruction
of the church, to exercise control over the ecclesiastical and
religious life of the community as well as of each individual,
to see to the maintenance of church order, and to visit the
refractory with civil penalties. Then their innermost principle
was the endeavour to make a complete and thorough distinction
between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, the
kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, of the converted
and the unconverted, so as to restore a visible kingdom of
saints by gathering together all true believers from all
sections of the utterly corrupted church into a new holy
communion of the regenerate. Thus they would prepare the way
for the promised millennium, when the saints shall rule the
world. The State, with its penalties and punishments, belongs
essentially to the domain of evil, and is to be endured only so
long as there are unbelievers and unconverted people, who alone
are under its jurisdiction. The community of true Christians,
on the other hand, is in no need of any secular magistracy, for
this law, which the civil power administers, concerns only the
unrighteous and evildoers. But in matters of religion and the
inner man, the civil authority can have no manner of right to
interfere; as, on the other hand, believers ought not to accept
any sort of magisterial office or civic rank. Freedom in matters
of conscience, religion, worship, and doctrine is a fundamental
axiom, which forms the primary privilege of every religious
denomination, and the only admissible punishment in connection
with religious questions is exclusion from the particular
community. The only unconditionally valid legislative code for
Christians is the Bible. To the law of the State, however, he is
not to submit at all in spiritual things, and even in temporal
things only in so far as Holy Scripture and his own conscience,
enlightened by the Spirit of God, do not enter a protest; but
where the injunction of a magistrate oversteps the limit, he
must offer strenuous resistance, and contend even to blood
and death.--With respect to the mode of life and activity
within the ranks of the community, the peculiarly high claims
which they put forth to be regarded as a congregation of chosen
saints demanded that they should insist upon the actual personal
conversion and regeneration of each individual member, the
exclusion of everything sinful and worldly by means of a rigidly
strict discipline, and where necessary by expulsion from church
fellowship, as well as the avoiding of all needless intercourse
with the unconverted and unbelieving, and the exercise of
true and perfect brotherly love toward one another, which also,
so far as present circumstances might admit, should evidence
itself in the voluntary sharing of goods. As a condition of
the admission of any individual into the community proof had
to be given of repentance and faith, and as an authenticating
seal on the one side of the entrance being granted, and on
the other side of the obligation being undertaken, baptism was
administered, which now, as infant baptism was denounced as an
invention of the devil, was understood simply of adult baptism,
for the most part administered in the usual way by sprinkling.
The ecclesiastical constitution of the regularly formed
congregations was modelled after what they regarded as the
apostolic type. Their congregational worship was extremely
simple, quite free of any ornament or ceremony. Their doctrinal
system, owing to the prominence given to the practical and the
ethical, was but poorly developed, and was therefore never set
forth in a confession of faith obligatory on all the communities.
Upon the whole, they inclined more to the Zwinglian than to
the Lutheran type of doctrine, especially in their views of
baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The grand Reformation dogma of
justification by faith alone was rejected, as also the idea that
even the regenerate may not in this world attain unto perfect
sinlessness. Here and there, too, antitrinitarian views found
entrance, but the majority firmly adhered to the œcumenical
faith of the church, or at least soon returned to it. Chiliastic
theories and expectations were widely spread, but the attempts
to realize them in the present by means of revolutionary
movements were soon recognised and denounced as mischievous,
and so, too, the fanatical, pseudo-prophetic craze by which many
of the leaders of the movement were carried away came by-and-by
to be discredited.
§ 147.2. Keller, in his _Reformation und die ält.
Reformparteien_ of 1885, has undertaken to give a historical
basis to a view of the origin and character of the Anabaptist
movement diverging in several important respects from the
one that has hitherto been generally accepted. He sees in the
tendency of the Swiss Anabaptist to go beyond the position
taken up by Luther and Zwingli not merely, as several earlier
investigators had already done, a revival of certain mediæval
endeavours at reform, but an actual, uninterrupted continuation
of these, involving, not only a relationship, whether conscious
or unconscious, but also a close historico-genetic and
personal connection with “those old evangelical brotherhoods,
which through many centuries, under many names,” in spite of
persecutions that raged against them, still survived in secret
remnants down into the 16th century. Of these brotherhoods,
during the 12th century, the Waldensians formed the heart and
core. Their precursors were the Petrubrusians [Petrobrusians],
the Apostolic Brothers, the Arnoldists, the Humiliati, etc.;
their successors and spiritual kinsmen were the heretical
Beghards and Lollards, the Spirituals together with Marsilius
of Padua and King Louis of Bavaria, the German mystics,
the Friends of God and Winkelers, the Dutch Brethren of
the Common Life, and, in specially close association with
the German Waldensians, the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren;
of like character, too, were John Staupitz, the Zucker family
of Nuremberg, Albert Dürer, and a great number of other notables
belonging to the first decades of the 16th century. And these
all, as belonging to one and the same spiritual family, and
forming an unbroken chain, link joined to link, when church
and State raged against them with fire and sword, found always
nurseries and places of refuge in those “noble corporations
of builders and masons,” whose tried organization was made by
them the basis of the church constitution, and has thus been
handed down to modern times. Luther, who, moved by Staupitz
and the study of Tauler and the “Deutsche Theologie,” was at
first inclined to throw himself into the spiritual current,
from A.D. 1521 more and more withdrew himself from it, and even
Zwingli detached himself from it on account of some proceedings
which he did not approve. The origin of the so called Anabaptism
is thus, not merely traced back to these two great reformers,
but rather is conditioned by the firm maintenance of a primitive
evangelical tendency, from which those two turned aside. In the
one case we have “new evangelicals,” founding a new communion;
in the other, “old evangelicals,” conserving and continuing
the old communion. And not Zürich, where the Anabaptist
movement began to get a footing in A.D. 1524, but Basel,
was its true birthplace. There in A.D. 1515 the liberal-minded
printers Frobenius, Curio, and Cratander, who first printed
the reformatory writings of the Middle Ages, repeatedly gathered
the secret representatives and friends of those old brotherhoods
from their hidings in the mountains of Switzerland and Savoy, as
well as from the south of France and Germany, in their “chapter
sessions,” held there in order to consult about the founding
of new brotherhoods; and from thence the opposition to infant
baptism was first transplanted to Zürich.--But these “chapter
sessions” served quite another purpose than the fostering
of Waldensian and Anabaptist societies, and were rather
devoted to advancing the interests of liberalistic humanism
and scholarship. And the embracing together of all the
above-named sects as representing one and the same spiritual
current, though supported by a great many combinations, guesses,
suppositions, and deductions, which from their very boldness and
the confidence with which they are stated are often startling,
seems to be utterly untenable, and to proceed not so much from
an unbiassed study of original sources as from a prejudiced
judgment manipulating the facts with great art and skill.
In conclusion, then, Keller proceeds to deal with the later
actors in the Anabaptist movement, and finds them not only in
the Mennonites and Puritans, but also in the freemason lodges,
the Rosicrucians, and Pietists. Even the spiritual tendencies
of Lessing, Kant, to a certain extent also of Schiller, also
of Schleiermacher, through his connection with the Brethren
of Herrnhut, seem to him determined and dominated by this same
fundamental principle! The baselessness of Keller’s arguments
has been thoroughly exposed by Kolde and Carl Müller, yet he
continues unweariedly to repeat and set them forth.
§ 147.3. =The Swiss Anabaptists.=--Even in German Switzerland,
although the reformers of that country had proceeded much
further than the Saxon reformers in the direction of removing
every vestige of Roman Catholicism in constitution, doctrine,
worship, and discipline, ultra-reforming tendencies soon made
their appearance among those who thought that such changes
were not radical and thorough enough. Here, too, the refusal
to recognise infant baptism was made specially prominent. Indeed
even Zwingli himself at first pronounced against its necessity
and serviceableness. According to him, baptism was not, as with
Luther, a means of grace, but analogous to the circumcision
of the Old Testament--a sign of obligation, by means of which
the subject of baptism accepted the Christian faith and life as
binding upon him. Thus he was inclined for a time to depreciate
infant baptism, without however declaring it absolutely
unallowable. But when subsequently it became apparent that
the radical opposition to it on the part of its former friends,
and their insisting upon the obligation to observe only adult
baptism, proceeded from an ultra-reforming tendency, which
threatened with ruin much that was necessary to ecclesiastical
and civil order, and tended to make the extremest consequences
of these views the very foundation of their system, he expressed
himself all the more decidedly in favour of having infant
baptism obligatorily retained.--The most zealous leaders of
the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland were Conrad Grebel,
a cultured humanist, son of a distinguished Zürich senator,
already designated by Zwingli as “the coryphæus of the Baptists;”
Felix Manz, also a humanist, and famous as an earnest promoter
of Hebrew studies, but drowned in A.D. 1527 by order of the
Zürich council; George Jacobs, a monk of Chur in the Grison
country, commonly called Blaurock, on account of his dress;
Louis Hätzer of Thurgau, etc. Besides these native Swiss, the
following also wrought with equal enthusiasm for the promotion
of the Anabaptist cause: William Röubli, a priest banished
from Rottenburg on the Neckar on account of his evangelical
zeal; Simon Stumpf, who had migrated from Franconia, and Michael
Sattler from Breisgau; but above all the famous Balthazar
Hubmeier, a scholar of John Eck, distinguished as a popular
preacher and an indefatigable apologist and skilful polemical
writer on the side of the Anabaptists. He was, in A.D. 1512,
professor of theology at Ingolstadt, in A.D. 1516 pastor of
the cathedral church of Regensburg; from whence, in A.D. 1522,
already powerfully influenced in favour of evangelical truth
by Luther’s writings, he removed to Waldshut, and there entered
on the work of the Reformation, but afterwards decided against
the continuance of infant baptism and in favour of Anabaptism.
The Austrian government, under whose protectorate Waldshut was,
demanded that he should be delivered up, which the governor
steadfastly refused to do. But when, in Dec., 1525, Waldshut
was obliged to surrender at discretion, he fled to Zürich, was
there taken prisoner, and was driven, through fear of being
delivered up to Austria, to make a public recantation. He then
left Zürich and passed over into Moravia.--The original home
of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland was Zürich and its
neighbourhood. At Wyticon and Zollicon, Röubli publicly preached
in A.D. 1524 against infant baptism, and persuaded several
parents to refuse to have their young children baptized. When,
in Jan., 1525, the Zürich council voted for the expulsion of
all ultra-reform agitators, these assembled together on the
evening preceding their departure for mutual edification and
establishment by prayer and Scripture reading. Then Blaurock
rose, and besought Grebel “for God’s sake to baptize him with
the true Christian baptism into the true faith,” and, when this
was done, imparted it himself to all others present. The same
sort of thing happened soon after at Waldshut, where Hubmeier
on Easter Eve received baptism by the hand of Röubli, and
then on Easter Day conferred it upon 110 and afterwards upon
more than 300 individuals. In this way a thorough break was
made, not only with the old Catholics, but also with the young
reformed Church, and the foundation of an independent Anabaptist
community laid, which now with rapid strides spread over the
whole of reformed Switzerland. Thus originated, _e.g._, the
twelve Anabaptist congregations that existed in Zürich and
neighbourhood as early as A.D. 1527, the twenty-five in the
Zürich highlands, and also the sixteen which in A.D. 1531 were
to be found in the Zürich lowlands. An attempt was next made to
diffuse information among the sectaries and convert them from
their errors by means of discussions and controversial tracts,
Zwingli lending his aid by word and pen; and then resort was had
to fines and imprisonment. In June, 1525, St. Gall, following
the example of Zürich, issued sentence of banishment against
the Baptists. But as the expulsion of the leaders in no degree
contributed to the crushing of the communities, which rather
gathered strength in secret, and as the exiles were now for
the first time fully able to spread over all lands the seeds
of their Anabaptist doctrines, it was finally concluded that
capital punishment was a necessity. The Zürich council, in
March, 1527, issued an edict, according to which all rebaptizers
and rebaptized were without exception to be drowned, and this
example was followed by the other magistrates. In consequence
of the general persecution that followed the Anabaptist
agitation in Switzerland might be regarded as stamped out
in A.D. 1531, although here and there little groups meeting
in remote and hidden corners, under constant threat of prison
and death, dragged out a miserable existence for some twenty
years more.[421]
§ 147.4. =The South German Anabaptists.=--The Anabaptists
expelled from Switzerland in A.D. 1525 spread first of all
over the neighbouring south German provinces. Blaurock,
publicly whipped in Zürich, returned to the Grison country,
and, when again driven out of that refuge, to the Tyrol, where
the Anabaptist views found uncommonly great favour. Röubli and
Sattler retired to Alsace, where Strassburg especially became
one of the chief nurseries of Anabaptism, and from thence
they carried on a successful mission work in Swabia. Louis
Hätzer and John Denck (§ 148, 1) gathered a large following in
Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Strassburg; also in Passau, Regensburg,
and Munich; then pressing eastward along the Inn and the Danube,
their adherents founded Anabaptist communities in Salzburg,
Styria, Linz, Stein, and even in Vienna. They found the greatest
success of all among the industrial classes, and travelling
artisans proved their most zealous apostles. Although, beyond
carrying on an unwearied propaganda on behalf of their own
religious confession, they almost invariably refused to identify
themselves with any other sort of social and political agitation,
they were on all hands most cruelly persecuted; no city, no
country town, no village was beyond the reach of inquisitorial
scrutiny. Their radical extirpation was, by the decision of the
diet at Spires in A.D. 1529, represented as a duty to the empire
resting upon all; for the sixth section of its decrees enjoined
that “each and all of the rebaptizers and rebaptized, both men
and women, come to years of discretion, should be brought to
the stake and block or suchlike death without any trial before
the spiritual judge.” Most blood was indeed shed in lands under
Catholic governments. In the Tyrol and in Görz, for example, it
is said that, even in A.D. 1531, the number executed was over
1,000, among whom was Blaurock, who was burnt in A.D. 1529.
Sebastian Franck, in A.D. 1530, estimated the number of the
slain at somewhere about 2,000, and the heat of the persecution
only began with that year. Duke William of Bavaria went furthest,
with the atrocious order, “Whoever recants, let him be beheaded;
whoever refuses to recant, let him be burnt alive.” But also
Protestant governments, princes, and magistrates took part
more or less zealously in the work of extermination recommended
in the interests of the empire. Only the Landgrave Philip of
Hesse and the magistrates of Strassburg kept at least their
hands clean from blood, although they also by imprisoning and
banishing did their best to prevent the spread of this heresy
in their domains.
§ 147.5. =The Moravian Anabaptists.=--=Balthazar Hubmeier=,
banished, in A.D. 1526, from Zürich, had found in Nikolsburg in
Moravia a place of refuge. Under the powerful and far-reaching
protection of the lords of Liechtenstein, which he obtained for
his gospel, Moravia became “a delightsome land,” and Nikolsburg
a “New Jerusalem” to the sorely oppressed Anabaptists, who had
been hunted like wild beasts and made homeless wanderers. And
there they remained, notwithstanding severe hostile attacks,
from which they repeatedly suffered, especially between the
years 1536 and 1554. This was followed by “the good time,”
from A.D. 1554 to 1565, and from A.D. 1565 to 1592 by “the
golden age” of the community, now consisting of 15,000 brethren.
With A.D. 1592 began again “the times of tribulation,” until
their church, as well as Protestantism generally throughout the
country, received its deathblow. According to their numerous
“chronicles” and “memoirs,” describing to their posterity the
fortunes of the community, dating from A.D. 1524, the number of
Anabaptists put to death up to A.D. 1581 in Switzerland, South
Germany, and throughout the Austrian States was 2,419. Hubmeier
had already, by the end of A.D. 1527, after Moravia had come
under Austrian rule, been made prisoner in Vienna, along with
his wife; and there, in the spring of A.D. 1528, he went to the
stake with the heroic spirit of a martyr. Three days later his
wife, showing the same bold contempt for death, was drowned in
the Danube. In A.D. 1531 =James Huter=, from the Tyrol, stood at
the head of the Moravian Anabaptists. Owing to the persecution
which from A.D. 1529 raged there against his companions in
the faith, he migrated thence with 150 brethren. He succeeded
in composing the many splits and quarrels which had broken
out in consequence of these migrations among the various
sorts of Anabaptists from Silesia, Bavaria, Swabia, and the
Palatinate, and managed to organize them in one united body
with the earlier settlers. His reputation and influence were
consequently so great that the community took the name from him
of the “Huterian Brethren.” During the persecution which was
directed against them in A.D. 1535 he fled to the Tyrol, but
was there taken prisoner and burnt in March, 1536.--The Moravian
Anabaptists, who had been with perfect propriety designated
“_the quiet of the land_,” were characterized by exemplary
piety, strict discipline, moral earnestness, industrial
diligence, conscientious obedience to the laws, unexampled
patience and gentleness amid all sufferings, but, above all,
by the astonishing courage of their martyrs and fortitude
under torture. In regard to doctrine, with the exception of
a few “false brethren” affected with Socinian views, they
unanimously and from the first acknowledged their adherence
to the œcumenical symbols. Their mode of worship was of an
extremely simple character. As sacraments, _i.e._ as “symbols
of a holy thing,” they recognised
1. true Christian baptism, _i.e._ that of grown up people who
professed repentance and faith;
2. the Lord’s Supper as a festival, in memory of the sufferings
and death of Christ, as well as a thanksgiving for the grace
of God thereby enjoyed, and as expression of the church’s
faith in it;
3. Marriage as a symbol of the espousals of Christ and His
church (Eph. v. 23-32); and in some fashion
4. the laying on of the hands of the elders in the ordination
of the clergy.
Mass, confirmation, extreme unction, confession, and indulgence,
worship of images, saints, and relics, as well as infant baptism,
were utterly rejected by them. They were equally decided in
denying all merit in fasting and observing the feast days,
in repudiating the doctrine of purgatory, and many of the
ceremonies of the Romish church. They also rejected the Lutheran
and Zwinglian doctrine of justification, which they regarded
as a remnant of antichristian Romanism. But as the true and
only communion of saints they regarded themselves as alone
constituting the true church. At the head of their community
stood
1. a bishop; and
2. next him the ministers of the Lord, divided into apostles
with the missionary calling for the spread of the church,
preachers, and pastors over particular congregations, and
helpers to give assistance to these;
3. ministers of benevolence, _i.e._ dispensers to the poor and
administrators of the possessions of the church; and
4. the elders, as representatives of the church in conducting
its government.
A particularly important factor for maintaining the union
of the scattered communities was the synodal constitution
introduced by Hubmeier. The superintendents of the smaller
circuits met together for consultation weekly, and the deputies
from the larger circuits met together once a month; while the
general synods, embracing also the brethren beyond the bounds
of Moravia, were convened for purposes of administration once
a year, when that was possible.--Continuation, § 162, 2.
§ 147.6. =The Venetian Anabaptists.=--Down to the year 1540
the evangelical reform movement in Italy (§ 139, 22-24) had
an essentially Lutheran orthodox character. But after that an
Anabaptist current set in, coming probably from Switzerland,
and communicated through Italian refugees residing there, which
subsequently took the direction of a unitarian rationalistic
movement. Its main centre was in the domain of Venice, and its
most zealous promoter an Italian, an exile from home on account
of his faith, =Tiziano=, who, with no fixed place of abode,
resided sometimes on this side, sometimes on the other side
of the Alps. Fuller knowledge of him we owe to the confessions
of one of his scholars, Manelfi, recently discovered in the
Venetian archives, which he wrote out voluntarily and penitently
before the Inquisition, first at Bologna and then at Rome, in
Oct. and Nov., 1551. Don =Pietro Manelfi=, priest at San Vito,
was led, in A.D. 1540 or 1541, by the preaching of a Capuchin,
Jerome Spinazola, to the conclusion that the Romish church is
contrary to Holy Scripture, and is a human, yea, a devilish
invention. This same priest also introduced him to Bernardino
Ochino (§ 139, 24), who furnished him with several writings
of Luther and Melanchthon, and taught him that the pope
is antichrist and the mass satanic idolatry. Called by the
“Lutherans” of Padua, he now for two years travelled through
all northern Italy and Istria as Lutheran “minister of the word.”
Then in Florence he made the acquaintance of Tiziano, and after
long resistance yielded at last to be baptized by him. During
a conversation which, in A.D. 1549, Tiziano had with him and
several other friends at Vincenza, the question was raised,
over Deuteronomy xviii. 18, whether Christ is God or man. It
was agreed in order to decide the matter to summon an Anabaptist
council, to meet at Vienna in Sept., 1550. There were somewhere
about sixty deputies who responded, of whom between twenty and
thirty were from Switzerland, mostly Italian refugees, who at
the fortieth session of their secret conclave, “after prayer,
fasting, and reading of Scripture,” laid down the following
doctrinal propositions as binding upon all their congregations:
“Christ is not God, but man, yet a man full of Divine power,
son of Joseph and Mary, who after him bore also other sons and
daughters: There are neither angels nor devil in the proper
sense; but when in Holy Scripture angels appear, they are men
sent by God for special purposes, and where the devil is spoken
of the fleshly mind of man is meant: There is no other hell than
the grave, in which the elect sleep in the Lord till they shall
be awaked at the last day; while the souls of the ungodly, as
well as their bodies, like those of the beasts, perish in death:
To the human seed God has given the capacity of begetting the
spirit as well as the body: The elect will be justified only
by God’s mercy and love, without the merits, the blood, and
the death of Christ: Christ’s death serves merely as a witness
to the righteousness, _i.e._ ‘the mercy and love’ of God.” On
their specifically Anabaptist doctrine, because not the subject
of controversy, there was no deliverance. The denial of the
supernatural birth of Christ, however, led to a limitation
of the fundamental doctrine of the absolute authority of the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament by the exclusion of
the first chapters of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, which
it was now affirmed had been forged by Jerome at the command
of Pope Damasus. The decrees of the council were adopted by
all the communities, with the exception of that of Citadella,
which in consequence was cast out of the union. Manelfi, elected
bishop, travelled in this capacity during a whole year among the
churches assigned to him, always accompanied by a brother. Then
he became penitent, and cast himself upon the grace of the papal
Inquisition. His confessions, especially as bearing on the names
and whereabouts of his former companions, Lutherans as well as
Anabaptists, were sent from Rome to the Venetian tribunal of
the Inquisition, which now began its work of persecution and
vengeance with such zeal and success, that after some decades
every trace of Lutheranism and Anabaptism was rooted out. Many
escaped imprisonment by opportune flight; many also failed in
courage, and retracted; but the steadfast confessors were burnt
or drowned in great numbers. Meanwhile this fiery tribulation
had proved in most of the communities a purifying fire. The
radical heretic tendency that had prevailed since the council
gave place by degrees to the more moderate views of earlier
days. This change was greatly furthered by the close intimacy
existing between the Italian Anabaptists and the Moravian
Brethren from about the middle of A.D. 1550. The credit of
having effected this alliance, and securing its benefits to
their fellow countrymen, belongs especially to two noble-minded
men, Francesco della Saga, formerly a student of Rovigo, and
Giulio Gherardi, formerly subdeacon at Rome. But the latter, in
A.D. 1561, the former a year later, fell into the hands of the
Venetian Inquisition. After all attempts at conversion proved in
vain, both were thrown by night into the Venice canal, Gherardi
in A.D. 1562, and Saga in A.D. 1565.
§ 147.7. =The older Apostles of Anabaptism in the North-West of
Germany.=--In the north-west no less than in the south and east,
from the lower Rhine as far as Friesland and Holstein, in Jülich,
Cleves, Berg, in Hesse, Westphalia, and Lower Saxony, as well
as in Holland and Brabant, where the Reformation had begun to
gain some footing, Anabaptism also secured an entrance and some
success. Among their older apostles labouring in these regions
the most distinguished were Hoffmann and Ring.
1. =Melchior Hoffmann=, a currier from Swabia, had even in
his early home taken part in the religious movements of the
age, and in A.D. 1524, in the prosecution of his handicraft,
went to Livonia, and became the herald of these views in
Wolmar, Dorpat, and Reval. When his followers in Dorpat
broke down the images and attacked the monasteries, he was
obliged to flee, and carried on his operations for some
time in Stockholm (§ 139, 1). Expelled by-and-by from that
city, he next made his appearance in Wittenberg. Luther
took offence at his prophetic-apocalyptic fanaticism, and
pointed him to his handicraft as his legitimate calling.
He now went to Holstein, where King Frederick of Denmark
afforded him a fixed residence at Kiel, with permission
to preach throughout the whole land. By contesting the
Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and representing
the sacrament as of merely symbolical import, and the
partaking as purely spiritual, he caused offence even
here, and was, after a public disputation with Bugenhagen
at Flensburg in A.D. 1529, driven out of the country. He
sought refuge in Strassburg, where Bucer received him with
open arms. There for the first time, under the influence of
the Swiss Anabaptists, was full and clear expression given
to those objections to infant baptism which long before
had been cherished in his heart. He had himself baptized,
and became from this time forth the most zealous apostle of
Anabaptism throughout all North Germany. In this capacity
he wrought unweariedly and successfully, issuing forth from
Emden in East Friesland, where he had settled in A.D. 1529,
and by his travels, preaching, and writings spread his
doctrines far and wide. Besides his heterodox doctrine
of the sacraments and his apocalyptic-fanaticism, which
led him to proclaim that the second coming of Christ would
take place within seven years, and ultimately to announce
that he himself was the prophet Elias foretold in Malachi
iv. 5, 6 as its forerunner, he brought forward his theory
about the incarnation of Christ, according to which the
eternal Word did not assume from Mary flesh and blood
but Himself became flesh and passed through Mary, simply
“as the sun shines through glass,” because otherwise not
Christ’s but Mary’s flesh would have suffered for us. In
other respects he utterly rejected the wild, fantastic
notions of the Anabaptists which were some years later
developed in Münster. In his own life he was thoughtful,
pure, and strictly moral, in disposition mild, benevolent,
and charitable. In A.D. 1533 we find him again at Strassburg,
where his fanatical-prophetical preaching soon produced
such dangerous results that the magistrates felt obliged
to shut him up under bolts and bars, where he could be
out of the way of doing mischief. He was still in prison
in A.D. 1543, and from that time onward nothing more is
known of him. But a sect of Melchiorites, by no means few
in number, held their ground for a long time in Alsace and
Lower Germany.
2. According to other accounts =Melchior Ring=, a currier
of Swabia, is represented as having wrought during the
same period and throughout the same places in Sweden,
Livonia, Holstein, and East Friesland, entertaining similar
christological, prophetico-apocalyptic, and Anabaptist
views. The identity of the Christian name, fatherland,
handicraft, doctrinal tenets, date, and spheres of labour
is so striking, that one is almost tempted to identify
him with Melchior Hoffmann, especially as John of Leyden
in his later examination is said to have affirmed that
Melchior Hoffmann had actually borne the name of Ring.
We feel compelled, however, to maintain the distinctness
of their personalities, since, according to Hochbuth’s
researches in the history of the Anabaptists in the Hessian
state, Ring had been actively engaged in Hesse at a time
during which it can be proved that Hoffmann was at work
elsewhere.
§ 147.8. So far in respect of place and time as the influence
of Hoffmann reached,--and it seems down to the time of his
imprisonment to have been widely predominant throughout the
whole of the north-western district,--the life and movement of
the Anabaptists there kept clear of any social revolutionary
tendencies, and in their aberrations from the ways of the
reformers were restricted to the purely religious domain.
In the beginning of the year 1530, however, a movement broke
forth again in =Holland=, in which there was a resurrection of
the spirit of Thomas Münzer, and the demand for a thoroughly
radical and revolutionary reconstruction of social and political
relations was brought into prominence. The most important
representative of this tendency was a baker, =Jan Matthys=
of Haarlem, who, claiming to be a prophet, proclaimed the
introduction of the millennium of glory as the proper and
principal task of the Baptists. For the fulfilment of this
task he insisted upon the overthrow of the present order in
church and State, resistance to their enemies with weapons
in hand, even the destruction of all “the ungodly” from the
face of the earth, in order that “the saints,” as promised in
Scripture, should rule over the world, and lead to completion
the kingdom of God. The doctrine of the new prophets may even
already have taken root in the minds of the Baptists, roused and
excited by continued persecution, without their having clearly
perceived what it would ultimately lead to if successfully
carried out. But when in Münster these fanatical theories were
shown forth as actual realized facts, when John of Leyden set
up his pretentious kingdom in that “New Jerusalem,” and sent
out into all the world his numerous apostles with the demand
for adhesion, in many cases they found a too willing audience.
The miserable collapse of the Münster kingdom was the first
thing that again called people back to their senses, and
rendered their remnants susceptible to the purification of
Anabaptism to which Menno Simons devoted his whole life.
§ 147.9. =The Münster Catastrophe, A.D. 1534, 1535.=--The
preacher Rothmann of Münster had for some time maintained
the Zwinglian theory of the Lord’s Supper, and then he took
a further step in the repudiation of infant baptism. A public
disputation in A.D. 1533 yielded no result, and he refused
to obey an order to retire into exile. He now sought, and
that successfully, to increase his following, by the adoption
of new elements of the Anabaptist creed. On the festival
of the Three Holy Kings in A.D. 1534, =John of Leyden= or John
Bockelssohn made his entrance into the city. An illegitimate
son of a girl in the Münster province, brought up by relatives
in Leyden, whither he returned after several years spent in
travelling about as a journeyman tailor, he was in the autumn
of A.D. 1533 converted by the prophet Matthys, and soon became
his most zealous apostle. In Münster the young man, now in his
twenty-fifth year, handsome in appearance and endowed with rich
intellectual abilities, was favourably received in the house of
a rich and respectable cloth merchant, Bernard Knipperdolling,
who had been long interested in the religious movement, and
married his daughter. In the meantime Jan Matthys also was
called from Amsterdam to Münster. Both now wrought in common
among the inhabitants of the city. Their sermons, delivered
with glowing eloquence, produced a great impression, especially
among the women, and their following grew to such an extent
that they believed they might act in defiance of the council.
In consequence of a riot the magistrates were weak and yielding
enough to enter into an agreement with them by which they
obtained legal recognition. Then from all sides Anabaptist
fanatics crowded into Münster. After some weeks they secured
a majority in the council, and Knipperdolling was made
burgomaster. The prophet Matthys declared it to be God’s
will that all unbelievers should be expelled. This was done
on 27th February, 1534. Seven deacons divided among the
believers the property of those who had been banished. In
May the bishop began the siege of the city. This much at least
resulted from that proceeding, that the epidemic was confined to
Münster. After all images, organs, and books, with the exception
of the Bible, had been destroyed, they introduced the principle
of community of goods. Matthys, who regarded himself as called
to slay the besieging foes, in a sortie fell by their swords.
Bockelssohn took his place. The council in consequence of his
revelations was dissolved, and a theocratical government of
twelve elders, who were ready to receive their inspiration
from the new prophet, was set up. In order that he might marry
Matthys’ beautiful widow, he introduced polygamy. He took
seventeen wives; Rothmann satisfied himself with four. In vain
did the remnants of moral consciousness existing still among
the inhabitants protest. The discontented, who gathered round
the smith Mollenhök, were overcome and all of them were put to
death. Bockelssohn, proclaimed by one of his fellow prophets,
John Dusendschur, king of the whole earth, set up a splendid
court, and perpetrated the most revolting iniquities. He
regarded himself as called to bring in the millennium, sent
out twenty-eight apostles to spread his kingdom, and appointed
twelve dukes to govern the world under him. The besiegers had
meanwhile, in August, 1534, made an utterly unsuccessful attempt
to storm the city. Had they not toward the end of the year
received assistance from Treves, Cleves, Mainz, and Cologne,
they would have been obliged to raise the siege. Even then they
could only think of securing the surrender of the city by famine.
It had already been reduced to sore straits. But on St. John’s
night, 1535, a deserter led the soldiers to the wall. After a
most determined struggle the Anabaptists were utterly overthrown.
Rothmann rushed into the hottest of the battle, and there met
his death. King John and his premier Knipperdolling and his
chancellor Krechting were taken prisoners, and on 22nd January,
1536, were pinched to death with redhot pincers and then hung
in iron chains from St. Lambert’s tower. Catholicism was finally
restored to absolute and exclusive supremacy.
§ 147.10. =Menno Simons and the Mennonites.=--Menno Simons,
born at Wittmarsum in Friesland in A.D. 1492, from A.D. 1516
a Catholic priest, had from careful study of Holy Scripture
come to entertain serious doubts as to the Romish doctrine.
The martyr courage of the Baptists called his attention to
the Baptist views of this sect, and soon he came to feel
convinced of their correctness. He resigned his priest’s
office at Wittmarsum in A.D. 1536, and had himself baptized.
Amid indescribable difficulties and with unwearied patience
he laboured on, wandering from place to place, devoting all his
powers to the reorganization of the sect. He gave it a definite
doctrinal formula, “The Fundamental Book of the True Christian
Faith,” in A.D. 1539, which in point of doctrine attached
itself to the Reformed confessions, and was distinguished
from these only by the rejection of infant baptism, and by
an unconditional spiritualization of the idea of the church as
a pure communion of true saints. It distinctly forbade military
and civil service, as well as all taking of oaths, introduced
feet washing in addition to baptism and the Lord’s Supper,
and by severe church discipline maintained a simple manner
of life and strict morality. The quiet, pious demeanour of
the Mennonites soon secured for them in Holland, and later
also in Germany, toleration and religious freedom. Menno
died in A.D. 1559.--Even during Menno’s lifetime his Dutch
followers split up into two parties, called “the Fine” and
“the Coarse.” The former enforced in all its severity Menno’s
strict discipline, and indeed went beyond it by prohibiting
all intercourse with the excommunicated, even should these be
parents or husbands and wives. The latter wished to allow to
the ban only ecclesiastical and not civil disabilities, and to
have it exercised only after repeated exhortations had proved
ineffectual.--Continuation, § 162, 1.
§ 148. ANTITRINITARIANS AND UNITARIANS.[422]
The first to contest the doctrine of the Trinity arose from among
the German Anabaptists. The Spaniard Michael Servetus wrought out
his Unitarianism into connection with a system that was fundamentally
pantheistic. The real home of Antitrinitarianism, however, was
Italy, a fruit of the half-pagan humanism that flourished there.
Banished the country, its representatives sought refuge in Switzerland.
Expelled by-and-by from these regions, they betook themselves mostly
to Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania, where they found protection
from the princes and nobles. A thoroughly developed system of doctrine,
elaborated by Lælius and Faustus Socinus, uncle and nephew, was now
accepted by them, and by this means they were consolidated into a
corporate society.
§ 148.1. =Anabaptist Antitrinitarians in Germany.=
1. =John Denck= from the Upper Palatinate, was, on
Œcolampadius’ recommendation, whose lectures he had
attended at Basel, made rector of St. Sebald’s school
in Nuremberg in A.D. 1523. On account of his maintaining
views inconsistent with Lutheran orthodoxy, he came into
collision with the reformer of that place, Andrew Osiander,
in A.D. 1524, and on the ground of a written confession
of faith extorted from him he was deposed from his office
and expelled the city. Nor did he find a permanent abode
in Augsburg, to which he went in A.D. 1525; for Urbanus
Rhegius, who at first received him in a friendly manner,
was obliged at last to turn against him on account of
his Anabaptist views and the great scandal he caused
by maintaining the belief that the devil and all the
ungodly would finally repent. He now, in A.D. 1526, went
to Strassburg, where Hätzer induced him, as a zealous
student of Hebrew, to assist him in his translation of
the Old Testament prophets. When here also his influence
assumed dangerous proportions, a disputation was arranged
for between him and Bucer, in consequence of which he was
expelled also from Strassburg. Like treatment awaited him
at Bergzahern and also at Landau. He then went to Worms
along with Hätzer, who had meanwhile been banished from
Strassburg. There they completed their translation of the
prophets, but from this retreat also after three months
they were again driven out. Denck now once again, through
Œcolampadius’ mediation, who unweariedly endeavoured, but
in vain, to win him back from his errors, found a fixed
abode among the more liberal-minded citizens of Basel;
but he died there of the plague in A.D. 1527. Denck was
indeed one of the most talented men of his day. His high
intellectual endowments and his pure and noble moral life
were acknowledged by his most bitterly prejudiced orthodox
opponents. Of his numerous tracts and pamphlets only that
“On the Law of God, how the Law is Abolished and yet must
be Fulfilled,” is still accurately known. It is rich in
deep thoughts cleverly put, as is also the confession of
faith already mentioned, but in direct antagonism to the
Lutheran doctrine on several most vital and cardinal points.
He placed the inner word of God above the outward, taught
that man had a natural inclination toward good, attached
a fundamental importance to the fulfilling of the moral
law for the attainment of salvation, gave the person of
Christ only the significance of a pattern and exhibition
of the Divine love, resolved the doctrine of the Trinity
into pantheistic speculative ideas, and by his rejection
of infant baptism became the acknowledged head of the whole
German Anabaptist movement of his age, so that Bucer could
designate him “the pope of the Baptists.”
2. =Louis Hätzer=, from Bischopzell in Thurgau, was priest at
Wädenschwyl, on the Zürich lake. At first an enthusiastic
follower of Zwingli and his fellow labourer, he soon
transcended the Zwinglian reforming tendencies, and with
fanatical radicalism launched out into fierce iconoclasm,
and attached himself to the Anabaptists, residing partly
in Switzerland, in Zürich, Basel, St. Gall, etc., partly
in Germany, in Augsburg, Strassburg, Worms, etc., but
soon driven out of every place, and meanwhile leading
a wandering, unstable life, until at last, in A.D. 1529,
he was beheaded at Constance as a bigamist and adulterer.
From Denck, who far excelled him in originality and depth
of thought, he derived his peculiar views. Among his
literary productions only his German translation of the
Old Testament prophets, which he produced in conjunction
with Denck, is of any importance. It was published at Worms
in A.D. 1527, two years before the Zürich version, and five
years before that of Luther, and passed through several
editions until it was displaced by Luther’s. He also holds
no mean position as a composer of spiritual songs.
3. =John Campanus= of Jülich was expelled from Cologne,
where he had studied, and went to Wittenburg [Wittenberg],
as tutor to some young noblemen, in A.D. 1528. He
accompanied the reformers to Marburg, where he sought
to unite different parties by explaining “This is My
body” to mean the body created by Me. But when he began
to spread Anabaptist and Arian views in Wittenberg, and
to calumniate the reformers by speech and writing, he was
obliged, in A.D. 1532, to quit Saxony. He now returned to
Jülich, but after labouring there for a considerable time,
he was arrested on a charge of preaching revolutionary and
chiliastic sermons, and died in prison after twenty years’
confinement at Cleves about A.D. 1578. His Arian-trinitarian
doctrine of God was just as peculiar as his doctrine of
the supper. He would acknowledge in the Godhead only two
Persons, just as its type marriage is a union of only two
persons. He regarded the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, as
the Divine nature common to both, and, on the other hand,
as the operation of these upon man.
4. =David Joris=, a painter on glass in Delft, received
his first impulse from Luther’s writings about A.D. 1524,
but soon plunged into wild excesses of iconoclasm and
anabaptism. After the overthrow of the short-lived rule
of the Münster fanatics (§ 133, 6), he travelled up and
down through the whole of Germany, in order to gather
together the scattered remnants of the Anabaptists, and
to proclaim his revelations. He was not to be deterred
or terrified by imprisonment, scourging, or banishment.
At last he was pronounced an outlaw, and a price was set
upon his head. He went now, in A.D. 1544, to Basel, and
lived there under the assumed name of John of Bruges,
outwardly professing attachment to the Reformed church,
but in secret, by the diligent circulation of letters and
treatises, working for his own ends, till his death in
A.D. 1556. When afterwards his true name was discovered,
the authorities had his bones dug up and burnt by the
public hangman. In theory and practice an antinomian,
he taught in his fantastic production, “T’Wonderboek”
of A.D. 1542, on the ground of the most naked naturalism,
how the perfection of the spiritual life and the true
reconciliation of all things must be brought about. He
conceived of the Trinity as the self-revelation of God
in three different ways. That of the Holy Spirit came to
pass with himself; the end and aim of that dispensation
he represented as consisting in the gathering together of
the people of God, _i.e._ all Anabaptists, who were to take
possession of the whole earth, as before Israel had of the
land of Canaan.
§ 148.2. =Michael Servetus= was born in A.D. 1509 at
Villanueva in Arragon. He was a man of rich speculative ability,
wide knowledge of science, and restless, inquiring spirit. At
Toulouse he devoted himself first of all to the study of law,
but soon after turned his attention with great eagerness to
theological questions. He became convinced that the fundamental
Christian doctrine of the Trinity in its accepted ecclesiastical
form is equally opposed to Scripture and to reason, and that in
this quarter pre-eminently a reformation was needed. At a later
period in Paris he gave himself to the study of medicine, and
is reputed the first discoverer of the circulation of the blood,
and secured for himself an eminent rank as a practical physician
and a writer on medical subjects. He began his polemic against
the prevailing doctrine of the Church at Strassburg in A.D. 1531
with the treatise _De Trinitatis erroribus, ll. vii._ Next in
order appeared at Hagenau, in A.D. 1532, his palliating and
to some extent retractational _Dialogorum de Trin., ll. ii._
In A.D. 1553 he issued anonymously at Vienne his radical and
revolutionary principal work, _Christianismi Restitutio_, which
was the means of bringing him to the stake. As he succeeded in
escaping from his prison in Vienne they were able there only
to burn him _in effigie_; but at Geneva he was, at Calvin’s
instigation, arrested again, and on his refusing to make a
recantation was sent to the stake on 27th Oct., A.D. 1553.
The last words heard from the dying man in the flames were,
“Jesus, Thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me.”--The
reformatory aim of Servetus in his doctrinal system was to
raise God as high as possible above the creature. In its very
earliest form it was fundamentally pantheistic, yet even here
God is thought of as the original substance, and everything
existing outside of Him is conceived of as conditioned by
a substantial emanation from His being. Those pantheistic
principles, however, make their appearance in a much more
decided form in the later and more complete developments
of his system which are completely dominated by Neoplatonic
speculations. In particular he regards the Logos as an emanation
of the Divine element of light, which first came into possession
of personal existence in the incarnation of Christ. The gross
matter of His corporeity He received from His mother; the
place of the male seed was taken by the Divine element of
light. In both respects he is ὁμοούσιος, for even the earthly
matter is only a grosser form of the primal light. Son and
Spirit are only different _dispositiones Dei_, the Father alone
is _tota substantia et unus Deus_. And as the Trinity makes its
appearance in connection with the redemption of the world, it
will disappear again when that redemption has been completed.
The polemic of Servetus, however, extended beyond the doctrine
of the Trinity to an attack upon the church doctrine of original
sin, and the repudiation of infant baptism. He also set forth
a spiritualistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, contended against
the Lutheran doctrine of justification and the Calvinistic
doctrine of predestination, sketched out a scheme of chiliastic
expectations, etc. Amid all these vagaries he maintained his
high estimate of Christ as the Logos, become Son of God by the
incarnation, and the centre and end of all history; he also
continued to reverence Holy Scripture as that which from its
first book to its last testifies of Christ. His mystical piety,
too, was deep and sincere. But owing to the immoderate violence
with which he denounced views opposed to his own as doctrines
of devils, among other reproachful terms applying to the church
doctrine of the Trinity the name of “_triceps Cerberus_,” the
three-headed dog of hell, his contemporaries were prevented
from getting even a glimpse of the bright side of his life and
endeavours, so that all the most notable theologians voted for
his death as salutary and necessary (§ 145, 1).[423]
§ 148.3. =Italian and other Antitrinitarians before
Socinus.=--=Claudius of Savoy= in A.D. 1534, at Bern, brought
forward the idea that Christ is to be called God only because
the fulness of the Divine Spirit has been communicated to Him.
He was on this account expelled from that city, and soon after
even from Basel, and was very coldly received at Wittenberg. He
retracted before a synod at Lausanne in A.D. 1537, afterwards
played the part of a popular agitator at Augsburg, and was
regarded in Memmingen down to A.D. 1550 as a prophet. After
that no further trace of him is found.--Closely connected with
the previously named Tiziano, by bonds of friendship and of
spiritual affinity, and subsequently also with Lælius Socinus,
was the Sicilian exile from his native land, =Camillo Renato=.
In A.D. 1545 he obtained at Chiavenna in Veltlin, which then
belonged to the country of the Grisons, a situation as a private
tutor, and soon became highly respected. He by-and-by, however,
involved himself in a violent controversy with the evangelical
pastor there, Agostino Mainardo, about the sacraments, which led
to his being excommunicated by the Grison synod in A.D. 1550. The
central point in his theology is the doctrine of predestination.
Only the elect are by God’s Spirit awakened into life, and
while the children of the Spirit only slumber in death, and
in the resurrection assume a renewed, purely spiritual form
of being, the soul of the non-elect die just like their bodies.
Although a decided opponent of infant baptism, he did not go so
far as to insist upon rebaptism, because he depreciated baptism
generally as a mere outward sign, and therefore not necessary.
And although he carefully avoided any express repudiation of
the doctrine of the Trinity, it can scarcely be doubted that
he and all his friends and followers favoured antitrinitarian
views.--=Matthew Gribaldo=, a jurist of Padua, the physician
=George Blandrata= of Saluzzo in Piedmont, and =Valentine
Gentilis= of Calabria, fugitives from their native lands, took
up a position of hostility to Calvin in Geneva after Servetus’
death. When Calvin proposed to have them brought before a legal
tribunal Gribaldo and Blandrata retired from Geneva and went to
Poland. Only Gentilis remained, and he subscribed a confession
of faith which Calvin laid before him, but soon declared
that he could not continue to hold by it, and set forth as
consistent with Scripture doctrine the opinion that the Father
as _Essentiator_ is not a person in the Godhead, but the whole
substance of the Godhead, and that the Son as _Essentiatus_
proceeding from Him, is only the perfect reflex and highest
image of the one deity of the Father. Having been cast into
prison and condemned to death he retracted once again, and then
withdrew also to Poland. Subsequently, however, he returned to
Switzerland, was arrested at Bern, and beheaded as an apostate
in A.D. 1566.[424] Blandrata had meanwhile betaken himself
to Transylvania, was there appointed physician to the prince,
secured the interest of Zapolya II. and many of the nobles
for his Unitarianism, so that public recognition was given to
it as a fourth confessional form of religion. According to the
doctrine set forth by him worship is rendered to Jesus as the
man endowed by God with grace beyond all others and raised to
universal dominion. But in A.D. 1588 he was murdered by his
own nephew, who had remained a Catholic, as he had not patience
to wait for his death in order to secure possession of his
property. Besides Blandrata we may also mention as one of the
chief founders of the Unitarian sect in Transylvania =Franz
Davidis= of Clausenburg. From A.D. 1552 Lutheran pastor,
he became a Calvinist in A.D. 1564, and was made a Reformed
superintendent, and, at Blandrata’s recommendation, Zapolya’s
court preacher. He then openly attached himself by word and
writing to the Unitarians, and became, in A.D. 1571, first
Unitarian superintendent of Transylvania. On account of his
opposing the doctrine of the supernatural conception of Christ
and His right to be worshipped, he was repudiated by Blandrata,
and was, in A.D. 1579, condemned by Prince Christopher Bathori,
as a blasphemer and enemy of Christ, to imprisonment for
life. After three months he died in prison.--The Italian
Antitrinitarians who had fled to =Poland= attached themselves
there to the Reformed church, and secured many followers not
only among the nobles, but also among the Reformed clergy.
At their head in Cracow stood the pastor Gregor Pauli, and
in Princzov George Schomann. At the Synod of Patrikaw, in
A.D. 1562, they first appeared as a close phalanx, making a
regular attempt to have the doctrine of the Trinity set aside.
Their attack, however, was repelled. A royal edict of A.D. 1564
enacted that all Italian Antitrinitarians should be banished,
and a second synod at Patrikaw, in A.D. 1565, excommunicated
all their followers. A final endeavour to arrive at a mutual
understanding by means of yet another religious conference,
while a diet was summoned in connection with this matter at
Patrikaw, led to no successful result. From this time forth
the Polish Antitrinitarians, who have generally been called
Arians, occupy a distinct position as a separate religious
denomination.--In the Reformed church of the Palatinate, too,
this Unitarian movement ended in an equally tragical scene. The
pastor =Adam Neuser= and the Reformed inspector =John Sylvanus=
took their place about A.D. 1570 along with the Transylvanian
Unitarians. During an investigation into their doctrinal views,
a manuscript written out by Sylvanus in his own hand was found:
“A Confessional Statement against the Tripersonal Idol and
the Two Natures of Christ.” He was beheaded in A.D. 1572 in
the market-place of Heidelberg. Neuser fled to Transylvania,
and at a subsequent period went over to Mohammedanism.--Out
of the Italian infidelity of this age probably also arose
that renewal of an idea that had already appeared during the
Middle Ages (§ 96, 19) in the book _De tribus impostoribus_,
Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. Of a similar tendency is the _Colloquium
Heptaplomeres_ of the French jurist =Jean Bodin= (§ 117, 4),
who died in A.D. 1597. He was one of seven freethinking Venetian
scholars who carried on a discussion upon religion, in which
he maintained that deficiencies and mistakes are inherent in
the same degree in all positive religions. But an ideal deism
is commended as the true religion.
§ 148.4. =The Two Socini and the Socinians.=--=Lælius Socinus=,
member of a celebrated family of lawyers in Siena, and himself
a lawyer, became convinced at an early period that the Romish
system of doctrine was not in accordance with Scripture. In
order to reach an assured and certain knowledge of the truth,
he learnt the original languages in which Scripture was written,
by travelling made the acquaintance of the most celebrated
theologians in Switzerland, Germany, and Poland, and wrought
out for himself a complete and consistent theory of Unitarian
belief. He died in Zürich in A.D. 1562 in his thirty-seventh
year. His nephew, =Faustus Socinus=, born at Siena in A.D. 1539,
was from his early days trained by personal intercourse and
epistolary correspondence with his uncle, and adopted similar
views. He was obliged in A.D. 1559 to make his escape to Lyons,
but returned in A.D. 1562 to Italy, where for twelve years
he was loaded with honours and offices at the court of the
Grand-duke Francis de Medici. In order that he might carry on
his studies undisturbed, he retired in A.D. 1574 to Basel, from
whence in A.D. 1578, at Blandrata’s request, he proceeded to
Transylvania to combat Davidis’ refusal of adoration to Christ.
In the following year he went to Poland in order to unite, if
possible, the various sections of the Unitarians in that country.
At Cracow they insisted that he should allow them to rebaptize
him, and when he firmly refused they declined to admit him to
the communion table. But the decision of his character, his
unwearied endeavours to secure peace and union, as well as the
superiority of his theological scholarship, in the end won for
his ideas a complete victory over the opposing party strifes.
He succeeded gradually in expelling from the ranks of the Polish
Antitrinitarians non-adorationism as well as Anabaptism, and all
their ethical, social, and chiliastic outgrowths, and finally at
the Synod of Racau, in A.D. 1603, he secured recognition for his
own theological views as he had developed them in disputations
and in writings. Persecutions and ill-treatment on the part of
the Catholics were not wanting; as, _e.g.,_ in A.D. 1594 by the
Catholic soldiers, and in A.D. 1598 by the Catholic students
at Cracow, who dragged him from a sick-bed on Ascension Day,
drew him half naked through the city, beat him till the blood
flowed, and would have drowned him had not a Catholic professor
delivered him out of their hands. He died in A.D. 1604.--The
chief symbol of the Socinian denomination is the Racovian
Catechism, published in the Polish language in A.D. 1605.
Socinus himself, in company with several others, compiled
it, mainly from an earlier short treatise, _Relig. christ.
brevissima institutio_. It was subsequently translated into
Latin and also into German.[425]--=The Socinian system of
doctrine= therein set forth is essentially as follows: The
Scriptures are the only source of knowledge of saving truth,
and as God’s word Scripture can contain nothing that is in
contradiction to reason. But the doctrine of the Trinity
contradicts the Bible and reason; God is only one Person.
Jesus was a mere man, but endowed with Divine powers for the
accomplishment of salvation, and as a reward for his perfect
obedience raised to Divine majesty, entrusted with authority
to judge the living and the dead, so that to him also Divine
homage should be paid. The Holy Spirit is only a power or
attribute of God. The image of God in men consisted merely in
dominion over the creatures. Man was by nature mortal, but had
he remained without sin he would by the supernatural operation
of God have entered into eternal life without death. There is
no such thing as original sin, but only hereditary evil and an
inherited inclination toward what is bad, which, however, does
not include in it any guilt. The idea of a Divine foreknowledge
of human action is to be rejected, because it would lead to the
acceptance of the idea of an absolute predestination. Redemption
consists in this, that Christ by life and teaching pointed
out the better way; and God rewards every one who pursues this
better way with the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. The
death of Christ was no atoning sacrifice, but merely attached
a seal to the teaching of Christ and formed for him a pathway
to Divine glory. Conversion must begin by the exercise of one’s
own powers, but can be perfected only through the assistance of
the Holy Spirit. The sacraments are only ceremonies, which may
even be dispensed with, though it is more becoming to retain
them as old and beautiful customs. The immortality of the pious
Christian is conditioned and made possible by the resurrection
of Christ. But the ungodly, along with the devil and his angels,
are annihilated; and because in this their punishment consists,
Holy Scripture designates the annihilation as eternal death
and eternal condemnation. There is no resurrection of the
flesh; the living indeed have their bodies restored in the
resurrection; but these are not fleshly, but, as Paul teaches
in 1 Corinthians xv., spiritual.[426]--Continuation, § 163, 1.
IV. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION.
§ 149. THE INTERNAL STRENGTHENING AND REVIVAL
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.[427]
The strenuous endeavours put forth by the Roman Catholic church to
restrict within the narrowest limits possible the victorious course
of the Reformation, and so far as might be to reconquer lost ground,
bulk so largely in its sixteenth century movement, that we may
review that entire era in its history from the standpoint of the
counter-reformation. This development was carried out, on the one
hand, by means of increased strengthening and revival, and, on
the other hand, by polemics and attack on those without, in this
latter case advanced by missions to the heathen and by violent
persecution and suppression of Protestantism. The Tridentine Council,
A.D. 1545-1547, A.D. 1551, 1552, A.D. 1562, 1563, was devoted to the
realization of these ends. The curialistic side of mediæval scholastic
Catholicism was again presented as the sole representation of the
truth, compacted with iron bands into a rigid system of doctrine,
and declared to be incapable in all time to come of any alteration
or reform; while at the same time it set aside or modified many of
the more flagrant abuses. With two long breaks caused by political
considerations, it had completed its work between 1545 and 1563 in
twenty-five sessions. The first ten sittings were held A.D. 1545-1547,
under Paul III.; the next six in A.D. 1551 and 1552, under Julius III.;
and the last nine in A.D. 1562, 1563, under Pius IV.--The old and
utterly corrupt monkish orders, which had once formed so powerful
a support to the papacy, had not proved capable of surviving the
shock of the Reformation. In their place there now arose a new order,
that of the =Jesuits=, which for centuries formed a buttress to
the severely shaken papacy, and hemmed in on all sides the further
advances of the Protestant movement. Besides this great order there
arose a crowd of others, partly new, partly old ones under reformed
constitutions, mostly of a practical churchly tendency. The strifes
and rivalries that prevailed between the different Protestant sects
stirred up with the Romish Church a new and remarkable activity in
the scientific study of doctrine; and mysticism flourished again in
Spain, and succeeded in reaching there a considerable development.
§ 149.1. =The Popes before the Council.=--=Leo X.= (§ 110, 14)
the accomplished, extravagant, luxurious, and frivolous Medici,
was succeeded by one who was in every respect diametrically
opposed to his predecessor, =Hadrian VI.=, A.D. 1522, 1523,
the only pope who for many centuries before down to the present
day retained his own honourable Christian name when he ascended
the throne of St. Peter. Hadrian Dedel, the son of a poor
ship-carpenter of Utrecht, a pious and learned Dominican, had
raised himself to a theological professorship in the University
of Louvain, when Maximilian I. chose him to be tutor to his
grandson, who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V. He
was thus put in the way for obtaining the highest offices in
the church. He was made Bishop of Tortosa, grand-inquisitor,
cardinal, and viceroy of Spain for Charles during his absence.
When, after Leo’s death, neither the imperial candidate Julius
Medici nor any other of the cardinals present in conclave
secured the necessary votes, the imperial commissioner pointed
to Hadrian, and so out of the voting box came the name of a
new pope whom no one particularly wished. A thoroughly learned,
scholastic commentator on the Lombard, pious and strict in his
morals even to rigorism, in his domestic economy practising
peasant-like simplicity, and saving even to the extent almost
of niggardliness; a zealot for the Thomist system of doctrine,
but holding in abhorrence the Renaissance, with all its glitter
of classical culture, art, and poetry; mourning bitterly over
the worldliness and corruption of the papacy, as well as over
the unfathomable depravity throughout the church, and firmly
resolved to inaugurate a thorough reformation in the head
and members (§ 126, 1),--he seemed in that position and age,
and with those surroundings, a Flemish barbarian, who could
not even understand Italian, and spoke Latin with an accent
intolerable to Roman ears, the greatest anomaly that had ever
yet appeared in the history of the popes. The Roman people hated
him with a deadly hatred, and Pasquino[428] was inexhaustibly
fruitful in stinging epigrams and scurrilous verses on the new
pope and his electors. The German reformers were not inclined
to view him with favour; for he had previously, in his capacity
as grand-inquisitor, condemned, according to Llorente, between
20,000 and 30,000 men under the Spanish Inquisition, and
had more than 1,600 burnt alive. Two attempts were made by
the Romans to assassinate him by dagger and by poison, but
neither succeeded. He died, however, after a short pontificate
of one and a half years, the last German and indeed the last
non-Italian occupant of the papal throne. But the Romans wrote
on the house door of his physician, “To the deliverer of the
fatherland,” and enjoyed themselves, when the corpse of the
deceased pope was laid between those of Pius I. and Pius II.,
by repeating the feeble pleasantry, _“Impius inter Pios.”_ The
jubilation in Rome, however, was extravagant, when by the next
conclave a member of the family of the Medici, the illegitimate
son of the murdered Julius (§ 110, 11), the Cardinal Julius
Medici, who had been rejected on the former occasion, was now
proclaimed under the title of =Clement VII., A.D. 1523-1534=.
The brave Romans did not indeed anticipate that this pope,
in consequence of the shiftiness of his policy and the
faithlessness of his conduct toward the emperor (§ 126, 6),
to whose favour and influence mainly he owed his own elevation,
would reduce their city to a condition of wretchedness and
depression such as had never been witnessed since the days
of Alaric and Genseric (§ 132, 2). The position of a pope like
Clement, who regarded himself as called upon, not only as church
prince to set right the ecclesiastical institutions of the age,
which in every department had been thrown into utter confusion
by the storms of the German Reformation (§ 126, 2), but also as
a temporal prince to deliver Italy and the States of the church
from threatened servitude to Germany and Spain, no less than
from France, was one of peculiar difficulty, so that even a much
more astute politician than Clement would have found it hardly
possible to maintain successfully.
§ 149.2. =The Popes of the Time of the Council.=--After
Clement VII. the papal dignity was conferred upon Alexander
Farnese, who took the name of =Paul III.=, A.D. 1534-1549, a
man of classical culture and extraordinary cunning. He owed
his cardinal’s hat, received some forty years before, to
an adulterous intrigue of his sister Julia Orsini with Pope
Alexander VI. His entrance upon this ecclesiastical dignity,
however, did not lead him to give up his sensual and immoral
course of life, and after his elevation to the papal chair he
practised nepotism after the example of the Borgias and the
Medicis. He was, however, the only pope, at least for a long
time, who seemed to be actually in earnest about coming to an
understanding on doctrinal points with the German Protestants
(§ 139, 23). He at last summoned the =œcumenical council=,
so long in vain demanded by the emperor, to meet at Mantua on
23rd May, A.D. 1537; but afterwards postponed the opening of
it, on account of the Turkish war, until 1st Nov. of that year,
and then again until 1st May, A.D. 1538. On the latter day it
was to meet at Vicenza, and after this date had elapsed, it
was suspended indefinitely. The emperor’s continued insistence
upon having a final and properly constituted council in a
German city led him to fix upon =Trent=, where a council was
summoned to meet on 1st Nov., A.D. 1542, but the troubles that
meanwhile arose with France gave a welcome excuse for further
postponement. Persistent pressure on the part of the emperor
led to the issuing of a new rescript by the pope on 15th March,
A.D. 1545; there was the usual delay because of the failure to
secure a sufficient number of orthodox and competent bishops
and delegates; and thus at last the council opened at Trent on
=13th Dec., A.D. 1545=. The skilful management of the council
by the Cardinal-legate del Monte, the statement carefully
prepared beforehand of the distinctly anti-protestant basis
upon which they were to proceed (§ 136, 4), and the well
arranged scheme of the legates to secure its adoption by
having the votes reckoned not according to nations, but by
individuals (§ 110, 7), contributed largely during the earlier
sessions to neutralize the conciliatory tendencies of the
emperor as well as to prevent the possibility of Protestants
taking any active share in the proceedings. When the emperor,
who had now reached the very summit of his power, forbade the
promulgating of these arrangements, the pope declared that he
did not think it a convenient and proper thing that the council
should be held in a German city; and so, on the pretext of a
plague having broken out in Trent, he issued an order at the
eighth session that on 11th March, A.D. 1547, it should resume
at Bologna. The emperor’s decided protest obliged the German
bishops to remain behind in Trent, and the bishops who assembled
at Bologna under these circumstances did not venture to continue
their proceedings. As the emperor persistently refused to
recognise the change of seat, and in consequence the bishops
present had one after another left the city, the pope issued
a decree in Sept., A.D. 1547, again postponing the meeting
indefinitely.--Paul was succeeded by the Cardinal-legate del
Monte, who took his place on the papal throne as =Julius III.=,
A.D. 1550-1555. He could indulge in nepotism only to a limited
extent, but he did in that direction what was possible. Driven
to it by necessity, he again opened the Council of Trent on
1st May, A.D. 1551. Protestant delegates were also to be present
at it. But without regard to them the council continued to
hold firmly by the anti-protestant doctrines (§ 136, 8). The
position of matters was suddenly and unexpectedly changed
by the appearance of the Elector Maurice. On the approach
of his victorious army the council broke up, after it had at
its sixteenth session, on 28th April, A.D. 1552, promulgated
articles condemning all the Protestants, and resolved to
sist further proceedings for two years. After the death of
Julius III., =Marcellus II.= was elected in his stead, one
of the noblest popes of all times, who once exclaimed, that
he could not understand how a pope could be happy in the
strait-jacket of the all-dominating curialism. He occupied
the chair of St. Peter only for twenty-one days. He was
succeeded by John Peter Caraffa (§ 139, 23), as =Paul IV.=,
A.D. 1555-1559. He carried on the operations of the Inquisition,
reintroduced into Rome at his instigation under Paul III. for
the suppression of all Protestant movements, with the most
reckless severity and insistency, was unwearied in searching
out and burning all heretical books, and protested against the
Religious Peace of Augsburg. He also opposed the elevation of
Ferdinand I. to the imperial throne, which led the new emperor
to issue a decree of state, which concluded with the words:
“And every one may from this judge that his holiness, by reason
of age or other causes, is no longer in full possession of
his senses.” This pope also in the bull, _Cum ex apostolatus
officio_ of A.D. 1558, released subjects from the duty of
obedience to heretical princes, and urged orthodox rulers
to undertake the conquest of their territories. But he also
embittered himself among the Roman populace by his inquisitorial
tyranny, so that they upon the report of his death destroyed
all the buildings of the Inquisition, broke in pieces the
papal statues and arms, and under threat of death forced all
the members of the Caraffa family to quit the city.--The mild
disposition of his successor, =Pius IV.=, A.D. 1560-1565,
moderated and reduced, as far as he thought safe, the fanatical
violence and narrowness of the Inquisition, and the reforming
influence which he allowed to his talented nephew Charles
Borromeo over the affairs of the curia bore many excellent
fruits. Without much opposition he again opened the Tridentine
Council on 18th Jan., A.D. 1562, which now it appeared could
be resumed with less danger, beginning with the seventeenth
session and ending with the twenty-fifth on the 3rd or 4th Dec.,
A.D. 1563. Of the 255 persons who throughout took part in it
more than two-thirds were Italians. The papal legates domineered
without restraint, and it was an open secret that “the Holy
Ghost came from Rome to Trent in the despatch box.” In the
doctrinal decisions, the mediæval dogmas, with a more decidedly
anti-protestant complexion, but with a careful avoidance of
points at issue between Franciscans and Dominicans (§ 113, 2),
were set forth, together with a formal condemnation of the
opposed doctrines of Protestantism. In the proposals for
reformation, decided improvements were introduced in church
order and church discipline, in so far as this could be
done without prejudice to the interests of the hierarchy.
German, Spanish, and especially French bishops, as well as
the commissioners for Catholic courts urged at first, in the
interests of conciliation and reform, for permission to priests
to marry and the granting of the cup to the laity, the limiting
of the number of fasts and of the worship of saints, relics, and
images, as well as the more extreme hierarchical extravagances.
But the legates knew well how to gain time by wily intrigues, to
disgust their opponents by exciting subtle theological disputes,
and to weary them out with tedious delays; and so when it
came at last to the vote, the compact majority of the Italians
withstood all opposition that could be shown. At the close of
the last session Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (§ 139, 13),
who from the opposition had passed over to the majority, cried
out, “Anathema to all heretics!” and the prelates answered in
full chorus. The pope confirmed the decrees of the council,
but forbade on pain of excommunication any exposition of
them, as that pertained solely to the papal chair. They found
unhesitating acceptance in Italy, Portugal, and Poland, and
in Spain in so far as they were agreeable to the laws of the
empire. In Germany, Hungary, and France the governments
refused to acknowledge them; but the reforming decrees, which
could really be recognised as improvements, were willingly
accepted, and even the objection to particular conclusions
in matters of faith was soon silenced before the sense of the
importance of having the thing settled, and securing at any
cost the unity of the church.[429]
§ 149.3. =The Popes after the Council.=--=Pius V.=,
A.D. 1566-1572, is the only pope for many centuries before and
down to the present time who has been canonized. This was done
by Clement XI. in A.D. 1712. He was previously a Dominican and
grand-inquisitor, and even as pope continued to live the life of
a monk and an ascetic. He strove hard to raise Roman society out
of its deep moral degradation, condemned strict Augustinianism
in the person of Baius, made more severe the bull _In Cæna
Domini_ (§ 117, 3), and set the Roman Inquisition to work with
a fearful activity never before equalled. He also released all
the subjects of Queen Elizabeth of England from their oaths of
allegiance, threatened the Emperor Maximilian with deposition
should he grant religious freedom to the Protestants, and in
league with Spain and Venice gained a brilliant naval victory
over the Turks at Lepanto in A.D. 1571.[430]--=Gregory XIII.=,
A.D. 1572-1585, celebrated the Bloody Marriage as a glorious
act of faith, produced an improved edition of the _Corpus juris
canonici_, and carried out in A.D. 1582 the calendar reform
that had been already moved for at the Tridentine Council.
The new or Gregorian Calendar, which passed over at a bound
ten days in order to get rid of the divergence that had arisen
between the civil or Julian and the natural year, was only
after considerable opposition adopted even by Catholic states.
The evangelical governments of Germany introduced it only in
A.D. 1700, England in A.D. 1752, and Sweden in A.D. 1753; while
Russia and all the countries under the dominion of the Greek
church continue to this day their adherence to the old Julian
Calendar. Gregory’s successor, =Sixtus V.=, A.D. 1585-1590,
was the greatest and most powerful of all the popes since
the Reformation, not indeed as a spiritual head of the church,
but as a statesman and ruler of the Papal States. Sprung from
a thoroughly impoverished family, Felix Peretti was as a boy
engaged in herding swine. In his tenth year, however, through
the influence of his uncle, a Minorite monk, he obtained
admission and elementary education in his cloister at Montalto
near Ancona. After completing his studies, he distinguished
himself as a pulpit orator by his eloquence, as a teacher and
writer by his learning, as a consulter to the Inquisition by
his zealot devotion to the interests of orthodoxy, as president
of various cloisters by the strictness with which he carried
out moral reforms, and, after he had passed through all the
stages of the monkish hierarchy and risen to be vicar-general
of his order, he was elevated by Pius V. to the rank of bishop
and cardinal. He now took the name of Cardinal Montalto, and
as such obtained great influence in the administration of
the curia. The death of his papal patron and the succession
of Gregory XIII., who from an earlier experience as joint
commissioner with him to Spain entertained a bitter enmity
toward him, condemned him to retirement into private life for
thirteen years. He spent the period of his enforced quiet in
architectural undertakings, laying out of gardens, editing the
works of St. Ambrose, in the exercise of deeds of benevolence,
exhibiting toward every one by the whole course of his conduct
mildness, gentleness, and friendliness, and, notwithstanding
occasional sharp and wicked criticisms about the pope, showing
a conciliatory spirit toward his traducers. Thus the cardinals
became convinced that he would be a gentle, tractable pope,
and so they elected him on Gregory’s death to be his successor.
There is still a story current regarding him as to how, on the
very day of his elevation, he threw away the stick on which,
with all the appearance of the feebleness of age, he had up to
that time been wont to lean; but it is an undoubted fact, that
from that same day he appeared in the guise of an altogether
different man. Cold and reserved, crafty and farseeing in
his schemes, recklessly and unhesitatingly determined even
to the utmost extremes of harshness in carrying out his devices,
greedy and insatiable in amassing treasures, parsimonious
toward his dependants and in his own housekeeping, but lavish
in his expenditure on great buildings for the adornment of the
eternal city and for its public weal. He delivered the States
of the Church from the power of the bandits, who had occasioned
unspeakable confusion and introduced throughout these dominions
a reign of terror. By a series of draconic laws, which were
carried out in the execution of many hundreds without respect
of person, he spread an indescribable fear among all evil-doers,
and secured to the city and the state a security of life
and property that had been hitherto unknown. In theological
controversies he kept himself for the most part neutral, but
in the persecution of heretics at home and abroad there was
no remission of his earlier zeal. In the political movements
of his time he took a most active share, and the fact that the
interests of the Papal States lay nearer to his heart than the
interests of the church had the most important and far reaching
consequences for the future developments of State and church in
Europe. That the Hapsburg universal sovereignty aspired after
by Philip II. of Spain threatened also the independence of the
Papal States and the political significance of the papacy was
perceived by him very distinctly; but he did not perceive, or
at least would not admit, that the success of this scheme would
have been the one certain way to secure the utter extinction
of Protestantism and the restoration of the absolute unity of
the church. This was the reason why he was only half-hearted
in supporting Philip in the war against the Protestant
Elizabeth of England, and also so lukewarm toward the Catholic
league of the Guises in France that wrought in the direction
of Spanish interests. He did indeed succeed in weakening the
Spanish power in Italy and in hindering Spanish aggressions
in France, but at the same time he failed through these very
devices in obtaining a victory over Protestantism in England
and in the Netherlands, while the weakness of the German
Hapsburgs over against the German Protestant princes was
in great part the result of his policy. The Roman populace,
excited against him, not so much by his severity as by
the heavy taxes laid upon them, broke down after his death
the statue which the senate had erected to his memory
in the capitol.[431] The next three popes, who had all
been elected in the Spanish interest, died soon after one
another. =Urban VIII.= had a pontificate of only twelve days;
=Gregory XIV.= reigned for ten months; and =Innocent IX.=
survived only for two months. Then =Clement VIII.=,
A.D. 1592-1605, ascended the papal throne, his pontificate
in respect of civil and ecclesiastical polity, “a weak copy
of that of Sixtus.” His successor, =Leo XI.=, died after he
had occupied the chair for twenty-seven days.--Continuation,
§ 155, 1.
§ 149.4. =Papal Infallibility.=--The counter-reformation during
this period exerted itself in bringing again into the foreground
the assertion of the infallibility of the pope, which had
been postponed or set to one side during the previous century
(§ 110, 15). The noble Hadrian VI. indeed had, in his scholastic
work, _Quæstiones de sacramentis_, of A.D. 1516, reissued during
his pontificate, laid it down as beyond all doubt that even
the popes in matters of faith might err and often had erred,
“_plures enim fuerunt pontifices Rom. hæretici_.” On the other
hand, Leo X., in the bull issued against Luther, had distinctly
affirmed that the popes of Rome had never erred in their decrees
and bulls. Gregory XIII. declared in A.D. 1584, that all papal
bulls which contained disciplinary decisions on points of
order were infallible. Sixtus V., in the bull _Æternus ille_,
with which he issued his unfortunate edition of the Vulgate
in A.D. 1589, claimed for the popes the right of infallibly
deciding upon the correctness of the readings of the biblical
text; but he hastened by the recalling or suppressing of the
bull to have the mistake covered in oblivion. Bellarmine taught
that the pope is infallible only when he speaks _ex cathedra_;
_i.e._ defines a dogma and prescribes it for the belief of all
Christendom. But when, in spite of all the efforts of the Jesuit
general Lainez, no final decision was come to at Trent upon the
question as to whether or how far the pope was to be regarded as
infallible, the matter remained undefined and uncertain for more
than three centuries (§ 187, 3).
§ 149.5. =The Prophecy of St. Malachi.=--In his book
“_Lignum Vitæ_,” published at Venice in A.D. 1595, the
Benedictine Wion made public for the first time a prophecy
ascribed to St. Malachi, Archbishop of Armagh, who died in
A.D. 1148, in which all the popes from Cœlestine II., in
A.D. 1143, down to the end of the world, embracing in all
one hundred and eleven, are characterized by short descriptive
sketches. He also issued a paper purporting to be written by
the Dominican Ciaconius, who died in A.D. 1599, the author
of a history of the popes, which, however, in many particulars
does not harmonize with this document. In this additional
fragment we have short and frequent characterizations of the
first seventy-four popes, reaching down to Urban VII., in
A.D. 1590. The devices for the most part correctly represent
the coat of arms, the name, the birthplace, the monkish order,
etc., of the several popes; but these in every case are derived
from the history of the man before he ascended the papal throne.
On the other hand, the devices used to designate the three
succeeding popes down to A.D. 1595 are utterly inapplicable
and arbitrary. The same is true in almost every case of attempts
to characterize the later popes. It can therefore be regarded
as only the result of a chance coincidence, if now and again
there should seem to be some fair measure of correspondence.
Thus No. 83, _Montium custos_, describes Alexander VII., whose
arms show six mountains; No. 100, _De balneis Etruriæ_, answers
to Gregory XVI., who belonged to a Tuscan cloister; and No. 102,
_Lumen in cœlo_, designates Leo XIII., who has a star in his
coat of arms. If after Leo’s death, as Harnack remarks, a
German pope were possible, No. 103, _Ignis ardens_, might be
most exactly realized by the election of the Cardinal Hohenlohe.
Still more striking, though breaking through the principle
that is rigidly followed with respect to the earlier numbers
from 1 to 74, is the way in which under No. 96, _Peregrinus
apostolicus_, ridicule is cast upon the misfortune of Pius VI.
(§ 165, 10, 13); and in No. 101 _Crux de cruce_ is applied to
Pius IX. (§ 184, 2, 3). Upon the whole, there can be no doubt
that the composition of the document belongs to A.D. 1590, and
indeed to the period during which the conclave sat for almost
two months after the death of Urban VII., and that the author,
though unsuccessfully, endeavoured to influence the cardinals
in their election by making it appear that the appointment
of Cardinal Simoncelli of Orvieto, _i.e._ _Urbs vetus_, with
the device, _De antiquitate urbis_, had been thus divinely
indicated. He chose the name of St. Malachi, because his friend
and biographer, St. Bernard, had ascribed to him the gift of
prophecy. His series of popes had, therefore, to begin with a
contemporary of St. Malachi; and since the author must speak of
him as a pope that has yet to be elected, he gives designations
to him, and to all who follow down to his own times, which
point exclusively to characteristics and relations belonging
to them before their election to the papal dignity. Weingarten
thinks that Wion himself is author both of the prophecy and of
its explanatory appendix, but Harnack has given weighty reasons
for questioning this conclusion.
§ 149.6. =Reformation of Old Monkish Orders.=
1. The controversies that prevailed within the ranks of the
=Franciscans= (§ 112, 3) were finally put to rest by Pope
Leo X. in A.D. 1517. The Conventuals and Observants were
allowed to choose respectively their own independent
general, and from that time forth maintained on equal
terms a more peaceful relation to one another. The general
of the Observants, however, who were in number, influence,
and reputation greatly the superior, boasted of pre-eminence
over his Conventual colleague. Although all Observants
under him formed a close and thoroughly united society,
there were still distinguished within the same _regular_,
_strict_, and _most strict_ Observants. Among the regulars
the most prominent were the _Cordeliers_ of France, so
called because they were girt merely with a cord; to the
strict belonged the Barefooted monks; and to the most strict
the Alcantarines, founded by Peter of Alcantara in Spain.
The founder of the =Capuchins= was the Italian Observant
Minorite Matth. de Bassi. As he reported that St. Francis
had worn a cowl with long sharp peak or capouch, and soon
thereafter saw the saint himself in a vision dressed in
such a garb, he withdrew from his cloister, went to Rome,
and obtained from Clement VII., in A.D. 1526, the right
of restoring the capouch. Falling out with the Observants
over this, his followers attached themselves, in A.D. 1528,
to the Conventuals as an independent congregation with
their own vicar-general. The unusual style of dress
produced a sensation. Whenever one of the brethren appeared
the gutter children would run after him, crying out in
mockery, _Capucino_. But the name that was given in reproach
they accepted as a title of honour. Their self-denying
benevolence upon the outbreak of the pestilence in Italy in
A.D. 1528 soon won high reputation to the order, and secured
its further spread. In consequence of their vicar-general,
Bernardino Ochino (§ 139, 24), going over to the Reformed
church, the order came for a long time into disrepute.
Thoroughly characteristic of them was their utter deficiency
in scientific culture, which often went the length of a
relapse in utter rudeness and vulgarity, and debased their
preaching into burlesque “_capuchinades_.”
2. A reformation of the Carmelites was brought about by
St. Theresa de Jesus in A.D. 1562. The restored order
bore the name of the “Shoeless Carmelites,” and its members
distinguished themselves as teachers of the young and in
works of charity. Alongside of her, as restorer of the male
Carmelites, stood the pious mystic John of the Cross.[432]
3. A reformed congregation of =Cistercians= was founded in
A.D. 1586 by Jean de la Barrière, abbot of the monastery of
Feuillans [Feuillants]. The mode of life of these Feuillants
was so severe that fourteen brothers sank under the burden
within a short time, and this led to the modification of
the rules in A.D. 1595. The founder was called by Henry III.
to establish a monastery near Paris. He continued faithful
to the king after he had withdrawn from the league, and thus
drew down upon himself the hatred of the fanatical Catholic
members of the order to such a degree that they deposed and
banished him in A.D. 1592. A later commission of inquiry,
however, under Cardinal Bellarmine pronounced him innocent.
§ 149.7. =New Orders for Home Missions.=
1. =The Theatines= had their origin in an association of
pious priests at Theate, which Cajetan, at the advice
of John Peter Caraffa, bishop of that place, afterwards
Pope Paul IV., constituted into an order. In A.D. 1524,
having been organized as _clerici regulares_, they chose to
live not by begging but by depending on Divine providence,
_i.e._ on gifts bestowed without asking, and came to be
of importance as a training school for the higher clergy.
Their statutes expressly required of them to instruct the
people by frequent preaching, to attend to the bodies and
souls of the sick, to seek the spiritual good of criminals,
and to labour for the overthrow of heresy.
2. =The Barnabites=, also a society of regular clergy,
founded by Antonio Maria Zaccaria at Milan, and confirmed
by Clement VII. in A.D. 1533. They assigned to themselves
the duty of devoting their whole life to works of mercy,
pastoral care, education of the young, preaching, hearing
confession, and conducting missions. They took the name
Barnabites from the church of St. Barnabas, which was
given over to them. To them was also attached the order
of =Angelicals=, founded by Louisa Torelli, Countess
Guastalla, a rich lady who was widowed for the second
time in her twenty-fifth year, and confirmed by Paul III.
in A.D. 1534. At first they accompanied the Barnabites on
their missions, and wrought for the conversion of women,
while the Barnabites devoted their attention to the men.
Subsequently, however, on account of loose behaviour,
they were obliged to keep within their convents. Each
of the nuns in addition to her own name took that of the
order, Angelica, which was intended to remind her of her
obligation to keep herself pure as the angels.
3. The congregation of the =Somaskians=, or regular clergy
of St. Majolus, trace their origin from Jerome Emiliani
of Somascho, a town of Lombardy. While serving as an
officer in the army, a thoroughly careless man of the
world, he happened to be cast into prison. In his gloomy
cell he repented of his past sinful life, and made his
escape, it is said, by the assistance of the blessed
Virgin, in a manner similar to that recorded in Acts v. 19.
Some years after, in A.D. 1518, he entered holy orders,
and now devoted his whole life to a self-denying practice
of benevolence, by founding orphanages and training schools,
asylums for fallen women, etc. In order to secure support,
instruction, and pastoral care for his numerous and varied
dependants, he joined with himself several like-minded
clergymen in A.D. 1532, and formed a benevolent society.
Its richly blessed activity extended over all northern
Italy as far down as Rome, and was not arrested even
by the founder’s early death in A.D. 1537. Pius V.
in A.D. 1568 prescribed to the society the rule of
St. Augustine, and on the ground of this raised it into
an order of St. Majolus, so called from a church gifted
to it at Pavia by St. Charles Borromeo.
4. =The Brothers of Charity=, in Spain called Hospitallers,
in France Frères de Charité, were originally a secular
fraternity for giving gratuitous attention to the sick,
which was founded in Granada, in A.D. 1540, by a Portuguese,
Juan Ciudad, poor in goods but rich in love, to whom
his bishop gave the honourable title John of God, Juan
di Dios, and who was canonized by Pope Alexander VIII.
in A.D. 1690.[433] After Pius V. had in A.D. 1572 given
the order the character of a monkish order by putting its
members under the rule of St. Augustine, it soon spread
over Italy, France, Germany, and Poland. Its cloisters
were arranged as well-equipped hospitals for the destitute
sick, without distinction of religious confession, so that
their studies were directed even more to the medical than
to the theological sciences.
5. =The Ursuline Nuns=, founded in A.D. 1537 by a pious
virgin, Angela Merici of Brescia, for affording help to
needy sufferers of every sort, but especially for the
education of girls.
6. =The Priests of the Oratory=, or the Order of the Holy
Trinity, founded by St. Philip Neri of Florence in
A.D. 1548, a saint of the most profound piety, possessed
at the same time with a bright and genial humour. They
combined works of charity with exercises of common prayer
and Bible study, which they conducted in the oratory of
a hospital erected by them.[434]--Continuation, § 156, 7.
§ 149.8. =The Society of Jesus: Founding of the Order.=--=Ignatius
Loyola=, Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde, born at the castle of Loyola
in A.D. 1491, was descended from a distinguished family of Spanish
knights. Seriously wounded at the siege of Pampeluna by the French
in A.D. 1521, he sought to relieve the tedium of a prolonged
and painful sickness by reading romances of chivalry and, when
he had finished these, the legends of the saints. These last made
a deep impression upon him, and enkindled in him a glowing zeal
for the imitation of the saints in their abandonment of the world,
and their superiority to the world’s thoughts and ways. Nervous
convulsions and appearances of the queen of heaven gave their
Divine consecration to this new tendency. After his recovery
he distributed his goods among the poor, and in beggar’s garb
subjected himself to the most rigorous asceticism. At the age
of thirty-three years he began, in A.D. 1524, sitting among boys,
to learn the first elements of Latin, then studied philosophy
at Complutum and theology at Salamanca and Paris. With iron
determination of will he overcame all difficulties. In Paris, six
like-minded men joined together with him: Peter Favre of Savoy,
who was already a priest; Francis Xavier, belonging to a family
of Spanish grandees; James Lainez, a Castilian; Simon Rodriguez,
a Portuguese; Alphonso Salmeron and Nicholas Bobadilla, both
Spaniards. With glowing enthusiasm they drew out the plan of a new
order, which, by its very name, “Compañia de Jesus,” indicated its
character as that of a spiritual army, and by combining in itself
all those features which separately were found to characterize
the several monkish orders, advanced the bold claim of being
the universal and principal order of the Romish church. But
pre-eminently they put themselves under obligation, in A.D. 1534,
by a solemn vow of absolute poverty and chastity, and promised
to devote themselves to the service of the Catholic faith at the
bidding of the pope. Practising the strictest asceticism they
completed their studies, and obtained ordination as priests.
As insurmountable difficulties, arising from the war carried
on by Venice with the Turks, prevented the accomplishing of
their original intention of a spiritual crusade to the Holy Land,
they travelled to Rome, and after some hesitation Paul III., in
A.D. 1540, confirmed their association as the =Ordo Societatis
Jesu=. Ignatius was its first general. As such he continued to
devote himself with great energy of will to spiritual exercises,
to the care of the sick, to pastoral duties, and to the conflict
with the heretics. He died in A.D. 1556, and was beatified by
Paul V. in A.D. 1609, and canonized by Gregory XV. in A.D. 1622.
A collection of his letters was published in three vols. by the
Jesuits in A.D. 1874.[435]--Among his disciples who emulated their
master in genius, insight, and wide, world-embracing schemes, we
must name the versatile Lainez, the energetic Francis Borgia, a
Spanish grandee, grandson of the murdered Giovanni Borgia, son
of Pope Alexander VI. (§ 110, 12), but above all the Neapolitan
Claudio Aquaviva, A.D. 1581-1615, who in many respects deserves to
be regarded as a new founder of Loyola’s creation. Under these the
order entered upon a career of universal significance in history,
as a new spiritual army for the defence of the papacy. The popes
showed their favour by heaping unheard of privileges upon it,
so that it grew from year to year more and more powerful and
comprehensive. Never has any human society come to understand
better how to prove spirits, and to assign to each individual
a place, and to set him to work for ends for which he is best
suited; and never has a system of watchful espionage been more
consistently and strictly carried out. Everything must be given
up to the interests of the order in unconditional obedience to
the commands of the superior, even that which is to men most dear
and sacred, fatherland, relations, likings and dislikings. One’s
own judgment and conscience count for nothing; the order is all
in all. They have understood how to use everything that the world
affords, science, learning, art, worldly culture, politics, and,
in carrying out their foreign missions, colonization, trade, and
industry, as means for accomplishing their own ends (§ 156, 13).
The order got into its own hands the education of the children of
the higher ranks, and thus secured devoted and powerful patrons.
By preaching, pastoral work, and the founding of numerous
brotherhoods and sisterhoods they wrought upon the people, became
advisers of the princes through the confessional, wormed their way
into connections and into all secrets. And all these innumerable
appliances, all these conspicuous powers and talents, united
under the direction of one will, were unwaveringly directed
to one end: on the positive side, the furthering and spread of
Catholicism; on the negative side, the overthrow and uprooting
of Protestantism. On the death of the founder, in A.D. 1556,
the order already numbered over 1,000 members in thirteen
provinces and 100 colonies; and seventy years later, the number
of provinces had increased to thirty-nine, with 15,493 members
in 803 houses.[436]--Continuation, §§ 151, 1; 165, 9.
§ 149.9. =Constitution of the Jesuit Order.=--Required to yield
obedience and render an account of their doings only to the pope,
exempted from every other kind of ecclesiastical supervision,
and therefore scorning to accept any spiritual dignities and
benefices, such as bishoprics, canonries, pastorates, etc.,
this order, thoroughly self-contained, presents a more perfect
and compact organization than any large association on this
earth has ever been able to show. Only those who had good bodily
health and intellectual ability were admitted to the two years’
novitiate. After this period of probation had been passed
in a satisfactory manner, the novices were released from the
discipline of the novice master and put under the usual three
monkish vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. They now
either entered immediately as “_secular coadjutors_” on the
duties assigned to such in administrating and taking care of the
outward affairs of the houses of the order, or as “_scholastici
approbati_” for their further intellectual culture were received
into collegiate establishments provided for such under the
direction of a rector. After completing the prescribed studies
and exercises, they proceeded as “_scholastici formati_” to
engage upon their duties as “_spiritual coadjutors_,” who were
required to continue the prosecution of their studies, teach
the young, and perform pastoral work. After many years’ trial,
the most able and active of them were received into the number
of the “_professi_,” who live purely on alms in a distinct and
special kind of institution presided over by a superior. But
among the _professi_, there is a distinction made between those
who adopt three and those who adopt four vows. The latter, who,
in addition to the other usual vows, take also one of obedience
to the pope in regard to any mission among heathens and heretics
which he may please to commission them to undertake, as the
choice spirits of the order, constitute its very core and form
the circle immediately around the general, who with monarchical
absolutism stands at the head of all. Even this autocrat however
is himself watched over by the four assistants associated with
him and by an admonisher, who is at the same time his confessor,
so that he may not commit anything contrary to the rules of the
order and unduly stretch his own prerogatives; and he is also
answerable to the general congregation of all the _professi_,
which is convened every third year. The provincials officiate
as his viceroys in different countries in which the order has a
footing. Alongside of the spiritual superior of every house of
the order stands a procurator, usually of clerical rank, for the
administration of the property and the superintendence of the
secular coadjutors. Like the general all the other superiors are
watched over by the assistants or advisers associated with them,
and by the admonishers or father confessors. The _Constitutiones
Societatis Jesu_ (Rom., 1583), p. vi., c. i. 1, thus describe
the obedience that must be rendered to the superiors: _Quisquis
sibi persuadeat, quod qui sub obedientia vivunt, se ferri ac
regi a divina providentia per superiores suos sinere debent
perinde ac si cadaver essent, quod quoquoversus ferri et
quacunque ratione tractari se sinit: vel similiter atque senis
baculus, qui ubicunque et quacunque in re velit eo uti, qui cum
manu tenet, ei inservit_. By all members of the order, of every
rank of degree, by novices and adepts alike, four weeks were
usually devoted once a year under an exercise master chosen for
that work to _exercitia spiritualia_, in which rigid attention
was given to prayer, meditation, examination of conscience,
mortification, etc., as an effectual means of breaking in
and breaking down the individual will. The first sketch of
a directory for exercises of this sort was made by the founder
himself in his _Exercitia Spiritualia_ (Antwerp, 1638). This
work, annotated, enlarged, and completed, was finally adopted
by the general congregation in A.D. 1594, and issued under
the title _Directorium in exer. sp._--The original rule of the
Jesuits is set forth in the _Constitutiones Societatis Jesu_
already referred to; their later rule, finally perfected at the
eighteenth general congregation, is given in the _Institutum
Soc. Jesu_ (2 vols., Prag., 1757). The so called _Monita secreta
Soc. Jesu_, first published at Cracow in A.D. 1612, professing
to have been obtained from private instructions communicated
by Aquaviva, the fifth general of the order, only to the
most trustworthy of the very _élite_ of the _professi_, which
gives without the slightest reserve an account of the devices,
often of the most unscrupulous description, to be practised in
order to secure an increase to the order of power, reputation,
influence, and possessions, have been repudiated with horror
by the order as a malevolent calumny, by which probably some
offender who had been ejected sought vent for his revenge. The
author, who at all events betrays a thorough acquaintance with
the internal arrangements of the order, under the fictitious
form of a course of instruction given by the general named, may
have communicated, with considerable exaggerations, an account
of the practices current within the society of his own day.[437]
§ 149.10. =The Doctrinal and Moral System of the Jesuits.=--In
=dogmatics= Loyola himself and his immediate disciples were
firmly attached to the prevailing doctrinal system of Thomas
(§ 113, 2). Gradually, however, it came to be seen, that upon
this ground their conflict with the Protestants in regard
to the fundamental doctrines of sin and grace, justification
and sanctification was in various ways precarious, and this
occasioned an inclination more and more toward the Scotist side.
Their general Aquaviva, in his order of study prescribed in
A.D. 1586, publicly announced this departure from the doctrine
of the _Doctor Angelicus_, restricting it, however, to the
doctrines of grace and of the immaculate conception. On
the other hand, they were the most zealous defenders of the
characteristic doctrines of St. Thomas (§ 96, 23) even in
their extremest form, the papal infallibility, the pope’s
universal episcopate, and his absolute supremacy over every
earthly potentate. In the interests of the papacy they thus
laid the foundations of a theory of the sovereignty of the
people in matters of civil life: Only the papal power is,
according to Matthew xvi. 18, immediately from God, that of
the princes is from the people. The people therefore, if their
prince be a heretic or a tyrant, can rid themselves of him
by deposing, banishing, or even putting him to death; _i.e._
tyrannicide. Thus taught Bellarmine, who died in A.D. 1621,
speaking for the whole order, in his treatise _De potestate
pontificis in temporalibus_, and still more decidedly and
openly the careful and reliable Spanish historian Juan Mariana,
who died in A.D. 1624, in his “Mirror for Princes,” _De rege
et regis institutione_, which was therefore condemned by the
parliament of Paris to be burnt; while another work of his,
published only after his death, reflecting upon the despotic
proceedings of the general of the order, Aquaviva, and
mercilessly exposing many other offences of the society, was
condemned by Urban VIII. Alongside of the Pelagianizing Jesuit
doctrine of grace there was also developed a lax =doctrine
of morals=, which threatened to sap the very foundations of
morality. This they made familiar to people generally through
the confessional. The following are the principal points upon
which their quibbling casuistry has been exercised in such a
manner as to bring the morality of the Jesuits into thorough
disrepute:
1. _Probabilism_, which teaches, that in a case where the
conscience is undecided as to what should be done or borne
in that particular instance, one is not necessarily bound
to the more certain and probable meaning, but may even
take a less certain and less probable view, if this were
supported by weighty reasons, or could be sustained by
the authority of some distinguished theologian, a _doctor
gravis_.
2. _Intentionalism_, or the doctrine that any action, even it
be in itself sinful, is to be judged only according to the
intention with which it was performed, pointedly expressed
in the saying, The end justifies the means, “_quia cum finis
est licitus etiam media sunt licita_” (Busembaum).
3. The distinction between _philosophical and theological
sin_, according to which only the latter, as a sin
committed with a clear understanding of the sinfulness of
the deed, and with the present consciousness and intention
thereby expressly to break a Divine command, is condemnable
before God.
4. The doctrine of the permissibility of a secret reserve,
_reservatio mentalis_, and the use of ambiguous language,
by means of which, if one, upon giving a solemn affirmation
or denial upon oath, has so arranged his words, that besides
the meaning naturally to be taken from them that is contrary
to the truth or the intention, they admit of another that is
in accordance with fact, he is not to be regarded as guilty
of giving false witness, of breach of faith, deceit, or
perjury.
These and other suchlike moral axioms, not indeed expressed for
the first time by the Jesuit order, but already for the most
part rooted in the mediæval system of casuistry, were certainly
first carried out with reckless consistency in the moral code of
the Society of Jesus. In the most frivolous and lighthearted way
they were applied to the life, and openly and unreservedly set
forth in the confessional, by the most celebrated moralists of
the order. They were laid down as well established principles,
not merely in learned theological discussion, but in the
regularly authorized handbooks of morals, approved by the
congregation of the order, of which some fifty or seventy
treatises, _e.g._ those of Escobar and Busembaum (§ 157, 1),
are still extant. They cannot therefore be repudiated as the
individual opinions of some rash and inconsistent writers. They
will also be found to lie at the foundation of the whole scheme
and procedure of the order in their prosecution of foreign
missions (§§ 150; 156, 12) and in their attempts to proselytise
Protestants (§ 151, 1, 2), to supply the principle underlying
their ecclesiastical and civil policy, their industrial and
commercial activity (§ 156, 13), their pastoral and educational
work. They are also thoroughly illustrative of their well known
motto, _Omnia in majorem Dei gloriam_. It need not, however,
be denied that the order has at all times numbered among its
members many distinguished by deep piety and strict moral
principles, and indeed some among them expressly combated from
Scripture and experience those doctrines so perilous to moral
truth and purity. The most notorious of the Jesuit moralists who
taught and defended these pernicious views were Francis Toletus,
who died in A.D. 1596, Gabriel Vasquez, who died in A.D. 1604,
Thomas Sanchez, who died in A.D. 1610, Francis Suarez, who
died in A.D. 1617, the Westphalian Hermann Busembaum, who died
in A.D. 1668, and the Spaniard Escobar de Mendoza, who died
in A.D. 1699. The name of the last mentioned has obtained an
unenviable notoriety by the adoption of the word _escobarderie_
into the French language.[438]
§ 149.11. =Jesuit Influence upon Worship and Superstition.=--As
Jesuitism itself may be described as in every respect a
reproduction in an exaggerated form of the Catholicism of the
mediæval papacy, with all its unevangelical and anti-evangelical
deterioration, all this showed itself pre-eminently and
characteristically in reference to worship and superstition.
Above all, this appeared in the mariolatry, in which the
doctrine and practice of the Jesuits far outstripped all the
extravagances of the Middle Ages. In the scheme of worship
recommended and practised by the Jesuits the Divine Trinity
was supplanted by a quaternity, in which Mary was assigned her
place as the adopted daughter of the Father, mother of the Son,
and spouse of the Holy Ghost, and thus her fervent devotees
made her worship overshadow that of the three Persons of the
Godhead. Along with the worship of Mary the order gave a new
impetus to the veneration of St. Ann (§ 57, 2), whom Thomas de
St. Cyrillo in his book, _De laudibus b. Annæ_, celebrated as
“the grandmother of God and mother-in-law of the Holy Ghost.”
In like manner it gave an impulse to worship of saints, images,
and relics, to processions, pilgrimages, and rosary devotions,
as well as to superstitious beliefs about wonder working
scapularies, girdles, medals, amulets, and talismans (§ 186, 2),
Ignatius and Xavier-water, endowed with healing properties
through contact with the relics or models of these saints.
The Jesuits were also making endless discoveries of new miracle
legends and relics previously unknown. They originated the
worship of the heart of Jesus (§ 156, 6), renewed the practice
of flagellation, gave a new vitality to the indulgence nuisance,
and diligently fostered belief in sorcery, demoniacal possession,
apparitions of the devil, and exorcism. They also encouraged
the silly notions of the people about witches, with all their
cruel and horrible consequences (§ 117, 4). The Jesuit Delrio,
with the approval of his order, published, in A.D. 1599, a book
with the title, “Disquisitiones Magicæ,” which, as a worthy
companion volume to the “Hammer for Witches,” branded as heresy
every doubt as to the truth of witchcraft witnessed to by so
many infallible popes, and gave a powerful impetus to witch
persecutions throughout Roman Catholic countries. That two noble
Jesuits, Tanner, who died in A.D. 1632, and Spee, who died in
A.D. 1635, are to be numbered among the first opponents of the
gross delusion, does not in the very least affect the indictment
brought against the order; for Tanner was persecuted on account
of his utterances being contrary to the principles of the
society, and Spee’s “_Cautio Criminalis_” could venture into
the light only anonymously, and be printed only in a Protestant
town (Ruiteln, 1631).
§ 149.12. =Educational Methods and Institutions of the
Jesuits.=--The Jesuit order never interested itself in
elementary and popular education. The pulpit and confessional,
as well as the founding and control of spiritual brotherhoods
and sisterhoods, afforded ample means and opportunities for
impressing their influence upon the lower orders of the people.
On the other hand, the order laboured unweariedly to secure
professorships in gymnasiums, seminaries for priests, and
universities, and that, not merely in the department of theology,
but also in all the other faculties. By these means and by
the founding of regular Jesuit schools they sought to get
into their own hands the education of the higher ranks, so
as to secure from among them as large a number as possible of
members, friends, and protectors. Under the general Aquaviva
this movement obtained an authorized directory and rule in the
_Ratio et institutio studiorum Soc. J._, published in A.D. 1586.
And very remarkable although thoroughly one-sided, and
thus no doubt most effectually realizing the ends desired,
were the results which the order gained in the department of
Catholic education, which had been thrown into deep shade by
the brilliant advances of Protestant scholarship and educational
methods. The study of philology had for its almost sole object
the acquiring of the Latin language with Ciceronian elegance,
but this only produced fluency in writing and speaking. Greek
was studied only by the way; and the knowledge of classical
antiquities, as well as the arts and sciences generally, with
the exception of mathematics, was utterly neglected. But special
attention was devoted to rhetoric, and by means of disputations,
public lectures, and dramatic representations readiness in
speaking and replying was obtained; but freedom of thought and
independent culture were rigorously suppressed. The whole course
of instruction, as well as the method of tuition, had for its
aim the breaking in and subduing of the pupil’s will. Adherence
to rigid order, and unconditional obedience to reasonable
demands, and a mild discipline, with strict control, and a
regular system by which one was set to watch another, were
the means used for arousing to the utmost a spirit of emulation
and giving a sharp spur to ambition. The course of study which
a scholastic of the order had to pass through in the collegiate
establishments was divided into the _studia inferiora_ and
_superiora_. The former, consisting of three classes, embraced
the _Grammatica_ as a preliminary basis for the two higher
classes of the _Humanitas_ and the _Rhetorica_. The _superiora_
comprised a three years’ course of Aristotelian philosophy, and
a four years’ course of scholastic theology upon the _Sentences_
of the Lombard and the _Summa_ of St. Thomas, together with
Bible study upon the Vulgate and the original texts, a little
Church history, and, as the crown of the whole curriculum,
casuistic ethics.
§ 149.13. =Theological Controversies.=
1. The old controversy about the immaculate conception of
the blessed Virgin had not by any means obtained a final
settlement at Trent. By firmly maintaining the decree on
the universality of original sin the Franciscans hoped,
with the zealous support of the Jesuits Lainez and Salmeron,
to obtain express recognition of the pet doctrine of their
order (§ 104, 7); but, on the other hand, the Dominicans so
vehemently protested, that the council, in order to prevent
a threatened schism, was obliged to leave the point in
dispute undecided, and was satisfied with renewing the
constitution of Sixtus IV., of A.D. 1483 (§ 112, 4), and
thus prohibiting the one party from accusing the other of
heresy.--Continuation, § 156, 5.
2. The council for the same reason was just as little able
to set at rest the burning controversy between Thomists
and Scotists on the =doctrine of grace= (§ 113, 2) by
issuing any decisive statement on the subject. When the
pious and learned professor =Michael Baius= of Lyons came
forward in lectures and writings as a zealous defender of
Augustinianism, the Franciscans extracted from his works
seventy-six propositions, which were condemned by Pius V.,
A.D. 1567. And when again the Jesuits came forward in
support of the papal verdict, the theological faculty
of Lyons in A.D. 1587, took the field and passed censure
upon thirty-four Pelagianizing propositions of the Jesuits
Leonard Less and John Hamel as opposed to Holy Scripture
and St. Augustine. In the following year the Portuguese
Jesuit =Louis Molina=, in his treatise _Liberi arbitrii
cum gratiæ donis concordia_ of A.D. 1588, set forth a
semi-pelagian modification of the disputed propositions;
the Dominicans, with the learned Dominicus Bañez at their
head, opposed with a bitter polemic. But now the whole
order of the Jesuits stood together as one man on the
side of Molina. Besieged from both sides into complaints
and demands, Clement VIII., in A.D. 1597, appointed a
commission, the so called _congregatio de auxiliis_, to
make a thorough investigation into the matter, and to give
an exhaustive report. After this commission had spent ten
years in vainly endeavouring to construct a formula which
would give satisfaction to both parties, Paul V. dissolved
it in A.D. 1607, promised to make known his decision at
a more suitable time, and then in A.D. 1611 forbade all
further disputings on that question. But after little
more than thirty years the controversy broke out again
at another place in a far more threatening and dangerous
form (§ 156, 5).
§ 149.14. =Theological Literature.=--Various kinds of
expedients were tried in order thoroughly to secure the
establishment of the Tridentine system of belief. Paul IV.
had as early as A.D. 1499 drawn up a list of prohibited books,
which was again ratified at Trent in A.D. 1562, and has been
since then continued and enlarged through some forty editions
as the _Index librorum prohibitorum et expurgandorum_ (with
the note, _donec corrigatur_). Pius V. founded in A.D. 1571
a special “Congregation of the Index,” for looking after
this business.[439] The _Professio fidei Tridentinæ_ of
A.D. 1564, and the _Catechismus Romanus_ of A.D. 1566, were
issued as authentic statements of the Tridentine doctrine;
and in A.D. 1588 a permanent congregation was instituted for
the explaining of that system in all cases of dispute that
might arise. Also the new _Breviarium Romanum_ of A.D. 1568
(§ 56, 2), as well as the _Missale Romanum_ of A.D. 1570, served
the same end. In A.D. 1566 Pius V. had appointed a commission,
the so called _Correctores Romani_, for the preparing of a
new edition of the _Corpus juris canonici_, which Gregory XIII.
issued as the only authentic form in A.D. 1582. Sixtus V.
published in A.D. 1589 a new edition of the Vulgate, _Editio
Sixtina_, and, notwithstanding its numerous errata, often
only pasted over or scratched out, pronounced it authentic.
Clement VIII., however, issued a much altered revision,
_Editio Clementina_, in A.D. 1592, and strictly forbade any
alteration of it, but was induced himself to send out next year
a second edition, which was guilty of this very fault. Meanwhile
Roman Catholics and scholars began, in spite of the Tridentine
decree as to the authenticity of the Vulgate, to give diligent
attention to the study of the original text of Holy Scripture.
The Dominican Santes =Pagninus= of Lucca, who died in A.D. 1541,
a pupil of Savonarola, after careful study of all rabbinical
aids, produced a Hebrew lexicon in A.D. 1529, a Hebrew grammar
in A.D. 1528, a literally exact rendering of the Old and the New
Testaments from the original texts, upon which he was engaged
for thirty years, an introduction, with a thorough treatment
of the tropical language of Scripture, and commentaries on the
Pentateuch and Psalms. The literal meaning was with him _palea,
folium, cortex_; the mystical, _triticum, fructus, nucleus
suavissimus_. More importance was attached to the historical
sense by the Dominican =Sixtus of Siena=, by birth a Jew,
who died in A.D. 1569. His _Bibliotheca sancta_ is an
introduction to Holy Scripture extremely credible for that
age. The Roman Inquisition condemned him to death because of
heretical expressions in that work, especially with regard to
the deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament; but Pius V.
pardoned him, after he had prevailed upon him to retract.
The Jesuit Cardinal =Robert Bellarmine=, who died in A.D. 1621,
in his _Ll. IV. de verbo Dei_ controverted the Protestant
principle, _Scriptura scripturæ interpres_. Jerome =Emser=
bitterly inveighed against Luther’s translation of the Bible,
and, in A.D. 1527, set over against it an attempted translation
of his own, which, however, is nothing more than a reprint of
Luther’s, with the changes necessary in consequence of following
the Vulgate and unimportant transpositions and alterations
of words. The same barefaced impudence was practised by John
=Dietenberger= of Mainz, in whose pretended rendering of the
Old Testament of A.D. 1534, the translation of Luther and
Leo Judä is followed almost word for word. John =Eck= of
Ingolstadt produced, in A.D. 1537, a translation of the Bible
from the Vulgate in the most wretched German, without the
least consultation of the original text. On the other hand,
the Augustinian monk =Luis de Leon=, who died in A.D. 1591,
was not only celebrated as a learned and brilliant exegete,
but also distinguished as a poet and prose writer of the first
rank in the national literature of Spain. He was thrown into the
prison of the Spanish Inquisition because of a translation and
exposition of the Song of Songs in the mystico-ecclesiastical
sense, circulated only in manuscript, and because of his
depreciation of the Vulgate; and only after a five years’
confinement, during which he narrowly escaped the hands of
the hangman, was he set free. The learned Spaniard =Arias
Montanus=, under the patronage of King Philip II., edited
the Antwerp polyglott in eight vols. folio, with learned notes
and excursuses, in A.D. 1569 ff. The number of exegetes who
now gave decided prominence to the literal sense became very
considerable toward the end of the century. The most notable
of these are Arias Montanus, who died in A.D. 1598, having
commented on almost the whole Bible; the Jesuit John Maldonatus,
who died in A.D. 1583, on the four gospels; John Mariana, who
died in A.D. 1624, _Scholia in V. et N.T._; Nich. =Serrarius=,
who died in A.D. 1609, on the Old and New Testaments; and
also William =Estius= of Douay, who died in A.D. 1613, on the
New Testament epistles.--In the department of dogmatics the
old traditional method was still followed by commenting on
the Lombard. The most important schoolman of the age was the
Spanish Jesuit Francis Suarez. In A.D. 1528 Berth. Pirstinger,
Bishop of Chiemsee, under the title “Tewtsche Theologey,” wrote
a complete handbook of theology in the High German dialect,
which had completely emancipated itself from the scholastic
forms (§ 125, 5). John =Eck= also produced a rival work to
Melanchthon’s _Loci_, the _Enchiridion locorum communium_,
which within fifty years passed through forty-six editions.
But of much greater importance are the _Loci theologici_ of
the Spanish Dominican Melch. =Canus=, who died in A.D. 1550,
which were published at Salamanca in A.D. 1563. They consist
not so much of a system of doctrines properly so called, as
rather of comprehensive and learned preliminary investigations
about the sources, principles, method, and fundamental ideas of
dogmatics. He rejects the charge of absolute perversity brought
against scholasticism, but grants that the method should be
simplified, and what is good in it preserved. For instructions
in higher and lower schools the two catechisms of the first
German Jesuit provincial, =Petrus [Peter] Canisius= (§ 161, 1),
_Cat. major_ of A.D. 1554, and _Cat. parvus_ of A.D. 1566,
were epoch-making. They were circulated in numberless editions
and translations,--the Little Catechism being printed more
than 500 times,--and used for two centuries in all the Catholic
schools in Germany; and even yet they are held in high esteem.
Among the Catholic polemical writers, Cardinal Bellarmine
occupies beyond dispute the foremost rank. His _Disputationes
de controversiis chr. fidei adv. hujus temp. hæreticos_,
A.D. 1588-1593, are in many respects unsurpassed even to
this day. Before him William =Lindanus=, Bishop of Ghent,
author of _Panoplia evangelica_ (Colon., A.D. 1563), and the
Jesuit Francis =Coster= of Mechlin, author of _Enchiridion
controversiarum_ (Colon., A.D. 1585), had won a great reputation
among their own party as disputants against Protestantism. The
services rendered to church history by Cardinal =Baronius= have
already been referred to under § 5, 2.
§ 149.15. =Art and Poetry.=--In the second Dutch school
(§ 115, 8) musical taste was thoroughly depraved, and =Church
music= especially became so artificial, florid, and secularized,
that some of the Tridentine fathers in all seriousness proposed
that figured music should be completely banished from the church
services, at least in the performance of mass. It was when
matters had reached this low ebb that =Palestrina=, Giovanni
Pietro Aloisio Sante of Palestrina, appeared as the saviour and
regenerator of sacred musical art. He was a scholar of Goudimel,
who, before he passed over to the Reformed church (§ 143, 2),
had founded a school of music in Rome. As early as A.D. 1560,
in his sacred compositions on Micah vi. 3 ff., which to this
day are performed always on Good Friday in the Sistine Chapel,
Palestrina secured a firm position as an unsurpassed master
of genuine ecclesiastical music. The commission appointed by
Pius IV. for the reformation of church music called upon him
therefore to submit specimens of his compositions. He produced
three masses in A.D. 1565, among which was the celebrated
_Missa Marcelli_, dedicated to his former patron, the deceased
pope Marcellus II. With this masterpiece, which represents the
highest perfection of Catholic church music, and entitled its
author to rank as a prince of musical art, _Musicæ princeps_,
the retention of the figured music in the mass, so keenly
contested in the council, was decided upon.--The immense
success of the =sacred song of= the Protestant church
as a means for spreading the Reformation constrained the
Catholic church, very unwillingly, to seek to counteract this
danger by the translation of Latin hymns and the composition of
songs of praise in German (§ 115, 7), as well as by the liberal
introduction of them into the public services. Between A.D. 1470
and A.D. 1631 there have been enumerated no fewer than sixty-two
collections of German Catholic church hymns. The most important
are those of Michael Vehe, Provost of Halle, A.D. 1537; of
George Witzel, a renegade Lutheran, A.D. 1550; of John
Leisetritt, dean of the cathedral at Budissin, A.D. 1567;
and Gregory Corner, Abbot of Gottweih, in his “Great Catholic
Hymnbook,” A.D. 1625. Caspar Ulenberg, previously a Lutheran,
in A.D. 1582 rendered the psalms of David into German rhyme;
and Rutzer Eding published in A.D. 1583 a German mass, with
translation of the Latin church hymns. The names of the poets
and translators are for the most part unknown. Many a beautiful
sacred song, too, is met with among these rich materials, an
evidence of what might have been the result if the Catholic
church of Germany, instead of having been opposed or only
half-hearted, had fostered and encouraged this important part
of the Divine service with whole-hearted enthusiasm.--The arts
of architecture and painting continued to be still cultivated
successfully in the Roman Catholic church (§ 115, 13). Besides
Correggio and Titian, and after them, named with the noble
masters of =painting=, are the two Caracci, uncle and nephew,
Domenichino and Guido Reni. Michael Angelo Buonarotti, who
died in A.D. 1564 an old man of ninety years, gave expression
to the most profound Christian ideas in his works of painting
and sculpture. The Renaissance style during the 16th century
gave scope for the further application and development of
ecclesiastical =architecture=. The most magnificent church
building of the century was the rebuilding of St. Peter’s
church at Rome, undertaken by Pope Julius II. in A.D. 1506,
which Bramante began and Michael Angelo after his plan carried
out. As painter and statuary, Angelo had refused slavishly to
follow the traditions of the church in respect of the worship
of Mary and the saints, and so, too, as a poet in glowing
sonnets he only gave expression to deep sorrow for sin,
and his true spiritual faith in the crucified Sin-bearer.
His countryman Torquato Tasso, who died in A.D. 1595, in
his “Jerusalem Delivered,” celebrated the Christian heroic
of mediæval Catholicism. In the history of Spanish poetry, the
Christian lyrics of St. Theresa and Luis de Leon are regarded
even to this day as unsurpassed in excellence.
§ 149.16. =The Spanish Mystics.=--In consequence of the
Reformation, the Roman Catholic church was compelled to have
recourse to the revivification of the mediæval mysticism from
which it had become alienated in life and doctrine, in order
by means of it to give that intensity and inward power to
the religious life which was now felt to be indispensably
necessary without falling away from the church in which alone
salvation can be found, and without making surrender to the
_inanis fiducia hæreticorum_. Thus there arose from about the
middle of the century, first of all in Spanish cloisters, a new
development of mysticism, which, without expressly attacking
the “outer way” of the ecclesiastical practice of piety,
introduced and recommended a second higher and nobler method,
called the “inner way,” because leading to Christian perfection.
This consisted in a regular and deeply spiritual exercise
in prayer and contemplation, with a decided preference for
inward unuttered prayer, with complete mortification of
one’s own self-will and absolute self-surrender to the Divine
guidance, having for its aim and climax the most blessed
rest in fellowship with God. A pious Minorite, =St. Peter
of Alcantara=, gave to this tendency a doctrinal basis by his
treatise, _De oratione et meditatione_, published in A.D. 1545,
in which he manifests a most bitter opposition to Protestantism,
and a zealous readiness to co-operate in all the horrid
cruelties of the Spanish counter-reformation. Its highest
point is reached in the famous Carmelite nun of Avila in Old
Castile, =St. Theresa de Jesus=, who died in A.D. 1582, the
most celebrated saint of the Spanish church. Introduced by
Peter of Alcantara in A.D. 1560 to the profound mysteries of
contemplation, and favoured amid the convulsions of her life
of prayer with frequent visions of Christ, she undertook, in
A.D. 1562, by the founding of a new cloister, to lead her order
back to the strict observance of this old rule. The fame of her
sanctity soon had spread over all Spain, but all the more did
the hatred of the brothers and sisters of her order who favoured
the lax observance increase. They even carried the bitterness so
far as to get the Inquisition to originate a heretic prosecution
against her in A.D. 1579, on the ground of her pretension to
have visions, but this was abandoned by command of the king.
Among her numerous writings, of which Luis de Leon, in A.D. 1583,
issued a complete edition, which have been translated into all
the languages of Europe, the “Castillo interior,” _i.e._ the
City of Mansoul, or the seven Residences of the Soul, is the
one in which her mysticism is most completely developed. It
describes the stages through which the soul must pass in order
to become wholly one with God. Her faithful fellow labourer in
the reforming of the order, =St. John of the Cross=, who died in
A.D. 1591, in regard to mysticism occupied the same ground with
her. His writings, among which the _Subida del Monte Carmel_,
“The Climbing of Mount Carmel,” is the most comprehensive,
are not to be compared with those of St. Theresa in the rare
witchery of an enchanting style, but are distinguished by
solidity and maturity of thought. The brethren of the order
opposed to reform showed toward John a far more severe and
continuous bitterness than they did toward Theresa. Even in
A.D. 1575 he was imprisoned in one of their cloisters, and
cruelly ill used. He made his escape indeed in the following
year by flight, but only in A.D. 1588 did a papal brief, by
a formal establishment of the Congregation of the Barefooted
Carmelites, put an end to all oppressions and persecutions. The
mysticism recommended by him and St. Theresa found entrance now
more and more into the cloisters, not only of the Carmelites,
but also of the other orders, and numbered many adherents
among the higher and lower clergy, as well as among cultured
laymen.--But while on this side the traditional forms and
doctrines usual in the practice of piety in the church sank
indeed into the background, but were never expressly repudiated
or contradicted, there arose upon this same mystical basis
numerous sects designated _enlightened_ “=Alumbrados=,” who went
all the length of pouring abuse and contempt upon every kind
of church form and doctrine, and thus calling forth down to the
17th century constant persecution from the Inquisition. Theresa
was canonized in A.D. 1622, Peter of Alcantara in A.D. 1669, and
John of the Cross in A.D. 1726.--Continuation, § 156.
§ 149.17. There were also many noble products of the
=practical Christian life= brought forth in that new departure
which Catholicism after the Reformation in the interests of
self-preservation had been obliged to undertake. Evidence of
this practical endeavour was given in the zealous manner in
which home missions were prosecuted. From out of the general
body of Catholicism there sprang up a new series of saints, who
were quite worthy to rank alongside those of the Middle Ages.
Most highly distinguished among these was =Charles Borromeo=,
born A.D. 1538, died A.D. 1584, who, from his position as
nephew of Pope Pius IV., and from his high rank in the church as
cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, exerted a powerful influence
upon the Tridentine Council and the curia, which he used for
the removal of many abuses. His life is the realization of the
perfect ideal of that of a Catholic pastor and prelate. He also
proved himself worthy of being so regarded during the dreadful
pestilence that raged in Milan in A.D. 1576. Paul V. canonized
him in A.D. 1610, and to this day his tall figure in a colossal
statue looks out upon the province of Milan as the patron of the
state.[440]--Along with the intensification of the specifically
Catholic sentiment awakened in the cloisters by means of the
endeavours put forth in the counter-reformation and spreading
out from these into the general Catholic community, we meet
with a revival of the old zeal for monkish =asceticism=. The
Jesuits especially laboured earnestly for the restoration of
the =discipline of the lash=, brought at an early period into
discredit by the extravagances of the Flagellants (§ 116, 3).
And besides these many also of the new and reformed orders
gave themselves to further and advance the counter-reformation.
Cardinal Borromeo, above referred to, took a lively interest
in this mode of spiritual disciplinary exercise. After he had
at a council at Milan, in A.D. 1569, given a new organization to
the flagellant societies of his diocese, and Pope Gregory XIII.,
in A.D. 1572, had endowed with a rich indulgence all the
associations of that sort, they in a very short time spread
again over all Italy. In Rome alone they numbered over a
hundred, which, according to their colours, were designated as
white, gray, black, red, green, blue, etc. Especially on Good
Friday they vied with one another in getting up their flagellant
processions on the most magnificent scale. In France they were
patronized by Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, and King Henry III.
was himself a devoted and enthusiastic member of the order. In
Germany, too, the Jesuits brought the flagellants into favour,
wherever they could get a footing, especially in the north
German cities. The learned Jesuit, Jac. Gretson, in Ingolstadt,
in the very beginning of the 17th century, wrote seven elaborate
rhetorical controversial tracts, _De spontanea disciplinarum
s. flagellorum cruce_, etc., against the Protestant opponents
of the flagellant craze. Afterwards, however, the ardour and
zeal for the practice of this discipline cooled down more and
more in most of the monkish orders as well as in general society,
and local flagellant processions, in which there was generally
more of a vain, empty show than of real penitential earnestness,
are to be met with now only as occasional displays in Spain and
Italy, and in the Romish states of America.
§ 150. FOREIGN MISSIONS.
The grand discoveries of new continents which had preceded
the Reformation age, and the serious losses sustained in European
countries, revived the interest in missions throughout the Roman
Catholic church. Commercial enterprise and campaigns for the conquest
of the world, which were still almost exclusively in the hands of the
Catholic states, afforded opportunities for the prosecution of mission
work in the New World; and abundant means for carrying it on were
furnished by the numerous monkish orders.
§ 150.1. =Missions to the Heathen: East Indies and China.=--The
Portuguese founded the first bishopric in the =East Indies=,
at Goa on the Malabar Coast, in A.D. 1534. Soon thereafter a
tribunal of the Inquisition was established alongside of it.
The bishop confined his attention to the European immigrants,
and the inquisitors applied themselves mainly to secure the
destruction of the Thomas-Christians settled there. Neither
of them had the remotest idea of doing any properly speaking
mission work among the native races. But it was quite different
when, in A.D. 1542, Loyola’s companion =Francis Xavier=, the
Apostle of the Indians, made his appearance as papal nuncio
in this wide field along with two other Jesuits. Working with
glowing zeal and unparalleled self-denial, he baptized in a
short time a hundred thousand, mostly of the low, despised caste
of pariahs, going forward certainly with a haste which never
allowed him time to make sure that the spiritual fruits should
bear any proportion to the outward successes. His unmeasured
missionary fervour, to which characteristic expression was
given in his saying, _Amplius! amplius!_ impelled him constantly
to go on seeking for new fields of labour. From the East
Indies he moved on to Japan, and only his death, which occurred
in A.D. 1552, hindered him from pushing his way into China.
Numerous successors from Loyola’s order undertook the carrying
on of his work, and so soon as A.D. 1565 the converts of the
East Indies numbered 300,000.[441]--Commerce opened the way for
missions into =China=, where all traces of earlier Christianity
(§§ 72, 1; 93, 15) had already completely vanished, and proud
contempt of everything stood in the way of the introduction
of any western customs or forms of worship. But the Jesuits,
with =Matthew Ricci= of Ancona at their head, by making use
of their knowledge of mathematical, mechanical, and physical
science, secured for themselves access even to the court. Ricci
at first completely nationalized himself, and then began his
missionary enterprise by introducing Christian instructions
into his mathematical and astronomical lectures. In order to
render the Chinese favourable to the adoption of Christianity,
he represented it to be a renewal and restoration of the old
doctrine of Confucius. The confession of faith which the new
converts before baptism were required to make was confined to
an acknowledgment of one God and recognition of the obligation
of the ten commandments. And even in worship he tolerated many
heathen practices and customs. The mathematical and astronomical
writings composed by him in the Chinese language are said to
have extended to 150 volumes. The Chinese artillery also stood
under his immediate supervision. When he died, in A.D. 1610, the
Jesuits had even then formed a network of hundreds of churches
spread over a great part of the land.[442]--Continuation,
§ 156, 11, 12.
§ 150.2. =Japan.=--Xavier had here, chiefly on account of his
defective acquaintance with the language, relatively speaking
only a very small measure of success. But other Jesuits followed
in his footsteps, and enjoyed the most brilliant success; so
that in A.D. 1581 there were already more than two hundred
churches and about 150,000 Christians in the land, of whom
many belonged to the old feudal nobility, the daimios, while
some were even imperial princes. This distinguished success
was greatly owing, on the one hand, to the favour of the
then military commander-in-chief Nobunaga, who greeted the
advance of Christianity as a welcome means for undermining the
influence of the Buddhist bonzes, which had become supreme, and,
on the other hand, to the abundance of money put by Portugal and
Spain at the disposal of the Jesuits, which they used as well
in the adorning of the Catholic services as in the bestowing
of liberal gifts upon the converts. It was, however, chiefly
owing to the close and essential relationship between the Romish
ritual and constitution and those of Buddhism, which rendered
the transition from the one to the other by no means very
difficult. Then everything that had gone to secure for Buddhism
in Japan a superiority over the simple old national Sintuism
or ancestor-worship, as well as everything that the Japanese
Buddhists had been wont to regard as indispensable requisites
of worship, the elegance of the temples, altars glittering with
bright colours blending together, theatrical display in the
vestments for their priests, grand solemn processions and masses,
incense, images, statues and rosaries, a hierarchical system,
the tonsure, celibacy, cloisters for monks and nuns, worship of
saints and images, pilgrimages, etc., was given them in even an
exaggerated degree in Jesuit Christianity. The zealous neophytes
from among the daimios effectually backed up the preaching
of the Jesuit fathers by fire and sword. They compelled
the subjects of their provinces to go over to the Christian
religion, banished or put to death those who proved refractory,
and overthrew the Buddhist temples and cloisters. In A.D. 1582
they sent an embassy of four young noblemen to Europe to
pay homage to the pope. After they had received the most
flattering reception in Madrid from Philip II., and in Rome
from Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V., they returned to their own
home in A.D. 1590, accompanied by seventeen Jesuit priests,
who were soon followed by whole crowds of mendicant friars. By
the close of the century the number of native Christians had
increased to 600,000. But meanwhile the axe was already being
laid at the root of the tree that had thriven so wondrously.
Nobunaga’s successor Hidejoshi found occasion, in A.D. 1587,
to issue a decree banishing from the country all foreign
missionaries. The Jesuits were wise enough to cease at once
all public preaching, but the begging monks treated the decree
with contempt and open defiance. In consequence of this six
Franciscans and seventeen Japanese converts of theirs, and
along with them also three Jesuits, were arrested at Nagasaki
and there crucified (§ 156, 11). Soon afterwards Hidejoshi
died. One of his generals, Ijejasu, to whom he had assigned the
regency during the minority of his six year old son, assumed
the sovereign power to himself. A civil war was the result, and
in A.D. 1600 his opponents, among whom were certain Christian
daimios, were conquered in a bloody battle. Ijejasu persuaded
the mikado to give him the hereditary rank of _shiogun_, _i.e._
field-marshal of the empire; and his successors down to the
revolution of A.D. 1867 (§ 182, 5), as military vice-emperors
alongside of the really powerless mikado, had all the power of
government in their own hands. Thus were corrupting elements
introduced which led to the complete overthrow of the Japanese
church.[443]
§ 150.3. =America.=--The desire to spread Christ’s kingdom
was not by any means the smallest among the impulses that
contributed to Christopher Columbus’ enthusiasm for the
discovery of new countries; but the greediness, cruelty, and
animosity of the Spanish conquerors, who had less interest in
converting the natives into Christians than in reducing them to
slavery, was a terrible hindrance to the Christianizing of the
New World. The Christian missionaries indeed most emphatically,
but with only a small measure of success, defended the human
rights of the ill-used Indians. The noble Mexican bishop,
=Bartholomew de las Casas=, in particular wrought unweariedly,
devoting his whole life, A.D. 1474 to A.D. 1566, to the sacred
task, not only of instructing the Indians, but also of saving
them from the hands of his greedy and bloodthirsty fellow
countrymen. Six times he journeyed to Spain in order to use
personal influence in high quarters for ameliorating the lot
of his _protégés_, and he was obliged to undertake a seventh
journey in order to justify himself and repel the violent
accusations of his enemies. Even in A.D. 1517 Charles V. had, at
the bishop’s entreaty, granted personal liberty to the Indians,
but at the same time gave permission to the Spanish colonists
to introduce African negro slaves for the laborious work
in the mines and on the plantations. The enslaving of the
natives, however, was still continued, and only in A.D. 1547
were vigorous measures taken to secure the suppression of
the practice, after many millions of Indians had been already
sacrificed. So far as the Spanish dominion extended Christianity
also spread, and was established by means of the Inquisition.--In
South America the Portuguese held sway in the rich and as yet
little known empire of Brazil. In A.D. 1549 King John III. sent
thither a Jesuit mission, with Emanuel Nobreya at its head.
Amid unspeakable hardships they won over the native cannibals
to Christianity and civilization.[444]
§ 150.4. The newly awakened missionary zeal of the church
made an attempt also upon the =schismatical Churches of the
East=. The enterprise, however, was even moderately successful
only in reference to a portion of the Persian and East Indian
=Nestorians= (§ 72, 1), who in Persia were called Syrian or
Chaldæan Christians, because of the language which they used
in their liturgy, and in India Thomas-Christians, because
they professed to have had the Apostle Thomas as their founder.
They had their origin really, in A.D. 1551, in Mesopotamia, in
consequence of a double episcopal election there. The one party
chose a priest Sulakas, whom Pope Julius III. had consecrated
priest under the name of John, but the other party refused to
acknowledge him. The Archbishop Alexius Menezius also became
involved in these controversies, and succeeded in getting the
former party to recognise the Roman primacy and accept the
Catholic doctrine; while, on the other hand, Rome permitted the
retention of its ancient ritual and form of constitution. These
united Nestorians were now called by way of eminence Chaldæan
Christians. Their chief, chosen by themselves and approved by
the pope, was called Bishop of Babylon, but had his residence
at Mosul in Mesopotamia. The Thomas-Christians of India, however,
proved much more troublesome. But even they were obliged, after
a long, protracted struggle, at a synod at Diampur in A.D. 1599,
to abjure the Nestorian heresy. All Syrian books were burnt,
and a new Malabar liturgy in accordance with the Romish type
was introduced.--The existence of an independent =Jacobite=
Christian church in Abyssinia (§ 64, 1) first became known
in Europe in the beginning of the sixteenth century through
Portuguese commercial and diplomatic missions. The Abyssinian
sultan, David, in A.D. 1514, upon promise of Portuguese help,
of which he stood in need because of the aggressions of the
neighbouring Mohammadan [Mohammedan] states, agreed to receive
the physician Bermudez as Catholic patriarch. But the next
sultan, Claudius, expelled him from his land. In A.D. 1562
Jesuit missionaries began to settle in the country; but Claudius
denounced them as Arians, and wished the people to have nothing
to do with them. As the result of a friendly communication
from the Coptic patriarch, Paul V., in the beginning of the
17th century, sent the Jesuit Rodriguez into =Egypt=. The
patriarch accepted the rich presents which the Jesuit brought
with him, and then made him return home without having gained
the object of his mission.
§ 151. ATTEMPTED REGENERATION OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM.
Paul III. had in A.D. 1542 erected a new tribunal of the Inquisition
for the suppression of Protestantism, which Paul IV. (§ 149, 2) brought
up to the highest point of its development. And scarcely had the
Catholic church secured for itself a stable position throughout its
own domains by the happy conclusion of the Tridentine Council, than it
directed all its powers with the utmost energy to reconquer as far as
then possible the ground that had been lost. The means used for this end
were mainly of two sorts: the territorial system, legitimated by a law
of the empire (§ 137, 5), which, devised originally in order to save
Protestantism (§ 126, 6), was now employed for its overthrow; and the
Jesuits, who, sometimes openly and sometimes with carefully concealed
plans, sometimes in conjunction with the civil power, sometimes
intriguing against it, spread like swarms over all the countries of
Europe where Protestantism had already struck its roots. The craftiness
of the members of this order, their diplomatic acts, their machinations,
their practice in controversy, succeeded in some cases in fanning the
scarcely glimmering embers of Catholicism into a bright flame, in other
cases in blighting Protestant churches that had been in a flourishing
condition. They hoped thus to be able to destroy these churches root and
branch, or to reduce Protestantism within the narrow limits of a barely
tolerated sect. But above all they were careful to get into their hands
the control of the higher and lower schools, in order to be able to
implant in the hearts of the young and rising generation a bitter hatred
of Protestantism.
§ 151.1. =Attempts at Regeneration in Germany.=--From the
time of the Passau Compact the political convulsions and the
weariness of controversy shown by the princes proved strongly in
favour of Protestantism. In Catholic states, too, the Protestant
religion had made rapid advances. The deputies of provinces,
and especially the nobles, gave unmistakable expression to
their sympathies, and for every grant of territory demanded a
religious concession from the prince. Many prelates or spiritual
princes had more Protestant than Catholic councillors. The
Protestant nobles frequented their courts without constraint.
Their residences were often Protestant cities, and their
revenues not unfrequently in the hands of evangelical superiors.
But for the Jesuits, in spite of territorial influence and
prelatical restrictions (§ 137, 5), in a few decades all Germany
would have fallen into the hands of the evangelical church.
In A.D. 1558 a Venetian observer of the country and the people
could bring back the report that in Germany only a tenth of the
population remained true to the old church; that of the other
nine parts seven had gone over to the Lutherans, and two were
distributed among the various anti-Catholic denominations. Of
all the German cities Ingolstadt was the first, in A.D. 1549,
to be favoured with a visit of the Jesuits, who were brought
there by William IV. of Bavaria as teachers of theology. Next
in order comes Vienna, where, in A.D. 1551, thirteen Jesuits,
under the name of Spanish priests, were introduced by Ferdinand.
Some years later they settled in Prague, as also in Cologne.
From those four capitals they spread out within a few years
over the whole territorially Catholic Germany, and throughout
the Austrian states. In A.D. 1552 Loyola founded at Rome the
_Collegium Germanicum_, which was subsequently extended under
the name of the _Collegium Germ.-Ungaricum_, for the training of
German youths for the conversion of Protestants in their native
land. The first Jesuit provincial for Germany was the Dutchman
Peter Canisius, who, first of all from Vienna, and afterwards,
when Maximilian II. (§ 137, 8) put the Jesuits in Austria under
intolerable restrictions, from Friesburg, had so successfully
carried the regeneration into Switzerland, until his death in
A.D. 1598, that while the Protestants designated him _Canis
Austriacus_ because of his ruthless persecution, the members
of his order honoured him as the second Apostle of the Germans,
and Pius IX., in recognition of his services, beatified him
in A.D. 1864.--The Catholic regeneration began in Bavaria in
A.D. 1564. Duke Albert V., converted into a zealous Catholic
by the opposition of his Protestant members of parliament,
excluded the Protestant nobles from the Bavarian diet, banished
the evangelical pastors, compelled his Protestant subjects
who refused to abandon their faith to emigrate, and obliged all
professors and officials to subscribe the Tridentine _Professio
fidei_. The Jesuits praised him as a second Josiah and
Theodosius, called Munich a second Rome, and the pope invested
him with the ecclesiastico-political privileges of a _summus
episcopus_ throughout his own dominions. When by inheritance
he became Count of the Hague, and also Baden-Baden came under
his rule as regent, Protestantism was there thoroughly rooted
out. Bavaria’s example was followed, though in a more temperate
manner, by the electors of Treves (Jac. von Eltz) and Mainz
(Daniel Brendel). The latter restored Catholicism in A.D. 1574
into the hitherto thoroughly Protestant city Eichsfelde. In
A.D. 1575 the Abbot of Fulda also, Balth. von Dernbach, who
in all his territory was almost the only Catholic, acted in
a similar manner. In making this attempt Balthasar [Balthazar]
came into collision with his chapter, and was by it and his
knights expelled. The Bishop of Würzburg, Jul. Echter of
Mispelbrunn, who had been aiding them in the revolution, in
A.D. 1576 undertook the administration of the diocese. But in
the beginning of the following year the abbot was restored by
an imperial order, and thus the last vestige of Protestantism
was rooted out. Julius of Würzburg, seriously compromised,
would probably have followed the example of Gebhard of Cologne
(§ 137, 7), though that prelate’s proceedings were dictated by
altogether different considerations; but by A.D. 1584 he worked
himself into power again by completely rooting out Protestantism
from his own territory, which had been almost completely
Protestant. The bishops of Bamberg, Salzburg, Hildesheim,
Münster, Paderborn, etc., pursued a similar policy. At all
points Jesuits were at the front and Jesuits were in the rear.
In the newly constituted nuncio court, at Vienna, in A.D. 1581,
at Cologne, in A.D. 1582, they had the grand centres of
their conspiracies and machinations. Ferdinand II. of Styria,
emperor from A.D. 1619, and Maximilian I. of Bavaria, were
both educated by the Jesuits at Ingolstadt. When in A.D. 1596
Ferdinand celebrated Easter at Grätz, he was the only one there
who communicated according to the Roman Catholic rite. Two years
later he successfully carried out the counter-reformation,
and his cousin, the Emperor Rudolph II., followed his
example.--Continuation, § 153, 2.
§ 151.2. But the regeneration was not confined to Germany. It
spread out over all =Europe=. The Jesuits pressed into every
country, and were successful in compassing their ends even in
places where there had been very little prospect of success.
The Cardinal Charles Borromeo (§ 149, 17) laboured with peculiar
energy to establish Catholicism, and spread it yet more widely
in the Catholic and mixed cantons of Switzerland. He himself
undertook a journey thither in A.D. 1570; contrived in A.D. 1574
to get the Jesuits introduced into Lucerne, in A.D. 1586 into
Freiburg; founded at Milan a _Collegium Helveticum_ for the
training of Catholic priests for Switzerland, and secured
the appointment of a permanent nuncio, who had his residence
at Lucerne. In the province of Chablais on Lake Geneva,
under Piedmontese rule, St. Francis de Sales, by the forcible
conversion of 80,000 heretics in A.D. 1596, completely rooted
out Protestantism (§ 156, 1).--In France the bloody civil wars
began in A.D. 1562. The Duke of Alva appeared in the Netherlands
in A.D. 1567. In Poland the Jesuits secured an entrance first
in A.D. 1569, and from thence made their way over into Livonia.
In A.D. 1578 the crafty Jesuit Ant. Possevin gained access to
Sweden, and there converted the king (§ 139, 1). Even in England,
where Elizabeth in A.D. 1582 had threatened every Jesuit with
capital punishment, crowds of them wrought away in secret,
and in hope of better times tended the flickering spark of
Catholicism smouldering under the ashes (§ 153, 6).
§ 151.3. =Russia and the United Greeks.=--The attempts, renewed
from time to time since the meeting of the Florentine Council
(§ 73, 6), to win over the Russian church, had always failed
of the end in view. In A.D. 1581, when the war so disastrous
for Russia between Ivan IV. Wassiljewitch and Stephen Bathori
of Poland afforded to the pope the desired excuse for putting
in an appearance as a peacemaker, Gregory XIII. sent the clever
Jesuit Possevin for this purpose to Poland and Russia. The
tsar gave him a most flattering reception, allowed him to hold
a religious conference, but was not prepared either to attach
himself to Rome or to banish the Lutherans. On the other hand,
Rome scored a victory, inasmuch as in the West Russian province
detached and given to Poland the union was consummated, partly
by force, partly by manœuvre, and obtained ecclesiastical
sanction at the Council of Brest, in A.D. 1596. These “United
Greeks” were obliged to acknowledge the Roman supremacy and the
Romish doctrines, but were allowed to retain their own ancient
ritual.--Continuation, § 203, 2.
SECOND SECTION.
CHURCH HISTORY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
I. Relations between the Different Churches.
§ 152. EAST AND WEST.
The papacy formed new plans for conquest in the domain of the Eastern
church, but with at most only transient success. Still more illusory
were the hopes entertained for a while in Geneva and London in regard
to the Calvinizing of the Greek church.
§ 152.1. =Roman Catholic Hopes.=--The Jesuit missions among the
Turks and schismatic Greeks failed, but among the Abyssinians
some progress was made. By promising Spanish aid, the Jesuit
Paez succeeded, in A.D. 1621, in inducing the Sultan Segued to
abjure the Jacobite heresy. Mendez was made Abyssinian patriarch
by Urban VIII. in A.D. 1626, but the clergy and people repeatedly
rebelled against sultan and patriarch. In A.D. 1642 the next
sultan drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom, and in it henceforth
no traces of Catholicism were to be found.--In Russia the false
Demetrius, in A.D. 1605, working in Polish Catholic interests,
sought to catholicize the empire; but this only convinced the
Russians that he was no true czar’s son. When his Catholic Polish
bride entered Moscow with 200 Poles, a riot ensued, in which
Demetrius lost his life.[445]
§ 152.2. =Calvinistic Hopes.=--=Cyril Lucar=, a native of Crete,
then under Venetian rule, by long residence in Geneva had come
to entertain a strong liking to the Reformed church. Expelled
from his situation as rector of a Greek seminary at Ostrog by
Jesuit machinations, he was made Patriarch of Alexandria in
A.D. 1602 and of Constantinople in A.D. 1621. He maintained
a regular correspondence with Reformed divines in Holland,
Switzerland, and England. In A.D. 1628 he sent the famous Codex
Alexandrinus as a present to James I. He wrought expressly
for a union of the Greek and Reformed churches, and for this
end sent, in A.D. 1629, to Geneva an almost purely Calvinistic
confession. But the other Greek bishops opposed his union
schemes, and influential Jesuits in Constantinople accused
him of political faults. Four times the sultan deposed and
banished him, and at last, in A.D. 1638, he was strangled as
a traitor and cast into the sea.--One of his Alexandrian clergy,
Metrophanes Critopulus, whom in A.D. 1616 he had sent for his
education to England, studied several years at Oxford, then
at German Protestant universities, ending with Helmstadt, where,
in A.D. 1625, he composed in Greek a confession of the faith
of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was pointedly antagonistic to
the Romish doctrine, conciliatory toward Protestantism, while
abandoning nothing essential in the Greek Orthodox creed, and
showing signs of the possession of independent speculative power.
Afterwards Metrophanes became Patriarch of Alexandria, and in
the synod, presided over by Lucar’s successor, Cyril of Berrhoë,
at Constantinople in A.D. 1638, gave his vote for the formal
condemnation of the man who had been already executed.[446]
§ 152.3. =Orthodox Constancy.=--The Russian Orthodox church,
after its emancipation from Constantinople and the erection of
an independent patriarchate at Moscow in A.D. 1589 (§ 73, 4),
had decidedly the pre-eminence over the Greek Orthodox church,
and the Russian czar took the place formerly occupied by the
East Roman emperor as protector of the whole Orthodox church.
The dangers to the Orthodox faith threatened by schemes of union
with Catholics and Protestants induced the learned metropolitan,
Peter Mogilas of Kiev, to compose a new confession in
catechetical form, which, in A.D. 1643, was formally authorized
by the Orthodox patriarchs as Ὀρθόδοξος ὁμολογία τῆς καθολικῆς
καὶ ἀποστολικῆς ἐκκλησίας τῆς ἀνατολικῆς.--Thirty years later
a controversy on the eucharist broke out between the Jansenists
Nicole and Arnauld, on the one side, and the Calvinists Claude
and Jurieu, on the other (§ 157, 1), in which both claimed to
be in agreement with the Greek church. A synod was convened
under =Dositheus of Jerusalem= in A.D. 1672, at the instigation
of French diplomatists, where the questions raised by Cyril
were again taken into consideration. Maintaining a friendly
attitude toward the Romish church, it directed a violent
polemic against Calvinism. In order to save the character of
the Constantinopolitan chair for constant Orthodoxy, Cyril’s
confession of A.D. 1629 was pronounced a spurious, heretical
invention, and a confession composed by Dositheus, in which
Cyril’s Calvinistic heresies were repudiated, was incorporated
with the synod’s acts.
§ 153. CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM.
The Jesuit counter-reformation (§ 151) was eminently successful
during the first decades of the century in Bohemia. The Westphalian
Peace restrained its violence, but did not prevent secret machinations
and the open exercise of all conceivable arts of seduction. Next to
the conversion of Bohemia, the greatest triumph of the restoration was
won in France in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Besides such
victories the Catholics were able to glory in the conversion of several
Protestant princes. New endeavours at union were repeatedly made, but
these in every case proved as fruitless as former attempts had done.
§ 153.1. =Conversions of Protestant Princes.=--The first
reigning prince who became a convert to Romanism was the
Margrave =James III. of Baden=. He went over in A.D. 1590
(§ 144, 4), but as his death occurred soon after, his conduct
had little influence upon his people. Of greater consequence
was the conversion, in A.D. 1614, of the Count-palatine Wolfgang
William of Neuburg, as it prepared the way for the catholicizing
of the whole Palatinate, which followed in A.D. 1685. Much was
made of the passing over to the Catholic church of =Christina
of Sweden=, the highly gifted but eccentric daughter of Gustavus
Adolphus. As she had resigned the crown, the pope gained no
political advantage from his new member, and Alexander VII.
had even to contribute to her support. The Elector of Saxony,
=Frederick Augustus II.=, passed over to the Roman Catholic
church in A.D. 1697, in order to qualify himself for the Polish
crown; but the rights of his Protestant subjects were carefully
guarded. An awkwardness arose from the fact that the prince was
pledged by the directory of the Regensburg Diet of A.D. 1653 to
care for the interests of the evangelical church. Now that he
had become a Catholic, he still formally promised to do so, but
had his duties discharged by a commissioner. Subsequently this
officer was ordered to take his directions from the evangelical
council of Dresden.
§ 153.2. =The Restoration in Germany and the Neighbouring
States= (§ 151, 1).--Matthias having, in violation of the royal
letter of his predecessor Rudolph II. (§ 139, 19), refused to
allow the Protestants of Bohemia to build churches, was driven
out; the Jesuits also were expelled, and the Calvinistic
Elector-palatine Frederick V. was chosen as prince in A.D. 1619.
Ferdinand II. (A.D. 1619-1637) defeated him, tore up the
royal letter, restored the Jesuits, and expelled the Protestant
pastors. Efforts were made by Christian IV. of Denmark and other
Protestant princes to save Protestantism, but without success.
Ferdinand now issued his =Restitution Edict= of A.D. 1629,
which deprived Protestants of their privileges, and gave to
Catholic nobles unrestricted liberty to suppress the evangelical
faith in their dominions. It was then that Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden, in religious not less than political interests, made his
appearance as the saviour of Protestantism.[447] The unhappy war
was brought to an end in A.D. 1648 by the publication at Münster
and Osnabrück of the =Peace of Westphalia=, which Innocent X.
in his bull “_Zelo Domus Dei_” of A.D. 1651 pronounced “null
and void, without influence on past, present, and future.”
Germany lost several noble provinces, but its intellectual
and religious freedom was saved. Under Swedish and French
guarantee the Augsburg Religious Peace was confirmed and even
extended to the Reformed, as related to the Augsburg Confession.
The church property was to be restored on January 1st,
A.D. 1624. The political equality of Protestants and Catholics
throughout Germany was distinctly secured. In =Bohemia=,
however, Protestantism was thoroughly extirpated, and in the
other Austrian states the oppression continued down to the time
of Joseph II. In =Silesia=, from the passing of the Restitution
Edict, over a thousand churches had been violently taken from
the evangelicals. No compensation was now thought of, but
rather the persecution continued throughout the whole century
(§ 165, 4), and many thousands were compelled to migrate, for
the most part to Upper Lusatia.
§ 153.3. Also in =Livonia=, from A.D. 1561 under Polish rule,
the Jesuits gained a footing and began the restoration, but
under Gustavus Adolphus from A.D. 1621 their machinations
were brought to an end.--The ruthless =Valteline Massacre=
of A.D. 1620 may be described as a Swiss St. Bartholomew on
a small scale. All Protestants were murdered in one day. The
conspirators at a signal from the clock tower in the early
morning broke into the houses of heretics, and put all to death,
down to the very babe in the cradle. Between four and five
hundred were slaughtered.--In =Hungary=, at the close of the
preceding century only three noble families remained Catholic,
and the Protestant churches numbered 2,000; but the Jesuits, who
had settled there under the protection of Rudolph II. in 1579,
resumed their intrigues, and the Archbishop of Gran, Pazmany,
wrought hard for the restoration of Catholicism. Rakoczy of
Transylvania, in the Treaty of Linz of A.D. 1645, concluded
a league offensive and defensive with Sweden and France, which
secured political and religious liberty for Hungary; but of
the 400 churches of which the Protestants had been robbed only
ninety were given back. The bigoted Leopold I., from A.D. 1655
king of Hungary, inaugurated a yet more severe persecution,
which continued until the publication of the Toleration Edict
of Joseph II. in A.D. 1781. The 2,000 Protestant congregations
were by this time reduced to 105.
§ 153.4. =The Huguenots in France= (§ 139, 17).--Henry IV.
faithfully fulfilled the promises which he made in the Edict of
Nantes; but under Louis XIII., A.D. 1610-1643, the oppressions
of the Huguenots were renewed, and led to fresh outbreaks.
Richelieu withdrew their political privileges, but granted
them religious toleration in the Edict of Nismes, A.D. 1629.
Louis XIV., A.D. 1643-1715, at the instigation of his confessors,
sought to atone for his sins by purging his land of heretics.
When bribery and court favour had done all that they could do in
the way of conversions, the fearful dragonnades began, A.D. 1681.
The formal =Revocation of the Edict of Nantes= followed in
A.D. 1685, and persecution raged with the utmost violence.
Thousands of churches were torn down, vast numbers of confessors
were tortured, burnt, or sent to the galleys. In spite of the
terrible penal laws against emigrating, in spite of the watch
kept over the frontiers, hundreds of thousands escaped, and were
received with open arms as _refugees_ in Brandenburg, Holland,
England, Denmark, and Switzerland. Many fled into the wilds of
the Cevennes, where under the name of Camisards they maintained
a heroic conflict for years, until at last exterminated by an
army at least ten times their strength. The struggle reached
the utmost intensity of bitterness on both sides in A.D. 1702,
when the fanatical and inhumanly cruel inquisitor, the Abbé
du Chaila, was slain. At the head of the Camisard army was
a young peasant, Jean Cavalier, who by his energetic and skilful
conduct of the campaign astonished the world. At last the
famous Marshal Villars, by promising a general amnesty, release
of all prisoners, permission to emigrate with possessions,
and religious toleration to those who remained, succeeded in
persuading Cavalier to lay down his arms. The king ratified
this bargain, only refusing the right of religious freedom.
Many, however, submitted; while others emigrated, mostly to
England. Cavalier entered the king’s service as colonel; but
distrusting the arrangements fled to Holland, and afterwards
to England, where in A.D. 1740 he died as governor of Jersey.
In A.D. 1707 a new outbreak took place, accompanied by prophetic
fanaticism, in consequence of repeated dragonnades, but it
was put down by the stake, the gallows, the axe, and the wheel.
France had lost half a million of her most pious, industrious,
and capable inhabitants, and yet two millions of Huguenots
deprived of all their rights remained in the land.[448]
§ 153.5. =The Waldensians in Piedmont= (§ 139, 25).--Although
in A.D. 1654 the Duke of Savoy confirmed to the Waldensians
their privileges, by Easter of the following year a bloody
persecution broke out, in which a Piedmontese army, together
with a horde of released prisoners and Irish refugees,
driven from their native land by Cromwell’s severities, to
whom the duke had given shelter in the valleys, perpetrated
the most horrible cruelties. Yet in the desperate conflict
the Waldensians held their ground. The intervention of the
Protestant Swiss cantons won for them again a measure of
toleration, and liberal gifts from abroad compensated them
for their loss of property. Cromwell too sent to the relief
of the sufferers the celebrated Lord Morland in A.D. 1658.
While in the valleys he got possession of a number of MSS.
(§ 108, 11), which he took home with him and deposited in
the Cambridge Library. In A.D. 1685 the persecution and civil
war were again renewed at the instigation of Louis XIV. The
soldiers besieged the valleys, and more than 14,000 captives
were consigned to fortresses and prisons. But the rest of the
Waldensians plucked up courage, inflicted many defeats upon
their enemy, and so moved the government in A.D. 1686 to release
the prisoners and send them out of the country. Some found their
way to Germany, others fled to Switzerland. These last, aided
by Swiss troops, and led by their own pastor, Henry Arnaud, made
an attack upon Piedmont in A.D. 1689, and conquered again their
own country. They continued in possession, notwithstanding all
attempts to dislodge them.
§ 153.6. =The Catholics in England and Ireland.=--When James I.,
A.D. 1603-1625, the son of Mary Stuart, ascended the English
throne (§ 139, 11), the Catholics expected from him nothing
short of the complete restoration of the old religion. But
great as James’ inclination towards Catholicism may have been,
his love of despotic authority was still greater. He therefore
rigorously suppressed the Jesuits, who disputed the royal
supremacy over the church; and the bitterness of the Catholics
now reached its height. They organized the so-called =Gunpowder
Plot=, with the intention of blowing up the royal family and
the whole Parliament at the first meeting of the house. At
the head of the conspiracy stood Rob. Catesby, Thomas Percy
of Northumberland, and Guy Fawkes, an English officer in the
Spanish service. The plan was discovered shortly before the day
appointed for its execution. On November 5th, A.D. 1605, Fawkes,
with lantern and matches, was seized in the cellar. The rest of
the conspirators fled, but, after a desperate struggle, in which
Catesby and Percy fell, were arrested, and, together with two
Jesuit accomplices, executed as traitors. Great severities were
then exercised toward the Catholics, not only in England, but
also in Ireland, where the bulk of the population was attached
to the Romish faith. James I. completed the transference of
ecclesiastical property to the Anglican church, and robbed
the Irish nobles of almost all their estates, and gifted them
over to Scottish and English favourites. All Catholics, because
they refused to take the oath of supremacy, _i.e._ to recognise
the king as head of the church, were declared ineligible
for any civil office. These oppressions at last led to the
fearful =Irish massacre=. In October, A.D. 1641, a desperate
outbreak of the Catholics took place throughout the country.
It aimed at the destruction of all Protestants in Ireland.
The conspirators rushed from all sides into the houses of the
Protestants, murdered the inhabitants, and drove them naked and
helpless from their homes. Many thousands died on the roadside
of hunger and cold. In other places they were driven in crowds
into the rivers and drowned, or into empty houses, which were
burnt over them. The number of those who suffered is variously
estimated from 40,000 to 400,000. Charles I., A.D. 1625-1649,
was suspected as instigator of this terrible deed, and it may
be regarded as his first step toward the scaffold (§ 155, 1).
After the execution of Charles, Oliver Cromwell, in A.D. 1649,
at the call of Parliament, took fearful revenge for the Irish
crime. In the two cities which he took by storm he had all
the citizens cut down without distinction. Panic-stricken, the
inhabitants of the other cities fled to the bogs. Within nine
months the whole island was reconquered. Hundreds of thousands,
driven from their native soil, wandered as homeless fugitives,
and their lands were divided among English soldiers and settlers.
During the time of the English Commonwealth, A.D. 1649-1660,
all moderate men, even those who had formerly demanded religious
toleration, not only for all Christian sects, but also for Jews
and Mohammedans, and even atheists, were now at one in excluding
Catholics from its benefit, because they all saw in the
Catholics a party ready at any moment to prove traitors to their
country at the bidding of a foreign sovereign.--The Restoration
under Charles II. could not greatly ameliorate the calamities of
the Irish. Religious persecution indeed ceased, but the property
taken from the Catholic church and native owners still remained
in the hands of the Anglican church and the Protestant occupiers.
To counterbalance the Catholic proclivities of Charles II.
(§ 155, 3), the English Parliament of A.D. 1673 passed the =Test
Act=, which required every civil and military officer to take
the test oaths, condemning transubstantiation and the worship
of the saints, and to receive the communion according to the
Anglican rite as members of the State church. The statements
of a certain Titus Oates, that the Jesuits had organized a plot
for murdering the king and restoring the papacy, led to fearful
riots in A.D. 1678 and many executions. But the reports were
seemingly unfounded, and were probably the fruit of an intrigue
to deprive the king’s Catholic brother, James II., of the right
of succession. When James ascended the throne, in A.D. 1685,
he immediately entered into negotiations with Rome, and
filled almost all offices with Catholics. At the invitation of
the Protestants, the king’s son-in-law, William III. of Orange,
landed in England in A.D. 1688, and on James’ flight was
declared king by the Parliament. The Act of Toleration, issued
by him in A.D. 1689, still withheld from Papists the privileges
now extended to Protestant dissenters (§ 155, 3).[449]
§ 153.7. =Union Efforts.=
1. Although =Hugo Grotius= distinctly took the side of
the Remonstrants (§ 160, 2), his whole disposition was
essentially irenical. He attempted, but in vain, not
only the reconciliation of the Arminians and Calvinists,
but also the union of all Protestant sects on a common
basis. Toward Catholicism he long maintained a decidedly
hostile attitude. But through intimate intercourse with
distinguished Catholics, especially during his exile
in France, his feelings were completely changed. He now
invariably expressed himself more favourably in regard
to the faith and the institutions of the Catholic church.
Its semi-Pelagianism was acceptable to him as a decided
Arminian. In his “_Votum pro Pace_” he recommended as the
only possible way to restore ecclesiastical union, a return
to Catholicism, on the understanding that a thorough reform
should be made. But that he was himself ready to pass over,
and was hindered only by his sudden death in A.D. 1645, is
merely an illusion of Romish imagination.[450]
2. King Wladislaus [Wladislaw] IV. of Poland thought
a union of Protestants and Catholics in his dominions
not impossible, and with this end in view arranged the
=Religious Conference of Thorn= in A.D. 1645. Prussia
and Brandenburg were also invited to take part in it.
The elector sent his court preacher, John Berg, and asked
from the Duke of Brunswick the assistance of the Helmstadt
theologian, George Calixt. The chief representatives of
the Lutheran side were Abraham Calov, of Danzig, and John
Hülsemann, of Wittenberg. That Calixt, a Lutheran, took
the part of the Reformed, intensified the bitterness of
the Lutherans at the outset. The result was to increase
the split on all sides. The Reformed set forth their
opinions in the “_Declaratio Thorunensis_,” which in
Brandenburg obtained symbolical rank.
3. J. B. =Bossuet=, who died in A.D. 1704, Bishop of Meaux,
used all his eloquence to prepare a way for the return of
Protestants to the church in which alone is salvation. In
several treatises he gave an idealized exposition of the
Catholic doctrine, glossed over what was most offensive
to Protestants, and sought by subtlety and sophistry
to represent the Protestant system as contradictory
and untenable.[451] During the same period the Spaniard
=Spinola=, Bishop of Neustadt, who had come into the
country as father confessor of the empress, proposed
a scheme of union at the imperial court. The controverted
points were to be decided at a free council, but the
primacy of the pope and the hierarchical system, as
founded _jure humano_, were to be retained. In prosecuting
his scheme, with the secret support of Leopold I., Spinola,
between A.D. 1676 and 1691, travelled through all Protestant
Germany. He found most success, out of respect for the
emperor, in Hanover, where the Abbot of Loccum, Molanus,
zealously advocated the proposed union, in which on the
Catholic side Bossuet, on the Protestant side the great
philosopher =Leibnitz=, took part. But the negotiations
ended in no practical result. That Leibnitz had himself
been already secretly inclined to Catholicism, some
think to have proved by a manuscript, found after his
death, entitled in another’s hand, “_Systema Theologicum
Leibnitii_.” Favourably disposed as Leibnitz was to
investigate and recognise what was profound and true
even in Catholicism, so that he reached the conviction
that neither of the two churches had given perfect and
adequate expression to Christian truth, he has apparently
sought in this work to make clear to himself what and how
much of specifically Catholic doctrines were justifiable,
and to sketch out a system of doctrine occupying a place
superior to both confessions. In this treatise many
doctrines are expressed in a manner quite divergent from
that of the Tridentine creed, while several expressions
show how clearly he perceived the contradiction between
his own Protestant faith and the Romish system, amid all
his attempts to effect a reconciliation.
§ 153.8. =The Lehnin Prophecy.=--The hope entertained, about
the end of the seventeenth century, by Catholics throughout
Germany of the speedy restoration of the mother church
was expressed in the so called =Vaticinium Lehninense=.
Professedly composed in the thirteenth century by a monk
called Hermann, of the cloister of Lehnin in Brandenburg,
it characterized with historical accuracy in 100 Leonine
verses the Brandenburg princes down to Frederick III., of
whose coronation in A.D. 1701 it is ignorant, and after this
proceeds in a purely fanciful and arbitrary manner. From
Joachim II., who openly joined the Reformation, it enumerates
eleven members, so that the history is just brought down to
Frederick William III. With the eleventh the Hohenzollern
dynasty ends, Germany is united, the Catholic church restored,
and Lehnin raised again to its ancient glory. Under Frederick
William IV., the Catholics diligently sought to prove the
genuineness of the prophecy, and by arbitrary methods to extend
it so as to include this prince. Lately “the deadly sin of
Israel” spoken of in it has been pointed to as a prophecy of
the _Kultur-kampf_ of our own day (§ 197). The first certain
trace of the poem is in A.D. 1693. Hilgenfeld thinks that its
author was a fanatical pervert, Andr. Fromm, who was previously
a Protestant pastor in Berlin, and died in A.D. 1685 as canon
of Leitmeritz, in Bohemia.
§ 154. LUTHERANISM AND CALVINISM.
The Reformed church made its way into the heart of Lutheran
Germany (§ 144) by the Calvinizing of Hesse-Cassel and Lippe, and by
the adherence of the electoral house of Brandenburg. Renewed attempts
to unite the two churches were equally fruitless with the endeavours
after a Catholic-Protestant union.
§ 154.1. =Calvinizing of Hesse-Cassel, A.D. 1605-1646.=--Philip
the Magnanimous, died 1567, left to his eldest son, William IV.,
one half of his territories, comprising Lower Hesse and
Schmalcald, with residence at Cassel; to Louis IV. a fourth
part, _viz._ Upper Hesse, with residence at Marburg; while
his two youngest sons, Philip and George, were made counts,
with their residence at Darmstadt. Philip died in 1583 and
Louis in 1604, both childless; in consequence of which the
greater part of Philip’s territory and the northern half
of Upper Hesse with Marburg fell to Hesse-Cassel, and the
southern half with Giessen to Hesse-Darmstadt.--Landgrave
=William IV.= of Hesse-Cassel sympathised with his father’s
union and levelling tendencies, and by means of general synods
wrought eagerly to secure acceptance for them throughout Hesse
by setting aside the _ubiquitous_ Christology (§ 141, 9) and
the Formula of Concord, while firmly maintaining the _Corpus
Doctrinæ Philippicum_ (§ 141, 10). The fourth and last of
those general synods was held in 1582. Further procedure was
meanwhile rendered impossible by the increase of opposition.
For, on the one hand, Louis IV., under the influence of the
acute and learned but contentious Ægidius Hunnius, professor of
theology at Marburg, 1576-1592, became more and more decidedly
a representative of exclusive Lutheranism; and, on the other
hand, William’s Calvinizing schemes became from day to day more
reckless. His son and successor =Maurice= went forward more
energetically along the same lines as his father, especially
after the death of his uncle Louis in 1604, who bequeathed to
him the Marburg part of his territories. These had been given
him on condition that he should hold by the confession and
its apology as guaranteed by Charles V. in 1530. But in 1605
he forbad the Marburg theologians to set forth the ubiquity
theology; and when they protested, issued a formal prohibition
of the dogma with its presuppositions and consequences, and
insisted on the introduction of the Reformed numbering of the
commandments of the decalogue, and the breaking of bread at
the communion, and the removal of the remaining images from
the churches (§ 144, 2). The theologians again protested, and
were deprived of their offices. The result was the outbreak
of a popular tumult at Marburg, which Maurice suppressed
by calling in the military. When in several places in Upper
and even in Lower Hesse opposition was persisted in, and the
resisting clergy could not be won over either by persuasion
and threatening or by persecution, Maurice in 1607 convened
consultative diocesan synods at Cassel, Eschwege, Marburg,
St. Goar, and soon after a general synod at Cassel, which,
giving expression on all points to the will of the landgrave,
drew up, besides a new hymnbook and catechism, a new “Christian
and correct confession of faith,” by which they openly and
decidedly declared their attachment to the Reformed church.
Soon Hesse accepted these conclusions, but not the rest of
the state, where the opposition of the nobles, clergy, and
people, in spite of all attempts to enforce this acceptance
by military power, imprisonment, and deposition, could not
be altogether overcome.--Meanwhile George’s son and successor,
=Louis V.=, 1596-1626, had been eagerly seeking to make capital
of those troubles in his cousin’s domains in favour of the
Darmstadt dynasty. He gave his protection to the professors
expelled from Marburg in 1605, founded in 1607 a Lutheran
university at Giessen, and made accusations against his cousin
before the imperial supreme court, which in 1623, on the basis
of the will of Louis IV. and the Religious Peace of Augsburg
(§ 137, 5), declared the inheritance forfeited, and entrusted
the electors of Cologne and Saxony with the execution of the
sentence. These in conjunction with the troops of the league
under Tilly attacked Upper and Lower Hesse; the Lutheran
University of Giessen was transferred to Marburg, and Upper
Hesse, after the banishment of the Reformed pastors, went
over wholly to the Lutheran confession. Maurice, completely
broken down, resigned in favour of his son =William V.=, who
was obliged to make an agreement, according to which he made
over Upper Hesse, Schmalcald, and Katzenelnbogen to =George II.=
of Hesse-Darmstadt, the successor of Louis V. In consequence
of his attachment to Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years’
War the ban of the empire was pronounced upon William. He died
in 1637. His widow, =Amalie Elizabeth=, undertook the government
on behalf of her young son William VI., and in 1646, after
repeated victories over George’s troops, made a new agreement
with him, by which the territories taken away in 1627 were
restored to Hesse-Cassel, under a guarantee, however, that
the _status quo_ in matters of religion should be preserved,
and that they should continue predominantly Lutheran. The
university property was divided; Giessen obtained a Lutheran,
Marburg a Reformed institution, and Lower Hesse received
a moderately but yet essentially Reformed ecclesiastical
constitution.
§ 154.2. =Calvinizing of Lippe, A.D. 1602.=--Count Simon VI.
of Lippe, in his eventful life, was brought into close relations
with the Reformed Netherlands and with Maurice of Hesse. His
dominions were thoroughly Lutheran, but from A.D. 1602 Calvinism
was gradually introduced under the patronage of the prince.
The chief promoter of this innovation was Dreckmeyer, chosen
general superintendent in A.D. 1599. At a visitation of churches
in A.D. 1602, the festivals of Mary and the apostles, exorcism,
the sign of the cross, the host, burning candles, and Luther’s
catechism were rejected. Opposing pastors were deposed, and
Calvinists put in their place. The city Lemgo stood out longest,
and persevered in its adherence to the Lutheran confession
during an eleven years’ struggle with its prince, from A.D. 1606
to 1617. After the death of Simon VI., his successor, Simon VII.,
allowed the city the free exercise of its Lutheran religion.
§ 154.3. =The Elector of Brandenburg becomes Calvinist,
A.D. 1613.=--John Sigismund, A.D. 1608-1619, had promised his
grandfather, John George, to maintain his connexion with the
Lutheran church. But his own inclination, which was strengthened
by his son’s marriage with a princess of the Palatinate, and
his connexion with the Netherlands, made him forget his promise.
Also his court preacher, the crypto-Calvinist Solomon Fink,
contributed to the same result. On Christmas Day, A.D. 1613,
he went over to the Reformed church. In order to share in the
Augsburg Peace, he still retained the Augsburg Confession,
naturally in the form known as the _Variata_. In A.D. 1624,
he issued a Calvinist confession of his own, the _Confessio
Sigismundi_ or _Marchica_, which sought to reconcile the
universality of grace with the particularity of election
(§ 168, 1). His people, however, did not follow the prince,
not even his consort, Anne of Prussia. The court preacher,
Gedicke, who would not retract his invectives against the
prince and the Reformed confession, was obliged to flee from
Berlin, as also another preacher, Mart. Willich. But when
altars, images, and baptismal fonts were thrown out of the
Berlin churches, a tumult arose, in A.D. 1615, which was
not suppressed without bloodshed. In the following year the
elector forbade the teaching of the _communicatio idiomatum_
and the _ubiquitas corporis_ (§ 141, 9) at the University of
Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In A.D. 1614, owing to the publication
of a keen controversial treatise of Hutter (§ 159, 5) he
forbade any of his subjects going to the University of
Wittenberg, and soon afterwards struck out the Formula of
Concord from the collection of the symbolical books of the
Lutheran church of his realm.--Continuation, § 169, 1.
§ 154.4. =Union Attempts.=--Hoë von Hoënegg, of an old Austrian
family, was from A.D. 1612 chief court preacher at Dresden,
and as spiritual adviser of the elector, John George, on the
outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, got Lutheran Saxony to
take the side of the Catholic emperor against the Calvinist
Frederick V. of the Palatinate, elected king of Bohemia.
In A.D. 1621, he had proved that “on ninety-nine points the
Calvinists were in accord with the Arians and the Turks.” At
the Religious Conference of Leipzig of A.D. 1631 a compromise
was accepted on both sides; but no practical result was secured.
The Religious Conference of Cassel, in A.D. 1661, was a well
meant endeavour by some Marburg Reformed theologians and
Lutherans of the school of Calixt (§ 158, 2); but owing to
the agitation caused by the Synergist controversy, no important
advance toward union could be accomplished. The union efforts
of Duke William of Brandenburg, A.D. 1640-1688, were opposed by
Paul Gerhardt, preacher in the church of St. Nicholas in Berlin.
On refusing to abstain from attacks on the Reformed doctrine
he was deposed from his office. He was soon appointed pastor
at Lübben in Lusatia, where he died in A.D. 1676.--The most
zealous apostle of universal Protestant union, embracing even
the Anglican church, was the Scottish Presbyterian John Durie.
From A.D. 1628 when he officiated as pastor of an English colony
at Elbing, till his death at Cassel in A.D. 1640, he devoted his
energies unweariedly to this one task. He repeatedly travelled
through Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, and the Netherlands,
formed acquaintance with clerical and civil authorities,
had intercourse with them by word and letter, published
a multitude of tracts on this subject; but at last could
only look back with bitter complaints over the lost labours
of a lifetime.[452]--Continuation, § 169, 1.
§ 155. ANGLICANISM AND PURITANISM.[453]
On the outbreak of the English Revolution, occasioned by the
despotism of the first two Stuarts, crowds of Puritan exiles returned
from Holland and North America to their old home. They powerfully
strengthened their secret sympathisers in their successful struggle
against the episcopacy of the State church (§ 139, 6); but, breaking
up into rival parties, as Presbyterians and Independents (§ 143, 3, 4),
gave way to fanatical extravagances. The victorious party of
Independents also split into two divisions: the one, after the old
Dutch style, simple and strict believers in Scripture; the other,
first in Cromwell’s army, fanatical enthusiasts and visionary saints
(§ 161, 1). The Restoration, under the last two Stuarts, sought to
re-introduce Catholicism. It was William of Orange, by his Act of
Toleration of A.D. 1689, who first brought to a close the Reformation
struggles within the Anglican church. It guaranteed, indeed, all the
pre-eminent privileges of an establishment to the Anglican and Episcopal
church, but also granted toleration to dissenters, while refusing it to
Catholics.
§ 155.1. =The First Two Stuarts.=--=James I.=, dominated by
the idea of the royal supremacy, and so estranged from the
Presbyterianism in which he was brought up (§ 139, 11), as
king of England, A.D. 1603-1625, attached himself to the
national Episcopal church, persecuted the English Puritans,
so that many of them again fled to Holland (§ 143, 4), and
forced Episcopacy upon the Scotch. =Charles I.=, A.D. 1625-1649,
went beyond his father in theory and practice, and thus incurred
the hatred of his Protestant subjects. William Laud, from
A.D. 1633 Archbishop of Canterbury, was the recklessly zealous
promoter of his despotic ideas, representing the Episcopacy,
by reason of its Divine institution and apostolic succession,
as the foundation of the church and the pillar of an absolute
monarchy. Laud used his position as primate to secure the
introduction of his own theory into the public church services,
among other things making the communion office an imitation
as near as possible of the Romish mass. But when he attempted
to force upon the Scotch such “Baal-worship” by the command of
the king, they formed a league in A.D. 1638 for the defence of
Presbyterianism, the so called Great Covenant, and emphasised
their demand by sending an army into England. The king, who had
ruled for eleven years without a Parliament, was obliged now
to call together the representatives of the people. Scarcely
had the Long Parliament, A.D. 1640-1653, in which the Puritan
element was supreme, pacified the Scotch, than oil was anew
poured on the flames by the Irish massacre of A.D. 1641
(§ 153, 6). The Lower House, in spite of the persistent
opposition of the court, resolved on excluding the bishops
from the Upper House and formally abolishing Episcopacy;
and in A.D. 1643, summoned the Westminster Assembly to
remodel the organization of the English church, at which
Scotch representatives were to have a seat. After long
and violent debates with an Independent minority, till
A.D. 1648, the Assembly drew up a Presbyterian constitution
with a Puritan service, and in the Westminster Confession
a strictly Calvinistic creed. But only in Scotland were these
decisions heartily accepted. In England, notwithstanding their
confirmation by the Parliament, they received only partial and
occasional acceptance, owing to the prevalence of Independent
opinions among the people.--Since A.D. 1642, the tension between
court and Parliament had brought about the Civil War between
Cavaliers and Roundheads. In A.D. 1645, the royal troops were
cut to pieces at Naseby by the parliamentary army under Fairfax
and Cromwell. The king fled to the Scotch, by whom he was
surrendered to the English Parliament in A.D. 1647. But when
now the fanatical Independents, who formed a majority in the
army, began to terrorise the Parliament, it opened negotiations
for peace with the king. He was now ready to make almost
any sacrifice, only on religious and conscientious grounds he
could not agree to the unconditional abandonment of Episcopacy.
Even the Scotch, whose Presbyterianism was now threatened by
the Independents, as before it had been by the Episcopalians,
longed for the restoration of royalty, and to aid in this
sent an army into England in A.D. 1648. But they were defeated
by Cromwell, who then dismissed the Parliament and had all
its Presbyterian members either imprisoned or driven into
retirement. The Independent remnant, known as the Rump
Parliament, A.D. 1648-1653, tried the king for high treason
and sentenced him to death. On January 30th, A.D. 1649, he
mounted the scaffold, on which Archbishop Laud had preceded
him in A.D. 1645, and fell under the executioner’s axe.[454]
§ 155.2. =The Commonwealth and the Protector.=--Ireland had
never yet atoned for its crime of A.D. 1641 (§ 153, 6), and
as it refused to acknowledge the Commonwealth, Cromwell took
terrible revenge in A.D. 1649. In A.D. 1650 at Dunbar, and in
A.D. 1651 at Worcester, he completely destroyed the army of the
Scots, who had crowned Charles II., son of the executed king,
drove out, in April A.D. 1653, the Rump of the Long Parliament,
which had come to regard itself as a permanent institution,
and in July opened, with a powerful speech, two hours in length,
on God’s ways and judgments, the Short or Barebones’ Parliament,
composed of “pious and God-fearing men” selected by himself.
In this new Parliament which, with prayer and psalm-singing,
wrought hard at the re-organization of the executive, the
bench, and the church, the two parties of Independents were
represented, the fanatical enthusiasts indeed predominating,
and so victorious in all matters of debate. To this party
Cromwell himself belonged. His attachment to it, however,
was considerably cooled in consequence of the excesses of
the Levellers (§ 161, 2), and the fantastic policy of the
parliamentarian Saints disgusted him more and more. When
therefore, on December 12th, A.D. 1653, after five months’
fruitless opposition to the radical demands of the extravagant
majority, all the most moderate members of the Parliament
had resigned their seats and returned their mandates into
Cromwell’s hands, he burst in upon the psalm-singing remnant
with his soldiers, and entered upon his life-long office of
the Protector of the Commonwealth with a new constitution. He
proclaimed toleration of all religious sects, Catholics only
being excepted on political grounds (§ 153, 6), giving equal
rights to Presbyterians, and offering no hindrance to the
revival of Episcopacy. He yet remained firmly attached to
his early convictions. He believed in a kingdom of the saints
embracing the whole earth, and looked on England as destined
for the protection and spread of Protestantism. Zürich greeted
him as the great Protestant champion, and he showed himself
in this _rôle_ in the valleys of Piedmont (§ 153, 5), in
France, in Poland, and in Silesia. He joined with all Protestant
governments into a league, offensive and defensive, against
fanatical attempts of Papists to recover their lost ground. When
Spain and France sued for his alliance, he made it a condition
with the former that, besides allowing free trade with the West
Indies, it should abolish the Inquisition; and of France he
required an assurance that the rights of Huguenots should be
respected. And when in Germany a new election of emperor was
to take place, he urged the great electors that they should by
no means allow the imperial throne to continue with the Catholic
house of Austria. Meanwhile his path at home was a thorny one.
He was obliged to suppress fifteen open rebellions during five
years of his reign, countless secret plots threatened his life
every day, and his bitterest foes were his former comrades in
the camp of the the saints. After refusing the crown offered
him in A.D. 1657, without being able thereby to quell the
discontents of parties, he died on September 3rd, A.D. 1658,
the anniversary of his glorious victories of Dunbar and
Worcester.[455]
§ 155.3. =The Restoration and the Act of Toleration.=--The
Restoration of royalty under =Charles II.=, A.D. 1660-1685,
began with the reinstating of the Episcopal church in all the
privileges granted to it under Elizabeth. The Corporation Act
of December, A.D. 1661, was the first of a series of enactments
for this purpose. It required of all magistrates and civil
officers that they should take an oath acknowledging the royal
supremacy and communicate in the Episcopal church. The Act
of Uniformity of May, A.D. 1662, was still more oppressive.
It prohibited any clergyman entering the English pulpit or
discharging any ministerial function, unless he had been
ordained by a bishop, had signed the Thirty-nine Articles,
and undertook to conduct worship exactly in accordance with
the newly revised Book of Common Prayer. More than 2,000 Puritan
ministers, who could not conscientiously submit to those terms,
were driven out of their churches. Then in June, A.D. 1664,
the Conventicle Act was renewed, enforcing attendance at the
Episcopal church, and threatening with imprisonment or exile
all found in any private religious meeting of more than five
persons. In the following year the Five Mile Act inflicted
heavy fines on all nonconformist ministers who should approach
within five miles of their former congregation or indeed of any
city. All these laws, although primarily directed against all
Protestant dissenters, told equally against the Catholics, whom
the king’s Catholic sympathies would willingly have spared.
When now his league with Catholic France against the Protestant
Netherlands made it necessary for him to appease his Protestant
subjects, he hoped to accomplish this and save the Catholics
by his “Declaration of Indulgence” of A.D. 1672, issued with
the consent of Parliament, which suspended all penal laws
hitherto in force against dissenters. But the Protestant
nonconformists saw through this scheme, and the Parliament
of A.D. 1673 passed the anti-Catholic Test Act (§ 153, 6).
Equally vain were all later attempts to secure greater liberties
and privileges to the Catholics. They only served to develop
the powers of Parliament and to bring the Episcopalians and
nonconformists more closely together. After spending his
whole life oscillating between frivolous unbelief and Catholic
superstition, Charles II., on his death-bed, formally went over
to the Romish church, and had the communion and extreme unction
administered by a Catholic priest. His brother and successor
=James II.=, A.D. 1685-1688, who was from A.D. 1672 an avowed
Catholic, sent a declaration of obedience to Rome, received
a papal nuncio in London, and in the exercise of despotic power
issued, in A.D. 1687, a “Declaration of Freedom of Conscience,”
which, under the fair colour of universal toleration and by the
setting aside of the test oath, enabled him to fill all civil
and military offices with Catholics. This act proved equally
oppressive to the Episcopalians and to Protestant dissenters.
This intrigue cost him his throne. He had, as he himself
said, staked three kingdoms on a mass, and lost all the three.
=William III.= of Orange, A.D. 1689-1702, grandson of Charles I.
and son-in-law of James II., gave a final decision to the rights
of the national Episcopal church and the position of dissenters
in the =Act of Toleration= of A.D. 1689, which he passed with
consent of the Parliament. All penal laws against the latter
were abrogated, and religious liberty was extended to all with
the exception of Catholics and Socinians. The retention of the
Corporation and Test Acts, however, still excluded them from the
exercise of all political rights. They were also still obliged
to pay tithes and other church dues to the Episcopal clergy
of their dioceses, and their marriages and baptisms had to be
administered in the parish churches. Their ministers were also
obliged to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, with reservation
of those points opposed to their principles. The Act of Union
of A.D. 1707, passed under Queen Anne, a daughter of James II.,
which united England and Scotland into the one kingdom of Great
Britain, gave legitimate sanction to a separate ecclesiastical
establishment for each country. In Scotland the Presbyterian
churches continued the established church, while the Episcopal
was tolerated as a dissenting body. Congregationalism, however,
has been practically limited to England and North
America.[456]--Continuation, § 202, 5.
II. The Roman Catholic Church.
§ 156. THE PAPACY, MONKERY, AND FOREIGN MISSIONS.
Notwithstanding the regeneration of papal Catholicism since the
middle of the sixteenth century, Hildebrand’s politico-theocratic
ideal was not realized. Even Catholic princes would not be dictated
to on political matters by the vicar of Christ. The most powerful of
them, France, Austria, and Spain, during the sixteenth century, and
subsequently also Portugal, had succeeded in the claim to the right of
excluding objectionable candidates in papal elections. Ban and interdict
had lost their power. The popes, however, still clung to the idea after
they had been obliged to surrender the reality, and issued from time
to time powerless protestations against disagreeable facts of history.
Several new monkish orders were instituted during this century, mostly
for teaching the young and tending the sick, but some also expressly
for the promoting of theological science. Of all the orders, new and
old, the Jesuits were by far the most powerful. They were regarded with
jealousy and suspicion by the other orders. In respect of doctrine the
Dominicans were as far removed from them as possible within the limits
of the Tridentine Creed. But notwithstanding any such mutual jealousies,
they were all animated by one yearning desire to oppose, restrict, and,
where that was possible, to uproot Protestantism. With similar zeal
they devoted themselves with wonderful success to the work of foreign
missions.
§ 156.1. =The Papacy.=--=Paul V.=, A.D. 1605-1621,
equally energetic in his civil and in his ecclesiastical
policy, in a struggle with Venice, was obliged to behold
the powerlessness of the papal interdict. His successor,
=Gregory XV.=, A.D. 1621-1623, founded the Propaganda,
prescribed a secret scrutiny in papal elections, and canonized
Loyola, Xavier, and Neri. He enriched the Vatican Library
by the addition of the valuable treasures of the Heidelberg
Library, which Maximilian I. of Bavaria sent him on his
conquest of the Palatinate. =Urban VIII.=, A.D. 1623-1644,
increased the Propaganda, improved the Roman “Breviary”
(§ 56, 2), condemned Jansen’s _Augustinus_ (§ 156, 5), and
compelled Galileo to recant. But on the other hand, through
his onesided ecclesiastical policy he was led into sacrificing
the interests of the imperial house of Austria. Not only did
he fail to give support to the emperor, but quite openly hailed
Gustavus Adolphus, the saviour of German Protestantism, as the
God-sent saviour from the Spanish-Austrian tyranny. For this he
was pronounced a heretic at the imperial court, and threatened
with a second edition of the sack of Rome (§ 132, 2). At the
same time his soul was so filled with fanatical hatred against
Protestantism, that in a letter of 1631 he congratulated the
Emperor Ferdinand II. on the destruction of Magdeburg as an
act most pleasing to heaven and reflecting the highest credit
upon Germany, and expressed the hope that the glory of so great
a victory should not be restricted to the ruins of a single
city. On receiving the news of the death of Gustavus Adolphus
in 1632 he broke out into loud jubilation, saying that now “the
serpent was slain which with its poison had sought to destroy
the whole world.” His successor, =Innocent X.=, A.D. 1644-1655,
though vigorously protesting against the Peace of Westphalia
(§ 153, 2), was, owing to his abject subserviency to a woman,
his own sister-in-law, reproached with the title of a new
_Johanna Papissa_. =Alexander VII.=, A.D. 1655-1667, had the
expensive guardianship of his godchild Christina of Sweden
(§ 153, 1), and fanned into a flame the spark kindled by his
predecessor in the Jansenist controversy (§ 156, 5), so that his
successor, =Clement IX.=, A.D. 1667-1670, could only gradually
extinguish it. =Clement X.=, A.D. 1670-1676, by his preference
for Spain roused the French king Louis XIV., who avenged himself
by various encroachments on the ecclesiastical administration
in his dominions. =Innocent XI.=, A.D. 1676-1689, was a powerful
pope, zealously promoting the weal of the church and the Papal
States by introducing discipline among the clergy and attacking
the immorality that prevailed among all classes of society.
He unhesitatingly condemned sixty-five propositions from the
lax Jesuit code of morals. Against the arrogant ambassador
of Louis XIV. he energetically maintained his sovereign
rights in his own domains, while he unreservedly refused
the claims of the French clergy, urged by the king on the
ground of the exceptional constitution of the Gallican church.
=Alexander VIII.=, A.D. 1689-1691, continued the fight against
Gallicanism, and condemned the Jesuit distinction between
theological and philosophical sin (§ 149, 10). =Innocent XII.=,
A.D. 1691-1700, could boast of having secured the complete
subjugation of the Gallican clergy after a hard struggle. He
too wrought earnestly for the reform of abuses in the curia.
Specially creditable to him is the stringent bull “_Romanum
decet pontificem_” against nepotism, which extirpated the
evil disease, so that it was never again openly practised as
an acknowledged right.--Continuation, § 165, 1.
§ 156.2. =The Jesuits and the Republic of Venice.=--Venice was
one of the first of the Italian cities to receive the Jesuits
with open arms, A.D. 1530. But the influence obtained by them
over public affairs through school and confessional, and their
vast wealth accumulated from bequests and donations, led the
government, in A.D. 1605, to forbid their receiving legacies
or erecting new cloisters. In vain did Paul V. remonstrate.
He then put Venice under an interdict. The Jesuits sought to
excite the people against the government, and for this were
banished in A.D. 1606. The pious and learned historian of the
Council of Trent and adviser of the State, Paul Sarpi, proved
a vigorous supporter of civil rights against the assumptions
of the curia and the Jesuits. When in A.D. 1607 he refused a
citation of Inquisition, he was dangerously wounded by three
dagger stabs, inflicted by hired bandits, in whose stilettos
he recognised the _stilum curiæ_. He died in A.D. 1623.
After a ten months’ vain endeavour to enforce the interdict,
the pope at last, through French mediation, concluded a peace
with the republic, without, however, being able to obtain either
the abolition of the objectionable ecclesiastico-political laws
or permission for the return of the Jesuits. Only after the
republic had been weakened through the unfortunate Turkish war
of A.D. 1645 was it found willing to submit. Even in A.D. 1653
it refused the offer of 150,000 ducats from the Jesuit general
for the Turkish campaign; but when Alexander VII. suppressed
several rich cloisters, their revenues were thankfully accepted
for this purpose. In A.D. 1657, on the pope’s promise of further
pecuniary aid, the decree of banishment was withdrawn. The
Jesuit fathers now returned in crowds, and soon regained much
of their former influence and wealth. No pope has ever since
issued an interdict against any country.[457]
§ 156.3. =The Gallican Liberties.=--Although =Louis XIV.=
of France, A.D. 1643-1715, as a good Catholic king, powerfully
supported the claims of papal dogmatics against the Jansenists
(§§ 156, 5; 165, 7), he was by no means unfaithful to the
traditional ecclesiastical polity of his house (§§ 96, 21;
110, 1, 9, 13, 14), and was often irritated to the utmost
pitch by the pope’s opposition to his political interests.
He rigorously insisted upon the old customary right of
the Crown to the income of certain vacant ecclesiastical
offices, the _jus regaliæ_, and extended it to all bishoprics,
burdened church revenues with military pensions, confiscated
ecclesiastical property, etc. Innocent XI. energetically
protested against such exactions. The king then had an assembly
of the French called together in Paris on March 19th, A.D. 1682,
which issued the famous =Four Propositions of the Gallican
Clergy=, drawn up by Bishop Bossuet of Meaux. These set forth
the fundamental rights of the French church:
1. In secular affairs the pope has no jurisdiction over
princes and kings, and cannot release their subjects
from their allegiance;
2. The spiritual power of the pope is subject to the higher
authority of the general councils;
3. For France it is further limited by the old French
ecclesiastical laws; and,
4. Even in matters of faith the judgment of the pope without
the approval of a general assembly of the church is not
unalterable.
Innocent consequently refused to institute any of the newly
appointed bishops. He was not even appeased by the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes in A.D. 1685. He was pleased indeed, and
praised the deed, and celebrated it by a _Te Deum_, but objected
to the violent measures for the conversion of Protestants as
contrary to the teaching of Christ. Then also there arose a
keen struggle against the mischievous extension of the right
of asylum on the part of foreign embassies at Rome. On the
pope’s representation all the powers but France agreed to
a restriction of the custom. The pope tolerated the nuisance
till the death of the French ambassador in A.D. 1687, but
then insisted on its abolition under pain of the ban. In
consequence of this Louis sent his new ambassador into Rome
with two companies of cavaliers, threw the papal nuntio in
France into prison, and laid siege to the papal state of
Avignon (§ 110, 4). But Innocent was not thus to be terrorized,
and the French ambassador was obliged, after eighteen months’
vain demonstrations, to quit Rome. Alexander VIII. repeated the
condemnation of the Four Propositions, and Innocent XIII. also
stood firm. The French episcopate, on the pope’s persistent
refusal to install bishops nominated by the king, was at last
constrained to submit. “Lying at the feet of his holiness,”
the bishops declared that everything concluded in that assembly
was null and void; and even Louis XIV., under the influence of
Madame de Maintenon (§ 157, 3), wrote to the pope in A.D. 1693,
saying that he recalled the order that the Four Propositions
should be taught in all the schools. There still, however,
survived among the French clergy a firm conviction of the
Gallican Liberties, and the _droit de régale_ continued to
have the force of law.[458]--Continuation, § 197, 1.
§ 156.4. =Galileo and the Inquisition.=--Galileo Galilei,
professor of mathematics at Pisa and Padua, who died in
A.D. 1642, among his many distinguished services to the
physical, mathematical, and astronomical sciences, has the
honour of being the pioneer champion of the Copernican system.
On this account he was charged by the monks with contradicting
Scripture. In A.D. 1616 Paul V., through Cardinal Bellarmine,
threatened him with the Inquisition and prison unless he agreed
to cease from vindicating and lecturing upon his heretical
doctrine. He gave the required promise. But in A.D. 1632
he published a dialogue, in which three friends discussed
the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, without any formal
conclusion, but giving overwhelming reasons in favour of the
latter. Urban VIII., in A.D. 1636, called upon the Inquisition
to institute a process against him. He was forced to recant,
was condemned to prison for an indefinite period, but was soon
liberated through powerful influence. How far the old man of
seventy-two years of age was compelled by torture to retract
is still a matter of controversy. It is, however, quite evident
that it was forced from him by threats. But that Galileo went
out after his recantation, gnashing his teeth and stamping
his feet, muttering, “Nevertheless it moves!” is a legend
of a romancing age. This, however, is the fact, that the
Congregation of the Index declared the Copernican theory to
be false, irrational, and directly contrary to Scripture; and
that even in A.D. 1660 Alexander VII., with apostolic authority,
formally confirmed this decree and pronounced it _ex cathedrâ_
(§ 149, 4) irrevocable. It was only in A.D. 1822 that the curia
set it aside, and in a new edition of the Index (§ 149, 14)
in A.D. 1835 omitted the works of Galileo as well as those
of Copernicus.[459]
§ 156.5. =The Controversy on the Immaculate Conception=
(§ 112, 4) received a new impulse from the nun =Mary of Jesus,
died 1665, of Agreda=, in Old Castile, superior of the cloister
there of the Immaculate Conception, writer of the “Mystical
City of God.” This book professed to give an inspired account
of the life of the Virgin, full of the strangest absurdities
about the immaculate conception. The Sorbonne pronounced it
offensive and silly; the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and
Rome forbad the reading of it; but the Franciscans defended
it as a divine revelation. A violent controversy ensued, which
Alexander VII. silenced in A.D. 1661 by expressing approval
of the doctrine of the immaculate conception set forth in the
book.--Continuation, § 185, 2.
§ 156.6. =The Devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.=--The
nun =Margaret Alacoque=, in the Burgundian cloister of _Paray
le Monial_, born A.D. 1647, recovering from a painful illness
when but three years old, vowed to the mother of God, who
frequently appeared to her, perpetual chastity, and in gratitude
for her recovery adopted the name of Mary, and when grown up
resisted temptations by inflicting on herself the severest
discipline, such as long fasts, sharp flagellations, lying
on thorns, etc. Visions of the Virgin no longer satisfied her.
She longed to lavish her affections on the Redeemer himself,
which she expressed in the most extravagant terms. She took the
Jesuit =La Colombière= as her spiritual adviser in A.D. 1675.
In a new vision she beheld the side of her Beloved opened,
and saw his heart glowing like a sun, into which her own was
absorbed. Down to her death in A.D. 1690 she felt the most
violent burning pains in her side. In a second vision she saw
her Beloved’s heart burning like a furnace, into which were
taken her own heart and that of her spiritual adviser. In a
third vision he enjoined the observance of a special “Devotion
of the Sacred Heart” by all Christendom on the Friday after the
octave of the _Corpus Christi_ festival and on the first Friday
of every month. La Colombière, being made director, put forth
every effort to get this celebration introduced throughout the
church, and on his death the idea was taken up by the whole
Jesuit order. Their efforts, however, for fully a century proved
unavailing. At this point, too, their most bitter opponents were
the Dominicans. But even without papal authority the Jesuits
so far succeeded in introducing the absurdities of this cult,
and giving expression to it in word and by images, that by the
beginning of the eighteenth century there were more than 300
male and female societies engaged in this devotion, and at last,
in A.D. 1765, =Clement XIII.=, the great friend of the Jesuits,
gave formal sanction to this special celebration.--Continuation,
§ 188, 12.
§ 156.7. =New Congregations and Orders.=
1. At the head of the new orders of this century stands
the =Benedictine Congregation of St. Banne= at Verdun,
founded by Didier de la Cour. Elected Abbot of St. Banne
in A.D. 1596, he gave his whole strength to the reforming
of this cloister, which had fallen into luxurious and
immoral habits. By a papal bull of A.D. 1604 all cloisters
combining with St. Banne into a congregation were endowed
with rich privileges. Gradually all the Benedictine
monasteries of Lorraine and Alsace joined the union.
Didier’s reforms were mostly in the direction of moral
discipline and asceticism; but in the new congregation
scholarship was represented by Calmet, Ceillier, etc., and
many gave themselves to work as teachers in the schools.
2. Much more important for the promotion of theological
science, especially for patristics and church history,
was another Benedictine congregation founded in France
in A.D. 1618 by Laurence Bernard, that of =St. Maur=,
named after a disciple of St. Benedict. The members of
this order devoted themselves exclusively to science and
literary pursuits. To them belonged the distinguished
names, Mabillon, Montfaucon, Reinart, Martène, D’Achery,
Le Nourry, Durand, Surius, etc. They showed unwearied
diligence in research and a noble liberality of judgment.
The editions of the most celebrated Fathers issued by
them are the best of the kind, and this may also be said
of the great historical collections which we owe to their
diligence.
3. =The Fathers of the Oratory of Jesus= are an imitation
of the Priests of the Oratory founded by Philip Neri
(§ 149, 7). Peter of Barylla, son of a member of parliament,
founded it in A.D. 1611 by building an oratory at Paris.
He was more of a mystic than of a scholar, but his order
sent out many distinguished and brilliant theologians;
_e.g._ Malebranche, Morinus, Thomassinus, Rich, Simon,
Houbigant.
4. =The Piarists=, _Patres scholarum piarum_, were founded
in Rome in A.D. 1607 by the Spaniard Joseph Calasanza. The
order adopted as a fourth vow the obligation of gratuitous
tuition. They were hated by the Obscurantist Jesuits for
their successful labours for the improvement of Catholic
education, especially in Poland and Austria, and also
because they objected to all participation in political
schemes.
5. =The Order of the Visitation of Mary=, or _Salesian Nuns_,
instituted in A.D. 1610 by the mystic Francis de Sales
and Francisca Chantal (§ 157, 1). They visited the poor
and sick in imitation of Elizabeth’s visit to the Virgin
(Luke i. 39); but the papal rescript of A.D. 1618 gave
prominence to the education of children.
§ 156.8.
6. =The Priests of the Missions and Sisters of Charity= were
both founded by Vincent de Paul. Born of poor parents,
he was, after completing his education, captured by
pirates, and as a slave converted his renegade master
to Christianity. As domestic chaplain to the noble family
of Gondy he was characterized in a remarkable degree
for unassuming humility, and he wrought earnestly and
successfully as a home missionary. In A.D. 1618 he founded
the order of Sisters of Mercy, who became devoted nurses
of the sick throughout all France, and in A.D. 1627 that
of the Priests of the Missions, or Lazarists, who travelled
the country attending to the spiritual and bodily wants
of men. After the death of the Countess Gondy in A.D. 1625,
he placed at the head of the Sisters of Mercy the widow
Louise le Gras, distinguished equally for qualities of head
and heart. Vincent died in A.D. 1660, and was subsequently
canonized.[460]
7. =The Trappists=, founded by De Rancé, a distinguished canon,
who in A.D. 1664 passed from the extreme of worldliness
to the extreme of fanatical asceticism. The order got its
name from the Cistercian abbey La Trappe in Normandy, of
which Rancé was commendatory abbot. Amid many difficulties
he succeeded, in A.D. 1665, in thoroughly reforming the
wild monks, who were called “the bandits of La Trappe.”
His rule enjoined on the monks perpetual silence, only
broken in public prayer and singing and in uttering
the greeting as they met, _Memento mori_. Their bed
was a hard board with some straw; their only food was
bread and water, roots, herbs, some fruit and vegetables,
without butter, fat, or oil. Study was forbidden, and they
occupied themselves with hard field labour. Their clothing
was a dark-brown cloak worn on the naked body, with wooden
shoes. Very few cloisters besides La Trappe submitted to
such severities (§ 185, 2).
8. =The English Nuns=, founded at St. Omer, in France, by
Mary Ward, the daughter of an English Catholic nobleman,
for the education of girls. Originally composed of English
maidens, it was afterwards enlarged by receiving those of
other nationalities, with establishments in Germany, Italy,
and the Netherlands. It did not obtain papal confirmation,
and in A.D. 1630 Urban VIII., giving heed to the calumnies
of enemies, formally dissolved it on account of arrogance,
insubordination, and heresy. All its institutions and
schools were then closed, while Mary herself was imprisoned
and given over to the Inquisition in Rome. Urban was
soon convinced of her innocence and set her free. Her
scattered nuns were now collected again, but succeeded only
in A.D. 1703 in obtaining confirmation from Clement XI.
Their chief tasks were the education of youth and care
of the sick. They were arranged in three classes, according
to their rank in life, and were bound by their vows for
a year or at the most three years, after which they might
return to the world and marry. Their chief centre was
Bavaria with the mother cloister in Munich.--Continuation,
§ 165, 2.
§ 156.9. =The Propaganda.=--Gregory XV. gave unity and strength
to the efforts for conversion of heretics and heathens by
instituting, in A.D. 1662, the _Congregatio de Propaganda
Fide_. Urban VIII. in A.D. 1627 attached to it a missionary
training school, recruited as far as possible from natives of
the respective countries, like Loyola’s _Collegium Germanicum_
founded in A.D. 1552 (§ 151, 1). He was thus able every Epiphany
to astonish Romans and foreigners by what seemed a repetition of
the pentecostal miracle of tongues. At this institute training
in all languages was given, and breviaries, mass and devotional
books, and handbooks were printed for the use of the missions.
It was also the centre from which all missionary enterprises
originated.--Continuation, § 204, 2.
§ 156.10. =Foreign Missions.=--Even during this century the
Jesuits excelled all others in missionary zeal. In A.D. 1608
they sent out from Madrid mission colonies among the wandering
Indians of South America, and no Spaniard could settle there
without their permission. The most thoroughly organized of
these was that of =Paraguay=, in which, according to their
own reports, over 100,000 converted savages lived happily
and contented under the mild, patriarchal rule of the Jesuits
for 140 years, A.D. 1610-1750; but according to another well
informed, though perhaps not altogether impartial, account,
that of Ibagnez, a member of the mission, expelled for advising
submission to the decree depriving it of political independence,
the paternal government was flavoured by a liberal dose of
slave-driver despotism. It was at least an undoubted fact,
notwithstanding the boasted patriarchal idyllic character of
the Jesuit state, that the order amassed great wealth from the
proceeds of the industry of their _protégés_.--Continuation,
§ 165, 3.
§ 156.11. =In the East Indies= (§ 150, 1) the Jesuits had
uninterrupted success. In A.D. 1606, in order to make way
among the Brahmans, the Jesuit Rob. Nobili assumed their
dress, avoided all contact with even the converts of low
caste, giving them the communion elements not directly, but
by an instrument, or laying them down for them outside the
door, and as a Christian Brahman made a considerable impression
upon the most exclusive classes.--In =Japan= the mission
prospects were dark (§ 150, 2). Mendicants and Jesuits opposed
and mutually excommunicated one another. The Catholic Spaniards
and Portuguese were at feud among themselves, and only agreed
in intriguing against Dutch and English Protestants. When the
land was opened to foreign trade, it became the gathering point
of the moral scum of all European countries, and the traffic in
Japanese slaves, especially by the Portuguese, brought discredit
on the Christian cause. The idea gained ground that the efforts
at Christianization were but a prelude to conquest by the
Spaniards and Portuguese. In the new organization of the country
by the _shiogun_ Ijejasu all governors were to vow hostility to
Christians and foreigners. In A.D. 1606 he forbad the observance
of the Christian religion anywhere in the land. When the
conspiracy of a Christian daimio was discovered, he caused,
in A.D. 1614, whole shiploads of Jesuits, mendicants, and
native priests to be sent out of the country. But as many
of the banished returned, death was threatened against all
who might be found, and in A.D. 1624 all foreigners, with the
exception of Chinese and Dutch, were rigorously driven out.
And now a bloody persecution of native Christians began. Many
thousands fled to China and the neighbouring islands; crowds
of those remaining were buried alive or burnt on piles made up
of the wood of Christian crosses. The victims displayed a martyr
spirit like those of the early days. Those who escaped organized
in A.D. 1637 an armed resistance, and held the fortress of Arima
in face of the _shiogun’s_ army sent against them. After a three
months’ siege the fortress was conquered by the help of Dutch
cannon; 37,000 were massacred in the fort, and the rest were
hurled down from high rocks. The most severe enactments were
passed against Christians, and the edicts filled with fearful
curses against “the wicked sect” and “the vile God” of the
Christians were posted on all the bridges, street corners, and
squares. Christianity now seemed to be completely stamped out.
The recollection of this work, however, was still retained down
to the nineteenth century. For when French missionaries went
in A.D. 1860 to Nagasaki, they found to their surprise in the
villages around thousands (?) who greeted them joyfully as the
successors of the first Christian missionaries.
§ 156.12. =In China=, after Ricci’s death (§ 150, 1), the
success of the mission continued uninterrupted. In A.D. 1628
a German Jesuit, Adam Schell, went out from Cologne, who gained
great fame at court for his mathematical skill. Louis XIV.
founded at Paris a missionary college, which sent out Jesuits
thoroughly trained in mathematics. But Dominicans and Franciscans
over and over again complained to Rome of the Jesuits. They
never allowed missionaries of other orders to come near their
own establishments, and actually drove them away from places
where they had begun to work. They even opposed priests,
bishops, and vicars-apostolic sent by the Propaganda, declared
their papal briefs forgeries, forbad their congregations to have
any intercourse with those “heretics,” and under suspicion of
Jansenism brought them before the Inquisition of Goa. Clement X.
issued a firm-toned bull against such proceedings; but the
Jesuits gave no heed to it, and attended only to their own
general. The papal condemnation a century later of the Jesuits’
accommodation scheme, and their permission of heathen rites
and beliefs to the new converts, complained against by the
Dominicans, was equally fruitless. In A.D. 1645 Innocent X.
forbad this practice on pain of excommunication; but still
they continued it till the decree was modified by Alexander VII.
in A.D. 1656. After persistent complaints by the Dominicans,
Innocent XII. appointed a new congregation in Rome to
investigate the question, but their deliberations yielded no
result for ten years. At last Clement XI. confirmed the first
decree of Innocent X., condemned anew the so called Chinese
rites, and sent the legate Thomas of Tournon in A.D. 1703 to
enforce his decision. Tournon, received at first by the emperor
at Pekin with great consideration, fell into disfavour through
Jesuit intrigues, was banished from the capital, and returned
to Nankin. But as he continued his efforts from this point,
and an attempt to poison him failed in A.D. 1707, he went to
Macao, where he was put in prison by the Portuguese, in which
he died in A.D. 1710. Clement XI., in A.D. 1715, issued his
decree against the Chinese rites in a yet severer form; but
the Franciscan who proclaimed the papal bull was put in prison
as an offender against the laws of the country, and, after
being maltreated for seventeen months, was banished. So proudly
confident had the Jesuits become, that in A.D. 1720 they treated
with scorn and contempt the papal legate Mezzabarba, Patriarch
of Alexandria, who tried by certain concessions to move them
to submit. A more severe decree of Clement XII. of A.D. 1735
was scoffed at by being proclaimed only in the Latin original.
Benedict XIV. succeeded for the first time, in A.D. 1742, in
breaking down their opposition, after the charges had been
renewed by the Capuchin Norbert. All the Jesuit missionaries
were now obliged by oath to exclude all pagan customs and rites;
but with this all the glory and wonderful success of their
Asiatic missions came to an end.--Continuation, § 165, 3.
§ 156.13. =Trade and Industry of the Jesuits.=--As Christian
missions generally deserve credit, not only for introducing
civilization and culture along with the preaching of the gospel
into far distant heathen lands, but also for having greatly
promoted the knowledge of countries, peoples, and languages
among their fellow countrymen at home, opening up new fields
for colonization and trade, these ends were also served by
the world-wide missionary enterprises of the Jesuits, and
were in perfect accordance with the character and intention of
this order, which aimed at universal dominion. In carrying out
these schemes the Jesuits abandoned the ascetical principles
of their founder and their vow of poverty, amassing enormous
wealth by securing in many parts a practical monopoly of
trade. Their fifth general, Aquaviva (§ 149, 8), secured from
Gregory XIII., avowedly in favour of the mission, exclusive
right to trade with both Indies. They soon erected great
factories in all parts of the world, and had ships laden
with valuable merchandise on all seas. They had mines, farms,
sugar plantations, apothecary shops, bakeries, etc., founded
banks, sold relics, miracle-working amulets, rosaries, healing
Ignatius- and Xavier-water (§ 149, 11), etc., and in successful
legacy-hunting excelled all other orders. Urban VIII. and
Clement XI. issued severe bulls against such abuses, but only
succeeded in restricting them to some extent.--Continuation,
§ 165, 9.
§ 156.14. =An Apostate to Judaism.=--Gabriel, or as he was
called after circumcision, =Uriel Acosta=, was sprung from
a noble Portuguese family, originally Jewish. Doubting
Christianity in consequence of the traffic in indulgences,
he at last repudiated the New Testament in favour of the Old.
He refused rich ecclesiastical appointments, fled to Amsterdam,
and there formally went over to Judaism. Instead of the biblical
Mosaism, however, he was disappointed to find only Pharisaic
pride and Talmudic traditionalism, against which he wrote
a treatise in A.D. 1623. The Jews now denounced him to the
civil authorities as a denier of God and immortality. The whole
issue of his book was burnt. Twice the synagogue thundered its
ban against him. The first was withdrawn on his recantation,
and the second, seven years after, upon his submitting to a
severe flagellation. In spite of all he held to his Sadducean
standpoint to his end in A.D. 1647, when he died by his own
hand from a pistol shot, driven to despair by the unceasing
persecution of the Jews.
§ 157. QUIETISM AND JANSENISM.
Down to the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Spanish
Mystics (§ 149, 16), and especially those attached to Francis de Sales,
were recognised as thoroughly orthodox. But now the Jesuits appeared as
the determined opponents of all mysticism that savoured of enthusiasm.
By means of vile intrigues they succeeded in getting Molinos, Guyon,
and Fénelon condemned, as “Quietist” heretics, although the founder
of their party had been canonized and his doctrine solemnly sanctioned
by the pope. Yet more objectionable to the Jesuits was that reaction
toward Augustinianism which, hitherto limited to the Dominicans
(§ 149, 13), and treated by them as a theological theory, was
now spreading among other orders in the form of French Jansenism,
accompanied by deep moral earnestness and a revival of the whole
Christian life.
§ 157.1. =Francis de Sales and Madame Chantal.=--Francis Count
de Sales, from A.D. 1602 Bishop of Geneva, _i.e._ _in partibus_,
with Annecy as his residence, had shown himself a good Catholic
by his zeal in rooting out Protestantism in Chablais, on the
south of the Genevan lake. In A.D. 1604 meeting the young
widowed Baroness de Chantal, along with whom at a later period
he founded the Order of the Visitation of Mary (§ 156, 7),
he proved a good physician to her amid her sorrow, doubts,
and temptations. He sought to qualify himself for this task
by reading the writings of St. Theresa. Teacher and scholar
so profited by their mystical studies, that in A.D. 1665
Alexander VII. deemed the one worthy of canonization and the
other of beatification. In A.D. 1877 Pius IX. raised Francis
to the dignity of _doctor ecclesiæ_. His “Introduction to
the Devout Life” affords a guide to laymen to the life of
the soul, amid all the disturbances of the world resting in
calm contemplation and unselfish love of God. In the Catholic
Church, next to À Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ,” it is the
most appreciated and most widely used book of devotion. In
his “_Theotime_” he leads the reader deeper into the yearnings
of the soul after fellowship with God, and describes the perfect
peace which the soul reaches in God.[461]
§ 157.2. =Michael Molinos.=--After Francis de Sales a great
multitude of male and female apostles of the new mystical
gospel sprang up, and were favourably received by all the
more moderate church leaders. The reactionaries, headed by the
Jesuits, sought therefore all the more eagerly to deal severely
with the Spaniard Michael Molinos. Having settled in Rome in
A.D. 1669, he soon became the most popular of father confessors.
His “Spiritual Guide” in A.D. 1675 received the approval of the
Holy Office, and was introduced into Protestant Germany through
a Latin translation by Francke in A.D. 1687, and a German
translation in A.D. 1699 by Arnold. In it he taught those who
came to the confessional that the way to the perfection of
the Christian life, which consists in peaceful rest in the
most intimate communion with God, is to be found in spiritual
conference, secret prayer, active and passive contemplation,
in rigorous destruction of all self-will, and in disinterested
love of God, fortified, wherever that is possible, by daily
communion. The success of the book was astonishing. It promptly
influenced all ranks and classes, both men and women, lay and
clerical, not only in Italy, but also by means of translations
in France and Spain. But soon a reaction set in. As early
as A.D. 1681 the famous Jesuit =Segneri= issued a treatise,
in which he charged Molinos’ contemplative mysticism with
onesidedness and exaggeration. He was answered by the pious
and learned Oratorian =Petrucci=. A commission, appointed
by the Inquisition to examine the writings of both parties,
pronounced the views of Molinos and Petrucci to be in accordance
with church doctrine and Segneri’s objections to be unfounded.
All that Jesuitism reckoned as foundation, means, and end of
piety was characterized as purely elementary. No hope could
be entertained of winning over Innocent XI., the bitter enemy
of the Jesuits. But Louis XIV. of France, at the instigation
of his Jesuit father confessor, Lachaise, expressed through
his ambassador his surprise that his holiness should, not only
tolerate, but even encourage and support so dangerous a heretic,
who taught all Christendom to undervalue the public services
of the Church. In A.D. 1685 Innocent referred the matter to
the tribunal of the Inquisition. Throughout the two years
during which the investigation proceeded all arts were used to
secure condemnation. Extreme statements of fanatical adherents
of Molinos were not rarely met with, depreciating the public
ordinances and ceremonies, confession, hearing of mass, church
prayers, rosaries, etc. The pope, facile with age, amid groans
and lamentations, allowed things to take their course, and at
last confirmed the decree of the Inquisition of August 28th,
A.D. 1687, by which Molinos was found guilty of spreading
godless doctrine, and sixty-eight propositions, partly from
his own writings, partly from the utterances of his adherents,
were condemned as heretical and blasphemous. The heretic was
to abjure his heresies publicly, clad in penitential garments,
and was then consigned to lifelong solitary confinement in a
Dominican cloister, where he died in A.D. 1697.[462]
§ 157.3. =Madame Guyon and Fénelon.=--After her husband’s
death, =Madame Guyon=, in company with her father confessor,
the Barnabite =Lacombe=, who had been initiated during a long
residence at Rome into the mysteries of Molinist mysticism,
spent five years travelling through France, Switzerland,
Savoy, and Piedmont. Though already much suspected, she won
the hearts of many men and women among the clergy and laity,
and enkindled in them by personal conference, correspondence,
and her literary work, the ardour of mystical love. Her
brilliant writings are indeed disfigured by traces of foolish
exaggeration, fanaticism and spiritual pride. She calls herself
the woman of Revelation xii. 1, and the _mère de la grace_
of her adherents. The following are the main distinguishing
characteristics of her mysticism: The necessity of turning
away from everything creaturely, rejecting all earthly pleasure
and destroying every selfish interest, as well as of turning
to God in passive contemplation, silent devotion, naked faith,
which dispensed with all intellectual evidence, and pure
disinterested love, which loves God for Himself alone, not
for the eternal salvation obtained through Him. On her return
to Paris with Lacombe in A.D. 1686 the proper martyrdom of
her life began. Her chief persecutor was her step-brother,
the Parisian superior of the Barnabites, La Mothe, who spread
the most scandalous reports about his half-sister and Lacombe,
and had them both imprisoned by a royal decree in A.D. 1688.
Lacombe never regained his liberty. Taken from one prison to
another, he lost his reason, and died in an asylum in A.D. 1699.
Madame Guyon, however, by the influence of Madame de Maintenon,
was released after ten months’ confinement. The favour of
this royal dame was not of long continuance. Warned on all
sides of the dangerous heretic, she broke off all intercourse
with her in A.D. 1693, and persuaded the king to appoint a
new commission, in A.D. 1694, with Bishop =Bossuet= of Meaux
at its head, to examine her suspected writings. This commission
meeting at Issy, had already, in February, A.D. 1695, drawn
up thirty test articles, when =Fénelon=, tutor of the king’s
grandson, and now nominated to the archbishopric of Cambray,
was ordered by the king to take part in the proceedings. He
signed the articles, though he objected to much in them, and
had four articles of his own added. Madame Guyon also did so,
and Bossuet at last testified for her that he had found her
moral character stainless and her doctrine free from Molinist
heresy. But the bigot Maintenon was not satisfied with this.
Bossuet demanded the surrender of this certificate that he
might draw up another; and when Madame Guyon refused, on
the basis of a statement by the crazed Lacombe, she was sent
to the Bastile [Bastille] in A.D. 1696. In A.D. 1697 Fénelon
had written in her defence his “_Explication des Maximes des
Saintes sur la Vie Intérieur_,” showing that the condemned
doctrines of passive contemplation, secret prayer, naked
faith, and disinterested love, had all been previously taught
by St. Theresa, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, and other
saints. He sent this treatise for an opinion to Rome. A violent
controversy then arose between Bossuet and Fénelon. The pious,
well-meaning pope, =Innocent XII.=, endeavoured vainly to
bring about a good understanding. Bossuet and the all-powerful
Maintenon wished no reconciliation, but condemnation, and gave
the king and pope no rest till very reluctantly he prohibited
the objectionable book by a brief in A.D. 1699, and condemned
twenty-three propositions from it as heretical. Fénelon,
strongly attached to the church, and a bitter persecutor
of Protestants, made an unconditional surrender, as guilty
of a defective exposition of the truth. But Madame Guyon
continued in the Bastile [Bastille] till A.D. 1701, when she
retired to Blois, where she died in A.D. 1717. Bossuet had
died in A.D. 1704, and Fénelon in A.D. 1715. She published
only two of her writings: “An Exposition of the Song,” and
the “_Moyen Court et très Facile de faire Oraison_.” Many
others, including her translation and expositions of the
Bible, were during her lifetime edited in twenty volumes by
her friend, the Reformed preacher of the Palatinate, Peter
Poiret.[463]
§ 157.4. =Mysticism Tinged with Theosophy and
Pantheism.=--=Antoinette Bourignon=, the daughter of a rich
merchant of Lille, in France, while matron of a hospital in
her native city, had in A.D. 1662 gathered around her a party
of believers in her theosophic and fantastic revelations.
She was obliged to flee to the Netherlands, and there, by
the force of her eloquence in speech and writing, spread her
views among the Protestants. Among them she attracted the
great scientist Swammerdam. But when she introduced politics,
she escaped imprisonment only by flight. Down to her death
in A.D. 1680 she earnestly and successfully prosecuted
her mission in north-west Germany. Peter Poiret collected
her writings and published them in twenty-one volumes at
Amsterdam, in A.D. 1679.--Quite of another sort was the
pantheistic mysticism of =Angelus Silesius=. Originally
a Protestant physician at Breslau, he went over to the
Romish church in A.D. 1653, and in consequence received from
Vienna the honorary title of physician to the emperor. He
was made priest in A.D. 1661, and till his death in A.D. 1677
maintained a keen polemic against the Protestant church
with all a pervert’s zeal. Most of his hymns belong to his
Protestant period. As a Catholic he wrote his “_Cherubinischer
Wandersmann_,” a collection of rhymes in which, with childish
_naïveté_ and hearty, gushing ardour, he merges self into the
abyss of the universal Deity, and develops a system of the most
pronounced pantheism.
§ 157.5. =Jansenism in its first Stage.=--Bishop Cornelius
Jansen, of Ypres, who died in A.D. 1638, gave the fruits
of his lifelong studies of Augustine in his learned work,
“_Augustinus s. doctr. Aug. de humanæ Naturæ Sanitate,
Ægritudine, et Medicina adv. Pelagianos et Massilienses_,”
which was published after his death in three volumes, Louvain,
1640. The Jesuits induced Urban VIII., in A.D. 1642, to prohibit
it in his bull _In eminenti_. Augustine’s numerous followers
in France felt themselves hit by this decree. Jansen’s pupil
at Port Royal from A.D. 1635, Duvergier de Hauranne, usually
called St. Cyran, from the Benedictine monastery of which he
was abbot, was the bitter foe of the Jesuits and Richelieu,
who had him cast into prison in A.D. 1638, from which he was
liberated after the death of the cardinal in A.D. 1643, and
shortly before his own. Another distinguished member of the
party was Antoine Arnauld, doctor of the Sorbonne, who died in
A.D. 1694, the youngest of twenty children of a parliamentary
advocate, whose powerful defence of the University of Paris
against the Jesuits called forth their hatred and lifelong
persecution. His mantle, as a vigorous polemist, had fallen
upon his youngest son. Very important too was the influence
of his much older sister, Angelica Arnauld, Abbess of the
Cistercian cloister of Port Royal des Champs, six miles from
Paris, which under her became the centre of religious life and
effort for all France. Around her gathered some of the noblest,
most pious, and talented men of the time: the poet Racine, the
mathematician and apologist Pascal, the Bible translator De Sacy,
the church historian Tillemont, all ardent admirers of Augustine
and determined opponents of the lax morality of the Jesuits.
Arnauld’s book, “_De la fréquente Communion_,” was approved
by the Sorbonne, the Parliament, and the most distinguished
of the French clergy; but in A.D. 1653 Innocent X. condemned
five Jansenist propositions in it as heretical. The Augustinians
now maintained that these doctrines were not taught in the
sense attributed to them by the pope. Arnauld distinguished
the _question du fait_ from the _question du droit_, maintaining
that the latter only were subject to the judgment of the
Holy See. The Sorbonne, now greatly changed in composition
and character, expelled him on account of this position from
its corporation in A.D. 1656. About this time, at Arnauld’s
instigation, Pascal, the profound and brilliant author of
“_Pensées sur la Religion_,” began, under the name of Louis
de Montalte to publish his famous “Provincial Letters,” which
in an admirable style exposed and lashed with deep earnestness
and biting wit the base moral principles of Jesuit casuistry.
The truly annihilating effect of these letters upon the
reputation of the powerful order could not be checked by
their being burnt by order of Parliament by the hangman at
Aix in A.D. 1657, and at Paris in A.D. 1660. But meanwhile
the specifically Jansenist movement entered upon a new phase
of its development. Alexander VII. had issued in A.D. 1656
a bull which denounced the application of the distinction _du
fait_ and _du droit_ to the papal decrees as derogatory to the
holy see, and affirmed that Jansen taught the five propositions
in the sense they had been condemned. In order to enforce the
sentence, Annal, the Jesuit father confessor of Louis XIV.,
obtained in 1661 a royal decree requiring all French clergy,
monks, nuns, and teachers to sign a formula unconditionally
accepting this bull. Those who refused were banished, and
fled mostly to the Netherlands. The sorely oppressed nuns of
Port Royal at last reluctantly agreed to sign it; but they were
still persecuted, and in A.D. 1664 the new archbishop, Perefixe,
inaugurated a more severe persecution, placed this cloister
under the interdict, and removed some of the nuns to other
convents. In A.D. 1669, Alexander’s successor, Clement IX.,
secured the submission of Arnauld, De Sacy, Nicole, and many
of the nuns by a policy of mild connivance. But the hatred
of the Jesuits was still directed against their cloister. In
A.D. 1705 Clement XI. again demanded full and unconditioned
acceptance of the decree of Alexander VII., and when the nuns
refused, the pope, in A.D. 1708, declared this convent an
irredeemable nest of heresy, and ordered its suppression, which
was carried out in A.D. 1709. In A.D. 1710 cloister and church
were levelled to the ground, and the very corpses taken out of
their graves.[464]--Continuation, § 165, 7.
§ 158. SCIENCE AND ART IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Catholic theology flourished during the seventeenth century as it
had never done since the twelfth and thirteenth. Especially in the
liberal Gallican church there was a vigorous scientific life. The
Parisian Sorbonne and the orders of the Jesuits, St. Maur, and the
Oratorians, excelled in theological, particularly in patristic and
historical, learning, and the contemporary brilliancy of Reformed
theology in France afforded a powerful stimulus. But the best days
of art, especially Italian painting, were now past. Sacred music was
diligently cultivated, though in a secularized style, and many gifted
hymn-writers made their appearance in Spain and Germany.
§ 158.1. =Theological Science= (§ 149, 14).--The parliamentary
advocate, Mich. le Jay, published at his own expense the
Parisian Polyglott in ten folio vols., A.D. 1629-1645, which,
besides complete Syriac and Arabic translations, included also
the Samaritan. The chief contributor was the Oratorian =Morinus=,
who edited the LXX. and the Samaritan texts, which he regarded
as incomparably superior to the Masoretic text corrupted by
the Jews. The Jansenists produced a French translation of
the Bible with practical notes, condemned by the pope, but
much read by the people. It was mainly the work of the brothers
=De Sacy=. The New Testament was issued in A.D. 1667 and the
Old Testament somewhat later, called the Bible of Mons from
the fictitious name of the place of publication. =Richard Simon=,
the Oratorian, who died in A.D. 1712, treated Scripture with
a boldness of criticism never before heard of within the church.
While opposed by many on the Catholic side, the curia favoured
his work as undermining the Protestant doctrine of Scripture.
=Cornelius à Lapide=, who died A.D. 1637, expounded Scripture
according to the fourfold sense.--In systematic theology
the old scholastic method still held sway. Moral theology
was wrought out in the form of casuistry with unexampled
lasciviousness, especially by the Jesuits (§ 149, 10). The
work of the Spaniard =Escobar=, who died in A.D. 1669, ran
through fifty editions, and that of =Busembaum=, professor in
Cologne and afterwards rector of Münster, who died A.D. 1668,
went through seventy editions. On account of the attempted
assassination of Louis XV. by Damiens in A.D. 1757, with
which the Jesuits and their doctrine of tyrannicide were
charged, the Parliament of Toulouse in A.D. 1757, and of Paris
in A.D. 1761, had Busembaum’s book publicly burnt, and several
popes, Alexander VII., VIII., and Innocent XI., condemned a
number of propositions from the moral writings of these and
other Jesuits. Among polemical writers the most distinguished
were =Becanus=, who died in A.D. 1624, and =Bossuet= (§ 153, 7).
Among the Jansenists the most prominent controversialists were
=Nicole= and =Arnauld=, who, in order to escape the reproach of
Calvinism, sought to prove the Catholic doctrine of the supper
to be the same as that of the apostles, and were answered
by the Reformed theologians Claude and Jurieu. In apologetics
the leading place is occupied by =Pascal=, with his brilliant
“_Pensées_.” =Huetius=, a French bishop and editor of Origen,
who died in A.D. 1721, replied to Spinoza’s attacks on the
Pentateuch, and applying to reason itself the Cartesian
principle, that philosophy must begin with doubt, pointed
the doubter to the supernatural revealed truths in the Catholic
church as the only anchor of salvation. The learned Jesuit
=Dionysius Petavius=, who died in A.D. 1652, edited Epiphanius
and wrote gigantic chronological works and numerous violent
polemics against Calvinists and Jansenists. His chief work
is the unfinished patristic-dogmatic treatise in five vols.
folio, A.D. 1680, “_De theologicis Dogmatibus_.” The Oratorian
=Thomassinus= wrote an able archæological work: “_Vetus et Nova
Eccl. Disciplina circa Beneficia et Beneficiarios_.”
§ 158.2. In church history, besides those named in § 5, 2, we
may mention Pagi, the keen critic and corrector of Baronius.
The study of sources was vigorously pursued. We have collections
of mediæval writings and documents by Sirmond, D’Achery,
Mabillon, Martène, Baluzius; of acts of councils by Labbé
and Cossart, those of France by =Jac. Sirmond=, and of Spain
by Aguirre; acts of the martyrs by =Ruinart=; monastic rules
by =Holstenius=, a pervert, who became Vatican librarian,
and died at Rome A.D. 1661. =Dufresne Ducange=, an advocate,
who died in A.D. 1688, wrote glossaries of the mediæval and
barbarous Latin and Greek, indispensable for the study of
documents belonging to those times. The greatest prodigy of
learning was =Mabillon=, who died in A.D. 1707, a Benedictine
of St. Maur, and historian of his order. =Pet. de Marca=, who
died Archbishop of Paris A.D. 1662, wrote the famous work on
the Gallican liberties “_De Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii_.”
The Jansenist doctor of the Sorbonne, =Elias du Pin=, who died
A.D. 1719, wrote “_Nouvelle Bibliothèque des Auteurs Eccles._”
in forty-seven vols. The Jesuit Maimbourg, died A.D. 1686,
compiled several party histories of Wiclifism, Lutheranism,
and Calvinism; but as a Gallican was deprived of office
by the pope, and afterwards supported by a royal pension.
The Antwerp Jesuits Bolland, Henschen, Papebroch started,
in A.D. 1643, the gigantic work “_Acta Sanctorum_,” carried
on by the learned members of their order in Belgium, known
as =Bollandists=. It was stopped by the French invasion
of A.D. 1794, when it had reached October 15th with the
fifty-third folio vol. The Belgian Jesuits continued the
work from A.D. 1845-1867, reaching in six vols. the end of
October, but not displaying the ability and liberality of their
predecessors. In Venice =Paul Sarpi= (§ 155, 2) wrote a history
of the Tridentine Council, one of the most brilliant historical
works of any period. =Leo Allatius=, a Greek convert at Rome,
who died in A.D. 1669, wrote a work to show the agreement of
the Eastern and Western churches. Cardinal =Bona= distinguished
himself as a liturgical writer.--In France pulpit eloquence
reached the highest pitch in such men as Flechier, Bossuet,
Bourdaloue, Fénelon, Massillon, and Bridaine. In Vienna
=Abraham à St. Clara= inveighed in a humorous, grotesque way
against the corruption of manners, with an undercurrent of deep
moral earnestness. Similar in style and spirit, but much more
deeply sunk in Catholic superstition, was his contemporary
the Capuchin =Martin of Cochem=, who missionarized the Rhine
Provinces and western Germany for forty years, and issued
a large number of popular religious tracts.--Continuation,
§ 165, 14.
§ 158.3. =Art and Poetry= (§ 149, 15).--The greatest master
of the musical school founded by Palestrina was _Allêgri_,
whose _Miserere_ is performed yearly on the Wednesday afternoon
of Passion Week in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The oratorio
originated from the application of the lofty music of this
school to dramatic scenes drawn from the Bible, for purely
musical and not theatrical performance. Philip Neri patronized
this music freely in his oratory, from which it took the name.
This new church music became gradually more and more secularized
and approximated to the ordinary opera style.--In =ecclesiastical
architecture= the Renaissance style still prevailed, but debased
with senseless, tasteless ornamentation.--In the Italian school
of =painting= the decline, both in creative power and imitative
skill, was very marked from the end of the sixteenth century.
In Spain during the seventeenth century religious painting
reached a high point of excellence in Murillo of Seville, who
died in A.D. 1682, a master in representing calm meditation
and entranced felicity.--The two greatest =poets= of Spain,
the creators of the Spanish drama, =Lope de Vega= (died
A.D. 1635) and =Pedro Calderon= (died A.D. 1681), both at
first soldiers and afterwards priests, flourished during
this century. The elder excelled the younger, not only in
fruitfulness and versatility (1,500 comedies, 320 autos,
§ 115, 12, etc.), but also in poetic genius and patriotism.
Calderon, with his 122 dramas, 73 festival plays, 200 preludes,
etc., excelled De Vega in artistic expression and beauty of
imagery. Both alike glorify the Inquisition, but occasionally
subordinate Mary and the saints to the great redemption of
the cross.--Specially deserving of notice is the noble German
Jesuit =Friedr. von Spee=, died A.D. 1635. His spiritual songs
show deep love to the Saviour and a profound feeling for nature,
approaching in some respects the style of the evangelical
hymn-writers. Spee was a keen but unsuccessful opponent of
witch prosecution. Another eminent poetic genius of the age
was the Jesuit =Jac. Balde= of Munich, who died in A.D. 1688.
He is at his best in lyrical poetry. A deep religious vein
runs through all his Latin odes, in which he enthusiastically
appeals to the Virgin to raise him above all earthly passions.
To Herder belongs the merit of rescuing him from oblivion.
III. The Lutheran Church.
§ 159. ORTHODOXY AND ITS BATTLES.[465]
The Formula of Concord commended itself to the hearts and
intelligences of Lutherans, and secured a hundred years’ supremacy of
orthodoxy, notwithstanding two Christological controversies. Gradually,
however, a new dogmatic scholasticism arose, which had the defects
as well as the excellences of the mediæval system. The orthodoxy of
this school deteriorated, on the one hand, into violent polemic on
confessional differences, and, on the other, into undue depreciation
of outward forms in favour of a spiritual life and personal piety.
These tendencies are represented by the Syncretist and Pietist
controversies.
§ 159.1. =Christological Controversies.=
1. =The Cryptist and Kenotist Controversy= between the
Giessen and Tübingen theologians, in A.D. 1619, about
Christ’s state of humiliation, led to the publication of
many violent treatises down to A.D. 1626. The Kenotists
of Giessen, with Mentzer and Feuerborn at their head,
assigned the humiliation only to the human nature, and
explained it as an actual κένωσις, _i.e._ a complete but
voluntary resigning of the omnipresence and omnipotence
immanent in His divinity (κτῆσις, but not χρῆσις),
yet so that He could have them at His command at any
moment, _e.g._ in His miracles. The Cryptists of Tübingen,
with Luc. Osiander and Thumm at their head, ascribed
humiliation to both natures, and taught that all the
while Christ, even _secundum carnem_, was omnipresent
and ruled both in heaven and earth, but in a hidden
way; the humiliation is no κένωσις, but only a κρύψις.
After repeated unsuccessful attempts to bring about
a reconciliation, John George, Elector of Saxony, in
A.D. 1623, accepted the Kenotic doctrine. But the two
parties still continued their strife.[466]
2. =The Lütkemann Controversy= on the humanity of Christ in
death was of far less importance. Lütkemann, a professor
of philosophy at Rostock, affirmed that in death, because
the unity of soul and body was broken, Christ was not true
man, and that to deny this was to destroy the reality and
the saving power of his death. He held that the incarnation
of Christ lasted through death, because the divine nature
was connected, not only with the soul, but also with the
body. Lütkemann was obliged to quit Rostock, but got an
honourable call to Brunswick as superintendent and court
preacher, and there died in A.D. 1655. Later Lutherans
treated the controversy as a useless logomachy.
§ 159.2. =The Syncretist Controversy.=--Since the Hofmann
controversy (§ 141, 15) the University of Helmstadt had shown
a decided humanistic tendency, and gave even greater freedom in
the treatment of doctrines than the Formula of Concord, which
it declined to adopt. To this school belonged =George Calixt=,
and from A.D. 1614 for forty years he laboured in promoting
its interests. He was a man of wide culture and experience,
who had obtained a thorough knowledge of church history, and
acquaintance with the most distinguished theologians of all
churches, during his extensive foreign travels, and therewith
a geniality and breadth of view not by any means common in
those days. He did not indeed desire any formal union between
the different churches, but rather a mutual recognition,
love, and tolerance. For this purpose he set, as a secondary
principle of Christian theology, besides Scripture, as the
primary principle, the consensus of the first five centuries
as the common basis of all churches, and sought to represent
later ecclesiastical differences as unessential or of less
consequence. This was denounced by strict Lutherans as
Syncretism and Cryptocatholicism. In A.D. 1639 the Hanoverian
preacher Buscher charged him with being a secret Papist. After
the Thorn Conference of A.D. 1645, a violent controversy arose,
which divided Lutherans into two camps. On the one side were
the universities of Helmstadt and Königsberg; on the other
hand, the theologians of the electorate of Saxony, Hülsemann
of Leipzig, Waller of Dresden, and Abr. Calov, who died
professor in Wittenberg in A.D. 1686. Calov wrote twenty-six
controversial treatises on this subject. Jena vainly sought to
mediate between the parties. In the _Theologorum Sax. Consensus
repetitus Fidei vera Lutheranæ_ of A.D. 1655, for which the
Wittenberg divines failed to secure symbolical authority, the
following sentiments were branded as Syncretist errors: That
in the Apostles’ Creed everything is taught that is necessary
to salvation; that the Catholic and Reformed systems retain
hold of fundamental truths; that original sin is of a merely
privative nature; that God _indirecte, improprie, et per
accidens_ is the cause of sin; that the doctrine of the Trinity
was first clearly revealed in the New Testament, etc. Calixt
died A.D. 1656 in the midst of most violent controversies. His
son Ulrich continued these, but had neither the ability nor
moderation of his father. Even the peaceably disposed Conference
of Cassel of A.D. 1661 (§ 154, 4) only poured oil on the flames.
The strife lost itself at last in actions for damages between
the younger Calixt and his bitter opponent Strauch of Wittenberg.
Wearied of these fruitless discussions, theologians now turned
their attention to the rising movement of Pietism.[467]
§ 159.3. =The Pietist Controversy in its First
Stage.=--=Philip Jacob Spener= born in Alsace in A.D. 1635,
was in his thirty-first year, on account of his spirituality,
distinguished gifts, and singularly wide scholarship, made
president of a clerical seminary at Frankfort-on-Main. In
A.D. 1686 he became chief court preacher at Dresden, and
provost of Berlin in A.D. 1691, when, on account of his intense
earnestness in pastoral work, he had been expelled from Dresden.
He died in Berlin in A.D. 1705. His year’s attendance at Geneva
after the completion of his curriculum at Strassburg had an
important influence on his whole future career. He there learned
to value discipline for securing purity of life as well as of
doctrine, and was also powerfully impressed by the practical
lectures of Labadie (§ 163, 7) and the reading of the “Practice
of Piety” and other ascetical writings of the English Puritans
(§ 162, 3). Though strongly attached to the Lutheran church,
he believed that in the restoration of evangelical doctrine
by the Wittenberg Reformation, “not by any means had all been
accomplished that needed to be done,” and that Lutheranism in
the form of the orthodoxy of the age had lost the living power
of the reformers, and was in danger of burying its talent in
dead and barren service of the letter. There was therefore a
pressing need of a new and wider reformation. In the Lutheran
church, as the depository of sound doctrine, he recognised
the fittest field for the development of a genuinely Christian
life; but he heartily appreciated any true spiritual movement
in whatsoever church it arose. He went back from scholastic
dogmatics to Holy Scripture as the living source of saving
knowledge, substituted for the external orthodox theology the
theology of the heart, demanded evidence of this in a pious
Christian walk: these were the means by which he sought to
promote his reformation. A whole series of Lutheran theologians
of the seventeenth century (§ 159) had indeed contributed to
this same end by their devotional works, hymns, and sermons.
What was new in Spener was the conviction of the insufficiency
of the hitherto used means and the undue prominence given to
doctrine, and his consequent effort vigorously made to raise
the tone of the Christian life. In his childlike, pious humility
he regarded himself as by no means called to carry out this work,
but felt it his duty to insist upon the necessity of it, and
indicate the means that should be used to realize it. This he
did in his work of A.D. 1675, “_Pia Desideria_.” As it was his
aim to recommend biblical practical Christianity to the heart
of the individual Christian, he revived the almost forgotten
doctrine “Of Spiritual Priesthood” in a separate treatise.
In A.D. 1670 he began to have meetings in his own house for
encouraging Christian piety in the community, which soon
were imitated in other places. Spener’s influence on the
Lutheran church became greater and wider through his position
at Dresden. Stirred up by his spirit, three young graduates of
Leipzig. A. H. Francke, Paul Anton, and J. K. Schade, formed
in A.D. 1686 a private _Collegia Philobiblica_ for practical
exposition of Scripture and the delivery of public exegetical
lectures at the university in the German language. But the
Leipzig theological faculty, with J. B. Carpzov II. at its
head, charged them with despising the public ordinances as
well as theological science, and with favouring the views
of separatists. The _Collegia Philobiblica_ was suppressed,
and the three friends obliged to leave Leipzig in A.D. 1690.
This marked the beginning of the Pietist controversies.
Soon afterwards Spener was expelled from Dresden; but in
his new position at Berlin he secured great influence in the
appointments to the theological faculty of the new university
founded at Halle by the peace-loving elector Frederick III.
of Brandenburg, in opposition to the contentious universities
of Wittenberg and Leipzig. Francke, Anton, and Breithaupt
were made professors of theology. Halle now won the position
which Wittenberg and Geneva had held during the Reformation
period, and the Pietist controversy thus entered upon
a second, more general, and more critical epoch of its
history.[468]--Continuation, § 166, 1.
§ 159.4. =Theological Literature= (§ 142, 6).--The “_Philologia
Sacra_” of =Sol. Glassius= of Jena, published in A.D. 1623,
has ranked as a classical work for almost two centuries. From
A.D. 1620 till the end of the century, a lively controversy was
carried on about the Greek style of the New Testament, in which
Lutherans, and especially the Reformed, took part. The purists
maintained that the New Testament idiom was pure and classical,
thinking that its inspiration would otherwise be endangered.
The first historico-critical introduction to the Scriptures was
the “_Officina Biblica_” of Walther in A.D. 1636. =Pfeiffer= of
Leipzig gained distinction in biblical criticism and hermeneutics
by his “_Critica Sacra_” of A.D. 1680 and “_Hermeneutica_”
of A.D. 1684. Exegesis now made progress, notwithstanding its
dependence on traditional interpretations of doctrinal proof
passages and its mechanical theory of inspiration. The most
distinguished exegetes were =Erasmus Schmidt= of Wittenberg,
who died in A.D. 1637: he wrote a Latin translation of New
Testament with admirable notes, and a very useful concordance
of the Greek New Testament, under the title Ταμεῖον, which
has been revised and improved by Bruder; =Seb. Schmidt= of
Strassburg, who wrote commentaries on several Old Testament
books and on the Pauline epistles; and =Abr. Calov= of
Wittenberg, who died in A.D. 1686, in his 74th year, whose
“_Biblia Illustrata_,” in four vols., is a work of amazing
research and learning, but composed wholly in the interests
of dogmatics.--Little was done in the department of church
history. Calixt awakened a new enthusiasm for historical
studies, and =Gottfried Arnold= (§ 159, 2), pietist, chiliast,
and theosophist, bitterly opposed to every form of orthodoxy,
and finding true Christianity only in sects, separatists,
and heretics, set the whole theological world astir by his
“_Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzer-historie_,” in A.D. 1699
(§ 5, 3).
§ 159.5. The orthodox school applied itself most diligently to
dogmatics in a strictly scholastic form. =Hutter= of Wittenberg,
who died in A.D. 1616, wrote “_Loci communes theologici_” and
“_Compendium Loc. Theol._” =John Gerhard= of Jena, who died
in A.D. 1637, published in A.D. 1610 his “_Loc. Theologici_”
in nine folio vols., the standard of Lutheran orthodoxy. =J.
Andr. Quenstedt= of Wittenberg, who died A.D. 1688, exhibited
the best and worst of Lutheran scholasticism in his “_Theol.
didactico-polemica_.” The most important dogmatist of the
Calixtine school was Conrad Horneius. Calixt himself is known
as a dogmatist only by his lectures; but to him we owe the
generally adopted distinction between morals and dogmatics
as set forth in his “_Epitome theol. Moralis_.”--Polemics
were carried on vigorously. =Hoë von Hoënegg= of Dresden
(§ 154, 3, 4) and =Hutter= of Wittenberg were bitter opponents
of Calvinism and Romanism. Hutter was styled by his friends
_Malleus Calvinistorum_ and _Redonatus Lutherus_. The ablest
and most dignified polemic against Romanism was that of =John
Gerhard= in his “_Confessio Catholica_.” =Nich. Hunnius=, son
of Ægid. Hunnius, and Hutter’s successor at Wittenberg, from
A.D. 1623 superintendent at Lübeck, distinguished himself as an
able controversialist against the papacy by his “_Demonstratio
Ministerii Lutherani Divini atque Legitimi_.” Against the
Socinians he wrote his “_Examen Errorum Photinianorum_,”
and against the fanatics a “Chr. Examination of the new
Paracelsist and Weigelian Theology.” His principal work is
his “_Διάσκεψις de Fundamentali Dissensu Doctrinæ Luth. et
Calvin_.” His “_Epitome Credendorum_” went through nineteen
editions. The most incessant controversialist was =Abr. Calov=,
who wrote against Syncretists, Papists, Socinians, Arminians,
etc.--Continuation, § 167, 4.
§ 160. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
The attachment of the Lutheran church of this age to pure doctrine led
to a one-sided over-estimation of it, often ending in dead orthodoxy.
But a succession of able and learned theologians, who recognised the
importance of heart theology as well as sound doctrine, corrected this
evil tendency by Scripture study, preaching, and faithful pastoral work.
A noble and moderate mysticism, which was thoroughly orthodox in its
beliefs, and opposing orthodoxy only where that had become external and
mechanical, had many influential representatives throughout the whole
country, especially during the first half of it. But also separatists,
mystics, and theosophists made their appearance, who were decidedly
hostile to the church. Sacred song flourished afresh amid the troubles
of the Thirty Years’ War; but gradually lost its sublime objective
church character, which was poorly compensated by a more flowing
versification, polished language, and elegant form. A corresponding
advance was also made in church music.
§ 160.1. =Mysticism and Asceticism.=--At the head of the orthodox
mystics stands =John Arndt=. His “True Christianity” and his
“_Paradiesgärtlein_” are the most widely read Lutheran devotional
books, but called forth the bitter hostility of those devoted
to the maintenance of a barren orthodoxy. He died in A.D. 1621,
as general superintendent at Celle. He had been expelled
from Anhalt because he would not condemn exorcism as godless
superstition, and was afterwards in Brunswick publicly charged
by his colleague Denecke and other Lutheran zealots with
Papacy, Calvinism, Osiandrianism, Flacianism, Schwenckfeldism,
Paracelsism, Alchemism, etc. As men of a similar spirit,
anticipators of the school of Spener, may be named =John Gerhard=
of Jena, with his “_Meditationes Sacræ_” and “_Schola pietatis_,”
and =Christian Scriver=, whose “Gotthold’s Emblems” is well known
to English readers. =Rahtmann= of Danzig maintained that the
word of God in Scripture has not in itself the power to enlighten
and convert men except through the gracious influence of God’s
Spirit. He was supported, after a long delay, in A.D. 1626 by
the University of Rostock, but opposed by Königsberg, Jena,
and Wittenberg. In A.D. 1628, the Elector of Saxony obtained
the opinion of the most famous theologians of his realm against
Rahtmann; but his death, which soon followed, brought the
controversy to a close.--The Württemberg theologian, =John
Valentine Andreä=, grandson of one of the authors of the
Formula of Concord, was a man of striking originality, famous
for his satires on the corruptions of the age. His “Order of
Rosicrucians,” published at Cassel in A.D. 1614, ridiculed the
absurdities of astrology and alchemy in the form of a satirical
romance. His influence on the church of his times was great and
wholesome, so that even Spener exclaimed: “Had I the power to
call any one from the dead for the good of the church, it would
be J. V. Andreä.” His later devotional work was almost completely
forgotten until attention was called to it by Herder.[469]
§ 160.2. =Mysticism and Theosophy.=--A mystico-theosophical
tendency, partly in outward connexion with the church, partly
without and in open opposition to it, was fostered by the
alchemist writings of Agrippa and Paracelsus, the theosophical
works of Weigel (§ 146, 2) and by the profound revelations of
the inspired shoemaker of Görlitz, =Jacob Boehme=, _philosophus
teutonicus_, the most talented of all the theosophists. In a
remarkable degree he combined a genius for speculation with the
most unfeigned piety that held firmly by the old Lutheran faith.
Even when an itinerant tradesman, he felt himself for a period
of seven days in calm repose, surrounded by the divine light. But
he dates his profound theosophical enlightenment from a moment in
A.D. 1594, when as a young journeyman and married, thrown into an
ecstasy, he obtained a knowledge of the divine mysteries down to
the ultimate principles of all things and their inmost quality.
His theosophy, too, like that of the ancient gnostics, springs
out of the question about the origin of evil. He solves it by
assuming an emanation of all things from God, in whom fire and
light, bitter and sweet qualities, are thoroughly tempered and
perfectly combined, while in the creature derived by emanation
from him they are in disharmony, but are reconciled and reduced
to godlike harmony through regeneration in Christ. Though opposed
by Calov, he was befriended by the Dresden consistory. Boehme
died in A.D. 1624, in retirement at Görlitz, in the arms of his
family.[470]--In close connexion with Boehmists, separatists, and
Pietists, yet differing from them all, =Gottfried Arnold= abused
orthodoxy and canonized the heretics of all ages. In A.D. 1700 he
wrote “The Mystery of the Divine Sophia.” When Adam, originally
man and woman, fell, his female nature, the heavenly Sophia,
was taken from him, and in his place a woman of flesh was made
for him out of a rib; in order again to restore the paradisiacal
perfection Christ brought again the male part into a virgin’s
womb, so that the new creature, the regenerate, stands before God
as a “male-virgin;” but carnal love destroys again the connexion
thus secured with the heavenly Sophia. But the very next year he
reached a turning-point in his life. He not only married, but in
consequence accepted several appointments in the Lutheran church,
without, however, signing the Formula of Concord, and applied his
literary skill to the production of devotional tracts.
§ 160.3. =Sacred Song= (§ 142, 3).--The first epoch of the
development of sacred song in this century corresponds to the
period of the Thirty Years’ War, A.D. 1618-1648. The Psalms of
David were the model and pattern of the sacred poets, and the
profoundest songs of the cross and consolation bear the evident
impress of the times, and so individual feeling comes more into
prominence. The influence of Opitz was also felt in the church
song, in the greater attention given to correctness and purity
of language and to the careful construction of verse and rhyme.
Instead of the rugged terseness and vigour of earlier days, we
now find often diffuse and overflowing utterances of the heart.
=John Hermann= of Glogau, who died in A.D. 1647, composed
400 songs, embracing these: “Alas! dear Lord, what evil hast
Thou done?” “O Christ, our true and only Light;” “Ere yet the
dawn hath filled the skies;” “O God, thou faithful God.” =Paul
Flemming=, a physician in Holstein, who died in A.D. 1640, wrote
on his journey to Persia, “Where’er I go, whate’er my task.”
=Matthew Meyffart=, professor and pastor at Erfurt, who died in
A.D. 1642, wrote “Jerusalem, thou city fair and high.” =Martin
Rinkart=, pastor at Eilenburg in Saxony, who died A.D. 1648,
wrote, “Now thank we all our God.” =Appelles von Löwenstern=,
who died A.D. 1648, composed, “When anguished and perplexed,
with many a sigh and tear.” =Joshua Stegmann=, superintendent
in Rinteln, who died A.D. 1632, wrote, “Abide among us with thy
grace.” =Joshua Wegelin=, pastor in Augsburg and Pressburg, wrote,
“Since Christ is gone to heaven, his home.” =Justus Gesenius=,
superintendent in Hanover, who died in A.D. 1673, wrote, “When
sorrow and remorse.” =Tob. Clausnitzer=, pastor in the Palatinate,
who died A.D. 1648, wrote, “Blessed Jesus, at thy word.” The
poets named mostly belong to the first Silesian school gathered
round Opitz. A more independent position, though not uninfluenced
by Opitz, is taken up by =John Rist=, who died in A.D. 1667. He
composed 658 sacred songs, of which many are remarkable for their
vigour, solemnity, and elevation; _e.g._ “Arise, the kingdom is
at hand;” “Sink not yet, my soul, to slumber;” “O living Bread
from heaven;” “Praise and thanks to Thee be sung.” At the head
of the Königsberg school of the same age stood =Simon Dach=,
professor of poetry at Königsberg, who died in A.D. 1659. He
composed 150 spiritual songs, among which the best known are,
“O how blessed, faithful souls, are ye!” “Wouldest thou inherit
life with Christ on high?” The most distinguished members of this
school are: =Henry Alberti=, organist at Königsberg, author of
“God who madest earth and heaven;” and =George Weissel=, pastor
in Königsberg, who died in A.D. 1655, author of “Lift up your
heads, ye mighty gates.”
§ 160.4. From the middle of the seventeenth century sacred song
became more subjective, and so tended to fall into a diversity
of groups. No longer does the church sing through its poets, but
the poets give direct expression to their individual feelings.
Confessional songs are less frequent, and their place is taken
by hymns of edification with reference to various conditions of
life; songs of death, the cross and consolation, and hymns for
the family become more numerous. With objectivity special features
of the church song disappear in the hymns of the period; but some
of its essential characteristics remain, especially the popular
form and contents, the freshness, liveliness, and simplicity of
diction, the truths of personal experience, the fulness of faith,
etc. We distinguish three groups:
1. =The Transition Group=, passing from objectivity to
subjectivity. Its greatest masters, indeed after Luther
the greatest sacred poet of the evangelical church, is
undoubtedly =Paul Gerhardt=, who died A.D. 1676, the
faith witness of the Lutheran faith under the wars and in
persecution (§ 154, 4). In him we find the new subjective
tendency in its noblest form; but there is also present
the old objective style, giving immediate expression to
the consciousness of the church, adhering tenaciously to
the confession, and a grand popular ring that reminds us
of the fulness and power of Luther. His 131 songs, if not
all church songs in the narrower sense, are almost all
genuine poems: _e.g._ “All my heart this night rejoices;”
“Cometh sunshine after rain;” “Go forth, my heart, and
seek delight;” “Be thou content: be still before;” “O world,
behold upon the tree;” “Now all the woods are sleeping;” and
“Ah, wounded head, must thou?” based on Bernard’s _Salve,
caput cruentatum_. To this school also belongs =George
Neumark=, librarian at Weimar, who died in A.D. 1681, author
of “Leave God to order all thy ways.” Also =John Franck=,
burgomaster at Guben in Lusatia, who died A.D. 1677, next
to Gerhardt the greatest poet of his age. His 110 songs are
less popular and hearty, but more melodious than Gerhardt’s;
_e.g._ “Redeemer of the nations, come;” “Ye heavens, oh
haste your dews to shed;” “Deck thyself, my soul, with
gladness.” =George Albinus=, pastor at Naumburg, died
A.D. 1679, wrote: “Not in anger smite us, Lord;” “World,
farewell! Of thee I’m tired.”
2. The =next stage= of the sacred song took the Canticles
instead of the Psalter as its model. The spiritual marriage
of the soul is its main theme. Feeling and fancy are
predominant, and often degenerate into sentimentality and
trifling. It obtained a new impulse from the addition of
a mystical element. =Angelus Silesius= (§ 156, 4) was the
most distinguished representative of this school, and while
Protestant he composed several beautiful songs; _e.g._
“O Love, who formedst me to wear;” “Thou holiest Love, whom
most I love;” “Loving Shepherd, kind and true.” =Christian
Knorr v. Rosenroth=, who died at Sulzbach A.D. 1689, wrote
“Dayspring of eternity.” =Ludämilie Elizabeth=, Countess
of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, who died in A.D. 1672, wrote
215 “Songs of Jesus.” =Caspar Neumann=, professor and pastor
at Breslau, died A.D. 1715, wrote, “Lord, on earth I dwell
in pain.”
3. =Those of Spener’s Time and Spirit=, men who longed for
the regeneration of the church by practical Christianity.
Their hymns are for the most part characterized by healthy
piety and deep godliness. Spener’s own poems are of slight
importance. =J. Jac. Schütz=, Spener’s friend, a lawyer in
Frankfort, who died A.D. 1690, composed only one, but that
a very beautiful hymn: “All praise and thanks to God most
high.” =Samuel Rodigast=, rector in Berlin, died A.D. 1708,
wrote, “Whate’er my God ordains is right.” =Laurentius
Laurentii=, musical director at Bremen, died A.D. 1722,
wrote, “Is my heart athirst to know?” “O thou essential
Word.”--=Gottfried Arnold=, died A.D. 1714, wrote, “Thou
who breakest every chain;” “How blest to all thy followers,
Lord, the road!”-- In Denmark, where previously translations
of German hymns were used, =Thomas Kingo=, from A.D. 1677
Bishop of Fünen, died A.D. 1703, was the much-honoured
founder of Danish national hymnology.[471]--Continuation,
§ 167, 6.
§ 160.5. =Sacred Music= (§ 142, 5).--The church music in the
beginning of the seventeenth century was affected by the Italian
school, just as church song was by the influence of Opitz. The
greatest master during the transition stage was =John Crüger=,
precentor in the church of St. Nicholas in Berlin, died A.D. 1662.
He was to the chorale what Gerhardt was to the church song.
We have seventy-one new melodies of his, admirably adapted to
Gerhardt’s, Hunnius’s, Franck’s, Dach’s, and Rinkart’s songs, and
used in the church till the present time. With the second half
of the century we enter on a new period, in which expression and
musical declamation perish. Choir singing now, to a great extent,
supersedes congregational singing. =Henry Schütz=, organist
to the Elector of Saxony, died A.D. 1672, is the great master
of this Italian sacred concert style. He introduced musical
compositions on passages selected from the Psalms, Canticles, and
prophets, in his “_Symphoniæ Sacræ_” of A.D. 1629. After a short
time a radical reform was made by =John Rosenmüller=, organist
of Wolfenbüttel, died A.D. 1686. A reaction against the exclusive
adoption of the Italian style was made by =Andr. Hammerschmidt=,
organist at Zittau, died A.D. 1675, one of the noblest and most
pious of German musicians. By working up the old church melodies
in the modern style, he brought the old hymns again into favour,
and set hymns of contemporary poets to bright airs suited to
modern standards of taste. The accomplished musician =Rud.
Ahle=, organist and burgomaster at Mühlhausen, died A.D. 1673,
introduced his own beautiful airs into the church music for
Sundays and festivals. His sacred airs are distinguished for
youthful freshness and power, penetrated by a holy earnestness,
and quite free from that secularity and frivolousness which soon
became unpleasantly conspicuous in such music.--Continuation,
§ 167, 7.
§ 160.6. =The Christian Life of the People.=--The rich
development of sacred poetry proves the wonderful fulness and
spirituality of the religious life of this age, notwithstanding
the many chilling separatistic controversies that prevailed
during the terrible upheaval of the Thirty Years’ War. The
abundance of devotional literature of permanent worth witnesses
to the diligence and piety of the Lutheran pastors. Ernest the
Pious of Saxe-Gotha, who died A.D. 1675, stands forth as the
ideal of a Christian prince. For the Christian instruction of his
people he issued, in the midst of the confusion and horrors of
the war, the famous Weimar or Ernestine exposition of the Bible,
upon which John Gerhard wrought diligently, along with other
distinguished Jena theologians. It appeared first in A.D. 1641,
and by A.D. 1768 had gone through fourteen large editions.
A like service was done for South Germany by the “Württemberg
Summaries,” composed by three Württemberg theologians at the
request of Duke Eberhard III., a concise, practical exposition
of all the books of Scripture, which for a century and a half
formed the basis of the weekly services (_Bibelstunden_) at
Württemberg.--Continuation, § 167, 8.
§ 160.7. =Missions.=--In the Lutheran church, missionary
enterprise had rather fallen behind (§ 142, 8). Gustavus Adolphus
of Sweden carried on the Lapp mission with new zeal, and Denmark,
too, gave ready assistance. A Norwegian pastor, Thomas Westen,
deserves special mention as the apostle of the mission. A German,
Peter Heyling of Lübeck, went on his own account as a missionary
to Abyssinia in A.D. 1635, while several of his friends at the
same time went to other eastern lands. Of these others no trace
whatever has been found. An Abyssinian abbot who came to Europe
brought news of Heyling. At first he was hindered by the
machinations of the Jesuits; but when these were expelled, he
found favour at court, became minister to the king, and married
one of the royal family. What finally came of him and his work
is unknown. Toward the end of the century two great men, the
philosopher Leibnitz and the founder of the Halle Orphanage,
A. H. Francke, warmly espoused the cause of foreign missions.
The ambitious and pretentious schemes of the philosopher ended in
nothing, but Francke made his orphanages, training colleges and
centres from which the German Lutheran missions to the heathens
were vigorously organized and successfully wrought.--Continuation,
§ 167, 9.
IV. The Reformed Church.
§ 161. THEOLOGY AND ITS BATTLES.
The Reformed scholars of France vied with those of St. Maur
and the Oratory, and the Reformed theologians of the Netherlands,
England, and Switzerland were not a whit behind. But an attempt made
at a general synod at Dort to unite all the Reformed national churches
under one confession failed. Opposition to Calvin’s extreme theory of
predestination introduced a Pelagianizing current into the Reformed
church, which was by no means confined to professed Arminians. In the
Anglican church this tendency appeared in the forms of latitudinarianism
and deism (§ 164, 3); while in France it took a more moderate course,
and approximated rather to the Lutheran doctrine. It was a reaction of
latent Zwinglianism against the dominant Calvinism. The Voetian school
successfully opposed the introduction of the Cartesian philosophy, and
secured supremacy to a scholasticism which held its own alongside of
that of the Lutherans. In opposition to it, the Cocceian federal school
undertook to produce a purely biblical system of theology in all its
departments.
§ 161.1. =Preliminaries of the Arminian Controversy.=--In the
_Confessio Belgica_ of A.D. 1562 the Protestant Netherlands
had already a strictly Calvinistic symbol, but Calvinism had
not thoroughly permeated the church doctrine and constitution.
There were more opponents than supporters of the doctrine of
predestination, and a Melanchthonian-synergistic (§ 141, 7),
or even an Erasmian-semipelagian, (§ 125, 3) doctrine, of
the freedom of the will and the efficacy of grace, was more
frequently taught and preached than the Augustinian-Calvinistic
doctrine. So also Zwingli’s view of the relation of church
and state was in much greater favour than the Calvinistic
Presbyterial church government with its terrorist discipline.
But the return of the exiles in A.D. 1572, who had adopted
strict Calvinistic views in East Friesland and on the Lower
German Rhine, led to the adoption of a purely Calvinistic creed
and constitution. The keenest opponent of this movement was
Coornhert, notary and secretary for the city of Haarlem, who
combated Calvinism in numerous writings, and depreciated doctrine
generally in the interests of practical living Christianity.
Political as well as religious sympathies were enlisted in
favour of this freer ecclesiastical tendency. The Dutch War
of Independence was a struggle for religious freedom against
Spanish Catholic fanaticism. The young republic therefore
became the first home of religious toleration, which was scarcely
reconcilable with a strict and exclusive Calvinism.--Meanwhile
within the Calvinistic church a controversy arose, which divided
its adherents in the Netherlands into two parties. In opposition
to the strict Calvinists, who as supralapsarians held that the
fall itself was included in the eternal counsels of God, there
arose the milder infralapsarians, who made predestination come
in after the fall, which was not predestinated but only foreseen
by God.
§ 161.2. =The Arminian Controversy.=--In A.D. 1588, James
Arminius (born A.D. 1560), a pupil of Beza, but a declared
adherent of the Ramist philosophy (§ 143, 6), was appointed
pastor in Amsterdam, and ordered by the magistrates to controvert
Coornhert’s universalism and the infralapsarianism of the
ministers of Delft. He therefore studied Coornhert’s writings,
and by them was shaken in his earlier beliefs. This was shown
first in certain sermons on passages from Romans, which made him
suspected of Pelagianism. In A.D. 1603 he was made theological
professor of Leyden, where he found a bitter opponent in his
supralapsarian colleague, Francis Gomarus. From the class-rooms
the controversy spread to the pulpits, and even into domestic
circles. A public disputation in A.D. 1608, led to no pacific
result, and Arminius continued involved in controversies
till his death in A.D. 1609. Although decidedly inclined
toward universalism, he had directed his polemic mainly against
supralapsarianism, as making God himself the author of sin.
But his followers went beyond these limits. When denounced by
the Gomarists as Pelagians, they addressed to the provincial
parliament of Holland and West Friesland, in A.D. 1610, a
remonstrance, which in five articles repudiates supralapsarianism
and infralapsarianism, and the doctrines of the irresistibility
of grace, and of the impossibility of the elect finally
falling away from it, and boldly asserts the universality of
grace. They were hence called Remonstrants and their opponents
Contraremonstrants. Parliament, favourably inclined toward
the Arminians, pronounced the difference non-fundamental,
and enjoined peace. When Vorstius, who was practically a
Socinian, was appointed successor to Arminius, Gomarus charged
the Remonstrants with Socinianism. Their ablest theological
representative was Simon Episcopius, who succeeded Gomarus at
Leyden in A.D. 1612, supported by the distinguished statesman,
Oldenbarneveldt, and the great jurist, humanist, and theologian,
Hugo Grotius of Rotterdam. Maurice of Orange, too, for a long
time sided with them, but in A.D. 1617 formally went over to
the other party, whose well-knit unity, strict discipline, and
rigorous energy commended them to him as the fittest associates
in his struggle for absolute monarchy. The republican-Arminian
party was conquered, Oldenbarneveldt being executed in 1619,
Grotius escaping by his wife’s strategem. =The Synod of Dort=
was convened for the purpose of settling doctrinal disputes.
It held 154 sessions, from Nov. 13th, 1618, to May 9th, 1619.
Invitations were accepted by twenty-eight theologians from
England, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. Brandenburg took
no part in it (§ 154, 3), and French theologians were refused
permission to go. Episcopius presented a clear and comprehensive
apology for the Remonstrants, and bravely defended their cause
before the synod. Refusing to submit to the decisions of the
synod, they were at the fifty-seventh session expelled, and then
excommunicated and deprived of all ecclesiastical offices. The
Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession were unanimously
adopted as the creed and manual of orthodox teaching. In the
discussion of the five controverted points, the opposition
of the Anglican and German delegates prevented any open and
manifest insertion of supralapsarian theses, so that the synodal
canons set forth only an essentially infralapsarian theory of
predestination.--Remonstrant teachers were now expelled from
most of the states of the union. Only after Maurice’s death
in A.D. 1625 did they venture to return, and in A.D. 1630 they
were allowed by statute to erect churches and schools in all the
states. A theological seminary at Amsterdam, presided over by
Episcopius till his death, in A.D. 1643, rose to be a famous
seat of learning and nursery of liberal studies. The number of
congregations, however, remained small, and their importance
in church history consists rather in the development of an
independent church life than in the revival of a semipelagian
and rationalistic type of doctrine.[472]
§ 161.3. =Consequences of the Arminian Controversy.=--The Dort
decrees were not accepted in Brandenburg, Hesse, and Bremen,
where a moderate Calvinism continued to prevail. In England
and Scotland the Presbyterians enthusiastically approved of the
decrees, whereas the Episcopalians repudiated them, and, rushing
to the other extreme of latitudinarianism, often showed lukewarm
indifferentism in the way in which they distinguished articles
of faith as essential and non-essential. The worthiest of the
latitudinarians of this age was Chillingworth, who sought an
escape from the contentions of theologians in the Catholic church,
but soon returned to Protestantism, seeking and finding peace in
God’s word alone. Archbishop Tillotson was a famous pulpit orator,
and Gilbert Burnet, who died A.D. 1715, was author of a “History
of the English Reformation.” In the French Reformed church, where
generally strict Calvinism prevailed, =Amyrault= of Saumur, who
died A.D. 1664, taught a _universalismus hypotheticus_, according
to which God by a _decretum universale et hypotheticum_ destined
all men to salvation through Jesus Christ, even the heathen, on
the ground of a _fides implicita_. The only condition is that
they believe, and for this all the means are afforded in _gratia
resistibilis_, while by a _decretum absolutum et speciale_
only to elect persons is granted the _gratia irresistibilis_.
The synods of Alençon, A.D. 1637, and Charenton, A.D. 1644,
supported by Blondel, Daillé, and Claude, declared these doctrines
allowable; but Du Moulin of Sedan, Rivetus and Spanheim of Leyden,
Maresius of Groningen [Gröningen], and others, offered violent
opposition. Amyrault’s colleague, =De la Place=, or _Placæus_,
who died A.D. 1655, went still further, repudiating the
unconditional imputation of Adam’s sin, and representing original
sin simply as an evil which becomes guilt only as our own actual
transgression. The synods just named condemned this doctrine.
Somewhat later Claude =Pajon= of Saumur, who died A.D. 1685,
roused a bitter discussion about the universality of grace,
by maintaining that in conversion divine providence wrought
only through the circumstances of the life, and the Holy
Spirit through the word of God. Several French synods condemned
this doctrine, and affirmed an immediate as well as a mediate
operation of the Spirit and providence.--Genuine Calvinism was
best represented in Switzerland, as finally expressed in the
=Formula Consensus= _Helvetica_ of Heidegger of Zürich, adopted
in A.D. 1675 by most of the cantons. It was, like the _Formula
Concordiæ_, a manual of doctrine rather than a confession. In
opposition to Amyrault and De la Place, it set forth a strict
theory of predestination and original sin, and maintained with
the Buxtorfs, against Cappellus of Saumur, the inspiration of
the Hebrew vowel points.
§ 161.4. =The Cocceian and Cartesian Controversies.=--If not
the founder, certainly the most distinguished representative in
the Netherlands of that scholasticism which sought to expound
and defend orthodoxy, was =Voetius=, who died A.D. 1676,
from A.D. 1607 pastor in various places, and from A.D. 1634
professor at Utrecht. A completely different course was pursued
by =Cocceius= of Bremen, who died A.D. 1669, professor at
Franeker in A.D. 1636, and at Leyden in A.D. 1650. The famous
Zürich theologian, Bullinger (§ 138, 7), had in his “_Compend.
Rel. Chr._” of A.D. 1556, viewed the whole doctrine of saving
truth from the point of view of a covenant of grace between God
and man; and this idea was afterwards carried out by Olevianus
of Heidelberg (§ 144, 1) in his “_De Substantia Fœderis_,” of
A.D. 1585. This became the favourite method of distribution
of doctrine in the whole German Reformed church. In the Dutch
church it was regarded as quite unobjectionable. In England it
was adopted in the Westminster Confession of A.D. 1648 (§ 155, 1),
and in Switzerland in A.D. 1675, in the _Formula Consensus_.
Cocceius is therefore not the founder of the federal theology.
He simply gave it a new and independent development, and freed
it from the trammels of scholastic dogmatics. He distinguished
a twofold covenant of God with man: the _fœdus operum s. naturæ_
before, and the _fœdus gratiæ_ after the fall. He then subdivided
the covenant of grace into three economies: before the law
until Moses; under the law until Christ; and after the law in
the Christian church. The history of the kingdom of God in the
Christian era was arranged in seven periods, corresponding to the
seven apocalyptic epistles, trumpets, and seals. In his treatment
of his theme, he repudiated philosophy, scholasticism, and
tradition, and held simply by Scripture. He is thus the founder
of a purely biblical theology. He attached himself as closely as
possible to the prevailing predestinationist orthodoxy, but only
externally. In his view the sacred history in its various epochs
adjusted itself to the needs of human personality, and to the
growing capacity for appropriating it. Hence it was not the idea
of election, but that of grace, that prevailed in his system.
Christ is the centre of all history, spiritual, ecclesiastical,
and civil; and so everything in Scripture, history, doctrine, and
prophecy, necessarily and immediately stands related to him. The
O.T. prophecies and types point to the Christ that was to come
in the flesh, and all history after Christ points to his second
coming; and O. and N.T. give an outline of ecclesiastical and
civil history down to the end of time. Thus typology formed the
basis of the Cocceian theology. In exegesis, however, Cocceius
avoided all arbitrary allegorizing. It was with him an axiom in
hermeneutics, _Id significan verba, quod significare possunt in
integra oratione, sic ut omnino inter se conveniant_. Yet his
typology led him, and still more many of his adherents, into
fantastic exegetical errors in the prophetic treatment of the
seven apocalyptic periods.
§ 161.5. A controversy, occasioned by Cocceius’ statement, in his
commentary on Hebrews in A.D. 1658, that the Sabbath, as enjoined
by the O.T. ceremonial law, was no longer binding, was stopped
in A.D. 1659 by a State prohibition. Voetius had not taken
part in it. But when Cocceius, in A.D. 1665, taught from Romans
iii. 25, that believers under the law had not full “ἄφεσις,”
only a “πάρεσις,” he felt obliged to enter the lists against this
“Socinian” heresy. The controversy soon spread to other doctrines
of Cocceius and his followers, and soon the whole populace seemed
divided into Voetians and Cocceians (§ 162, 5). The one hurled
offensive epithets at the other. The Orange political party
sought and obtained the favour of the Voetians, as before they
had that of the Gomarists; while the liberal republican party
coalesced with the Cocceians. Philosophical questions next
came to be mixed up in the discussion. The philosophy of the
French Catholic =Descartes= (§ 164, 1), settled in A.D. 1629 in
Amsterdam, had gained ground in the Netherlands. It had indeed
no connexion with Christianity or church, and its theological
friends wished only to have it recognised as a formal branch of
study. But its fundamental principle, that all true knowledge
starts from doubt, appeared to the representatives of orthodoxy
as threatening the church with serious danger. Even in A.D. 1643
Voetius opposed it, and mainly in consequence of his polemic,
the States General, in A.D. 1656, forbad it being taught in the
universities. Their common opposition to scholasticism, however,
brought Cocceians and Cartesians more closely to one another.
Theology now became influenced by Cartesianism. Roëll, professor
at Franeker and Utrecht, who died A.D. 1718, taught that the
divinity of the Scriptures must be proved to the reason, since
the _testimonium Spir. s. internum_ is limited to those who
already believe, rejected the doctrine of the imputation
of original sin, the doctrine that death is for believers
the punishment of sin, and the application of the idea of
eternal “generation” to the Logos, to whom the predicate of
sonship belongs only in regard to the decree of redemption
and incarnation. Another zealous Cartesian, Balth. Bekker, not
only repudiated the superstitions of the age about witchcraft
(§ 117, 4), but also denied the existence of the devil and demons.
The Cocceians were in no way responsible for such extravagances,
but their opponents sought to make them chargeable for these. The
stadtholder, William III., at last issued an order, in A.D. 1694,
which checked for a time the violence of the strife.
§ 161.6. =Theological Literature.=--Biblical oriental philology
flourished in the Reformed church of this age. =Drusius= of
Franeker, who died A.D. 1616, was the greatest Old Testament
exegete of his day. The two =Buxtorfs= of Basel, the father
died A.D. 1629, the son A.D. 1664, the greatest Christian
rabbinical scholars, wrote Hebrew and Chaldee grammars,
lexicons, and concordances, and maintained the antiquity and
even inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points against Cappellus
of Saumur. =Hottinger= of Zürich, who died A.D. 1667, vied with
both in his knowledge of oriental literature and languages, and
wrote extensively on biblical philology, and besides found time
to write a comprehensive and learned church history. =Cocceius=,
too, occupies a respectable place among Hebrew lexicographers.
In England, both before and after the Restoration, scholarship
was found, not among the controversial Puritans, but among the
Episcopal clergy. =Brian Walton=, who died A.D. 1661, aided by
the English scholars, issued an edition of the “London Polyglott”
in six vols., in A.D. 1657, which, in completeness of material
and apparatus, as well as in careful textual criticism, leaves
earlier editions far behind. =Edm. Castellus= of Cambridge in
A.D. 1669 published his celebrated “_Lexicon Heptaglottum_.” The
Elzevir printing-house at Amsterdam and Leyden, boldly assuming
the prerogatives of the whole body of theological scholars,
issued a _textus receptus_ of the N.T. in A.D. 1624. The best
established exegetical results of earlier times were collected
by Pearson in his great compendium, the “_Critici Sacri_,” nine
vols. fol., London, 1660; and Matthew Pool in his “_Synopsis
Criticorum_,” five vols. fol., London, 1669. Among the exegetes
of this time the brothers, J. Cappellus of Sedan, who died
A.D. 1624, and Louis Cappellus II. of Saumur, who died A.D. 1658,
were distinguished for their linguistic knowledge and liberal
criticism. =Pococke= of Oxford and =Lightfoot= of Cambridge were
specially eminent orientalists. =Cocceius= wrote commentaries
on almost all the books of Scripture, and his scholar =Vitringa=
of Franeker, who died A.D. 1716, gained great reputation by his
expositions of Isaiah and the Apocalypse. Among the Arminians the
famous statesman =Grotius=, who died A.D. 1645, was the greatest
master of grammatico-historical exposition in the century, and
illustrated Scripture from classical literature and philology.
The Reformed church too gave brilliant contributions to biblical
archæology and history. =John Selden= wrote “_De Syndriis Vett.
Heb._,” “_De diis Syris_,” etc. =Goodwin= wrote “Moses and Aaron.”
=Ussher= wrote “_Annales V. et N.T._” =Spencer= wrote “_De
Legibus Heb._” The Frenchman =Bochart=, in his “_Hierozoicon_”
and “_Phaleg_,” made admirable contributions to the natural
history and geography of the Bible.
§ 161.7. Dogmatic theology was cultivated mainly in the
Netherlands. =Maccovius=, a Pole, who died A.D. 1644, a
professor at Franeker, introduced the scholastic method into
Reformed dogmatics. The Synod of Dort cleared him of the charge
of heresy made against him by Amesius, but condemned his method.
Yet it soon came into very general use. Its chief representatives
were Maresius of Groningen [Gröningen], Voetius and Mastricht
of Utrecht, Hoornbeck [Hoornbeeck] of Leyden, and the German
Wendelin, rector of Zerbst. Among the Cocceians the most
distinguished were Heidanus of Leyden, Alting of Groningen
[Gröningen], and, above all, Hermann Witsius of Franeker, whose
“Economy of the Covenants” is written in a conciliatory spirit.
The most distinguished Arminian dogmatist after Episcopius
was =Phil. Limborch= of Amsterdam, who died A.D. 1712, in
high repute also as an apologist, exegete, and historian. The
greatest dogmatist of the Anglican church was =Pearson=, who died
A.D. 1686, author of “An Exposition of the Creed.” The Frenchman
=Peyrerius= obtained great notoriety from his statement, founded
on Romans v. 12, that Adam was merely the ancestor of the Jews
(Gen. ii. 7), while the Gentiles were of pre-Adamite origin
(Gen. i. 26), and also by maintaining that the flood had been only
partial. He gained release from prison by joining the Catholic
church and recanted, but still held by his earlier views.--Ethics,
consisting hitherto of little more than an exposition of the
decalogue, was raised by =Amyrault= into an independent science.
Amesius dealt with cases of conscience. =Grotius=, in his “_De
Veritate Relig. Chr._” and =Abbadie=, French pastor at Berlin,
and afterwards in London, who died A.D. 1727, in his “_Vérité de
la Rel. Chrét._,” distinguished themselves as apologists. =Claude=
and =Jurieu= gained high reputation as controversialists against
Catholicism and its persecution of the Huguenots.--The Reformed
church also in the interests of polemics pursued historical
studies. Hottinger of Zürich, Spanheim of Leyden, Sam. Basnage
of Zütpfen, and Jac. Basnage of the Hague, produced general
church histories. Among the numerous historical monographs the
most important are =Hospinian’s= “_De Templis_,” “_De Monachis_,”
“_De Festis_,” “_Hist. Sacramentaria_,” “_Historia Jesuitica_;”
=Blondel’s= “_Ps.-Isidorus_,” “_De la Primauté de l’Egl._,”
“_Question si une Femme a été Assisse au Siège Papal_” (§ 82, 6),
“_Apologia sent. Hieron. de Presbyt._” Also =Daillé= of Saumur
on the non-genuineness of the “Apostolic Constitutions” and the
Ps.-Dionysian writings, and his “_De Usu Patrum_” in opposition
to Cave’s Catholicizing over-estimation of the Fathers. We have
also the English scholar =Ussher=, who died A.D. 1656, “_Brit.
Ecclesiarum Antiquitates_;” H. Dodwell, who died A.D. 1711,
“_Diss. Cyprianicæ_,” etc.; Wm. Cave, who died A.D. 1713, “Hist.
of App. and Fathers,” “_Scriptorum Ecclst. Hist. Literaria_,”
etc.--Special mention should be made of =Eisenmenger=, professor
of oriental languages at Heidelberg. In his “_Entdecktes
Judenthum_,” two vols. quarto, moved by the over-bearing
arrogance of the Jews of his day, he made an immense collection
of absurdities and blasphemies of rabbinical theology from Jewish
writings. At his own expense he printed 2,000 copies; for these
the Jews offered him 12,000 florins, but he demanded 30,000.
They now persuaded the court at Venice to confiscate them before
a single copy was sold. Eisenmenger died in A.D. 1704, and his
heirs vainly sought to have the copies of his work given up to
them. Even the appeal of Frederick I. of Prussia was refused.
Only when the king had resolved, in A.D. 1711, at his own expense
to publish an edition from one copy that had escaped confiscation,
was the Frankfort edition at last given back.
§ 161.8. =The Apocrypha Controversy= (§ 136, 4).--In A.D. 1520
Carlstadt raised the question of the books found only in the
LXX., and answered it in the style of Jerome (§ 59, 1). Luther
gave them in his translation as an appendix to the O.T. with the
title “Apocrypha, _i.e._ Books, not indeed of Holy Scripture,
but useful and worthy to be read.” Reformed confessions took
up the same position. The Belgic Confession agreed indeed that
these books should be read in church, and proof passages taken
from them, in so far as they were in accord with the canonical
Scriptures. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer gives readings
from these books. On the other hand, although at the Synod of
Dort the proposal to remove at least the apocryphal books of Ezra
or Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Bel and the Dragon, was indeed rejected,
it was ordered that in future all apocryphal books should be
printed in smaller type than the canonical books, should be
separately paged, with a special title, and with a preface and
marginal notes where necessary. Their exclusion from all editions
of the Bible was first insisted on by English and Scotch Puritans.
This example was followed by the French, but not by the German,
Swiss, and Dutch Reformed churches.--Continuation, § 182, 4.
§ 162. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.[473]
The religious life in the Reformed church is characterized generally
by harsh legalism, rigorous renunciation of the world, and a thorough
earnestness, coupled with decision and energy of will, which nothing in
the world can break or bend. It is the spirit of Calvin which impresses
on it this character, and determines its doctrine. Only where Calvin’s
influence was less potent, _e.g._ in the Lutheranized German Reformed,
the catholicized Anglican Episcopal Church, and among the Cocceians,
is this tendency less apparent or altogether wanting. On the other
hand, often carried to the utmost extreme, it appears among the English
Puritans (§§ 143, 3; 155, 1) and the French Huguenots (§ 153, 4), where
it was fostered by persecution and oppression.
§ 162.1. =England and Scotland.=--During the period of the
English Revolution (§ 155, 1, 2), after the overthrow of
Episcopacy, Puritanism became dominant; and the incongruous
and contradictory elements already existing within it assumed
exaggerated proportions (§ 143, 3, 4), until at last the opposing
parties broke out into violent contentions with one another.
The ideal of Scottish and English =Presbyterianism= was the
setting up of the kingdom of Christ as a theocracy, in which
church and state were blended after the O.T. pattern. Hence
all the institutions of church and state were to be founded on
Scripture models, while all later developments were set aside
as deteriorations from that standard. The ecclesiastical side of
this ideal was to be realized by the establishment of a spiritual
aristocracy represented in presbyteries and synods, which,
ruling the presbyteries through the synods, and the congregations
through the presbyteries, regarded itself as called and under
obligation to inspect and supervise all the details of the
private as well as public life of church members, and all this
too by Divine right. Regarding their system as alone having
divine institution, Presbyterians could not recognise any other
religious or ecclesiastical party, and must demand uniformity,
not only in regard to doctrine and creed, but also in regard to
constitution, discipline, and worship.[474]--On the other hand,
=Independent Congregationalism=, inasmuch as it made prominent
the N.T. ideas of the priesthood of all believers and spiritual
freedom, demanded unlimited liberty to each separate congregation,
and unconditional equality for all individual church members.
It thus rejected the theocratic ideal of Presbyterianism, strove
after a purely democratic constitution, and recognised toleration
of all religious views as a fundamental principle of Christianity.
Every attempt to secure uniformity and stability of forms
of worship was regarded as a repressing of the Spirit of God
operating in the church, and so alongside of the public services
private conventicles abounded, in which believers sought to
promote mutual edification. But soon amid the upheavals of this
agitated period a fanatical spirit spread among the various sects
of the Independents. The persecutions under Elizabeth and the
Stuarts had awakened a longing for the return of the Lord, and
the irresistible advance of Cromwell’s army, composed mostly
of Independents, made it appear as if the millennium was close
at hand. Thus chiliasm came to be a fundamental principle of
Independency, and soon too prophecy made its appearance to
interpret and prepare the way for that which was coming. From the
_Believers_ of the old Dutch times we now come to the =Saints= of
the early Cromwell period. These regarded themselves as called,
in consequence of their being inspired by God’s Spirit, to form
the “kingdom of the saints” on earth promised in the last days,
and hence also, from Daniel ii. and vii., they were called Fifth
Monarchy Men. The so called Short Parliament of A.D. 1653, in
which these Saints were in a majority, had already laid the
first stones of this structure by introducing civil marriage,
with the strict enforcement, however, of Matthew v. 32, as well
as by the abolition of all rights of patronage and all sorts
of ecclesiastical taxes, when Cromwell dissolved it. The Saints
had not and would not have any fixed, formulated theological
system. They had, however, a most lively interest in doctrine,
and produced a great diversity of Scripture expositions and
dogmatic views, so that their deadly foes, the Presbyterians,
could hurl against them old and new heretical designations
by the hundred. The fundamental doctrine of predestination,
common to all Puritans, was, even with them, for the most part,
a presupposition of all theological speculation.
§ 162.2. At the same time with the _Saints_ there appeared
among the Independents the =Levellers=, political and social
revolutionists, rather than an ecclesiastical and religious sect.
They were unjustly charged with claiming an equal distribution of
goods. Over against the absolutist theories of the Stuarts, all
the Independents maintained that the king, like all other civil
magistrates, is answerable at all times and in all circumstances
to the people, to whom all sovereignty originally and inalienably
belongs. This principle was taken by the Levellers as the
starting-point of their reforms. As their first regulative
principle in reconstructing the commonwealth and determining the
position of the church therein they did not take the theocratic
constitution of the O.T., as the Presbyterians did, nor the
biblical revelation of the N.T., as the moderate Independents
did, nor even the modern professed prophecy of the “Saints,” but
the law of nature as the basis of all revelation, and already
grounded in creation, with the sovereignty of the people as
its ultimate foundation. While the rest of the Independents
held by the idea of a Christian state, and only claimed that
all Christian denominations, with the exception of the Catholics
(§ 153, 6), should enjoy all political rights, the Levellers
demanded complete separation of church and state. This therefore
implied, on the one hand, the non-religiousness of the state,
and, on the other, again with the exception of Catholics, the
absolute freedom, independence, and equality of all religious
parties, even non-Christian sects and atheists. Yet all the
while the Levellers themselves were earnestly and warmly attached
to Christian truth as held by the other Independents.--Roger
Williams (§ 163, 3), a Baptist minister, in A.D. 1631
transplanted the first seeds of Levellerism from England to North
America, and by his writings helped again to spread those views
in England. When he returned home in A.D. 1651 he found the sect
already flourishing. The ablest leader of the English Levellers
was John Lilburn. In A.D. 1638, when scarcely twenty years old,
he was flogged and sentenced to imprisonment for life, because he
had printed Puritan writings in Holland and had them circulated
in England. Released on the outbreak of the Revolution, he joined
the Parliamentary army, was taken prisoner by the Royalists
and sentenced to death, but escaped by flight. He was again
imprisoned for writing libels on the House of Lords. Set free
by the Rump Parliament, he became colonel in Cromwell’s army,
but was banished the country when it was found that the spread
of radicalism endangered discipline. Till the dissolution of the
Short Parliament his followers were in thorough sympathy with
the Saints. Afterwards their ways went more and more apart; the
Saints drifted into Quakerism (§ 163, 4), while the Levellers
degenerated into deism (§ 164, 3).
§ 162.3. Out of the religious commotion prevailing in England
before, during, and after the Revolution there sprang up a
voluminous =devotional literature=, intended to give guidance
and directions for holy living. Its influence was felt in foreign
lands, especially in the Reformed churches of the continent, and
even German Lutheran Pietism was not unaffected by it (§ 159, 3).
That this movement was not confined to the Puritans, among
whom it had its origin, is seen from the fact that during the
seventeenth century many such treatises were issued from the
University Press of Cambridge. =Lewis Bayly=, Bishop of Bangor
A.D. 1616-1632, wrote one of the most popular books of this
kind, “The Practice of Piety,” which was in A.D. 1635 in its
thirty-second and in A.D. 1741 in its fifty-first edition, and
was also widely circulated in Dutch, French, German, Hungarian,
and Polish translations.--Out of the vast number of important
personages of the Revolution period we name the following three:
1. In =John Milton=, the highly gifted poet as well as eloquent
and powerful politician, born A.D. 1608, died A.D. 1674, we
find, on the basis of a liberal classical training received
in youth, all the motive powers of Independency, from the
original Puritan zeal for the faith and Reformation to
the politico-social radicalism of the Levellers, combined
in full and vigorous operation. From Italy, the beloved
land of classical science and artistic culture, he was
called back to England in A.D. 1640 at the first outburst
of freedom-loving enthusiasm (§ 155, 1), and made the
thunder of his controversial treatises ring over the
battlefield of parties. He fought against the narrowness
of Presbyterian control of conscience not less energetically
than against the hierarchism of the Episcopal church;
vindicates the permissibility of divorce (in view, no
doubt, of his own first unhappy marriage); advanced in his
“_Areopagitica_” of A.D. 1644 a plea for the unrestricted
liberty of the press; pulverized in his “_Iconoclastes_”
of A.D. 1649 the Εἰκὼν βασιλική, ascribed to Charles I.;
in several tracts, “_Defensio pro Populo Anglicano_,” etc.,
justified the execution of the king against Salmasius’s
“_Defensio Regia pro Carolo I._;” and, even after he
had in A.D. 1652 become incurably blind, he continued
unweariedly his polemics till silenced by the Restoration.
The “_Iconoclastes_” and “_Defensio_” were burned by the
hangman, but he himself was left unmolested. He now devoted
himself to poetry. “Paradise Lost” appeared in A.D. 1665,
and “Paradise Regained” in A.D. 1671. To this period,
when he had probably turned his back on all existing
religious parties, belongs the composition of his “_De
doctrina Christiana_,” a first attempt at a purely biblical
theology, Arian in its Christology and Arminian in its
soteriology.[475]
2. =Richard Baxter=, born A.D. 1615, died A.D. 1691, was quite
a different sort of man, and showed throughout a decidedly
ironical tendency. At once attracted and repelled by the
Independent movement in Cromwell’s army, he joined the force
in A.D. 1645 as military chaplain, hoping to moderate, if
not to check, their extravagances. A severe illness obliged
him to withdraw in A.D. 1647. After his recovery he returned
to his former post as assistant-minister at Kidderminster
in Worcestershire, and there remained till driven out by the
Act of Uniformity of A.D. 1662 (§ 155, 3). Those fourteen
years formed the period of his most successful labours. He
then composed most of his numerous devotional works, three
of which, “The Saint’s Everlasting Rest,” “The Reformed
Pastor,” “A Call to the Unconverted,” are still widely read
in the original and in translations. At first he hoped much
from the Restoration; but when, on conscientious grounds,
he refused a bishopric, he met only with persecution,
ill treatment, and imprisonment. Through William’s Act
of Toleration of A.D. 1689, he was allowed to pass the
last year of his life in London. On the doctrine of
predestination he took the moderate position of Amyrault
(§ 161, 3). His ideal church constitution was a blending
of Presbyterianism and Episcopacy, by restoring the original
episcopal constitution of the second century, when even the
smaller churches had each its own bishop with a presbytery
by his side.[476]
3. =John Bunyan=, born A.D. 1628, died A.D. 1688, was in his
youth a tinker or brazier, and as such seems to have led
a rough, wild life. On the outbreak of the Civil War in
A.D. 1642, he was drafted into the Parliamentary army.[477]
At the close of the war he married a poor girl from a
Puritan family, whose only marriage portion consisted in
two Puritan books of devotion. It was now that the birthday
of a new spiritual life began to dawn in him. He joined
the Baptist Independents, the most zealous of the Saints of
that time, was baptized by them in A.D. 1655, and travelled
the country as a preacher, attracting thousands around
him everywhere by his glorious eloquence. In A.D. 1660
he was thrown into prison, from which he was released by
the Indulgence of A.D. 1672 (§ 155, 3). He now settled in
Bedford, and from this time till his death, amid persecution
and oppression, continued his itinerant preaching with
ever-increasing zeal and success. “The Pilgrim’s Progress”
was written by him in prison. It is an allegory of the
freshest and most lively form, worthy to rank alongside
the “Imitation of Christ” (§ 114, 7). In it the fanatical
endeavour of the Saints to rear a millennial kingdom
on earth is transfigured into a struggle overcoming all
hindrances to secure an entrance into the heavenly Zion
above. It has passed through numberless editions, and has
been translated into almost all known languages.[478]
§ 162.4. =The Netherlands.=--From England the Reformed Pietism
was transplanted to the Netherlands, where =William Teellinck=
may be regarded as its founder. After finishing his legal studies
he resided for a while in England, where he made the acquaintance
of the Puritans and their writings, and was deeply impressed with
their earnest and pious family life. He then went to Leyden to
study theology, and in A.D. 1606 began a ministry that soon bore
fruit. He was specially blessed at Middelburg in Zealand, where
he died A.D. 1629. His writings, larger and smaller, more than a
hundred in number, in which a peculiar sweetness of mystical love
for the Redeemer is combined with stern Calvinistic views, after
the style of St. Bernard, were circulated widely in numerous
editions, eagerly read in many lands, and for fully a century
exerted a powerful influence throughout the whole Reformed church.
Teellinck in no particular departed from the prevailing orthodoxy,
but unwittingly toned down its harshness in his tracts, and
with the gentleness characteristic of him counselled brotherly
forbearance amid the bitterness of the Arminian controversy. In
spite of much hostility, which his best efforts could not prevent,
many university theologians stood by his side as warm admirers
of his writings. It will not be wondered at that among these was
the pious Amesius of Franeker (§ 161, 7), the scholar of the able
Perkins (§ 143, 5); but it is more surprising to find here the
powerful champion of scholastic orthodoxy, Voetius of Utrecht,
and his vigorous partisan, Hoornbeeck of Leyden. =Voetius=
especially, who even in his preacademic career as a pastor had
pursued a peculiarly exemplary and godly life, styled Teellinck
the Reformed Thomas à Kempis, and owned his deep indebtedness to
his devout writings. He opened his academic course in A.D. 1634
with an introductory discourse, “_De Pietate cum Scientia
conjungenda_,” and year after year gave lectures on ascetical
theology, out of which grew his treatise published in A.D. 1664,
“_Τὰ Ἀσκητικὰ s. Exercita Pietatis in usum Juventutis Acad._,”
which is a complete exposition of evangelical practical divinity
in a thoroughly scholastic form.
§ 162.5. During the controversy in the Dutch Reformed Church
between =Voetians and Cocceians=, beginning in A.D. 1658, the
former favoured the pietistic movement. In the German Pietist
controversy the Cocceians were with the Pietists in their
biblical orthodoxy joined with confessional indifferentism, but
with the orthodox in their liberality and breadth on matters of
life and conduct. The earnest, practical piety of the Voetians,
again, made them sympathise with the Lutheran Pietists, and their
zeal for pure doctrine and the Church confession brought them
into relation with the orthodox Lutherans. As discord between
the theologians arose over the obligation of the Sabbath law,
so the difference among the people arose out of the question of
Sabbath observance. The Voetians maintained that the decalogue
prohibition of any form of work on Sabbath was still fully
binding, while the Cocceians, on the ground of Mark ii. 27,
Galatians iv. 9, Colossians ii. 16, etc., denied its continued
obligation, their wives often, to the annoyance of the Voetians,
sitting in the windows after Divine service with their knitting
or sewing. But the opposition did not stop there; it spread
into all departments of life. The Voetians set great value upon
fasting and private meditation, avoided all public games and
plays, dressed plainly, and observed a simple, pious mode of
life; their pastors wore a clerical costume, etc. The Cocceians,
again, fell in with the customs of the time, mingled freely in
the mirth and pastimes of the people, went to public festivals
and entertainments, their women dressed in elegant, stylish
attire, their pastors were not bound by hard and fast symbols,
but had full Scripture freedom, etc.--Continuation, § 169, 2.
§ 162.6. =France, Germany, and Switzerland.=--The Reformed church
of =France= has gained imperishable renown as a martyr-church.
Fanatical excesses, however, appeared among the prophets of the
Cevennes (§ 153, 4), the fruits of which continued down into
the eighteenth century, and appeared now and again in England,
Holland, and Germany (§ 160, 2, 7).--In =Germany= the Reformed
church, standing side by side with the numerically far larger
Lutheran church, had much of the sternness and severity that
characterized the Romanic-Calvinistic party in doctrine, worship,
and life greatly modified; but where the Reformed element was
predominant, as in the Lower Rhine, it was correspondingly
affected by a contrary influence. The Reformed church in
Germany in its service of praise kept to the psalms of Marot and
Lobwasser (§ 143, 2). Maurice of Hesse published Lobwasser’s in
A.D. 1612, accompanied by some new bright melodies, for the use
of the churches in the land. Lutheran hymns, however, gradually
found their way into the Reformed church, which also produced two
gifted poets of its own. =Louisa Henrietta=, Princess of Orange,
wife of the great elector, and Paul Gerhardt’s sovereign, wrote
“Jesus my Redeemer lives;” and =Joachim Neander=, pastor in
Bremen, wrote, “Thou most Highest! Guardian of mankind,” “To
heaven and earth and sea and air,” “Here behold me, as I cast
me.”--In German =Switzerland= the noble =Breitinger= of Zürich,
who died A.D. 1645, the greatest successor of Zwingli and
Bullinger, wrought successfully during a forty years’ ministry,
and did much to revive and quicken the church life. That the
spirit of Calvin and Beza still breathed in the church of Geneva
is proved by the reception given there to such men as Andreä
(§ 160, 1), Labadie (§ 163, 7), and Spener (§ 159, 3).
§ 162.7. =Foreign Missions.=--From two sides the Reformed
church had outlets for its Christian love in the work of foreign
missions; on the one side by the cession of the Portuguese
East Indian colonies to the Netherlands in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and on the other side by the continuous
formation of English colonies in North America throughout
the whole century. In regard to missionary effort, the
Dutch government followed in the footsteps of her Portuguese
predecessors. She insisted that all natives, before getting
a situation, should be baptized and have signed the Belgic
Confession, and many who fulfilled these conditions remained as
they had been before. But the English Puritans settled in America
showed a zeal for the conversion of the Indians more worthy
of the Protestant name. John Eliot, who is rightly styled the
apostle of the Indians, devoted himself with unwearied and
self-denying love for half a century to this task. He translated
the Bible into their language, and founded seventeen Indian
stations, of which during his lifetime ten were destroyed in
a bloody war. Eliot’s work was taken up by the Mayhew family,
who for five generations wrought among the Indians. The last
of the noble band, Zacharias Mayhew, died on the mission field
in A.D. 1803, in his 87th year.[479]--Continuation, § 172, 5.
V. Anti- and Extra-Ecclesiastical Parties.
§ 163. SECTS AND FANATICS.
Socinianism during the first decades of the century made extraordinary
progress in Poland, but then collapsed under the persecution of
the Jesuits. Related to the continental Anabaptists were the English
Baptists, who rejected infant baptism; while the Quakers, who adopted
the old fanatical theory of an inner light, set baptism and the Lord’s
supper entirely aside. In the sect of the Labadists we find a blending
of Catholic quietist mysticism and Calvinistic Augustinianism. Besides
those regular sects, there were various individual enthusiasts and
separatists. These were most rife in the Netherlands, where the free
civil constitution afforded a place of refuge for all exiles on account
of their faith. Here only was the press free enough to serve as a
thoroughgoing propaganda of mysticism and theosophy. Finally the Russian
sects, hitherto little studied, call for special attention.
§ 163.1. =The Socinians= (§ 148, 4).--The most important of the
Socinian congregations in =Poland=, for the most part small and
composed almost exclusively of the nobility, was that at Racau in
the Sendomir Palatinate. Founded in 1569, this city, since 1600
under James Sieninski, son of the founder, recognised Socinianism
as the established religion; and an academy was formed there
which soon occupied a distinguished position, and gave such
reputation to the place that it could be spoken of as “the
Sarmatian Athens.” But the congregation at Lublin, next in
importance to that of Racau, was destroyed as early as 1627 by
the mob under fanatical excitement caused by the Jesuits. The
same disaster befell Racau itself eleven years later. A couple of
idle schoolboys had thrown stones at a wooden crucifix standing
before the city gate, and had been for this severely punished by
their parents, and turned out of school. The Catholics, however,
made a complaint before the senate, where the Jesuits secured a
sentence that the school should be destroyed, the church taken
from “the Arians,” the printing press closed, but the ministers
and teachers outlawed and branded with infamy. And the Jesuits
did not rest until the Reichstag at Warsaw in 1658 issued decrees
of banishment against “all Arians,” and forbad the profession of
“Arianism” under pain of death.--The Davidist non-adoration party
of =Transylvanian= Unitarians (§ 148, 3) was finally overcome,
and the endeavours after conformity with the Polish Socinians
prevailed at the Diet of Deesch in 1638, where all Unitarian
communities engaged to offer worship to Christ, and to accept
the baptismal formula of Matthew xxviii. 19. And under the
standard of this so called _Complanatio Deesiana_ 106 Unitarian
congregations, with a membership of 60,000 souls, exist in
Transylvania to this day.--In =Germany= Socinianism had, even in
the beginning of the century, a secret nursery in the University
of Altdorf, belonging to the territory of the imperial city of
Nuremberg. Soner, professor of medicine, had been won over to
this creed by Socinians residing at Leyden, where he had studied
in 1597, 1598, and now used his official position at Altdorf
for, not only instilling his Unitarian doctrines by means
of private philosophical conversations into the minds of his
numerous students, who flocked to him from Poland, Transylvania,
and Hungary, but also for securing the adhesion of several German
students. Only after his death in 1612 did the Nuremberg council
come to know about this propaganda. A strict investigation was
then made, all Poles were expelled, and all the Socinian writings
that could be discovered were burned.--The later Polish Exultants
sought and found refuge in Germany, especially in Silesia,
Prussia, and Brandenburg, as well as in the Reformed Palatinate,
and also founded some small Unitarian congregations, which,
however, after maintaining for a while a miserable existence,
gradually passed out of view. They had greater success and spread
more widely in the =Netherlands=, till the states-general of 1653,
in consequence of repeated synodal protests, and on the ground
of an opinion given by the University of Leyden, issued a strict
edict against the Unitarians, who now gradually passed over to
the ranks of the Remonstrants (§ 161, 2) and the Collegiants.
Also in =England=, since the time of Henry VIII., antitrinitarian
confessors and martyrs were to be found. Even in 1611, under
James I., three of them had been consigned to the flames. The
Polish Socinians took occasion from this to send the king a
Racovian Catechism; but in 1614 it was, by order of parliament,
burned by the hands of the hangman. The Socinians were also
excluded from the benefit of the Act of Toleration of 1689, which
was granted to all other dissenters (§ 155, 3). The progress
of deism, however, among the upper classes (§§ 164, 3; 171, 1)
did much to prevent the extreme penal laws being carried into
execution.--The following are the most distinguished among the
numerous learned theologians of the Augustan age of Socinian
scholarship, who contributed to the extending, establishing, and
vindicating of the system of their church by exegetical, dogmatic,
and polemical writings: John Crell, died 1631; Jonas Schlichting,
died 1661; Von Wolzogen, died 1661; and Andr. Wissowatius,
a grandson of Faustus Socinus, died 1678; and with these must
also be ranked the historian of Polish Socinianism, Stanislaus
Lubienicki, died 1675, whose “_Hist. Reformat. Polonicæ_,” etc.,
was published at Amsterdam in 1685.
§ 163.2. =The Baptists of the Continent.=
1. =The Dutch Baptists= (§ 147, 2). Even during Menno’s
lifetime the Mennonites had split into the _Coarse_ and
the _Fine_. The _Coarse_, who had abandoned much of the
primitive severity of the sect, and were by far the most
numerous, were again divided during the Arminian controversy
into Remonstrants and Predestinationists. The former, from
their leader, were called Galenists, and from having a lamb
as the symbol of their Church, Lambists. The latter were
called Apostoolers from their leader, and Sunists because
their churches had the figure of the sun as a symbol. The
Lambists, who acknowledged no confession of faith, were most
numerous. In A.D. 1800, however, a union of the two parties
was effected, the Sunists adopting the doctrinal position
of the Lambists.--During the time when Arminian pastors
were banished from the Netherlands, three brothers Van der
Kodde founded a sect of =Collegiants=, which repudiated
the clerical office, assigned preaching and dispensation of
sacraments to laymen, and baptized only adults by immersion.
Their place of baptism was Rhynsburg on the Rhine, and hence
they were called Rhynsburgers. Their other name was given
them from their assemblies, which they styled _collegia_.
2. =The Moravian Baptists= (§ 147, 3). The Thirty Years’ War
ruined the flourishing Baptist congregations in Moravia,
and the reaction against all non-Catholics that followed
the battle of the White Mountain near Prague, in A.D. 1620,
told sorely against them. In A.D. 1622 a decree for their
banishment was issued, and these quiet, inoffensive men
were again homeless fugitives. Remnants of them fled into
Hungary and Transylvania, only to meet new persecutions
there. A letter of protection from Leopold I., A.D. 1659,
secured them the right of settling in three counties around
Pressburg. But soon these rigorous persecutions broke out
afresh; they were beset by Jesuits seeking to convert them,
and when this failed they were driven out or annihilated.
At last, by A.D. 1757-1762, they were completely broken up,
and most of them had joined the Roman Catholic church. A few
families preserved their faith by flight into South Russia,
where they settled in Wirschenka. When the Toleration Edict
of Joseph II., of A.D. 1781, secured religious freedom to
Protestants in Austria, several returned again to the faith
of their fathers, in the hope that the toleration would be
extended to them; but they were bitterly disappointed. They
now betook themselves to Russia, and together with their
brethren already there, settled in the Crimea, where they
still constitute the colony of Hutersthal.
§ 163.3. =The English Baptists.=--The notion that infant
baptism is objectionable also found favour among the English
Independents. Owing to the slight importance attached to the
sacraments generally, and more particularly to baptism, in
the Reformed church, especially among the Independents, the
supporters of the practice of the church in regard to baptism
to a large extent occupied common ground with its opponents.
The separation took place only after the rise of the fanatical
prophetic sects (§ 161, 1). We must, however, distinguish
from the continental Anabaptists the English Baptists, who
enjoyed the benefit of the Toleration Act of William III.,
of A.D. 1689, along with the other dissenters, by maintaining
their Independent-Congregationalist constitution (§ 155, 3).
In A.D. 1691, over the Arminian question, they split up into
Particular and General, or Regular and Free Will, Baptists.
The former, by far the more numerous, held by the Calvinistic
doctrine of _gratia particularis_, while the latter rejected
it. The Seventh-Day Baptists, who observed the seventh instead
of the first day of the week, were founded by Bampfield in
A.D. 1665.[480]--From England the Baptists spread to North
America, in A.D. 1630, where Roger Williams (§ 162, 2), one
of their first leaders, founded the little state of Rhode
Island, and organized it on thoroughly Baptist-Independent
principles.[481]--Continuation, § 170, 6.
§ 163.4. =The Quakers.=--=George Fox=, born A.D. 1624, died
A.D. 1691, was son of a poor Presbyterian weaver in Drayton,
Leicestershire. After scant schooling he went to learn shoemaking
at Nottingham, but in A.D. 1643 abandoned the trade. Harassed by
spiritual conflicts, he wandered about seeking peace for his soul.
Upon hearing an Independent preach on 2 Peter i. 19, he was moved
loudly to contradict the preacher. “What we have to do with,” he
said, “is not the word, but the Spirit by which those men of God
spake and wrote.” He was seized as a disturber of public worship,
but was soon after released. In A.D. 1649 he travelled the
country preaching and teaching, addressing every man as “thou,”
raising his hat to none, greeting none, attracting thousands by
his preaching, often imprisoned, flogged, tortured, hunted like a
wild beast. The core of his preaching was, not Scripture, but the
Spirit, not Christ without but Christ within, not outward worship,
not churches, “steeple-houses,” and bells, not doctrines and
sacraments, but only the inner light, which is kindled by God in
the conscience of every man, renewed and quickened by the Spirit
of Christ, which suddenly lays hold upon it. The number of his
followers increased from day to day. In A.D. 1652 he found, along
with his friends, a kindly shelter in the house of Thomas Fell,
of Smarthmore near Preston, and in his wife Margaret a motherly
counsellor, who devoted her whole life to the cause. They called
themselves “The Society of Friends.” The name Quaker was given as
a term of reproach by a violent judge, whom Fox bad “quake before
the word of God.” After the overthrow of the hopes of the Saints
through the dissolution of the Short Parliament and Cromwell’s
apostasy (§ 155, 2), many of them joined the Quakers, and
led them into revolutionary and fanatical excesses. Confined
hitherto to the northern counties, they now spread in London
and Bristol, and over all the south of England. In January,
A.D. 1655, they held a fortnight’s general meeting at Swannington,
in Leicestershire. Crowds of apostles went over into Ireland, to
North America and the West Indies, to Holland, Germany, France,
and Italy, and even to Constantinople. They did not meet with
great success. In Italy they encountered the Inquisition, and in
North America the severest penal laws were passed against them.
In A.D. 1656 James Naylor, one of their most famous leaders,
celebrated at Bristol the second coming of Christ “in the
Spirit,” by enacting the scene of Christ’s triumphal entry into
Jerusalem. But the king of the new Israel was scourged, branded
on the forehead with the letter B as a blasphemer, had his tongue
pierced with a redhot iron, and was then cast into prison. Many
absurd extravagances of this kind, which drew down upon them
frequent persecutions, as well as the failure of their foreign
missionary enterprises, brought most of the Quakers to adopt more
sober views. The great mother Quakeress, Margaret Fell, exercised
a powerful influence in this direction. George Fox, too, out
of whose hands the movement had for a long time gone, now lent
his aid. Naylor himself, in A.D. 1659, issued a recantation,
addressed “to all the people of the Lord,” in which he made the
confession, “My judgment was turned away, and I was a captive
under the power of darkness.”
§ 163.5. The movement of Quakerism in the direction of sobriety
and common sense was carried out to its fullest extent during
the Stuart Restoration, A.D. 1660-1688. Abandoning their
revolutionary tendencies through dislike to Cromwell’s violence,
and giving up most of their fanatical extravagances, the Quakers
became models of quiet, orderly living. Robert Barclay, by his
“_Catechesis et Fidei Confessio_,” of A.D. 1673, gave a sort of
symbolic expression to their belief, and vindicated his doctrinal
positions in his “_Theologiæ vere Christianæ Apologia_” of
A.D. 1676. During this period many of them laid down their lives
for their faith. On the other side of the sea they formed powerful
settlements, distinguished for religious toleration and brotherly
love. The chief promoter of this new departure was =William Penn=,
A.D. 1644-1718, son of an English admiral, who, while a student
at Oxford, was impressed by a Quaker’s preaching, and led to
attend the prayer and fellowship meetings of the Friends. In
order to break his connexion with this party, his father sent him,
in A.D. 1661, to travel in France and Italy. The frivolity of the
French court failed to attract him, but for a long time he was
spellbound by Amyrault’s theological lectures at Saumur. On his
return home, in A.D. 1664, he seemed to have completely come back
to a worldly life, when once again he was arrested by a Quaker’s
preaching. In A.D. 1668 he formally joined the society. For a
controversial tract, _The Sandy Foundation Shaken_, he was sent
for six months to the Tower, where he composed the famous tract,
_No Cross, no Crown_, and a treatise in his own vindication,
“Innocency with her Open Face.” His father, who, shortly before
his death in A.D. 1670, was reconciled to his son, left him a
yearly income of £1,500, with a claim on Government for £16,000.
In spite of continued persecution and oppression he continued
unweariedly to promote the cause of Quakerism by speech and pen.
In A.D. 1677, in company with Fox and Barclay, he made a tour
through Holland and Germany. In both countries he formed many
friendships, but did not succeed in establishing any societies.
His hopes now turned to North America, where Fox had already
wrought with success during the times of sorest persecution,
A.D. 1671, 1672, In lieu of his father’s claim, he obtained from
Government a large tract of land on the Delaware, with the right
of colonizing and organizing it under English suzerainty. Twice
he went out for this purpose himself, in A.D. 1682 and 1699, and
formed the Quaker state of Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia as its
capital. The first principle of its constitution was universal
religious toleration, even to Catholics.[482]
§ 163.6. =The Quaker Constitution=, as fixed in Penn’s time,
was strictly democratic and congregationalist, with complete
exclusion of a clerical order. At their services any man or
woman, if moved by the Spirit, might pray, teach, or exhort,
or if no one felt so impelled they would sit on in silence.
Their meeting-houses had not the form or fittings of churches,
their devotional services had neither singing nor music. They
repudiated water baptism, alike of infants and adults, and
recognised only baptism of the Spirit. The Lord’s supper,
as a symbolical memorial, is no more needed by those who are
born again. Monthly gatherings of all independent members,
quarterly meetings of deputies of a circuit, and a yearly synod
of representatives of all the circuits, administered or drew up
the regulations for the several societies. =The Doctrinal Belief
of the Quakers= is completely dominated by its central dogma of
the “inner light,” which is identified with reason and conscience
as the common heritage of mankind. Darkened and weakened by the
fall, it is requickened in us by the Spirit of the glorified
Christ, and possesses us as an inner spiritual Christ, an inner
Word of God. The Bible is recognised as the outer word of God,
but is useful only as a means of arousing the inner word. The
Calvinistic doctrine of election is decidedly rejected, and also
that of vicarious satisfaction. But also the doctrines of the
fall, original sin, justification by faith, as well as that of
the Trinity, are very much set aside in favour of an indefinite
subjective theology of feeling. The operation of the Holy Spirit
in man’s redemption and salvation outside of Christendom is
frankly admitted. On the other hand, the ethical-practical
element, as shown in works of benevolence, in the battle for
religious freedom, for the abolition of slavery, etc., is brought
to the front. In regard to =life and manners=, the Quakers have
distinguished themselves in all domestic, civil, industrial,
and mercantile movements by quiet, peaceful industry, strict
integrity, and simple habits, so that not only did they amass
great wealth, but gained the confidence and respect of those
around. They refused to take oaths or to serve as soldiers, or to
engage in sports, or to indulge in any kind of luxury. In social
intercourse they declined to acknowledge any titles of rank,
would not bow or raise the hat to any, but addressed all by the
simple “thou.” Their men wore broad-brimmed hats, a plain, simple
coat, without collar or buttons, fastened by hooks. Their women
wore a simple gray silk dress, with like coloured bonnet, without
ribbon, flower, or feathers, and a plain shawl. Wearing mourning
dress was regarded as a heathenish custom.[483]--Continuation,
§ 211, 3.
§ 163.7. =Labadie and the Labadists.=--Jean de Labadie, the
scion of an ancient noble family, born A.D. 1610, was educated
in the Jesuit school at Bordeaux, entered the order, and became a
priest, but was released from office at his own wish in A.D. 1639,
on account of delicate health. Even in the Jesuit college the
principles that manifested themselves in his later life began to
take root in him. By Scripture study he was led to adopt almost
Augustinian views of sin and grace, as well as the conviction of
the need of a revival of the church after the apostolic pattern.
This tendency was confirmed and deepened by the influence of
Spanish Quietism, which even the Jesuits had favoured to some
extent. In the interest of these views he wrought laboriously
for eleven years as Catholic priest in Amiens, Paris, and other
places, amid the increasing hostility of the Jesuits. Their
persecution, together with a growing clearness in his Augustinian
convictions, led him formally to go over to the Reformed church
in A.D. 1650. He now laboured for seven years as Reformed pastor
at Montauban. In A.D. 1657, owing to political suspicions against
him spread by the Jesuits, he withdrew from Montauban, and,
after two years’ labour at Orange, settled at Geneva, where
his preaching and household visitations bore abundant fruit. In
A.D. 1666 he accepted a call to Middelburg, in Zealand. There he
was almost as successful as he had been in Geneva; but there too
it began to appear that in him there burned a fire strange to
the Reformed church. The French Reformed synod took great offence
at his refusal to sign the Belgic Confession. It was found that
at many points he was not in sympathy with the church standards,
that he had written in favour of chiliasm and the Apokatastasis,
that in regard to the nature and idea of the church and its
need of a reformation he was not in accord with the views of the
Reformed church. The synod in 1668 suspended him from office, and,
as he did not confess his errors, in the following year deposed
him. Labadie then saw that what he regarded as his lifework, the
restoration of the apostolic church, was as little attainable
within the Reformed as within the Catholic church. He therefore
organized his followers into a separate denomination, and was,
together with them, banished by the magistrate. The neighbouring
town of Veere received them gladly, but Middelburg now persuaded
the Zealand council to issue a decree banishing them from that
town also. The people of Veere were ready to defy this order,
but Labadie thought it better to avoid the risk of a civil war
by voluntary withdrawal; and so he went, in August, A.D. 1669,
with about forty followers, to Amsterdam, where he laid the
foundations of an apostolic church. This new society consisted of
a sort of monastic household consisting only of the regenerate.
They hired a commodious house, and from thence sent out spiritual
workers as missionaries, to spread the principles of the “new
church” throughout the land. Within a year they numbered 60,000
souls. They dispensed the sacrament according to the Reformed
rite, and preached the gospel in conventicles. The most important
gain to the party was the adhesion of Anna Maria von Schürman,
born at Cologne A.D. 1607 of a Reformed family, but settled
from A.D. 1623 with her mother in Utrecht, celebrated for her
unexampled attainment in languages, science, and art. When in
A.D. 1670, the government, urged by the synod, forbad attendance
on the Labadists’ preaching, the accomplished and pious
Countess-palatine Elizabeth, sister of the elector-palatine,
and abbess of the rich cloister of Herford, whose intimate friend
Schürman had been for forty years, gave them an asylum in the
capital of her little state.
§ 163.8. In Herford “the Hollanders” met with bitter opposition
from the Lutheran clergy, the magistracy, and populace, and
were treated by the mob with insult and scorn. They themselves
also gave only too good occasion for ridicule. At a sacramental
celebration, the aged Labadie and still older Schürman embraced
and kissed each other and began to dance for joy. In his sermons
and writings Labadie set forth the Quietist doctrines of the
limitation of Christ’s life and sufferings in the mortification
of the flesh, the duty of silent prayer, the sinking of the
soul into the depths of the Godhead, the community of goods, etc.
Special offence was given by the private marriage of the three
leaders, Labadie, Yvon, and Dulignon with young wealthy ladies of
society, and their views of marriage among the regenerate as an
institution for raising up a pure seed free from original sin and
brought forth without pain. The Elector of Brandenburg, hitherto
favourable, as guardian of the seminary was obliged, in answer to
the complaints of the Herford magistracy, to appoint a commission
of inquiry. Labadie wrote a defence, which was published in
Latin, Dutch, and German, in which he endeavoured to harmonize
his mystical views with the doctrines of the Reformed church. But
in A.D. 1671 the magistrates obtained a mandate from the imperial
court at Spires, which threatened the abbess with the ban if she
continued to harbour the sectaries. In A.D. 1672 Labadie settled
in Altona, where he died in A.D. 1674. His followers, numbering
160, remained here undisturbed till the war between Denmark and
Sweden broke out in A.D. 1675. They then retired to the castle of
Waltha in West Friesland, the property of three sisters belonging
to the party. Schürman died in A.D. 1678, Dulignon in A.D. 1679,
and Yvon, who now had sole charge, was obliged in A.D. 1688 to
abolish the institution of the community of goods, after a trial
of eighteen years, being able to pay back much less than he had
received. After his death in A.D. 1707 the community gradually
fell off, and after the property had gone into other hands on
the death of the last of the sisters in A.D. 1725, the society
finally broke up.
§ 163.9. During this age various =fanatical sects= sprang up. In
Thuringia, =Stiefel= and his nephew =Meth= caused much trouble
to the Lutheran clergy in the beginning of the century by their
fanatical enthusiasm, till convinced, after twenty years, of
the errors of their ways. =Drabicius=, who had left the Bohemian
Brethren owing to differences of belief, and then lived in
Hungary as a weaver in poor circumstances, boasted in A.D. 1638
of having Divine revelations, prophesied the overthrow of the
Austrian dynasty in A.D. 1657, the election of the French king as
emperor, the speedy fall of the Papacy, and the final conversion
of all heathens; but was put to death at Pressburg in A.D. 1671
as a traitor with cruel tortures. Even Comenius, the noble
bishop of the Moravians, took the side of the prophets, and
published his own and others’ prophecies under the title “_Lux in
Tenebris_.”--=Jane Leade= of Norfolk, influenced by the writings
of Böhme, had visions, in which the Divine Wisdom appeared to
her as a virgin. She spread her Gnostic revelations in numerous
tracts, founded in A.D. 1670 the Philadelphian Society in
London, and died in A.D. 1704, at the age of eighty-one. The
most important of her followers was =John Pordage=, preacher and
physician, whose theological speculation closely resembles that
of Jac. Böhme. To the Reformed church belonged also =Peter Poiret=
of Metz, pastor from A.D. 1664 in Heidelburg [Heidelberg], and
afterwards of a French congregation in the Palatine-Zweibrücken.
Influenced by the writings of Bourignon and Guyon, he resigned
his pastorate, and accompanied the former in his wanderings
in north-west Germany till his death in 1680. At Amsterdam in
A.D. 1687 he wrote his mystical work, “_L’Économie Divine_”
in seven vols., which sets forth in the Cocceian method the
mysticism and theosophy of Bourignon. He died at Rhynsburg
in A.D. 1719.--From the Lutheran church proceeded Giftheil of
Württemburg [Württemberg], Breckling of Holstein, and Kuhlmann,
who went about denouncing the clergy, proclaiming fanatical views,
and calling for impracticable reforms. Of much greater importance
was =John George Gichtel=, an eccentric disciple of Jac. Böhme,
who in A.D. 1665 lost his situation as law agent in his native
town of Regensburg, his property, and civil rights, and suffered
imprisonment and exile from the city for his fanatical ideas.
He died in needy circumstances in Amsterdam in A.D. 1710. He
had revelations and visions, fought against the doctrine of
justification, and denounced marriage as fornication which
nullifies the spiritual marriage with the heavenly Sophia
consummated in the new birth, etc. His followers called
themselves Angelic Brethren, from Matthew xxii. 20, strove
after angelic sinlessness by emancipation from all earthly lusts,
toils, and care, regarded themselves as a priesthood after the
order of Melchizedec [Melchisedec] for propitiating the Divine
wrath.--Continuation, § 170.
§ 163.10. =Russian Sects.=--A vast number of sects sprang up
within the Russian church, which are all included under the
general name =Raskolniks= or apostates. They fall into two great
classes in their distinctive character, diametrically opposed the
one to the other.
1. The =Starowerzi=, or Old Believers. They originated in
A.D. 1652, in consequence of the liturgical reform of the
learned and powerful patriarch Nikon, which called forth
the violent opposition of a large body of the peasantry, who
loved the old forms. Besides stubborn adhesion to the old
liturgy, they rejected all modern customs and luxuries, held
it sinful to cut the beard, to smoke tobacco, to drink tea
and coffee, etc. The Starowerzi, numbering some ten millions,
are to this day distinguished by their pure and simple lives,
and are split up into three parties:
i. _Jedinowerzi_, who are nearest to the orthodox church,
recognise its priesthood, and are different only in
their religious ceremonies and the habits of their
social life;
ii. The _Starovbradzi_, who do not recognise the
priesthood of the orthodox church; and
iii. the _Bespopowtschini_, who have no priests, but only
elders, and are split up into various smaller sects.
Under the peasant Philip Pustosiwät, a party of Starowerzi,
called from their leader Philippins, fled during the
persecution of A.D. 1700 from the government of Olonez, and
settled in Polish Lithuania and East Prussia, where to the
number of 1,200 souls they live to this day in villages in
the district of Gumbinnen, engaged in agricultural pursuits,
and observing the rites of the old Russian church.
2. At the very opposite pole from the Starowerzi stand the
=Heretical Sects=, which repudiate and condemn everything
in the shape of external church organization, and manifest
a tendency in some cases toward fanatical excess, and in
other cases toward rationalistic spiritualism. As the sects
showing the latter tendency did not make their appearance
till the eighteenth century (§ 166, 2), we have here to
do only with those of the former class. The most important
of these sects is that of the =Men of God=, or Spiritual
Christians, who trace their origin from a peasant, Danila
Filipow, of the province of Wladimir. In 1645, say they,
the divine Father, seated on a cloud of flame, surrounded
by angels, descended from heaven on Mount Gorodin in a
chariot of fire, in order to restore true Christianity in
its original purity and spirituality. For this purpose he
incarnated himself in Filipow’s pure body. He commanded
his followers, who in large numbers, mainly drawn from the
peasant class, gathered around him, not to marry, and if
already married to put away their wives, to abstain from all
intoxicating drinks, to be present neither at marriages nor
baptisms, but above all things to believe that there is no
other god besides him. After some years he adopted as his
son another peasant, Ivan Suslow, who was said to have been
born of a woman a hundred years old, by communicating to him
in his thirtieth year his own divine nature. Ivan, as a new
Christ, sent out twelve apostles to spread his doctrine. The
Czar Alexis put him and forty of his adherents into prison;
but neither the knout nor the rack could wring from them the
mysteries of their faith and worship. At last, on a Friday,
the czar caused the new Christ to be crucified; but on
the following Sunday he appeared risen again among his
disciples. After some years the imprisoning, crucifying, and
resurrection were repeated. Imprisoned a third time in 1672,
he owed his liberation to an edict of grace on the occasion
of the birth of the Prince Peter the Great. He now lived
at Moscow along with the divine father Filipow, who had
hitherto consulted his own safety by living in concealment
in the enjoyment of the adoration of his followers
unmolested for thirty years, supported by certain wealthy
merchants. Filipow is said to have ascended up in the
presence of many witnesses, in 1700, into the seventh and
highest heaven, where he immediately seated himself on
the throne as the “Lord of Hosts,” and the Christ, Suslow,
also returned thither in 1716, after both had reached the
hundredth year of the human existence. As Suslow’s successor
appeared a new Christ in Prokopi Lupkin, and after his
death, in 1732, arose Andr. Petrow. The last Christ
manifestation was revealed in the person of the unfortunate
Czar Peter III., dethroned by his wife Catharine II. in 1762,
who, living meanwhile in secret, shall soon return, to
the terrible confusion of all unbelievers. With this the
historical tradition of the earlier sect of the Men of God
is brought to a close, and in the Skopsen, or Eunuchs, who
also venerate the Czar Peter III. as the Christ that is
to come again, a new development of the sect has arisen,
carrying out its principles more and more fully (§ 210, 4).
Other branches of the same party, among which, as also among
the Skopsen, the fanatical endeavour to mortify the flesh is
carried to the most extravagant length, are the Morelschiki
or Self-Flagellators, the Dumbies, who will not, even
under the severest tortures, utter a sound, etc. The
ever-increasing development of this sect-forming craze,
which found its way into several monasteries and nunneries,
led to repeated judicial investigations, the penitent
being sentenced for their fault to confinement in remote
convents, and the obdurate being visited with severe
corporal punishments and even with death. The chief sources
of information regarding the history, doctrine, and customs
of the “Men of God” and the Skopsen are their own numerous
spiritual songs, collected by Prof. Ivan Dobrotworski of
Kasan, which were sung in their assemblies for worship with
musical accompaniment and solemn dances. On these occasions
their prophets and prophetesses were wont to prophesy, and
a kind of sacramental supper was celebrated with bread and
water. The sacraments of the Lord’s supper and baptism,
as administered by the orthodox church, are repudiated
and scorned, the latter as displaced by the only effectual
baptism of the Spirit. They have, indeed, in order to avoid
persecution, been obliged to take part in the services of
the orthodox national church, and to confess to its priests,
avoiding, however, all reference to the sect.[484]
§ 164. PHILOSOPHERS AND FREETHINKERS.[485]
The mediæval scholastic philosophy had outlived itself, even in the
pre-Reformation age; yet it maintained a lingering existence side by
side with those new forms which the modern spirit in philosophy was
preparing for itself. We hear an echo of the philosophical ferment
of the sixteenth century in the Italian Dominican Campanella, and in
the Englishman Bacon of Verulam we meet the pioneer of that modern
philosophy which had its proper founder in Descartes. Spinoza, Locke,
and Leibnitz were in succession the leaders of this philosophical
development. Alongside of this philosophy, and deriving its weapons from
it for attack upon theology and the church, a number of freethinkers
also make their appearance. These, like their more radical disciples in
the following century, regarded Scripture as delusive, and nature and
reason as alone trustworthy sources of religious knowledge.
§ 164.1. =Philosophy.=--=Campanella= of Stilo in Calabria
entered the Dominican order, but soon lost taste for Aristotelian
philosophy and scholastic theology, and gave himself to the
study of Plato, the Cabbala, astrology, magic, etc. Suspected
of republican tendencies, the Spanish government put him in
prison in A.D. 1599. Seven times was he put upon the rack for
twenty-four hours, and then confined for twenty-seven years in
close confinement. Finally, in A.D. 1626, Urban VIII. had him
transferred to the prison of the papal Inquisition. He was set
free in A.D. 1629, and received a papal pension; but further
persecutions by the Spaniards obliged him to fly to his protector
Richelieu in France, where in A.D. 1639 he died. He composed
eighty-two treatises, mostly in prison, the most complete being
“_Philosophia Rationalis_,” in five vols. In his “_Atheismus
Triumphatus_” he appears as an apologist of the Romish system,
but so insufficiently, that many said _Atheismus Triumphans_ was
the more fitting title. His “_Monarchia Messiæ_” too appeared,
even to the Catholics, an abortive apology for the Papacy. In
his “_Civitas Solis_,” an imitation of the “Republic” of Plato,
he proceeded upon communistic principles.--=Francis Bacon of
Verulam=, long chancellor of England, died A.D. 1626, the great
spiritual heir of his mediæval namesake (§ 103, 8), was the
first successful reformer of the plan of study followed by the
schoolmen. With a prophet’s marvellous grasp of mind he organized
the whole range of science, and gave a forecast of its future
development in his “_De Augmentis_” and “_Novum Organon_.”
He rigidly separated the domain of _knowledge_, as that of
philosophy and nature, grasped only by experience, from the
domain of _faith_, as that of theology and the church, reached
only through revelation. Yet he maintained the position:
_Philosophia obiter libata a Deo abducit, plene hausta ad Deum
reducit_. He is the real author of empiricism in philosophy and
the realistic methods of modern times. His public life, however,
is clouded by thanklessness, want of character, and the taking of
bribes. In A.D. 1621 he was convicted by his peers, deprived of
his office, sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Tower, and
to pay a fine of £40,000; but was pardoned by the king.[486]--The
French Catholic =Descartes= started not from experience, but from
self-consciousness, with his “_Cogito, ergo sum_” as the only
absolutely certain proposition. Beginning with doubt, he rose
by pure thinking to the knowledge of the true and certain in
things. The imperfection of the soul thus discovered suggests
an absolutely perfect Being, to whose perfection the attribute
of being belongs. This is the ontological proof for the being of
God.--His philosophy was zealously taken up by French Jansenists
and Oratorians and the Reformed theologians of Holland, while
it was bitterly opposed by such Catholics as Huetius and such
Reformed theologians as Voetius.[487]--=Spinoza=, an apostate
Jew in Holland, died A.D. 1677, gained little influence over his
own generation by his profound pantheistic philosophy, which has
powerfully affected later ages. A violent controversy, however,
was occasioned by his “_Tractatus Theologico-politicus_,” in
which he attacked the Christian doctrine of revelation and the
authenticity of the O.T. books, especially the Pentateuch, and
advocated absolute freedom of thought.[488]
§ 164.2. =John Locke=, died A.D. 1704, with his sensationalism
took up a position midway between Bacon’s empiricism and
Descartes’ rationalism, on the one hand, and English deism and
French materialism, on the other. His “Essay concerning Human
Understanding” denies the existence of innate ideas, and seeks
to show that all our notions are only products of outer or
inner experience, of sensation or reflection. In this treatise,
and still more distinctly in his tract, “The Reasonableness of
Christianity,” intended as an apology for Christianity, and even
for biblical visions and miracles, as well as for the messianic
character of Christ, he openly advocated pure Pelagianism
that knows nothing of sin and atonement.[489]--=Leibnitz=,
a Hanoverian statesman, who died A.D. 1716, introduced the new
German philosophy in its first stage. The philosophy of Leibnitz
is opposed at once to the theosophy of Paracelsus and Böhme and
to the empiricism of Bacon and Locke, the pantheism of Spinoza,
and the scepticism and manichæism of Bayle. It is indeed a
Christian philosophy not fully developed. But inasmuch as at
the same time it adopted, improved upon, and carried out the
rationalism of Descartes, it also paved the way for the later
theological rationalism. The foundation of his philosophy is the
theory of monads wrought out in his “_Theodicée_” against Bayle
and in his “_Nouveaux Essais_,” against Locke. In opposition to
the atomic theory of the materialists, he regarded all phenomena
in the world as eccentricities of so called monads, _i.e._
primary simple and indivisible substances, each of which is
a miniature of the whole universe. Out of these monads that
radiate out from God, the primary monad, the world is formed
into a harmony once for all admired of God: the theory of
pre-established harmony. This must be the best of worlds,
otherwise it would not have been. In opposition to Bayle, who
had argued in a manichæan fashion against God’s goodness and
wisdom from the existence of evil, Leibnitz seeks to show that
this does not contradict the idea of the best of worlds, nor that
of the Divine goodness and wisdom, since finity and imperfection
belong to the very notion of creature, a metaphysical evil from
which moral evil inevitably follows, yet not so as to destroy the
pre-established harmony. Against Locke he maintains the doctrine
of innate ideas, contests Clarke’s theory of indeterminism,
maintains the agreement of philosophy with revelation, which
indeed is above but not contrary to reason, and hopes to prove
his system by mathematical demonstration.[490]--Continuation,
§ 171, 10.
§ 164.3. =Freethinkers.=--The tendency of the age to throw off
all positive Christianity first showed itself openly in England
as the final outcome of Levellerism (§ 162, 2). This movement
has been styled naturalism, because it puts natural in place of
revealed religion, and deism, because in place of the redeeming
work of the triune God it admits only a general providence of the
one God. On philosophic grounds the English deists affirmed the
impossibility of revelation, inspiration, prophecy, and miracle,
and on critical grounds rejected them from the Bible and history.
The simple religious system of deism embraced God, providence,
freedom of the will, virtue, and the immortality of the soul. The
Christian doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, satisfaction,
justification, resurrection, etc., were regarded as absurd and
irrational. Deism in England spread almost exclusively among
upper-class laymen; the people and clergy stood firmly to their
positive beliefs. Theological controversial tracts were numerous,
but their polemical force was in great measure lost by the
latitudinarianism of their authors.--The principal English deists
of the century were
1. =Edward Herbert of Cherbury=, A.D. 1581-1648, a nobleman
and statesman. He reduced all religion to five points: Faith
in God, the duty of reverencing Him, especially by leading
an upright life, atoning for sin by genuine repentance,
recompense in the life eternal.
2. =Thomas Hobbes=, A.D. 1588-1679, an acute philosophical
and political writer, looked on Christianity as an oriental
phantom, and of value only as a support of absolute monarchy
and an antidote to revolution. The state of nature is a
_bellum omnium contra omnes_; religion is the means of
establishing order and civilization. The state should decide
what religion is to prevail. Every one may indeed believe
what he will, but in regard to churches and worship he must
submit to the state as represented by the king. His chief
work is “Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a
Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.”
3. =Charles Blount=, who died a suicide in A.D. 1693, a rabid
opponent of all miracles as mere tricks of priests, wrote
“Oracles of Reason,” “_Religio Laici_,” “Great is Diana
of the Ephesians,” and translated Philostratus’ “Life of
Apollonius of Tyana.”
4. =Thomas Browne=, A.D. 1635-1682, a physician, who in his
“_Religio Medici_” sets forth a mystical supernaturalism,
took up a purely deistic ground in his “Vulgar Errors,”
published three years later.
Among the opponents of deism in this age the most notable are
Richard Baxter (§ 162, 3) and Ralph Cudworth, A.D. 1617-1688,
a latitudinarian and Platonist, who sought to prove the leading
Christian doctrines by the theory of innate ideas. He wrote
“Intellectual System of the Universe” in A.D. 1678. The pious
Irish scientist, Robert Boyle, founded in London, in A.D. 1691,
a lectureship of £40 a year for eight discourses against deistic
and atheistic unbelief.[491]--Continuation, § 171, 1.
§ 164.4. A tendency similar to that of the English deists was
represented in Germany by =Matthias Knutzen=, who sought to found
a freethinking sect. The Christian “Coran” contains only lies;
reason and conscience are the true Bible; there is no God, nor
hell nor heaven; priests and magistrates should be driven out of
the world, etc. The senate of Jena University on investigation
found that his pretension to 700 followers was a vain boast.--In
France the brilliant and learned sceptic =Peter Bayle=,
A.D. 1647-1706, was the apostle of a light-hearted unbelief.
Though son of a Reformed pastor, the Jesuits got him over to the
Romish church, but in a year and a half he apostatised again. He
now studied the Cartesian philosophy, as Reformed professor at
Sedan, vindicated Protestantism in several controversial tracts,
and as refugee in Holland composed his famous “_Dictionnaire
Historique et Critique_,” in which he avoided indeed open
rejection of the facts of revelation, but did much to unsettle
by his easy treatment of them.--Continuation, § 171, 3.
THIRD SECTION.
CHURCH HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[492]
I. The Catholic Church in East and West.
§ 165. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
During the first half of the century the Roman hierarchy suffered
severely at the hand of Catholic courts, while in the second half storms
gathered from all sides, threatening its very existence. Portugal,
France, Spain, and Italy rested not till they got the pope himself to
strike the deathblow to the Jesuits, who had been his chief supporters
indeed, but who had now become his masters. Soon after the German
bishops threatened to free themselves and their people from Rome,
and what reforms they could not effect by ecclesiastical measures the
emperor undertook to effect by civil measures. Scarcely had this danger
been overcome when the horrors of the French Revolution broke out, which
sought, along with the Papacy, to overthrow Christianity as well. But,
on the other hand, during the early decades of the century Catholicism
had gained many victories in another way by the counter-reformation and
conversions. Its foreign missions, however, begun with such promise of
success, came to a sad end, and even the home missions faded away, in
spite of the founding of various new orders. The Jansenist controversy
in the beginning of the century entered on a new stage, the Catholic
church being driven into open semi-Pelagianism, and Jansenism into
fanatical excesses. The church theology sank very low, and the Catholic
supporters of “_Illumination_” far exceeded in number those who had
fallen away to it from Protestantism.
§ 165.1. =The Popes.=--=Clement XI.=, 1700-1721, protested in
vain against the Elector Frederick III. of Brandenburg assuming
the crown as King Frederick I. of Prussia, on Jan. 18th,
A.D. 1701. In the Spanish wars of succession he sought to remain
neutral, but force of circumstances led him to take up a position
adverse to German interests. The new German emperor, Joseph I.,
A.D. 1705-1711, scorned to seek confirmation from the pope, and
Clement consequently had the usual prayer for the emperor omitted
in the church services. The relations became yet more strained,
owing to a dispute about the _jus primarum precum_, Joseph
claiming the right to revenues of vacancies as the patron. In
A.D. 1707, the pope had the joy of seeing the German army driven
out, not only of northern Italy, but also of Naples by the French.
Again they came into direct conflict over Parma and Piacenza,
Clement claiming them as a papal, the emperor claiming them as
an imperial, fief. No pope since the time of Louis the Bavarian
had issued the ban against a German emperor, and Clement ventured
not to do so now. Refusing the invitation of Louis XIV. to go
to Avignon, he was obliged either unconditionally to grant the
German claims or to try the fortune of war. He chose the latter
alternative. The miserable papal troops, however, were easily
routed, and Clement was obliged, in A.D. 1708, to acknowledge
the emperor’s brother, the Grand-duke Charles, as king of Spain,
and generally to yield to Joseph’s very moderate demands. Clement
was the author of the constitution _Unigenitus_, which introduced
the second stage in the history of Jansenism. After the short
and peaceful pontificate of =Innocent XIII.= A.D. 1721-1724,
came =Benedict XIII.=, A.D. 1724-1730, a pious, well-meaning,
narrow-minded man, ruled by a worthless favourite, Cardinal
Coscia. He wished to canonize Gregory VII., in the fond hope
of thereby securing new favour to his hierarchical views,
but this was protested against by almost all the courts. All
the greater was the number of monkish saints with which he
enriched the heavenly firmament. He promised to all who on their
death-bed should say, “Blessed be Jesus Christ,” a 2,000 years’
shortening of purgatorial pains. His successor =Clement XII.=,
A.D. 1730-1740, deprived the wretched Coscia of his offices, made
him disgorge his robberies, imposed on him a severe fine and ten
years’ imprisonment, but afterwards resigned the management of
everything to a greedy, grasping nephew. He was the first pope to
condemn freemasonry, A.D. 1736. =Benedict XIV.=, A.D. 1740-1758,
one of the noblest, most pious, learned, and liberal of the popes,
zealous for the faith of his church, and yet patient with those
who differed, moderate and wise in his political procedure, mild
and just in his government, blameless in life. He had a special
dislike of the Jesuits (§ 156, 12), and jestingly he declared, if,
as the curialists assert, “all law and all truth” lie concealed
in the shrine of his breast, he had not been able to find the key.
He wrote largely on theology and canon law, founded seminaries
for the training of the clergy, had many French and English
works translated into Italian, and was a liberal patron of
art. To check popular excesses he tried to reduce the number
of festivals, but without success.--Continuation, in Paragraphs
§ 165, 9, 10, 13.
§ 165.2. =Old and New Orders.=--Among the old orders that of
=Clugny= had amassed enormous wealth, and attempts made by its
abbots at reformation led only to endless quarrels and divisions.
The abbots now squandered the revenues of their cloisters at
court, and these institutions were allowed to fall into disorder
and decay. When, in A.D. 1790, all cloisters in France were
suppressed, the city of Clugny bought the cloister and church
for £4,000, and had them both pulled down.--The most important
new orders were:
1. =The Mechitarist Congregation=, originated by Mechitar the
Armenian, who, at Constantinople in A.D. 1701, founded a
society for the religious and intellectual education of his
countrymen; but when opposed by the Armenian patriarch, fled
to the Morea and joined the United Armenians (§ 72, 2). In
A.D. 1712 the pope confirmed the congregation, which, during
the war with the Turks was transferred to Venice, and in
A.D. 1717 settled on the island St. Lazaro [Lazzaro]. Its
members spread Roman Catholic literature in Armenia and
Armenian literature in the West. At a later time there was
a famous Mechitarist college in Vienna, which did much by
writing and publishing for the education of the Catholic
youth.
2. =Frères Ignorantins=, or Christian Brothers, founded
in A.D. 1725 by De la Salle, canon of Rheims, for the
instruction of children, wrought in the spirit of the
Jesuits through France, Belgium, and North America. After
the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in A.D. 1724, they
took their place there till themselves driven out by the
Revolution in A.D. 1790.[493]
3. The =Liguorians or Redemptorists=, founded in A.D. 1732
by Liguori, an advocate, who became Bishop of Naples in
A.D. 1762. He died in A.D. 1787 in his ninety-first year,
was beatified by Pius VII. in A.D. 1816, and canonized by
Gregory XVI. in A.D. 1839, and proclaimed _doctor ecclesiæ_
by Pius IX. in A.D. 1871 as a zealous defender of the
immaculate conception and papal infallibility. His devotional
writings, which exalt Mary by superstitious tales of
miracles, were extremely popular in all Catholic countries.
His new order was to minister to the poor. He declared
the pope’s will to be God’s, and called for unquestioning
obedience. Only after the founder’s death did it spread
beyond Italy.--Continuation, § 186, 1.
§ 165.3. =Foreign Missions.=--In the accommodation controversy
(§ 156, 12), the Dominicans prevailed in A.D. 1742; but the
abolishing of native customs led to a sore persecution in
China, from which only a few remnants of the church were
saved. The Italian Jesuit Beschi, with linguistic talents of
the highest order, sought in India to make use of the native
literature for mission purposes and to place alongside of it
a Christian literature. Here the Capuchins opposed the Jesuits
as successfully as the Dominicans had in China. These strifes
and persecutions destroyed the missions.--The Jesuit state of
Paraguay (§ 156, 10) was put an end to in A.D. 1750 by a compact
between Portugal and Spain. The revolt of the Indians that
followed, inspired and directed by the Jesuits, which kept the
combined powers at bay for a whole year, was at last quelled,
and the Jesuits expelled the country in A.D. 1758.--Continuation
§ 186, 7.
§ 165.4. =The Counter-Reformation= (§ 153, 2).--Charles XII. of
Sweden, in A.D. 1707, forced the Emperor Joseph I. to give the
Protestants of =Silesia= the benefits of the Westphalian Peace
and to restore their churches. But in =Poland= in A.D. 1717,
the Protestants lost the right of building new churches, and in
A.D. 1733 were declared disqualified for civil offices and places
in the diet. In the Protestant city of Thorn the insolence of
the Jesuits roused a rebellion which led to a fearful massacre
in A.D. 1724. The Dissenters sought and obtained protection
in Russia from A.D. 1767, and the partition of Poland between
Russia, Austria, and Prussia in A.D. 1772 secured for them
religious toleration. In =Salzburg= the archbishop, Count Firmian,
attempted in A.D. 1729 a conversion of the evangelicals by force,
who had, with intervals of persecution in the seventeenth century,
been tolerated for forty years as quiet and inoffensive citizens.
But in A.D. 1731 their elders swore on the host and consecrated
salt (2 Chron. xiii. 5) to be true to their faith. This “covenant
of salt” was interpreted as rebellion, and in spite of the
intervention of the Protestant princes, all the evangelicals,
in the severe winter of A.D. 1731, 1732, were driven, with
inhuman cruelty, from hearth and home. About 20,000 of them
found shelter in Prussian Lithuania; others emigrated to America.
The pope praised highly “the noble” archbishop, who otherwise
distinguished himself only as a huntsman and a drinker, and by
maintaining a mistress in princely splendour.
§ 165.5. In =France= the persecution of the Huguenots continued
(§ 153, 4). The “pastors of the desert” performed their duties at
the risk of their lives, and though many fell as martyrs, their
places were quickly filled by others equally heroic. The first
rank belongs to Anton Court, pastor at Nismes from A.D. 1715; he
died at Lausanne A.D. 1760, where he had founded a theological
seminary. He laboured unweariedly and successfully in gathering
and organizing the scattered members of the Reformed church,
and in overcoming fanaticism by imparting sound instruction.
Paul Rabaut, his successor at Nismes, was from A.D. 1730 to
1785 the faithful and capable leader of the martyr church. The
judicial murder of =Jean Calas= at Toulouse in A.D. 1762 presents
a hideous example of the fanaticism of Catholic France. One of
his sons had hanged himself in a fit of passion. When the report
spread that it was the act of his father, in order to prevent
the contemplated conversion of his son, the Dominicans canonized
the suicide as a martyr to the Catholic faith, roused the mob,
and got the Toulouse parliament to put the unhappy father to the
torture of the wheel. The other sons were forced to abjure their
faith, and the daughters were shut up in cloisters. Two years
later Voltaire called attention to the atrocity, and so wrought
on public opinion that on the revision of the proceedings by the
Parisian parliament, the innocence of the ill-used family was
clearly proved. Louis XV. paid them a sum of 30,000 livres; but
the fanatical accusers, the false witnesses, and the corrupt
judges were left unpunished. This incident improved the position
of the Protestants, and in A.D. 1787 Louis XVI. issued the Edict
of Versailles, by which not only complete religious freedom
but even a legal civil existence was secured them, which was
confirmed by a law of Napoleon in A.D. 1802.
§ 165.6. =Conversions.=--Pecuniary interests and prospect of
marriage with a rich heiress led to the conversion, in A.D. 1712,
of Charles Alexander while in the Austrian service; but when he
became Duke of Württemburg [Württemberg] he solemnly undertook
to keep things as they were, and to set up no Catholic services
in the country save in his own court chapel. Of other converts
Winckelmann and Stolberg are the most famous. While Winckelmann,
the greatest of art critics, not a religious but an artistic
ultramontane, was led in A.D. 1754 through religious indifference
into the Romish church, the warm heart of Von Stolberg was
induced, mainly by the Catholic Princess Gallitzin (§ 172, 2)
and a French emigrant, Madame Montague, to escape the
chill of rationalism amid the incense fumes of the Catholic
services.--Continuation, § 175, 7.
§ 165.7. =The Second Stage of Jansenism= (§ 157, 5).--=Pasquier
Quesnel=, priest of the Oratory at Paris, suspected in 1675 of
Gallicanism, because of notes in his edition of the works of
Leo the Great, fled into the Netherlands, where he continued his
notes on the N.T. Used and recommended by Noailles, Archbishop
of Paris, and other French bishops, this “Jansenist” book was
hated by the Jesuits and condemned by a brief of Clement XI.
in A.D. 1708. The Jesuit confessor of Louis XIV., Le Tellier,
selected 101 propositions from the book, and induced the king to
urge their express condemnation by the pope. In the =Constitution
Unigenitus= of A.D. 1713, Clement pronounced these heretical,
and the king required the expulsion from parliament and church
of all who refused to adopt this bull, which caused a division
of the French church into _Acceptants_ and _Appellants_. As many
of the condemned propositions were quoted literally by Quesnel
from Augustine and other Fathers, or were in exact agreement
with biblical passages, Noailles and his party called for an
explanation. Instead of this the pope threatened them with
excommunication. In A.D. 1715 the king died, and under the Duke
of Orleans’ regency in A.D. 1717, four bishops, with solemn
appeal to a general council, renounced the papal constitution
as irreconcilable with the Catholic faith. They were soon
joined by the Sorbonne and the universities of Rheims and Nantes,
Archbishop Noailles, and more than twenty bishops, all the
congregations of St. Maur and the Oratorians with large numbers
of the secular clergy and the monks, especially of the Lazarists,
Dominicans, Cistercians, and Camaldulensians. The pope, after
vainly calling them to obey, thundered the ban against the
Appellants in A.D. 1718. But the parliament took the matter
up, and soon the aspect of affairs was completely changed. The
regent’s favourite, Dubois, hoping to obtain a cardinal’s hat,
took the side of the Acceptants and carried the duke with him,
who got the parliament in 1720 to acknowledge the bull, with
express reservation, however, of the Gallican liberties, and
began a persecution of the Appellants. Under Louis XV. the
persecution became more severe, although in many ways moderated
by the influence of his former tutor, Cardinal Fleury. Noailles,
who died in 1729, was obliged in 1728 to submit unconditionally,
and in A.D. 1730 the parliament formally ratified the bull. Amid
daily increasing oppression, many of the more faithful Jansenists,
mostly of the orders of St. Maur and the Oratory, fled to the
Netherlands, where they gave way more and more to fanaticism. In
1727 a young Jansenist priest, Francis of Paris, died with the
original text of the appeal in his hands. His adherents honoured
him as a saint, and numerous reports of miracles, which had been
wrought at his grave in Medardus churchyard at Paris, made this a
daily place of pilgrimage to thousands of fanatics. The excited
enthusiasts, who fell into convulsions, and uttered prophecies
about the overthrow of church and state, grew in numbers and,
with that mesmeric power which fanaticism has been found in all
ages to possess powerfully influenced many who had been before
careless and profane. One of these was the member of parliament
De Montgeron, who, from being a frivolous scoffer, suddenly, in
1732, fell into violent convulsions, and in a three-volumed work,
“_La Vérité des Miracles Opérés par l’Intercession de François
de Paris_,” 1737, came forward as a zealous apologist of the
party. The government, indeed, in 1732 ordered the churchyard
to be closed, but portions of earth from the grave of the saint
continued to effect convulsions and miracles. Thousands of
convulsionists throughout France were thrown into prison, and
in 1752, Archbishop Beaumont of Paris, with many other bishops,
refused the last sacrament to those who could not prove that
they had accepted the constitution. The grave of “St. Francis,”
however, was the grave of Jansenism, for fanatical excess
contains the seeds of dissolution and every manifestation of it
hastens the catastrophe. Yet remnants of the party lingered on
in France till the outbreak of the Revolution, of which they had
prophesied.
§ 165.8. =The Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands.=--The
first Jesuits appeared in Holland in A.D. 1592. The form of piety
fostered by superior and inferior clergy in the Catholic church
there, a heritage from the times of the Brethren of the Common
Life (§ 112, 9), was directed to the deepening of Christian
thought and feeling; and this, as well as the liberal attitude
of the Archbishop of Utrecht, awakened the bitter opposition of
the Jesuits. At the head of the local clergy was Sasbold Vosmeer,
vicar-general of the vacant archiepiscopal see of Utrecht. Most
energetically he set himself to thwart the Jesuit machinations,
which aimed at abolishing the Utrecht see and putting the church
of Holland under the jurisdiction of the papal nuncio at Cologne.
On the ground of suspicions of secret conspiracy Vosmeer was
banished. But his successors refused to be overruled or set
aside by the Jesuits. Meanwhile in France the first stage of
the Jansenist controversy had been passed through. The Dutch
authorities had heartily welcomed the condemned book of their
pious and learned countryman; but when the five propositions
were denounced, they agreed in repudiating them, without, however,
admitting that they had been taught in the sense objected to by
Jansen. The Jesuits, therefore, charged them with the Jansenist
heresy, and issued in A.D. 1697 an anonymous pamphlet full of
lying insinuations about the origin and progress of Jansenism
in Holland. Its beginning was traced back to a visit of Arnauld
to Holland in A.D. 1681, and its effects were seen in the
circulation of prayer-books, tracts, and sermons, urging diligent
reading of Scripture, in the depreciation of the worship of Mary,
of indulgences, of images of saints and relics, rosaries and
scapularies (§ 186, 2), processions and fraternities, in the
rigoristic strictness of the confessional, the use of the
common language of the country in baptism, marriage, and extreme
unction, etc. The archbishop of that time, Peter Codde, in order
to isolate him, was decoyed to Rome, and there flattered with
hypocritical pretensions of goodwill, while behind his back his
deposition was carried out, and an apostolic vicar nominated for
Utrecht in the person of his deadly foe Theodore de Cock. But
the chapter refused him obedience, and the States of Holland
forbad him to exercise any official function, and under threat
of banishment of all Jesuits demanded the immediate return of
the archbishop. Codde was now sent down with the papal blessing,
but a formal decree of deposition followed him. Meanwhile the
government pronounced on his rival De Cock, who avoided a trial
for high treason by flight, a sentence of perpetual exile. But
Codde, though persistently recognised by his chapter as the
rightful archbishop, withheld on conscientious grounds from
discharging official duties down to his death in A.D. 1710. Amid
these disputes the Utrecht see remained vacant for thirteen years.
The flock were without a chief shepherd, the inferior clergy
without direction and support, the people were wrought upon
by Jesuit emissaries, and the vacant pastorates were filled by
the nuncio of Cologne. Thus it came about that of the 300,000
Catholics remaining after the Reformation, only a few thousands
continued faithful to the national party, while the rest became
bitter and extreme ultramontanes, as the Catholic church of
Holland still is. Finally, in A.D. 1723, the Utrecht chapter
took courage and chose a new archbishop in the person of
Cornelius Steenowen. Receiving no answer to their request for
papal confirmation, the chapter, after waiting a year and a
half, had him and also his three successors consecrated by a
French missionary bishop, Varlet, who had been driven away by
the Jesuits. But in order to prevent the threatened loss of
legitimate consecration for future bishops after Varlet’s death
in A.D. 1742, a bishop elected at Utrecht was in that same year
ordained to the chapter of Haarlem, and in A.D. 1758 the newly
founded bishopric of Deventer was so supplied. All these, like
all subsequent elections, were duly reported to Rome, and a
strictly Catholic confession from electors and elected sent
up; but each time, instead of confirmation, a frightful ban
was thundered forth. This, however, did not deter the Dutch
government from formally recognising the elections.--Meanwhile
the second and last act of the Jansenist tragedy had been played
in France. Many of the persecuted Appellants sought refuge in
Holland, and the welcome accorded them seemed to justify the
long cherished suspicion of Jansenism against the people of
Utrecht. They repelled these charges, however, by condemning the
five propositions and the heresies of Quesnel’s book; but they
expressly refused the bull of Alexander VII. and its doctrine
of papal infallibility. This put a stop to all attempts at
reconciliation. The church of Utrecht meanwhile prospered. At
a council held at Utrecht in A.D. 1765 it styled itself “The
Old Roman Catholic Church of the Netherlands,” acknowledged the
pope, although under his anathema, as the visible head of the
Christian church, accepted the Tridentine decrees as their creed,
and sent this with all the acts of council to Rome as proof of
their orthodoxy. The Jesuits did all in their power to overturn
the formidable impression which this at first made there;
and they were successful. Clement XIII. declared the council
null, and those who took part in it hardened sons of Belial.
But their church at this day contains, under one archbishop
and two bishops, twenty-six congregations, numbering 6,000
souls.[494]--Continuation, § 200, 3.
§ 165.9. =Suppression of the Order of Jesuits, A.D. 1773.=--The
Jesuits had striven with growing eagerness and success after
worldly power, and instead of absolute devotion to the interests
of the papacy, their chief aim was now the erection of an
independent political and hierarchical dominion. Their love
of rule had sustained its first check in the overthrow of the
Jesuit state of Paraguay; but they had secured a great part of
the world’s trade (§ 156, 13), and strove successfully to control
European politics. The Jansenist controversy, however, had called
forth against them much popular odium; Pascal had made them
ridiculous to all men of culture, the other monkish orders were
hostile to them, their success in trade roused the jealousy of
other traders, and their interference in politics made enemies
on every hand. The Portuguese government took the first decided
step. A revolt in Paraguay and an attempt on the king’s life were
attributed to them, and the minister Pombal, whose reforms they
had opposed, had them banished from Portugal in A.D. 1759, and
their goods confiscated. =Clement XIII.=, A.D. 1758-1769, chosen
by the Jesuits and under their influence, protected them by a
bull; but Portugal refused to let the bull be proclaimed, led the
papal nuncio over the frontier, broke off all relations with Rome,
and sent whole shiploads of Jesuits to the pope. France followed
Portugal’s example when the general Ricci had answered the king’s
demand for a reform of his orders: _Sint ut sunt, aut non sint_.
For the enormous financial failure of the Jesuit La Valette,
the whole order was made responsible, and at last, in A.D. 1764,
banished from France as dangerous to the state. Spain, Naples,
and Parma, too, soon seized all the Jesuits and transported them
beyond the frontiers. The new papal election on the death of
Clement XIII. was a life and death question with the Jesuits,
but courtly influences and fears of a schism prevailed. The
pious and liberal Minorite Ganganelli mounted the papal throne
as =Clement XIV.=, A.D. 1769-1774. He began with sweeping
administrative reforms, forbad the reading of the bull _In cœna
Domini_ (§ 117, 3), and, pressed by the Bourbon court, issued in
A.D. 1773 the bull _Dominus ac Redemtor Noster_ suppressing the
Jesuit order. The order numbered 22,600 members and the pope felt,
in granting the bull, that he endangered his own life. Next year
he died, not without suspicion of poisoning. All the Catholic
courts, even Austria, put the decree in force. But the heretic
Frederick II. tolerated the order for a long time in Silesia, and
Catherine II. and Paul I. in their Polish provinces.--=Pius VI.=,
A.D. 1775-1799, in many respects the antithesis of his
predecessor, was the secret friend of the exiled and imprisoned
ex-Jesuits. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, a
proposal was made at Rome, in A.D. 1792, for the formal
restoration of the order, as a means of saving the seriously
imperilled church, but it did not find sufficient encouragement.
§ 165.10. =Anti-hierarchical Movements in Germany and
Italy.=--Even before Joseph II. could carry out his reforms in
ecclesiastical polity, the noble elector =Maximilian Joseph III.=,
A.D. 1745-1777, with greater moderation but complete success,
effected a similar reform in the Jesuit-overrun Bavaria. Himself
a strict Catholic, he asserted the supremacy of the state over a
foreign hierarchy, and by reforming the churches, cloisters, and
schools of his country he sought to improve their position. But
under his successor, Charles Theodore, A.D. 1777-1799, everything
was restored to its old condition.--Meanwhile a powerful voice
was raised from the midst of the German prelates that aimed a
direct blow at the hierarchical papal system. =Nicholas von
Hontheim=, the suffragan Bishop of Treves, had under the name
_Justinus Febronius_ published, in A.D. 1763, a treatise _De
Statu Ecclesiæ_, in which he maintained the supreme authority of
general councils and the independence of bishops in opposition to
the hierarchical pretensions of the popes. It was soon translated
into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. The book
made a great impression, and Clement XIII. could do nothing
against the bold defender of the liberties of the church. In
A.D. 1778, indeed, Pius VI. had the poor satisfaction of extorting
a recantation from the old man of seventy-seven years, but he
lived to see yet more deadly storms burst upon the church. Urged
by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, the pope, in A.D. 1785,
had made Munich the residence of a nuncio. The episcopal electors
of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, and the Archbishop of Salzburg,
seeing their archiepiscopal rights in danger, met in congress
at Ems in A.D. 1786, and there, on the basis of the Febronian
proofs, claimed, in the so called =Punctation of Ems=, practical
independence of the pope and the restoration of an independent
German national Catholic church. But the German bishops found
it easier to obey the distant pope than the near archbishops.
So they united their opposition with that of the pope, and the
undertaking of the archbishops came to nothing.--More threatening
still for the existence of the hierarchy was the reign of
=Joseph II.= in Austria. German emperor from A.D. 1765, and
co-regent with his mother Maria Theresa, he began, immediately
on his succession to sole rule in A.D. 1780, a radical reform of
the whole ecclesiastical institutions throughout his hereditary
possessions. In A.D. 1781 he issued his =Edict of Toleration=,
by which, under various restrictions, the Protestants obtained
civil rights and liberty of worship. Protestant places of worship
were to have no bells or towers, were to pay stole dues to the
Catholic priests, in mixed marriages the Catholic father had the
right of educating all his children and the Catholic mother could
claim the education at least of her daughters. By stopping all
episcopal communications with the papal curia, and putting all
papal bulls and ecclesiastical edicts under strict civil control,
the Catholic church was emancipated from Roman influences, set
under a native clergy, and made serviceable in the moral and
religious training of the people, and all her institutions that
did not serve this end were abolished. Of the 2,000 cloisters,
606 succumbed before this decree, and those that remained were
completely sundered from all connexion with Rome. In vain the
bishops and Pius VI. protested. The pope even went to Vienna in
A.D. 1782; but though received with great respect, he could make
nothing of the emperor. Joseph’s procedure had been somewhat
hasty and inconsiderate, and a reaction set in, led by interested
parties, on the emperor’s early death in A.D. 1790.--The
Grand-duke =Leopold of Tuscany=, Joseph’s brother, with the
aid of the pious Bishop Scipio von Ricci, inclined to Jansenism,
sought also in a similar way to reform the church of his land
at the Synod of Pistoia, in A.D. 1786. But here too at last the
hierarchy prevailed.
§ 165.11. =Theological Literature.=--The Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, A.D. 1685, gave the deathblow to the French Reformed
theology, but it also robbed Catholic theology =in France= of its
spur and incentive. The Huguenot polemic against the papacy, and
that of Jansenism against the semi-pelagianism of the Catholic
church, were silenced; but now the most rabid naturalism, atheism,
and materialism held the field, and the church theology was so
lethargic that it could not attempt any serious opposition. Yet
even here some names are worthy of being recorded. Above all,
=Bernard de Montfaucon= of St. Maur, the ablest antiquarian of
France, besides his classical works, issued admirable editions of
Athanasius, Chrysostom, Origen’s “_Hexapla_,” and the “_Collectio
Nova Patrum_.” =E. Renaudot=, a learned expert in the oriental
languages, wrote several works in vindication of the “_Perpétuité
de la Foi cath._,” a history of the Jacobite patriarchs of
Alexandria, etc., and compiled a “_Collectio liturgiarum
Oriental_,” in two vols. Of permanent worth is the “_Bibliotheca
Sacra_” of the Oratorian =Le Long=, which forms an admirable
literary-historical apparatus for the Bible. The learned Jesuit
=Hardouin=, who pronounced all Greek and Latin classics, with
few exceptions, to be monkish products of the thirteenth century,
and denied the existence of all pre-Tridentine general councils,
edited a careful collection of Acts of Councils in twelve vols.
folio in Paris, 1715, and compiled an elaborate chronology
of the Old Testament. His pupil, the Jesuit =Berruyer=, wrote
a romancing “_Hist. du Peuple de Dieu_,” which, though much
criticised, was widely read. Incomparably more important was
the Benedictine =Calmet=, died A.D. 1757, whose “_Dictionnaire de
la Bible_” and “_Commentaire Littéral et Critique_” on the whole
Bible are really most creditable for their time. And, finally,
the Parisian professor of medicine, =Jean Astruc=, deserves to
be named as the founder of the modern Pentateuch criticism, whose
“_Conjectures sur les Mémoires Originaux_,” etc., appeared in
Brussels A.D. 1753.--Within the limits of the French Revolution
the noble theosophist =St. Martin=, died A.D. 1805, a warm
admirer of Böhme, wrote his brilliant and profound treatises.
§ 165.12. =In Italy= the most important contributions were in
the department of history. =Mansi=, in his collection of Acts of
Councils in thirty-one vols. folio, A.D. 1759 ff., and =Muratori=,
in his “_Scriptores Rer. Italic._,” in twenty-eight vols., and
“_Antiquitt. Ital. Med. Ævi_,” in six vols., show brilliant
learning and admirable impartiality. =Ugolino=, in a gigantic
work, “_Thesaurus Antiquitt. ss._,” thirty-four folio vols.,
A.D. 1744 ff., gathers together all that is most important for
biblical archæology. The three =Assemani=, uncle and two nephews,
cultured Maronites in Rome, wrought in the hitherto unknown
field of Syrian literature and history. The uncle, Joseph Simon,
librarian at the Vatican, wrote “_Bibliotheca Orientalis_,”
in four vols., A.D. 1719 ff., and edited Ephraem’s [Ephraim’s]
works in six vols. The elder nephew, Stephen Evodius, edited
the “_Acta ss. Martyrum Orient. et Occid._,” in two vols.,
and the younger, Joseph Aloysius, a “_Codex Liturgicus Eccles.
Univ._,” in thirteen vols. Among dogmatical works the “_Theologia
hist.-dogm.-scholastica_,” in eight vols. folio, Rome, 1739, of
the Augustinian =Berti= deserves mention. =Zaccaria= of Venice,
in some thirty vols., proved an indefatigable opponent of
Febronianism, Josephinism, and such-like movements, and a careful
editor of older Catholic works. The Augustinian =Florez=, died
A.D. 1773, did for =Spain= what Muratori had done for Italy
in making collections of ancient writers, which, with the
continuations of the brethren of his order, extended to fifty
folio volumes.--In =Germany= the greatest Catholic theologian
of the century was =Amort=. Of his seventy treatises the
most comprehensive is the “_Theologia Eclectica, Moralis et
Scholastica_,” in four vols. folio, A.D. 1752. He conducted
a conciliatory polemic against the Protestants, contested
the mysticism of Maria von Agreda (§ 156, 5), and vigorously
controverted superstition, miracle-mongering, and all manner
of monkish extravagances. To the time of Joseph II. belongs the
liberal, latitudinarian supernaturalist =Jahn= of Vienna, whose
“Introduction to the Old Testament,” and “Biblical Antiquities”
did much to raise the standard of biblical learning. For
his anti-clericalism he was deprived of his professorship in
A.D. 1805, and died in A.D. 1816 a canon in Vienna. To this
century also belongs the greatly blessed literary labours of
the accomplished mystic, =Sailer=, beginning at Ingolstadt in
A.D. 1777, and continued at Dillingen from A.D. 1784. Deprived
in A.D. 1794 of his professorship on pretence of his favouring
the Illuminati, it was not till A.D. 1799 that he was allowed to
resume his academic work in Ingolstadt and Landshut. By numerous
theological, ascetical, and philosophical tracts, but far more
powerfully by his lectures and personal intercourse, he sowed
the seeds of rationalism, which bore fruit in the teachings
of many Catholic universities, and produced in the hearts of
many pupils a warm and deep and at the same time a gentle and
conciliatory Catholicism, which heartily greeted, even in pious
Protestants, the foundations of a common faith and life. Compare
§ 187, 1.--Continuation, § 191.
§ 165.13. =The German-Catholic Contribution to the
Illumination.=--The Catholic church of Germany was also carried
away with the current of “the Illumination,” which from the
middle of the century had overrun Protestant Germany. While the
exorcisms and cures of Father Gassner in Regensburg were securing
signal triumphs to Catholicism, though these were of so dubious
a kind that the bishops, the emperor, and finally even the curia,
found it necessary to check the course of the miracle worker,
=Weishaupt=, professor of canon law in Ingolstadt, founded,
in A.D. 1776, the secret society of the =Illuminati=, which
spread its deistic ideas of culture and human perfectibility
through Catholic South Germany. Though inspired by deadly
hatred of the Jesuits, Weishaupt imitated their methods, and
so excited the suspicion of the Bavarian government, which, in
A.D. 1785, suppressed the order and imprisoned and banished its
leaders.--Catholic theology too was affected by the rationalistic
movement. But that the power of the church to curse still
survived was proved in the case of the Mainz professor, =Laurence
Isenbiehl=, who applied the passage about Immanuel, in Isaiah
vii. 14, not to the mother of Christ, but to the wife of the
prophet, for which he was deposed in A.D. 1774, and on account
of his defective knowledge of theology was sent back for two
years to the seminary. When in A.D. 1778 he published a learned
treatise on the same theme, he was put in prison. The pope too
condemned his exposition as pestilential, and Isenbiehl “as
a good Catholic” retracted. =Steinbühler=, a young jurist of
Salzburg, having been sentenced to death in A.D. 1781 for some
contemptuous words about the Catholic ceremonies, was pardoned,
but soon after died from the ill-treatment he had received. The
rationalistic movement got hold more and more of the Catholic
universities. In Mainz, =Dr. Blau=, professor of dogmatics,
promulgated with impunity the doctrine that in the course of
centuries the church has often made mistakes. In the Austrian
universities, under the protection of the Josephine edict, a
whole series of Catholic theologians ventured to make cynically
free criticisms, especially in the field of church history. At
Bonn University, founded in A.D. 1786 by the Elector-archbishop
of Cologne, there were teachers like =Hedderich=, who sportively
described himself on the title page of a dissertation as “_jam
quater Romæ damnatus_,” =Dereser=, previously a Carmelite monk,
who followed Eichhorn in his exposition of the biblical miracles,
and =Eulogius Schneider=, who, after having made Bonn too hot
for him by his theological and poetical recklessness, threw
himself into the French Revolution, for two years marched through
Alsace with the guillotine as one of the most dreaded monsters,
and finally, in A.D. 1794, was made to lay his own head on the
block.--At the Austrian universities, under the protection of
the tolerant Josephine legislation, a whole series of Catholic
theologians, Royko, Wolff, Dannenmayr, Michl, etc., criticised,
often with cynical plainness, the proceedings and condition of
the Catholic church. To this class also, in the first stage of
his remarkably changeful and eventful career, belongs Ign. Aur.
=Fessler=. From 1773, a Capuchin in various cloisters, last of
all in Vienna, he brought down upon himself the bitter hatred
of his order by making secret reports to the emperor about the
ongoings that prevailed in these convents. He escaped their
enmity by his appointment, in 1784, as professor of the oriental
languages and the Old Testament at Lemberg, but was in 1787
dismissed from this office on account of various charges against
his life, teaching, and poetical writings. In Silesia, in 1791,
he went over to the Protestant church, joined the freemasons,
held at Berlin the post of a councillor in ecclesiastical and
educational affairs for the newly won Catholic provinces of
Poland, and, after losing this position in consequence of the
events of the war of 1806, found employment in Russia in 1809;
first, as professor of oriental languages at St. Petersburg,
and afterwards, when opposed and persecuted there also on
suspicion of entertaining atheistical views, as member of a legal
commission in South Russia. Meanwhile having gradually moved from
a deistical to a vague mystical standpoint, he was in 1819 made
superintendent and president of the evangelical consistory at
Saratov, with the title of an evangelical bishop, and after the
abolition of that office in 1833 he became general superintendent
at St. Petersburg, where he died in 1839. His romances and
tragedies as well as his theological and religious writings
are now forgotten, but his “Reminiscences of his Seventy Years’
Pilgrimage,” published in 1824, are still interesting, and his
“History of Hungary,” in ten volumes, begun in 1812, is of
permanent value.
§ 165.14. =The French Contribution to the Illumination.=--The
age of Louis XIV., with the morals of its Jesuit confessors, the
lust, bigotry, and hypocrisy of its court, its dragonnades and
Bastille polemic against revivals of a living Christianity among
Huguenots, mystics, and Jansenists, its prophets of the Cevennes
and Jansenist convulsionists, etc., called forth a spirit of
freethinking to which Catholicism, Jansenism, and Protestantism
appeared equally ridiculous and absurd. This movement was
essentially different from English deism. The principle of
the English movement was _common sense_, the universal moral
consciousness in man, with the powerful weapon of rational
criticism, maintaining the existence of an ideal and moral
element in men, and holding by the more general principles of
religion. French naturalism, on the other hand, was a philosophy
of the _esprit_, that essentially French lightheartedness
which laughed away everything of an ideal sort with scorn and
wit. Yet there was an intimate relationship between the two.
The philosophy of common sense came to France, and was there
travestied into a philosophy _d’esprit_. The organ of this French
philosophy was the “_Encyclopédie_” of Diderot and D’Alembert,
and its most brilliant contributors, Montesquieu, Helvetius,
Voltaire, and Rousseau. =Montesquieu=, A.D. 1689-1755, whose
“_Esprit des Lois_” in two years passed through twenty-two
editions, wrote the “_Lettres Persanes_,” in which with biting
wit he ridiculed the political, social, and ecclesiastical
condition of France. =Helvetius=, A.D. 1715-1771, had his book,
“_De l’Esprit_,” burnt in A.D. 1759 by order of parliament,
and was made to retract, but this only increased his influence.
=Voltaire=, A.D. 1694-1778, although treating in his writings
of philosophical and theological matters, gives only a hash
of English deism spiced with frivolous wit, showing the same
tendency in his historical and poetical works, giving a certain
eloquence to the commonest and filthiest subjects, as in his
“_Pucelle_” and “_Candide_.” He obtained, however, an immense
influence that extended far past his own days. To the same class
belongs =Jean Jacques Rousseau=, A.D. 1712-1778, belonging to the
Roman Catholic church only as a pervert for seventeen years in
the middle of his life. Of a nobler nature than Voltaire, he
yet often sank into deep immorality, as he tells without reserve,
but also without any hearty penitence, in his _Confessions_.
His whole life was taken up with the conflict for his ideals
of freedom, nature, human rights, and human happiness. In
his “_Contrat Social_” of A.D. 1762, he commends a return
to the natural condition of the savage as the ideal end of
man’s endeavour. His “_Emile_” of A.D. 1761 is of epoch-making
importance in the history of education, and in it he eloquently
sets forth his ideal of a natural education of children,
while he sent all his own (natural) children to a foundling
hospital.--The physician =De la Mettrie=, who died at the court
of Frederick the Great in A.D. 1751, carried materialism to
its most extreme consequences, and the German-Frenchman Baron
=Holbach=, A.D. 1723-1789, wrote the “_Système de la Nature_,”
which in two years passed through eighteen editions.[495]
§ 165.15. These seeds bore fruit in the =French Revolution=.
Voltaire’s cry “_Écrasez l’infame_,” was directed against the
church of the Inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
and the dragonnades, and Diderot had exclaimed that the world’s
salvation could only come when the last king had been strangled
with the entrails of the last priest. The constitutional National
Assembly, A.D. 1789-1791, wished to set aside, not the faith of
the people, but only the hierarchy, and to save the state from
a financial crisis by the goods of the church. All cloisters
were suppressed and their property sold. The number of bishops
was reduced to one half, all ecclesiastical offices without
a pastoral sphere were abolished, the clergy elected by the
people paid by the state, and liberty of belief recognised as
an inalienable right of man. The legislative National Assembly,
A.D. 1791, 1792, made all the clergy take an oath to the
constitution on pain of deposition. The pope forbad it under
the same threat. Then arose a schism. Some 40,000 priests who
refused the oath mostly quitted the country. Avignon (§ 110, 4)
had been incorporated in the French territory. The terrorist
National Convention, A.D. 1792-1795, which brought the king
to the scaffold on January 21st, A.D. 1793, and the queen on
October 16th, prohibited all Christian customs, on 5th October
abolished the Christian reckoning of time, and on November 7th
Christianity itself, laid waste 2,000 churches and converted
_Notre Dame_ into a _Temple de la Raison_, where a ballet-dancer
represented the goddess of reason. Stirred up by the fanatical
baron, “Anacharsis” Cloots, “the apostle of human freedom and the
personal enemy of Jesus Christ,” the Archbishop Gobel, now in his
sixtieth year, came forward, proclaiming his whole past life a
fraud, and owning no other religion than that of freedom. On the
other hand, the noble Bishop Gregoire of Blois, the first priest
to support the constitution, who voted for the abolition of
royalty, but not the execution of the king, was not driven by
the terrorism of the convention, of which he was a member, from
a bold and open profession of Christianity, appearing in his
clerical dress and unweariedly protesting against the vandalism
of the Assembly. Robespierre[496] himself said, “_Si Dieu
n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer_,” passed in A.D. 1794
the resolution, _Le peuple français reconnait l’Être suprême et
l’immortalité de l’âme_, and issued an order to celebrate the
_fête de l’Être suprême_. The Directory, A.D. 1795-1799, restored
indeed Christian worship, but favoured the deistical sect of the
=Theophilanthropists=, whose high-swelling phrases soon called
forth public scorn, while in A.D. 1802 the first consul banished
their worship from all churches. But meanwhile, in A.D. 1798, in
order to nullify the opposition of the pope, French armies had
overrun Italy and proclaimed the Church States a Roman Republic.
=Pius VI.= was taken prisoner to France, and died in A.D. 1799 at
Valence under the rough treatment of the French, without having
in the least compromised himself or his office.[497]
§ 165.16. =The Pseudo-Catholics.=
1. =The Abrahamites or Bohemian Deists.= When Joseph II. issued
his edict of toleration in A.D. 1781, a sect which had
hitherto kept itself secret under the mask of Catholicism
made its appearance in the Bohemian province of Pardubitz.
The Abrahamites were descended from the old Hussites,
and professed to follow the faith of Abraham before his
circumcision. Their fundamental doctrine was deistic
monotheism, and of the Bible they accepted only the ten
commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. But as they would
neither attend the Jewish synagogue nor the churches of any
existing Christian sect, the emperor refused them religious
toleration, drove them from their homes, and settled them
in A.D. 1783 on the eastern frontiers. Many of them, in
consequence of persecution, returned to the Catholic church,
and even those who remained steadfast did not transmit their
faith to their children.
§ 165.17.
2. =The Frankists.=--Jacob Leibowicz, the son of a Jewish rabbi
in Galicia, attached himself in Turkey, where he assumed the
name of =Frank=, to the Jewish sect of the Sabbatarians, who,
repudiating the Talmud, adopted the cabbalistic book Sohar
as the source of their more profound religious teaching.
Afterwards in Podolia, which was then still Polish, he was
esteemed among his numerous adherents as a Messiah sent of
God. Bitterly hated by the rabbinical Jews, and accused of
indulging in vile orgies in their assemblies, many of those
Soharists were thrown into prison at the instigation of
Bishop Dembowski of Kaminetz. But when they turned and
accused their opponents of most serious crimes against
Christendom, and, at Frank’s suggestion, pointing out what
they alleged to be an identity between the book Sohar and
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation, made
it known that they were inclined to become converts, they
won the favour of the bishop. He arranged a disputation
between the two parties, pronounced the Talmudists beaten,
confiscated all available copies of the Talmud, dragged
them through the streets tied to the tail of a horse, and
then burnt them. Dembowski, however, died soon after in
A.D. 1757, and the cathedral chapter expelled the Soharists
from Kaminetz. They appealed to King Augustus III. and to
Archbishop Lubienski of Lemberg, renewing their profession
of faith in the Trinity, and promising to be subject to the
pope. In a disputation with the Talmudists lasting three
days they sought to prove that the Talmudists used Christian
blood in their services, which afterwards led to the death
of five of the Jews thus accused. By Frank’s advice, who
took part neither in this nor in the former disputation,
but was the secret leader of the whole movement, they now
formally applied for admission into the Catholic church,
and their leader now entered Lemberg in great state. They
actually submitted to be thus driven by him, and 1,000 of
his adherents were baptized at Lemberg. Frank was baptized
at Warsaw under the name of =Joseph=, the king himself
acting as sponsor. In all Catholic journals this event was
celebrated as a signal triumph for the Catholic church.
But Frank among his own disciples continued to play the
_rôle_ of a miracle-working Messiah. Hence in A.D. 1760
the Inquisition stepped in. Some of his followers were
imprisoned, others banished, and he himself as a heresiarch
condemned to confinement for life with hard labour, from
which after thirteen years he was liberated on the first
partition of Poland in A.D. 1772, through the favour of
Catherine II., who employed him as secret political agent.
Feeling that his life was insecure in Poland, he went to
Moravia, and at Brünn reorganized his numerous and attached
followers into a well-knit society, by which he was revered
as the incarnation of the Deity, and his beautiful daughter
Eva, brought up by her noble godmother, as “the divine
Emuna.” How he was permitted, under the protection of the
Catholic church, to continue here for sixteen years, playing
the _rôle_ of a Messiah, and to amass such wealth as enabled
him to purchase, in A.D. 1788, from the impoverished prince
of Homburg-Birstein his castle at Offenbach, with all the
privileges attached to it, is an insoluble mystery. He now
called himself Baron von Frank, formed with his followers
from Moravia and Poland a brilliant establishment, which
outwardly adhered to the Roman Catholic church, although he
very seldom attended the Catholic services. Frank died in
A.D. 1791, and was buried with great pomp, but without the
presence of the Catholic clergy. His daughter Eva was able
to maintain the extravagant establishment of her father
for twenty-six years, when the debt resting on the castle
reached three million florins. At last, in A.D. 1817, the
long-threatened catastrophe occurred. Eva died suddenly,
and a coffin said to contain her body was actually with
all decorum laid in the grave.
§ 166. THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES.
The oppressed condition of the orthodox church in the Ottoman empire
continued unchanged. It had a more vigorous development in Russia,
where its ascendency was unchallenged. Although the Russian church,
from the time of its obtaining an independent patriarchate at Moscow,
in A.D. 1589, was constitutionally emancipated from the mother church
of Constantinople, it yet continued in close religious affinity with it.
This was intensified by the adoption of the common confession, drawn up
shortly before by Peter Mogilas (§ 152, 3). The patriarchal constitution
in Russia, however, was but short-lived, for Peter I., in 1702,
after the death of the Patriarch Hadrian, abolished the patriarchate,
arrogated to himself as emperor the highest ecclesiastical office,
and in A.D. 1721 constituted “the Holy Synod,” to which, under the
supervision of a procurator guarding the rights of the state, he
assigned the supreme direction of spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs.
To these proposals the Patriarch of Constantinople gave his approval.
In this reform of the church constitution Theophanes Procopowicz,
Metropolitan of Novgorod, was the emperor’s right hand.--The
monophysite church of Abyssinia was again during this period the
scene of Christological controversies.
§ 166.1. =The Russian State Church.=--From the time of the
liturgical reformation of the Patriarch Nikon (§ 163, 10) a
new and peculiar =service of song= took the place of the old
unison style that had previously prevailed in the Russian church.
Without instrumental accompaniment, it was sustained simply by
powerful male voices, and was executed, at least in the chief
cities, with musical taste and charming simplicity. Among
the =theologians=, the above-named Procopowicz, who died in
A.D. 1736, occupied a prominent position. His “Handbook of
Dogmatics,” without departing from the doctrines of his church,
is characterized by learning, clearness of exposition, and
moderation. From the middle of the century, however, especially
among the superior clergy, there crept in a Protestant tendency,
which indeed held quite firmly by the old theology of the
œcumenical synods of the Greek Church, but set aside or laid
little stress upon later doctrinal developments. Even the
celebrated and widely used catechism, drawn up originally for the
use of the Grand-duke Paul Petrovich, by his tutor, the learned
Platón, afterwards Metropolitan of Moscow, was not quite free
from this tendency. It found yet more decided expression in
the dogmatic handbook of Theophylact, archimandrite of Moscow,
published in A.D. 1773.--Continuation, § 206, 1.
§ 166.2. =Russian Sects.=--To the sects of the seventeenth
century (§ 163, 10) are to be added spiritualistic gnostics of
the eighteenth, in which we find a blending of western ideas with
the old oriental mysticism. Among those were the =Malakanen=, or
consumers of milk, because, in spite of the orthodox prohibition,
they used milk during the fasts. They rejected all anointings,
even chrism and priestly consecration, and acknowledged only
spiritual anointing by the doctrine of Christ. They also
volatilized the idea of baptism and the Lord’s supper into that
of a merely spiritual cleansing and nourishing by the word of the
gospel. Otherwise they led a quiet and honourable life. More
important still in regard to numbers and influence were the
=Duchoborzen=. Although belonging exclusively to the peasant
class, they had a richly developed theological system of a
speculative character, with a notable blending of theosophy,
mysticism, Protestantism, and rationalism. They idealized the
doctrine of the sacraments after the style of the Quakers, would
have no special places of worship or an ordained clergy, refused
to take oaths or engage in military service, and led peaceable
and useful lives. They made their first appearance in Moscow in
the beginning of the eighteenth century under Peter the Great,
and spread through other cities of Old Russia.--Continuation,
§ 210, 3.
§ 166.3. =The Abyssinian Church= (§§ 64, 1; 73, 2).--About the
middle of the century a monk appeared, proclaiming that, besides
the commonly admitted twofold birth of Christ, the eternal
generation of the Father and the temporal birth of the Virgin
Mary, there was a third birth through anointing with the Holy
Spirit in the baptism in Jordan. He thus convulsed the whole
Abyssinian church, which for centuries had been in a state of
spiritual lethargy. The _abuna_ with the majority of his church
held by the old doctrine, but the new also found many adherents.
The split thus occasioned has continued till the present time,
and has played no unimportant part in the politico-dynastic
struggles of the last ten years (§ 184, 9).
II. The Protestant Churches.
§ 167. THE LUTHERAN CHURCH BEFORE “THE ILLUMINATION.”
By means of the founding of the University of Halle in A.D. 1694
a fresh impulse was given to the pietist movement, and too often the
whole German Church was embroiled in violent party strifes, in which
both sides failed to keep the happy mean, and laid themselves open to
the reproach of the adversaries. Spener died in A.D. 1705, Francke in
A.D. 1727, and Breithaupt in A.D. 1732. After the loss of these leaders
the Halle pietism became more and more gross, narrow, unscientific,
regardless of the Church confession, frequently renouncing definite
beliefs for hazy pious feeling, and attaching undue importance to pious
forms of expression and methodistical modes of life. The conventionalism
encouraged by it became a very Pandora’s box of sectarianism and
fanaticism (§ 170, 1). But it had also set up a ferment in the church
and in theology which created a wholesome influence for many years. More
than 6,000 theologians from all parts of Germany had down to Francke’s
death received their theological training in Halle, and carried the
leaven of his spirit into as many churches and schools. A whole series
of distinguished teachers of theology now rose in almost all the
Lutheran churches of the German states, who, avoiding the onesidedness
of the pietists and their opponents, taught and preached pure doctrine
and a pious life. From Calixt they had learnt to be mild and fair
towards the Reformed and Catholic churches, and by Spener they had
been roused to a genuine and hearty piety. Gottfried Arnold’s protest,
onesided as it was, had taught them to discover, even among heretics
and sectaries, partial and distorted truths; and from Calov and Löscher
they had inherited a zeal for pure doctrine. Most eminent among these
were Albert Bengel, of Württemberg, who died in A.D. 1752, and Chr. Aug.
Crusius of Leipzig, who died in A.D. 1775. But when the flood of “the
Illumination” came rushing in upon the German Lutheran Church about the
middle of the century, it overflowed even the fields sown by these noble
men.
§ 167.1. =The Pietist Controversies after the Founding of the
Halle University= (§ 159, 3).--Pietism, condemned by the orthodox
universities of Leipzig and Wittenberg, was protected and
encouraged in Halle. The crowds of students flocking to this new
seminary roused the wrath of the orthodox. The Wittenberg faculty,
with Deutschmann at its head, issued a manifesto in A.D. 1695,
charging Spener with no less than 264 errors in doctrine. Nor
were those of Leipzig silent, Carpzov going so far as to style
the mild and peace-loving Spener a _procella ecclesiæ_. Other
leading opponents of the pietists were Schelwig of Dantzig,
Mayer of Wittenberg, and Fecht of Rostock. When Spener died in
A.D. 1705 his opponents gravely discussed whether he could be
thought of as in glory. Fecht of Rostock denied that it could
be. Among the later champions of pure doctrine the worthiest
and ablest was the learned Löscher, superintendent at Dresden,
A.D. 1709-1747, who at least cannot be reproached with dead
orthodoxy. His “_Vollständiger Timotheus Verinus_,” two vols.,
1718, 1721, is by far the most important controversial work
against pietism.[498] Francis Buddeus of Jena for a long time
sought ineffectually to bring about a reconciliation between
Löscher and the pietists of Halle. In A.D. 1710 Francke and
Breithaupt obtained a valorous colleague in Joachim Lange;
but even he was no match for Löscher in controversy. Meanwhile
pietism had more and more permeated the life of the people, and
occasioned in many places violent popular tumults. In several
states conventicles were forbidden; in others, _e.g._ Württemberg
and Denmark, they were allowed.
§ 167.2. The orthodox regarded the pietists as a new sect,
with dangerous errors that threatened the pure doctrine of the
Lutheran Church; while the pietists maintained that they held by
pure Lutheran orthodoxy, and only set aside its barren formalism
and dead externalism for biblical practical Christianity. The
controversy gathered round the doctrines of the new birth,
justification, sanctification, the church, and the millennium.
a. The new birth. The orthodox maintained that regeneration
takes place in baptism (§ 141, 13), every baptized person
is regenerate; but the new birth needs nursing, nourishment,
and growth, and, where these are wanting, reawakening.
The pietists identified awakening or conversion with
regeneration, considered that it was effected in later
life through the word of God, mediated by a corporeal and
spiritual penitential struggle, and a consequent spiritual
experience, and sealed by a sensible assurance of God’s
favour in the believer’s blessed consciousness. This
inward sealing marks the beginning, introduction into the
condition of babes in Christ. They distinguished a _theologia
viatorum_, _i.e._ the symbolical church doctrine, and a
_theologia regenitorum_, which has to do with the soul’s
inner condition after the new birth. They have consequently
been charged with maintaining that a true Christian who has
arrived at the stage of spiritual manhood may and must in
this life become free from sin.
b. Justification and Sanctification. In opposition to an
only too prevalent externalizing of the doctrine of
justification, Spener has taught that only living faith
justifies, and if genuine must be operative, though not
meritorious. Only in faith proved to be living by a pious
life and active Christianity, but not in faith in the
external and objective promises of God’s word, lies the sure
guarantee of justification obtained. His opponents therefore
accused him of confounding justification and sanctification,
and depreciating the former in favour of the latter.
And, though not by Spener, yet by many of his followers,
justification was put in the background, and in a onesided
manner stress was laid upon practical Christianity.
Spener and Francke had expressly preached against worldly
dissipation and frivolity, and condemned dancing, the
theatre, card-playing, as detrimental to the progress of
sanctification, and therefore sinful; while the orthodox
regarded them as matters of indifference. Besides this, the
pietists held the doctrine of a day of grace, assigned to
each one within the limit of his earthly life (_terminism_).
c. The Church and the Pastorate. Orthodoxy regarded word and
sacrament and the ministry which administered them as the
basis and foundation of the church; pietism held that the
individual believers determined the character and existence
of the church. In the one case the church was thought
to beget, nurse, and nourish believers; in the other
believers, constituted, maintained, and renewed the church,
accomplishing this best by conventicles, in which living
Christianity preserved itself and diffused its influence
abroad. The orthodox laid great stress upon clerical
ordination and the grace of office; pietists on the person
and his faith. Spener had taught that only he who has
experienced in his own heart the power of the gospel,
_i.e._ he who has been born again, can be a true preacher
and pastor. Löscher maintained that the official acts of an
unconverted preacher, if only he be orthodox, may be blessed
as well as those of a converted man, because saving power
lies not in the person of the preacher, but in the word of
God which he preaches, in its purity and simplicity, and in
the sacraments which he dispenses in accordance with their
institution. The pietists then went so far as absolutely
to deny that saving results could follow the preaching of
an unconverted man. The proclamation of forgiveness by the
church without the inward sealing had for them no meaning;
yea, they regarded it as dangerous, because it quieted
conscience and made sinners secure. Hence they keenly
opposed private confession and churchly absolution. Of a
special grace of office they would know nothing: the true
ordination is the new birth; each regenerate one, and such
a one only, is a true priest. The orthodox insisted above
all on pure doctrine and the church confession; the pietists
too regarded this as necessary, but not as the main thing.
Spener decidedly maintained the duty of accepting the church
symbols; but later pietists rejected them as man’s work, and
so containing errors. Among the orthodox, again, some went
so far as to claim for their symbols absolute immunity from
error. Spener’s opposition to the compulsory use of fixed
Scripture portions, prescribed forms of prayer, and the
exorcism formulary occasioned the most violent contentions.
On the other hand, his reintroduction of the confirmation
service before the first communion, which had fallen into
general desuetude, was imitated, and soon widely prevailed,
even among the orthodox.
d. Eschatology. Spener had interpreted the biblical doctrine of
the 1,000 years’ reign as meaning that, after the overthrow
of the papacy and the conversion of heathens and Jews, a
period of the most glorious and undisturbed tranquillity
would dawn for the kingdom of Christ on earth as prelude
to the eternal sabbath. His opponents denounced this as
chiliasm and fanaticism.
e. There was, finally, a controversy about Divine providence
occasioned by the founding of Francke’s orphan house at
Halle. The pietists pointed to the establishment and growth
of this institution as an instance of immediate divine
providence; while Löscher, by indicating the common means
employed to secure success, reduced the whole affair to the
domain of general and daily providence, without denying the
value of the strong faith in God and the active love that
characterized its founder, as well as the importance of the
Divine blessing which rested upon the work.[499]
§ 167.3. =Theology= (§ 159, 4).--The last two important
representatives of the =Old Orthodox School= were =Löscher=, who,
besides his polemic against pietism, made learned contributions
to biblical philology and church history; and his companion in
arms, =Cyprian= of Gotha, who died in A.D. 1745, the ablest
combatant of Arnold’s “_Ketzerhistorie_,” and opponent of union
efforts and of the papacy.--The =Pietist School=, more fruitful
in practical than scientific theology, contributed to devotional
literature many works that will never be forgotten. The learned
and voluminous writer =Joachim Lange=, who died A.D. 1744, the
most skilful controversialist among the Halle pietists, author
of the “Halle Latin Grammar,” which reached its sixtieth edition
in A.D. 1809, published a commentary on the whole Bible in
seven folio vols. after the Cocceian method. Of importance as
a historian of the Reformation was =Salig= of Wolfenbüttel,
who died in A.D. 1738. =Christian Thomasius= at first attached
himself to the pietists as an opponent of the rigid adherence
to the letter of the orthodox, but was repudiated by them as an
indifferentist. To him belongs the honour of having turned public
opinion against the persecution of witches (§ 117, 4). Out of
the contentions of pietists and orthodox there now rose a =third
school=, in which Lutheran theology and learning were united with
genuine piety and profound thinking, decided confessionalism with
moderation and fairness. Its most distinguished representatives
were =Hollaz= of Pomerania, died 1713 (“_Examen Theologicum
Acroamaticum_”); =Buddeus= of Jena, died 1729 (“_Hist. Ecclst.
V.T._,” “_Instit. Theol. Dogma_,” “_Isagoge Hist. Theol. Univ._”);
=J. Chr. Wolf= of Homburg, died 1739 (“_Biblioth. Hebr._,” “_Curæ
Philol. et Crit. in N.T._”); =Weismann= of Tübingen, died 1747
(“_Hist. Ecclst._”); =Carpzov= of Leipzig, died A.D. 1767 as
superintendent at Lübeck (“_Critica s. V.T._,” “_Introductio
ad Libros cen. V.T._,” “_Apparatus Antiquitt. s. Codicis_”);
=J. H. Michaelis= of Halle, died 1731 (“_Biblia. Hebr. c.
Variis Lectionibus et Brev. Annott._,” “_Uberiores Annott. in
Hagiograph._”); assisted in both by his learned nephew =Chr. Ben.
Michaelis= of Halle, died 1764; =J. G. Walch= of Jena, died 1755
(“_Einl. in die Religionsstreitigkeiten_,” “_Biblioth. Theol.
Selecta_,” “_Biblioth. Patristica_,” “_Luther’s Werke_”); =Chr.
Meth. Pfaff= of Tübingen, died 1760 (“_K. G., K. Recht, Dogmatik,
Moral_”); =L. von Mosheim= of Helmstädt [Helmstadt] and Göttingen,
died 1755, the father of modern church history (“_Institt. Hist.
Ecclst._,” “_Commentarii Rebus Christ. ante Constant. M._,”
“_Dissertationes_,” etc.); =J. Alb. Bengel= of Stuttgart, died
1752 (“_Gnomon N.T._,” a commentary on the N.T. distinguished
by pregnancy of expression and profundity of thought; from
his interpretation of Revelation he expected the millennium to
begin in A.D. 1836); and =Chr. A. Crusius= of Leipzig, died 1775
(“_Hypomnemata ad Theol. Propheticam._”)--A =fourth= theological
school arose out of the application of the mathematical
method of demonstration by the philosopher =Chr. von Wolff=
of Halle, who died A.D. 1754. Wolff attached himself to
the philosophical system of Leibnitz, and sought to unite
philosophy and Christianity; but under the manipulation of his
logico-mathematical method of proof he took all vitality out of
the system, and the pre-established harmony of the world became
a purely mechanical clockwork. He looked merely to the logical
accuracy of Christian truths, without seeking to penetrate their
inner meaning, gave formal exercise to the understanding, while
the heart was left empty and cold; and thus inevitably revelation
and mystery made way for a mere natural theology. Hence the
charge brought against the system of tending to fatalism and
atheism, not only by narrow pietists like Lange, but by able
and liberal theologians like Buddeus and Crusius, was quite
justifiable. By a cabinet order of Frederick William I. in
A.D. 1723 Wolff was deposed, and ordered within two days,
on pain of death, to quit the Prussian states. But so soon as
Frederick II. ascended the throne, in A.D. 1740, he recalled the
philosopher to Halle from Marburg, where he had meanwhile taught
with great success.[500] =Sig. Jac. Baumgarten=, the pious and
learned professor in Halle, who died in A.D. 1757, was the first
to introduce Wolff’s method into theology. In respect of contents
his theology occupies essentially the old orthodox ground.
The ablest promoter of the system was =John Carpov= of Weimar,
who died in A.D. 1768 (“_Theol. Revelata Meth. Scientifica
Adornata_”). When applied to sermons, the Wolffian method led
to the most extreme insipidity and absurdity.
§ 167.4. =Unionist Efforts.=--The distinguished theologian
Chr. Matt. Pfaff, chancellor of the University of Tübingen, who,
without being numbered among the pietists, recognised in pietism
a wholesome reaction against the barren worship of the letter
which had characterized orthodoxy, regarded a union between
the Lutheran and Reformed churches on their common beliefs,
which in importance far exceeded the points of difference, as
both practicable and desirable; and in A.D. 1720 expressed this
opinion in his “_Alloquium Irenicum ad Protestantes_,” in which
he answered the challenge of the “_Corpus Evangelicorum_” at
Regensburg (§ 153, 1). His proposal, however, found little favour
among Lutheran theologians. Not only Cyprian of Gotha, but even
such conciliatory theologians as Weismann of Tübingen and Mosheim
of Helmstädt [Helmstadt], opposed it. But forty years later a
Lutheran theologian, Heumann of Göttingen, demonstrated that “the
Reformed doctrine of the supper is true,” and proposed, in order
to end the schism, that Lutherans should drop their doctrine
of the supper and the Reformed their doctrine of predestination.
This pamphlet, edited after the author’s death by Sack of Berlin,
in A.D. 1764, produced a great sensation, and called forth a
multitude of replies on the Lutheran side, the best of which
were those of Walch of Jena and Ernesti of Leipzig. Even within
the Lutheran church, however, it found considerable favour.
§ 167.5. =Theories of Ecclesiastical Law.=--Of necessity during
the first century of the Protestant church its government was
placed in the hands of the princes, who, because there were no
others to do so, dispensed the _jura episcopalia_ as _præcipua
membra ecclesiæ_. What was allowed at first in the exigency of
these times came gradually to be regarded as a legal right.
Orthodox theology and the juristic system associated with it,
especially that of Carpzov, justified this assumption in what
is called the =episcopal system=. This theory firmly maintains
the mediæval distinction between the spiritual and civil powers
as two independent spheres ordained of God; but it installs the
prince as _summus episcopus_, combining in his person the highest
spiritual with the highest civil authority. In lands, however,
where more than one confession held sway, or where a prince
belonging to a different section of the church succeeded, the
practical difficulties of this theory became very apparent; as,
_e.g._, when a Reformed or Romish prince had to be regarded as
_summus episcopus_ of a Lutheran church. Driven thus to seek
another basis for the claims of royal supremacy, a new theory,
that of the =territorial system=, was devised, according to
which the prince possessed highest ecclesiastical authority, not
as _præcipuum membrum ecclesiæ_, but as sovereign ruler in the
state. The headship of the church was therefore not an independent
prerogative over and above that of civil government, but an
inherent element in it: _cujus regio, illius et religio_. The
historical development of the German Reformation gave support to
this theory (§ 126, 6), as seen in the proceedings of the Diet of
Spires in A.D. 1526, in the Augsburg and Westphalian Peace.
A scientific basis was given it by Puffendorf of Heidelberg,
died A.D. 1694, in alliance with Hobbes (§ 163, 3). It was
further developed and applied by Christian Thomasius of Halle,
died A.D. 1728, and by the famous J. H. Böhmer in his “_Jus
Ecclesiasticum Potestantium_.” Thomasius’ connexion with the
pietists and his indifference to confessions secured for the
theory a favourable reception in that party. Spener himself
indeed preferred the Calvinistic presbyterial constitution,
because only in it could equality be given to all the three
orders, _ministerium ecclesiasticum_, _magistratus politicus_,
_status œconomicus_. This protest by Spener against the two
systems was certainly not without influence upon the construction
of a third theory, the =collegial system=, proposed by Pfaff of
Tübingen, died A.D. 1760. According to this scheme there belonged
to the sovereign as such only the headship of the church, _jus
circa sacra_, while the _jura in sacra_, matters pertaining to
doctrine, worship, ecclesiastical law and its administration,
installation of clergy, and excommunication, as _jura
collegialia_, belonged to the whole body of church members. The
normal constitution therefore required the collective vote of
all the members through their synods. But outward circumstances
during the Reformation age had necessitated the relegating the
discharge of these collegial rights to the princes, which in
itself was not unallowable, if only the position be maintained
that the prince acts _ex commisso_, and is under obligation to
render an account to those who have commissioned him. This system,
on account of its democratic character, found hearty supporters
among the later rationalists. But as a matter of fact nowhere
was any of the three systems consistently carried out. The
constitution adopted in most of the national churches was a
weak vacillation between all the three.[501]
§ 167.6. =Church Song= (§ 159, 3) received, during the first half
of the century, many valuable contributions. Two main groups of
singers may be distinguished:
1. The pietistic school, characterized by a biblical and
practical tendency. The spiritual life of believers, the
work of grace in conversion, growth in holiness, the varying
conditions and experiences of the religious life, were
favourite themes. They were fitted, not so much for use
in the public services, as for private devotion, and few
comparatively have been retained in collections of church
hymns. The later productions of this school sank more and
more into sentimentalism and allegorical and fanciful play
of words. We may distinguish among the Halle pietists an
older school, A.D. 1690-1720, and a younger, A.D. 1720-1750.
The former, coloured by the fervent piety of Francke,
produced simple, hearty, and often profound songs. The most
distinguished representatives were =Freylinghausen=, died
A.D. 1739, Francke’s son-in-law, and director of the Halle
Orphanage, editor in A.D. 1717 of a hymn-book widely used
among the pietists, was author of the hymns “Pure Essence,
spotless Fount of Light,” “The day expires;” =Chr. Fr.
Richter=, physician to the Orphanage, died A.D. 1711, author
of thirty-three beautiful hymns, including “God, whom I as
Love have known;” =Emilia Juliana=, Countess of Schwarzburg
Rudolstadt, died A.D. 1706, who wrote 586 hymns, including
“Who knows how near my end may be?” =Schröder=, pastor in
Magdeburg, died A.D. 1728, wrote “One thing is needful: Let
me deem;” =Winckler=, cathedral preacher of Magdeburg, died
A.D. 1722, author of “Strive, when thou art called of God;”
=Dessler=, rector of Nuremburg, died A.D. 1722, composer
of “I will not let Thee go, Thou help in time of need,” “O
Friend of souls, how well is me;” =Gotter=, died A.D. 1735,
who wrote, “O Cross, we hail thy bitter reign;” =Cresselius=,
pastor in Dusseldorf [Düsseldorf], author of “Awake, O man,
and from thee shake.” The younger Halle school represents
pietism in its period of decay. Its best representatives
are =J. J. Rambach=, professor at Giessen, died A.D. 1735,
who wrote “I am baptized into thy name;” =Allendorf=, court
preacher at Cöthen, died A.D. 1773, editor of a collection
of poetic renderings from the Canticles.
2. The poets of the orthodox party, although opposed to the
pietists, are all more or less touched by the fervent piety
of Spener. =Neumeister=, pastor at Hamburg, died A.D. 1756,
was an orthodox hymn-writer of thoroughly conservative
tendencies, zealously opposing the onesidedness of pietism,
with a strong, ardent faith in the orthodox creed, but
without much significance as a poet. =Schmolck=, pastor
at Schweidnitz, died A.D. 1737, wrote over 1,000 hymns,
including “Blessed Jesus, here we stand,” “Hosanna to the
Son of David! Raise,” “Welcome, thou Victor in the strife.”
=Sol. Franck=, secretary to the consistory at Weimar, died
A.D. 1725, wrote over 300 hymns, including “Rest of the
weary, thou thyself art resting now.” The mediating party
between pietism and orthodoxy, represented by Bengel and
Crusius in theology, is represented among hymn-writers
by =J. Andr. Rothe=, died A.D. 1758, and by =Mentzer=,
died A.D. 1734, composer of “Oh, would I had a thousand
tongues!” In A.D. 1750 J. Jac. von Moser collected a
list of 50,000 spiritual songs printed in the German
language.--Continuation, § 171, 1.
§ 167.7. =Sacred Music= (§ 159, 5).--Decadence of musical taste
accompanied the lowering of the poetic standard, and pietists
went even further than the orthodox in their imitation and
adaptation of operatic airs. =Freylinghausen=, not only himself
composed many such melodies, but made a collection from various
sources in A.D. 1704, retaining some of the more popular of the
older tunes.--There now arose, amid all this depravation of taste,
a noble musician, who, like the good householder, could bring
out of his treasure things new and old. =J. Seb. Bach=, the most
perfect organist who ever lived, was musical director of the
School of St. Thomas, Leipzig, and died A.D. 1750. He turned
enthusiastically to the old chorale, which no one had ever
understood and appreciated as he did. He harmonized the old
chorales for the organ, made them the basis for elaborate organ
studies, gave expression to his profoundest feelings in his
musical compositions and in his recitatives, duets, and airs,
reproduced at the sacred concerts many fine old chorales wedded
to most appropriate Scripture passages. He is for all times
the unrivalled master in fugue, harmony, and modulation. In his
passion music we have expression given to the profoundest ideas
of German Protestantism in the noblest music. After Bach comes a
master in oratorio music hitherto unapproached, =G. Fr. Handel=
of Halle, who, from A.D. 1710 till his death in A.D. 1759,
lived mostly in England. For twenty-five years he wrought for
the opera-house, and only in his later years gave himself to
the composing of oratorios. His operas are forgotten, but his
oratorios will endure to the end of time. His most perfect
work is the “Messiah,” which Herder describes as a Christian
epic in music. Of his other great compositions, “Samson,”
“Judas Maccabæus,” and “Jephtha” may be mentioned.[502]
§ 167.8. =The Christian Life and Devotional Literature.=--Pietism
led to a powerful revival of religious life among the people,
which it sustained by zealous preaching and the publication of
devotional works. A similar activity displayed itself among the
orthodox. Francke began his charitable labours with seven florins;
but with undaunted faith he started his Orphanage, writing over
its door the words of Isaiah xl. 31. In faith and benevolence
Woltersdorff was a worthy successor of Francke; and Baron von
Canstein applied his whole means to the founding of the Bible
Institute of Halle. Missions too were now prosecuted with a zeal
and success which witnessed to the new life that had arisen in
the Lutheran church.--A remarkable manifestation of the pietistic
spirit of this age is seen in =The Praying Children in Silesia=,
A.D. 1707. Children of four years old and upward gathered in open
fields for singing and prayer, and called for the restoration of
churches taken away by the Catholics. The movement spread over
the whole land. In vain was it denounced from the pulpits and
forbidden by the authorities. Opposition only excited more and
more the zeal of the children. At last the churches were opened
for their services. The excitement then gradually subsided. It
was, however, long a subject of discussion between the pietists
and the orthodox; the latter denouncing it as the work of the
devil, the former regarding it as a wonderful awakening of God’s
grace.--Best remembered of the many devotional writers of this
period are Bogatsky of Halle, died A.D. 1774, whose “Golden
Treasury” is still highly esteemed;[503] and Von Moser, died
A.D. 1785, who lived a noble and exemplary life at Stuttgart
amid much sore persecution. The great need of simple explanation
of Scripture appears from the great sale of such popular
commentaries as those of Pfaff at Tübingen, 1730, Starke at
Leipzig, 1741, and the Halle Bible of S. J. Baumgarten, 1748.
§ 167.9. =Missions to the Heathen.=--The quickening of
religious life by pietism bore fruit in new missionary activity.
Frederick IV. of Denmark founded in his East Indian possessions
the Tranquebar mission in A.D. 1706, under Ziegenbalg and
Plutschau. Ziegenbalg, who translated the New Testament into
Tamil, died in A.D. 1719. From the Danish possessions this
mission carried its work over into the English Indian territories.
Able and zealous workers were sent out from the Halle Institute,
of whom the greatest was Chr. Fr. Schwartz, who died in A.D. 1798,
after nearly fifty years of noble service in the mission field.
In the last quarter of the century, however, under the influence
of rationalism, zeal for missions declined, the Halle society
broke up, and the English were allowed to reap the harvest
sown by the Lutherans. The Halle professor Callenberg founded
in A.D. 1728 a society for the conversion of the Jews, in the
interests of which Stephen Schultz travelled over Europe, Asia,
and Africa, preaching the Cross among the Jews. Christianity had
been introduced among the Eskimos in Greenland in the eleventh
century (§ 93, 5), but the Scandinavian colony there had been
forgotten, and no trace of the religion which it had taught any
longer remained. This reproach to Christianity lay sore on the
heart of Hans Egede, a Norwegian pastor, and he found no rest
till, supported by a Danish-Norwegian trading house, he sailed
with his family in A.D. 1721 for these frozen and inhospitable
shores. Amid almost inconceivable hardships, and with at first
but little success, he continued to labour unweariedly, and even
after the trading company abandoned the field he remained. In
A.D. 1733 he had the unexpected joy of welcoming three Moravian
missionaries, Christian David and the brothers Stach. His joy
was too soon dashed by the spiritual pride of the new arrivals,
who insisted on modelling everything after their own Moravian
principles, and separated themselves from the noble Egede, when
he refused to yield, as an unspiritual and unconverted man. Egede,
on the other hand, though deeply offended at their confounding
justification and sanctification, their contempt of pure doctrine,
and their unscriptural views and mode of speech, was ready to
attribute all this to their defective theological training.
He rewarded their unkindness, when they were stricken down in
sore sickness, with unwearied, loving care. In A.D. 1736 he
returned to Denmark, leaving his son Paul to carry on his work,
and continued director of the Greenland Mission Seminary in
Copenhagen till his death in A.D. 1758.[504]--Continuation,
§ 171, 5.
§ 168. THE CHURCH OF THE MORAVIAN BRETHREN.[505]
The highly gifted Count Zinzendorf, inspired even as a boy, out of
fervent love to the Saviour, with the idea of gathering together the
lovers of Jesus, took occasion of the visit of some Moravian Exultants
to his estate to realize his cherished project. On the Hutberg he
dropped the mustard seed of the dream of his youth into fertile soil,
where, under his fervent care, it soon grew into a stately tree, whose
branches spread over all European lands, and thence through all parts
of the habitable globe. The society which he founded was called “The
Society of the United Brethren.” The fact that this society was not
overwhelmed by the extravagances to which for a time it gave way, that
its fraternising with the fanatics, the extravagant talk in which its
members indulged about a special covenant with the Saviour, and their
not over-modest claims to a peculiar rank in the kingdom of God, did not
lead to its utter overthrow in the abyss of fanaticism, and that on the
slippery paths of its mystical marriage theory it was able to keep its
feet, presents a phenomenon, which stands alone in church history, and
more than anything else proves how deeply rooted founder and followers
were in the saving truths of the gospel. The count himself laid aside
many of his extravagances, and what still remained was abandoned by
his sensible and prudent successor Spangenberg, so far as it was not
necessarily involved in the fundamental idea of a special covenant
with the Saviour. The special service rendered by the society was
the protest which it raised against the generally prevailing apostasy.
During this period of declension it saved the faith of many pious souls,
affording them a welcome refuge, with rich spiritual nourishment and
nurture. With the reawakening of the religious life in the nineteenth
century, however, its adherents lost ground in Europe more and more,
by maintaining their old onesidedness in life and doctrine, their
depreciatory estimate of theological science, and the quarrelsome spirit
which they generally manifested. But in one province, that of missions
to the heathen, their energy and success have never yet been equalled.
Their thorough and well-organized system of education also deserves
particular mention. At present the Society of the Brethren numbers half
a million, distributed among 100 settlements or thereabout.
§ 168.1. =The Founder of the Moravian Brotherhood=, Nic. Ludwig
Count von =Zinzendorf= and Pottendorf, was born in Dresden in
A.D. 1700. Spener was one of his sponsors at baptism. His father
dying early, and his mother marrying a second time, the boy,
richly endowed with gifts of head and heart, was brought up by
his godly pietistic grandmother, the Baroness von Gersdorf. There
in his earliest youth he learned to seek his happiness in the
closest personal fellowship with the Lord, and the tendency of
his whole future life to yield to the impulses of pious feeling
already began to assert itself. In his tenth year he entered the
Halle Institute under Francke, where the pietistic idea of the
need of the _ecclesiolæ in ecclesia_ took firm possession of his
heart. Even in his fifteenth year he sought its realization by
founding among his fellow students “The Order of the Grain of
Mustard Seed” (Matt. xiii. 31). After completing his school
course, his uncle and guardian, in order to put an end to his
pietistic extravagances, sent him to study law at the orthodox
University of Wittenberg. Here he had at first to suffer a sort
of martyrdom as a rigid pietist swimming against the orthodox
current. His residence at Wittenberg, however, was beneficial
to him in freeing him unconsciously of the Halle pietism,
which had restrained his spiritual development. He did indeed
firmly maintain the fundamental idea of pietism, _ecclesiolæ
in ecclesia_, but in his mind it gained a wider significance
than pietism had given it. His endeavours to secure a personal
conference, and where possible a union, between the Halle
and Wittenberg leaders were unsuccessful. In A.D. 1719 he
left Wittenberg and travelled for two years, visiting the most
distinguished representatives of all confessions and sects. This
too fostered his idea of a grand gathering of all who love the
Lord Jesus. On his return home, in A.D. 1721, at the wish of his
relatives he entered the service of the Saxon government. But a
religious genius like Zinzendorf could find no satisfaction in
such employment. And soon an opportunity presented itself for
carrying out the plan to which his thoughts and longings were
directed.[506]
§ 168.2. =The Founding of the Brotherhood=, A.D. 1722-1727. The
Schmalcald, and still more the Thirty Years’ War, had brought
frightful suffering and persecution upon the Bohemian and
Moravian Brethren. Many of them sought refuge in Poland and
Prussia. One of the refugees was the famous educationist J. Amos
Comenius, who died in A.D. 1671, after having been bishop of the
Moravians at Lissa in Posen from 1648. Those who remained behind
were, even after the Peace of Westphalia, subjected to the
cruellest oppression! Only secretly in their houses and at the
risk of their lives could they worship God according to the faith
of their fathers; and they were obliged publicly to profess their
adherence to the Romish church. Thus gradually the light of the
gospel was extinguished in the homes of their descendants, and
only a tradition, becoming ever more and more faint, remained
as a memory of their ancestral faith. A Moravian carpenter,
Christian David, born and reared in the Romish church, but
converted by evangelical preaching, succeeded in the beginning
of the eighteenth century in fanning into a flame again in some
families the light that had been quenched. This little band of
believers, under David’s leading, went forth in A.D. 1722 and
sought refuge on Zinzendorf’s estate in Lusatia. The count was
then absent, but the steward, with the hearty concurrence of
the count’s grandmother, gave them the Hutberg at Berthelsdorf
as a settlement. With the words of Psalm lxxxiv. 4 on his lips,
Christian David struck the axe into the tree for building the
first house. Soon the little town of Herrnhut had arisen, as
the centre of that Christian society which Zinzendorf now sought
with all his heart and strength to develop and promote. Gradually
other Moravians dropped in, but a yet greater number from far and
near streamed in, of all sorts of religious revivalists, pietists,
separatists, followers of Schwenckfeld, etc. Zinzendorf had no
thought of separation from the Lutheran church. The settlers were
therefore put under the pastoral care of Rothe, the worthy pastor
of Berthelsdorf (§ 167, 6). To organize such a mixed multitude
was no easy task. Only Zinzendorf’s glorious enthusiasm for
the idea of a congregation of saints, his eminent organizing
talents, the wonderful elasticity and tenacity of his will,
the extraordinary prudence, circumspection, and wisdom of his
management, made it possible to cement the incongruous elements
and avoid an open breach. The Moravians insisted upon restoring
their old constitution and discipline, and of the others, each
wished to have prominence given to whatever he thought specially
important. Only on one point were they all agreed, the duty of
refusing to conform to the Lutheran church and its pastor Rothe.
The count, therefore, felt obliged to form a new and separatist
society. Personally he had no special liking for the old Moravian
constitution; but the lot decided in its favour, while the idea
of continuing a pre-Reformation martyr church was not without a
certain charm. Thus Zinzendorf drew up a constitution with old
Moravian forms and names, on the basis of which the colony was
established, August 13th, A.D. 1727, under the name of the United
Brotherhood.
§ 168.3. =The Development of the Brotherhood down to Zinzendorf’s
Death=, A.D. 1727-1760.--With great energy the new society
proceeded to found settlements in Germany, Holland, England,
Ireland, Denmark, Norway, and North America, as well as among
German residents in other lands. In A.D. 1734, Zinzendorf
submitted to examination at Tübingen as candidate for license,
and in A.D. 1737 received episcopal consecration from the Berlin
court preacher, Jablonsky, who was at the same time bishop of
the Moravian Brethren, which the same prelate had two years
previously granted to Dr. Nitschmann, another member of the
society. The efforts of the Brethren to spread their cause now
attracted attention. The Saxon government in A.D. 1736 sent to
Herrnhut a commission, of which Löscher was a member. But in
A.D. 1736, before it submitted its report, which on the whole
was favourable, Zinzendorf quitted the country, probably by the
elector’s command at the instigation of the Austrian government,
which objected to the harbouring of so many Bohemian and Moravian
emigrants. Like all those at this time persecuted on account
of religion he took refuge in Wetterau (§ 170, 2). With his
little family of pilgrims he settled at Ronneburg near Büdingen,
founded the prosperous churches of Marienborn and Herrnhaag, and
travelled extensively in Europe and America. This period of exile
was the period when the society was most successful in spreading
outwardly, but it was also the period when it suffered most from
troubles and dissensions within. It was bitterly attacked by
Lutheran theologians, and much more venomously by apostates from
its own fold. The Brethren at this time afforded only too much
ground for misunderstanding and reproach. To this period belongs
the famous fiction of a special covenant, the Pandora-box
of all other absurdities; the development of the count’s own
theological views and peculiar form of expression in his numerous
works; the composition and introduction of unsavoury spiritual
songs, with their silly conceits and many blasphemous and even
obscene pictures and analogies; the market-crier laudations of
their church, the not always pure methods of propaganda, the
introduction of a marriage discipline fitted to break down all
modest restraints; and, finally, the so-called _Niedlichkeiten_,
or boisterous festivals. Even the pietists opposed these
antinomian excesses. Tersteegen, too (§ 169, 1), whose mystic
tendency inclined him strongly toward pietist views, reproached
the Herrnhuters with frivolity. This polemic, disagreeable as it
was, exercised a wholesome influence upon the society. The count
became more guarded in his language, and more prudent in his
behaviour, while he set aside the most objectionable excrescences
of doctrine and practice that had begun to show themselves in the
community. At last, in A.D. 1747, the Saxon government repeated
the edict of banishment so far as the person of the founder
was concerned, and when, two years later, the society expressly
accepted the Augsburg Confession, it was formally recognised
in Saxony. In this same year, A.D. 1749, an English act of
parliament recognised it as a church with a pure episcopal
succession on equal terms with the Anglican episcopal
church.--Zinzendorf continued down to his death to direct the
affairs of this church, which hung upon him with childlike
affection, reflecting his personality, not only in its
excellences, but also in all its extravagances. He died in
A.D. 1760 in the full enjoyment of that blessedness which his
fervent love for the Saviour had brought him.
§ 168.4. =Zinzendorf’s Plan and Work.=--While Zinzendorf
received his first impulse from pietism, he soon perceived its
onesidedness and narrowness. He would have no conventicle, but
one organized community; no ideal invisible, but a real visible
church; no narrow methodism, but a rich, free administration of
the Christian spirit. He did not, in the first instance, aim at
the conversion of the world, nor even at the reformation of the
church, but at gathering and preserving those belonging to the
Saviour. He hoped, however, to erect a reservoir in which he
might collect every little brooklet of living water, from which
he might again water the whole world. And when he succeeded in
organizing a community, he was quite convinced that it was the
Philadelphia of the Apocalypse (iii. 7 ff.), that it introduced
“the Philadelphian period” of church history, of which all
prophets and apostles had prophesied. His plan had originally
reference to all Christendom, and he even took a step toward
realizing this universal idea. In order to build a bridge
between the Catholic church and his own community, he issued, in
A.D. 1727, a Christo-Catholic hymn-book and prayer-book, and had
even sketched out a letter to the pope to accompany a copy of his
book. He also attempted, by a letter to the patriarchs and then
to Elizabeth, empress of Russia, to interest the Greek church
in his scheme, dwelling upon the Greek extraction of the church
of the Moravian Brethren (§ 79, 2). His gathering of members,
however, was practically limited to the Protestant churches. All
confessions and sects afforded him contingents. He was himself
heartily attached to the distinctive doctrines of the Lutheran
church. But in a society whose distinctive characteristic it was
to be the gathering point for the pious of all nationalities,
doctrine and confession could not be the uniting bond. It could
be only a fellowship of love and not of creed, and the bond
a community of loving sentiment and loving deeds. The inmost
principle of Lutheranism, reconciliation by the blood of Christ,
was saved, indeed was made the characteristic and vital doctrine,
the one point of union between Moravians, Lutherans, and Reformed.
Over the three parties stood the count himself as _ordinarius_;
but this gave an external and not a confessional unity. The
subsequent acceptance of the Augsburg Confession, in A.D. 1749,
was a political act, so as to receive a civil status, and
had otherwise no influence. Instead then of the confession,
Zinzendorf made the =constitution= the bond of union. Its forms
were borrowed from the old Moravian church order, but dominated
and inspired by Zinzendorf’s own spirit. The old Moravian
constitution was episcopal and clerical, and proceeded from
the idea of the church; while the new constitution of Herrnhut
was essentially presbyterial, and proceeded from the idea of
the community, and that as a communion of saints. The Herrnhut
bishops were only titular bishops; they had no diocese, no
jurisdiction, no power of excommunication. All these prerogatives
belonged to the united eldership, in which the lay element
was distinctly predominant. Herrnhut had no pastors, but
only preaching brothers; the pastoral care devolved upon the
elders and their assistants. But beside these half-Lutheran and
pseudo-Moravian peculiarities, there was also a Donatist element
at the basis of the constitution. This lay in the fundamental
idea of absolutely true and pure children of God, and reached
full expression in the concluding of a =special covenant= with
the Saviour at London on Sept. 16th, A.D. 1741. Leonard Dober for
some years administered the office of an elder-general. But at
the London synod it was declared that he had not the requisite
gifts for that office. Dober now wished to resign. While in
confusion as to whom they could appoint, it flashed into the
minds of all to appoint the Saviour Himself. “Our feeling and
heart conviction was, that He made a special covenant with His
little flock, taking us as His peculiar treasure, watching over
us in a special way, personally interesting Himself in every
member of our community, and doing that for us perfectly which
our previous elders could only do imperfectly.”
§ 168.5. Among the =numerous extravagances= which Zinzendorf
countenanced for a time, the following may be mentioned.
1. The notion of the motherhood of the Holy Spirit. Zinzendorf
described the holy Trinity as “man, woman, and child.”
The Spirit is the mother in three respects: the eternal
generation of the Son of God, the conception of the Man
Jesus, and the second birth of believers.
2. The notion of the fatherhood of Jesus Christ (Isa. ix. 6).
Creation is ascribed solely to the Son, hence Christ is our
special, direct Father. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
is only, “in the language of men, our father-in-law or
grandfather.”
3. In reference to our Lord’s life on earth, Zinzendorf
delighted in using terms of contempt, in order to emphasize
the depths of His humiliation.
4. In like manner he uses reproachful terms in speaking of the
style of the sacred Scriptures, and the inspired community
prefers a living Bible.
5. The theory and practice of mystical marriage, according to
Ephesians v. 32. The community and each member of it are
spiritual brides of Christ, and the marriage relation and
begetting of children were set forth and spiritualized in
a singularly indelicate manner.
§ 168.6. =Zinzendorf’s greatness= lay in the fervency of his
love of the Saviour, and in the yearning desire to gather under
the shadow of the cross all who loved the Lord. His weakness
consisted not so much in his manifested extravagances, as in his
idea that he had been called to found a society. To the realizing
of this idea he gave his life, talents, heart, and means. The
advantages of rank and culture he also gave to this one task.
He was personally convinced of his Divine call, and as he
did not recognise the authority of the written word, but only
subjective impressions, it is easily seen how he would drift into
absurdities and inconsistencies. The end contemplated seemed to
him supremely important, so that to realize it he did not scruple
to depart from strict truthfulness.--Zinzendorf’s writings,
over one hundred in number, are characterized by originality,
brilliancy, and peculiar forms of expression. Of his 2,000 hymns,
mostly improvised for public services, 700 of the best were
revised and published by Knapp. Two are still found in most
collections, and are more or less reproduced in our English hymns,
“Jesus still lead on,” and “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness.”
§ 168.7. =The Brotherhood under Spangenberg’s
Administration.=--For its present form the Brotherhood is indebted
to its wise and sensible bishop, =Aug. Gottl. Spangenberg=, who
died A.D. 1792. Born in 1704, he became personally acquainted
with Zinzendorf in 1727, after he had completed his studies at
Jena under Buddæus, and continued ever after on terms of close
intimacy with him and his community. Through the good offices
of G. A. Francke, son and successor of A. H. Francke, he was
called in Sept., 1732, to the office of an assistantship in the
theological faculty at Halle, and appointed school inspector of
the Orphanage; but very soon offence was taken at the brotherly
fellowship which he had, not only with the society of Herrnhut,
but also with other separatists. The misunderstanding that
thus arose led in April, 1733, to his deprivation under a royal
cabinet order, and his expulsion by military power from Halle.
He now formally joined the communion of the Brethren. The first
half of his signally blessed ministry of sixty years among the
Moravians was chiefly devoted to foreign mission work, both in
their colonies abroad and in their stations in heathen lands.
In Holland in 1734, in England and Denmark in 1735, he obtained
official permission for the founding of Moravian colonies in
Surinam, in the American state of Georgia, and in Santa Cruz,
the forming and management of which he himself undertook, besides
directing the mission work in these places. Returning from
America in 1762, he won, after Zinzendorf’s death, so complete
an ascendency in the church in every respect, that he may well
be regarded as its second founder. At the Synod of Marienborn,
in A.D. 1764, the constitution was revised and perfected.
Zinzendorf’s monarchical prerogative was surrendered to the
eldership, and Spangenberg prudently secured the withdrawal of
all excrescences and extravagances. But the central idea of a
special covenant was not touched, and Sept. 16th is still held as
a grand pentecost festival. In the fifth section of the statutes
of the United Brethren at Gnaden, 1819, it distinguishes itself
from all the churches as a “society of true children of God; as
a family of God, with Jesus as its head. ” In the fourth section
of the “Historical Account of the Constitution of the United
Brethren at Gnaden, 1823,” the society is described as “a company
of living members of the invisible body of Jesus Christ;” and in
its litany for Easter morning, it adds as a fourth particular to
the article of the creed: “I believe that our brothers _N. N._,
and our sisters _N. N._ have joined the church above, and have
entered into the joy of the Lord.” The synod of A.D. 1848
modified this article, and generally the society’s distinctive
views are not made so prominent. This liberal tendency had
dogmatic expression given to it in Spangenberg’s “_Idea Fidei
Fratrum_.” Only a few new settlements have been formed since
Zinzendorf’s death, and none of any importance; while the
hitherto flourishing Moravian settlements in Wetterau were
destroyed and their members banished, in A.D. 1750, by the
reigning prince, Count von Isenburg-Büdingen, on account of
their refusing to take the oath of allegiance.--After the first
attempt to establish societies among the German emigrants in
Livonia and Esthonia in A.D. 1729-1743 had ended in the expulsion
of the Herrnhuters, these regions proved in the second half of
the century a more fruitful field than any other. They secured
there a relation to the national church such as they never
attained unto elsewhere. They had in these parts formally
organized a church within the church, whose members, mostly
peasants, felt convinced that they had been called by the Lord’s
own voice as His chosen little flock, a proceeding which caused
infinite trouble, especially in Livonia, to the faithful pastors,
who perceived the deadly mischief that was being wrought, and
witnessed against them from God’s word. This protest was too
powerful and convincing to be disregarded, and now, not only
too late, but also in too half-hearted a way, Herrnhut began,
in A.D. 1857, to turn back, so as to save its Livonian institute
by inward regeneration from certain overthrow.
§ 168.8. =The doctrinal peculiarities of the Brotherhood= cannot
be quite correctly described as un-Lutheran, or anti-Lutheran.
Bengel smartly characterized them in a single phrase: “They
plucked up the stock of sound doctrine, stripped oft what was
most essential and vital, and retained the half of it,” which not
only then, but even still retains its truth and worth. Salvation
is regarded as proceeding purely from the Son, the God-Man,
so that the relation of the Father and of the Holy Spirit to
redemption is scarcely even nominal; and the redemption of the
God-Man again is viewed one-sidedly as consisting only in His
sufferings and death, while the other side, that is grounded on
His life and resurrection, is either carefully passed over, or
its fruit is represented as borrowed from the atoning death. Thus
not only justification, but sanctification is derived exclusively
from the death of Christ, and this, not so much as a forensic
substitutionary satisfaction, although that is not expressly
denied, but rather as a Divine love-sacrifice which awakens
an answering love in us. The whole of redemption is viewed as
issuing from Christ’s blood and wounds; and since from this mode
of viewing the subject God’s grace and love are made prominent
rather than His righteousness, we hear almost exclusively of
the gospel, and little or nothing of the law. All preaching
and teaching were avowedly directed to the awakening of pious
feelings of love to God, and thus tended to foster a kind of
religious sentimentalism.
§ 168.9. =The peculiarities of worship among the Brethren=
were also directed to the excitement of pious feeling; their
sensuously sweet sacred music, their church hymns, overcharged
with emotion, their richly developed liturgies, their restoration
of the _agape_ with tea, biscuit, and chorale-singing, the
fraternal kiss at communion, in their earlier days also washing
of the feet, etc. The daily watchword from the O.T. and doctrinal
texts from the N.T. were regarded as oracles, and were intended
to give a special impress to the religious feelings of the day.
As early as A.D. 1727 they had a hymn-book containing 972 hymns.
Most of these were compositions of their own, a true reflection
of their religious sentiments at that period. It also contained
Bohemian and Moravian hymns, translated by Mich. Weiss, and
also many old favourites of the evangelical church, often sadly
mutilated. By A.D. 1749 it had received twelve appendices and
four supplements. In these appendices, especially in the twelfth,
the one-sided tendency to give prominence to feeling was carried
to the most absurd lengths of caricature in the use of offensive
and silly terms of endearment as applied to the Saviour.
Zinzendorf admitted the defects of this production, and had
it suppressed in 1751, and in London prepared a new, expurgated
edition of the hymn-book. Under Spangenberg’s presidency
Christian Gregor issued, in A.D. 1778, a hymn-book, containing
542 from Zinzendorf’s book and 308 of his own pious rhymes. He
also published a chorale book in A.D. 1784. Among their sacred
poets Zinzendorf stands easily first. His only son, Christian
Renatus, who died A.D. 1752, left behind him a number of sacred
songs. Their hymns were usually set to the melodies of the Halle
pietists.
§ 168.10. In regard to the =Christian life=, the Brotherhood
withdrew from politics and society, adopted stereotyped forms of
speech and peculiar usages, even in their dress. They sought to
live undisturbed by controversy, in personal communion with the
Saviour. Their separatism as a covenanted people may be excused
in view of the unbelief prevailing in the Protestant church, but
it has not been overcome by the reawakening of spiritual life
in the Church. As to their =ecclesiastical constitution=, Christ
Himself, as the Chief Elder of the church, should have in it the
direct government. The leaders, founding upon Proverbs xvi. 33
and Acts i. 26, held that fit expression was given to this
principle by the use of the lot; but soon opposition to this
practice arose, and with its abandonment the “special covenant”
theory lost all its significance. The lot was used in election of
office-bearers, sending of missionaries, admission to membership,
etc. But in regard to marriage, it was used only by consent
of the candidates for marriage, and an adverse result was not
enforced. The administration of the affairs of the society
lay with the conference of the united elders. From time to
time general synods with legislative power were summoned. The
membership was divided into groups of married, widowed, bachelors,
maidens, and children, with special duties, separate residences,
and also special religious services in addition to those common
to all. The church officers were bishops, presbyters, deacons,
deaconesses, and acolytes.
§ 168.11. =Missions to the Heathen.=--Zinzendorf’s meeting with
a West Indian negro in Copenhagen awakened in him at an early
period the missionary zeal. He laid the matter before the church,
and in A.D. 1732 the first Herrnhut missionaries, Dober and
Nitschmann, went out to St. Thomas, and in the following year
missions were established in Greenland, North America, almost
all the West Indian islands, South America, among the Hottentots
at the Cape, the East Indies, among the Eskimos of Labrador,
etc. Their missionary enterprise forms the most brilliant and
attractive part of the history of the Moravians. Their procedure
was admirably suited to uncultured races, and only for such. In
the East Indies, therefore, they were unsuccessful. They were
never wanting in self-denying missionaries, who resigned all from
love to the Saviour. They were mostly pious, capable artisans,
who threw themselves with all their hearts into their new work,
and devoted themselves with affectionate tenderness to the
advancement of the bodily and spiritual interests of those
among whom they laboured. One of the noblest of them all was the
missionary patriarch Zeisberger, who died in A.D. 1808, after
toiling among the North American Indians for sixty-three years.
These missions were conducted at a surprisingly small outlay. The
Brethren also interested themselves in the conversion of the Jews.
In A.D. 1738 Dober wrought among the Jews of Amsterdam; and with
greater success in A.D. 1739, Lieberkühn, who also visited the
Jews in England and Bohemia, and was honoured by them with the
title of “rabbi.”[507]
§ 169. THE REFORMED CHURCH BEFORE THE “ILLUMINATION.”
The sharpness of the contest between Calvinism and Lutheranism was
moderated on both sides. The union efforts prosecuted during the first
decades of the century in Germany and Switzerland were always defeated
by Lutheran opposition. In the Dutch and German Reformed Churches, even
during the eighteenth century, Cocceianism was still in high repute.
After it had modified strict Calvinism, the opposition between Reformed
orthodoxy and Arminian heterodoxy became less pronounced, and more and
more Arminian tendencies found their way into Reformed theology. What
pietism and Moravianism were for the Lutheran church of Germany,
Methodism was, in a much greater measure, and with a more enduring
influence, for the episcopal church of England.
§ 169.1. =The German Reformed Church.=--The Brandenburg dynasty
made unwearied efforts to effect a =union= between the Lutheran
and Reformed churches throughout their territories (§ 154, 4).
Frederick I. (III.) instituted for this purpose in A.D. 1703 a
_collegium caritativum_, under the presidency of the Reformed
court preacher Ursinus (ranked as bishop, that he might officiate
at the royal coronation), in which also, on the side of the
Reformed, Jablonsky, formerly a Moravian bishop, and, on the part
of the Lutherans, the cathedral preacher Winkler of Magdeburg and
Lüttke, provost of Cologne-on-the-Spree, took part. Spener, who
wanted not a made union but one which he himself was making, gave
expression to his opinion, and soon passed over. Lüttke after a
few _sederunts_ withdrew, and when Winkler in A.D. 1703 published
a plan of union, _Arcanum regium_, which the Lutheran church
merely submitted for the approval of the Reformed king, such a
storm of opposition arose against the project, that it had to
be abandoned. In the following year the king took up the matter
again in another way. Jablonsky engaged in negotiations with
England for the introduction of the Anglican episcopal system
into Prussia, in order by it to build a bridge for the union with
Lutheranism. But even this plan failed, in consequence of the
succession of Frederick William I. in A.D. 1713, whose shrewd
sense strenuously opposed it.--The vacillating statements of
the _Confessio Sigismundi_ (§ 154, 3) regarding =predestination=
made it possible for the Brandenburg Reformed theologians to
understand it as teaching the doctrine of particular as well as
universal grace, and so to make it correspond with Brandenburg
Reformed orthodoxy. The rector of the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in
Berlin, Paul Volkmann, in A.D. 1712, interpreted it as teaching
universal grace, and so in his _Theses theologicæ_ he constructed
a system of theology, in which the divine foreknowledge of the
result, as the reconciling middle term between the particularism
and universalism of the call, was set forth in a manner
favourable to the latter. The controversy that was aroused over
this, in which even Jablonsky argued for the more liberal view,
while on the other side Barckhausen, Volkmann’s colleague, in
his _Amica Collatio Doctrinæ de Gratia, quam vera ref. confitetur
Ecclesia, cum Doctr. Volkmanni_, etc., came forward under the
name of _Pacificus Verinus_ as his most determined opponent, was
put a stop to in A.D. 1719 by an edict of Frederick William I.,
which enjoined silence on both parties, without any result having
been reached.--One of the noblest mystics that ever lived was
=Gerhard Tersteegen=, died A.D. 1769. He takes a high rank as a
sacred poet. Anxious souls made pilgrimages to him from far and
near for comfort, counsel, and refreshment. Though not exactly a
separatist, he had no strong attachment to the church.[508]--The
prayer-book of =Conrad Mel=, pastor and rector at Hersfeld in
Hesse, died A.D. 1733, continues to the present day a favourite
in pious families of the Reformed communion.
§ 169.2. =The Reformed Church in Switzerland.=--=The Helvetic
Confession=, with its strict doctrine of predestination and its
peculiar inspiration theory (§ 161, 3), had been indeed accepted,
in A.D. 1675, by all the Reformed cantons as the absolute
standard of doctrine in church and school; but this obligation
was soon felt to be oppressive to the conscience, and so
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the kings of England and
Prussia repeatedly interceded for its abrogation. In Geneva,
though vigorously opposed by a strictly orthodox minority, the
_Vénérable Compagnie_ succeeded, in A.D. 1706, with the rector
of the Academy at its head, J. A. Turretin, whose father had
been one of the principal authors of the formula, in modifying
the usual terms of subscription, _Sic sentio, sic profiteor,
sic docebo, et contrarium non docebo_, into _Sic docebo quoties
hoc argumentum tractandum suscipiam, contrarium non docebo,
nec ore, nec calamo, nec privatim, nec publice_; and afterwards,
in A.D. 1725, it was entirely set aside, and adhesion to the
Scriptures of the O. and N.T., and to the catechism of Calvin,
made the only obligation. More persistent on both sides was the
struggle in Lausanne; yet even there it gradually lost ground,
and by the middle of the century it had no longer any authority
in Switzerland.--The =union efforts= made by the Prussian dynasty
found zealous but unsuccessful advocates in the chancellor Pfaff
of Lutheran Württemberg (§ 167, 4), and in Reformed Switzerland
in J. A. Turretin of Geneva.
§ 169.3. =The Dutch Reformed Church.=--Toward the end of the
seventeenth century, in consequence of threats on the part
of the magistrates, the passionate violence of the =dispute
between= Voetians and Cocceians (§ 162, 5) was moderated; but
in the beginning of the eighteenth century the flames burst
forth anew, reaching a height in 1712, when a marble bust of
Cocceius was erected in a Leyden church. An obstinate Voetian,
Pastor Fruytier of Rotterdam, was grievously offended at this
proceeding, and published a controversial pamphlet full of the
most bitter reproaches and accusations against the Cocceians,
which, energetically replied to by the accused, was much more
hurtful than useful to the interests of the Voetians. At last
a favourable hearing was given to a word of peace which a highly
respected Voetian, the venerable preacher of eighty years of
age, _J. Mor. Mommers_, addressed to the parties engaged in
the controversy. He published in A.D. 1738, under the title of
“_Eubulus_,” a tract in which he proved that neither Cocceius
himself nor his most distinguished adherents had in any essential
point departed from the faith of the Reformed church, and that
from them, therefore, in spite of all differences that had
since arisen, the hand of fellowship should not be withheld.
In consequence of this, the magistrates of Gröningen first of
all decided, that forthwith, in filling up vacant pastorates, a
Cocceian and Voetian should be appointed alternately; a principle
which gradually became the practice throughout the whole country.
At the same time also care was now taken that in the theological
faculties both schools should have equal representation. But
meanwhile also new departures had been made in each of the two
parties. Among the Voetians, after the pattern formerly given
them by Teellinck (§ 162, 4), followed up by the Frisian preacher
Theod. Brakel, died A.D. 1669, and further developed by Jodocus
von Lodenstein of Utrecht, died A.D. 1677, mysticism had made
considerable progress; and the Cocceians, in the person of
Hermann Witsius, drew more closely toward the pietism of the
Voetians and the Lutherans. The most distinguished representative
of this conciliatory party was F. A. Lampe of Detmold, afterwards
professor in Utrecht, previously and subsequently pastor in
Bremen, in high repute in his church as a hymn-writer, but best
known by his commentary on John.--These conciliatory measures
were frustrated by the publication, in A.D. 1740, of a work by
=Schortinghuis= of Gröningen, which pronounced the Scriptures
unintelligible and useless to the natural man, but made fruitful
to the regenerate and elect by the immediate enlightenment of the
Holy Spirit, evidenced by deep groanings and convulsive writhings.
It was condemned by all the orthodox. The author now confined
himself to his pastorate, where he was richly blessed. He died in
A.D. 1750. His notions spread like an epidemic, till stamped out
by the united efforts of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities
in A.D. 1752.
§ 169.4. =Methodism.=--=In the episcopal church of England= the
living power of the gospel had evaporated into the formalism of
scholastic learning and a mechanical ritualism. A reaction was
set on foot by =John Wesley=, born A.D. 1703, a young man of
deep religious earnestness and fervent zeal for the salvation
of souls. During his course at Oxford, in A.D. 1729, along with
some friends, including his brother Charles, he founded a society
to promote pious living.[509] Those thus leagued together were
scornfully called Methodists. From A.D. 1732, =George Whitefield=,
born in A.D. 1714, a youth burning with zeal for his own and his
fellow men’s salvation, wrought enthusiastically along with them.
In A.D. 1735 the brothers Wesley went to America to labour for
the conversion of the Indians in Georgia. On board ship they met
Nitschmann, and in Savannah Spangenberg, who exercised a powerful
influence over them. John Wesley accepted a pastorate in Savannah,
but encountered so many hindrances, that he decided to return to
England in A.D. 1738. Whitefield had just sailed for America, but
returned that same year. Meanwhile Wesley visited Marienborn and
Herrnhut, and so became personally acquainted with Zinzendorf. He
did not feel thoroughly satisfied, and so declined to join the
society. On his return he began, along with Whitefield, the great
work of his life. In many cities they founded religious societies,
preached daily to immense crowds in Anglican churches, and when
the churches were refused, in the open air, often to 20,000
or even 30,000 hearers. They sought to arouse careless sinners
by all the terrors of the law and the horrors of hell, and by
a thorough repentance to bring about immediate conversion. An
immense number of hardened sinners, mostly of the lower orders,
were thus awakened and brought to repentance amid shrieks and
convulsions. Whitefield, who divided his attentions between
England and America, delivered in thirty-four years 18,000
sermons; Wesley, who survived his younger companion by twenty-one
years, dying in A.D. 1791, and was wont to say the world was
his parish, delivered still more. Their association with the
Moravians had been broken off in A.D. 1740. To the latter, not
only was the Methodists’ style of preaching objectionable, but
also their doctrine of “Christian perfection,” according to
which the true, regenerate Christian can and must reach a perfect
holiness of life, not indeed free from temptation and error,
but from all sins of weakness and sinful lusts. Wesley in turn
accused the Herrnhuters of a dangerous tendency toward the errors
of the quietists and antinomians. Zinzendorf came himself to
London to remove the misunderstanding, but did not succeed.
The great Methodist leaders were themselves separated from one
another in A.D. 1741. Whitefield’s doctrine of grace and election
was Calvinistic; Wesley’s Arminian.--From A.D. 1748 the =Countess
of Huntingdon= attached herself to the Methodists, and secured an
entrance for their preaching into aristocratic circles. With all
her humility and self-sacrifice she remained aristocrat enough
to insist on being head and organizer. Seeing she could not
play this _rôle_ with Wesley, she attached herself closely to
Whitefield. He became her domestic chaplain, and with other
clergymen accompanied her on her travels. Wherever she went she
posed as a “queen of the Methodists,” and was allowed to preach
and carry on pastoral work. She built sixty-six chapels, and in
A.D. 1768 founded a seminary for training preachers at Trevecca in
Wales, under the oversight of the able and gentle John Fletcher,
reserving supreme control to herself. After Whitefield’s death,
in A.D. 1770, the opposition between the Calvinistic followers
of Whitefield and the Arminian Wesleyans burst out in a much more
violent form. Fletcher and his likeminded fellow labourers were
charged with teaching the horrible heresy of the universality of
grace, and were on that account discharged by the countess from
the seminary of Trevecca. They now joined Wesley, around whom the
great majority of the Methodists had gathered.
§ 169.5. The Methodists did not wish to separate from
the episcopal church, but to work as a leaven within it.
Whitefield was able to maintain this connexion by the aid of
his aristocratic countess and her relationship with the higher
clergy; but Wesley, spurning such aid, and trusting to his great
powers of organization, felt driven more and more to set up
an independent society. When the churches were closed against
him and his fellow workers, and preaching in the open air was
forbidden, he built chapels for himself.[510] The first was
opened in Bristol, in A.D. 1739. When his ordained associates
were too few for the work, he obtained the assistance of lay
preachers. He founded two kinds of religious societies: The
_united societies_ embraced all, the _band societies_ only the
tried and proved of his followers. Then he divided the _united
societies_ again into _classes_ of from ten to twenty persons
each, and the _class-leaders_ were required to give accurate
accounts of the spiritual condition and progress of those under
their care. Each member of the _united_ as well as the _band
societies_ held a _society ticket_, which had to be renewed
quarterly. The outward affairs of the societies were managed by
_stewards_, who also took care of the poor. A number of local
societies constituted a _circuit_ with a superintendent and
several itinerant preachers.[511] Wesley superintended all
the departments of oversight, administration, and arrangement,
supported from A.D. 1744 by an annual conference. Daily preaching
and devotional exercises in the chapels, weekly class-meetings,
monthly watchnights, quarterly fasts and lovefeasts, an
annual service for the renewing of the covenant, and a great
multiplication of prayer-meetings, gave a special character
to Methodistic piety. Charles Wesley composed hymns for their
services. They carefully avoided collision with the services
of the state church. The American Methodists, who had been up
to this time supplied by Wesley with itinerant missionaries, in
A.D. 1784, after the War of Independence, gave vigorous expression
to their wish for a more independent ecclesiastical constitution,
which led Wesley, in opposition to all right order, to ordain for
them by his own hand several preachers, and to appoint, in the
person of Thomas Coke, a superintendent, who assumed in America
the title of bishop. Coke became the founder of the Methodist
Episcopal Church of America, which soon outstripped all other
denominations in its zeal for the conversion of sinners, and
in consequent success. The breach with the mother church was
completed by the adoption of a creed in which the Thirty-nine
Articles were reduced to twenty-five. At the last conference
presided over by Wesley, A.D. 1790, it was announced that they
had in Britain 119 circuits, 313 preachers, and in the United
States 97 circuits and 198 preachers. After Wesley’s death,
in A.D. 1791, his autocratic supremacy devolved, in accordance
with the Methodist “Magna Charta,” the _Deed of Declaration_
of A.D. 1784, upon a fixed conference of 100 members, but its
hierarchical organization has been the cause of many subsequent
splits and divisions.[512]
§ 169.6. =Theological Literature=--=Clericus=, of Amsterdam, died
A.D. 1736, an Arminian divine, distinguished himself in biblical
criticism, hermeneutics, exegesis, and church history. =J. J.
Wettstein= was in A.D. 1730 deposed for heresy, and died in
A.D. 1754 as professor at the Remonstrant seminary at Amsterdam.
His critical edition of the N.T. of A.D. 1751 had a great
reputation. =Schultens= of Leyden, died A.D. 1750, introduced a
new era for O.T. philology by the comparative study of related
dialects, especially Arabic. He wrote commentaries on Job and
Proverbs. Of the Cocceian exegetes we mention, =Lampe= of Bremen,
died A.D. 1729, “Com. on John,” three vols., etc., and =J. Marck=
of Leyden, died A.D. 1731, “Com. on Minor Prophets.” In biblical
antiquity, =Reland= of Utrecht, died A.D. 1718, wrote “_Palæstina
ex vett. monum. Illustr. Antiquitt. ss._;” in ecclesiastical
antiquity, Bingham, died A.D. 1723, “Origines Ecclest.; or,
Antiquities of the Christian Church,” ten vols., 1724, a
masterpiece not yet superseded. Of English apologists who
wrote against the deists, =Leland=, died A.D. 1766, “Advantage
and Necessity of the Christian Revelation;” =Stackhouse=, died
A.D. 1752, “History of the Bible.” Of dogmatists, =Stapfer= of
Bern, died A.D. 1775, and =Wyttenbach= of Marburg, died A.D. 1779,
who followed the Wolffian method. Among church historians,
=J. A. Turretin= of Geneva, died A.D. 1757, and =Herm. Venema= of
Franeker, died A.D. 1787.--The most celebrated of the writers of
sacred songs in the English language was the Congregationalist
preacher =Isaac Watts=, died A.D. 1748, whose “Hymns and Spiritual
Songs,” which first appeared in A.D. 1707, still hold their
place in the hymnbooks of all denominations, and have largely
contributed to overthrow the Reformed prejudice against using
any other than biblical psalms in the public service of praise.
§ 170. NEW SECTS AND FANATICS.
The pietism of the eighteenth century, like the Reformation of the
sixteenth, was followed by the appearance of all sorts of fanatics and
extremists. The converted were collected into little companies, which,
as _ecclesiolæ in ecclesia_, preserved the living flame amid prevailing
darkness, and out of these arose separatists who spoke of the church as
Babylon, regarded its ordinances impure, and its preaching a mere jingle
of words. They obtained their spiritual nourishment from the mystical
and theosophical writings of Böhme, Gichtel, Guyon, Poiret, etc. Their
chief centre was Wetterau, where, in the house of Count Casimir von
Berleburg, all persecuted pietists, separatists, fanatics, and sectaries
found refuge. The count chose from them his court officials and personal
servants, although he himself belonged to the national Reformed church.
There was scarcely a district in Protestant Germany, Switzerland, and
the Netherlands where there were not groups of such separatists; some
mere harmless enthusiasts, others circulated pestiferous and immoral
doctrines. Quite apart from pietism Swedenborgianism made its appearance,
claiming to have a new revelation. Of the older sects the Baptists and
the Quakers sent off new swarms, and even predestinationism gave rise to
a form of mysticism allied to pantheism.
§ 170.1. =Fanatics and Separatists in Germany.=--Juliana =von
Asseburg=, a young lady highly esteemed in Magdeburg for her
piety, declared that from her seventh year she had visions and
revelations, especially about the millennium. She found a zealous
supporter in Dr. J. W. Petersen, superintendent of Lüneburg.
After his marriage with Eleonore von Merlau, who had similar
revelations, he proclaimed by word and writing a fantastic
chiliasm and the restitution of all things. He was deposed in
A.D. 1692, and died in A.D. 1727.[513] =Henry Horche=, professor
of theology at Herborn, was the originator of a similar movement
in the Reformed church. He founded several Philadelphian societies
(§ 163, 9) in Hesse, and composed a “mystical and prophetical
bible,” the so called “Marburg Bible,” A.D. 1712. Of other
fanatical preachers of that period one of the most prominent
was =Hochmann=, a student of law expelled from Halle for his
extravagances, a man of ability and eloquence, and highly
esteemed by Tersteegen. Driven from place to place, he at last
found refuge at Berleburg, and died there in A.D. 1721. In
Württemberg the pious court chaplain, =Hedinger=, of Stuttgart,
died A.D. 1703, was the father of pietism and separatism. The
most famous of his followers were =Gruber= and =Rock=, who,
driven from Württemberg, settled with other separatists at
Wetterau, renouncing the use of the sacraments and public worship.
Of those gathered together in the court of Count Casimir, the
most eminent were =Dr. Carl=, his physician, the French mystic
=Marsay=, and =J. H. Haug=, who had been expelled from Strassburg,
a proficient in the oriental languages. They issued a great
number of mystical works, chief of all the Berleburg Bible,
in eight vols., 1726-1742, of which Haug was the principal
author. Its exposition proceeded in accordance with the threefold
sense; it vehemently contended against the church doctrine of
justification, against the confessional writings, the clerical
order, the dead church, etc. It showed occasionally profound
insight, and made brilliant remarks, but contained also
many trivialities and absurdities. The mysticism which is
prominent in this work lacks originality, and is compiled from
the mystico-theosophical writings of all ages from Origen down
to Madame Guyon.
§ 170.2. =The Inspired Societies in Wetterau.=--After the
unfortunate issue of the Camisard War in A.D. 1705 (§ 153, 4)
the chief of the prophets of the Cevennes fled to England. They
were at first well received, but were afterwards excommunicated
and cast into prison. In A.D. 1711 several of them went to
the Netherlands, and thence made their way into Germany. Three
brothers, students at Halle, named Pott, adopted their notion
of the gift of inspiration, and introduced it into Wetterau in
A.D. 1714. =Gruber= and =Rock=, the leaders of the separatists
there, were at first opposed to the doctrine, but were overpowered
by the Spirit, and soon became its most enthusiastic champions.
Prayer-meetings were organized, immense lovefeasts were held, and
by itinerant brethren an _ecclesia ambulatoria_ was set on foot,
by which spiritual nourishment was brought to believers scattered
over the land and the children of the prophets were gathered from
all countries. The “utterances” given forth in ecstasy were calls
to repentance, to prayer, to the imitation of Christ, revelations
of the divine will in matters affecting the communities,
proclamations of the near approach of the Divine judgment upon a
depraved church and world, but without fanatical-sensual chiliasm.
Also, except in the contempt of the sacraments, they held by the
essentials of the church doctrine. In A.D. 1715 a split occurred
between the _true_ and the _false_ among the inspired. The true
maintained a formal constitution, and in A.D. 1716 excluded all
who would not submit to that discipline. By A.D. 1719 only Rock
claimed the gift of inspiration, and did so till his death in
A.D. 1749. Gruber died in A.D. 1728, and with him a pillar of
the society fell. Rock was the only remaining prop. A new era of
their history begins with their intercourse with the Herrnhuters.
Zinzendorf sent them a deputation in A.D. 1730, and paid them
a visit in person at Berleberg [Berleburg]. Rock’s profound
Christian personality made a deep impression upon him. But he
was offended at their contempt of the sacraments, and at the
convulsive character of their utterances. This, however, did not
hinder him from expressing his reverence for their able leader,
who in return visited Zinzendorf at Herrnhut in A.D. 1732. In the
interests of his own society Zinzendorf shrank from identifying
himself with those of Wetterau. Rock denounced him as a new
Babylon-botcher, and he retaliated by calling Rock a false
prophet. When the Herrnhuters were driven from Wetterau in
A.D. 1750 (§ 168, 3, 7), the inspired communities entered on
their inheritance. But with Rock’s death in A.D. 1749 prophecy had
ceased among them. They sank more and more into insignificance,
until the revival of spiritual life, A.D. 1816-1821, brought them
into prominence again. Government interference drove most of them
to America.
§ 170.3. Quite a peculiar importance belongs to =J. C. Dippel=,
theologian, physician, alchemist, discoverer of Prussian blue and
_oleum dippelii_, at first an orthodox opponent of pietism, then,
through Gottfr. Arnold’s influence, an adherent of the pietists,
and ultimately of the separatists. In A.D. 1697, under the name
of _Christianus Democritus_, he began to write in a scoffing
tone of all orthodox Christianity, with a strange blending
of mysticism and rationalism, but without any trace profound
Christian experience. Persecuted on every hand, exiled or
imprisoned, he went hither and thither through Germany, Holland,
Denmark, and Sweden, and found a refuge at last at Berleberg
[Berleburg] in A.D. 1729. Here he came in contact with the
inspired, who did everything in their power to win him over; but
he declared that he would rather give himself to the devil than
to this Spirit of God. He was long intimate with Zinzendorf, but
afterwards poured out upon him the bitterest abuse. He died in
the count’s castle at Berleberg [Berleburg] in A.D. 1734.[514]
§ 170.4. =Separatists of Immoral Tendency.=--One of the worst was
the =Buttlar sect=, founded by Eva von Buttlar, a native of Hesse,
who had married a French refugee, lived gaily for ten years at
the court of Eisenach, and then joined the pietists and became
a rigid separatist. Separated from her husband, she associated
with the licentiate Winter, and founded a Philadelphian society
at Allendorf in A.D. 1702, where the foulest immoralities were
practised. Eva herself was reverenced as the door of paradise,
the new Jerusalem, the mother of all, Sophia come from heaven,
the new Eve, and the incarnation of the Spirit. Winter was
the incarnation of the Father, and their son Appenfeller the
incarnation of the Son. They pronounced marriage sinful; sensual
lusts must be slain in spiritual communion, then even carnal
association is holy. Eva lived with all the men of the sect
in the most shameless adultery. So did also the other women
of the community. Expelled from Allendorf after a stay of six
weeks, they sought unsuccessfully to gain a footing in various
places. At Cologne they went over to the Catholic church.
Their immoralities reached their climax at Lüde near Pyrmont.
Winter was sentenced to death in A.D. 1706, but was let off
with scourging. Eva escaped the same punishment by flight,
and continued her evil practices unchecked for another year.
She afterwards returned to Altona, where with her followers
leading outwardly an honourable life, she attached herself
to the Lutheran church, and died, honoured and esteemed, in
A.D. 1717.--In a similar way arose in A.D. 1739 the =Bordelum
sect=, founded at Bordelum by the licentiates Borsenius and Bär;
and the =Brüggeler sect=, at Brüggeler in Canton Bern, where
in A.D. 1748 the brothers Kohler gave themselves out as the
two witnesses (Rev. xi.). Of a like nature too was the =sect
of Zionites= at Ronsdorf in the Duchy of Berg. Elias Eller, a
manufacturer at Elberfeld, excited by mystical writings, married
in A.D. 1725 a rich old widow, but soon found more pleasure in a
handsome young lady, Anna von Buchel, who by a nervous sympathetic
infection was driven into prophetic ecstasy. She proclaimed the
speedy arrival of the millennium; Eller identified her with the
mother of the man-child (Rev. xii. 1). When his wife had pined
away through jealousy and neglect and died, he married Buchel.
The first child she bore him was a girl, and the second, a boy,
soon died. When a strong opposition arose in Elberfeld against
the sect, he, along with his followers, founded Ronsdorf, as
a New Zion, in A.D. 1737. The colony obtained civil rights,
and Eller was made burgomaster. Anna having died in A.D. 1744,
Eller gave his colony a new mother, and practised every manner
of deceit and tyranny. After the infatuation had lasted a long
time, the eyes of the Reformed pastor Schleiermacher, grandfather
of the famous theologian, were at last opened. By flight to the
Netherlands he escaped the fate of another revolter, whom Eller
persuaded the authorities at Düsseldorf to put to death as a
sorcerer. Every complaint against himself was quashed by Eller’s
bribery of the officials. After his death in A.D. 1750 his
stepson continued this Zion game for a long time.
§ 170.5. =Swedenborgianism.=--=Emanuel von Swedenborg= was born
at Stockholm, in A.D. 1688, son of the strict Lutheran bishop
of West Gothland, Jasper Swedberg. He was appointed assessor
of the School of Mines at Stockholm, and soon showed himself to
be a man of encyclopædic information and of speculative ability.
After long examination of the secrets of nature, in a condition
of magnetic ecstasy, in which he thought that he had intercourse
with spirits, sometimes in heaven, sometimes in hell, he became
convinced, in A.D. 1743, that he was called by these revelations
to restore corrupted Christianity by founding a church of the
New Jerusalem as the finally perfected church. He published the
apocalyptic revelations as a new gospel: “_Arcana Cœlestia in
Scr. s. Detecta_,” in seven vols.; “_Vera Chr. Rel._,” two vols.
After his death, in A.D. 1772, his “_Vera Christiana Religio_”
was translated into Swedish, but his views never got much hold
in his native country. They spread more widely in England, where
John Clowes, rector of St. John’s Church, Manchester, translated
his writings, and himself wrote largely in their exposition and
commendation. Separate congregations with their own ministers,
and forms of worship, sprang up through England in A.D. 1788,
and soon there were as many as fifty throughout the country.
From England the New Church spread to America.--In Germany it
was specially throughout Württemberg that it found adherents.
There, in A.D. 1765, Oetinger (§ 171, 9) recognised Swedenborg’s
revelations, and introduced many elements from them into
his theosophical system.--Swedenborg’s religious system was
speculative mysticism, with a physical basis and rationalizing
results. The aim of religion with him is the opening of an
intimate correspondence between the spiritual world and man,
and giving an insight into the mystery of the connexion between
the two. The Bible (excluding the apostolic epistles, as merely
expository), pre-eminently the Apocalypse, is recognised by him
as God’s word; to be studied, however, not in its literal but
in its spiritual or inner sense. Of the church dogmas there is
not one which he did not either set aside or rationalistically
explain away. He denounces in the strongest terms the church
doctrine of the Trinity. God is with him only one Person,
who manifests Himself in three different forms: the Father is
the principle of the manifesting God; the Son, the manifested
form; the Spirit, the manifested activity. The purpose of the
manifestation of Christ is the uniting of the human and Divine;
redemption is nothing more than the combating and overcoming of
the evil spirits. But angels and devils are spirits of dead men
glorified and damned. He did not believe in a resurrection of the
flesh, but maintained that the spiritual form of the body endures
after death. The second coming of Christ will not be personal
and visible, but spiritual through a revelation of the spiritual
sense of Holy Scripture, and is realized by the founding of the
church of the New Jerusalem.[515]
§ 170.6. =New Baptist Sects= (§ 163, 3).--In Wetterau about
A.D. 1708 an anabaptist sect arose called =Dippers=, because they
did not recognise infant baptism and insisted upon the complete
immersion of adult believers. They appeared in Pennsylvania
in A.D. 1719, and founded settlements in other states. Of the
“perfect” they required absolute separation from all worldly
practices and enjoyments and a simple, apostolic style of dress.
To baptism and the Lord’s supper they added washing the feet
and the fraternal kiss and anointing the sick. The =Seventh-day
Baptists= observe the seventh instead of the first day of the
week, and enjoin on the “perfect” celibacy and the community of
goods. New sects from England continued to spread over America.
Of these were the =Seed= or =Sucker Baptists=, who identified the
non-elect with the seed of the serpent, and on account of their
doctrine of predestination regarded all instruction and care of
children useless. A similar predestinarian exaggeration is seen
in the =Hard-shell Baptists=, who denounce all home and foreign
missions as running counter to the Divine sovereignty. Many,
sometimes called Campbellites from their founder, reject any
party name, claiming to be simply =Christians=, and acknowledge
only so much in Scripture as is expressly declared to be “the
word of the Lord.” The =Six-Principles-Baptists= limit their
creed to the six articles of Hebrews vi. 1, 2. The brothers
Haldane, about the middle of the eighteenth century, founded
in Scotland the Baptist sect of =Haldanites=, which has with
great energy applied itself to the practical cultivation of
the Christian life.--Continuation, §§ 208, 1; 211, 3.
§ 170.7. =New Quaker Sects.=--The =Jumpers=, who sprang up among
the Methodists of Cornwall about A.D. 1760, are in principle
closely allied to the early Quakers (§ 163, 4). They leaped
and danced after the style of David before the ark and uttered
inarticulate howls. They settled in America, where they have
adherents still.--The =Shakers= originated from the prophets of
the Cevennes who fled to England in A.D. 1705. They converted
a Quaker family at Bolton in Lancashire named Wardley, and the
community soon grew. In A.D. 1758 Anna Lee, wife of a farrier
Stanley, joined the society, and, as the apocalyptic bride,
inaugurated the millennium. She taught that the root of all sin
was the relationship of the sexes. Maltreated by the mob, she
emigrated to America, along with thirty companions, in A.D. 1774.
Though persecuted here also, the sect increased and formed in the
State of New York the _Millennial Church_ or _United Society of
Believers_. Anna died in A.D. 1784; but her prophets declared
that she had merely laid aside the earthly garb and assumed the
heavenly, so that only then the veneration of “Mother Anna” came
into force. As Christ is the Son of the eternal Wisdom, Anna is
the daughter; as Christ is the second Adam, she is the second
Eve, and spiritual mother of believers as Christ is their father.
Celibacy, community of goods, common labour (chiefly gardening),
as a pleasure, not a burden, common domestic life as brothers
and sisters, and constant intercourse with the spirit world, are
the main points in her doctrine. By the addition of voluntary
proselytes and the adoption of poor helpless children the sect
has grown, till now it numbers 3,000 or 4,000 souls in eighteen
villages. The capital is New Lebanon in the State of New York.
The name Shakers was given them from the quivering motion of
body in their solemn dances. In their services they march about
singing “On to heaven we will be going,” “March heavenward, yea,
victorious band,” etc. Like the Quakers (§ 163, 6) they have
neither a ministry nor sacraments, and their whole manner of life
is modelled on that of the Quakers. The purity of the relation of
brothers and sisters has always been free from suspicion.[516]
§ 170.8. =Predestinarian-Mystical Sects.=--The =Hebræans=,
founded by Verschoor, a licentiate of the Reformed church of
Holland deposed under suspicion of Spinozist views, in the end
of the seventeenth century, hold it indispensably necessary
to read the word of God in the original. They were fatalists,
and maintained that the elect could commit no sin. True faith
consisted in believing this doctrine of their own sinlessness.
About the same time sprang up the =Hattemists=, followers of
_Pontiaan von Hattem_, a preacher deposed for heresy, with
fatalistic views like the Hebræans, but with a strong vein
of pantheistic mysticism. True piety consisted in the believer
resting in God in a purely passive manner, and letting God alone
care for him. The two sects united under the name of Hattemists,
and continued to exist in Holland and Zealand till about A.D. 1760.
§ 171. RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND LITERATURE OF
THE “ILLUMINATION.”[517]
In England during the first half of the century deism had still
several active propagandists, and throughout the whole century efforts,
not altogether unsuccessful, were made to spread Unitarian views.
From the middle of the century, when the English deistic unbelief had
died out, the “Illumination,” under the name of rationalism, found an
entrance into Germany. Arminian pelagianism, recommended by brilliant
scholarship, English deism, spread by translations and refutations,
and French naturalism, introduced by a great and much honoured king,
were the outward factors in securing this result. The freemason lodges,
carried into Germany from England, a relic of mediævalism, aided the
movement by their endeavour after a universal religion of a moral
and practical kind. The inward factors were the Wolffian philosophy
(§ 167, 3), the popular philosophy, and the pietism, with its
step-father separatism (§ 170), which immediately prepared the soil
for the sowing of rationalism. Orthodoxy, too, with its formulas that
had been outlived, contributed to the same end. German rationalism is
essentially distinguished from Deism and Naturalism by not breaking
completely with the Bible and the church, but eviscerating both by its
theories of accommodation and by its exaggerated representations of
the limitations of the age in which the books of Scripture were written
and the doctrines of Christianity were formulated. It thus treats the
Bible as an important document, and the church as a useful religious
institution. Over against rationalism arose supernaturalism, appealing
directly to revelation. It was a dilution of the old church faith by
the addition of more or less of the water of rationalism. Its reaction
was therefore weak and vacillating. The temporary success of the
vulgar rationalism lay, not in its own inherent strength, but in the
correspondence that existed between it and the prevailing spirit of the
age. The philosophy, however, as well as the national literature of the
Germans, now began a victorious struggle against these tendencies, and
though itself often indifferent and even hostile to Christianity, it
recognised in Christ a school-master. Pestalozzi performed a similar
service to popular education by his attempts to reform effete systems.
§ 171.1. =Deism, Arianism, and Unitarianism in the English Church.=
1. =The Deists= (§ 164, 3). With Locke’s philosophy (§ 164, 2)
deism entered on a new stage of its development. It is
henceforth vindicated on the ground of its reasonableness.
The most notable deists of this age were =John Toland=,
an Irishman, first Catholic, then Arminian, died A.D. 1722,
author of “Christianity not Mysterious,” “Nazarenus, or
Jewish, Gentile, and Mohametan Christianity,” etc. The Earl
of =Shaftesbury=, died A.D. 1713, wrote “Characteristics of
Men,” etc. =Anthony Collins=, J.P. in Essex, died A.D. 1729,
author of “Priestcraft in Perfection,” “Discourse of
Freethinking,” etc. =Thomas Woolston=, fellow of Cambridge,
died in prison in A.D. 1733, author of “Discourse on the
Miracles of the Saviour.” =Mandeville= of Dort, physician in
London, died A.D. 1733, wrote “Free Thoughts on Religion.”
=Matthew Tindal=, professor of law in Oxford, died A.D. 1733,
wrote “Christianity as Old as the Creation.” =Thomas
Morgan=, nonconformist minister, deposed as an Arian, then
a physician, died A.D. 1743, wrote “The Moral Philosopher.”
=Thomas Chubb=, glover and tallow-chandler in Salisbury, died
A.D. 1747, author of popular compilations, “The True Gospel
of Jesus Christ.” Viscount =Bolingbroke=, statesman, charged
with high treason and pardoned, died A.D. 1751, writings
entitled, “Philosophical Works.”--Along with the deists
as an opponent of positive Christianity may be classed the
famous historian and sceptic =David Hume=, librarian in
Edinburgh, died A.D. 1776, author of “Inquiry concerning
the Human Understanding,” “Natural History of Religion,”
“Dialogues concerning Natural Religion,” etc.[518]--Deism
never made way among the people, and no attempt was made
to form a sect. Among the numerous opponents of deism these
are chief: Samuel Clarke, died A.D. 1729; Thomas Sherlock,
Bishop of London, died A.D. 1761; Chandler, Bishop of Durham,
died A.D. 1750; Leland, Presbyterian minister in Dublin,
died A.D. 1766, wrote “View of Principal Deistic Writers,”
three vols., 1754; Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester,
died A.D. 1779; Nath. Lardner, dissenting minister,
died A.D. 1768, wrote “Credibility of the Gospel History,”
seventeen vols., 1727-1757. With these may be ranked
the famous pulpit orator of the Reformed church of France,
Saurin, died A.D. 1730, author of _Discours hist., crit.,
theol., sur les Evénements les plus remarkables du V. et N.T._
2. =The So-called Arians.= In the beginning of the century
several distinguished theologians of the Anglican church
sought to give currency to an Arian doctrine of the
Trinity. Most conspicuous was =Wm. Whiston=, a distinguished
mathematician, physicist, and astronomer of the school of
Sir Isaac Newton, and his successor in the mathematical
chair at Cambridge. Deprived of this office in A.D. 1708
for spreading his heterodox views, he issued in A.D. 1711 a
five-volume work, “Primitive Christianity Revived,” in which
he justified his Arian doctrine of the Trinity as primitive
and as taught by the ante-Nicene Fathers, and insisted upon
augmenting the N.T. canon by the addition of twenty-nine
books of the apostolic and other Fathers, including the
apostolic “Constitutions” and “Recognitions” which he
maintained were genuine works of Clement. Subsequently
he adopted Baptist views, and lost himself in fantastic
chiliastic speculations. He died A.D. 1752. More sensible
and moderate was =Samuel Clarke=, also distinguished
as a mathematician of Newton’s school and as a classical
philologist. As an opponent of deism in sermons and
treatises he had gained a high reputation as a theologian,
when his work, “The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity,”
in A.D. 1712, led to his being accused of Arianism by
convocation; but by conciliatory explanations he succeeded
in retaining his office till his death in A.D. 1729. But the
excitement caused by the publication of his work continued
through several decades, and was everywhere the cause of
division. His ablest apologist was Dan. Whitby, and his
keenest opponent Dan. Waterland.
3. =The Later Unitarians.= The anti-trinitarian movement
entered on a new stage in A.D. 1770. After Archdeacon
Blackburne of London, in A.D. 1766, had started the idea,
at first anonymously, in his “Confessional,” he joined
in A.D. 1772 with other freethinkers, among whom was his
son-in-law =Theophilus Lindsey=, in presenting to Parliament
a petition with 250 signatures, asking to have the clergy of
the Anglican church freed from the obligation of subscribing
to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy, and to have the
requirement limited to assent to the Scriptures. This prayer
was rejected in the Lower House by 217 votes against 71.
Lindsey now resigned his clerical office, announced his
withdrawal from the Anglican church, founded and presided
over a Unitarian congregation in London from A.D. 1774, and
published a large number of controversial Unitarian tracts.
He died in A.D. 1808. The celebrated chemist and physicist
=Joseph Priestley=, A.D. 1733-1806, who had been a
dissenting minister in Birmingham from A.D. 1780, joined
the Unitarian movement in 1782, giving it a new impetus by
his high scientific reputation. He wrote the “History of
the Corruptions of Christianity,” and the “History of Early
Opinions about Jesus Christ,” denying that there is any
biblical foundation for the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity,
and seeking to show that it had been forced upon the church
against her will from the Platonic philosophy. These and
a whole series of other controversial writings occasioned
great excitement, not only among theologians, but also
among the English people of all ranks. At last the mob rose
against him in A.D. 1791. His house and all his scientific
collections and apparatus were burnt. He narrowly escaped
with his life, and soon after settled in America, where he
wrote a church history in four vols. Of his many English
opponents the most eminent was Bishop Sam. Horsley, a
distinguished mathematician and commentator on the works
of Sir Isaac Newton.
§ 171.2. =Freemasons.=--The mediæval institution of freemasons
(§ 104, 13) won much favour in England, especially after the Great
Fire of London in A.D. 1666. The first step toward the formation
of freemason lodges of the modern type was taken about the end of
the sixteenth century, when men of distinction in other callings
sought admission as honorary members. After the rebuilding
of London and the completion of St. Paul’s in A.D. 1710, most
of the lodges became defunct, and the four that continued to
exist united in A.D. 1717 into one grand lodge in London, which,
renouncing material masonry, assumed the task of rearing the
temple of humanity. In A.D. 1721 the Rev. Mr. Anderson prepared
a constitution for this reconstruction of a trade society into
a universal brotherhood, according to which all “free masons”
faithfully observing the moral law as well as all the claims of
humanity and patriotism, came under obligation to profess the
religion common to all good men, transcending all confessional
differences, without any individual being thereby hindered from
holding his own particular views. Although, in imitation of the
older institution, all members by reason of their close connexion
were bound to observe the strictest secrecy in regard to their
masonic signs, rites of initiation and promotion, and forms
of greeting, it is not properly a secret society, since the
constitution was published in A.D. 1723, and members publicly
acknowledge that they are such.--From London the new institute
spread over all England and the colonies. Lodges were founded
in Paris in A.D. 1725, in Hamburg in A.D. 1737, in Berlin in
A.D. 1740. This last was raised in A.D. 1744 into a grand lodge,
with Frederick II. as grand master. But soon troubles and disputes
arose, which broke up the order about the end of the century.
Rosicrucians (§ 160, 1) and alchemists, pretending to hold the
secrets of occult science, Jesuits (§ 210, 1), with Catholic
hierarchical tendencies, and “Illuminati” (§ 165, 13), with
rationalistic and infidel tendencies, as well as adventurers of
every sort, had made the lodges centres of quackery, juggling,
and plots.[519]
§ 171.3. =The German “Illumination.”=
1. =Its Precursors.= One of the first of these, following in
the footsteps of Kuntzen and Dippel, was =J. Chr. Edelmann=
of Weissenfels, who died A.D. 1767. He began in A.D. 1735
the publication of an immense series of writings in a rough
but powerful style, filled with bitter scorn for positive
Christianity. He went from one sect to another, but never
found what he sought. In A.D. 1741 he accepted Zinzendorf’s
invitation, and stayed with the count for a long time. He
next joined the Berleberg [Berleburg] separatists, because
they despised the sacraments, and contributed to their
Bible commentary, though Haug had to alter much of his work
before it could be used. This and his contempt for prayer
brought the connexion between him and the society to an
end. He then led a vagabond life up and down through Germany.
Edelmann regarded himself as a helper of providence, and at
least a second Luther. Christianity he pronounced the most
irrational of all religions; church history a conglomeration
of immorality, lies, hypocrisy, and fanaticism; prophets
and apostles, bedlamites; and even Christ by no means
a perfect pattern and teacher. The world needs only one
redemption--redemption from Christianity. Providence,
virtue, and immortality are the only elements in religion.
No less than 166 separate treatises came from his facile
pen.--=Laurence Schmidt= of Wertheim in Baden, a scholar
of Wolff, was author of the notorious “Wertheimer Bible
Version,” which rendered Scripture language into the dialect
of the eighteenth century, and eviscerated it of all positive
doctrines of revelation. This book was confiscated by the
authorities, and its author cast into prison.
§ 171.4.
2. =The Age of Frederick the Great.= Hostility to all positive
Christianity spread from England and France into Germany.
The writings of the English deists were translated and
refuted, but mostly in so weak a style that the effect
was the opposite of that intended. Whilst English deism
with its air of thoroughness made way among the learned,
the poison of frivolous French naturalism committed
its ravages among the higher circles. The great king of
Prussia =Frederick II.=, A.D. 1740-1786, surrounded by
French freethinkers Voltaire, D’Argens, La Metrie, etc.,
wished every man in his kingdom to be saved after his own
fashion. In this he was quite earnest, although his personal
animosity to all ecclesiastical and pietistic religion made
him sometimes act harshly and unjustly. Thus, when Francke
of Halle (son of the famous A. H. Francke) had exhorted
his theological students to avoid the theatre, the king,
designating him “hypocrite” Francke, ordered him to attend
the theatre himself and have his attendance attested by the
manager. His bitter hatred of all “priests” was directed
mainly against their actual or supposed intolerance,
hypocrisy, and priestly arrogance; and where he met with
undoubted integrity, as in Gellert and Seb. Bach, or simple,
earnest piety, as in General Ziethen, he was not slow in
paying to it the merited tribute of hearty acknowledgment
and respect. His own religion was a philosophical
deism, from which he could thoroughly refute Holbach’s
materialistic “_Système de la Nature_.”--Under the name
of the German popular philosophy (Moses Mendelssohn,
Garve, Eberhard, Platner, Steinbart, etc.), which started
from the Wolffian philosophy, emptied of its Christian
contents, there arose a weak, vapoury, and self-satisfied
philosophizing on the part of the common human reason.
Basedow was the reformer of pedagogy in the sense of the
“Illumination,” after the style of Rousseau, and crying
up his wares in the market made a great noise for a while,
although Herder declared that he would not trust calves, far
less men, to be educated by such a pedagogue. The “Universal
German Library” of the Berlin publisher Nicolai, 106 vols.
A.D. 1765-1792, was a literary Inquisition tribunal against
all faith in revelation or the church. The “Illumination”
in the domain of theology took the name of rationalism.
Pietistic Halle cast its skin, and along with Berlin took
front rank among the promoters of the “Illumination.” In the
other universities champions of the new views soon appeared,
and rationalistic pastors spread over all Germany, to preach
only of moral improvement, or to teach from the pulpit about
the laws of health, agriculture, gardening, natural science,
etc. The old liturgies were mutilated, hymn-books revised
after the barbarous tastes of the age, and songs of mere
moral tendency substituted for those that spoke of Christ’s
atonement. An ecclesiastical councillor, Lang of Regensburg,
dispensed the communion with the words: “Eat this bread! The
Spirit of devotion rest on you with His rich blessing! Drink
a little wine! The virtue lies not in this wine; it lies in
you, in the divine doctrine, and in God.” The Berlin provost,
W. Alb. Teller, declared publicly: “The Jews ought on
account of their faith in God, virtue, and immortality, to
be regarded as genuine Christians.” C. Fr. Bahrdt, after he
had been deposed for immorality from various clerical and
academical offices, and was cast off by the theologians,
sought to amuse the people with his wit as a taphouse-keeper
in Halle, and died there of an infamous disease in A.D. 1792.
§ 171.5.
3. =The Wöllner Reaction.=--In vain did the Prussian government,
after the death of Frederick the Great, under Frederick
William II., A.D. 1786-1797, endeavour to restore the church
to the enjoyment of its old exclusive rights by punishing
every departure from its doctrines, and insisting that
preaching should be in accordance with the Confession.
At the instigation of the Rosicrucians (§ 160, 1) and of
the minister Von Wöllner, a country pastor ennobled by the
king, the =Religious Edict of 1788= was issued, followed
by a statement of severe penalties; then by a _Schema
Examinationis Candidatorum ss. Ministerii rite Instituendi_;
and in A.D. 1791, by a commission for examination under the
Berlin chief consistory and all the provincial consistories,
with full powers, not only over candidates, but also over
all settled pastors. But notwithstanding all the energy
with which he sought to carry out his edict, the minister
could accomplish nothing in the face of public opinion,
which favoured the resistance of the chief consistory.
Only one deposition, that of Schulz of Gielsdorf, near
Berlin, was effected, in A.D. 1792. Frederick William III.,
A.D. 1797-1840, dismissed Wöllner in A.D. 1798, and set
aside the edict as only fostering hypocrisy and sham piety.
§ 171.6. =The Transition Theology.=--Four men, who endeavoured to
maintain their own belief in revelation, did more than all others
to prepare the way for rationalism: Ernesti of Leipzig, in the
department of N.T. exegesis; Michaelis of Göttingen, in O.T.
exegesis; Semler of Halle, in biblical and historical criticism;
and Töllner of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in dogmatics. =J. A.
Ernesti=, A.D. 1707-1781, from A.D. 1734 rector of St. Thomas’
School, from A.D. 1742 professor at Leipzig, colleague to Chr. A.
Crusius (§ 167, 3), was specially eminent as a classical scholar,
and maintained his reputation in that department, even after
becoming professor of theology in A.D. 1758. His _Institutio
Interpretis N.T._, of A.D. 1761, made it an axiom of exegesis
that the exposition of Scripture should be conducted precisely
as that of any other book. But even in the domain of classical
literature there must be an understanding of the author as a
whole, and the expositor must have appreciation of the writer’s
spirit, as well as have acquaintance with his language and the
customs of his age. And just from Ernesti’s want of this, his
treatise on biblical hermeneutics is rationalistic, and he became
the father of rationalistic exegesis, though himself intending
to hold firmly by the doctrine of inspiration and the creed of
the church.--What Ernesti did for the N.T., =J. D. Michaelis=,
A.D. 1717-1791, son of the pious and orthodox Chr. Bened.
Michaelis, did for the O.T. He was from A.D. 1750 professor
at Göttingen, a man of varied learning and wide influence. He
publicly acknowledged that he had never experienced anything of
the _testimonium Sp. s. internum_, and rested his proofs of the
divinity of the Scriptures wholly on external evidences, _e.g._
miracles, prophecy, authenticity, etc., a spider’s web easily
blown to pieces by the enemy. No one has ever excelled him in the
art of foisting his own notions on the sacred authors and making
them utter his favourite ideas. A conspicuous instance of this is
his “Laws of Moses,” in six vols.--In a far greater measure than
either Ernesti or Michaelis did =J. Sol. Semler=, A.D. 1725-1791,
pupil of Baumgarten, and from A.D. 1751 professor at Halle, help
on the cause of rationalism. He had grown up under the influence
of Halle pietism in the profession of a customary Christianity,
which he called his private religion, which contributed to his
life a basis of genuine personal piety. But with a rare subtlety
of reasoning as a man of science, endowed with rich scholarship,
and without any wish to sever himself from Christianity, he
undermined almost all the supports of the theology of the church.
This he did by casting doubt on the genuineness of the biblical
writings, by setting up a theory of inspiration and accommodation
which admitted the presence of error, misunderstanding, and pious
fraud in the Scriptures, by a style of exposition which put aside
everything unattractive in the N.T. as “remnants of Judaism,”
by a critical treatment of the history of the church and its
doctrines, which represented the doctrines of the church as the
result of blundering, misconception, and violence, etc. He was a
voluminous author, leaving behind him no less than 171 writings.
He sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind, by which he himself
was driven along. He firmly withstood the installation of Bahrdt
at Halle, opposed Basedow’s endeavours, applied himself eagerly
to refute the “Wolfenbüttel Fragments” of Reimarus, edited by
Lessing in 1774-1778, which represented Christianity as founded
upon pure deceit and fraud, and defended even the edict of
Wöllner. But the current was not thus to be stemmed, and Semler
died broken-hearted at the sight of the heavy crop from his own
sowing.--J. Gr. Töllner, A.D. 1724-1774, from A.D. 1756 professor
at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, was in point of learning and influence
by no means equal to those now named; yet he deserves a place
alongside of them, as one who opened the door to rationalism in
the department of dogmatics. He himself held fast to the belief
in revelation, miracles, and prophecy, but he also regarded it
as proved that God saves men by the revelation of nature; the
revelation of Scripture is only a more sure and perfect means. He
also examined the divine inspiration of Scripture, and found that
the language and thoughts were the authors’ own, and that God
was concerned in it in a manner that could not be more precisely
determined. Finally, in treating of the active obedience of
Christ, he gives such a representation of it as sets aside the
doctrine of the church.
§ 171.7. =The Rationalistic Theology.=--From the school of
these men, especially from that of Semler, went forth crowds
of rationalists, who for seventy years held almost all the
professorships and pastorates of Protestant Germany. At their
head stands =Bahrdt=, A.D. 1741-1792, writer at first of orthodox
handbooks, who, sinking deeper and deeper through vanity, want of
character, and immorality, and following in the steps of Edelmann,
wrote 102 vols., mostly of a scurrilous and blasphemous character.
The rationalists, however, were generally of a nobler sort:
=Griesbach= of Jena, A.D. 1745-1812, distinguished as textual
critic of the N.T.; =Teller= of Berlin, published a lexicon
to the N.T., which substituted “leading another life” for
regeneration, “improvement” for sanctification, etc.; Koppe of
Göttingen, and Rosenmüller of Leipzig wrote _scholia_ on N.T.,
and Schulze and Bauer on the O.T. Of far greater value were the
performances of =J. G. Eichhorn= of Göttingen, A.D. 1752-1827,
and =Bertholdt= of Erlangen, A.D. 1774-1822, who wrote
introductions to the O.T. and commentaries. In the department
of church history, =H. P. C. Henke= of Helmstädt and the
talented statesman, =Von Spittler= of Württemberg, wrote
from the rationalistic standpoint. Steinbart and Eberhardt
[Eberhard] wrote more in the style of the popular philosophy.
The subtle-minded =J. H. Tieftrunk=, A.D. 1760-1837, professor
of philosophy at Halle, introduced into theology the Kantian
philosophy with its strict categories. Jerusalem, Zollikofer,
and others did much to spread rationalistic views by their
preaching.[520]
§ 171.8. =Supernaturalism.=--Abandoning the old orthodoxy without
surrendering to rationalism, the supernaturalists sought to
maintain their hold of the Scripture revelation. Many of them
did so in a very uncertain way: their revelation had scarcely
anything to reveal which was not already given by reason. Others,
however, eagerly sought to preserve all essentially vital truths.
Morus of Leipzig, Ernesti’s ablest student, Less of Göttingen,
Döderlein of Jena, Seiler of Erlangen, and Nösselt of Halle,
were all representatives of this school. More powerful opponents
of rationalism appeared in =Storr= of Tübingen, A.D. 1746-1805,
who could break a lance even with the philosopher of Königsberg,
=Knapp= of Halle, and =Reinhard= of Dresden, the most famous
preacher of his age. Reinhard’s sermon on the Reformation
festival of A.D. 1800 created such enthusiasm in favour of the
Lutheran doctrine of justification, that government issued an
edict calling the attention of all pastors to it as a model. The
most distinguished apologists were the mathematician =Euler= of
St. Petersburg, the physiologist, botanist, geologist, and poet
=Haller= of Zürich and the theologians =Lilienthal= of Königsberg
and =Kleuker= of Kiel. The most zealous defender of the faith was
the much abused =Goeze= of Hamburg, who fought for the palladium
of Lutheran orthodoxy against his rationalistic colleagues,
against the theatre, against Barth, Basedow, and such-like,
against the “Wolfenbüttel Fragments,” against the “Sorrows of
Werther,” etc. His polemic may have been over-violent, and he
certainly was not a match for such an antagonist as Lessing; he
was, however, by no means an obscurantist, ignoramus, fanatic,
or hypocrite, but a man in solemn earnest in all he did. In
the field of church history important services were rendered
by =Schröckh= of Wittenberg and =Walch= of Göttingen, laborious
investigators and compilers, =Stäudlin= and =Planck= of Göttingen,
and =Münter= of Copenhagen.--Among English theologians of this
tendency toward the end of the century, the most famous was
=Paley= of Cambridge, A.D. 1743-1805, whose “Principles of Moral
and Political Philosophy” and “Evidences of Christianity” were
obligatory text-books in the university. His “_Horæ Paulinæ_”
prove the credibility of the Acts of the Apostles from the
epistles, and his “Natural Theology” demonstrates God’s being
and attributes from nature.
§ 171.9. =Mysticism and Theosophy.=--=Oetinger= of Württemburg
[Württemberg], the _Magus_ of the South, A.D. 1702-1782,
takes rank by himself. He was a pupil of Bengel (§ 167, 3),
well grounded in Scripture, but also an admirer of Böhme and
sympathising with the spiritualistic visions of Swedenborg. But
amid all, with his biblical realism and his theosophy, which held
corporeity to be the end of the ways of God, he was firmly rooted
in the doctrines of Lutheran orthodoxy.--The best mystic of the
Reformed church was =J. Ph. Dutoit= of Lausanne, A.D. 1721-1793,
an enthusiastic admirer of Madame Guyon; he added to her quietist
mysticism certain theosophical speculations on the original
nature of Adam, the creation of woman, the fall, the necessity
of the incarnation apart from the fall, the basing of the
sinlessness of Christ upon the immaculate conception of his
mother, etc. He gathered about him during his lifetime a large
number of pious adherents, but after his death his theories were
soon forgotten.
§ 171.10. =The German Philosophy.=--As Locke accomplished the
descent from Bacon to deism and materialism, so =Wolff= effected
the transition from Leibnitz to the popular philosophy. =Kant=,
A.D. 1724-1804, saved philosophy from the baldness and self-
sufficiency of Wolffianism, and pointed it to its proper element
in the spiritual domain. Kant’s own philosophy stood wholly
outside of Christianity, on the same platform with rationalistic
theology. But by deeper digging in the soil it unearthed many a
precious nugget, of whose existence the vulgar rationalism had
never dreamed, without any intention of becoming a schoolmaster
to lead to Christ. Kant showed the impossibility of a knowledge
of the supernatural by means of pure reason, but admitted
the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality as postulates of
the practical reason and as constituting the principle of all
religion, whose only content is the moral law. Christianity and
the Bible are to remain the basis of popular instruction, but
are to be expounded only in an ethical sense. While in sympathy
with rationalism, he admits its baldness and self-sufficiency.
His keen criticism of the pure reason, the profound knowledge of
human weakness and corruption shown in his doctrine of radical
evil, his categorical imperative of the moral law, were well
fitted to awaken in more earnest minds a deep distrust of
themselves, a modest estimate of the boasted excellences of
their age, and a feeling that Christianity could alone meet their
necessities.--=F. H. Jacobi=, A.D. 1743-1819, “with the heart a
Christian, with the understanding a pagan,” as he characterized
himself, took religion out of the region of mere reason into the
depths of the universal feelings of the soul, and so awakened a
positive aspiration.--=J. G. Fichte=, A.D. 1762-1814, transformed
Kantianism, to which he at first adhered, into an idealistic
science of knowledge, in which only the _ego_ that posits itself
appears as real, and the _non-ego_, only by its being posited by
the _ego_; and thus the world and nature are only a reflex of the
mind. But when, accused of atheism in A.D. 1798, he was expelled
from his position in Jena, he changed his views, rushing from the
verge of atheism into a mysticism approaching to Christianity. In
his “Guide to a Blessed Life,” A.D. 1806, he delivered religion
from being a mere servant to morals, and sought the blessedness
of life in the loving surrender of one’s whole being to the
universal Spirit, the full expression of which he found in
John’s Gospel. Pauline Christianity, on the other hand, with its
doctrine of sin and redemption, seemed to him a deterioration,
and Christ Himself only the most complete representative of
the incarnation of God repeated in all ages and in every pious
man.--In the closing years of the century, =Schelling= brought
forward his theory of _identity_, which was one of the most
powerful instruments in introducing a new era.[521]
§ 171.11. =The German National Literature.=--When the powerful
strain of the evangelical church hymn had well-nigh expired in
the feeble lispings of =Gellert’s= sacred poetry, =Klopstock=
began to chant the praises of the Messiah in a higher strain. But
the pathos of his odes met with no response, and his “Messiah,”
of which the first three cantos appeared in A.D. 1748, though
received with unexampled enthusiasm, could do nothing to exorcise
the spirit of unbelief, and was more praised than read. The
theological standpoint of =Lessing=, A.D. 1729-1781, is set forth
in one of his letters to his brother. “I despise the orthodox
even more than you do, only I despise the clergy of the new style
even more. What is the new-fashioned theology of those shallow
pates compared with orthodoxy but as dung-water compared with
dirty water? On this point we are at one, that our old religious
system is false; but I cannot say with you that it is a patchwork
of bunglers and half philosophers. I know nothing in the world
upon which human ingenuity has been more subtly exercised than
upon it. That religious system which is now offered in place of
the old is a patchwork of bunglers and half philosophers.” He is
offended at men hanging the concerns of eternity on the spider’s
thread of external evidences, and so he was delighted to hurl
the Wolfenbüttel “Fragments” at the heads of theologians and the
Hamburg pastor Goeze, whom he loaded with contumely and scorn.
Thoroughly characteristic too is the saying in the “_Duplik_:”
That if God holding in his right hand all truth, and in his
left hand the search after truth, subject to error through all
eternity, were to offer him his choice, he would humbly say,
“Father the left, for pure truth is indeed for thee alone.” In
his “_Nathan_” only Judaism and Mohammedanism are represented by
truly noble and ideal characters, while the chief representative
of Christianity is a gloomy zealot, and the conclusion of the
parable is that all three rings are counterfeit. In another
work he views revelation as one of the stages in “The Education
of the Human Race,” which loses its significance as soon as
its purpose is served. In familiar conversation with Jacobi
he frankly declared his acceptance of the doctrine of Spinoza:
Ἓν καὶ πᾶν.[522] =Wieland=, A.D. 1733-1813, soon turned
from his youthful zeal for ecclesiastical orthodoxy to the
popular philosophy of the cultured man of the world. =Herder=,
A.D. 1744-1803, with his enthusiastic appreciation of the
poetical contents of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament,
was not slow to point out the insipidity of its ordinary
treatment. =Goethe=, A.D. 1749-1832, profoundly hated the
vandalism of neology, delighted in “The Confessions of a
Fair Soul” (§ 172, 2), had in earlier years sympathy with the
Herrnhuters, but in the full intellectual vigour of his manhood
thought he had no need of Christianity, which offended him by
its demand for renunciation of self and the world. =Schiller=,
A.D. 1759-1805, enthusiastically admiring everything noble,
beautiful and good, misunderstood Christianity, and introduced
into the hearts of the German people Kantian rationalism clothed
in rich poetic garb. His lament on the downfall of the gods of
Greece, even if not so intended by the poet himself, told not so
much against orthodox Christianity as against poverty-stricken
deism, which banished the God of Christianity from the world
and set in his place the dead forces of nature. And if indeed
he really thought that for religion’s sake he should confess
to no religion, he has certainly in many profoundly Christian
utterances given unconscious testimony to Christianity.--The
Jacobi philosophy of feeling found poetic interpreters in =Jean
Paul Richter=, A.D. 1763-1825, and =Hebel=, died A.D. 1826, in
whom we find the same combination of pious sentiment which is
drawn toward Christianity and the sceptical understanding which
allied itself to the revolt against the common orthodoxy. =J. H.
Voss=, a rough, powerful Dutch peasant, who in his “_Luise_”
sketched the ideal of a brave rationalistic country parson, and,
with the inexorable rigour of an inquisitor, hunted down the
night birds of ignorance and oppression. But alongside of those
children of the world stood two genuine sons of Luther, =Matthias
Claudius=, A.D. 1740-1815, and =J. G. Hamann=, A.D. 1730-1788,
the “Magus of the North” and the Elijah of his age, of whom Jean
Paul said that his commas were planetary systems and his periods
solar systems, to whom the philosopher Hemsterhuis erected in
the garden of Princess Gallitzin a tablet with the inscription:
“To the Jews a stumbling- block, to the Greeks foolishness.” With
them may also be named two noble sons of the Reformed church, the
physiognomist =Lavater=, A.D. 1741- 1801, and the devout dreamer,
=Jung-Stilling=, A.D. 1740-1817. The famous historian, =John von
Müller=, A.D. 1752- 1809, well deserves mention here, who more
than any previous historian made Christ the centre and summit
of all times; and also the no less famous statesman =C. F. von
Moser=, the most German of the Germans of this century, who,
with noble Christian heroism, in numerous political and patriotic
tracts, battled against the prevailing social and political vices
of his age.
§ 171.12. The great Swiss educationist =Pestalozzi=,
A.D. 1746-1827, assumed toward the Bible, the church, and
Christianity an attitude similar to that of the philosopher of
Königsberg. The conviction of the necessity and wholesomeness
of a biblical foundation in all popular education was rooted
in his heart, and he clearly saw the shallowness of the popular
philosophy, whether presented under the eccentric naturalism of
Rousseau or the bald utilitarianism of Basedow. His whole life
issued from the very sanctuary of true Christianity, as seen in
his self-sacrificing efforts to save the lost, to strengthen the
weak, and to preach to the poor by word and deed the gospel of
the all-merciful God whose will it is that all should be saved.
He began his career as an educationist in A.D. 1775 by receiving
into his house deserted beggar children, and carried on his
experiments in his educational institutions at Burgdorf till
A.D. 1798, and at Isserten till A.D. 1804. His writings, which
circulated far and wide, gained for his methods recognition and
high approval.[523]
§ 172. CHURCH LIFE IN THE PERIOD OF THE “ILLUMINATION.”
The ancient faith of the church had even during this age of prevailing
unbelief its seven thousand who refused to bow the knee to Baal. The
German people were at heart firmly grounded in the Christianity of the
Bible and the church, and where the pulpit failed had their spiritual
wants supplied by the devout writings of earlier days. Where the modern
vandalism of the “Illumination” had mutilated and watered down the books
of praise, the old church songs lingered in the memories of fathers and
mothers, and were sung with ardour at family worship. For many men of
culture, who were more exposed to danger, the Society of the Brethren
afforded a welcome refuge. But even among the most accomplished of the
nation many stood firmly in the old paths. Lavater and Stilling, Haller
and Euler, the two Mosers, father and son, John von Müller and his
brother J. G. Müller, are not by any means the only, but merely the best
known, of such true sons of the church. In Württemberg and Berg, where
religious life was most vigorous, religious sects were formed with new
theological views which made a deep impression on the character and
habits of the people. Also toward the end of the century an awakened
zeal in home and foreign missions was the prelude of the glorious
enterprises of our own days.
§ 172.1. =The Hymnbook and Church Music.=--Klopstock, followed
by Cramer and Schlegel, introduced the vandalism of altering
the old church hymns to suit modern tastes and views. But a
few, like Herder and Schubert, raised their voices against such
philistinism. The “Illuminist” alterations were unutterably
prosaic, and the old pathos and poetry of the sixteenth and
seventeenth century hymns were ruthlessly sacrificed. The
spiritual songs of the noble and pious Gellert are by far
the best productions of this period.--=Church Music= too now
reached its lowest ebb. The old chorales were altered into modern
forms. A multitude of new, unpopular melodies, difficult of
comprehension, with a bald school tone, were introduced; the last
trace of the old rhythm disappeared, and a weary monotony began
to prevail, in which all force and freshness were lost. As a
substitute, secular preludes, interludes, and concluding pieces
were brought in. The people often entered the churches during the
playing of operatic overtures, and were dismissed amid the noise
of a march or waltz. The church ceased to be the patron and
promoter of music; the theatre and concert room took its place.
The opera style thoroughly depraved the oratorio. For festival
occasions, cantatas in a purely secular, effeminate style were
composed. A true ecclesiastical music no longer existed, so that
even Winterfeld closed his history of church music with Seb. Bach.
It was, if possible, still worse with the mass music of the Roman
Catholic church. Palestrina’s earnest and capable school was
completely lost sight of under the sprightly and frivolous opera
style, and with the organ still more mischief was done than in
the Protestant church.
§ 172.2. =Religious Characters.=--The pastor of Ban de la Roche
in Steinthal of Alsace, “the saint of the Protestant church,”
=J. Fr. Oberlin=, A.D. 1740-1826, deserves a high place of honour.
During a sixty years’ pastorate “Father Oberlin” raised his
poverty-stricken flock to a position of industrial prosperity,
and changed the barren Steinthal into a patriarchal paradise. The
same may be said of a noble Christian woman of that age, =Sus.
Cath. von Klettenberg=, Lavater’s “Cordata,” Goethe’s “Fair Soul,”
whose genuine confessions are wrought into “_Wilhelm Meister_,”
the centre of a beautiful Christian circle in Frankfort, where
the young Goethe received religious impressions that were never
wholly forgotten.--Community of religious yearnings brought
together pious Protestants and pious Catholics. The Princess von
Gallitzin, her chaplain Overberg, and minister Von Fürstenberg
formed a noble group of earnest Catholics, for whom the ardent
Lutheran Hamann entertained the warmest affection.
§ 172.3. =Religious Sects.=--In Württemberg there arose out of
the pietism of Spener, with a dash of the theosophy of Oetinger,
the party of the =Michelians=, so named from a layman, Michael
Hahn, whose writings show profound insight into the truths of the
gospel. He taught the doctrine of a double fall, in consequence
of which he depreciated though he did not forbid marriage; of a
restitution of all things; while he subordinated justification
to sanctification, the Christ for us to the Christ in us, etc.
As a reaction against this extreme arose the =Pregizerians=, who
laid exclusive stress upon baptism and justification, declared
assurance and heart-breaking penitence unnecessary, and imparted
to their services as much brightness and joy as possible. Both
sects spread over Württemberg and still exist, but in their
common opposition to the destructive tendencies of modern times,
they have drawn more closely together. In their chiliasm and
restitutionism they are thoroughly agreed.--The =Collenbuschians=
in Canton Berg propounded a dogmatic system in which Christ
empties Himself of His divine attributes, and assumes with sinful
flesh the tendencies to sin that had to be fought against, the
sufferings of Christ are attributed to the wrath of Satan, and
His redemption consists in His overcoming Satan’s wrath for us
and imparting His Spirit to enable us to do works of holiness.
The most distinguished adherents of Collenbusch were the two
Hasencamps and the talented Bremen pastor Menken.
§ 172.4. =The Rationalistic “Illumination” outside of
Germany.=--In Amsterdam, in A.D. 1791, a =Restored Lutheran
Church= or =Old Light= was organized on the occasion of the
intrusion of a rationalistic pastor. It now numbers eight Dutch
congregations with 14,000 adherents and 11 pastors. Under the
name of =Christo Sacrum= some members of the French Reformed
church at Delft, in A.D. 1797, founded a denomination which
received adherents of all confessions, holding by the divinity
of Christ and His atonement, and treating all confessional
differences as non-essential and to be held only as private
opinions. In their public services they adopted mainly the forms
of the Anglican episcopal church. Though successful at first, it
soon became rent by the incongruity of its elements. In England
the dissenters and Methodists provided a healthy protest against
the lukewarmness of the State church. In =William Cowper=,
A.D. 1731-1800, we have a noble and brilliant poet of high
lyrical genius, whose life was blasted by the terrorism of a
predestinarian doctrine of despair and the religious melancholy
produced by Methodistic agonies of soul.
§ 172.5. =Missionary Societies and Missionary Enterprise.=--In
order to arouse interest in the idea of a grand union for
practical Christian purposes, the Augsburg elder, John Urlsperger,
travelled through England, Holland, and Germany. The Basel
Society for Spreading Christian Truth, founded in A.D. 1780, was
the firstfruits of his zeal, and branches were soon established
throughout Switzerland and Southern Germany. The Basel Bible
Society was founded in A.D. 1804, and the Missionary Society
in A.D. 1816.--At a meeting of English Baptist preachers at
Kettering, in Northamptonshire, in A.D. 1792, William Carey was
the means of starting the Baptist Missionary Society. Carey was
himself its first missionary. He sailed for India in A.D. 1793,
and founded the Serampore Mission in Bengal. The work of the
society has now spread over the East and West Indies, the Malay
Archipelago, South Africa, and South America. A popular preacher,
Melville Horne, who had been himself in India, published “Letters
on Missions,” in A.D. 1794, in which he earnestly counselled a
union of all true Christians for the conversion of the heathen.
In response to this appeal a large number of Christians of all
denominations, mostly Independents, founded in A.D. 1795, the
London Missionary Society, and in the following year the first
missionary ship, _The Duff_, under Captain Wilson, sailed for the
South Seas with twenty-nine missionaries on board. Its operations
now extend to both Indies, South Africa, and North America;
but its chief hold is in the South Seas. In the Society Islands
the missionaries wrought for sixteen years without any apparent
result, till at last King Pomare II. of Tahiti sought baptism as
the first-fruits of their labours. A victory gained over a pagan
reactionary party in A.D. 1815 secured complete ascendency to
Christianity. The example of the London Society was followed by
the founding of two Scottish societies in A.D. 1796 and a Dutch
society in A.D. 1797, and the Church Missionary Society in London
in A.D. 1799, for the English possessions in Africa, Asia, etc.
The Danish Lutheran (§ 167, 9) and the Herrnhut (§ 168, 11)
societies still continued their operations.[524]--Continuation,
§§ 183, 184.
FOURTH SECTION.
CHURCH HISTORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
I. General and Introductory.
§ 173. SURVEY OF RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY.
A reaction had set in against the atheistic spirit of the French
Revolution, and the victories of A.D. 1813, 1815, encouraged the
pious in their Christian confidence. Princes and people were full of
gratitude to God. Alexander I., Francis I., and Frederick William III.,
representing the three principal churches, in A.D. 1815, after the
political situation had been determined by the Congress of Vienna,
formed “the Holy Alliance,” a league of brotherly love for mutual
defence and maintenance of peace, to which all the European princes
adhered with the exception of the pope, the sultan, and the king of
England. Through Metternich’s arts it ultimately degenerated into an
instrument of repression and tyranny.--Incongruous elements were present
everywhere. The restoration of the papacy in A.D. 1814 had given a new
impulse to ultramontanism, as did also the Reformation centenary of
A.D. 1817 to Protestantism; while supernaturalism and pietism prevailing
in the Lutheran and Reformed churches led to renewed attempts at union.
Old sects were strengthened and new sects arose. Pantheism, materialism,
and atheism, as well as socialism and communism, without concealment
attacked Christianity; while pauperism and vagabondage, on the one hand,
and the Stock Exchange swindling of capitalists, on the other, spread
moral consumption through all classes of society. The ultramontanes, led
by the Jesuits, reasserted the most arrogant claims of the papacy. The
climax was reached when Pius IX. obtained a decree of council affirming
his infallibility, while by the Nemesis of history the royal crown was
torn from his head.
§ 174. NINETEENTH CENTURY CULTURE IN RELATION TO
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH.
Down to A.D. 1840, when zeal for it began to abate, philosophy
exercised an important influence on the religious development of the
age, both in the departments of science and of life. While rationalism
was not able to transcend the standpoint of Kant, the other theological
tendencies were more or less determined formally, and even materially
by the philosophical movements of this period. Alongside of philosophy,
literature, itself to a great extent coloured by contemporary philosophy,
exerted a powerful influence on the religious opinions of the more
cultured among the people. The sciences, too, came into closer relations,
partly friendly, partly hostile, to Christianity; and art in some of its
masterpieces paid a noble tribute to the church.
§ 174.1. =The German Philosophy= (§ 171, 10).--=Fries=, whose
philosophy was Kantian rationalism, modified by elements borrowed
from Jacobi, influenced such theologians as De Wette. =Schelling=,
in his “Philosophy of Identity,” had advanced from Fichte’s
idealism to a pantheistic naturalism. From Fichte he had learned
that this world is nothing without spirit; but while Fichte
recognised this world, the _non-ego_, as reality only in so far
as man seizes upon it and penetrates it by his spirit, and so
raises it into real being, Schelling regards spirit as nothing
else than the life of nature itself. In the lower stages of this
nature-life spirit is still slumbering and dreaming, but in man
it has attained unto consciousness. The nature-life as a whole,
or the world-soul, is God; man is the reflex of God and the
world in miniature, a microcosmos. In the world’s development God
comes into objective being and unfolds his self-consciousness;
Christianity is the turning point in the world’s history; its
fundamental dogmas of revelation, trinity, incarnation, and
redemption are suggestive attempts to solve the world’s riddle.
Schelling’s poetic view of the world penetrated all the sciences,
and gave to them a new impulse. Though hateful to the old
rationalists, this system found ardent admirers among the younger
theologians. As Schelling to Fichte, so =Hegel= was attached
to Schelling, and wrought his pantheistic naturalism into a
pantheistic spiritualism. Not so much in the life of nature as in
the thinking and doing of the human spirit, the divine revelation
is the unfolding of the divine self-consciousness from non-being
into being. Judaism and Christianity are progressive stages of
this process; Judaism stands far below classic paganism; but in
Christianity we have the perfect religion, to be developed into
the highest form of philosophy. The Protestant church doctrine
was now again accorded the place of honour. Marheincke developed
Lutheran orthodoxy into a system of speculative theology based on
Hegelian principles; while Göschel infused into it a pietist
spirit, which made many hail the new departure as the long-sought
reconciliation of theology and philosophy. But after Hegel’s
death in A.D. 1831 the condition of matters suddenly changed.
His school split into an orthodox wing following the master’s
ecclesiastical tendencies, and a heterodox wing which deified the
human spirit. Strauss, Bauer, and Feuerbach led this heterodox
party in theology, and Ruge in reference to social, æsthetic,
and political questions. Persecuted by the state in A.D. 1843,
the Young Hegelians joined the rationalists, whom they had before
sneered at as “antediluvian theologians.” =Schelling=, who had
been silent for almost thirty years, took Hegel’s chair in Berlin
as his decided opponent in A.D. 1841, and with his dualistic
doctrine of potencies, from which he finally advanced to a
Christian gnosticism, obtained a temporary influence among the
younger theologians. He died at the baths of Ragaz in Switzerland
in A.D. 1854. He flashed for a moment like a meteor, and as
suddenly his light was quenched.
§ 174.2. The domination of the Hegelian philosophy was overthrown
by the split in the school and the radicalism of the adherents
of the left wing, and Schelling in the second stage of his
philosophical development had not succeeded in founding any
proper school of his own. A group of younger philosophers, with
I. H. Fichte at their head, starting from the Hegelian dialectic,
have striven to free philosophy from the reproach of pantheism
and to develop a speculative theism in touch with historical
Christianity. Other members of this school are Weisse, Braniss,
Chalibæus, Ulrici, Wirth, Romang, etc.--=Herbart= renounces all
that philosophers from Fichte senior to Fichte junior had done,
and declares the metaphysical end of their systems beyond the
horizon of philosophy, which must limit itself to the province of
experience. His realism is in diametrical opposition to Hegel’s
idealism. Toward Christianity his philosophy occupies a position
of indifference. Influenced by Kant’s theory of knowledge as
well as by the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel idealism and Herbart’s
realism, with an infusion of Leibnitz’s monad doctrine, =Hermann
Lotze= of Göttingen has, since A.D. 1844, set forth a system of
“teleological idealism.” He develops his metaphysical principles
from what we have by immediate experience internal and external,
and the invariability of the causal mechanism in everything that
happens in the inner and outer world he explains as the realizing
of moral purposes.--=Schopenhauer’s= philosophy, which only in
the later years of his life (died A.D. 1860) began to attract
attention, is in spirit utterly opposed to the religion and
ethics of Christianity. Its task is to describe “The World as
Will and Idea;” first at that stage of entering into visibility
which is represented in man does will, the thing-in-itself,
become joined with idea, and makes its appearance now with it
over against the world as a conscious subject. But since idea
is regarded as a pure illusion of the will, this leads to a
pessimism which takes absolute despair as the only legitimate
moral principle. =E. von Hartmann= went still further in the
same direction in his “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” published
in 1869, of which an English translation in three vols. appeared
in 1884. He identifies the will with matter and idea with spirit,
demands in addition to the absolute despair of the individual
here and hereafter, the complete surrender of the personality to
the world-process in order to the attainment of its end, the
annihilation of the world. This dissolution of the world consists
in the complete withdrawal of the will into the absolute as
the only unconscious, so that at last the wrong and misery of
being produced by the irrational will are abolished in this
withdrawal. From this philosophical standpoint Hartmann attempted
in A.D. 1874 to take Christianity to pieces, showing some favour
to Vatican Catholicism, but pouring out the vials of his wrath
upon Protestantism. His “religion of the future” consists in a
yearning for freedom from all the burden and misery of being and
share in the world-process by relapsing into the blessedness of
non-being.--In France, England, and America much favour has been
shown to the atheistic-sensual Positivism of =Aug. Comte=, which,
excluding every form of theology and morals, requires only the
so-called exact sciences as the object of philosophy. On his later
notions of a “religion of humanity,” see § 210, 1. On essentially
similar lines proceeds =Herbert Spencer=, in his “System of
Synthetic Philosophy,” to whose school also Darwin belonged.
His followers are styled agnostics, because they regard all
knowledge of God and divine things as absolutely impossible,
and evolutionists, because their master endeavours to construct
all the sciences on the basis of the evolution theory.
§ 174.3. =The Sciences.=-Schelling’s profound theories were of
all the more significance from their not being restricted to
the philosophical strivings of his time, but inspiring the other
sciences with the breath of a new life. To the fullest extent
the natural sciences exposed themselves to this influence. There
was not wanting indeed a certain shadowy mysticism, to which
especially the fancies of mesmeric magnetism largely contributed;
but this fog gradually cleared away, and the Christian elements
were purified from their pantheistic surroundings. Steffens
and Von Schubert taught that the divine book of nature is to be
regarded as the reflex and expansion of the divine revelation in
Scripture. The Hegelian philosophy, too, seemed at first likely
to infuse a Christian spirit into the other sciences. In Göschel,
at least, there was a thinker who imparted to jurisprudence a
Christian character, and to Christianity a juristic construction.
In other respects Hegel’s philosophy in its application to the
other departments of science gave in many ways a predominance to
an abstruse dialectic tendency. Its adherents of the extreme left
sought to construct all sciences _a priori_ from the pure idea,
and at the same time to root out from them the last vestiges of
the Christian spirit.
The greatest names in natural science, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton,
Haller, Davy, Cuvier, etc., are household words in Christian
circles. All these and many more were firmly convinced that there
was no conflict between their most brilliant discoveries and
Christian truth. In A.D. 1825 the Earl of Bridgwater founded a
lectureship, and treatises on the power, wisdom, and goodness of
God as manifested in the creation, have been written by Buckland,
Chalmers, Whewell, Bell, etc. It was otherwise in Germany.
Even Schleiermacher, in his “Letters to Lücke,” in A.D. 1829,
expressed his fears of the prophesied overthrow of all Christian
theories of the world by the incontrovertible results of physical
research, and Bretschneider in his “Letters to a Statesman,” in
A.D. 1830, proclaimed to the world without regret that already
what Schleiermacher only feared had actually come to pass.
Physicists, awakening from the glamour of the Schelling nature
philosophy, pronounced all speculation contraband, and declared
pure empiricism, the simple investigation of actual things, the
only permissible object of their labour. And although they handed
over to theologians and philosophers questions about spirit in
and over nature, as not belonging to their province, a younger
generation maintained that spirit was non-existent, because it
could not be discovered by the microscope and dissecting knife.
Carl Vogt defined thought to be a secretion of the brain,
and Moleschott regarded life as a mere mode of matter and
man’s existence after life only as the manuring of the fields.
Feuerbach proclaimed that “man is what he eats,” and Buchner
[Büchner] popularized these views into a gospel for social
democrats and nihilists. Oersted, the famous discoverer of
electro-magnetism, had sought “the spirit in nature,” but the
spirit which he found was not that of the Bible and the church.
The grandmaster of German scientific research, Alex. von Humboldt,
saw in the world a cosmos of noble harmony as a whole and in its
parts, but of Christian ideas in God’s great book of nature he
finds no trace. In A.D. 1859 the great English naturalist Darwin,
died A.D. 1882, introduced into the arena the theory of “Natural
Selection,” by means of which the modification and development of
the few primary animal forms through the struggle for existence
and the survival of the fittest by sexual selection is supposed,
in millions, perhaps milliards, of years, to have brought
forth the present variety and manifoldness of animal species.
Multitudes of naturalists now accept his theory of the descent
of men and apes from a common stem.--In =Medicine= De Valenti on
the Protestant side, with pietistic earnestness, maintains that
Christian faith is a vehicle of healing power; while a circle in
Munich on the Catholic side make worship of saints and the host a
_conditio sine qua non_ of all medicine. A more moderate attitude
is assumed by the Roman Catholic Dr. Capellmann of Aachen, in his
“Pastoral Medicine.”
§ 174.4. Of Christian =Jurists= we have, on the Protestant
side, Stahl, Savigny, Puchta, Jacobson, Richter, Meier, Scheuerl,
Hinschius, etc.; and on the Catholic side, Walther, Philipps, etc.
Among =Historians=, the greatest in modern times is Leopold von
Ranke, who, with his disciples, occupies a thoroughly Christian
standpoint. There has appeared, however, on the part of many
Protestant historians, such as Voigt, Leo, Mentzel, Vorreiter,
Hurter, Gfroerer [Gfrörer], etc., a tendency in the most
conspicuous manner to recognise and admire the brilliant
phenomena of mediæval Catholicism, even going to the length
of renouncing the vital principles of Protestantism, and
glorifying a Boniface, a Gregory VII., and an Innocent III.,
and characterizing the Reformation as a revolution. Ultramontanes
have been only too ready to turn to their own use all such
concessions, but show no inclination to make similar admissions
damaging to their side, so that with them history consists rather
in the abuse of everything Protestant as vile and perfidious,
instead of being a record of independent research. Janssen
[Jansen] of Frankfort stands out prominently above the billows
of the “_Kulturkampf_” (§ 197), as the greatest master of this
ultramontane style of history making.--=Geography=, first raised
to the rank of a science by Carl Ritter, received from its great
founder a Christian impress and owes much of its development to
the researches of Christian missionaries. Finally, =Philology=,
in the hands of Creuzer, Görres, Sepp, etc., unfolds in a
Christian spirit the religion and mythology of classical paganism;
and in the hands of Nägelsbach and Lübker expounds the religious
life of the ancient world in relation to Christian truth.
§ 174.5. =National Literature= (§ 171, 11).--To some extent
Goethe, but much more decidedly the romantic school of poets, was
attached to Schelling’s philosophy of nature. The romanticists
developed a deep religiousness of feeling, as shown in Novalis
and La Motte Fouqué, and violent opposition to rationalistic
theology as shown in Tieck, which in the case of Fr. Schlegel ran
to the other extreme of moral frivolity as seen in his “Lucinde.”
The romantic school as thus represented by Schlegel was joined by
the party of Young Germany with its gospel of the rehabilitation
of the flesh. Its mouthpiece was the gifted poet Heine.
The pantheistic deification of nature by Schelling, and
the self-deification of the Hegelian school obtained poetic
expression in Leop. Schafer’s _Laienbrevier und Weltpriester_,
as well as in Sallet’s _Laienevangelium_; while the sympathies
of the young Hegelians with the revolutionary movements gained
utterance in the poems of Herwegh, and in a more serious
tone in those of Freiligrath. More recently the views of
the _Protestantenverein_ (§ 180) have found their poetical
representative in Nic. Eichhorn, whose “Jesus of Nazareth,” a
tragical drama, 1880, deals with the life, works, and sufferings
of the “historical Christ,” after the style of free Protestant
science, with rich psychological analysis of the character in a
brilliant imaginative production. Though composed with a view to
theatrical representation, it has never yet been put on the stage.
§ 174.6. The Christian element was present in the noble patriotic
songs of E. M. Arndt[525] and Max. von Schenkendorf much more
distinctly than in the romantic school. Enthusiasm in the
struggle for freedom awakened faith in the living God. Uhland’s
lovely lyrics, with their enthusiasm for the present interests
of the Fatherland, entitle him to rank among patriotic poets, and
their brilliant and profound rendering of the old German legends
places him in the romantic school, which, however, in clearness
and depth he leaves far behind. Without being a distinctively
Christian poet, his warm sympathy with the life of the German
people gives him a genuine interest in the Christian religion.
The same may be said of Rückert’s highly finished poems, which
transplanted the fragrant flowers of oriental sensuousness
and contemplativeness into the garden of German poetry. A more
decided Christian consecration of poetic genius is seen in the
noble and beautiful lyrics of Emanuel Geibel, died 1884, the
greatest and most Christian of the secular poets of the present.
Of those ordinarily ranked as sacred poets may be named Knapp,
Döring, Spitta, Garve, Vict. Strauss, etc., who for the most
part contributed their sacred songs to Knapp’s “_Christoterpe_”
(1833-1853). A later publication of equal merit, called the
“_Neue Christoterpe_,” has been edited since 1880 by Kögel, Baur,
and Frommel. But with all the Christian depth and spirituality,
freshness and warmth, which we meet with in the productions of
these Christian poets, none of them has been able to rise to
the noble simplicity, power, popular force, and fitting them for
church use, objectivity which are present in the old evangelical
church hymns. In this respect they all bear too conspicuously the
signature of their age, with its subjective tone and the noise
and turmoil of present conflicts. Of all modern poets, Rückert
alone approaches in his advent hymn the measure and spirit of the
old church song.--In the department of novels and romance there
has been shown an almost invariable hostility toward Christianity,
religion being either entirely avoided or held up to contempt by
having as its representatives, simpletons, hypocrites, or knaves.
§ 174.7. In =France=, Chateaubriand in his “_Genie du
Christianisme_” pronounces an eloquent eulogy on the half-pagan
Christianity of the Middle Ages. In another work he makes the
representatives of heathenism in the age of Constantine act like
Homeric heroes, and those of Christianity speak “like theologians
of the age of Bossuet.” Lamartine may be described as a Christian
romanticist. Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, Sue, Dumas,
etc., influenced by the Revolution, developed an antichristian
tendency; while naked naturalism, photographic realism in
depicting the lowest side of Parisian life, especially adultery
and prostitution, is represented by Flaubert, Daudet, De Goncourt,
Zola, etc.--In =Italy=, the amiable Manzoni gave noble expression
to Christian feeling in his “_Inni Sacri_,” and in his masterly
romance “_Promessi Sposi_;” and the famous poet Silvio Pellico,
in his “_La mia Prigioni_,” affords a noble example of the
sustaining power of true religion during ten years’ rigorous
imprisonment in an Austrian dungeon. The most gifted of modern
Italian poets, Giacomo Leopardi, sank into despairing pessimism,
which expressed itself in the domain of religion in biting
satire and savage irony. Among the poets of the present who,
with glowing patriotism, not only yearned for the deliverance
and unity of Italy, but also lived to see these accomplished,
and have since given expression, though from different political
and religious standpoints, to the desire for the reconciliation
of the free united kingdom with the irreconcilable church, the
most distinguished are Aleardi, Carducci, Imbriani, Guercini,
Cavalotti.--In =Spain=, Caecilia Böhl von Faber, although
the daughter of a German father, and educated in Germany,
introduced, under the name Fernan Caballero, the modern romance
in a thoroughly national Spanish style, and in a purely moral and
catholic Christian spirit. In the =Flemish Provinces=, Hendrik
Conscience, the able novelist, has described Flemish village
life in a spirit fully in sympathy with Christianity.--=England=
had in Lord Byron a poet of the first rank, who more than any
other poet had experience in himself of the convulsions and
contradictions of his age. In powerful and impressive tones he
sets forth the unreconciled disharmonies of nature and of human
life. Incurable pain, despair, weariness of life, and hatred
of mankind, without hope, yet without desire for reconciliation,
enthusiastic admiration of the ancient world, passionate love of
liberty and titanic pride in human might mingle with scenes of
grumbling, misery, and profligacy. On the other hand, the rich
and mostly solid English novel literature is prevailingly
inspired by a Christian spirit.
§ 174.8. =Popular Education.=--While the poetic national
literature for the most part found entrance only among the
cultured and adult circles, this age, almost as fond of
writing as of reading, produced an enormous quantity of books
for the people and for children. But only a few succeeded in
catching the proper tone for the masses and the youth, and
still fewer supplied their readers with what was genuinely pious.
Pestalozzi’s “_Lienhard und Gertrud_,” Hebel’s “_Schatzkästlein_,”
and Tschokke’s “_Goldmacherdorf_,” respected at least the
Christian feeling of the people, although they did not strengthen
or foster it. But, on the other hand, in recent years a number of
writers have appeared, thoroughly popular, and at the same time
thoroughly Christian, who, as popular poets and novelists, have
become apostles of Christian views, morals, and customs to the
people. The most distinguished of these are Jeremiah Gotthelf
(Albert Bitzius, died 1854), whose “Kate the Grandmother” was
translated in the _Sunday Magazine_ for 1865, Von Horn, Carl
Stöber, Wildenhahn, Nathusius, Frommel, Weitbrecht, etc. In the
Catholic church Albanus Stoltz, died 1883, developed a wonderful
power of popular composition, which, however, he subsequently put
at the service of a fanatical ultramontanism, and so sacrificed
much of its nobility and worth. From the enormous mass of
children’s books only extremely few attain their aim. In the
front rank stands the brilliant patriarch of Christian tale
writing, Von Schubert, died 1860. After him are Barth, the author
of “Poor Henry,” Stöber, and the Swiss Spyri, and the Catholic
Christian Schmid, author of the “Easter Eggs.”--The =Public
Schools=, especially under Dinter (died 1831), member of the
consistory and schoolboard of Königsberg, were for a long time
nurseries of the tame, flat, and self-satisfied rationalism of
the _ancien régime_; but since 1830, and more particularly in
consequence of the violent agitations of the seminary director
Diesterweg, who died in 1866, put to silence in 1847, but
still for his work in connexion with education always highly
respected, many of the teachers took a higher flight in the
naturalistic-democratic direction. By word and pen Diesterweg
carried on a propaganda in favour of a free and liberal education
for the people. His disciples, wanting his earnest Christian
spirit, carried out recklessly his radical tendencies, and now
the Christian faith has no more persistent foes than the teachers
of the public schools. In A.D. 1870, a Teachers’ Association in
Vienna gave a vote of 6,000 in favour of radicalism. At a Hamburg
meeting in A.D. 1872 of 5,100 teachers, progress was shown by
individuals raising their voices in defence of Christianity,
which, however, were generally drowned in shrieks and hisses.
A Teachers’ Evangelical Association held its ninth assembly
at Hamburg in A.D. 1881 with 1,500 members. Christian opinions
are now ably represented in schools, educational journals,
and literature. A burning question at present is whether the
national school should be preferred to the denominational school.
Liberals in church and state say it should; conservatives say
it should not; while both parties think their views supported by
the experience of the past. The Prussian minister of education,
Falk, A.D. 1872-1879, firmly insisted upon the development of the
national system, but his successors Von Puttkamer and Von Gossler
reverted to the denominational system. The German Evangelical
School Congress of Hamburg in October, 1882, demanded that both
elementary and secondary schools should have a confessional
character.
§ 174.9. =Art.=--The intellectual quickening called forth with
the opening of the new century imparted new spirit and life to
the cultivation of the arts. Winckelmann, died A.D. 1768, had
opened the way to an understanding of pagan classical art, and
romanticism awakened appreciation of and enthusiasm for mediæval
Christian art. The greatest masters of =Architecture= were
Schinckel, Klenze, and Heideloff. The foundation stone of the
final part of the Cologne cathedral was laid by a Protestant king,
Frederick William IV., in A.D. 1842, and the work was finished
by a Protestant builder in A.D. 1880. =Statuary= had three great
masters, who gave expression to profound Christian ideas in
bronze and marble, the Italian Canova, the German Dannecker,
and greatest of all, the Dane Thorwaldsen, whose Christ and the
Apostles and other works form a main attraction to visitors in
Copenhagen. Three younger German masters of the art, who have
heired their fame, are Rauch, Rietschl, and Drake.--In =Painting=
too a new era now began. A group of gay German artists in Rome,
with Overbeck at their head, formed a Society in A.D. 1813, and
mostly became perverts to Romanism. Peter Cornelius, the ablest
of the school, himself born a Catholic, answered his friends’
request to place Luther in a picture of the last judgment,
in hell: “Yes, but with the Bible in his hands and the devils
trembling before him”; and in a subsequent picture of the
judgment, he gave the German reformer his place among the saints
in heaven. His pupil, Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld is well known
by his “_Bibel in Bildern_.” Ludwig Richter, the Albert Dürer
of the nineteenth century and creator of the modern woodcut,
has filled German houses with his artistic and poetic creations,
which breathe of God, nature, and the family fireside. The
Frenchman, Gustave Doré of Strassburg, has also illustrated the
Bible in a manner worthy of ranking alongside of Schnorr, though
a characteristically French striving for effect is everywhere
discernible.--=Painted Glass= (§ 104, 14) for church windows
had during the eighteenth century passed almost wholly out of
use, but again in the nineteenth came into favour, and was made
at Dresden, Nuremberg, and Munich. The most eminent artist in
this department was Ainmiller of Munich, specimens of whose
workmanship are to be seen in all parts of the world.
§ 174.10. =Music and the Drama.=--In Vienna the three great
masters of musical composition, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven,
produced in the department of sacred music some of their noblest
works. Mendelssohn, in his St. Paul and Elijah and in his Psalms,
sought to reproduce the power and truth of the simple word of
God. An early death prevented him giving expression to his ideal
of Christ in music. The Hungarian virtuoso Liszt sacrifices
sacred calmness and dignity to theatrical effect. His son-in-law,
Richard Wagner, inspired by Schopenhauer’s philosophy, a richly
endowed poet and composer, proclaimed by his followers as the
Messiah of the music of the future, going back to mediæval legend,
has produced a _quasi_-Christian musical drama, in which the
gospel of pessimism takes the place of the gospel of the grace of
God.--Quite different is the Passion Play of the Bavarian village
Oberammergau, which is a reproduction of the mediæval mysteries
(§ 115, 12). It originated in a vow made in 1633 on the occasion
of a plague which visited the place, and is repeated every
ten years on the Sundays from the end of May to the middle
of September. The history of the Saviour’s passion is here
represented with interludes from Messianic Old Testament passages
explained by a chorus like that of the classical tragedy, with
appropriate scenery, drapery, and musical accompaniment. In
the presence of an immense concourse of strangers for whose
accommodation a large amphitheatre was been built, almost all the
villagers, men, women, and children, take part in the performance
and show rare artistic power. The text of the drama for the
most part agrees with the gospel narrative, only occasionally
interspersed with legend, and quite free from ultramontane
hagiology and mariolatry. The performance of A.D. 1850, and still
more that of A.D. 1880, attracted crowds of pilgrims and tourists
to the quiet and remote valley. An independent exhibition,
falling little behind the original in the artistic character
of its composition and production, was given, in 1883, on the
Sundays of July and August in the Tyrolese village of Brixlegg,
and was visited by similar crowds.
§ 175. INTERCOURSE AND NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE CHURCHES.
Protestants could recognise, as Catholics could not, elements of
truth and beauty in the creeds of their opponents. When a peaceful and
conciliatory spirit was shown by individual Catholic clergymen, it was
the occasion of suspicion and persecution on the part of the old Romish
party. Schemes of union were entertained by the Old Catholics (§ 190),
and negotiations were entered on by the Greek Orthodox church, on
the one hand, and the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, on the
other, but in both cases without any practical result. On the union
negotiations between the different Protestant sects, see § 178;
and on the Prusso-Anglican bishopric of Jerusalem, see § 184, 8.
Of the numerous conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism and
from Catholicism to Protestantism, we can here mention only such as
have excited public interest in some special way.
§ 175.1. =Romanizing Tendencies among Protestants.=--Not only
in England, where an important high-church party embraced a more
than half-Catholic Puseyism (§ 202, 2), but even in Protestant
Germany a Romanizing current set in on many sides. A taste for
the romantic, artistic, historical (§ 174, 5, 9, 4), as well
as feudalist-aristocratic and hyper-Lutheran ecclesiastical
tendencies led the way in this direction. Many sought rest in
the bosom of the church “where alone salvation is found,” while
others, too deeply rooted in evangelical truth, bewailed the
loss of “noble and venerable” institutions in the worship, life,
and constitution of the church, but were unable to accept the
various unevangelical accretions which made void the doctrine
of justification by faith alone. This was the position of Löhe
of Neuendettelsau, in point of doctrine a strict Lutheran,
who published a selection of Catholic legends as patterns of
self-denial for his deaconesses, wished to restore anointing of
the sick, etc. Some Protestant pastors expressed warm sympathy
with the Pope during his misfortunes in A.D. 1860, and approved
of the continuance of the papacy and the pope’s temporal dominion.
A conference of Catholics (Count Stolberg, Dr. Michelis, etc.)
and Protestants (Leo, Bindewald, etc.) at Erfurt in A.D. 1860,
on the basis of a common recognition of the moral advantages of
the papacy, sought to bring about a union of the churches. Still
more remarkable is the story told by the Old Catholic professor
Friedrich. Just before the opening of the Vatican Council,
certain evangelical pastors of Saxony wrote letters to Bishop
Martin of Paderborn, which Friedrich himself read, urging that at
the council permission should be given to priests to marry and to
give the cup in the communion to the laity, and promising that in
that case they themselves and many like-minded pastors would join
the Romish church. That the letters were written and received is
unquestionable; but it is doubtful whether folly and imbecility
or a wish to hoax and mystify, directed the pen. The writer or
writers, as the examination before the consistory of the locality
proved, are not to be sought among the pastors whose names are
appended. How far the Protestant ultra-conservative reactionary
party goes with the ultramontanes and how far it would aid the
overthrow and undermining of the Protestant state and evangelical
church, is shown by the conduct of the Privy Councillor and
Chief Justice Ludwig von Gerlach (§ 176, 1), who, in 1872, in
the Prussian House of Representatives, took his place among
the ultramontane party of the centre, hostile to the empire
and friendly to the Poles, and in his pamphlet “_Kaiser und
Papst_” of 1872 described the new German empire as an incarnate
antichrist. Also the Lutheran Guelphs of Hanover are zealous
supporters of all the demands of the centre in the Prussian
parliament and in the German Reichstag.
§ 175.2. =The Attitude of Catholicism toward
Protestantism.=--Every Catholic bishop has still on assuming
office to take the oath, _Hæreticos pro posse persequar_. The
Jesuits, restored in A.D. 1814, soon pervaded every section with
their intolerant spirit. The huge lie that Protestantism is in
matters of State as well as of church essentially revolutionary,
while Catholicism is the bulwark of the State against revolution
and democracy, was affirmed with such audacity that even
Protestant statesmen believed it. The Roman Jesuit Perrone
(§ 191, 9) taught the Catholic youth in a controversial Italian
catechism that “they should feel a creeping horror come over them
at the mere mention of the word Protestantism, more even than
when a murderous attack was made upon them, for Protestantism and
its defenders are in the religious and moral world just the same
as the plague and plague-stricken are in the physical world, and
in all lands Protestants are the scum of all that is vile and
immoral,” etc. In a pastoral of A.D. 1855, Von Ketteler, Bishop
of Mainz, compared the Germans, who by the Reformation rent
the unity of the church, to the Jews who crucified the Messiah.
Romish prelates have vied with one another in their abuse
of Protestants and Protestantism. In A.D. 1881, Leo XIII.
speaking of the spread of Russian nihilism, charged Protestant
missionaries with spreading the dominion of the prince of
darkness. Prof. Hohoff of Paderborn, in his “Hist. Studies on
Protestantism and Socialism,” Paderb., 1881, reiterated the
accusation: “Yes, it is so, Protestantism has begotten atheism,
materialism, scepticism, nihilism. The Reformation was the
murderer of all science, the greatest foe of culture and learning,
and the falsifier of all history.... Melanchthon’s _Loci_ may
be styled the most unscientific production in the domain of
dogmatics.... Yes, the Reformation has proved a prime source of
superstition, a step backward in the history of civilization....
The Catholic church has been the champion of conscience,
reason, and freedom.... No one is thoroughly capable of judging
historical facts without prejudice as the believing Catholic
Christian.”--But while the vast majority of Catholic writers
thus abuse Protestantism, others like Seltmann of Eberswald seek
to win over to the ranks of the Romish church those who can be
befooled by fair speeches. The “Protestant” correspondents in
Seltmann’s periodical write under the cloak of anonymity.--In
Spain the Reformation was long attributed to the Augustinians,
who were jealous of the Dominicans as the only dispensers of
indulgences, and to Luther’s desire to marry; but the poet Nuñez
de Arca in his “_Vision de Fray Martin_,” attributed it to the
corruption of the church and papacy of its time, and regarded
with sympathy the spiritual struggles of the reformer. Though as
a good Catholic he concludes his poem with the ban of the church
against Luther, he yet describes him as a just and well-deserving
man.
§ 175.3. =Romish Controversy.=--In the beginning of A.D. 1872
the Waldensian Professor Sciarelli published as a challenge
the thesis that the Apostle Peter never set foot in Rome, and
Pius IX. with childlike simplicity gave his consent to a public
disputation, which came off at Rome on 9th and 10th February.
Three Protestant champions, with Sciarelli at their head, were
confronted by three Catholics, headed by Fabiani, before 125
auditors admitted by ticket. Both sides claimed the victory; but
the shorthand reports were more widely read through Italy than
could be agreeable to the papal court.
§ 175.4. =Roman Catholic Union Schemes.=--While American
Protestant missionaries strove zealously for the conversion of
the schismatical Eastern Churches, Rome with equal diligence but
little success endeavoured to win over these and the orthodox
Greeks to her own communion. There was great joy over the
conversion of the =Bulgarians= to Romanism in A.D. 1860.
Taking advantage of a national movement for the restoration
of a patriarchate independent of Constantinople (§ 207, 3),
some French Jesuits succeeded in persuading a small number of
malcontents to agree to a union with Rome. In 1861 the pope
consecrated an old Bulgarian priest, Jos. Sokolski, archbishop
of the united Bulgarian church. Very soon, however, he and almost
all his followers returned to their allegiance to the Greek
Orthodox church. Leo XIII. in his _encyclical_ of A.D. 1880, by
giving conspicuous honour to Cyril and Methodius, and uttering
kind sentiments about the Christian church in the East, and
conferring high rank on dignitaries of the Eastern church,
seeks to smooth the way for a union of the two great churches.
§ 175.5. =Greek Orthodox Union Schemes.=--In A.D. 1867 the
Archbishop of Canterbury addressed a letter to the Patriarch
of Constantinople and the whole Eastern church, to open the way
to a common understanding and union of the churches, sending a
modern Greek translation of the Book of Common Prayer, and asking
their assistance at the consecration of an Anglican church at
Constantinople. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory] granted this
request, and answered the letter in a friendly manner, passing
over the Anglican’s warnings against superstitious additions
to the doctrine, _e.g._ mariolatry, but characterizing all the
contrary doctrines of the Thirty-nine Articles as “very modern.”
At the same time vigorous measures were being taken with a
similar object by members of the Russian and of the Anglican
churches. In 1870 Professor Overbeck of Halle undertook to act
as intermediary in these negotiations. He had in 1865 published,
in answer to the papal encyclical with syllabus of December 8th,
1864 (§ 185, 2), a tract with the motto _Ex oriente lux_, in
which he placed the claims of the Orthodox eastern church before
the Roman Catholic as well as Protestant. On the opening of the
Vatican Council in 1869 he advocated in a pamphlet the breaking
up of the papal church and the formation of Catholic national
churches. In North America Professor Bjerring, of the Catholic
seminary for priests at Baltimore, took the same position. In
March, 1871, he went to St. Petersburg, was there ordained as
an Orthodox priest, and on his return to New York instituted a
Sunday service in the English language according to the Greek
rite. Of any further advance in this direction of union nothing
is known.
§ 175.6. =Old Catholic Union Schemes.=--Döllinger (§ 191, 5) in
A.D. 1871 was hopeful of a union not only with the Greek, but
also with the Anglican church, and similar hopes were entertained
in England and Russia, and distinguished representatives of both
communions took part in the Old Catholic congresses (§ 190, 1).
On the invitation of Döllinger, as president of the committee
commissioned by the Freiburg Congress of A.D. 1874 to treat
about union with the Anglican church, forty friends of union from
Germany, England, Denmark, France, Russia, Greece, and America
met in conference at Bonn. After a lively debate the cleft
between East and West was bridged over by a compromise treating
the _filioque_ as an unnecessary addition to the Nicene symbol,
and asserting that, however desirable a mutual understanding
on doctrinal questions might be, existing differences in
constitution, discipline, and worship presented no bar to
union. The Catholics presented the Anglicans with fourteen
theses essential to union, in which the anti-Protestant doctrines
were for the most part toned down, but transubstantiation
distinctly asserted. Subsequent conferences never got beyond
these preliminaries. It was, however, agreed that, in case of
necessity, Anglicans and Old Catholics might dispense the supper
to one another.
§ 175.7. =Conversions.=--The most famous converts of the century
were Hurter, the biographer of Innocent III., the Countess Ida
von Hahn-Hahn, writer of religious romances, Gfroerer [Gfrörer],
the church historian, the radical Hegelian Daumer, the historian
of ante-tridentine theology Hugo Lämmer, and Dr. Ed. Preuss, who
had written against the immaculate conception and for criminal
conduct had to flee the country. In A.D. 1844 Carl Haas, a
Protestant pastor, went over to the Romish church, but the two
new dogmas of Pius IX. led him to study the works of Luther. He
now returned to the Lutheran church, vindicating his procedure
in a treatise entitled, “To Rome, and from Rome back again to
Wittenberg, 1881.” Also the Mecklenburg Lutheran pastor, Dr. A.
Hager, who, after his conversion, had undertaken the editorship
of an ultramontane newspaper in Breslau in 1873, was obliged
in a few years to resign the appointment. His return to the
evangelical church was being talked about, when he suddenly died
in 1883, after having received the last sacrament in the Catholic
church. The climax of abuse of Luther and the Lutheran church was
reached by the Hanoverian Evers, who had gone over in 1880; in
all his scandalous and vituperative writings he describes himself
on the title page as “formerly Lutheran pastor.” His mud-throwing,
however, was carried so far, that even the ultramontane _Köln.
Volkszeitung_ was constrained to advise him to write more
decently.
§ 175.8. The Mortara affair of A.D. 1858 attracted special
attention. The eight-year old son of the Jew Mortara of Bologna
was violently taken from his parents to Rome because his
Christian nurse said that two years before, during a dangerous
illness, she had baptized him. The church answered the entreaties
of the parents and the universal outcry by saying that the
sacrament had an indelible character, and that the pope could not
change the law. Again in A.D. 1864, the ten-year old Jewish boy,
Joseph Coën, apprentice weaver in Rome, was decoyed by a priest
to his cloister and there persuaded to receive baptism. In vain
his mother, the Jewish community, and even the French ambassador,
urged his restoration; and when, in A.D. 1870, the temporal power
of the pope was overthrown, the lad, now sixteen years old, had
himself become such a fanatical Catholic that he refused to have
anything to do with his mother as an unbeliever.
§ 175.9. In the Tyrol in A.D. 1830 there were numerous
conversions from Catholicism to Protestantism (§ 198, 1).
A Catholic priest in Baden, Henhöfer of Mühlhausen, influenced
by the writings of Sailer and Boos, went over to the Lutheran
church in A.D. 1823, and continued down to his death in A.D. 1862
a vigorous opponent of the prevailing rationalism. Count Leopold
von Seldnitzsky, formerly Prince-Bishop of Breslau, felt obliged
in 1840, in consequence of the conscientious objections he had
to perform his official duties toward church and state during
the ecclesiastico-political controversies of 1830 (§ 193, 1),
to resign his appointments. He was subsequently led in A.D. 1863,
through reading the Scriptures and Luther’s works, after a sore
struggle, to join the evangelical Church. He devoted all his
means to the founding of Protestant educational institutions at
Berlin and Breslau. He died in A.D. 1871, in his eighty-fourth
year. The proclamation by the Vatican of the dogma of
infallibility drove many pious and earnest Catholics out of the
Romish communion. Of these Carl von Richthofen, Canon of Breslau,
engages our special interest. Son of a pious Lutheran mother, and
trained up under Gossner’s mild spiritual direction (§ 187, 2),
his gentle and deeply religious nature had attached itself to
the Roman Catholic church of his father only under the illusion
that the Romish doctrine of justification was not wholly
irreconcilable with the evangelical doctrine. He at first
submitted to but soon renounced the Vatican decree; was
excommunicated by Archbishop Förster, voluntarily resigned
his emoluments; joined the Old Catholics in A.D. 1873, and
the separated Old Lutherans in A.D. 1875. In the following
year he died a painful death from the explosion of a petroleum
lamp.--Upon the whole Rome has made most converts in America
and England; and she has suffered losses more or less severe
in France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Bohemia.
§ 175.10. =The Luther Centenary, A.D. 1883.=--The celebration of
Luther’s birth was carried out with great enthusiasm throughout
all Germany, more than a thousand tracts on Luther and the
Reformation were published, statues were erected, special
services were held in all Lutheran churches, high schools, and
universities, and brilliant demonstrations were made at Jena,
Worms, Wittenberg, and Eisleben. There were founded at Kiel a
Luther-house, at Worms and at the Wartburg Luther libraries, in
Leipzig and Berlin Luther churches. At Eisleben a bronze statue
of the reformer was solemnly unveiled representing his tearing
the papal bull with his right hand and pressing the Bible to his
heart with his left. Another noble monument was raised by the
munificence of the emperor by the issuing during this year of
the first volume of pastor Knaake’s critical edition of Luther’s
works. A “German Luther Institute” aims at assisting children
of the poorer clergy and teachers, and a “Reformation History
Society” has undertaken the task of issuing popular tracts on the
persons, events and principles of that and the succeeding period
based upon original documents. Protestants of all lands, with the
exception of the English high-church party, contributed liberally;
the Americans had a copy of the great Luther statue of the Worms
monument (§ 178, 1) made and erected in Washington. Even in
Italy the liberal press eulogised Luther, while the ultramontanes
loaded his memory with unmeasured calumny and reproach. The
threatened counter-demonstrations of German ultramontanes fell
quite flat and harmless. The =Zwingli Centenary= of January 1st,
A.D. 1884, was celebrated with enthusiasm throughout the Reformed
church, especially in Switzerland. On the other hand, the
celebration of the five-hundredth anniversary of Wiclif’s death
on December 31st, 1884, created comparatively little interest.
II. Protestantism in General.[526]
§ 176. RATIONALISM AND PIETISM.
At the beginning of the century rationalism was generally prevalent,
but philosophy and literature soon weakened its foundations, and the
war of independence moved the hearts of the people toward the faith of
their fathers. Pietism entered the lists against rationalism, and the
Halle controversy of A.D. 1830 marked the crisis of the struggle. The
rationalists were compelled to make appeal to the people by popular
agitators. During A.D. 1840 they managed to found several “free
churches,” which, however, had for the most part but a short and
unprosperous existence. They were more successful in A.D. 1860 with
the _Protestantenverein_ as the instrument of their propaganda (§ 180).
§ 176.1. The old =Rationalism= was attacked by the disciples
of Hegel and Schelling, and in A.D. 1834 Röhr of Weimar found
Hase of Jena as keen an opponent as any pietist or orthodox
controversialist. That recognised leader of the old rationalists
had coolly attempted to substitute a new and rational form
of doctrine, worship, and constitution for the antiquated
formularies of the Reformation, and drew down upon himself the
rebuke even of those who sympathized with him in his doctrinal
views.--In A.D. 1817 Claus Harms of Kiel, on the occasion of
the Reformation centenary, opened an attack upon those who had
fallen away from the faith of their fathers, by the publication
of ninety-five new theses, recalling attention to Luther’s almost
forgotten doctrines. In A.D. 1827 Aug. Hahn in an academical
discussion at Leipzig maintained that the rationalists should
be expelled from the church, and Hengstenberg started his
_Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_. The jurist Von Gerlach in
A.D. 1830 charged Gesenius and Wegscheider of Halle with open
contempt of Christian truth, and called for State interference.
In all parts of Germany, amid the opposition of scientific
theologians and the scorn of philosophers, pietism made way
against rationalism, so that even men of culture regarded it
as a reproach to be reckoned among the rationalists. Unbelief,
however, was widespread among the masses. When Sintenis,
preacher in Magdeburg in A.D. 1840, declared the worship of
Christ superstitious, and was reprimanded by the consistory,
his neighbours, the pastors Uhlich and König, founded the society
of the “Friends of Light,” whose assembly at Köthen then was
attended by thousands of clergymen and laymen. In one of these
assemblies in A.D. 1844, Wislicenus of Halle, by starting the
question, Whether the Scriptures or the reason is to be regarded
as the standard of faith? shattered the illusion that rationalism
still occupied the platform of the church and Scripture. The
left wing of the school of Schleiermacher took offence at the
severe measures demanded by Hengstenberg and his party, and
in 1846 issued in Berlin a manifesto with eighty-eight signatures
against the paper pope of antiquated Reformation confessions and
the inquisitorial proceedings of the _Kirchenzeitung_ party, as
inimical to all liberty of faith and conscience, wishing only to
maintain firm hold of the truth that Jesus Christ is yesterday,
to-day, and for ever the one and only ground of salvation. The
Friends of Light, combining with the German Catholics and the
Young Hegelians, founded Free churches at Halle, Königsberg,
and many other places. Their services and sermons void of
religion, in which the Bible, the living Christ, and latterly
even the personal God, had no place, but only the naked worship
of humanity, had temporary vitality imparted them by the
revolutionary movements of A.D. 1848. This gave the State an
excuse, long wished for, to interfere, and soon scarcely a trace
of their churches was to be found.
§ 176.2. =Pietism= had not been wholly driven out of the
evangelical church during the period of ecclesiastical
impoverishment, but, purified from many eccentric excesses,
and seeking refuge and support for the most part by attaching
itself to the community of the Moravian Brethren, it had, even
in Württemberg, established itself independently and in an
essentially theosophical-chiliastic spirit. There too a kind
of spiritualism was introduced by the physician and poet Justin
Kerner of Weinsberg, and the philosopher Eschenmayer of Tübingen,
with spirit revelations from above and below. Amid the religious
movements of the beginning of the century Pietism gained a
decided advantage. It took the form of a protest against the
rationalism prevailing among the clergy. The earnest and devout
sought spiritual nourishment at conventicles and so-called
_Stunden_ addressed by laymen, mostly of the working class,
well acquainted with Scripture and works in practical divinity.
Persecuted by the irreligious mob, the rationalist clergy,
and sometimes by the authorities, they by-and-by secured
representatives among the younger clergy and in the university
chairs, and carried on vigorous missions at home and abroad.
This pietism was distinctly evangelical and Protestant. It did
not oppose but endeavoured simply to restore the orthodoxy of
the church confession. Yet it had many of the characteristics
of the earlier pietism: over-estimation of the invisible to
the disparagement of the visible church, of sanctification
over justification, a tendency to chiliasm, etc.--Of no less
importance in awakening the religious life throughout Germany,
and especially in Switzerland, was the missionary activity of
Madame de Krüdener of Riga. This lady, after many years of a
gay life, forsook the world, and began in A.D. 1814 her travels
through Europe, preaching repentance, proclaiming the gospel
message in the prisons, the foolishness of the cross to the
wise of this world, and to kings and princes the majesty of
Christ as King of kings. Wherever she went she made careless
sinners tremble, and drew around her crowds of the anxious and
spiritually burdened of every sort and station. Honoured by
some as a saint, prophetess, and wonder-worker, ridiculed by
others as a fool, persecuted as a dangerous fanatic or deceiver,
driven from one country to another, she died in the Crimea in
A.D. 1824.[527]
§ 176.3. =The Königsberg Religious Movement,
A.D. 1835-1842.=--The pious theosophist, J. H. Schönherr of
Königsberg, starting from the two primitive substances, fire
and water, developed a system of theosophy in which he solved
the riddles of the theogony and cosmogony, of sin and redemption,
and harmonized revelation with the results of natural science.
At first influenced by these views, but from A.D. 1819 expressly
dissenting from them, J. W. Ebel, pastor in the same city,
gathered round him a group of earnest Christian men and women,
Counts Kanitz and Finkenstein and their wives, Von Tippelskirch,
afterwards preacher to the embassy at Rome, the theological
professor H. Olshausen, the pastor Dr. Diestel, and the medical
doctor Sachs. After some years Olshausen and Tippelskirch
withdrew, and dissensions arose which gave opportunity to
the ecclesiastical authorities to order an investigation. Ebel
was charged with founding a sect in which impure practices were
encouraged. He was suspended in A.D. 1835, and at the instigation
of the consistory a criminal process was entered upon against him.
Dr. Sachs, who had been expelled from the society, was the chief
and almost only witness, but vague rumours were rife about mystic
rites and midnight orgies. Ebel and Diestel were deposed in
A.D. 1839, and pronounced incapable of holding any public office;
and as a sect founder Ebel was sentenced to imprisonment in the
common jail. On appeal to the court of Berlin, the deposition was
confirmed, but all the rest of the sentence was quashed, and the
parties were pronounced capable of holding any public offices
except those of a spiritual kind. Two reasons were alleged for
deposition:
1. That Ebel, though not from the pulpit or in the public
instruction of the young, yet in private religious teaching,
had inculcated his theosophical views.
2. That both of them as married men had given expression to
opinions injurious to the purity of married life.
In general they were charged with spreading a doctrine which was
in conflict with the principles of Christianity, and making such
use of sexual relations as was fitted to awaken evil thoughts
in the minds of hearers. Ebel was pronounced guiltless of
sectarianism.--Kanitz wrote a book in defence, which represents
Ebel and Diestel as martyrs to their pure Christian piety in
an age hostile to every pietistic movement; whereas Von Wegnern,
followed by Hepworth Dixon, in a romancing and frivolous style,
lightly give currency to evil surmisings without offering any
solid basis of proof. The whole affair still waits for a patient
and unprejudiced investigation.[528]
§ 176.4. =The Bender Controversy.=--At the Luther centenary
festival of A.D. 1883, Prof. Bender of Bonn declared that in
the confessional writings of the Reformation evangelical truth
had been obscured by Romish scholasticism, introduced by subtle
jurists and sophistical theologians. This called forth vigorous
opposition, in which two of his colleagues, 38 theological
students, 59 members of the Rhenish synod, took part.
General-Superintendent Baur, also, in a new year’s address,
inveighed against Bender’s statements. On the other hand,
170 students of Bonn, 32 of these theological students, gave a
grand ovation to the “brave vindicator of academic freedom.”
The Rhenish and Westphalian synods bewailed the offence given by
Bender’s address, and protested against its hard and unfounded
attacks upon the confessional writings. At the Westphalian synod,
Prof. Mangold said that the faculty was as much offended at the
address as the church had been, but that its author, when he
found how his words had created such feeling, sought in every
way to repress the agitation, and had intended only to pass a
scientific judgment on ecclesiastical and theological developments.
§ 177. EVANGELICAL UNION AND LUTHERAN SEPARATION.
From A.D. 1817 Prussia favoured and furthered the scheme for union
between the two evangelical churches, and over this question a split
arose in the camp of pietism. On the one hand were the confessionalists,
determined to maintain what was distinctive in their symbols, and on the
other, those who would sacrifice almost anything for union. For the most
part both churches cordially seconded the efforts of the royal head of
the church; only in Silesia did a Lutheran minority refuse to give way,
which still maintains a separate existence.
§ 177.1. =The Evangelical Union.=--Circumstances favoured
this movement. Both in the Lutheran and in the Reformed
church comparatively little stress was laid upon distinctive
confessional doctrines, and pietism and rationalism, for
different reasons, had taught the relative unimportance of dogma.
And so a general accord was given to the king’s proposal, at
the Reformation centenary of A.D. 1817, to fortify the Protestant
church by means of a =Union= of Lutherans and Calvinists. The
new Book of Common Order of A.D. 1822, in the preparation of
which the pious king, Frederick William III., had himself taken
part, was indeed condemned by many as too high-church, even
Catholicizing in its tendency. A revised edition in A.D. 1829,
giving a wider choice of formularies, was legally authorized,
and the union became an accomplished fact. There now existed in
Prussia an evangelical national church with a common government
and liturgy, embracing within it three different sections:
a Lutheran, and a Reformed, which held to their distinctive
doctrines, though not regarding these as a cause of separation,
and a real union party, which completely abandoned the points of
difference. But more and more the union became identified with
doctrinal indifferentism and slighting of all church symbols,
and those in whom the church feeling still prevailed were driven
into opposition to the union (§ 193). The example of Prussia
in sacking the union of the two churches was followed by Nassau,
Baden, Rhenish Bavaria, Anhalt, and to some extent in Hesse
(§§ 194, 196).
§ 177.2. =The Lutheran Separation.=--Though the union denied
that there was any passing over from one church to another, it
practically declared the distinctive doctrines to be unessential,
and so assumed the standpoint of the Reformed church. Steffens
(§ 174, 3), the friend of Scheibel of Breslau, who had been
deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1832 for his determined
opposition to the union, and died in exile in 1843 (§ 195, 2),
headed a reaction in favour of old Lutheranism. Several suspended
clergymen in Silesia held a synod at Breslau in A.D. 1835,
to organize a Lutheran party, but the civil authorities bore
so heavily upon them that most of them emigrated to America
and Australia. Guericke of Halle, secretly ordained pastor,
ministered in his own house to a small company of Lutheran
separatists, was deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1835,
and only restored in A.D. 1840, after he had apologised for his
conduct. From A.D. 1838, the laws were modified by Frederick
William IV., imprisoned clergymen were liberated in A.D. 1840,
and a Lutheran church of Prussia independent of the national
church was constituted by a general synod at Breslau in A.D. 1841,
which received recognition by royal favour in A.D. 1845. The
affairs are administered by a supreme council resident in
Breslau, presided over by the distinguished jurist Huschke. Other
separations were prevented by timely concessions on the part of
the national church. The separatists claim 50,000 members, with
fifty pastors and seven superintendents.
§ 177.3. =The Separation within the Separation.=--Differences
arose among the separate Lutherans, especially over the question
of the visible church. The majority, headed by Huschke, defined
the visible church as an organism of various offices and orders
embracing even unbelievers, which is to be sifted by the divine
judgment. To it belongs the office of church government, which
is a _jus divinum_, and only in respect of outward form a _jus
humanum_. The opposition understood visibility of the preaching
of the word and dispensation of sacraments, and held that
unbelievers belonged as little to the visible as to the invisible
church. The distribution of orders and offices is a merely human
arrangement without divine appointment, individual members are
quite independent of one another, the church recognises no other
government than that of the unfettered preaching of the word, and
each pastor rules in his own congregation. Diedrich of Jabel and
seven other pastors complained of the papistical assumptions of
the supreme council, and at a general synod in A.D. 1860 refused
to recognise the authority of that council, or of a majority of
synods, and in A.D. 1861, along with their congregations, they
formally seceded and constituted the so called Immanuel Synod.
§ 178. EVANGELICAL CONFEDERATION.
The union had only added a third denomination to the two previously
existing, and was the means of even further dissension and separation.
Thus the interests of Protestantism were endangered in presence of the
unbelief within her own borders and the machinations of the ultramontane
Catholics without. An attempt was therefore made in A.D. 1840 to combine
the scattered Protestant forces, by means of confederation, for common
work and conflict with common foes.
§ 178.1. =The Gustavus Adolphus Society.=--In A.D. 1832, on the
two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the saviour of German
Protestantism, on the motion of Superintendent Grossman of
Leipzig, a society was formed for the help of needy Protestant
churches, especially in Catholic districts. At first almost
confined to Saxony, it soon spread over Germany, till only
Bavaria down to A.D. 1849, and Austria down to A.D. 1860, were
excluded by civil enactment from its operations. The masses
were attracted by the simplicity of its basis, which was simply
opposition to Catholicism, and the demagogical Friends of Light
soon found supremacy in its councils. Because of opposition to
the expulsion of Rupp, in A.D. 1846, as an apostate from the
principle of protestantism, great numbers with church leanings
seceded, and attempted to form a rival union in A.D. 1847. After
recovering from the convulsions of A.D. 1848, under the wise
guidance of Zimmermann of Darmstadt, the society regained a solid
position. In A.D. 1883 it had 1,779 branches, besides 392 women’s
and 11 students’ unions, and a revenue for the year of about
£43,000.--The same feeling led to the erection of the =Luther
Monument at Worms=. This work of genius, designed by Rietschel,
and completed after his death in A.D. 1857 by his pupils, and
inaugurated on 25th June, A.D. 1868, represents all the chief
episodes in the Reformation history. It was erected at a cost
of more than £20,000, raised by voluntary contributions, and
the scheme proved so popular that there was a surplus of £2,000,
which was devoted to the founding of bursaries for theological
students.
§ 178.2. =The Eisenach Conference.=--The other German states
borrowed the idea of confederation from Prussia and Württemberg.
It took practical shape in the meetings of deputies at Eisenach,
begun in A.D. 1852, and was held for a time yearly, and
afterwards every second year, to consult together on matters of
worship, discipline and constitution. Beyond ventilating such
questions the conference yielded no result.
§ 178.3. =The Evangelical Alliance.=--An attempt was made in
England, on the motion of Dr. Chalmers (§ 202, 7), at a yet more
comprehensive confederation of all Protestant churches of all
lands against the encroachments of popery and puseyism (§ 202, 2).
After several preliminary meetings the first session of the
=Evangelical Alliance= was held in London in August, A.D. 1846.
Its object was the fraternizing of all evangelical Christians on
the basis of agreement upon the fundamental truths of salvation,
the vindication and spread of this common faith, and contention
for liberty of conscience and religious toleration. Nine articles
were laid down as terms of membership: Belief in the inspiration
of Scripture, in the Trinity, in the divinity of Christ,
in original sin, in justification by faith alone, in the
obligatoriness of the two sacraments, in the resurrection of the
body, in the last judgment, and in the eternal blessedness of the
righteous and the eternal condemnation of the ungodly. It could
thus include Baptists, but not Quakers. In A.D. 1855 it held its
ninth meeting at the great Paris Industrial Exhibition as a sort
of church exhibition, the representatives of different churches
reporting on the condition of their several denominations. The
tenth meeting, of A.D. 1857, was held in Berlin. The council of
the Alliance, presided over by Sir Culling Eardley, presented
an address to King Frederick William IV., in which it was said
that they aimed a blow not only against the sadduceanism, but
also against the pharisaism of the German evangelical church.
The confessional Lutherans, who had opposed the Alliance,
regarded this latter reference as directed against them. The
king, however, received the deputation most graciously, while
declaring that he entertained the brightest hopes for the future
of the church, and urged cordial brotherly love among Christians.
Though many distinguished confessionalists were members of
the Alliance none of them put in an appearance. The members of
the “Protestantenverein” (§ 180) would not take part because
the articles were too orthodox. On the other hand, numerous
representatives of pietism, unionism, Melanchthonianism, as well
as Baptists, Methodists, and Moravians, crowded in from all parts,
and were supported by the leading liberals in church and state.
While there was endless talk about the oneness and differences
of the children of God, about the universal priesthood, about the
superiority of the present meeting over the œcumenical councils
of the ancient church, about the want of spiritual life in
the churches, even where the theology of the confessions was
professed, etc., with denunciations of half-Catholic Lutheranism
and its sacramentarianism and officialism, and many a true
and admirable statement of what the church’s needs are, Merle
d’Aubigné introduced discord by the hearty welcome which
he accorded his friend Bunsen, which was intensified by the
passionate manner in which Krummacher reported upon it. The
gracious royal reception of the members of the Alliance, at which
Krummacher gave expression to his excited feelings in the words,
“Your Majesty, we would all fall not at your feet, but on your
neck!” was described by his brother, Dr. F. W. Krummacher, as a
sensible prelude to the solemn scenes of the last judgment. Sir
Culling Eardley declared, “There is no more the North Sea.” Lord
Shaftesbury said in London that with the Berlin Assembly a new
era had begun in the world’s history; and others who had returned
from it extolled it as a second Pentecost.
§ 178.4. =The Evangelical Church Alliance.=--After the revolution
of A.D. 1848, the most distinguished theologians, clergymen and
laymen well-affected toward the church, sought to bring about
a confederation of the Lutheran, Reformed, United, and Moravian
churches. When they held their second assembly at Wittenberg,
A.D. 1849, many of the strict Lutherans had already withdrawn,
especially those of Silesia. The Lutheran congress, held shortly
before at Leipzig under the presidency of Harless, had pronounced
the confederation unsatisfactory. The political reaction in
favour of the church had also taken away the occasion for such
a confederation. Yet the yearly deliberations of this council
on matters of practical church life did good service. An attempt
made at the Berlin meeting of A.D. 1853 to have the _Augustana_
adopted as the church confession awakened keen opposition. At
the Stuttgart meeting of A.D. 1857 there were violent debates
on foreign missions and evangelical Catholicity between the
representatives of confessional Lutheranism who had hitherto
maintained connection with the confederation and the unionist
majority. The Lutherans now withdrew. The attempt made at
the Berlin October assembly of A.D. 1871, amid the excitement
produced by the glorious issue of the Franco-Prussian War and the
founding of the new German empire with a Protestant prince, to
draw into the confederation confessional Lutherans and adherents
of the “Protestantenverein,” in order to form a grand German
Protestant national church, miscarried, and a meeting of
the confederation in the old style met again at Halle in the
following year. But it was now found that its day was past.
§ 178.5. =The Evangelical League.=--At a meeting of the Prussian
evangelical middle party in autumn, 1886, certain members,
“constrained by grief at the surrender of arms by the Prussian
government in the _Kulturkampf_,” gathered together for private
conference, and resolved in defence of the threatened interests
of the evangelical church to found an “Evangelical League” out
of the various theological and ecclesiastical parties. Prominent
party leaders on both sides being admitted, a number of moderate
representatives of all schools were invited to a consultative
gathering at Erfurt. On January 15th, 1887, a call to join
the membership of the league was issued. It was signed by
distinguished men of the middle party, such as Beyschlag, Riehm
of Halle, etc., moderate representatives of confessionalism and
the positive union, such as Kawerau of Kiel, Fricke of Leipzig,
Witte, Warneck, etc., and liberal theologians like Lipsius and
Nippold of Jena, etc.; and it soon received the addition of
about 250 names. It recognised Jesus Christ, as the only begotten
Son of God, as the only means of salvation, and professed the
fundamental doctrines of the Reformation. It represented the
task of the League as twofold: on the one hand the defending
at all points the interests of the evangelical church against
the advancing pretensions of Rome, and, on the other hand, the
strengthening of the communal consciousness of the Christian
evangelical church against the cramping influence of party,
as well as in opposition to indifferentism and materialism. For
the accomplishment of this task the league organized itself under
the control of a central board with subordinate branches over all
Germany, each having a committee for representing its interests
in the press, and with annual general assemblies of all the
members for common consultation and promulgating of decrees.
§ 179. LUTHERANISM, MELANCHTHONIANISM, AND CALVINISM.
Widespread as the favourable reception of the Prussian union had
been, there were still a number of Lutheran states in which the Reformed
church had scarcely any adherents, _e.g._ Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover,
Mecklenburg, and Schleswig-Holstein; and the same might be said of the
Baltic Provinces and of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Also in Austria,
France, and Russia the two denominations kept apart; and in Poland, the
union of A.D. 1828 was dissolved in A.D. 1849 (§ 206, 3). The Lutheran
confessional reaction in Prussia afforded stimulus to those who had
thus stood apart. In all lands, amid the conflict with rationalism, the
confessional spirit both of Lutheran and Reformed became more and more
pronounced.
§ 179.1. =Lutheranism within the Union.=--After the Prussian
State church had been undermined by the revolution of A.D. 1848,
an unsuccessful attempt was made to have a pure Lutheran
confessional church set up in its place. At the October assembly
in Berlin, in A.D. 1871, an ineffectual effort was made by the
United Lutherans to co-operate with those who were unionists
on principle. During the agitation caused by the May Laws
(§ 197, 5) and the Sydow proceedings (§ 180, 4), the first general
evangelical Lutheran conference was held in August, A.D. 1873, in
Berlin. It assumed a moderate conciliatory tone toward the union,
pronounced the efforts of the “Protestantenverein” (§ 180) an
apostasy from the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, bewailed
the issuing of the May Laws, protested against their principles,
but acknowledged the duty of obedience, and concluded an address
to the emperor with a petition on behalf of a democratic church
constitution and civil marriage.--The literary organs of the
United Lutherans are the “_Evang. Kirchenzeitung_,” edited by
Hengstenberg, and now by Zöckler, and the “_Allgem. konserv.
Monatsschrift für die christl. Deutschl._,” by Von Nathusius.
§ 179.2. =Lutheranism outside of the Union.=--A general Lutheran
conference was held under the presidency of Harless, in July,
A.D. 1868, at which the sentiments of Kliefoth, denouncing a union
under a common church government without agreement about doctrine
and sacraments, met with almost universal acceptance. At the
Leipzig gathering of A.D. 1870, Luthardt urged the duty of firmly
maintaining doctrinal unity in the Lutheran church. The assembly
of the following year agreed to recognise the emperor as head
of the church only in so far as he did not interfere with the
dispensation of word and sacrament, admitted the legality of
a merely civil marriage but maintained that despisers of the
ecclesiastical ordinance should be subjected to discipline, that
communion fellowship is to be allowed neither to Reformed nor
unionists if fixed residents, but to unionists faithful to the
confession if temporary residents, even without expressly joining
their party; and also with reference to the October assembly of
the previous year the union of the two Protestant churches of
Germany under a mixed system of church government was condemned.
The third general conference of Nüremburg [Nuremberg], in
A.D. 1879, dealt with the questions: Whether the church should
be under State control or free? Whether the schools should
be denominational or not? and in both cases decided in favour
of the latter alternative.--Its literary organ is Luthardt’s
“_Allg. Luth. Kirchenzeitung_.”
§ 179.3. =Melancthonianism [Melanchthonianism] and
Calvinism.=--The Reformed church of Germany has maintained a
position midway between Lutheranism and Calvinism very similar to
the later Melanchthonianism. Ebrard indeed sought to prove that
strict predestinarianism was only an excrescence of the Reformed
system, whereas Schweitzer, purely in the interests of science
(§ 182, 9, 16), has shown that it is its all-conditioning nerve
and centre, to which it owes its wonderful vitality, force, and
consistency. Heppe of Marburg went still further than Ebrard
in his attempt to combine Lutheranism and Calvinism in a
=Melancthonian [Melanchthonian] church= (§ 182, 16), by seeking
to prove that the original evangelical church of Germany was
Melanchthonian, that after Luther’s death the fanatics, more
Lutheran than Luther, founded the so-called Lutheran church
and completed it by issuing the Formula of Concord; that the
Calvinizing of the Palatinate, Hesse, Brandenburg, Anhalt was
only a reaction against hyper- or pseudo-Lutheranism, and that
the restoration of the original Melanchthonianism, and the modern
union movement were only the completion of that restoration.
Schenkel’s earlier contributions to Reformation history moved
in a similar direction. Ebrard also, in A.D. 1851, founded a
“_Ref. Kirchenzeitung_.”--But even the genuine strict =Calvinism=
had zealous adherents during this century, not only in Scotland
(§ 202, 7) and the Netherlands (§ 200, 2), but also in Germany,
especially in the Wupperthal. G. D. Krummacher, from A.D. 1816
pastor in Elberfeld, and his nephew F. W. Krummacher of Barmen,
were long its chief representatives. When Prussia sought in
A.D. 1835 to force the union in the Wupperthal, and threatened
the opposing Reformed pastors with deposition, the revolt here
proved almost as serious as that of the Lutherans in Silesia. The
pastors, with the majority of their people agreed at last to the
union only in so far as it was in accordance with the Reformed
mode of worship. But a portion, embracing their most important
members, stood apart and refused all conciliation. The royal
Toleration Act of A.D. 1847 allowed them to form an independent
congregation at Elberfeld with Dr. Kohlbrügge as their minister.
This divine, formerly Lutheran pastor at Amsterdam, was driven
out owing to a contest with a rationalising colleague, and
afterwards, through study of Calvin’s writings, became an ardent
Calvinist. This body, under the name of the Dutch Reformed
church, constituted the one anti-unionist, strictly Calvinistic
denomination in Prussia.--The De Cock movement (§ 200, 2), out
of which in A.D. 1830 the separate “Chr. Ref. Church of Holland”
sprang, spread over the German frontiers and led to the founding
there of the “Old Ref. Church of East Frisia and Bentheim,” which
has now nine congregations and seven pastors.--At the meeting
of the Evangelical Alliance in New York in A.D. 1873, the
Presbyterians present resolved to convoke an œcumenical Reformed
council. A conference in London in A.D. 1875 brought to maturity
the idea of a Pan-Presbyterian assembly. The council is to meet
every third year; the members recognise the supreme authority
of the Old and New Testament in matters of faith and practice,
and accept the consensus of all the Reformed confessions.
The first “=General Presbyterian Council=” met in Edinburgh
from 3rd to 10th July, A.D. 1877, about 300 delegates being
present. The proceedings consisted in unmeasured glorification
of presbyterianism “drawn from the whole Scripture, from the
seventy elders of the Pentateuch to the twenty-four elders
of the Apocalypse.” The second council met at Philadelphia in
A.D. 1880, and boasted that it represented forty millions of
Presbyterians. It appointed a committee to draw up a consensus
of the confessions of all Reformed churches. The third council of
305 members met at Belfast in A.D. 1884, and after a long debate
declined, by a great majority, to adopt a strictly formulated
consensus of doctrine as uncalled for and undesirable, and by the
reception of the Cumberland Presbyterians they even surrendered
the Westminster Confession (§ 155, 1) as the only symbol
qualifying for membership of the council. The fourth council met
in London in A.D. 1887.--An œcumenical Methodist congress was
held in London in A.D. 1881, attended by 400 delegates.
§ 180. THE “PROTESTANTENVEREIN.”
Rationalists of all descriptions, adherents of Baur’s school, as well
as disciples of Hegel and Schleiermacher of the left wing, kept far off
from every evangelical union. But the common negation of the tendencies
characterizing the evangelical confederations and the common endeavour
after a free, democratic, non-confessional organization of the German
Protestant church, awakened in them a sense of the need of combination
and co-operation. While in North Germany this feeling was powerfully
expressed from A.D. 1854, in the able literary organ the “_Protest.
Kirchenzeitung_,” in South Germany, with Heidelberg as a centre and Dean
Zittel as chief agitator, local “_Protestantenvereine_” were formed,
which combined in a united organization in the Assembly of Frankfort,
A.D. 1863. After long debates the northern and southern societies
were joined in one. In June, A.D. 1865, the first general Protestant
assembly was held at Eisenach, and the nature, motive, and end of the
associations were defined. To these assemblies convened from year to
year members of the society crowded from all parts of Germany in order
to encourage one another to persevere in spreading their views by word
and pen, and to take steps towards the founding of branch associations
for disseminating among the people a Christianity which renounces the
miraculous and sets aside the doctrines of the church.
§ 180.1. =The Protestant Assembly.=--The first general
German Protestant Assembly, composed of 400 clerical and lay
notabilities, met at Eisenach in A.D. 1865, under the presidency
of the jurist Bluntschli of Heidelberg and the chief court
preacher Schwarz of Gotha. A peculiar lustre was given to
the meeting by the presence of Rothe of Heidelberg. Of special
importance was Schwarz’s address on “The Limits of Doctrinal
Freedom in Protestantism,” which he sought not in the confession,
not in the authority of the letter of Scripture, not even
in certain so called fundamental articles, but in the one
religious moral truth of Christianity, the gospel of love
and the divine fatherhood as Christ taught it, expounded it in
his life and sealed it by his death. In Berlin, Osnabrück, and
Leipzig, the churches were refused for services according to the
_Protestantenverein_. In A.D. 1868 fifteen heads of families in
Heidelberg petitioned the ecclesiastical council to grant them
the use of one of the city churches where a believing clergyman
might conduct service in the old orthodox fashion. This request
was refused by fifty votes against four. Baumgarten denounced
this intolerance, and declared that unless repudiated by the
union it would be a most serious stain upon its reputation.
In A.D. 1877 he publicly withdrew from the society.
§ 180.2. =The “_Protestantenverein_” Propaganda.=--The views
of the union were spread by popular lectures and articles in
newspapers and magazines. The “_Protestanten-Bibel_,” edited
by Schmidt and Holtzendorff in A.D. 1872, of which an English
translation has been published, giving the results of New
Testament criticism, “laid the axe at the root of the dogmatics
and confessionalism,” and proved that “we are still Christians
though our conception of Christianity diverges in many points
from that of the second century, and we proclaim a Christianity
without miracles and in accordance with the modern theory of
the universe.” The success of such efforts to spread the broad
theology has been greatly over-estimated. Enthusiastic partisans
of the union claimed to have the whole evangelical world at their
back, while Holtzendorff boasted that they had all thoughtful
Germans with them.
§ 180.3. =Sufferings Endured.=--In many instances members of
the society were disciplined, suspended and deposed. In October,
A.D. 1880, =Beesenmeyer= of Mannheim, on his appointment to
Osnabrück, was examined by the consistory. He confessed an
economic but not an essential Trinity, the sinlessness and
perfect godliness but not the divinity of Christ, the atoning
power of Christ’s death but not the doctrine of vicarious
satisfaction. He was pronounced unorthodox, and so unfit to hold
office. =Schroeder=, a pastor in the consistory of Wiesbaden in
A.D. 1871, on his refusing to use the Apostles’ Creed at baptism
and confirmation, was deposed, but on appealing to the minister
of worship, Dr. Falk, he was restored in the beginning of
A.D. 1874. The Stettin consistory declined to ordain Dr. =Hanne=
on account of his work “_Der ideale u. d. geschichtl. Christus_,”
and an appeal to the superior court and another to the king were
unsuccessful. Several members of the church protested against
the call of Dr. =Ziegler= to Liegnitz in A.D. 1873, on account
of his trial discourse and a previous lecture on the authority
of the Bible, and the consistory refused to sustain the call.
The Supreme Church Council, however, when appealed to, declared
itself satisfied with Ziegler’s promise to take unconditionally
the ordination vow, which requires acceptance of the fundamental
doctrines of the gospel and not the peculiar theological system
of the symbols.
§ 180.4. The conflicts in =Berlin= were specially sharp.
In A.D. 1872 the aged pastor of the so called New Church,
Dr. =Sydow=, delivered a lecture on the miraculous birth of
Jesus, in which he declared that he was the legitimate son
of Joseph and Mary. His colleague, Dr. =Lisco=, son of the
well-known commentator, spoke of legendary elements in the
Apostles’ Creed, and denied its authority. Lisco was reprimanded
and cautioned by the consistory. Sydow was deposed. He appealed,
together with twenty-six clergymen of the province of Brandenburg,
and twelve Berlin pastors, to the Supreme Church Council. The
Jena theologians also presented a largely signed petition to
Dr. Falk against the procedure of the consistory, while the Weimar
and Württemberg clergy sent a petition in favour of maintaining
strict discipline. The superior court reversed the sentence, on
the ground that the lecture was not given in the exercise of his
office, and severely reprimanded Sydow for giving serious offence
by its public delivery. At a Berlin provincial synod in A.D. 1877,
an attack was made by pastor =Rhode= on creed subscription.
=Hossbach=, preaching in a vacant church, declared that he
repudiated the confessional doctrine of the divinity of Christ,
regarded the life of Jesus in the gospels as a congeries of
myths, etc. Some loudly protested and others as eagerly pressed
for his settlement. The consistory accepted Rhode’s retractation
and annulled Hossbach’s call. The Supreme Church Council supported
the consistory, and issued a strict order to its president to
suffer no departure from the confession. The congregation next
chose Dr. =Schramm=, a pronounced adherent of the same party, who
was also rejected. In A.D. 1879 =Werner=, biographer of Boniface,
a more moderate disciple of the same school, holding a sort of
Arian position, received the appointment. When, in A.D. 1880,
the Supreme Church Council demanded of Werner a clear statement
of his belief regarding Scripture, the divinity and resurrection
of Christ, and the Apostles Creed, and on receiving his reply
summoned him to a conference at Berlin, he resigned his office.
§ 180.5. The conflicts in Schleswig Holstein also caused
considerable excitement. Pastor =Kühl= of Oldensworth had
published an article at Easter, A.D. 1880, entitled, “The Lord
is Risen indeed,” in which the resurrection was made purely
spiritual. He was charged with violating his ordination vow,
sectaries pointed to his paper as proof of their theory that
the state church was the apocalyptic Babylon, and petitions from
115 ministers and 2,500 laymen were presented against him to
the consistory of Kiel. The consistory exhorted Kühl to be more
careful and his opponents to be more patient. In the same year,
however, he published a paper in which he denied that the order
of nature was set aside by miracles. He was now advised to give
up writing and confine himself to his pastoral work. A pamphlet
by Decker on “The Old Faith and the New,” was answered by =Lühr=,
and his mode of dealing with the ordination vow was of such a
kind as to lead pastor Paulsen to speak of it as a “chloroforming
of his conscience.”
§ 181. DISPUTES ABOUT FORMS OF WORSHIP.
During the eighteenth century the services of the evangelical church
had become thoroughly corrupted and disordered under the influence
of the “Illumination,” and were quite incapable of answering to the
Christian needs and ecclesiastical tastes of the nineteenth century.
Whenever there was a revival in favour of the faith of their fathers,
a movement was made in the direction of improved forms of worship. The
Rationalists and Friends of Light, however, prevented progress except
in a few states. Even the official Eisenach Conference did no more than
prepare the way and indicate how action might afterwards be taken.
§ 181.1. =The Hymnbook.=--Traces of the vandalism of the
Illumination were to be seen in all the hymnbooks. The noble poet
Ernst Moritz Arndt was the first to enter the lists as a restorer;
and various attempts were made by Von Elsner, Von Raumer, Bunsen,
Stier, Knapp, Daniel, Harms, etc., to make collections of sacred
songs answerable to the revived Christian sentiment of the people.
These came to be largely used, not in the public services, but
in family worship, and prepared the way for official revisal of
the books for church use. The Eisenach Conference of A.D. 1853
resolved to issue 150 classical hymns with the old melodies as
an appendix to the old collection and a pattern for further work.
Only with difficulty was the resolution passed to make A.D. 1750
the _terminus ad quem_ in the choice of pieces. Wackernagel
insisted on a strict adherence to the original text and retired
from the committee when this was not agreed to. Only in a few
states has the Eisenach collection been introduced; _e.g._ in
Bavaria, where it has been incorporated in its new hymnbook.
§ 181.2. =The Book of Chorales.=--In A.D. 1814, Frederick
William III. of Prussia sought to secure greater prominence
to the liturgy in the church service. In A.D. 1817, Natorp of
Münster expressed himself strongly as to the need of restoring
the chorale to its former position, and he was followed by the
jurist Thibaut, whose work on “The Purity of Tone” has been
translated into English. The reform of the chorale was carried
out most vigorously in Württemberg, but it was in Bavaria that
the old chorale in its primitive simplicity was most widely
introduced.
§ 181.3. =The Liturgy.=--Under the reign of the Illuminists the
liturgy had suffered even more than the hymns. The Lutherans now
went back to the old Reformation models, and liturgical services,
with musical performances, became popular in Berlin. Conferences
held at Dresden did much for liturgical reform, and the able
works and collections of Schöberlein supplied abundant materials
for the practical carrying out of the movement.
§ 181.4. =The Holy Scriptures.=--The Calw Bible in its fifth
edition adopted somewhat advanced views on inspiration, the canon
and authenticity, while maintaining generally the standpoint
of the most reverent and pious students of scripture. Bunsen’s
commentary assumed a “mediating” position, and the “Protestant
Bible” on the New Testament, translated into English, that of
the advanced school. Besser’s expositions of the New Testament
books, of which we have in English those on John’s gospel, had
an unexampled popularity. The Eisenach Conference undertook
a revision of Luther’s translation of the Bible. The revised
New Testament was published in A.D. 1870, and accepted by some
Bible societies. The much more difficult task of Old Testament
revision was entrusted to a committee of distinguished university
theologians, which concluded its labours in A.D. 1881. A “proof”
Bible was issued in A.D. 1883, and the final corrected rendering
in A.D. 1886. A whole legion of pamphlets were now issued
from all quarters. Some bitterly opposing any change in the
Luther-text, others severely criticising the work, so that the
whole movement seems now at a standstill.[529]--In England, in
May, 1885, the work of revision of the English version of the
Bible, undertaken by order of convocation, was completed after
fifteen years’ labour, and issued jointly by the two universities
of Oxford and Cambridge. The revised New Testament, prepared
four years previously, had been telegraphed in short sections to
America by the representative of the _New York Herald_, so that
the complete work appeared there rather earlier than in England.
But in the case of the Old Testament revision such freebooting
industry was prevented by the strict and careful reserve of all
concerned in the work. The revised New Testament had meanwhile
never been introduced into the public services; whether the
completed Bible will ever succeed in overcoming this prejudice
remains to be seen.[530]
§ 182. PROTESTANT THEOLOGY IN GERMANY.
The real founder of modern Protestant theology, the Origen of the
nineteenth century, is Schleiermacher. His influence was so powerful
and manysided that it extended not merely to his own school, but
also in almost all directions, even to the Catholic church, embracing
destructive and constructive tendencies such as appeared before
in Origen and Erigena. Alongside of the vulgar rationalism, which
still had notable representatives, De Wette founded the new school
of historico-critical rationalism, and Neander that of pietistic
supernaturalism, which soon overshadowed the two older schools of
rational and supra-rational supernaturalism. On the basis of Schelling’s
and Hegel’s philosophy Daub founded the school of speculative theology
with an evangelical tendency; but after Hegel’s death it split into
a right and left wing. As the former could not maintain its position,
its adherents by-and-by went over to other schools; and the latter,
setting aside speculation and dogmatics, applied itself to the critical
investigation of the early history of Christianity, and founded the
school of Baur at Tübingen. Schleiermacher’s school also split into a
right and left wing. Each of them took the union as its standard; but
the right, which claimed to be the “German” and the “Modern” theology,
wished a union under a consensus of the confessions, and sought to
effect an accommodation between the old faith and the modern liberalism;
whereas the left wished union without a confession, and unconditioned
toleration of “free science.” This latter tendency, however, secured
greater prominence and importance from A.D. 1854, through combination
with the representatives of the historico-critical and the younger
generation of the Baurian school, from which originated the “free
Protestant” theology. On the other hand, under the influence of pietism,
there has arisen since A.D. 1830, especially in the universities
of Erlangen, Leipzig, Rostock, and Dorpat, a Lutheran confessional
school, which seeks to develop a Lutheran system of theology of the
type of Gerhard and Bengel. A similar tendency has also shown itself
in the Reformed church. The most recent theological school is that
founded by Ritschl, resting on a Lutheran basis but regarded by the
confessionalists as rather allied to the “free Protestant” theology,
on account of its free treatment of certain fundamental doctrines of
Lutheranism.--Theological contributions from Scandinavia, England,
and Holland are largely indebted to German theology.
§ 182.1. =Schleiermacher, A.D. 1768-1834.=--Thoroughly grounded
in philosophy and deeply imbued with the pious feeling of the
Moravians among whom he was trained, Schleiermacher began his
career in A.D. 1807 as professor and university preacher at Halle,
but, to escape French domination, went in the same year to Berlin,
where by speech and writing he sought to arouse German patriotism.
There he was appointed preacher in A.D. 1809, and professor
in A.D. 1810, and continued to hold these offices till his
death in A.D. 1834. In A.D. 1799 he published five “_Reden
über d. Religion_.” In these it was not biblical and still
less ecclesiastical Christianity which he sought with glowing
eloquence to address to the hearts of the German people, but
Spinozist pantheism. The fundamental idea of his life, that God,
“the absolute unity,” cannot be reached in thought nor grasped
by will, but only embraced in feeling as immediate consciousness,
and hence that feeling is the proper seat of religion, appears
already in his early productions as the centre of his system. In
the following year, A.D. 1800, he set forth his ethical theory
in five “Monologues:” every man should in his own way represent
humanity in a special blending of its elements. The study and
translation of Plato, which occupied him now for several years,
exercised a powerful influence upon him. He approached more and
more towards positive Christianity. In a Christmas Address in
A.D. 1803 on the model of Plato’s Symposium, he represents Christ
as the divine object of all faith. In A.D. 1811 he published his
“Short Outline of Theological Study,” which has been translated
into English, a masterly sketch of theological encyclopædia. In
A.D. 1821 he produced his great masterpiece, “_Der Chr. Glaube_,”
which makes feeling the seat of all religion as immediate
consciousness of absolute dependence, perfectly expressed in
Jesus Christ, whose life redeems the world. The task of dogmatics
is to give scientific expression to the Christian consciousness
as seen the life of the redeemed; it has not to prove,
but only to work out and exhibit in relation to the whole
spiritual life what is already present as a fact of experience.
Thus dogmatics and philosophy are quite distinct. He proves
the evangelical Protestant character of the doctrines thus
developed by quotations from the consensus of both confessions.
Notwithstanding his protest, many of his contemporaries still
found remnants of Spinozist pantheism. On certain points too,
he failed to satisfy the claims of orthodoxy; _e.g._ in his
Sabellian doctrine of the Trinity, his theory of election, his
doctrine of the canon, and his account of the beginning and
close of our Lord’s life, the birth and the ascension.[531]
§ 182.2. =The Older Rationalistic Theology.=--The older,
so-called vulgar rationalism, was characterized by the
self-sufficiency with which it rejected all advances from
philosophy and theology, science and national literature. The
new school of historico-critical rationalism availed itself
of every aid in the direction of scientific investigation. The
father of the vulgar rationalism of this age was =Röhr= of Weimar,
who exercised his ingenuity in proving how one holding such
views might still hold office in the church. To this school also
belonged =Paulus= of Heidelberg, described by Marheineke as one
who believes he thinks and thinks he believes but was incapable
of either; =Wegscheider= of Halle, who in his “_Institutions
theol. Christ. dogmaticæ_” repudiates miracles; =Bretschneider=
of Gotha, who began as a supernaturalist and afterwards went over
to extreme rationalism; and =Ammon= of Dresden, who afterwards
passed over to rational supernaturalism.
§ 182.3. The founder of =Historico-critical Rationalism= was
=De Wette=; a contemporary of Schleiermacher in Berlin University,
but deprived of office in A.D. 1819 for sending a letter of
condolence to the mother of Sands, which was regarded as an
apology for his crime. From A.D. 1822 till his death in A.D. 1849
he continued to work unweariedly in Basel. His theological
position had its starting point in the philosophy of his friend
Fries, which he faithfully adhered to down to the end of his life.
His friendship with Schleiermacher had also a powerful influence
upon him. He too placed religion essentially in feeling,
which, however, he associated much more closely with knowledge
and will. In the church doctrines he recognised an important
symbolical expression of religious truths, and so by the out and
out rationalist he was all along sneered at as a mystic. But his
chief strength lay in the sharp critical treatment which he gave
to the biblical canon and the history of the O.T. and N.T. His
commentaries on the whole of the N.T. are of permanent value, and
contain his latest thoughts, when he had approached most nearly
to positive Christianity. His literary career began in A.D. 1806
with a critical examination of the books of Chronicles. He also
wrote on the Psalms, on Jewish history, on Jewish archæology,
and made a new translation of the Bible. His Introductions to
the O.T. and N.T. have been translated into English.--=Winer=
of Leipzig is best known by his “Grammar of New Testament Greek,”
first published in A.D. 1822, of which several English and
American translations have appeared, the latest and best that of
Dr. Moulton, made in A.D. 1870, from the sixth German edition. He
also edited an admirable “_Bibl. Reallexicon_,” and wrote a work
on symbolics which has been translated into English under the
title “A Comparative View of the Doctrines and Confessions of the
Various Communities of Christendom” (Edin., 1873).--=Gesenius=
of Halle, who died A.D. 1842, has won a high reputation by
his grammatical and lexicographical services and as author of
a commentary on Isaiah--=Hupfeld= of Marburg and Halle, who died
A.D. 1866, best known by his work in four vols. on the Psalms,
in his critical attitude toward the O.T., belonged to the same
party.--=Hitzig= of Zürich and Heidelberg, who died A.D. 1875,
far outstripped all the rest in genius and subtlety of mind and
critical acuteness. He wrote commentaries on most of the prophets
and critical investigations into the O.T. history.--=Ewald= of
Göttingen, A.D. 1803-1875, whose hand was against every man and
every man’s hand against him, held the position of recognised
dictator in the domain of Hebrew grammar, and uttered oracles as
an infallible expounder of the biblical books. In his _Journal
for Biblical Science_, he held an annual _auto da fe_ of all
the biblico-theological literature of the preceding year;
and, assuming a place alongside of Isaiah and Jeremiah, he
pronounced in every preface a prophetic burden against the
theological, ecclesiastical, or political ill doers of his time.
His exegetical writings on the poetical and prophetical books
of the O.T., his “History of Israel down to the Post-Apostolic
Age,” and a condensed reproduction of his “Bible Doctrine of
God,” under the title: “Revelation, its Nature and Record” and
“Old and New Testament Theology,” have all appeared in English
translations, and exhibit everywhere traces of brilliant genius
and suggestive originality.[532]
§ 182.4. =Supernaturalism= of the older type (§ 171, 8) was
now represented by Storr, Reinhard, Planck, Knapp, and Stäudlin.
In Württemberg Storr’s school maintained its pre-eminence
down to A.D. 1830. Neander, Tholuck, and Hengstenberg may
be described as the founders and most powerful enunciators
of the more recent =Pietistic Supernaturalism=. Powerfully
influenced by Schleiermacher, his colleague in Berlin, =Neander=,
A.D. 1789-1850, exercised an influence such as no other
theological teacher had exerted since Luther and Melanchthon.
Adopting Schleiermacher’s standpoint, he regarded religion as
a matter of feeling: _Pectus est quod theologum facit_. By his
subjective pectoral theology he became the father of modern
scientific pietism, but it incapacitated him from understanding
the longing of the age for the restoration of a firm objective
basis for the faith. He was adverse to the Hegelian philosophy
no less than to confessionalism. Neander was so completely a
pectoralist, that even his criticism was dominated by feeling,
as seen in his vacillations on questions of N.T. authenticity
and historicity. His “Church History,” of which we have
admirable English translations, was an epoch-making work, and
his historical monographs were the result of careful original
research.[533]--=Tholuck=, A.D. 1799-1877, from A.D. 1826
professor at Halle, at first devoted to oriental studies,
roused to practical interests by Baron von Kottwitz of Berlin,
gave himself with all his wide culture by preaching, lecturing
and conversing to lead his students to Christ. His scientific
theology was latitudinarian, but had the warmth and freshness
of immediate contact with the living Saviour. His most important
works are apologetical and exegetical. In his “Preludes to
the History of Rationalism” he gives curious glimpses into the
scandalous lives of students in the seventeenth century; and he
afterwards confessed that these studies had helped to draw him
into close sympathy with confessionalism. While always lax in his
views of authenticity, he came to adopt a very decided position
in regard to revelation and inspiration.--=Hengstenberg=,
A.D. 1802-1869, from A.D. 1826 professor in Berlin, had quite
another sort of development. Rendered determined by innumerable
controversies, in none of which he abated a single hair’s breadth,
he looked askance at science as a gift of the Danaides, and set
forth in opposition to rationalism and naturalism a system of
theology unmodified by all the theories of modern times. Born in
the Reformed church and in his understanding of Scripture always
more Calvinist than Lutheran, rationalising only upon miracles
that seemed to detract from the dignity of God, and in his
later years inclined to the Romish doctrine of justification, he
may nevertheless claim to be classed among the confessionalists
within the union. He deserves the credit of having given a great
impulse to O.T. studies and a powerful defence of O.T. books,
though often abandoning the position of an apologist for that
of an advocate. His “Christology of the Old Testament,” in
four vols., “Genuineness of the Pentateuch and Daniel,” three
vols., “Egypt and the Books of Moses,” commentaries on Psalms,
Ecclesiastes, Ezekiel, the Gospel of John, Revelation, and his
“History of the Kingdom of God in the Old Testament,” have all
been translated into English.
§ 182.5. The so called =Rational Supernaturalism= admits the
supernatural revelation in holy scripture, and puts reason
alongside of it as an equally legitimate source of religious
knowledge, and maintains the rationality of the contents of
revelation. Its chief representative was =Baumgarten-Crusius=
of Jena. Of a similar tendency, but more influenced by æsthetic
culture and refined feeling, and latterly inclining more and
more to the standpoint of “free Protestantism,” =Carl Hase=,
after seven years’ work in Tübingen, opened his Jena career in
A.D. 1830, which he closed by resigning his professorship in
A.D. 1883, after sixty years’ labour in the theological chair.
In his “Life of Jesus,” first published A.D. 1829, he represents
Christ as the ideal man, sinless but not free from error, endowed
with the fulness of love and the power of pure humanity, as
having truly risen and become the author of a new life in the
kingdom of God, of which the very essence is most purely and
profoundly expressed in the gospel of the disciple who lay upon
the Master’s heart. The latest revision of this work, issued
in A.D. 1876 under the title “_Geschichte Jesu_,” treats the
fourth gospel as non-Johnannine in authorship and mythical in its
contents, and explains the resurrection by the theory of a swoon
or a vision. In his “_Hutterus Redivivus_,” A.D. 1828, twelfth
edition 1883, he seeks to set forth the Lutheran dogmatic as
Hutter might have done had he lived in these days. This led to
the publication of controversial pamphlets in A.D. 1834-1837,
which dealt the deathblow to the _Rationalismus Vulgaris_. His
“Church History,” distinguished by its admirable little sketches
of leading personalities, was published in A.D. 1834, and the
seventh edition of A.D. 1854 has been translated into English.
§ 182.6. =Speculative Theology.=--Its founder was =Daub=,
professor at Heidelberg from A.D. 1794 till his death in
A.D. 1836. Occupying and writing from the philosophical
standpoints of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling successively, he
published in A.D. 1816 “Judas Iscariot,” an elaborate discussion
of the nature of evil, but passed over in A.D. 1833, with his
treatise on dogmatics, to the Hegelian position. He exerted
great influence as a professor, but his writings proved to most
unintelligible.--=Marheineke= of Berlin in the first edition
of his “Dogmatics” occupied the standpoint of Schelling, but in
the second set forth Lutheran orthodoxy in accordance with the
formulæ of the Hegelian system.--After Hegel’s death in A.D. 1831
his older pupils =Rosenkranz= and =Göschel= sought to enlist his
philosophy in the service of orthodoxy. =Richter= was the first
to give offence, by his “Doctrine of the Last Things,” in which
he denounced the doctrine of immortality in the sense of personal
existence after death. =Strauss=, A.D. 1808-1874, represented
the “Life of Jesus,” in his work of A.D. 1835, as the product
of unintentional romancing, and in his “_Glaubenslehre_” of
A.D. 1840, sought to prove that all Christian doctrines are
put an end to by modern science, and openly taught pantheism
as the residuum of Christianity. =Bruno Bauer=, after passing
from the right to the left Hegelian wing, described the gospels
as the product of conscious fraud, and =Ludwig Feuerbach=,
in his “Essence of Christianity,” A.D. 1841, set forth in all
its nakedness the new gospel of self-adoration. The breach
between the two parties in the school was now complete. Whatever
Rosenkranz and Schaller from the centre, and Göschel and Gabler
from the right, did to vindicate the honour of the system,
they could not possibly restore the for ever shattered illusion
that it was fundamentally Christian. Those of the right fell
back into the camps of “the German theology” and the Lutheran
confessionalism; while in the latest times the left has no
prominent theological representative but Biedermann of Zürich.
§ 182.7. =The Tübingen School.=--Strauss was only the advanced
skirmisher of a school which was proceeding under an able leader
to subject the history of early Christianity to a searching
examination. =Fred. Chr. Baur= of Tübingen, A.D. 1792-1860,
almost unequalled among his contemporaries in acuteness,
diligence, and learning, a pupil of Schleiermacher and Hegel,
devoted himself mainly to historical research about the
beginnings of Christianity. In this department he proceeded to
reject almost everything that had previously been believed. He
denied the genuineness of all the New Testament writings, with
the exception of Revelation and the Epistles to the Romans,
Galatians, and Corinthians; treating the rest as forgeries of
the second century, resulting from a bitter struggle between
the Petrine and Pauline parties. This scheme was set forth in
a rudimentary form in the treatise on “The So-called Pastoral
Epistles of the Apostle Paul,” A.D. 1835. His works, “Paul, the
Apostle,” and the “History of the First Three Centuries,” have
been translated into English. He had as collaborateurs in this
work, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, etc. =Ritschl=,
who was at first an adherent of the school, made important
concessions to the right, and in the second edition of his
great work, “_Die Entstehung d. alt-kath. Kirche_,” of A.D. 1857,
announced himself as an opponent. =Hilgenfeld= of Jena, too,
marked out new lines for himself in New Testament Introduction
and in the estimate of early church doctrine, modifying in
various ways the positions of Baur. The labours of this school
and its opponents have done signal service in the cause of
science.
§ 182.8. =Strauss=, who had meanwhile occupied himself with the
studies of Von Hutten, Reimarus, and Lessing’s “Nathan,” feeling
that the researches of the Tübingen school had antiquated his
“Life of Jesus,” and stimulated by Renan’s “Life of Jesus,”
written with French elegance and vivacity, in which he described
Christ as an amiable hero of a Galilæan village story, undertook
in 1864 a semi-jubilee reproduction of his work, addressed to
“the German people.” This was followed by a severe controversial
pamphlet, “The Half and the Whole,” in which he lashed the
halting attempts of Schenkel as well as the uncompromising
conservatism of Hengstenberg. He now pointed out cases of
intentional romancing in the gospel narratives; the resurrection
rests upon subjective visions of Christ’s disciples. His
“Lectures on Voltaire” appeared in A.D. 1870, and in A.D. 1872
the most radical of all his books, “The Old and the New Faith,”
which makes Christianity only a modified Judaism, the history
of the resurrection mere “humbug,” and the whole gospel story
the result of the “hallucinations” of the early Christians. The
question whether “we” are still Christians he answers openly
and honourably in the negative. He has also surmounted the
standpoint of pantheism. The religion of the nineteenth century
is _pancosmism_, its gospel the results of natural science
with Darwin’s discoveries as its bible, its devotional works
the national classics, its places of worship the concert rooms,
theatres, museums, etc. The most violent attacks on this book
came from the _Protestantenverein_. Strauss had said, “If
the old faith is absurd, then the modernized edition of the
‘_Protestantenverein_’ and the school of Jena is doubly, trebly
so. The old faith only contradicts reason, not itself; the
new contradicts itself at every point, and how can it then
be reconciled with reason?”[534]
§ 182.9. =The Mediating Theology.=--This tendency originated
from the right wing of the school of Schleiermacher, still
influenced more or less by the pectoralism of Neander. It adopted
in dogmatics a more positive and in criticism a more conservative
manner. It earnestly sought to promote the interests of the
union not merely as a combination for church government, but as
a communion under a confessional consensus. Its chief theological
organs were the “_Studien und Kritiken_,” started in A.D. 1828,
edited by Ullmann and Umbreit in Heidelberg, afterwards by
Riehm and Köstlin in Halle, and the “_Jahrbücher für deutsche
Theologie_” of Dorner and Leibner, A.D. 1856-1878.--Although the
mediating theology sought to sink all confessional differences,
denominational descent was more or less traceable in most of its
adherents. Its leading representatives from the =Reformed church=
were: =Alexander Schweizer=, who most faithfully preserved the
critical tendency of Schleiermacher, and, in a style far abler
and subtler than any other modern theologian, expounded the
Reformed system of doctrine in its rigid logical consistency.
In his own system he gives a scientific exposition of the
evangelical faith from the unionist standpoint, with many pious
reflections on Scripture and the confession as well as results of
Christian experience, based upon the threefold manifestation of
God set forth without miracle in the physical order of the world,
in the moral order of the world, and in the historical economy
of the kingdom of God.--=Sack=, one of the oldest and most
positive of Schleiermacher’s pupils, professor at Bonn, then
superintendent at Magdeburg, wrote on apologetics and polemics.
=Hagenbach= of Basel, A.D. 1801-1874, is well-known by his
“Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology,” “History of the
Reformation,” and “History of the Church in the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries,” all of which are translated into
English.--=John Peter Lange= of Bonn, A.D. 1802-1884, a man
of genius, imaginative, poetic, and speculative, with strictly
positive tendencies, widely known by his “Life of Christ” and the
commentary on Old and New Testament, edited and contributed to by
him.--=Dr. Philip Schaff= may also be named as the transplanter
of German theology of the Neander-Tholuck type to the American
soil. Born in Switzerland, he accepted a call as professor to the
theological seminary of the German Reformed church at Mercersburg
in 1843. He soon fell under suspicion of heresy, but was
acquitted by the Synod of New York in 1845. In 1869 he accepted
a call to a professorship in the richly endowed Presbyterian
Union Theological Seminary of New York. Writing first in German
and afterwards in English, his works treat of almost all the
branches of theological science, especially in history and
exegesis. He is also president of several societies engaged
in active Christian work.
§ 182.10. Among those belonging originally to the =Lutheran
church= were Schleiermacher’s successor in Berlin, =Twesten=,
whose dogmatic treatise did not extend beyond the doctrine of
God, a faithful adherent of Schleiermacher’s right wing on the
Lutheran side; =Nitzsch=, professor in Bonn A.D. 1822-1847, and
afterwards of Berlin till his death in A.D. 1868, best known by
his “System of Christian Doctrine,” and his Protestant reply to
Möhler’s “Symbolism,” a profound thinker with a noble Christian
personality, and one of the most influential among the consensus
theologians. =Julius Müller= of Halle, A.D. 1801-1878, if we
except his theory of an ante-temporal fall, occupied the common
doctrinal platform of the confessional unionists. His chief work,
“The Christian Doctrine of Sin,” is a masterpiece of profound
thinking and original research. =Ullmann=, A.D. 1796-1865,
professor in Halle and Heidelberg, a noble and peace-loving
character, distinguished himself in the domain of history by his
monograph on “Gregory Nazianzen,” his “Reformers before the
Reformation,” and most of all by his beautiful apologetical
treatise on the “Sinlessness of Jesus.”--=Isaac Aug. Dorner=,
A.D. 1809-1884, born and educated in Württemberg, latterly
professor in Berlin, applied himself mainly to the elaborating
of Christian doctrine, and gave to the world, in his “Doctrine of
the Person of Christ,” in A.D. 1839, a work of careful historical
research and theological speculation. The fundamental ideas of
his Christology are the theory favoured by the “German” theology
generally of the necessity of the incarnation even apart from sin
(which Müller strongly opposed), and the notion of the archetypal
Christ, the God-Man, as the collective sum of humanity, in whom
“are gathered the patterns of all several individualities.” His
“System of Christian Doctrine” formed the copestone of an almost
fifty years’ academical career. Christ’s virgin birth is admitted
as the condition of the essential union in Him of divinity and
humanity; but the incarnation of the Logos extends through the
whole earthly life of the Redeemer; it is first completed in
his exaltation by means of his resurrection; it was therefore
an operation of the Logos, as principle of all divine movement,
_extra carnem_. His “System of Christian Ethics” was edited
after his death by his son.[535]--=Richard Rothe=, A.D. 1799-1867,
appointed in A.D. 1823 chaplain to the Prussian embassy at Rome,
where he became intimately acquainted with Bunsen. In A.D. 1828
he was made ephorus at the preachers’ seminary of Wittenberg,
and afterwards professor in Bonn and Heidelberg. Rothe was one
of the most profound thinkers of the century, equalled by none
of his contemporaries in the grasp, depth, and originality of
his speculation. Though influenced by Schleiermacher, Neander,
and Hegel, he for a long time withdrew like an anchoret from the
strife of theologians and philosophers, and took up a position
alongside of Oetinger in the chamber of the theosophists. His
mental and spiritual constitution had indeed much in common with
that great mystic. In his first important work, “_Die Anfänge
der chr. Kirche_,” he gave expression to the idea that in its
perfected form the church becomes merged into the state. The same
thought is elaborated in his “Theological Ethics,” a work which
in depth, originality, and conclusiveness of reasoning is almost
unapproached, and is full of the most profound Christian views
in spite of its many heterodoxies. In his later years he took
part in the ecclesiastical conflicts in Baden (§ 196, 3) with
the _Protestantenverein_ (§ 180, 1), and entered the arena of
public ecclesiastical life.[536]--=Beyschlag= of Halle, in his
“_Christologie d. N. T._,” A.D. 1866, carried out Schleiermacher’s
idea of Christ as only man, not God and man but the ideal of
man, not of two natures but only one, the archetypal human, which,
however, as such is divine, because the complete representation
of the divine nature in the human. From this standpoint, too,
he vindicates the authenticity of John’s Gospel, and from Romans
ix.-xi. works out a “Pauline Theodicy.”--=Hans Lassen Martensen=,
A.D. 1808-1884, professor at Copenhagen, Bishop of Zealand
and primate of Denmark, with high speculative endowments and
a considerable tincture of theosophical mysticism, has become
through his “Christian Dogmatics,” “Christian Ethics,” in three
vols., etc., of a thoroughly Lutheran type, one of the best known
theologians of the century.
§ 182.11. Among =Old Testament exegetes= the most distinguished
are: =Umbreit=, A.D. 1795-1860, of Heidelberg, who wrote from
the supernaturalist standpoint, influenced by Schleiermacher
and Herder, commentaries on Solomon’s writings and those of the
prophets, and on Job; =Bertheau= of Göttingen, of Ewald’s school,
wrote historico-critical and philological commentaries on the
historical books; and =Dillmann=, Hengstenberg’s successor in
Berlin, specially distinguished for his knowledge of the Ethiopic
language and literature, has written critical commentaries on
the Pentateuch and Job.--Among =New Testament exegetes= we may
mention: =Lücke= of Göttingen, known by his commentary on John’s
writings; =Bleek=, the able New Testament critic and commentator
on the Epistle to the Hebrews; =Meyer=, A.D. 1800-1873, most
distinguished of all, whose “Critical and Exegetical Commentary
on the New Testament,” begun in A.D. 1832, in which he was
aided by Huther, Lunemann, and Düsterdieck, is well-known in its
English edition as the most complete exegetical handbook to the
New Testament; =Weiss= of Kiel and Berlin, author of treatises
on the doctrinal systems of Peter and of John, “The Biblical
Theology of the New Testament,” “Life of Christ,” “Introduction
to New Testament,” revises and rewrites commentaries on Mark,
Luke, John, and Romans, in the last edition of the Meyer
series.--A laborious student in the domain of New Testament
textual criticism was =Constant. von Tischendorff [Tischendorf]=
of Leipzig, A.D. 1815-1874, who ransacked all the libraries
of Europe and the East in the prosecution of his work. The
publication of several ancient codices, _e.g._ the _Cod.
Sinaiticus_, a present from the Sinaitic monks to the czar on
the thousandth anniversary of the Russian empire in A.D. 1862,
the _Cod. Vaticanus N.T._, a new edition of the LXX., the most
complete collection of New Testament apocrypha and pseudepigraphs,
and finally a whole series of editions of the New Testament (from
A.D. 1841-1873 there appeared twenty-four editions, of which the
_Editio Octava Major_ of 1872 is the most complete in critical
apparatus), are the rich and ripe fruits of his researches.
A second edition, compared throughout with the recensions of
Tregelles and Westcott and Hort, was published by =Von Gebhardt=,
and a third volume of Prolegomena was added by C. R. Gregory.
As a theologian he attached himself, especially in later years,
to the Lutheranism of his Leipzig colleagues, and on questions
of criticism and introduction took up a strictly conservative
position as seen in his well known tract, “When were our Gospels
written?”
§ 182.12. Among the university teachers of his time =John Tob.
Beck=, A.D. 1804-1878, assumed a position all his own. After
a pastorate of ten years he began in A.D. 1836 his academical
career in Basel, and went in A.D. 1843 to Tübingen, where he
opposed to the teaching of Baur’s school a purely biblical and
positive theology, with a success that exceeded all expectations.
A Württemberger by birth, nature, and training, he quite ignored
the history of the church and its dogmas as well as modern
criticism, and set forth a system of theology drawn from a
theosophical realistic study of the Bible. He took little
interest in the excited movements of his age for home and foreign
missions, union, confederation, and alliances, in questions about
liturgies, constitution, discipline, and confessions, in all
which he saw only the form of godliness without the power. Better
times could be hoped for only as the result of the immediate
interposition of God. His “Pastoral Theology” and “Biblical
Psychology” have been translated into English.
§ 182.13. =The Lutheran Confessional Theology.=--=Sartorius=,
A.D. 1797-1859, from A.D. 1822 professor in Dorpat, then from
A.D. 1835 general superintendent at Königsberg, made fresh and
vigorous attacks upon rationalism, and supported the union as
preserving “the true mean” of Lutheranism. He is best known by
his “Doctrine of Divine Love.” =Rudelbach=,--a Dane by birth and
finally settled in Copenhagen, occupying the same ground, became
a violent opponent of the union.--=Guericke= of Halle, beginning
as a pietist, passed through the union into a rigorous Lutheran,
and joined Rudelbach in editing the journal afterwards conducted
by Luthardt of Leipzig.--Alongside of these older representatives
of Lutheran orthodoxy there arose a =second generation= which
from A.D. 1840 has fallen into several groups. Their divergencies
were mainly on two points:
1. On the place and significance of the clerical order, some
viewing it as based on the general priesthood of believers
and resting on the call of the congregation for the orderly
administration of the means of grace, others regarding it
as a divine institution, yet without adopting the Romanizing
and Anglican theory of apostolic succession; and
2. On the more important question of biblical prophecy, where
one party maintained the spiritualistic, widely favoured
since the time of Jerome, and another party, attaching
itself to Crusius and Bengel, insisted upon a realistic
interpretation.
At the head of the =first group=, which maintained the old
Protestant theory of church and office and looked askance
at chiliastic theories, supporting the old doctrines by all
available materials from modern science, stands =Harless=,
A.D. 1806-1879, professor in Erlangen and Leipzig, the chief
ecclesiastical commissioner in Dresden, and finally at Munich.
His theological reputation rests upon his “Commentary on
Ephesians,” A.D. 1835, his “Christian Ethics,” A.D. 1842.
Alongside of him =Thomasius= of Erlangen, A.D. 1802-1875, wrought
in a similar direction.--=Keil=, A.D. 1807-1888, from A.D. 1833
professor in Dorpat, since A.D. 1858 living retired in Leipzig,
of all Hengstenberg’s students has most faithfully preserved
his master’s exegetical and critical conservatism. He began
in A.D. 1861 in connexion with Delitzsch his “Old Testament
Commentary” on strictly conservative lines. We have an English
translation of that work, and also of his “Introduction to the
Old Testament” and his “Old Testament Archæology.”--=Philippi=,
A.D. 1809-1882, son of Jewish parents, during his academic
career in Dorpat, A.D. 1841-1852, exercised a powerful influence
in securing for strict Lutheranism a very widespread ascendency
among the clergy of Livonia. From A.D. 1852 till his death in
A.D. 1882 he resided in Rostock. As exegete and dogmatist, he
has, like a John Gerhard and Quenstedt of the nineteenth century,
reproduced the Lutheran theology of the seventeenth century,
unmodified by the developments of modern thought. He is known to
English readers by his “Commentary on Romans.” His chief work is
“_Kirchl. Glaubenslehre_,” in six vols.--Alongside of him, and
scarcely less important, stands =Theodosius Harnack=, who went
from Dorpat in A.D. 1853 to Erlangen, but returned to Dorpat
in A.D. 1866, and retired in A.D. 1873. He has written upon
the worship of the church of the post-apostolic age, on Luther’s
theology, and practical theology.
§ 182.14. At the head of the =second group=, characterized
by a decided biblical realism and inclined to a biblical
chiliasm, stands =Von Hofmann= of Erlangen, A.D. 1810-1877, whose
“_Weissagung und Erfüllung_,” 1841, represents the very antipodes
of Hengstenberg’s view of the Old Testament, placing history and
prophecy in vital relation to one another, and studying prophecy
in its historical setting. In his “_Schriftbeweis_” we have
an entirely new system of doctrine drawn from Scripture, the
doctrine of the atonement being set forth in quite a different
form from that generally approved, but vindicated by its author
against Philippi as “a new way of teaching old truth.” In his
commentary on the New Testament, he takes up a conservative
position on questions of criticism and introduction.--=Franz
Delitzsch=, in Rostock, A.D. 1846, Erlangen, A.D. 1850,
in Leipzig since A.D. 1867, more intimately acquainted with
rabbinical literature than any other Christian theologian, became
an enthusiastic adherent of Hofmann’s position. His theology,
however, has a more decidedly theosophical tendency, while
his critical attitude is more liberal. He is well known by his
“Biblical Psychology,” commentary on Psalms, Isaiah, Solomon’s
writings, Job, Hebrews, and a new commentary on Genesis in
which he accepts many of the positions of the advanced school
of biblical criticism.--=Luthardt= of Leipzig in the domain of
New Testament exegesis and dogmatics works from the standpoint of
Hofmann. His “Commentary on John’s Gospel,” “Authorship of Fourth
Gospel,” and “Apologetical Lectures on the Fundamental, Saving
and Moral Truths of Christianity,” are well known.--Hofmann’s
conception of Old Testament doctrine is admirably carried out
by =Oehler=, A.D. 1812-1872, with learning and speculative
power, in his “Theology of the Old Testament,” and in various
important monographs on Old Testament doctrines.--The most
important representatives of the =third group=, which strongly
emphasizes the extreme Lutheran theory of the church and office,
are =Kliefoth= of Schwerin, liturgist and biblical commentator;
and =Vilmar=, who opened his academic career at Marburg, in
1856, with a controversial programme entitled “The Theology
of Facts against the Theology of Rhetoric.” Vilmar’s lectures,
able, though sketchy and incomplete, were published after his
death in A.D. 1868 by some of his disciples. To the same school
belonged =Von Zezschwitz= of Erlangen, A.D. 1825-1886, whose
“_Catechetics_” is a treasury of solid learning.
§ 182.15. Among Lutheran theologians taking little or nothing to
do with these controversial questions, =Kahnis=, A.D. 1814-1888,
from A.D. 1850 professor at Leipzig, occupied a strict Lutheran
confessional standpoint, diverging only in the adoption of a
subordinationist doctrine on the person of Christ, a Sabellian
theory of the Trinity, and a theory of the Lord’s supper in
some points differing from that of the strict Lutherans. His
historical sketches are vigorous and lively.--=Zöckler= of
Giessen and Greifswald has made important contributions to
church history, exegesis, and dogmatics, and especially to the
theory and history of natural theology. In 1886 he began the
publication of a short biblical commentary contributed to by the
most distinguished positive theologians, he himself editing the
New Testament and Strack the Old Testament. It is to be in twelve
vols., and is being translated into English.--=Von Oetingen=
of Dorpat has devoted himself to social problems and moral
statistics.--=Frank= of Erlangen has proved a powerful apologist
for old Lutheranism, and in his “System of Christian Evidence”
has introduced a new branch of theology, in which the subjective
Christian certitude which the believer has with his faith is
made the basis of the scientific exposition of the truth set
forth in his “System of Christian Truth,” a thoughtful and
speculative treatise on doctrine, followed by “The System
of Christian Morals” as the conclusion of his theological
work.--Lutheran theology had also zealous representatives in
several distinguished jurists: =Göschel=, president of the
consistory of Magdeburg, who wrote against Strauss, sought
to derive profound Christian teaching from Goethe and Dante,
and wrote on the last things, and on man in respect of body,
soul, and spirit; =Stahl=, A.D. 1802-1861, professor of law at
Erlangen and Berlin, leader since A.D. 1849 of the high-church
aristocratic reactionary party in the Prussian chamber, supported
his views by reference to the Scripture doctrine of the divine
origin of magisterial authority.
§ 182.16. As zealous representatives of =Reformed
Confessionalism= who set aside the dogma of predestination
and so show no antagonism to the union, may be named: =Heppe=,
opponent of Vilmar in Marburg, who devoted much of his career
as a historian to the undermining of Lutheranism, then wrought
upon the histories of provincial churches, of Catholic mysticism
and pietism, etc.; and =Ebrard=, A.D. 1818-1887, a brilliant
believing theologian who combated rationalism and Catholicism,
professor from A.D. 1847 of Reformed theology at Erlangen, known
by his “Gospel History: a Compendium of Critical Investigations
in Support of the Historical Church of the Four Gospels,” his
“Apologetics,” in 3 vols., “Commentary on Hebrews,” etc.
§ 182.17. =The Free Protestant Theology.=--This school originated
in the left wing of Schleiermacher’s following, and has as its
literary organs, Hilgenfeld’s _Zeitschrift_ and the _Jahrbücher
für prot. Theologie_.--The distinguished statesman, =Von Bunsen=,
A.D. 1791-1860, ambassador at Rome and afterwards at London, at
first stood at the head of the revival of the church interests
and life; but in his “Church of the Future,” conceived a
constitutional idea on a democratic basis, for which he sought
support in historical studies on the Ignatian age, etc., and
the historical refutation of the orthodox Christology and
trinitarianism. His elaborate work on “Egypt’s Place in the
World’s History,” full of arbitrary criticism, negative and
positive, on the chronological and historical data of the
Old Testament, seeks to show that, by restoring the Egyptian
chronology, we for the first time make the Bible history fit
into general history. “The Signs of the Times” comprise glowing
philippics against the hierarchical pretensions of Papists
and even more dangerous Lutherans, insists on Scripture being
translated out of the Semitic into the Japhetic mode of speech,
to which end he devoted his last great works, “God in History”
and his “Bible Commentary,” the latter finished after his
death by Kamphausen and Holtzmann.--=Schenkel=, A.D. 1813-1885,
professor at Heidelberg from A.D. 1851 till his resignation in
A.D. 1884, from the right wing of the mediating school, through
unionism and Melanchthonianism advanced to the standpoint of his
“_Charakterbild Jesu_,” which strips Christ of all supernatural
features, yet proclaims him the redeemer of the world, and
strives to save his resurrection as a historical and saving
truth, and explains his appearances after the resurrection as
“real manifestations of the personality living and glorified
after death.” In later years he sought to draw yet more
closely to positive Christianity. =Keim= of Zürich and Giessen,
A.D. 1825-1878, the ablest of all recent historians of the
life of Jesus, and with all his radicalism preserving some
conservative tendencies, is best known by his “Jesus of Nazareth,”
in six vols.--=Holtzmann= of Heidelberg and Strassburg, passed
from the mediating school over to that of Tübingen, from which in
important points he has now departed.--To the same rank belongs
=Hausrath= of Heidelberg, whose “History of the New Testament
Times” is well known. Under the pseudonym of George Taylor he
has composed several highly successful historical romances.--The
organs of this school are Hilgenfeld’s _Zeitschrift_, and since
1875 the Jena “_Jahrbücher für protest. Theologie_.”
§ 182.18. =In the Old Testament Department= a liberal critical
school has arisen which has reversed the old relation of “the law
and the prophets,” treating the origin of the law as post-exilian,
and as in not coming at the beginning, but at the end of the
Jewish history. =Reuss=, whose “History of the New Testament
Books” marked an epoch in New Testament introduction, was the
first who moved in this direction, in his lectures begun at
Strassburg in A.D. 1834, the results of which are given us in
his “History of the Theology of the Apostolic Age” and in his
“History of the Canon.” Meanwhile =Vatke= of Berlin had, in
A.D. 1835, undertaken to prove that the patriarchal religion was
pure Semitic nature worship, and that the prophets were the first
to raise it into a monotheistic Jehovism. Little success attended
his efforts. Greater results were obtained by Reuss’ two pupils,
=Graf= in A.D. 1866, and =Kayser= in A.D. 1874. The most brilliant
exposition of this theory was given by =Julius Wellhausen=
of Greifswald, transferred in A.D. 1882 to the Philosophical
Faculty of Halle, in his “History of Israel.” In his “Prolegomena
to History of Israel,” and article “Israel” in “_Encyclopædia
Britannica_,” he gives expression with clearness and force to
his radical negative criticism, and develops a purely naturalist
conception of the Old Testament. Professor Kuenen of Leyden
transplanted these views to the Netherlands, and Robertson Smith
has introduced them into Scotland and England, while in Germany
they are taught by a number of the younger teachers, Stade in
Giessen, Merx in Heidelberg, Smend in Basel, etc. And now at last
in A.D. 1882 the venerable master of the school, =Edward Reuss=,
has himself in his “_Geschichte d. h. Schr. d. A. Test._” given a
brilliant and in many points modified exposition of these radical
theories. The history of Israel, according to him, divides itself
into the four successive periods of the heroes, of the prophets,
of the priests, and of the scribes, characterized respectively
by individualism, idealism, formalism, and traditionalism. Even
before the close of prophetism the priestly influence began
to assert itself, but it was only in the post-exilian period
under the domination of the priests that the construction and
codification of the law began to make impression on the Jewish
people. So too in the age of the kings there existed a Levitical
tradition about rites and worship, which traced back its first
outlines to the time of Moses, though at this period there could
have been no written official codex of any kind. In regard to
Moses, we are to think not only of his person as historical,
but also of his career as that of a man inspired by the
divine spirit and recognised as such by his contemporaries and
fellow-countrymen.--Also =Wellhausen=, who has hitherto concerned
himself only with the critical introduction to the Old Testament
books, not with their historical or theological interpretation,
supplied this defect to some extent by his “Prolegomena to the
History of Israel.” He admits that much of the history of Israel
related in the Old Testament is credible. He even goes so far as
to allow that this history was a preparation and forerunner of
Christianity, but without miracle and prophecy, and without any
immediate interposition of God in the affairs of Israel.
§ 182.19. Among the most distinguished free-thinking =dogmatists=
of recent times, =Biedermann= of Zürich, A.D. 1819-1885,
has occupied the most advanced position. His principal work,
“_Christliche Dogmatik_,” A.D. 1869, defined God and the origin
of the world as the self-development of the Absolute Idea
according to the Hegelian scheme, recognises in the person of
Christ the first realization of the Christian principle of the
divine sonship in a personal life, then proceeds with free
exposition of the Scripture and church doctrines, and combats
openly the doctrines of the church and through them also those
of Scripture, as setting religion purely in the domain of the
imagination.--=Lipsius= of Leipzig, Kiel, and Jena, in his
earliest treatise on the Pauline Doctrine of Justification in
A.D. 1853, held the position of the mediating theology, but under
the influence of Kant, Hegel, and Baur has been led to adopt
the standpoint of the “Free Protestant” school. His history of
gnosticism and his researches in early apocryphal literature
are important contributions to our knowledge of primitive
Christianity. His “_Lehrbuch d. ev. prot. Dogmatik_,” 1876,
2nd ed., 1879, on the basis of Kant and Schleiermacher, fixing
the limits of science with the former, and maintaining with the
latter the necessity of religious faith and life, not rejecting
metaphysics generally, but only its speculations on God and
divine things lying quite outside of human experience, seeks
from the common faith of the Christian church of all ages, as
it is expressed in the Scriptures and in the confessions, by
the application of the freest subjective criticism of the letter
of revelation, to secure a theory of the world in harmony with
modern views.--=Pfleiderer=, Twesten’s successor in Berlin,
in his “Paulinism,” “Influence of Paul on Development of
Christianity” and “History of the Philosophy of Religion,”
occupies more the Hegelian speculative standpoint than that
of Kantian criticism.
§ 182.20. =Ritschl and his School.=--=Ritschl=, 1822-1889, from
A.D. 1846 in Bonn, from A.D. 1864 in Göttingen, on his withdrawal
from the Tübingen party, applied himself to dogmatic studies
and founded a school, the adherents of which, divided into
right and left wings, have secured quite a number of academical
appointments. After the completion of his great dogmatic work
on “Justification and Reconciliation,” Ritschl resumed his
historical studies in a “History of Pietism,” which he traces
back through the persecuted anabaptists of the Reformation age
to the Tertiaries of the Franciscan order and the mysticism
of St. Bernard. He earnestly maintains his adherence to the
confessions of the Lutheran church, and regards it as the task
of his life to disentangle the pure Lutheran doctrine from the
accretions of scholastic metaphysics. Even more decidedly than
Schleiermacher, he banishes all philosophy from the domain of
theology. The grand significance of Kant’s doctrine of knowledge,
with its assertion of the incomprehensibility of all transcendent
truth except the ethical postulates of God, freedom and
immortality, as set forth in a more profound manner by Lotze,
is indeed admitted, but only as a methodological basis of all
religious inquiries, and with determined rejection of every
material support from Kant’s construction of religion within the
limits of the pure reason. Ritschl rather pronounces in favour
of the formal principle of Protestantism, and declares distinctly
that all religious truth must be drawn directly from Scripture,
primarily from the New Testament as the witness of the early
church uncorrupted by the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysic, but
also secondarily from the Old Testament as the record of the
content of revelation made to the religious community of Israel.
The truthfulness of the biblical, especially of the New Testament,
system of truth, rests, however, not on any theory of inspiration,
but on its being an authentic statement of the early church of
the doctrine of Christ, inasmuch as to this witness the necessary
degree of _fides humana_ belongs. Ritschl’s Christology rests on
the witness of Christ to himself in the synoptists, through which
he proclaims himself the one prophet who in the divine purpose
of grace for mankind has received perfect consecration, sent by
God into the world to represent the founding of the kingdom of
God on earth foreshadowed in the Old Testament revelation; but
no attempt is made to explain how Christ became possessed of
the secrets of the divine decree. To him, as the first and only
begotten Son of God, standing in essential union with the Father,
belongs the attribute of deity and the right of worship. But of
an eternal pre-existence of Christ we can speak only in so far
as this is meant of the eternal gracious purpose of God to redeem
the world through him by means of the complete unfolding of the
kingdom of God in the fellowship of love. Whatever goes beyond
this in the fourth gospel, its Johannine authenticity not being
otherwise contested, as well as in Paul’s epistles and in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, resulted from the necessity felt by their
writers for assigning a sufficient reason for the assumption of
such incomparable glory on the part of Christ. As the archetype
of humanity destined for the kingdom of God, Christ is the
original object of the divine love, so that the love of God to
the members of his kingdom comes to them only through him. And
as the earthly founding, so also the heavenly completion, of
the kingdom of God is assigned to Christ, and hence after his
resurrection all power was given to him, of the transcendent
exercise of which, however, we can know nothing. The universality
of human sin is admitted by Ritschl as a fact of experience,
but he despairs of reaching any dogmatic statement as to the
origin of sin through the temptation of a superhuman evil
power. But that sin is inherited and as original guilt is
under the condemnation of God, is not taught or pre-supposed
by the teaching either of Christ or of the apostles. Redemption
(reconciliation and justification) consists in the forgiveness of
sins, by which the guilt that estranges from God is removed and
the sinner is restored into the fellowship of the kingdom of God.
Forgiveness, however, is not given on condition of the vicarious
penal sufferings of Christ, whose sufferings and death are of
significance rather because his life and works were a complete
fulfilment of his calling, and witnessed to as such by God’s
raising him from the dead. Justification secures the reception
of the penitent sinner into the fellowship of the kingdom of
God, preached and perfectly developed by Christ, and the sonship
enjoyed in its membership, prefigured in Christ himself, which
contains in itself the desire as well as the capacity to do good
works out of love to God.--The school of Ritschl is represented
in Göttingen by its founder and by =Schultz= and =Wendt=,
in Marburg by =Herrmann=, in Bonn by =Bender=, in Giessen by
=Gottschick= and =Kattenbusch=, in Strassburg by =Lobstein=,
in Basel by =Kaftan=, formerly of Berlin.[537]
§ 182.21. Opponents and critics of the school of Ritschl,
especially from the confessional Lutheran ranks, have appeared in
considerable numbers. Luthardt of Leipzig in A.D. 1878 opened the
campaign against Ritschilianism, followed by Bestmann, charging
it with undermining Christianity. The Hanoverian synod of
A.D. 1882 decided by a large majority that the scientific results
of theological science must be ruled by the confessions of the
evangelical church. The chief theme at the following Hanoverian
Pentecost Conference was the “Incarnation of the Son of God,” the
discussion being led by Professor Dieckhoff of Rostock, against
whom no voice was raised in favour of the views of Ritschl.
Not long after, Professor Fricke of Leipzig published a lecture
given by him at the Meissen Conference, on the Present Relations
of Metaphysics and Theology, followed by utterances of Kübel of
Tübingen, Grau of Königsberg, Kreibig and H. Schmidt at Berlin,
all unfavourable to Ritschl’s theology.--The main objections
are, according to =Bestmann=: idolatry of Kant, depreciation
of the religious factor in Christianity in favour of the ethical
by laying out a moral foreground without providing a dogmatic
background, reducing the objective fundamental truths of the
confession into subjective ethical ideas, etc.; according to
=Luthardt=: Ritschl’s position that it does not matter so much
what the facts of the Christian faith are in themselves, as what
they mean for us, makes his whole dogmatic system hang in the
air, if in Christianity we have to do not with what God, Christ,
the resurrection are, but only what significance we attach to
them, Christianity is stript of all importance, the significance
of a thing must have its foundation in the thing itself, etc.;
according to =Dieckhoff=: Ritschl on his accepting the divinity
of Christ lays down the rule that the special content of what is
meant by the term divinity must be transferable to the believer,
and so for Ritschl, Christ is a mere man who in his person was
the first to represent a relation to God which is destined for
all men in like measure, etc.; according to =Fricke=: new Kantian
scepticism with regard to ideals and transcendentals, reducing
religious elements to moral, with Ritschl’s removal of all
metaphysical facts the chief verities of our Christian faith
are taken away, at least in the scientific form in which we have
them, _e.g._ the doctrine of the Trinity, our Christology, our
theory of satisfaction, in place of which comes the Catholic
_justitia infusa_, etc.; according to =Münchmayer=: “the object
of justification with Ritschl is not the individual but the
community, it is no act of God upon the individual but an eternal
purpose of God for the community, its effect on the individual
is not objective divine forgiveness of guilt but a subjective act
of incorporation of the individual into the redeemed community;
Christ and his work are not the ground of justification,
but only the means of revealing the eternal justifying will
of God, and therefore finally a continuation of the historical
work of Christ by means of his church takes the place of the
personal intercession of the exalted Redeemer for the penitent
sinner.” Kreibig and Schmidt express themselves in a similar
manner.--Ritschl has not himself undertaken any reply, but
his disciples have sought to remove what they regard as
misunderstandings, and generally to vindicate the system of
their master.
§ 182.22. =Writers on Constitutional Law and History.=--The most
distinguished writers on the constitutional law of the church
are Eichhorn and Dove of Göttingen, Jacobsen of Königsberg,
Wasserschleben of Giessen, Richter and Hinschius of Berlin,
Friedberg of Leipzig, who belong to the unionist party; while
Bickell of Marburg, Mejer of Göttingen and Hanover, Von Scheuerl
of Erlangen, and Sohm of Strassburg belong to the confessional
Lutherans.--Of ecclesiastical historians (§ 5, 4, 5) the number
is so great that we cannot even enumerate their names.--The
“_Theologische Literaturzeitung_” of Schürer and Harnack
is a liberal scientific journal, distinguished for its fair
criticisms by writers whose names are given.
§ 183. HOME MISSIONS.
In regard to home mission work, the Protestant church long lagged
behind the Catholic, which had wrought vigorously through its monkish
orders. England first entered with zeal into the field, especially
dissenters and members of the low church party, and subsequently also
the high church ritualistic party (§ 202, 1, 3), which now takes an
active interest in this work. Germany, in view of the scanty means at
the disposal of the pietists and the church party, made noble efforts.
In other continental countries, but especially in North America, much
was done for home missions. Soon the whole Protestant world began
to organize benevolent and evangelistic institutions. The laborious
Wichern, in A.D. 1849, went through all Germany to arouse interest
in home missions, and started a yearly congress on the subject in
Wittenberg. Till his death in A.D. 1881, Wichern continued to direct
this congress and further the interests which it represented.
§ 183.1. =Institutions.=--The earliest charity school was that
founded at Düsselthal by Count Recke-Volmarstein, in A.D. 1816,
followed by Zeller’s at Beuggen in A.D. 1820. One of the most
famous of these institutions was the =Rauhe Haus= of Wichern,
at Horn, near Hamburg, A.D. 1833.[538] Fliedner’s Deaconess
Institute at Kaiserswerth is the pride of the evangelical church.
It has now 190 branches, with 625 sisters, in the four continents.
There are many independent institutions modelled upon it in
Germany, England, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, and France.
In A.D. 1881 there were in Germany 31, and in the cities of other
lands 22, principal deaconess institutions of this German order,
with 4,751 sisters and 1,491 fields of labour outside of the
institution. The original institute of Kaiserswerth comprises
a hospital with 600 patients, a refuge for fallen women and
liberated prisoners, an orphanage for girls, a seminary for
governesses, and a home for female imbeciles.[539] Löhe founded
the deaconess institute of =Neuendettelsau=, on strict Lutheran
principles, with hospital, girls’ school, and asylum for imbecile
children. In France a most successful institution was founded by
pastor Bost of Laforce, in A.D. 1848, for foundlings, imbeciles,
and epileptics. In England, George Müller, a poor German student
of Halle, a pupil of Tholuck, beginning in A.D. 1832, founded at
Bristol five richly endowed orphanages after the pattern of that
of A. H. Francke, in which thousands of destitute street children
have been educated, and for this and other purposes has spent
nearly £1,000,000 without ever asking any one for a contribution,
acting on the belief that “the God of Elijah still lives.”
The London City Mission employs 600 missionaries. In New York,
since A.D. 1855, about 60,000 street children have been placed,
by the Society for Poor Children, in Christian families, and
21 Industrial schools are maintained with 10,000 scholars.--Tract
Societies in London, Hamburg, Berlin, etc., send out millions
of tracts for Christian instruction and awakening. The Society
for North Germany successfully pursues a similar work; the Calw
Publication Society circulates Christian text-books with woodcuts
at a remarkably small price. In Berlin the Evangelical Book
Society issues reprints of the older tracts on practical divinity.
Christian women, like the English Quakeress Elizabeth Fry, the
noble Amalie Sieveking of Hamburg, Miss Florence Nightingale, the
heroine of the Crimean war, and the brave Maria Simon of Dresden,
who organized the female nursing corps of the wars of 1866,
1870, 1871, helped on the work of home missions in all lands,
especially in the departments of tending the poor and the sick.
§ 183.2. The =Order of St. John=, secularized in A.D. 1810,
was reorganized by Frederick William IV. in A.D. 1852 into
an association for the care of the sick and poor. Under a
grand-master it has 350 members and 1,500 associates. Its
revenues are formed from entrance fees and annual contributions.
It has thirty hospitals. In A.D. 1861 it founded a hospital for
men in Beyrout during the persecution of Christians in Syria, and
in A.D. 1868 gave aid during the famine that followed the typhus
epidemic in East Prussia, and did noble service in the wars of
A.D. 1864, 1866, and 1870.
§ 183.3. =The Itinerant Preacher Gustav Werner in
Württemberg.=--Abandoning his charge in A.D. 1840, Werner began
his itinerant labours, and during the year formed more than a
hundred groups of adherents over all Württemberg. His preaching
was allegorical and eschatological, and avoided the doctrines of
satisfaction and justification. On his repudiating the Augsburg
Confession, the church boards refused to recognise him, and
he went hither and thither preaching a Christian communism. In
A.D. 1842 he bought a site in Reutlingen, built a house, and
founded a school for eighty children. In order to develop his
views of carrying on industrial arts on a Christian basis, he
bought, in A.D. 1850, the paper factory at Reutlingen for £4,000,
and subsequently transferred it to Dettingen on a larger scale,
at an outlay of £20,000. By A.D. 1862 he had established no less
than twenty-two branches, in which manufacturing was carried
on, with institutions of all kinds for education, pastoral work,
rescuing the lost and raising the fallen. Each member lives and
works for the whole; none receives wages; surplus income goes
to increase the number and extent of the institutions. Vast
multitudes of sunken and destitute families have been by these
means restored to respectable social positions and to a moral
religious life.
§ 183.4. =Bible Societies.=--The Bible societies constitute
an independent branch of the home mission. Modern efforts to
circulate Scripture began in England. As a necessary adjunct to
missionary societies, the great British and Foreign Bible Society
was founded in London in A.D. 1804, embracing all Protestant
sects, excepting the Quakers. It circulates Bibles without note
or comment. The Apocryphal controversy of A.D. 1825-1827 resulted
in the society resolving not to print the Apocrypha in its
issues. In consequence of this decision, fifty German societies,
including the present society of Berlin, seceded. The New York
Association, founded in A.D. 1817, is in thorough accord with
the London society. The Baden Missionary Society revived the
discussion in A.D. 1852 by making it the subject of essay
for a prize, which was won by the learned work of Keerl, who,
along with the stricter Lutherans, condemned the Apocrypha.
The other side was taken by Stier and Hengstenberg, and most
of the consistories advised adherence to the old practice,
as all misunderstanding was prevented by Luther’s preface and
the prohibition against using passages from the Apocrypha as
sermon texts.--Bible societies altogether have issued during
the century 180,000,000 Bibles and New Testaments in 324
different languages.[540]
§ 184. FOREIGN MISSIONS.
Protestant zeal for missions to the heathen has gone on advancing
since the end of last century (§ 172, 5). Missionary societies increase
from year to year. In A.D. 1883 there were seventy independent societies
with innumerable branches, which contribute annually about £1,500,000,
or five times as much as the Romish church, and maintain 2,000 mission
stations, 2,940 European and American missionaries, and 1,000 ordained
native pastors and 25,000 native teachers and assistants, having under
their care 2,214,000 converts from heathenism. In missionary enterprise
England holds the first place, next comes America, and then Germany.
Among Protestant sects the Methodists and Baptists are most zealous
in the cause of missions, and the Moravian Brethren have wrought
most successfully in this department. The missions also did much to
prepare the way for the suppression of the slave trade by the European
powers in A.D. 1830, and the emancipation of all slaves in the British
possessions in A.D. 1834, at a cost of £20,000,000. The noble English
philanthropist, William Wilberforce, unweariedly laboured for these
ends.--Also in England, Germany, Russia, and France new associations
were formed for missions to the Jews, and the work was carried on with
admirable patience, though the visible results were very small.
§ 184.1. =Missionary Societies.=--The great American Missionary
Society was founded at Boston in A.D. 1810, the English Wesleyan
in A.D. 1814, the American Methodist in A.D. 1819, the American
Episcopal in A.D. 1820, and the Society of Paris in A.D. 1824.
The new German societies were on confessional lines: that of
Basel in A.D. 1816, of Berlin in A.D. 1823, the Rhenish with the
mission seminary at Barmen in A.D. 1829, the North German, on
the basis of the Augsburg Confession, in A.D. 1836. The Dresden
Society, which resumed the old Lutheran work in the East Indies
(§ 167, 9), founded a seminary at Leipzig in A.D. 1849, in order
to get the benefit of the university. Lutheran societies, mostly
affiliated with that of Leipzig, were started in Sweden, Denmark,
Norway, Russia, Bavaria, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Hesse, and America.
The Neuendettelsau Institute wrought through the Iowa Synod among
the North American Indians, and through the Immanuel Synod among
the aborigines of Australia. The Hermannsburg Institute under
Harms prosecuted mission work with great zeal. In A.D. 1853,
Harms sent out in his own mission ship eight missionaries and as
many Christian colonists. It has been objected to this mission,
that endeavours after social elevation and industrial training
have driven to the background the main question of individual
conversion.--The advanced liberal school in Switzerland and
Germany sought in A.D. 1883 to start a mission on their own
particular lines. They do not propose any opposition to existing
agencies, and intend to make their first experiment among the
civilized races of India and Japan.
§ 184.2. =Europe and America.=--The Swedish mission in Lapland
(§ 160, 7) was resumed in A.D. 1825 by Stockfleth. The Moravians
carried on their work among the Eskimos in Greenland, which had
now become a wholly Christian country, and also in Labrador,
which was almost in the same condition. The chaplain of the
Hudson Bay Company, J. West, founded a successful mission in
that territory in A.D. 1822. Among the natives and negro slaves
in the British possessions, the United States, and West Indies,
Moravians, Methodists, Baptists, and Anglican Episcopalians
patiently and successfully carried on the work. Among the natives
and bush negroes, descendants of runaway slaves, in Guiana, the
Moravians did a noble work.--Catholic South America remained
closed against Protestant missions. But the ardent zeal of
Capt. Allen Gardiner led him to choose the inhospitable shores of
Patagonia as a field of labour. He landed there in A.D. 1850 with
five missionaries, but in the following year their corpses only
were found. The work, however, was started anew in A.D. 1856, and
prosecuted with success under the direction of an Anglican bishop.
§ 184.3. =Africa.=--The Moravians have laboured among the
Hottentots, the Berlin missionaries among the wild Corannas,
and the French Evangelical Society among the Bechuanas. Hahn
of Livonia is the apostle of the Hereros. On the East Coast the
London Missionary Society has wrought among the warlike Kaffirs,
and other British societies are labouring in Natal among the
Zulus. On the West Coast the English colony of Sierra Leone was
founded for the settling and Christianizing of liberated slaves,
and farther south is Liberia, a similar American colony; both in
a flourishing condition, under the care of Methodists, Baptists,
and Anglican Episcopalians. The Basel missionaries labour on the
Gold Coast, Baptists in Old Calabar, and the American and North
German Societies on the Gaboon River.--The London missionaries
won Radama of Madagascar to Christianity in A.D. 1818, but his
successor Ranavalona instituted a bloody persecution of the
Christians in A.D. 1835, during which David Jones, the apostle
of the Malagassy, suffered martyrdom in A.D. 1843. In the island
of Mauritius, where there is an Anglican bishop, many Malagassy
Christians found refuge. After the queen’s death in A.D. 1861,
her Christian son Radama II. recalled the Christian exiles
and the missionaries. He soon became the victim of a palace
revolution. His wife and successor Rosaherina continued a heathen
till her death in A.D. 1868, but put no obstacle in the way of
the gospel. But her cousin Ranavalona II. overthrew the idol
worship, was baptized in A.D. 1869, and in the following year
burned the national idols. Protestantism now made rapid strides,
till interrupted by French Jesuit intrigues, which have been
favoured by the recent French occupation.
§ 184.4. Livingstone and Stanley have made marvellous
contributions to our geographical knowledge of =Central Africa=
and to Christian missions there. The Scottish missionary, David
Livingstone, factory boy, afterwards physician and minister,
wrought, A.D. 1840-1849, under the London Missionary Society in
South Africa, and then entered on his life work of exploration
in Central Africa. During his third exploring journey into the
interior in A.D. 1865 as a British consul, he was not heard of
for a whole year. H. M. Stanley, of the _New York Herald_, was
sent in A.D. 1871, and found him in Ujiji on Lake Tanganyiká.
Livingstone died of dysentery on the southern bank of this lake
in A.D. 1873. Still more important was Stanley’s second journey,
A.D. 1874-1877, which yielded the most brilliant scientific
results, and was epoch-making in the history of African missions.
He got the greatest potentate in those regions, King Mtesa of
Uganda, who had been converted by the Arabs to Mohammedanism, to
adopt Christianity and permit a Christian church to be built in
his city. Stanley’s letters from Africa roused missionary fervour
throughout England. The Church Missionary Society in A.D. 1877
set up a mission station in the capital, and put a steamer
on the Victoria Nyanza. The church services were regularly
attended, education and the work of civilization zealously
prosecuted, Sunday labour and the slave trade prohibited, etc.
French Jesuits entered in A.D. 1879, insinuating suspicions
of the English missionaries into the ear of the king, and the
machinations of the Arab slave-dealers made their position
dangerous. Missionaries arrived by way of Egypt with flattering
recommendations from the English foreign secretary in the name
of the queen. But the traders, by means of an Arabic translation
of a letter purporting to be from the English consul at Zanzibar,
cast suspicion on the document as a forgery, and represented its
bearers as in the pay of the hostile Egyptians. Mtesa’s wrath
knew no bounds, and only his favour for the missionary physician
saved the mission and led him to send an embassy of three chiefs
and two missionaries to England in June, A.D. 1879, to discover
the actual truth. His anger meanwhile cooled, and the work of
the mission was resumed. He was preparing to put an utter end
to the national heathenism, when suddenly a report spread that
the greatest of all the Lubaris or inferior deities, that of
the Nyanza Lake, had become incarnate in an old woman, in order
to heal the king and restore the ancient religion. The whole
populace was in an uproar; Mtesa, under threat of deposition,
restored heathenism, with human sacrifice, man stealing, and the
slave trade. Then the Lubari excitement cooled down. Mtesa, moved
by a dream, declared himself again a Mohammedan, and converted
the Christian church into a mosque. The English missionaries,
stripped of all means, starved, and subjected to all sorts of
privations, did not flinch. At last, in January, A.D. 1881,
the embassy, sent eighteen months before to England, reached
home again, and, by the story of their reception, caused a
revulsion of feeling in favour of the English mission, which
again flourished under the protection of the king. But Mtesa died
in 1884. His son and successor, Mwanga, a suspicious, peevish
young despot, addicted to all forms of vice, began again the
most cruel persecution, of which Bishop Hannington, sent out
from England, with fifty companions, were the victims. Only
four escaped.
§ 184.5. =Asia.=--The most important mission field in
Asia is =India=. The old Lutheran mission there had great
difficulties to contend against: the system of caste distinctions,
the proud self-sufficiency of the pantheistic Brahmans, the
politico-commercial interests of the East India Company, etc.
The Leipzig Society has sixteen stations among the Tamuls, and
alongside are English, American, and German missionaries of
every school. The Gossner Society works among the Kohls of Chota
Nagpore, where a rival mission has been started by the puseyite
bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Milman, to which, in A.D. 1868, six
of the twelve German missionaries and twelve of the thirty-six
chapels were transferred. The Basel missionaries labour in Canara
and Malabar. The military revolt in Northern India in A.D. 1857
interrupted missionary operations for two years; but the work was
afterwards resumed with great vigour. The Christian benevolence
shown during the famine of A.D. 1878, in which three millions
perished, made a great impression in favour of the Protestant
church. In the preceding years throughout all India only between
5,000 and 10, 000 souls were annually added; but in A.D. 1878 the
number of new converts rose to 100,000, and in A.D. 1879 there
were 44,000.--The island of =Ceylon= was, under Portuguese and
Dutch rule, in great part nominally Christianized; but when
compulsion was removed under British rule, this sham profession
was at an end. Multitudes fell back into heathenism, and in the
first ten years of the British dominion 900 new idol temples
were erected. From A.D. 1812 Baptist, Methodist, and Anglican
missionaries have toiled with small appearance of fruit. In
=Farther India= the American missionaries have wrought since
A.D. 1813. Judson and his heroic wife did noble work among the
Karens and the Burmans. Also in Malacca, Singapore, and Siam
the Protestant missions have had brilliant success. The work in
Sumatra has been retarded by the opposition of the Malays and
deadly malarial fever. The preaching of the gospel was eminently
successful in =Java=, where since A.D. 1814 Baptist missionaries
and agents of the London Society have wrought heroically.
In Celebes the Dutch missionaries found twenty Christian
congregations of old standing, greatly deteriorated for want
of pastoral care, but still using the Heidelberg Catechism. At
Banjermassin, in A.D. 1835 the Rhenish Society founded their
first station in Borneo, and wrought not unsuccessfully among
the heathen Dyaks. But in A.D. 1859 a rebellion of the Mohammedan
residents led to the expulsion of the Dutch and the murder of all
Christians. Only a few of the missionaries escaped martyrdom, and
subsequently settled in Sumatra.
§ 184.6. The work in =China= began in A.D. 1807, when the London
Missionary Society settled Morrison in Canton, where he began the
study of the language and the translation of the Bible. Gutzlaff
of Pomerania, in A.D. 1826, conceived the plan of evangelizing
China through the Chinese converts, but, though he continued his
efforts till his death in A.D. 1854, the scheme failed through
the unworthiness of many of the professors. The war against the
opium traffic, A.D. 1839-1842, opened five ports to the mission,
and led to the transference of Hongkong to the English. The
Chinese mission now made rapid strides; but the interior was
still untouched. The conflict between the governor of Canton
and the English, French, and Americans, and the chastisement
administered to the Chinese in A.D. 1857, led the emperor, in
A.D. 1858, to make a treaty with the three powers and also with
Russia, by which the whole land was opened up for trade and
missions, and full toleration granted to Christianity. Popular
hatred of strangers, and especially of missionaries, however,
occasioned frequently bloody encounters, and in A.D. 1870 there
was a furious outburst directed against the French missionaries.
During a terrible famine in North China, in A.D. 1878, when more
than five millions perished, the heroic and self-sacrificing
conduct of the missionaries brought them into high favour.
Throughout China there are now 320 organized Christian
congregations with 50,000 adherents under 238 foreign
missionaries.--After seclusion for three centuries, =Japan=,
about the same time as China, was opened by treaty to European
and American commerce, notwithstanding the opposition of the
old feudal nobility, the so-called Daimios. In A.D. 1871 the
mikado’s government succeeded in overcoming completely the power
of the daimios and setting aside the shiogun or military vizier,
who had exercised supreme executive power. European customs were
introduced, but the rigorous enactments against native converts
to Christianity were still enforced. A cruel persecution
of native Christians was carried on in A.D. 1867, but the
Protestant missionaries continued to work unweariedly, preparing
dictionaries and reading books. The Buddhist priests sought
to get up a rival mission to send agents to America and Europe,
whereas many of the leading newspapers expressed the opinion that
Japan must soon put Christianity in the place of Buddhism as the
state religion.
§ 184.7. =Polynesia and Australia.=--The flourishing Protestant
church of Tahiti, the largest and finest of the Society Islands
(§ 172, 5), suffered from the appearance of two French Jesuits
in A.D. 1836. When Queen Pomare compelled them to withdraw,
the French government, resenting this as an indignity to
their nation, sent a fleet to attack the defenceless people,
proclaimed a French protectorate, and introduced not only
Catholic missionaries, but European vices. Amid much persecution,
however, the Protestants held their own. In December, 1880,
Pomare V. resigned, and the Society Islands became a dependency
of France.--In the south-east groups great opposition was shown,
but in the north-west Christianity made rapid progress. The
island of Raiatea was the centre of the South Sea missions. There
from A.D. 1819 John Williams, the apostle of the South Seas,
wrought till he met a martyr’s death in A.D. 1839. He went from
place to place in a mission ship built by his own hands. The
Harvey Group were Christianized in A.D. 1821, and the Navigator
Group in A.D. 1830. The French took the Marquesas Islands in
A.D. 1838, and introduced Catholic missionaries. The attempt
to evangelize the New Hebrides led to the death of Williams
and two of his companions. Missionaries of the London Society,
A.D. 1797-1799, had failed in the Friendly Islands through the
savage character of the natives, but in A.D. 1822 the Methodists
made a successful start. The gospel was carried thence to Fiji,
which is now under British rule. Both groups have become almost
wholly Christianized. The =Sandwich Islands= form a third mission
centre, wrought by the American board. Kamehameha I. gladly
adopted the elements of Christian civilization, though rejecting
Christianity: while his successor Kamehameha II. in A.D. 1829
abolished tabu and overthrew the idol temples. In A.D. 1851
Christianity was adopted as the national religion. The work was
more difficult in =New Zealand=, where the Church Missionary
Society, represented by Samuel Marsden, the apostle of New
Zealand, began operations in A.D. 1814. For ten years the
position of the missionaries was most hazardous; yet they held
on, and the conversion of the most bloodthirsty of the chiefs
did much to advance their cause. In New Guinea the London Society
has been making steady progress. Among the stolid natives of the
continent of New Holland, the so called Papuans, the labours of
the Moravians since A.D. 1849 have not yielded much fruit. Since
A.D. 1875 the German-Australian Immanuel Synod, supported by
Neuendettelsau, has laboured for the conversion of the heathen
in the inland districts.
§ 184.8. =Missions to the Jews.=--In A.D. 1809 the London Society
for Promoting Christianity among the Jews (§ 172, 5) was formed
by a union of all denominations, but soon passed into the hands
of the Anglicans. By the circulation of the Scriptures and
tracts, and by the sending out of missionaries, mostly Jewish
converts, the work was persevered in amid many discouragements.
In A.D. 1818 Poland was opened to its missionaries, and there
some 600 Jews were baptized. The society carried on its operations
also in Germany, Holland, France, and Turkey. The work in Poland
was interrupted by the Crimean war, and was not resumed till
A.D. 1875. In Bessarabia Faltin has laboured successfully among
the Jews since A.D. 1860. He was joined in the work in A.D. 1867
by the converted Rabbi Gurland, who had studied theology at Halle
and Berlin. In A.D. 1871 Gurland accepted a call to similar work
in Courland and Lithuania, and since A.D. 1876 has been Lutheran
pastor at Mitau. In A.D. 1841 the evangelical bishopric of
St. James was founded in Jerusalem by the English and Prussian
governments conjointly, presentations to be made alternately, but
the ordination to be according to the Anglican rite. The first
bishop was Alexander, a Jewish convert. He died in A.D. 1845 and
was succeeded by the zealous missionary Gobat, elected by the
Prussian government. He died in A.D. 1879 and was succeeded
by Barclay, who died in A.D. 1881. It was now again Prussia’s
turn to make an appointment. The English demand to have Lutheran
ministers ordained successively deacon, presbyter, and bishop
had given offence, and so no new appointment has been made. In
June 1886 the English-Prussian compact was formally cancelled
and a proposal made to found an independent Prussian Evangelical
bishopric.
§ 184.9. =Missions among the Eastern Churches.=--In A.D. 1815
the Church Missionary Society founded a missionary emporium in
the island of Malta, as a tract depôt for the evangelizing the
East; and in A.D. 1846 the Malta Protestant College was erected
for training native missionaries, teachers, physicians, etc., for
work in the various oriental countries. In the Ionian islands, in
Constantinople, and in Greece, British and American missionaries
began operations in A.D. 1819 by erecting schools and circulating
the scriptures. At first the orthodox clergy were favourable, but
as the work progressed they became actively hostile, and only two
mission schools in Syra and Athens were allowed to continue. In
Syria the Americans made Beyrout their head quarters in A.D. 1824,
but the work was interrupted by the Turco-Egyptian conflicts.
Subsequently, however, it flourished more and more, and, before
the Syrian massacre of A.D. 1860 (§ 207, 2), there were nine
prosperous stations in Syria. The founding of the Jerusalem
bishopric in A.D. 1841, and the issuing of the Hatti-Humayun
in A.D. 1856 (§ 207, 2), induced the Church Missionary Society
to make more vigorous efforts which, however, were afterwards
abandoned for want of success. Down to the outbreak of the
persecution of Syrian Christians in A.D. 1860, this society
had five flourishing stations. From A.D. 1831 the Americans
had wrought zealously and successfully among the Armenians in
Constantinople and neighbourhood, but in A.D. 1845 the Armenian
patriarch excited a violent persecution which threatened
the utter overthrow of the work. The British ambassador,
Sir Stratford de Redcliffe, however, insisted upon the Porte
recognising the rights of the Protestant Armenians as an
independent religious denomination, and since then the missions
have prospered. Among the Nestorians in Turkey and Persia the
Americans, with Dr. Grant at their head, began operations in
A.D. 1834; but through Jesuit intrigues the suspicions of the
Kurds and Turks were excited, and in A.D. 1843 and 1846 a war
of extermination was waged against the mountain Nestorians,
which annihilated the Protestant missions among them. Operations,
however, have been recommenced with encouraging success. Among
the deeply degraded Copts in Egypt, and extending from them into
Abyssinia, the Moravians had been working without any apparent
result from A.D. 1752 to A.D. 1783. In A.D. 1826 the Church
Missionary Society, under German missionaries trained at Basel
(Gobat, Irenberg, Krapf [Krapff], etc.), took up the work, till
it was stopped by the government in A.D. 1837. In A.D. 1855
the Basel missionaries began again to work in Abyssinia with
the approval of King Theodore. This state of things soon changed.
Theodore’s ambition was to conquer Egypt and overthrow Islam.
But when in A.D. 1863 this scheme only called forth threats from
London and Paris, he gave loose rein to his natural ferocity
and put the English consul and the German missionaries in chains.
By means of an armed expedition in A.D. 1868, England compelled
the liberation of the prisoners, and Theodore put an end to his
own life. After the withdrawal of the English the country was
desolated by civil wars, and at the close of these troubles in
A.D. 1878 the mission resumed its operations.
III. Catholicism in General.
§ 185. THE PAPACY AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH.
The papacy, humiliated but not destroyed by Napoleon I., was in
A.D. 1814 by the aid of princes of all creeds restored to the full
possession of its temporal and spiritual authority, and amid many
difficulties it reasserted for the most part successfully its
hierarchical claims in the Catholic states and in those whose
Protestantism and Catholicism were alike tolerated. Many severe
blows indeed were dealt to the papacy even in the Roman states by
revolutionary movements, yet political reaction generally by-and-by put
the church in a position as good if not better than it had before. But
while on this side the Alps, especially since the outbreak of A.D. 1848,
ultramontanism gained one victory after another in its own domain, in
Italy, it suffered one humiliation after another; and while the Vatican
Council, which put the crown upon its idolatrous assumptions (§ 189, 3),
was still sitting, the whole pride of its temporal sovereignty was
shattered: the States of the Church were struck out of the number of the
European powers, and Rome became the capital and residence of the prince
of Sardinia as king of United Italy. But reverence for the pope now
reached a height among catholic nations which it had never anywhere
attained before.
§ 185.1. =The First Four Popes of the Century.=--Napoleon as
First Consul of the French Republic, in A.D. 1801 concluded a
concordat with =Pius VII.=, A.D. 1800-1823, who under Austrian
protection was elected pope at Venice, whereby the pope was
restored to his temporal and spiritual rights, but was obliged
to abandon his hierarchical claims over the church of France
(§ 203, 1). He crowned the consul emperor of the French at Paris
in A.D. 1804, but when he persisted in the assertion of his
hierarchical principles, Napoleon in A.D. 1808 entered the papal
territories, and in May, A.D. 1809, formally repudiated the
donation of “his predecessor” Charlemagne. The pope treated the
offered payment of two million francs as an insult, threatened
the emperor with the ban, and in July, A.D. 1809, was imprisoned
at Savona, and in A.D. 1812 was taken to Fontainebleau. He
refused for a time to give canonical institution to the bishops
nominated by the emperor, and though at last he yielded and
agreed to reside in France, he soon withdrew his concession,
and the complications of A.D. 1813 constrained the emperor, on
February 14th, to set free the pope and the Papal States. In May
the pope again entered Rome. One of his first official acts was
the restoration of the Jesuits by the bull _Sollicitudo omnium_,
as by the unanimous request of all Christendom. The Congregation
of the Index was again set up, and during the course of the year
737 charges of heresy were heard before the tribunal of the holy
office. All sales of church property were pronounced void, and
1,800 monasteries and 600 nunneries were reclaimed. In A.D. 1815
the pope formally protested against the decision of the Vienna
Congress, especially against the overthrow of the spiritual
principalities in the German empire (§ 192, 1). Equally fruitless
was his demand for the restoration of Avignon (§ 165, 15).
In A.D. 1816 he condemned the Bible societies as a plague to
Christendom, and renewed the prohibition of Bible translations.
His diplomatic schemes were determined by his able secretary
Cardinal Consalvi, who not only at the Vienna Congress, but also
subsequently by several concordats secured the fullest possible
expression to the interests and claims of the curia.--His
successor was =Leo XII.=, A.D. 1823-1829, who, more strict in
his civil administration than his predecessor, condemned Bible
societies, renewed the Inquisition prosecutions, for the sake
of gain celebrated the jubilee in A.D. 1825, ordered prayers
for uprooting of heresy, rebuilt the Ghetto wall of Rome,
overturned during the French rule (§ 95, 3), which marked off
the Jews’ quarter, till Pius IX. again threw it down in A.D. 1846.
After the eight months’ reign of =Pius VIII.=, A.D. 1829-1830,
=Gregory XVI.=, A.D. 1831-1846, ascended the papal throne, and
sought amid troubles at home and abroad to exalt to its utmost
pitch the hierarchical idea. In A.D. 1832 he issued an encyclical,
in which he declared irreconcilable war against modern science
as well as against freedom of conscience and the press, and his
whole pontificate was a consistent carrying out of this principle.
He encountered incessant opposition from liberal and revolutionary
movements in his own territory, restrained only by Austrian
and French military interference, A.D. 1832-1838, and from the
rejection of his hierarchical schemes by Spain, Portugal, Prussia,
and Russia.[541]
§ 185.2. =Pius IX., A.D. 1846-1878.=--Count Mastai Feretti in
his fifty-fourth year succeeded Gregory on 16th June, and took
the name of Pius IX. While in ecclesiastical matters he seemed
willing to hold by the old paths and distinctly declared against
Bible societies, he favoured reform in civil administration
and encouraged the hopes of the liberals who longed for the
independence and unity of Italy. But this only awakened the
thunder storm which soon burst upon his own head. The far
resounding cry of the jubilee days, “_Evviva Pio Nono!_” ended
in the pope’s flight to Gaeta in November, 1848; and in February,
1849, the Roman Republic was proclaimed. The French Republic,
however, owing to the threatening attitude of Austria, hastened
to take Rome and restore the temporal power of the pope. Amid the
convulsions of Italy, Pius could not return to Rome till April,
1850, where he was maintained by French and Austrian bayonets.
Abandoning his liberal views, the pope now put himself more and
more under the influence of the Jesuits, and his absolutist and
reactionary politics were directed by Card. Antonelli. From his
exile at Gaeta he had asked the opinion of the bishops of the
whole church regarding the immaculate conception of the blessed
Virgin, to whose protection he believed that he owed his safety.
The opinions of 576 were favourable, resting on Bible proofs:
Genesis iii. 15, Song of Sol. iv. 7, 12, and Luke i. 28; but some
French and German bishops were strongly opposed. The question was
now submitted for further consideration to various congregations,
and finally the consenting bishops were invited to Rome to settle
the terms of the doctrinal definition of the new dogma. After
four secret sessions it was acknowledged by acclamation, and
on 8th December, 1854 (§ 104, 7), the pope read in the Sixtine
chapel the bull _Ineffabilis_ and placed a brilliant diadem
on the head of the image of the queen of heaven. The disciples
of St. Thomas listened in silence to this aspersion of their
master’s orthodoxy; no heed was paid to two isolated individual
voices that protested; the bishops of all Catholic lands
proclaimed the new dogma, the theologians vindicated it, and the
spectacle-loving people rejoiced in the pompous Mary-festival.
The pope’s next great performance was the encyclical, _Quanta
cura_, of December 8th, 1864, and the accompanying syllabus
cataloguing in eighty-four propositions all the errors of the
day, by which not only the antichristian and anti-ecclesiastical
tendencies, but also claims for freedom of belief and worship,
liberty of the press and science, the state’s independence of the
church, the equality of the laity and clergy in civil matters, in
short all the principles of modern political and social life, were
condemned as heretical. Three years later the centenary of Peter
(§ 16, 1) brought five hundred bishops to Rome, with other clergy
and laymen from all lands. The enthusiasm for the papal chair
was such that the pope was encouraged to convoke an œcumenical
council. The jubilee of his consecration as priest in A.D. 1869
brought him congratulatory addresses signed by one and a half
millions, filled the papal coffers, attracted an immense number
of visitors to Rome, and secured to all the votaries gathered
there a complete indulgence. On the Vatican Council which met
during that same year, see § 189.[542]
§ 185.3. =The Overthrow of the Papal States.=--In the Peace of
Villafranca of 1859, which put an end to the short Austro-French
war in Italy, a confederation was arranged of all the Italian
princes under the honorary presidency of the pope for drawing up
the future constitution of Italy. During the war the Austrians
had vacated Bologna, but the French remained in Rome to protect
the pope. The revolution now broke out in Romagna. Victor Emanuel,
king of Sardinia, was proclaimed dictator for the time over that
part of the Papal States and a provisional government was set
up. In vain did the pope remind Christendom in an encyclical
of the necessity of maintaining his temporal power, in vain
did he thunder his _excommunicatio major_ against all who would
contribute to its overthrow. A pamphlet war against the temporal
power now began, and About’s letters in the _Moniteur_ described
with bitter scorn the incapacity of the papal government. In his
pamphlet, “_Le Pope et le Congrès_,” Laguéronnière proposed to
restrict the pope’s sovereignty to Rome and its neighbourhood,
levy a tax for the support of the papal court on all Catholic
nations, and leave Rome undisturbed by political troubles. On
December 31st, 1859, Napoleon III. exhorted the pope to yield
to the logic of facts and to surrender the provinces that refused
any longer to be his. The pope then issued a rescript in which
he declared that he could never give up what belonged not to
him but to the church. The popular vote in Romagna went almost
unanimously for annexation to Sardinia, and this, in spite of
the papal ban, was done. A revolution broke out in Umbria and
the March of Ancona, and Victor Emanuel without more ado attached
these states also to his dominion in A.D. 1860, so that only
Rome and the Campagna were retained by the pope, and even these
only by means of French support. At the September convention of
A.D. 1864 Italy undertook to maintain the papal domain intact,
to permit the organization of an independent papal army, and to
contribute to the papal treasury; while France was to quit Roman
territory within at the latest two years. The pope submitted
to what he could not prevent, but still insisted upon his most
extreme claims, answered every attempt at conciliation with
his stereotyped _non possumus_, and in A.D. 1866 proclaimed
St. Catherine of Siena (§ 112, 4) patron of the “city.” When
the last of the French troops took ship in A.D. 1866 the radical
party thought the time had come for freeing Italy from papal rule,
and roused the whole land by public proclamation. Garibaldi again
put himself at the head of the movement. The Papal State was
soon encircled by bands of volunteers, and insurrections broke
out even within Rome itself. Napoleon pronounced this a breach
of the September convention, and in A.D. 1867 the volunteers
were utterly routed by the French at Mentana. The French guarded
Civita Vecchia and fortified Rome. But in August, 1870, their own
national exigencies demanded the withdrawal of the French troops,
and after the battle of Sedan the Italians to a man insisted
on having Rome as their capital, and Victor Emanuel acquiesced.
The pope sought help far and near from Catholic and non-Catholic
powers, but he received only the echo of his own words, _non
possumus_. After a four hours’ cannonade a breach was made in the
walls of the eternal city, the white flag appeared on St. Angelo,
and amid the shouts of the populace the Italian troops entered
on September 20th, 1870. A plebiscite in the papal dominions gave
133,681 votes in favour of annexation and 1,507 against; in Rome
alone there were 40,785 for and only 46 against. The king now
issued the decree of incorporation; Rome became capital of united
Italy and the Quirinal the royal residence.
§ 185.4. =The Prisoner of the Vatican, A.D. 1870-1878.=--The
dethroned papal king could only protest and utter denunciations.
No result followed from the adoption of St. Joseph as guardian
and patron of the church, nor from the solemn consecration of the
whole world to the most sacred heart of Jesus, at the jubilee of
June 16th, A.D. 1875. The measures of A.D. 1871, by which Cavour
sought to realize his ideal of a “free church in a free state,”
were pronounced absurd, cunning, deceitful, and an outrage on
the apostles Peter and Paul. By these measures the rights and
privileges of a sovereign for all time had been conferred on the
pope: the holiness and inviolability of his person, a body-guard,
a post and telegraph bureau, free ambassadorial communication
with foreign powers, the _ex-territoriality_ of his palace of
the Vatican, embracing fifteen large saloons, 11,500 rooms,
236 stairs, 218 corridors, two chapels, several museums, archives,
libraries, large beautiful gardens, etc., as also of the Lateran
and the summer palace of Castle Gandolpho, with all appurtenances,
also an annual income, free from all burdens and taxes, of three
and a quarter million francs, equal to the former amount of
his revenue, together with unrestricted liberty in the exercise
of all ecclesiastical rights of sovereignty and primacy, and
the renunciation of all state interference in the disposal of
bishoprics and benefices. The right of the inferior clergy to
exercise the _appellatio ab abusu_ to a civil tribunal was set
aside, and of all civil rights only that of the royal _exequatur_
in the election of bishops, _i.e._ the mere right of investing
the nominee of the curia in the possession of the revenues of
his office, was retained.--To the end of his life Pius every year
returned the dotation as an insult and injury, and “the starving
holy father in prison, who has not where to lay his head,”
received three or four times more in Peter’s pence contributed
by all Catholic Christendom. Playing the _rôle_ of a prisoner
he never passed beyond the precincts of the Vatican. He reached
the semi-jubilee of his papal coronation in A.D. 1871, being
the first pope who falsified the old saying, _Annos Petri non
videbit_. He rejected the offer of a golden throne and the
title of “the great,” but he accepted a Parisian lady’s gift of
a golden crown of thorns. In support of the prison myth, straws
from the papal cell were sold in Belgium for half a franc per
stalk, and for the same price photographs of the pope behind
an iron grating. As once on a time the legend arose about the
disciple whom Jesus loved that he would not die, so was it
once said about the pope; and on his eighty-third birthday, in
A.D. 1874, a Roman Jesuit paper, eulogising the moral purity of
his life, put the words in his mouth, “Which of you convinceth
me of sin?” But he himself by constantly renewed rescripts,
encyclicals, briefs, allocutions to the cardinals and to numerous
deputations from far and near, unweariedly fanned the flame of
enthusiasm and fanaticism throughout papal Christendom, and
thundered threatening prophecies not only against the Italian,
but also against foreign states, for with most of them he lived
in open war. A collection of his “Speeches delivered at the
Vatican” was published in 1874, commented on by Gladstone in
the _Contemporary Review_ for January, 1875, who gives abundant
quotations showing papal assumptions, maledictions, abuse and
misunderstanding of the Scriptures with which they abound. On
the fiftieth anniversary of the pope’s episcopal consecration,
in June, 1877, crowds from all lands assembled to offer their
congratulations, with costly presents and Peter’s pence amounting
to sixteen and a half million francs. He died February 8th, 1878,
in the eighty-sixth year of his age and thirty-second of his
pontificate. His heirs claimed the unpaid dotations of twenty
million lire, but were refused by the courts of law.[543]--His
secretary Antonelli, descended from an old brigand family,
who from the time of his stay at Gaeta was his evil demon,
predeceased him in A.D. 1876. Though the son of a poor herdsman
and woodcutter, he left more than a hundred million lire. His
natural daughter, to the great annoyance of the Vatican, sought,
but without success, in the courts of justice to make good her
claims against her father’s greedy brothers.
§ 185.5. =Leo XIII.=--After only two days’ conclave the
Cardinal-archbishop of Perugia, Joachim Pecci, born in A.D. 1810,
was proclaimed on February 20th, 1878, as Leo XIII. In autograph
letters he intimated his accession to the German and Russian
emperors, but not to the king of Italy, and expressed his
wish for a good mutual understanding. To the government of the
Swiss Cantons he declared his hope that their ancient friendly
relations might be restored. At Easter, 1878, he issued an
encyclical to all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops,
in which he required of them that they should earnestly entreat
the mediation of the “immaculate queen of heaven” and the
intercession of St. Joseph, “the heavenly shield of the church,”
and also failed not to make prominent the infallibility of
the apostolic chair, and to condemn all the errors condemned
by his predecessors, emphasizing the necessity of restoring the
temporal power of the pope, and confirming and renewing all the
protests of his predecessor Pius IX., of sacred memory, against
the overthrow of the Papal States. On the first anniversary of
his elevation he proclaimed a universal jubilee, with the promise
of a complete indulgence. He still persisted in the prison
myth of his predecessor, and like him sent back the profferred
contribution of his “jailor.” In the conflicts with foreign
powers inherited from Pius, as well as in his own, he has
employed generally moderate and conciliatory language.--He has
not hesitated to take the first step toward a good understanding
with his opponents, for which, while persistently maintaining
the ancient principles of the papal chair, he makes certain
concessions in regard to subordinate matters, always with
the design and expectation of seeing them outweighed on the
other side by the conservation of all the other hierarchical
pretensions of the curial system. It was, however, only in
the middle of A.D. 1885 that it became evident that the pope
had determined, without allowing any misunderstanding to arise
between himself and his cardinals, to break through the trammels
of the irreconcilable zealots in the college. And indeed after
the conclusion of the German _Kulturkampf_ (§ 197, 13, 15),
brought about by these means, in an allocution with reference
thereto addressed to the cardinals in May, 1887, he gave an
unexpected expression to his wish and longing in regard to an
understanding with the government on the Italian question, which
involved an utter renunciation of his predecessor’s dogged _Non
possumus_, the attitude hitherto unfalteringly maintained. “Would
that peaceful counsels,” says he, “embracing all our peoples
should prevail in Italy also, and that at last once that unhappy
difference might be overcome without loss of privilege to the
holy see!” Such harmony, indeed, is only possible when the pope
“is subjected to no authority and enjoys perfect freedom,” which
would cause no loss to Italy, “but would only secure its lasting
peace and safety.” That he counts upon the good offices of the
German emperor for the effecting of this longed-for restoration
of such a _modus vivendi_ with the Italian government, he
has clearly indicated in his preliminary communications to the
Prussian centre exhorting to peace (§ 197, 14). The _Moniteur
de Rome_ (§ 188, 1), however, interpreted the words of the pope
thus: “Italy would lose nothing materially or politically, if
it gave a small corner of its territory to the pope, where he
might enjoy actual sovereignty as a guarantee of his spiritual
independence.”--On Leo’s contributions to theological science
see § 191, 12; on his attitude to Protestantism and the Eastern
Church, see § 175, 2, 4. He expressed himself against the
freemasons in an encyclical of A.D. 1884 with even greater
severity than Pius. Consequently the Roman Inquisition issued
an instruction to all bishops throughout the Catholic world
requiring them to enjoin their clergy in the pulpit and the
confessional to make it known that all freemasons are _eo ipso_
excommunicated, and by Catholic associations of every sort,
especially by the spread of the third order of St. Francis
(§ 186, 2), the injunction was carried out. At the same time a
year’s reprieve was given to the freemasons, during which the
Roman heresy laws, which required their children, wives, and
relatives to denounce them to all clergy and laymen, were to be
suspended. Should the guilty, however, allow this day of grace
to pass, these laws were to be again fully enforced, and then it
would be only for the pope to absolve them from their terrible sin.
§ 186. VARIOUS ORDERS AND ASSOCIATIONS.
The order of the Jesuits restored in A.D. 1814 by Pius VII.
impregnated all other orders with its spirit, gained commanding
influence over Pius IX., made the bishops its agents, and turned the
whole Catholic church into a Jesuit institution. An immense number
of societies arose aiming at the accomplishment of home mission work,
inspired by the Jesuit spirit and carrying out unquestioningly the
ultramontane ideas of their leaders. Also zeal for foreign missions
on old Jesuit lines revived, and the enthusiasm for martyrdom was due
mainly to the same cause.
§ 186.1. =The Society of Jesus and Related Orders.=--After the
suppression of their order by Clement XIV. the Jesuits found
refuge mainly among the =Redemptorists= (§ 165, 2), whose
headquarters were at Vienna, from which they spread through
Austria and Bavaria, finding entrance also into Switzerland,
France, Belgium, and Holland, and after 1848 into Catholic
Prussia, as well as into Hesse and Nassau. The =Congregation
of the Sacred Heart= was founded by ex-Jesuits in Belgium
in A.D. 1794, and soon spread in Austria and Bavaria.--The
=restored Jesuit order= was met with a storm of opposition from
the liberals. The July revolution of A.D. 1830 drove the Jesuits
from France, and when they sought to re-establish themselves,
Gregory XVI., under pressure of the government, insisted that
their general should abolish the French institutions in A.D. 1845.
An important branch of the order had settled in Catholic
Switzerland, but the unfavourable issue of the Separated Cantons’
War of 1847 drove its members out of that refuge. The revolution
of 1848 threatened the order with extinction, but the papal
restoration of A.D. 1850 re-introduced it into most Catholic
countries. Since then the sons of Loyola have renewed their
youth like the eagle. They have forced their way into all lands,
even in those on both sides of the ocean that had by legislative
enactments been closed against them, spreading ultramontane views
among Catholics, converting Protestants, and disseminating their
principles in schools and colleges. Even Pius IX., under whose
auspices Aug. Theiner had been allowed, in A.D. 1853, in his
“History of the Pontificate of Clement XIV.” to bring against
them the heavy artillery drawn from “the secret archives of the
Vatican,” again handed over to them the management of public
instruction, and surrendered himself even more and more to their
influence, so that at last he saw only by their eyes, heard only
with their ears, and resolved only according to their will.[544]
The founding of the Italian kingdom under the Prince of Sardinia
in A.D. 1860 led to their expulsion from all Italy, with the
exception of Venice and the remnants of the Papal States. When,
in A.D. 1866, Venice also became an Italian province, they
migrated thence into the Tyrol and other Austrian provinces,
where they enjoyed the blessings of the concordat (§ 198, 2).
Spain, too, on the expulsion of Queen Isabella in A.D. 1868, and
even Mexico and several of the States of Central and Southern
America, drove out the disciples of Loyola. On the other hand,
they made brilliant progress in Germany, especially in Rhenish
Hesse and the Catholic provinces of Prussia. But under the
new German empire the Reichstag, in A.D. 1872, passed a law
suppressing the Jesuits and all similar orders throughout the
empire (§ 197, 4). They were also formally expelled from France
in A.D. 1880 (§ 203, 6). Still, however, in A.D. 1881 the order
numbered 11,000 members in five provinces, and according to
Bismarck’s calculation in A.D. 1872 their property amounted to
280 million thalers. In A.D. 1853 John Beckx of Belgium was made
general. He retired in A.D. 1884 at the age of ninety, Anderlady,
a Swiss, having been appointed in A.D. 1883 his colleague and
successor.--The hope which was at first widely entertained
that Leo XIII. would emancipate himself from the domination of
the order seems more and more to be proved a vain delusion. In
July, 1886, he issued, on the occasion of a new edition of the
institutions of the order, a letter to Anderlady, in which he,
in the most extravagant manner, speaks of the order as having
performed the most signal services “to the church and society,”
and confirms anew everything that his predecessors had said and
done in its favour, while expressly and formally he recalls anew
anything that any of them had said and done against it.
§ 186.2. =Other Orders and Congregations.=--After the storms of
the revolution religious orders rapidly recovered lost ground.
France decreed, on November 2nd, 1789, the abolition of all
orders, and cloisters and in 1802, under Napoleon’s auspices,
they were also suppressed in the German empire and the friendly
princes indemnified with their goods. Yet on grounds of utility
Napoleon restored the Lazarists, as well as the Sisters of Mercy,
whose scattered remnants he collected in A.D. 1807 in Paris into
a general chapter, under the presidency of the empress-mother.
But new cloisters in great numbers were erected specially in
Belgium and France (in opposition to the law of 1789, which was
unrepealed), in Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Rhenish Hesse, etc.,
as also in England and America. In 1849 there were in Prussia
fifty monastic institutes; in 1872 there were 967. In Cologne one
in every 215, in Aachen one in every 110, in Münster one in every
sixty-one, in Paderborn one in every thirty-three, was a Catholic
priest or member of an order. In Bavaria, between 1831 and 1873
the number of cloisters rose from 43 to 628, all, with the
exception of some old Benedictine monasteries, inspired and
dominated by the Jesuits. Even the Dominicans, originally such
determined opponents, are now pervaded by the Jesuit spirit. The
restoration of the =Trappist order= (§ 156, 8) deserves special
mention. On their expulsion from La Trappe in A.D. 1791 the
brothers found an asylum in the Canton Freiburg, and when driven
thence by the French invasion of A.D. 1798, Paul I. obtained from
the czar permission for them to settle in White Russia, Poland,
and Lithuania. But expelled from these regions again in A.D. 1800
they wandered through Europe and America, till after Napoleon’s
defeat they purchased back the monastery of La Trappe, and made
it the centre of a group of new settlements throughout France
and beyond it.--Besides regular orders there were also numerous
=congregations= or religious societies with communal life
according to a definite but not perpetually binding rule, and
without the obligation of seclusion, as well as =brotherhoods=
and =sisterhoods= without any such rule, which after the
restoration of A.D. 1814 in France and after A.D. 1848 in Germany,
were formed for the purposes of prayer, charity, education,
and such like. From France many of these spread into the Rhine
Provinces and Westphalia.--In Spain and Portugal (§ 205, 1, 5)
all orders were repeatedly abolished, subsequently also in
Sardinia and even in all Italy (§ 204, 1, 2), and also in several
Romish American states (§ 209, 1, 2), as also in Prussia and
Hesse (§ 197, 8, 15). Finally the third French Republic has
enforced existing laws against all orders and congregations not
authorized by the State (§ 203, 6).--On the 700th anniversary of
the birth of St. Francis, in September, 1882, Leo XIII. issued an
encyclical declaring the institute of the Franciscan Tertiaries
(§ 98, 11) alone capable of saving human society from all the
political and social dangers of the present and future, which had
some success at least in Italy.
Of what inhuman barbarity the superiors of cloisters are still
capable is shown _instar omnium_ in the horrible treatment of the
nun =Barbara Ubryk=, who, avowedly on account of a breach of her
vow of chastity, was confined since A.D. 1848 in the cloister of
the Carmelite nuns at Cracow in a dark, narrow cell beside the
sewer of the convent, without fire, bed, chair, or table. It was
only in A.D. 1869, in consequence of an anonymous communication
to the law officers, that she was freed from her prison in a
semi-animal condition, quite naked, starved, and covered with
filth, and consigned to an asylum. The populace of Cracow,
infuriated at such conduct, could be restrained from demolishing
all the cloisters only by the aid of the military.
§ 186.3. =The Pius Verein.=--A society under the name of the Pius
Verein was started at Mainz in October, 1848, to further Catholic
interests, advocating the church’s independence of the State,
the right of the clergy to direct education, etc. At the annual
meetings its leading members boasted in grossly exaggerated terms
of what had been accomplished and recklessly prophesied of what
would yet be achieved. At the twenty-eighth general assembly
at Bonn in A.D. 1881, with an attendance of 1,100, the same
confident tone was maintained. Windhorst reminded the Prussian
government of the purchase of the Sibylline books, and declared
that each case of breaking off negotiations raised the price
of the peace. Not a tittle of the ultramontane claims would be
surrendered. The watchword is the complete restoration of the
_status quo ante_. Baron von Loë, president of the Canisius
Verein, concluded his triumphant speech with the summons to
raise the membership of the union from 80,000 to 800,000, yea
to 8,000,000; then would the time be near when Germany should
become again a Catholic land and the church again the leader of
the people. At the assembly at Düsseldorf in A.D. 1883, Windhorst
declared, amid the enthusiastic applause of all present, that
after the absolute abrogation of the May laws the centre would
not rest till education was again committed unreservedly to the
church. In the assembly at Münster in A.D. 1885, he extolled
the pope (notwithstanding all confiscation and imprisoning for
the time being) as the governor and lord of the whole world.
The thirty-third assembly at Breslau in A.D. 1886, with special
emphasis, demanded the recall of all orders, including that of
the Jesuits.
§ 186.4. =The various German unions= gradually fell under
ultramontane influences. The Borromeo Society circulated Catholic
books inculcating ultramontane views in politics and religion.
The Boniface Union, founded by Martin, Bishop of Paderborn,
aided needy Catholic congregations in Protestant districts. Other
unions were devoted to foreign missions, to work among Germans in
foreign lands, etc. In all the universities such societies were
formed. In Bavaria patriot peasant associations were set on foot,
as a standing army in the conflict of the ultramontane hierarchy
with the new German empire. For the same purpose Bishop Ketteler
founded in A.D. 1871 the Mainz Catholic Union, which in A.D. 1814
had 90,000 members. The Görres Society of 1876 (§ 188, 1) and
the Canisius Society of 1879 (§ 151, 1) were meant to promote
education on ultramontane lines.--In =Italy= such societies
have striven for the restoration of the temporal power and the
supremacy of the church over the State. The unions of =France=
were confederated in A.D. 1870, and this general association
holds an annual congress. The several unions were called
“_œuvres_.” The _Œuvre du Vœu National_, _e.g._, had the task
of restoring penitent France to the “sacred heart of Jesus”
(§ 188, 12); the _Œuvre Pontifical_ made collections of Peter’s
pence and for persecuted priests; the _Œuvre de Jesus-Ouvrier_
had to do with the working classes, etc.
§ 186.5. The knowledge of the omnipotence of =capital= in
these days led to various proposals for turning it to account
in the interests of Catholicism. The Catholic Bank schemes of
the Belgian Langrand-Dumonceau in 1872 and the Munich bank were
pure swindles; and that of Adele Spitzeder 1869-1872, pronounced
“holy” by the clergy and ultramontane press, collapsed with
a deficit of eight and a quarter million florins.--Archbishop
Purcell of Cincinnati invited church members to avoid risk to
bank with him. He invested in land, advanced money for building
churches, cloisters, schools, etc., and in A.D. 1878 found
himself bankrupt with liabilities amounting to five million
dollars. He then offered to resign his office, but the pope
refused and gave him a coadjutor, whereupon the archbishop
retired into a cloister where he died in his eighty-third year.
In the _Union Générale_ of Paris, founded in 1876, which came
to a crash in 1882, the French aristocracy, the higher clergy
and members of orders lost hundreds of millions of francs.
§ 186.6. =The Catholic Missions.=--The impulse given to Catholic
interests after 1848 was seen in the zeal with which missions
in Catholic lands, like the Protestant Methodist revival and
camp-meetings (§ 208, 1), began to be prosecuted. An attempt was
thus made to gather in the masses, who had been estranged from
the church during the storms of the revolution. The Jesuits and
Redemptorists were prominent in this work. In bands of six they
visited stations, staying for three weeks, hearing confessions,
addressing meetings three times a day, and concluding by a
general communion.
§ 186.7. Besides the Propaganda (§ 156, 9), fourteen societies in
Rome, three in Paris, thirty in the whole of Catholic Christendom,
are devoted to the dissemination of Catholicism among =Heretics=
and =Heathens=. The Lyons Association for the spread of the faith,
instituted in 1822, has a revenue of from four to six million
francs. Specially famous is the =Picpus Society=, so called from
the street in Paris where it has its headquarters. Its founder
was the deacon Coudrin, a pupil of the seminary for priests
at Poictiers [Poitiers] broken up in A.D. 1789. Amid the evils
done to the church and the priests by the Revolution, in his
hiding-place he heard a divine call to found a society for the
purpose of training the youth in Catholic principles, educating
priests, and bringing the gospel to the heathen “by atoning for
excesses, crimes, and sins of all kinds by an unceasing day and
night devotion of the most holy sacrament of the altar.” Such a
society he actually founded in A.D. 1805, and Pius VII. confirmed
it in A.D. 1817. The founder died in A.D. 1837, after his
society had spread over all the five continents. Its chief aim
henceforth was missions to the heathen. While the Picpus society,
as well as the other seminaries and monkish orders, sent forth
crowds of missionaries, other societies devoted themselves to
collecting money and engaging in prayer. The most important of
these is the =Lyonese Society= for the spread of the faith of
A.D. 1822. The member’s weekly contribution is 5 cents, the
daily prayer-demand a paternoster, an angel greeting, and a
“St. Francis Xavier, pray for us.” The fanatical journal of the
society had a yearly circulation of almost 250,000 copies, in
ten European languages. The popes had showered upon its members
rich indulgences.--After Protestant missions had received such
a powerful impulse in the nineteenth century, the Catholic
societies were thereby impelled to force in wherever success had
been won and seemed likely to be secured, and wrought with all
conceivable jesuitical arts and devices, for the most part under
the political protection of France. The Catholic missions have
been most zealously and successfully prosecuted in North America,
China, India, Japan, and among the schismatic churches of the
Levant. Since 1837 they have been advanced by aid of the French
navy in the South Seas (§ 184, 7) and in North Africa by the
French occupation of Algiers, and most recently in Madagascar.
In South Africa they have made no progress.--In A.D. 1837-1839
a bloody persecution raged in Tonquin and Cochin China; in
A.D. 1866 Christianity was rooted out of Corea, and over 2,000
Christians slain; two years later persecution was renewed in
Japan. In China, through the oppressions of the French, the
people rose against the Catholics resident there. This movement
reached a climax in the rebellion of 1870 at Tientsin, when all
French officials, missionaries, and sisters of mercy were put to
death, and the French consulate, Catholic churches and mission
houses were levelled to the ground. Also in Further India since
the French war of A.D. 1883 with Tonquin, over which China
claimed rights of suzerainty, the Catholic missions have again
suffered, and many missionaries have been martyred.
§ 187. LIBERAL CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS.
Alongside of the steady growth of ultramontanism from the time of the
restoration of the papacy in A.D. 1814, there arose also a reactionary
movement, partly of a mystical-irenical, evangelical- revival and
liberal-scientific, and partly of a radical-liberalistic, character.
But all the leaders in such movements sooner or later succumbed before
the strictly administered discipline of the hierarchy. The Old Catholic
reaction (§ 190), on the other hand, in spite of various disadvantages,
still maintains a vigorous existence.
§ 187.1. =Mystical-Irenical Tendencies.=--=J. M. Sailer=,
deprived in A.D. 1794 of his office at Dillingen (§ 165, 12), was
appointed in A.D. 1799 professor of moral and pastoral theology
at Ingolstadt, and was transferred to Landshut in A.D. 1800.
There for twenty years his mild and conciliatory as well as
profoundly pious mysticism powerfully influenced crowds of
students from South Germany and Switzerland. Though the pope
refused to confirm his nomination by Maximilian as Bishop of
Augsburg in A.D. 1820, he so far cleared himself of the suspicion
of mysticism, separatism, and crypto-calvinism, that in A.D. 1829
no opposition was made to his appointment as Bishop of Regensburg.
Sailer continued faithful to the Catholic dogmatic, and none
of his numerous writings have been put in the Index. Yet he lay
under suspicion till his death in A.D. 1832, and this seemed to
be justified by the intercourse which he and his disciples had
with Protestant pietists. His likeminded scholar, friend, and
vicar-general, the Suffragan-bishop =Wittmann=, was designated
his successor in Regensburg, but he died before receiving papal
confirmation. Of all his pupils the most distinguished was the
Westphalian Baron von =Diepenbrock=, over whose wild, intractable,
youthful nature Sailer exercised a magic influence. In A.D. 1823
he was ordained priest, became Sailer’s secretary, remaining his
confidential companion till his death, was made vicar-general
to Sailer’s successor in A.D. 1842, and in A.D. 1845 was
raised to the archiepiscopal chair of Breslau, where he joined
the ultramontanes, and entered with all his heart into the
ecclesiastico-political conflicts of the Würzburg episcopal
congress (§ 192, 4). His services were rewarded by a cardinal’s
hat from Pius IX. in A.D. 1850. His pastoral letters, however,
as well as his sermons and private correspondence, show that he
never altogether forgot the teaching of his spiritual father. He
delighted in the study of the mediæval mystics, and was specially
drawn to the writings of Suso.
§ 187.2. =Evangelical-Revival Tendencies.=--A movement much
more evangelical than that of Sailer, having the doctrine of
justification by faith alone as its centre, was originated by
a simple Bavarian priest, =Martin Boos=, and soon embraced sixty
priests in the diocese of Augsburg. The spiritual experiences
of Boos were similar to those of Luther. The words of a poor old
sick woman brought peace to his soul in A.D. 1790, and led him
to the study of Scripture. His preaching among the people and his
conversations with the surrounding clergy produced a widespread
revival. Amid manifold persecutions, removed from one parish
to another, and flying from Bavaria to Austria and thence into
Rhenish Prussia, where he died in A.D. 1825 as priest of Sayn,
he lighted wherever he went the torch of truth. Even after his
conversion Boos believed that he still maintained the Catholic
position, but was at last to his own astonishment convinced of
the contrary through intercourse with Protestant pietists and the
study of Luther’s works. But so long as the mother church would
keep him he wished not to forsake her.[545] So too felt his
like-minded companions =Gossner= and =Lindl=, who were expelled
from Bavaria in A.D. 1829 and settled in St. Petersburg. Lindl,
as Provost of South Russia, went to reside in Odessa, where he
exercised a powerful influence over Catholics and Protestants and
among the higher classes of the Russians. The machinations of the
Roman Catholic and Greek churches caused both Gossner and Lindl
to leave Russia in A.D. 1824. They then joined the evangelical
church, Lindl in Barmen and Gossner in Berlin. Lindl drifted
more and more into mystico-apocalyptic fanaticism; but Gossner,
from A.D. 1829 till his death in A.D. 1858 as pastor of the
Bohemian church in Berlin, proved a sincere evangelical and a
most successful worker.--The Bavarian priest Lutz of Carlshuld,
influenced by Boos, devoted himself to the temporal and spiritual
well-being of his people, preached Christ as the saviour of
sinners, and exhorted to diligent reading of the Bible. In
A.D. 1831, with 600 of his congregation, he joined the Protestant
church; but to avoid separation from his beloved people, he
returned again after ten months, and most of his flock with him,
still retaining his evangelical convictions. He was not, however,
restored to office, and subsequently in A.D. 1857, with three
Catholic priests of the diocese, he attached himself to the
Irvingites, and was with them excommunicated.
§ 187.3. =Liberal-Scientific Tendencies.=--=Von Wessenberg=,
as vicar-general of the diocese of Constance introduced such
drastic administrative reforms as proved most distasteful to
the nuncio of Lucerne and the Romish curia. He also endeavoured
unsuccessfully to restore a German national Catholic church.
In the retirement of his later years he wrote a history of the
church synods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which
gave great offence to the ultramontanes.--=Fr. von Baader= of
Munich expressed himself so strongly against the absolutism
of the papal system that the ultramontane minister, Von Abel,
suspended his lectures on the philosophy of religion in A.D. 1838.
He gave still greater offence by his work on Eastern and Western
Catholicism, in which he preferred the former to the latter.[546]
The talented =Hirscher= of Freiburg more interested in what is
Christian than what is Roman Catholic, could not be won over
to yield party service to the ultramontanes. They persecuted
unrelentingly =Leop. Schmid=, whose theosophical speculation
had done so much to restore the prestige of theology at Giessen,
and had utterly discredited their pretensions. When his enemies
successfully opposed his consecration as Bishop of Mainz
in A.D. 1849, he resigned his professorship and joined the
philosophical faculty. Goaded on by the venomous attacks of his
opponents he advanced to a more extreme position, and finally
declared “that he was compelled to renounce the specifically
Roman Catholic church so long as she refused to acknowledge the
true worth of the gospel.”
§ 187.4. =Radical-Liberalistic Tendencies.=--The brothers
=Theiner= of Breslau wrote in A.D. 1828 against the celibacy
of the clergy; but subsequently John attached himself to the
German-Catholics, and in A.D. 1833 Augustine returned to his
allegiance to Rome (§ 191, 7).--During the July Revolution in
Paris, the priest Lamennais, formerly a zealous supporter of
absolutism, became the enthusiastic apostle of liberalism. His
journal _L’Avenir_, A.D. 1830-1832, was the organ of the party,
and his _Paroles d’un Croyant_, A.D. 1834, denounced by the
pope as unutterably wicked, made an unprecedented sensation. The
endeavour, however, to unite elements thoroughly incongruous led
to the gradual breaking up of the school, and Lamennais himself
approximated more and more to the principles of modern socialism.
He died in A.D. 1854. One of his most talented associates on
the staff of the _Avenir_ was the celebrated pulpit orator
=Lacordaire=, A.D. 1802-1861. Upon Gregory’s denunciation of
the journal in A.D. 1832 Lacordaire submitted to Rome, entered
the Dominican order in A.D. 1840, and wrote a life of Dominic
in which he eulogised the Inquisition; but his eloquence still
attracted crowds to _Notre Dame_. Ultimately he fell completely
under the influence of the Jesuits.
§ 187.5. =Attempts at Reform in Church Government.=--In A.D. 1861
=Liverani=, pope’s chaplain and apostolic notary, exposed the
scandalous mismanagement of Antonelli, the corruption of the
sacred college, the demoralization of the Roman clergy, and the
ambitious schemes of the Jesuits, recommended the restoration
of the holy Roman empire, not indeed to the Germans, but to
the Italians: the pope should confer on the king of Italy by
divine authority the title and privileges of Roman emperor, who,
on his part, should undertake as papal mandatory the political
administration of the States of the Church. But in A.D. 1873 he
sought and obtained papal forgiveness for his errors. The Jesuit
=Passaglia= expressed enthusiastic approval of the movements of
Victor Emanuel and of Cavour’s ideal of a “free church in a free
state.” He was expelled from his order, his book was put into
the Index, but the Italian Government appointed him professor of
moral philosophy in Turin. At last he retracted all that he had
said and written. In the preface to his popular exposition of the
gospels of 1874, the Jesuit father =Curci= urged the advisability
of a reconciliation between the Holy See and the Italian
government, and expressed his conviction that the Church States
would never be restored. That year he addressed the pope in
similar terms, and refusing to retract, was expelled his order in
A.D. 1877. Leo XIII. by friendly measures sought to move him to
recant, but without success. The condemnation of his books led
to their wider circulation. In A.D. 1883 he charged the Holy See
with the guilt of the unholy schism between church and state; but
in the following year he retracted whatever in his writings the
pope regarded as opposed to the faith, morals, and discipline of
the Catholic church.
§ 187.6. =Attempts to Found National Catholic Churches.=--After
the July Revolution of A.D. 1830 the Abbé =Chatel= of Paris
had himself consecrated bishop of a new sect by a new-templar
dignitary (§ 210, 1) and became primate of the =French Catholic
Church=, whose creed recognised only the law of nature and viewed
Christ as a mere man. After various congregations had been formed,
it was suppressed by the police in A.D. 1842. The Abbé =Helsen=
of Brussels made a much more earnest endeavour to lead the church
of his fatherland from the antichrist to the true Christ. His
=Apostolic Catholic Church= was dissolved in A.D. 1857 and its
remnants joined the Protestants. The founding of the =German
Catholic Church= in A.D. 1844 promised to be more enduring. In
August of that year, Arnoldi, Bishop of Treves, exhibited the
holy coat preserved there, and attracted one and a half millions
of pilgrims to Treves (§ 188, 2). A suspended priest, =Ronge=, in
a letter to the bishop denounced the worship of relics, seeking
to pose as the Luther of the nineteenth century. =Czerski= of
Posen had in August, 1844, seceded from the Catholic church, and
in October founded the “Christian Catholic Apostolic Church,”
whose creed embodied the negations without the positive beliefs
of the Protestant confessions, maintaining in other respects
the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. Ronge meanwhile
formed congregations in all parts of Germany, excepting Bavaria
and Austria. A General Assembly held at Leipzig in March, 1845,
brought to light the deplorable religious nihilism of the leaders
of the party. Czerski, who refused to abandon the doctrine of
Christ’s divinity, withdrew from the conference, but Ronge held
a triumphal procession through Germany. His hollowness, however,
became so apparent that his adherents grew ashamed of their
enthusiasm for the new reformer. His congregations began to break
up; many withdrew, several of the leaders threw off the mask
of religion and adopted the _rôle_ of political revolutionists.
After the settlement that followed the disturbances of A.D. 1848
the remnants of this party disappeared.[547]
§ 187.7. The inferior clergy of Italy, after the political
emancipation of Naples from the Bourbon domination in A.D. 1860,
longed for deliverance from clerical tyranny, and founded in
A.D. 1862 a society with the object of establishing a =national
Italian church= independent of the Romish curia. Four Neapolitan
churches were put at the disposal of the society by the minister
Ricasoli, but in 1865, an agreement having been come to between
the curia and the government, the bishops were recalled and the
churches restored. Thousands, to save themselves from starvation,
gave in their submission, but a small party still remained
faithful. Encouraged by the events of 1870 (§§ 135, 3; 189, 3),
they were able in 1875 to draw up a “dogmatic statement” for
the “Church of Italy independent of the Roman hierarchy,” which
indeed besides the Holy Scriptures admitted the authority of
the universal church as infallible custodian and interpreter
of revealed truth, but accepted only the first seven œcumenical
councils as binding. In the same year Bishop Turano of Girgenti
excommunicated five priests of the Silician town Grotta as
opponents of the syllabus and the dogma of infallibility. The
whole clergy of the town, numbering twenty-five, then renounced
their obedience to the bishop, and with the approval of the
inhabitants declared themselves in favour of the “statement.”
North of Rome this movement made little progress; but in 1875
three villages of the Mantuan diocese claimed the ancient
privilege of choosing their own priest, and the bishop and
other authorities were obliged to yield. The Neapolitan movement,
however, as a whole seems to be losing itself in the sand.
§ 187.8. =The Frenchman, Charles Loyson=, known by his Carmelite
monkish name of _Père Hyacinthe_, was protected from the Jesuits
by Archbishop Darboy when he inveighed against the corruptions
of the church, and even Pius IX. on his visit to Rome in 1868
treated him with favour. The general of his order having imposed
silence on him, he publicly announced his secession from the
order and appeared as a “preacher of the gospel,” claiming
from a future General Council a sweeping reform of the church,
protesting against the falsifying of the gospel of the Son of God
by the Jesuits and the papal syllabus. He was then excommunicated.
In A.D. 1871 he joined the German Old Catholics (§ 190, 1);
and though he gave offence to them by his marriage, this did
not prevent the Old Catholics of Geneva from choosing him as
their pastor. But after ten months, because “he sought not the
overthrow but the reform of the Catholic church, and reprobated
the despotism of the mob as well as that of the clergy, the
infallibility of the state as well as that of the pope,” he
withdrew and returned to Paris, where he endeavoured to establish
a French National Church free of Rome and the Pope. The clerical
minister Broglie, however, compelled him to restrict himself to
moral-religious lectures. In February, 1879, he built a chapel
in which he preaches on Sundays and celebrates mass in the French
language. He sought alliance with the Swiss Christian Catholics,
whose bishop, Herzog, heartily reciprocated his wishes, and with
the Anglican church, which gave a friendly response. But that
this “seed corn” of a “Catholic Gallican Church” will ever grow
into a fully developed plant was from the very outset rendered
more than doubtful by the peculiar nature of the sower, as well
as of the seed and the soil.
§ 188. CATHOLIC ULTRAMONTANISM.
The restoration of the Jesuit order led, during the long pontificate
of Pius IX., to the revival and hitherto unapproached prosperity of
ultramontanism, especially in France, whose bishops cast the Gallican
Liberties overboard (§§ 156, 3; 203, 1), and in Germany, where with
strange infatuation even Protestant princes gave it all manner of
encouragement. Even the lower clergy were trained from their youth
in hierarchical ideas, and under the despotic rule of their bishops,
and a reign of terror carried on by spies and secret courts, were
constrained to continue the profession of the strictest absolutism.
§ 188.1. =The Ultramontane Propaganda.=--In =France=
ultramontanism revived with the restoration. Its first and ablest
prophet was Count =de Maistre=, A.D. 1754-1821, long Sardinian
ambassador at St. Petersburg. He wrote against the modern
views of the relations of church and state, supporting the
infallibility, absolutism, and inviolability of the pope. He
was supported by Bonald, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamennais,
Lacordaire, and Montalembert. Only Bonald maintained this
attitude. Between him and Chateaubriand a dispute arose over
the freedom of the press; Lamennais and Lacordaire began to
blend political radicalism with their ultramontanism; Lamartine
involved himself in the February revolution of 1848 as the
apostle of humanity; and Montalembert took up a half-way position.
In 1840 Louis =Veuillot= started the _Univers Religieux_ in place
of the _Avenir_, in which, till his death in 1883, he vindicated
the extremest ultramontanism.--In =Germany= ultramontane views
were disseminated by romancing historians and poets mostly
converts from Protestantism. =Görres=, professor of history in
Munich, represented the Reformation as a second fall, and set
forth the legends of ascetics in his “History of Mysticism” as
sound history. The German bishops set themselves to train the
clergy in hierarchical views, and by a rule of terror prevented
any departure from that theory. The ultramontanising of the
masses was carried on by missions, and by the establishment
of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. In the beginning of A.D. 1860
there were only thirteen ultramontane journals with very
few subscribers, while in January, 1875, there were three
hundred. The most important was _Germania_, founded at Berlin in
1871.--The _Civiltà Cattolica_ of Rome was always revised before
publication by Pius IX., and under Leo XIII. a similar position
is held by the _Moniteur de Rome_, while the _Osservatore Romano_
and the _Voce della verità_ have also an official character.
§ 188.2. =Miracles.=--Prince =Hohenlohe= went through many parts
of Germany, Austria, and Hungary, performing miraculous cures;
but his day of favour soon passed, and he settled down as a
writer of ascetical works.--Pilgrimages to wonder-working shrines
were encouraged by reports of cures wrought on the grand-niece
of the Bishop of Cologne (§ 193, 1), cured of knee-joint
disease before the holy coat of Treves (§ 187, 6). Subjected to
examination, the pretended seamless coat was found to be a bit
of the gray woollen wrapping of a costly silk Byzantine garment
1½ feet broad and 1 foot long.
§ 188.3. =Stigmatizations.=--In many cases these marks were
found to have been fraudulently made, but in other cases it was
questionable whether we had not here a pathological problem,
or whether hysteria created a desire to deceive or pre-disposed
the subject to being duped under clerical influence. =Anna Cath.
Emmerich=, a nun of Dülmen in Westphalia, in 1812, professed
to have on her body bloody wound-marks of the Saviour. For five
years down to her death in 1824, the poet Brentano sat at her
feet, venerating her as a saint and listening to her ecstatic
revelations on the death and sufferings of the Redeemer and his
mother. Overberg, Sailer, and Von Stolberg were also satisfied of
the genuineness of her revelations and of the miraculous marking
of her body. The physician Von Drussel examined the wound-prints
and certified them as miraculous; but Bodde, professor of
chemistry at Münster, pronounced the blood marks spots produced
by dragon’s-blood. Competent physicians declared her a hysterical
woman incapable of distinguishing between dream and reality,
truth and lies, honesty and deceit. Others famous in the same
line were Maria von Wörl, Dominica Lazzari, and =Crescentia
Stinklutsch=; also Dorothea Visser of Holland and Juliana
Weiskircher from near Vienna.
§ 188.4. Of a very doubtful kind were the miraculous marks on
=Louise Lateau=, daughter of a Belgian miner. On 24th April, 1868,
it is said she was marked with the print of the Saviour’s wounds
on hands, feet, side, brow, and shoulders. In July, A.D. 1868,
she fell into an ecstasy, from which she could be awakened
only by her bishop or one authorized by him. Trustworthy
physicians, after a careful medical examination, reported
that she laboured under a disease which they proposed to call
“stigmatic neuropathy.” Chemical analysis proved the presence of
food which had been regularly taken, probably in a somnambulistic
trance. In the summer of 1875 her sister for a time put an end
to the affair by refusing the clergy entrance into the house,
and she was then obliged to eat, drink, and sleep like other
Christians, so that the Friday bloody marks disappeared. But
now, say ultramontane journals, Louise became dangerously ill,
and clergy were called in to her help, and the marks were again
visible. Her patron Bishop Dumont of Tournay being deposed by
the pope in 1879, she took part against his successor, and was
threatened with excommunication (§ 200, 7). She was now deserted
by the ultramontanes and Belgian clergy, and treated as a poor,
weak-minded invalid. She died neglected and in obscurity in
A.D. 1883.
§ 188.5. Of pseudo-stigmatizations there has been no lack even
in the most recent times. In 1845 =Caroline Beller=, a girl of
fifteen years, in Westphalia, was examined by a skilful physician.
On Thursday he laid a linen cloth over the wound-prints, and sure
enough on Friday it was marked with blood stains; but also strips
of paper laid under, without her knowledge, were pricked with
needles. The delinquent now confessed her deceit, which she had
been tempted to perpetrate from reading the works of Francis of
Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Emmerich. Theresa Städele in 1849,
Rosa Tamisier in 1851, and Angela Hupe in 1863, were convicted of
fraudulently pretending to have stigmata. The latter was proved
to have feigned deafness and lameness for a whole year, to have
diligently read the writings of Emmerich in 1861, to have shown
the physician fresh bleeding wounds on hands, feet, and side, and
to have affirmed that she had neither eaten nor drunk for a year.
Four sisters of mercy were sent to attend her, and they soon
discovered the fraud. In 1876 the father confessor of Ernestine
Hauser was prosecuted for damages, having injured the girl’s
health by the severe treatment to which she was subjected in
order to induce ecstasy and obtain an opportunity for impressing
the stigmata. =Sabina Schäfer= of Baden, in her eighteenth year,
had for two years borne the reputation of a wonder-working saint,
who every Friday showed the five wound prints, and in ecstasy
told who were in hell and who in purgatory. She professed
to live without food, though often she betook herself to the
kitchen to pray alone, and even carried food with her to give
to her guardian angel to carry to the distant poor. When under
surveillance in 1880 she sought to bribe her guardian to bring
her meat and drink, fragments of food were found among her
clothes, and also a flask with blood and an instrument for
puncturing the skin. She confessed her guilt, and was sentenced
by the criminal court of Baden to ten weeks’ imprisonment. The
ultramontane _Pfälzer Bote_ complained that so-called liberals
should ruthlessly encroach on the rights of the church and the
family.
§ 188.6. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in France.=--The
most celebrated of these manifestations occurred in 1858 at
=Lourdes=, where in a grotto the Virgin repeatedly appeared to a
peasant girl of fourteen years, almost imbecile, named Bernadette
Soubirous, saying “_Je suis l’Immaculée Conception_,” and urging
the erection of a chapel on that spot. A miracle-working well
sprang up there. Since 1872 the pilgrimages under sanction of the
hierarchy have been on a scale of unexampled magnificence, and
the cures in number and significance far excelling anything heard
of before.--At the village of =La Salette= in the department of
Isère, in 1846 two poor children, a boy of fifteen and a girl of
eleven years, saw a fair white-dressed lady sitting on a stone
and shedding tears, and, lo, from the spot where her foot rested
sprang up a well, at which innumerable cures have been wrought.
The epidemic of visions of the Virgin reached a climax in Alsace
Lorraine in 1872. In a wood near the village of =Gereuth= crowds
of women and children gathered, professing to see visions of
the mother of God; but when the police appeared to protect the
forest, the manifestation craze spread over the whole land, and
at thirty-five stations almost daily visions were enjoyed. The
epidemic reached its crisis in Mary’s month, May, 1874, and
continued with intervals down to the end of the year. In some
cases deceit was proved; but generally it seemed to be the
result of a diseased imagination and self-deception fostered
by speculative purveyors and the ultramontane press and clergy.
§ 188.7. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in Germany.=--In
the summer of 1876 three girls of eight years old in the village
of =Marpingen=, in the department of Treves, saw by a well a
white-robed lady, with the halo over her head and with a child
in her arms, who made herself known as the immaculate Virgin,
and called for the erection of a chapel. A voice from heaven
said, This is my beloved Son, etc. There were also processions
and choirs of angels, etc. The devil, too, appeared and ordered
them to fall down and worship him. Thousands crowded from far
and near, and the water of the fountain wrought miraculous cures.
The surrounding clergy made a profitable business of sending
the water to America, and the _Germania_ of Berlin unweariedly
sounded forth its praises. Before the court of justice the
children confessed the fraud, and were sentenced to the house of
correction; and though on technical grounds this judgment was set
aside, the supreme court of appeal in 1879 pronounced the whole
thing a scandalous and disgraceful swindle.--Weichsel, priest
of =Dittrichswald= in Ermland, who gained great reputation as an
exorcist, made a pilgrimage to Marpingen in the summer of 1877,
and on his return gave such an account of what he had seen to
his communicants’ class that first one and then another saw the
mother of God at a maple tree, which also became a favourite
resort for pilgrims.
§ 188.8. =Canonizations.=--When in 1825 Leo XII. canonized a
Spanish monk Julianus, who among other miracles had made roasted
birds fly away off the spit, the Roman wits remarked that they
would prefer a saint who would put birds on the spit for them.
St. Liguori was canonized by Gregory XVI. in 1839. Pius IX.
canonized fifty-two and beatified twenty-six of the martyrs
of Japan. The Franciscans had sought from Urban VIII. in 1627
canonization for six missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts
martyred in 1596 (§ 150, 2), but were refused because they would
not pay 52,000 Roman thalers for the privilege. Pius IX. granted
this, and included three Jesuit missionaries. At Pentecost, 1862,
the celebration took place, amid acclamations, firing of cannons,
and ringing of bells. In 1868 the infamous president of the
heretic tribunal Arbúes [Arbires] (§ 117, 2) received the
distinction. The number of _doctores ecclesiæ_ was increased by
Pius IX. by the addition of Hilary of Poitiers in 1851, Liguori
in 1870, and Francis de Sales in 1877. And Leo XIII. canonized
four new saints, the most distinguished of whom was the French
mendicant, Bened. Jos. Labre, who after having been dismissed
by Carthusians, Cistercians, and Trappists as unteachable, made
a pilgrimage to Rome, where he stayed fifteen years in abject
poverty, and died in 1783 in his thirty-sixth year.
§ 188.9. =Discoveries of Relics.=--The Roman catacombs continued
still to supply the demand for relics of the saints for newly
erected altars. Toward the end of A.D. 1870 the Archbishop of
St. Iago de Compostella (§ 88, 4) made excavations in the crypt
of his cathedral, in consequence of an old tradition that the
bones of the Apostle James the Elder, the supposed founder of the
church, had been deposited there, and he succeeded in discovering
a stone coffin with remains of a skeleton. The report of this
made to Pius IX. gave occasion to the appointment of a commission
of seven cardinals, who, after years of minute examination of
all confirmatory historical, archæological, anatomical, and
local questions, submitted their report to Leo XIII., whereupon,
in November, 1884, he issued an “Apostolic Brief,” by which
he (without publishing the report) declared the unmistakable
genuineness of the discovered bones as _ex constanti et
pervulgato apud omnes sermone jam ab Apostolorum ætate memoriæ
prodita_, pronounced the relics generally _perennes fontes_,
from which the _dona cælestia_ flow forth like brooks among the
Christian nations, and calls attention to the fact that it is
just in this century, in which the power of darkness has risen
up in conflict against the Lord and his Christ, these and also
many other relics “_divinitus_” have been discovered, as _e.g._
the bones of St. Francis, of St. Clara, of Bishop Ambrose, of the
martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, of the Apostles Philip and James
the Less, the genuineness of which had been avouched by his
predecessors Pius VII. and Pius IX.
§ 188.10. =The blood of St. Januarius=, a martyr of the age
of Diocletian, liquefies thrice a year for eight days, and on
occasion of earthquakes and such-like calamities in Naples, the
blood is brought in two vials by a matron near to the head of the
saint; if it liquefies the sign is favourable to the Neapolitans,
if it remains thick unfavourable; but in either case it forms
a powerful means of agitation in the hands of the clergy.
Unbelievers venture to suggest that this _precioso sangue del
taumaturgo S. Gennaro_ is not blood, but a mixture that becomes
liquid by the warmth of the hand and the heat of the air in the
crowded room, some sort of cetaceous product coloured red.
§ 188.11. About 100 clergy, twenty colour-bearers, 150 musicians,
10,000 leapers, 3,000 beggars, and 2,000 singers take part
in the =Leaping Procession at Echternach= in Luxemburg, which
is celebrated yearly on Whit-Tuesday. It was spoken of in the
sixteenth century as an ancient custom. After an “exciting”
sermon, the procession is formed in rows of from four to six
persons bound together by pocket-handkerchiefs held in their
hands; Wilibrord’s dance is played, and all jump in time to the
music, five steps forward and two backward, or two backward and
three forward, varied by three or four leaps to the right and
then as many to the left. Thus continually leaping the procession
goes through the streets of the city to the parish church, up
the sixty-two steps of the church stair and along the church
aisles to the tomb of Wilibrord (§ 78, 3). The dance is kept up
incessantly for two hours. The performers do so generally because
of a vow, or as penance for some fault, or to secure the saint’s
intercession for the cure of epilepsy and convulsive fits,
common in that region, mainly no doubt owing to such senseless
proceedings. The origin of the custom is obscure. Tradition
relates that soon after the death of Wilibrord a disease appeared
among the cattle which jumped incessantly in the stalls, till
the people went leaping in procession to Wilibrord’s tomb, and
the plague was stayed! But the custom is probably a Christian
adaptation of an old spring festival dance of pagan times
(§ 75, 3; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 14).
§ 188.12. =The Devotion of the Sacred Heart.=--Even after the
suppression of the Jesuit order the devotion of the Sacred Heart
(§ 156, 6) was zealously practised by the ex-Jesuits and their
friends. On the restoration of the order numerous brotherhoods
and sisterhoods, especially in France, devoted themselves to this
exercise, and the _revanche_ movement of A.D. 1870 used this as
one of its most powerful instruments. Crowds of pilgrims flocked
to Paray le Monial, and there, kneeling before the cradle of
Bethlehem, they besought the sacred heart of Jesus to save France
and Rome, and the refrain of all the pilgrim songs, “_Dieu, de
la clemence ... sauvez Rome et la France au nom du sacré-cœur_,”
became the spiritual Marseillaise of France returning to the
Catholic fold. From the money collected over the whole land a
beautiful church _du Sacré-Cœur_ has been erected on Montmartre
in Paris. The gratifying news was then brought from Rome that
the holy father had resolved on July 16th, 1875, the twenty-ninth
anniversary of his ascending the papal throne and the two
hundredth anniversary of the great occurrences at Paray le
Monial, that the whole world should give adoration to the sacred
heart. In France this day was fixed upon for the laying of the
foundation stone of the church at Montmartre, and the Archbishop
of Cologne, Paul Melchers, commanded Catholic Germany to show
greater zeal in the adoration of the sacred heart, “ordained by
divine revelation” two hundred years before.
§ 188.13. =Ultramontane Amulets.=--The Carmelites adopted a brown,
the Trinitarians a white, the Theatines a blue, the Servites
a black, and the Lazarites a red, scapular, assured by divine
visions that the wearing of them was a means of salvation. A
tract, entitled “_Gnaden und Ablässe des fünffachen Skapuliers_,”
published by episcopal authority at Münster in 1872, declared
that any layman who wore the five scapulars would participate
in all the graces and indulgences belonging to them severally.
The most useful of all was the Carmelite scapular, impenetrable
by bullets, impervious to daggers, rendering falls harmless,
stilling stormy seas, quenching fires, healing the possessed, the
sick, the wounded, etc.--The Benedictines had no scapulars, but
they had Benedict-medals, from which they drew a rich revenue.
This amulet first made its appearance in the Bavarian Abbey of
Metten. The tract, entitled, “_St. Benediktusbüchlein oder die
Medaille d. h. Benediktus_,” published at Münster in 1876, tells
how it cures sicknesses, relieves toothache, stops bleeding
at the nose, heals burns, overcomes the craving for drink,
protects from attacks of evil spirits, restrains skittish horses,
cures sick cattle, clears vineyards of blight, secures the
conversion of heretics and godless persons, etc.--In A.D. 1878
there appeared at Mainz, with approval of the bishop, a book in
its third edition, entitled, “_Der Seraphische Gürtel und dessen
wunderbare Reichtümer nach d. Franz. d. päpstl. Hausprälaten
Abbé v. Segur_,” according to which Sixtus V. in 1585 founded
the Archbrotherhood of the Girdle of St. Francis. It also affirms
that whoever wears this girdle day and night and repeats the six
enjoined paternosters, participates in all the indulgences of
the holy land and of all the basilicas and sanctuaries of Rome
and Assisi, and is entitled to liberate 1,000 souls a day from
purgatory.--Great miracles of healing and preservation from all
injuries to body and soul, property and goods, are attributed by
the Jesuits to the “_holy water of St. Ignatius_” (§ 149, 11),
the sale of which in Belgium, France, and Switzerland has proved
to them a lucrative business. But the mother of God has herself
favoured them with a still more powerful miracle-working water in
the fountains of Lourdes and Marpingen.
§ 188.14. We give in conclusion a specimen of =Ultramontane
pulpit eloquence=. A Bavarian priest, Kinzelmann, said in a
sermon in 1872: “We priests stand as far above the emperor, kings,
and princes as the heaven is above the earth.... Angels and
archangels stand beneath us, for we can in God’s stead forgive
sins. We occupy a position superior to that of the mother of God,
who only once bare Christ, whereas we create and beget him every
day. Yea, in a sense, we stand above God, who must always and
everywhere serve us, and at the consecration must descend from
heaven upon the mass,” etc.--An apotheosis of the priesthood
worthy of the Middle Ages.
§ 189. THE VATICAN COUNCIL.[548]
Immediately after Pius IX. had, at the centenary of St. Peter in 1867,
given a hint that a general council might be summoned at an early date,
the _Civiltà Cattolica_ of Rome made distinct statements to the effect
that the most prominent questions for discussion would be the confirming
of the syllabus (§ 185, 2), the sanctioning of the doctrine of papal
absolutism in the spirit of the bull _Unam sanctam_ of Boniface VIII.
(§ 110, 1), and the proclamation of papal infallibility. The _Civiltà_
had already taught that “when the pope thinks, it is God who thinks in
him.” When the council opened on the day of the immaculate conception,
December 8th, 1869, all conceivable devices of skilful diplomacy
were used by the Jesuit Camarilla, and friendly cajoling and violent
threatening on the part of the pope, in order to silence or win
over, and, in case this could not be done, to stifle and suppress
the opposition which even already was not inconsiderable in point
of numbers, but far more important in point of moral, theological,
and hierarchical influence. The result aimed at was secured. Of the
150 original opponents only fifty dared maintain their opposition to
the end, and even they cowardly shrank from a decisive conflict, and
wrote from their respective dioceses, as their Catholic faith obliged
them to do, notifying their most complete acquiescence.
§ 189.1. =Preliminary History of the Council.=--When Pius IX. on
the centenary of St. Peter made known to the assembled bishops
his intention to summon a general council, they expressed their
conviction that by the blessing of the immaculate Virgin it would
be a powerful means of securing unity, peace, and holiness. The
formal summons was issued on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul
of the following year, June 29th, 1868. The end for which the
council was convened was stated generally as follows: The saving
of the church and civil society from all evils threatening them,
the thwarting of the endeavours of all who seek the overthrow
of church and state, the uprooting of all modern errors and the
downfall of all godless enemies of the apostolical chair. In
Germany the Catholic General Assembly which met at Bamberg soon
after this declared that from this day a new epoch in the world’s
history would begin, for “either the salvation of the world would
result from this council, or the world is beyond the reach of
help.” This hopefulness prevailed throughout the whole Catholic
world. Fostered by the utterances of the _Civiltà Cattolica_, the
excitement grew from day to day. The learned bishop _in partibus_
Maret, dean of the theological faculty of Paris, now came
forward as an eloquent exponent of the Gallican liberties;
even the hitherto so strict Catholic, the Count Montalembert,
to the astonishment of everybody, assumed a bold and independent
attitude in regard to the council, and energetically protested
in a publication of March 7th, 1870, six days before his death,
against the intrigues of the Jesuits and the infallibility dogma
which it was proposed to authorize. But the greatest excitement
was occasioned by the work “_Der Papst und das Konzil_,”
published in Leipzig, 1869, under the pseudonym _Janus_, of which
the real authors were Döllinger, Friedrich, and Huber of Munich,
who brought up the heavy artillery of the most comprehensive
historical scholarship against the evident intentions of the
curia. The German bishops gathered at the tomb of St. Boniface
at Fulda in September, 1869, and issued from thence a general
pastoral letter to their disturbed flocks, declaring that it
was impossible that the council should decide otherwise than
in accordance with holy Scripture and the apostolic traditions
and what was already written upon the hearts of all believing
Catholics. Also the papal secretary, Card. Antonelli, quieted
the anxiety of the ambassadors of foreign powers at Rome by the
assurance that the Holy See had in view neither the confirming of
the syllabus nor the affirming of the dogma of infallibility. In
vain did the Bavarian premier, Prince Hohenlohe, insist that the
heads of other governments should combine in taking measures to
prevent any encroachment of the council upon the rights of the
state. The great powers resolved to maintain simply a watchful
attitude, and only too late addressed earnest expostulations and
threats.
§ 189.2. =The Organization of the Council.=--Of 1,044 prelates
entitled to take part in the council 767 made their appearance,
of whom 276 were Italians and 119 bishops _in partibus_, all
pliable satellites of the curia, as were also the greater number
of the missionary bishops, who, with their assistants in the
propaganda, were supported at the cost of the holy father. The
sixty-two bishops of the Papal States were doubly subject to the
pope, and of the eighty Spanish and South American bishops it was
affirmed in Rome that they would be ready at the bidding of the
holy father to define the Trinity as consisting of four persons.
Forty Italian cardinals and thirty generals of orders were
equally dependable. The Romance races were represented by no less
than 600, the German by no more than fourteen. For the first time
since general councils were held was the laity entirely excluded
from all influence in the proceedings, even the ambassadors of
Catholic and tolerant powers. The order of business drawn up
by the pope was arranged in all its details so as to cripple
the opposition. The right of all fathers of the council to make
proposals was indeed conceded, but a committee chosen by the pope
decided as to their admissibility. From the special commissions,
whose presidents were nominated by the pope, the drafts of
decrees were issued to the general congregation, where the
president could at will interrupt any speaker and require him
to retract. Instead of the unanimity required by the canon law
in matters of faith, a simple majority of votes was declared
sufficient. A formal protest of the minority against these and
similar unconstitutional proposals was left quite unheeded. The
proceedings were indeed taken down by shorthand reporters, but
not even members of council were allowed to see these reports.
The conclusions of the general congregation were sent back for
final revision to the special commissions, and when at last
brought up again in the public sessions, they were not discussed,
but simply voted on with a _placet_ or a _non-placet_. The right
transept of St. Peter’s was the meeting place of the council,
the acoustics of which were as bad as possible, but the pope
refused every request for more suitable accommodation. Besides,
the various members spoke with diverse accents, and many had but
a defective knowledge of Latin. Although absolute secresy was
enjoined on pain of falling into mortal sin, under the excitement
of the day so much trickled out and was in certain Romish circles
so carefully gathered and sifted, that a tolerably complete
insight was reached into the inner movements of the council. From
such sources the author of the “_Römischen Briefe_,” supposed
to have been Lord Acton, a friend and scholar of Döllinger, drew
the material for his account, which, carried by trusty messengers
beyond the bounds of the Papal State, reached Munich, and
there, after careful revision by Döllinger and his friends, were
published in the _Augsburg Allg. Zeitung_. Also Prof. Friedrich
of Munich, who had accompanied Card. Hohenlohe to Rome as
theological adviser, collected what he could learn in episcopal
and theological circles in a journal which was published at a
later date.
§ 189.3. =The Proceedings of the Council.=--The first public
session of December 8th, 1869, was occupied with opening
ceremonies; the second, of January 6th, with the subscription
of the confession of faith on the part of each member. The first
preliminary was the _schema_ of the faith, the second that on
church discipline. Then followed the _schema_ on the church and
the primacy of the pope in three articles: the legal position
of the church in reference to the state, the absolute supremacy
of the pope over the whole church on the principles of the
Pseudo-Isidore (§ 87, 2) and the assumptions of Gregory VII.,
Innocent III. and Boniface VIII., reproduced in the principal
propositions of the syllabus (§ 184, 2), and the outlines of a
catechism to be enforced as a manual for the instruction of youth
throughout the church. On March 6th there was added by way of
supplement to the _schema_ of the church a fourth article in the
form of a sketch of the decree of infallibility. Soon after the
opening of the council an agitation in this direction had been
started. An address to the pope emanating from the Jesuit college
petitioning for this was speedily signed by 400 subscribers.
A counter address with 137 signatures besought the pope not to
make any such proposal. At the head of the agitation in favour of
infallibility stood archbishops Manning of Westminster, Deschamps
of Mechlin, Spalding of Baltimore, and bishops Fessler of
St. Pölten, secretary of the council, Senestrey of Regensburg,
the “overthrower of thrones” (§ 197, 1), Martin of Paderborn, and,
as bishop _in partibus_, Mermillod of Geneva. Among the leaders
of the opposition the most prominent were cardinals Rauscher of
Vienna, Prince Schwarzenberg of Prague and Matthieu of Besançon,
Prince-bishop Förster of Breslau, archbishops Scherr of Munich,
Melchers of Cologne, Darboy of Paris, and Kenrick of St. Louis,
the bishops Ketteler of Mainz, Dinkel of Augsburg, Hefele
of Rottenburg, Strossmayer of Sirmium, Dupanloup of Orleans,
etc.--Owing to the discussions on the =Schema of the Faith= there
occurred on March 22nd a stormy scene, which in its wild uproar
reminds one of the disgraceful _Robber Synod of Ephesus_
(§ 52, 4). When Bishop Strossmayer objected to the statement
made in the preamble, that the indifferentism, pantheism, atheism,
and materialism prevailing in these days are chargeable upon
Protestantism, as contrary to truth, the furious fathers of the
majority amid shouts and roars, shaking of their fists, rushed
upon the platform, and the president was obliged to adjourn the
sitting. At the next session the objectionable statement was
withdrawn and the entire _schema_ of the faith was unanimously
adopted at the third public sitting of the council on April 24th.
=The Schema of the Church= came up for a consideration on
May 10th. The discussion turned first and mainly on the fourth
article about the infallibility of the pope. Its biblical
foundation was sought in Luke xxii. 32, its traditional basis
chiefly in the well-known passage of Irenæus (§ 34, 8) and on
its supposed endorsement by the general councils of Lyons and
Florence (§ 67, 4, 6), but the main stress was laid on its
necessarily following from the position of the pope as the
representative of Christ. The opposition party had from the
outset their position weakened by the conduct of many of their
adherents who, partly to avoid giving excessive annoyance to the
pope, and partly to leave a door open for their retreat, did not
contest the correctness of the doctrine in question, but all the
more decidedly urged the inopportuneness of its formal definition
as threatening the church with a schism and provocative of
dangerous conflicts with the civil power. The longer the decision
was deferred by passionate debates, the more determinedly did
the pope throw the whole weight of his influence into the scales.
By bewitching kindliness he won some, by sharp, angry words he
terrified others. He denounced opponents as sectarian enemies of
the church and the apostolic chair, and styled them ignoramuses,
slaves of princes, and cowards. He trusted the aid of the blessed
Virgin to ward off threatened division. To the question whether
he himself regarded the formulating of the dogma as opportune,
he answered: “No, but as necessary.” Urged by the Jesuits, he
confidently declared that it was notorious that the whole church
at all times taught the absolute infallibility of the pope;
and on another occasion he silenced a modest doubt as to a
sure tradition with the dictatorial words, _La tradizione
sono io_, adding the assurance, “As Abbáte Mastai I believe in
infallibility, as pope I have experienced it.” On July 13th the
final vote was called for in the general congregation. There were
371 who voted simply _placet_, sixty-one _placet juxta modum_,
_i.e._ with certain modifications, and eighty-eight _non placet_.
After a last hopeless attempt by a deputation to obtain the
pope’s consent to a milder formulating of the decree, Bishop
Ketteler vainly entreating on his knees, to save the unity and
peace of the church by some small concession, the fifty hitherto
steadfast members of the minority returned home, after emitting
a written declaration that they after as well as before must
continue to adhere to their negative vote, but from reverence and
respect for the person of the pope they declined to give effect
to it at a public session. On the following day, July 18th,
the fourth and last public sitting was held: 547 fathers voted
_placet_ and only two, Riccio of Cajazzo and Fitzgerald of Little
Rock, _non placet_. A violent storm had broken out during the
session and amid thunder and lightning, Pius IX., like “a second
Moses” (Exod. xix. 16), proclaimed in the _Pastor æternus_ the
absolute plenipotence and infallibility of himself and all his
predecessors and successors.--It was on the evening preceding
the proclamation of this new dogma that Napoleon III. proclaimed
war with Prussia, in consequence of which the pope lost the
last remnants of temporal sovereignty and every chance of its
restoration. Under the influence of the fever-fraught July sun,
the council now dwindled down to 150 members, and, after the
whole glory of the papal kingdom had gone down (§ 185, 3), on
October 20th, its sittings were suspended until better times.
The _schema_ of discipline and the preliminary sketch of a
catechism were not concluded; a subsequently introduced _schema_
on apostolic missions was left in the same state; and a petition
equally pressed by the Jesuits for the defining of the corporeal
ascension of Mary had not even reached the initial stage.
§ 189.4. =Acceptance of the Decrees of the Council.=--All
protests which during the council the minority had made
against the order of business determined on and against all
irregularities resulting from it, because not persisted in,
were regarded as invalid. Equally devoid of legal force was
their final written protest which they left behind, in which
they expressly declined to exercise their right of voting. And
the assent which they ultimately without exception gave to the
objective standpoint of the law and the faith of the Catholic
church, was not in the least necessary in order to make it appear
that the decisions of the council, drawn up with such unanimity
as had scarcely ever before been seen, were equally valid with
any of the decrees of the older councils. Thus the bishops
of the minority, if they did not wish to occasion a split of
unexampled dimensions and incalculable complications, quarrels,
and contentions in the church that boasted of a unity which had
hitherto been its strength and stay, could do nothing else than
yield at the twelfth hour to the pope’s demand that “_sacrificio
dell’intelletto_” which at the eleventh hour they had refused.
The German bishops, who had proved most steadfast at the council,
were now in the greatest haste to make their submission. Even
by the end of August, at Fulda, they joined their infallibilist
neighbours in addressing a pastoral letter, in which they most
solemnly declared that all true Catholics, as they valued their
soul’s salvation, must unconditionally accept the conclusions of
the council unanimously arrived at which are in no way prejudiced
by the “differences of opinion” elicited during the discussion.
At the same time they demanded of theological professors,
teachers of religion, and clergymen throughout the dioceses a
formal acceptance of these decrees as the inviolable standpoint
of their doctrinal teaching; they also took measures against
those who refused to yield, and excommunicated them. Even
Bishop Hefele, who did not sign this pastoral and was at
first determined not to yield nor swerve, at last gave way.
In his pastoral proclaiming the new dogma he gave it a quite
inadmissible interpretation: As the infallibility of the church,
so also that of the pope as a teacher, extends only to the
revealed doctrines of faith and morals, and even with reference
to them only the definitions proper and not the introductory
statements, grounds, and applications, belong to the infallible
department. But subsequently he cast himself unreservedly into
the arms of his colleagues assembled once again at Fulda in
September, 1872, where he also found his like-minded friend,
Bishop Haneberg of Spires. Yet he forbore demanding an express
assent from his former colleagues at Tübingen and his clergy, and
thus saved Württemberg from a threatened schism. Strossmayer held
out longest, but even he at last threw down his weapons. But many
of the most cultured and scholarly of the theological professors,
disgusted with the course events were taking, withdrew from the
field and continued silently to hold their own opinions. The
inferior clergy, for the most part trained by ultramontane bigots,
and held in the iron grasp of strict hierarchical discipline,
passed all bounds in their extravagant glorification of the new
dogma. And while among the liberal circles of the Catholic laity
it was laughed at and ridiculed, the bigoted nobles and the
masses who had long been used to the incensed atmosphere of an
enthusiastic adoration of the pope, bowed the knee in stupid
devotion to the papal god. But the brave heart of one noble
German lady broke with sorrow over the indignity done by the
Vatican decree and the characterlessness of the German bishops to
the church of which to her latest breath she remained in spirit a
devoted member. Amalie von Lasaulx, sister of the Munich scholar
Ernst von Lasaulx (§ 174, 4), from 1849 superioress of the
Sisters of Mercy in St. John’s Hospital at Bonn, lay beyond hope
of recovery on a sick-bed to which she had been brought by her
self-sacrificing and faithful discharge of the duties of her
calling, when there came to her from the lady superior of the
order at Nancy the peremptory demand to give in her adhesion to
the infallibility dogma. As she persistently and courageously
withstood all entreaties and threats, all adjurations and cruelly
tormenting importunings, she was deposed from office and driven
from the scene of her labours, and when, soon thereafter, in 1872,
she died, the habit of her order was stripped from her body. The
Old Catholics of Bonn, whose proceedings she had not countenanced,
charged themselves with securing for her a Christian burial.--No
state as such has recognised the council. Austria answered it by
abolishing the concordat and forbidding the proclamation of the
decrees. Bavaria and Saxony refused their _placet_; Hesse, Baden,
and Württemberg declared that the conclusions of the council
had not binding authority in law. Prussia indeed held to its
principle of not interfering in the internal affairs of the
Catholic church, but, partly for itself, partly as the leading
power of the new German empire, passed a series of laws in
order to resume its too readily abandoned rights of sovereignty
over the affairs of the Catholic church, and to insure itself
against further encroachments of ultramontanism upon the domain
of civil life (§ 197). The Romance states, on the other hand,
pre-eminently France, were prevented by internal troubles and
conflicts from taking any very decisive steps.
§ 190. THE OLD CATHOLICS.
A most promising reaction, mainly in Germany, led by men highly
respected and eminent for their learning, set in against the Vatican
Council and its decrees, in the so-called Old Catholic movement of the
liberal circles of the Catholic people, which went the length, even
in 1873, of establishing an independent and well organized episcopal
church. Since then, indeed, it has fallen far short of the all too
sanguine hopes and expectations at first entertained; but still
within narrower limits it continues steadily to spread and to rear for
itself a solid structure, while carefully, even nervously, shrinking
from anything revolutionary. More in touch with the demands of the
_Zeitgeist_ in its reformatory concessions, yet holding firmly in every
particular to the positive doctrines of orthodoxy, the Old Catholic
movement has made progress in Switzerland, while in other Catholic
countries its success has been relatively small.
§ 190.1. =Formation and Development of the Old Catholic Church
in the German Empire.=--In the beginning of August, 1870, the
hitherto exemplary Catholic professor Michelis of Braunsberg
(§ 191, 6), issued a public charge against Pius IX. as a heretic
and devourer of the church, and by the end of August several
distinguished theologians (Döllinger and Friedrich of Munich,
Reinkens, Weber, and Baltzer of Breslau, Knoodt of Bonn, and
the canonist Von Schulte of Prague) joined him at Nuremberg
in making a public declaration that the Vatican Council could
not be regarded as œcumenical, nor its new dogma as a Catholic
doctrine. This statement was subscribed to by forty-four Catholic
professors of the university of Munich with the rector at their
head, but without the theologians. Similarly, too, several
Catholic teachers in Breslau, Freiburg, Würzburg, and Bonn
protested, and still more energetically a gathering of Catholic
laymen at Königswinter. Besides the Breslau professors already
named, the Bonn professors Reusch, Langen, Hilgers, and Knoodt
refused to subscribe the council decrees at the call of their
bishop; whereas the Munich professors, with the exception of
Döllinger and Friedrich, yielded. A repeated injunction of his
archbishop in January, 1871, drew from Döllinger the statement
that he as a Christian, a theologian, a historian, and a citizen,
was obliged to reject the infallibility dogma, while at the
same time he was prepared before an assembly of bishops and
theologians to prove that it was opposed to Scripture, the
Fathers, tradition, and history. He was now literally overwhelmed
with complimentary addresses from Vienna, Würzburg, Munich, and
almost all other cities of Bavaria; and an address to government
on the dangers to the state threatened by the Vatican decrees
that lay at the Munich Museum, was quickly filled with 12,000
signatures. On April 14th, Döllinger was excommunicated, and
Professor Huber sent an exceedingly sharp reply to the archbishop.
After several preliminary meetings, the =first congress= of the
Old Catholics was held in Munich in September, 1871, attended
by 500 deputies from all parts of Germany. A programme was
unanimously adopted which, with protestation of firm adherence
to the faith, worship, and constitution of the ancient Catholic
church, maintained the invalidity of the Vatican decrees and the
excommunication occasioned by them, and, besides recognising the
Old Catholic church of Utrecht (§ 165, 8), expressed a hope of
reunion with the Greek church, as well as of a gradual progress
towards an understanding with the Protestant church. But when at
the second session the president, Dr. von Schulte, proposed the
setting up of independent public services with regular pastors,
and the establishing as soon as possible of an episcopal
government of their own, Döllinger contested the proposal as
a forsaking of the safe path of lawful opposition, taking the
baneful course of the Protestant Reformation, and tending toward
the formation of a sect. As, however, the proposal was carried
by an overwhelming majority, he declined to take further part
in their public assemblies and retired more into the background,
without otherwise opposing the prevailing current or detaching
himself from it. The second congress was held at Cologne in
the autumn of 1872. From the episcopal churches of England and
America, from the orthodox church of Russia, from France, Italy,
and Spain, were sent deputies and hearty friendly greetings.
Archbishop Loos of Utrecht, by the part which he took in the
congress, cemented more closely the union with the Old Catholics
of Holland. Even the German “_Protestantenverein_” was not
unrepresented. A committee chosen for the purpose drew up an
outline of a synodal and congregational order, which provides
for the election of bishops at an annual meeting at Pentecost
of a synod, of which all the clergy are members and to which the
congregations send deputies, one for every 200 members. Alongside
of the bishop stands a permanent synodal board of five priests
and seven laymen. The bishop and synodal board have the right of
vetoing doubtful decrees of synod. The choice of pastors lies
with the congregation; its confirmation belongs to the bishop.
In July, 1873, a bishop was elected in the Pantaleon church
of Cologne by an assembly of delegates, embracing twenty-two
priests and fifty-five laymen. The choice fell upon Professor
Reinkens, who, as meanwhile Bishop Loos of Utrecht had died, was
consecrated on August 11th, at Rotterdam, by Bishop Heykamp of
Deventer, and selected Bonn as his episcopal residence.
§ 190.2. The first synod of the German Old Catholics, consisting
of thirty clerical and fifty-nine lay members, met at Bonn in
May, 1874. It was agreed to continue the practice of auricular
confession, but without any pressure being put upon the
conscience or its observance being insisted upon at set times.
Similarly the moral value of fasting was recognised, but all
compulsory abstinence, and all distinctions of food as allowable
and unallowable, were abolished. The second synod, with reference
to the marriage law, took the position that civil regular
marriages ought also to have the blessing of the church; only
in the case of marriages with non-Christians and divorced parties
should this be refused. The third synod introduced a German
ritual in which the exorcism was omitted, while the Latin mass
was provisionally retained. The fourth synod allowed to such
congregations as might wish it the use of the vernacular in
several parts of the service of the mass. At all these synods the
lay members had persistently repeated the proposal to abolish the
obligatory celibacy of the clergy. But now the agitation,
especially on the part of the Baden representatives, had become
so keen, that at the fifth synod of 1878, in spite of the
warning read by Bishop Reinkens from the Dutch Old Catholics,
who threatened to withdraw from the communion, the proposal
was carried by seventy-five votes against twenty-two. The Bonn
professors, Langen and Menzel, foreseeing this result, had
absented themselves from the synod, Reusch immediately withdrew
and resigned his office as episcopal vicar-general, Friedrich
protested in the name of the Bavarian Old Catholics. Reinkens,
too, had vigorously opposed the movement; whereas Knoodt,
Michelis, and Von Schulte had favoured it. The synod of 1883
resolved to dispense the supper in both kinds to members of the
Anglican church residing in Germany, but among their own members
to follow meanwhile the usual practice of _communio sub una_.
The number of Old Catholic congregations in the German empire
is now 107, with 38,507 adherents and 56 priests.--Even at their
first congress the German Old Catholics, in opposition to the
unpatriotic and law-defying attitude of German ultramontanism,
had insisted upon love of country and obedience to the laws
of the state as an absolute Christian duty. Their newly chosen
bishop Reinkens, too, gave expression to this sentiment in
his first pastoral letter, and had the oath of allegiance
administered him by the Prussian, Baden, and Hessian governments.
But Bavaria felt obliged, on account of the terms of its
concordat, to refuse. At first the Old Catholics had advanced the
claim to be the only true representatives of the Catholic church
as it had existed before July 18th, 1870. At the Cologne congress
they let this assumption drop, and restricted their claims upon
the state to equal recognition with “the New Catholics,” equal
endowments for their bishop, and a fair proportion of the
churches and their revenues. Prussia responded with a yearly
episcopal grant of 16,000 thalers; Baden added about 6,000. It
proved more difficult to enforce their claim to church property.
A law was passed in Baden in 1874, which not only guaranteed
to the Old Catholic clergy their present benefices and incomes,
freed them from the jurisdiction of the Romish hierarchy, and
gave them permission to found independent congregations, but also
granted them a mutual right of possessing and using churches and
church furniture as well as sharing in church property according
to the numerical proportion of the two parties in the district.
A similar measure was introduced into the Prussian parliament,
and obtained the royal assent in July, 1875. Since then, however,
the interest of the government in the Old Catholic movement has
visibly cooled. In Baden, in 1886 the endowment had risen to
24,000 marks.
§ 190.3. =The Old Catholics in other Lands.=--=In Switzerland=
the Old, or rather, as it has there been called, the Christian,
Catholic movement, had its origin in 1871 in the diocese
of Basel-Solothurn, whence it soon spread through the whole
country. The national synod held at Olten in 1876 introduced
the vernacular into the church services, abolished the compulsory
celibacy of the clergy and obligatory confession of communicants,
and elected Professor Herzog bishop, Reinkens giving him
episcopal consecration. In 1879 the number of Christian Catholics
in German Switzerland amounted to about 70,000, with seventy-two
pastors. But since then, in consequence of the submission of the
Roman Catholics to the church laws condemned by Pius IX. they
have lost the majority in no fewer than thirty-nine out of the
forty-three congregations of Canton Bern, and therewith the
privileges attached. A proposal made in the grand council of
the canton in 1883 for the suppression of the Christian Catholic
theological faculty in the University of Bern, which has existed
since 1874, was rejected by one hundred and fifty votes against
thirteen.--=In Austria=, too, strong opposition was shown
to the infallibility dogma. At Vienna the first Old Catholic
congregation was formed in February, 1872, under the priest Anton;
and soon after others were established in Bohemia and Upper
Austria. But it was not till October, 1877, that they obtained
civil recognition on the ground that their doctrine is that
which the Catholic church professed before 1870. In June, 1880,
they held their first legally sanctioned synod. The provisional
synodical and congregational order was now definitely adopted,
and the use of the vernacular in the church services, the
abolition of compulsory fasting, confession, and celibacy,
as well as of surplice fees, and the abandoning of all but the
high festivals, were announced on the following Sunday. The
bitter hatred shown by the Czechs and the ultramontane clergy
to everything German has given to the Old Catholic movement for
some years past a new impulse and decided advantage.--=In France=
the Abbé Michaud of Paris lashed the characterlessness of the
episcopate and was excommunicated, and the Abbés Mouls and Junqua
of Bordeaux were ordered by the police to give up wearing the
clerical dress. Junqua, refusing to obey this order, was accused
by Cardinal Donnet, Bishop of Bordeaux, before the civil court,
and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. Not till 1879
did the ex-Carmelite Loyson of Paris lay the foundation of a
Catholic Gallican church, affiliated with the Swiss Old Catholics
(§ 187, 8).--=In Italy= since 1862, independently of the German
movement, yet on essentially the same grounds, a national Italian
church was started with very promising beginnings, which were
not, however, realized (§ 187, 7). Rare excitement was caused
throughout Italy by the procedure of Count Campello, canon of
St. Peter’s in Rome, who in 1881 publicly proclaimed his creed
in the Methodist Episcopal chapel, there renouncing the papacy,
and in a published manifesto addressed to the cathedral chapter
justified this step and made severe charges against the papal
curia; but soon after, in a letter to Loyson, he declared that
he, remaining faithful to the true Catholic church, did not
contemplate joining any Protestant sect severed from Catholic
unity, and in a communication to the Old Catholic Rieks of
Heidelberg professed to be in all points at one with the German
Old Catholics. Accordingly he sought to form in Rome a Catholic
reform party, whose interests he advocated in the journal _Il
Labaro_. The pope’s domestic chaplain, Monsignor Savarese, has
adopted a similar attitude. In December, 1883, he was received
by the pastor of the American Episcopal church at Rome into the
Old Catholic church on subscribing the Nicene Creed. In 1886 they
were joined by another domestic chaplain of the pope, Monsignor
Renier, formerly an intimate friend of Pius IX., who publicly
separated himself from the papal church, and with them took his
place at the head of a Catholic “_Congregation of St. Paul_” in
Rome.--Also the Episcopal _Iglesia Española_ in Spain (§ 205, 4),
and the Mexican _Iglesia de Jesus_ (§ 209, 1), must be regarded
as essentially of similar tendencies to the Old Catholics.
§ 191. CATHOLIC THEOLOGY, ESPECIALLY IN GERMANY.
Catholic theology in Germany, influenced by the scientific spirit
prevailing in Protestantism, received a considerable impulse. From
latitudinarian Josephinism it gradually rose toward a strictly
ecclesiastical attitude. Most important were its contributions in
the department of dogmatic and speculative theology. Besides and after
the schools of Hermes, Baader, and Günther, condemned by the papal
chair, appeared a whole series of speculative dogmatists who kept their
speculations within the limits of the church confession. Also in the
domain of church history, Catholic theology, after the epoch-making
productions of Möhler and Döllinger, has aided in reaching important
results, which, however, owing to the “tendency” character of
their researches, demand careful sifting. Least important are their
contributions to biblical criticism and exegesis. In general, however,
the theological _docents_ at the German universities give a scientific
character to their researches and lectures in respect of form and also
of matter, so far as the Tridentine limits will allow. But the more the
Jesuits obtained influence in Germany, the more was that scholasticism,
which repudiated the German university theology and opposed it with
perfidious suspicions and denunciations, naturalized, especially in the
episcopal seminaries, while it was recommended by Rome as the official
theology. The attempt, however, at the Munich Congress of Scholars
in 1863 to come to an understanding between the two tendencies failed,
owing to the contrariety of their principles and the opposition of
the Jesuits.--Outside of Germany, French theology, especially in the
department of history, manifested a praiseworthy activity. In Spain
theology has never outgrown the period of the Middle Ages. In Italy,
on the other hand, the study of Christian antiquities flourished,
stimulated by recent discoveries of treasures in catacombs, museums,
archives, and libraries.
§ 191.1. =Hermes and his School.=--The Bonn professor, =George
Hermes=, influenced in youth by the critical philosophy, passed
the Catholic dogma of Trent, assured it would stand the test,
through the fire of doubt and the scrutiny of reason, because
only what survives such examination could be scientifically
vindicated. He died in A.D. 1831, and left a school named after
him, mainly in Treves, Bonn, and Breslau. Gregory XVI. in 1835
condemned his writings, and the new Archbishop of Cologne,
Droste-Vischering, forbad students at Bonn attending the lectures
of Hermesians. These made every effort to secure the recall of
the papal censure. Braun and Elvenich went to Rome, but their
declaration that Hermes had not taught what the pope condemned
profited them as little as a similar statement had the Jansenists.
There now arose on both sides a bitter controversy, which
received new fuel from the Prusso-Cologne ecclesiastical strife
(§ 193, 1). Finally in 1844 professors Braun and Achterfeld of
Bonn were deprived of office by the coadjutor-Archbishop Geissel,
and the Prussian government acquiesced. The professors of the
Treves seminary and Baltzer of Breslau, the latter influenced
by Günther’s theology, retracted.--A year before Hermes’
condemnation the same pope had condemned the opposite theory of
Abbé =Bautain= of Strassburg, that the Christian dogmas cannot
be proved but only believed, and that therefore all use of reason
in the appropriation of the truths of salvation is excluded.
Bautain, as an obedient son of the church, immediately retracted,
“_laudabiliter se subjecit_.”
§ 191.2. =Baader and his School.=--Catholic theology for a long
time paid no regard to the development of German philosophy.
Only after Schelling, whose philosophy had many points of contact
with the Catholic doctrine, a general interest in such studies
was awakened as forming a speculative basis for Catholicism. To
the theosophy of Schelling based on that of the Görlitz shoemaker
(§ 160, 2), =Francis von Baader=, professor of speculative
dogmatics at Munich, though not a professional theologian, but
a physician and a mineralogist, attached himself. In his later
years he went over completely to ultramontanism. His scholar
=Franz Hoffmann= of Würzburg has given an exposition of Baader’s
speculative system. At Giessen this system was represented by
Leop. Schmid (§ 187, 3). All the Catholic adherents of this
school are distinguished by their friendly attitude toward
Protestantism.
§ 191.3. =Günther and his School.=--A theology of at least
equal speculative power and of more decidedly Catholic contents
than that of Baader, was set forth by the secular priest =Anton
Günther= of Vienna, a profound and original thinker of combative
humour, sprightly wit, and a roughness of expression sometimes
verging upon the burlesque. He recognised the necessity of going
up in philosophical and theological speculation to Descartes,
who held by the scholastic dualism of God and the creature, the
Absolute and the finite, spirit and nature, while all philosophy,
according to him, had been ever plunging deeper into pantheistic
monism. Thence he sought to solve the two problems of Christian
speculation, creation and incarnation, and undertook a war of
extermination against “all monism and semimonism, idealistic and
realistic pantheism, disguised and avowed semipantheism,” among
Catholics and Protestants. His first great work, “_Vorschule zur
Spekul. Theologie_,” published in 1828, treating of the theory
of creation and the theory of incarnation, was followed by a
long series of similar works. His most eminent scholars were
=Pabst=, doctor of medicine in Vienna, who gave clear expositions
of his master’s dark and aphoristic sayings, and =Veith=, who
popularized his teachings in sermons and practical treatises.
Some of the Hermesians, such as Baltzer of Breslau, entered the
rank of his scholars. The historico-political papers, however,
charged him with denying the mysteries of Christianity, rejecting
the traditional theology, etc., and Clemens, a _privatdocent_
of philosophy in Bonn, became the mouthpiece of this party. Thus
arose a passionate controversy, which called forth the attention
of Rome. We might have expected Günther to meet the fate of
Hermes twenty years before; but the matter was kept long under
consideration, for strong influence from Vienna was brought
to bear on his behalf. At last in January, 1857, the formal
reprobation of the Güntherian philosophy was announced, and
all his works put in the Index. Günther humbly submitted to the
sentence of the church. So too did =Baltzer=. But being suspected
at Rome, he was asked voluntarily to resign. This Baltzer refused
to do. Then Prince-Bishop Förster called upon the government
to deprive him; and when this failed, he withdrew from him the
_missio canonica_ and a third of his canonical revenues, and in
1870, on his opposing the infallibility dogma, he withheld the
other two-thirds. His salary from the State continued to be paid
in full till his death in A.D. 1871.
§ 191.4. =John Adam Möhler.=--None of all the Catholic
theologians of recent times attained the importance and influence
of Möhler in his short life of forty-two years. Stimulated
to seek higher scientific culture by the study mainly of
Schleiermacher’s works and those of other Protestants, and
putting all his rich endowments at the service of the church,
he won for himself among Catholics a position like that of
Schleiermacher among Protestants. His first treatise of 1825,
on the unity of the church, was followed by his “Athanasius the
Great,” and the work of his life, the “Symbolics” of 1832, in
its ninth edition in 1884, which with the apparatus of Protestant
science combats the Protestant church doctrine and presented
the Catholic doctrine in such an ennobled and sublimated form,
that Rome at first seriously thought of placing it in the Index.
Hitherto Protestants had utterly ignored the productions of
Catholic theology, but to overlook a scientific masterpiece like
this would be a confession of their own weakness. And in fact,
during the whole course of the controversy between the two
churches, no writing from the Catholic camp ever caused such
commotion among the Protestants as this. The ablest Protestant
replies are those of Nitsch [Nitzsch] and Baur. In 1835 Möhler
left Tübingen for Munich; but sickness hindered his scientific
labours, and, in 1838, in the full bloom of manhood, the Catholic
church and Catholic science had to mourn his death. He can
scarcely be said to have formed a school; but by writings,
addresses, and conversation he produced a scientific ferment in
the Catholic theology of Germany, which continued to work until
at last completely displaced by the scholasticism reintroduced
into favour by the Jesuits.
§ 191.5. =John Jos. Ignat. von Döllinger.=--Of all Catholic
theologians in Germany, alongside of and after Möhler, by far the
most famous on either side of the Alps was the church historian
Döllinger, professor at Munich since 1826. His first important
work issued in that same year was on the “Doctrine of the
Eucharist in the First Three Centuries.” His comprehensive
work, “The History of the Christian Church,” of 1833 (4 vols.,
London, 1840), was not carried beyond the second volume; and
his “Text-book of Church History” of 1836, was only carried
down to the Reformation. The tone of his writings was strictly
ecclesiastical, yet without condoning the moral faults of
the popes and hierarchy. Great excitement was produced by his
treatise on “The Reformation,” in which he gathered everything
that could be found unfavourable to the Reformers and their work,
and thus gained the summit of renown as a miracle of erudition
and a master of Catholic orthodoxy. Meanwhile in 1838 he had
taken part in controversies about mixed marriages (§ 193, 1), and
in 1843 over the genuflection question (§ 195, 2), with severely
hierarchical pamphlets. As delegate of the university since 1845
he defended with brilliant eloquence in the Bavarian chamber the
measures of the ultramontane government and the hierarchy, became
in 1847 Provost of St. Cajetan, but was also in the same year
involved in the overthrow of the Abel ministry, and was deprived
of his professorship. In the following year he was one of the
most distinguished of the Catholic section in the Frankfort
parliament, where he fought successfully in the hierarchical
interest for the unconditional freedom and independence of the
church. King Maximilian II. restored him to his professorship
in 1849. From this time his views of confessional matters became
milder and more moderate. He first caused great offence to his
ultramontane admirers at Easter, 1861, when he in a series of
public lectures delivered one on the Papal States then threatened,
in which he declared that the temporal power of the pope, the
abuses of which he had witnessed during a journey to Rome in 1857,
was by no means necessary for the Catholic church, but was rather
hurtful. The papal nuncio, who was present, ostentatiously left
the meeting, and the ultramontanes were beside themselves with
astonishment, horror, and wrath. Döllinger gave some modifying
explanations at the autumn assembly of the Catholic Union at
Munich in 1861. But soon thereafter appeared his work, “The
Church and the Churches” (London, 1862), which gave the lecture
slightly modified as an appendix. The “Fables respecting the
Popes of the Middle Ages” (London, 1871), was as little to the
taste of the ultramontanes. Indeed in these writings, especially
in the first named, the polemic against the Protestant Church
had all its old bitterness; but he is at least more just toward
Luther, whom he characterizes as “the most powerful man of the
people, the most popular character, which Germany ever possessed.”
And while he delivers a glowing panegyric on the person of the
pope, he lashes unrelentingly the misgovernment of the Papal
States. At the Congress of Scholars at Munich he contended for
the freedom of science. Döllinger as president of the congress
sent the pope a telegram which satisfied his holiness. But the
Jesuits looked deeper, and immediately “_il povero Döllinger_”
was loaded by the _Civiltà Cattolica_ with every conceivable
reproach. In A.D. 1868 nominated to the life office of imperial
councillor, he voted with the bishops against the liberal
education scheme of the government. But his battle against
the council and infallibility made the rent incurable, and his
angry archbishop hurled against him the great excommunication.
Then Vienna made him doctor of philosophy, Marburg, Oxford,
and Edinburgh gave him LL.D., and the senate of his university
unanimously elected him rector in 1871. But his tabooed lecture
room became more and more deserted. He took no prominent part
in the organizing of the Old Catholic church (§ 190, 1), but all
the more eagerly did he seek to promote its union negotiations
(§ 175, 6).
§ 191.6. =The Chief Representatives of Systematic
Theology.=--=Klee=, A.D. 1800-1840, of Bonn and Munich,
was a positivist of the old school, and during the Hermesian
controversy a supporter of the theology of the curia. =Hirscher=,
1788-1865, of Freiburg, numbered by the liberals as one of
their ornaments and by the fanatical ultramontanes as a heretic,
did much to promote a conciliatory and moderate Catholicism,
equally free from ultramontane and rationalistic tendencies,
abandoning nothing essential in the Catholic doctrine. =Hilgers=,
the Hermesian, afterwards joined the Old Catholics of Bonn.
=Staudenmaier= and =Sengler= of Freiburg and =Berlage= of Münster
held a distinguished rank as speculative theologians. In the same
department, =Kuhn= and =Drey= of Tübingen, =Ehrlich= of Prague,
=Deutinger= of Dillingen, a disciple of Schelling and Baader,
and as such persecuted, though a pious believing Catholic,
=Oischinger= of Munich, who in despair at the proclamation of the
Vatican decree suddenly stopped his fruitful literary activity,
=Dieringer= of Bonn, who for the same reason not only ceased to
write but also in 1871 resigned his professorship and retired to
a small country pastorate, and finally, =Hettinger= of Würzburg,
best known by his “_Apologie d. Christenthums_.”--While the
above-named, though suspected and opposed by the scholastic party,
strove to preserve intact their ecclesiastical Catholic character,
other representatives of this tendency by their struggles against
scholasticism and then against the Vatican Council, were driven
away from their orthodox position. Thus =Frohschammer= of Munich,
when his treatise on “The Origin of the Soul,” in which he
supported the theory of Generationism in opposition to the
Catholic doctrine of creationism, and other works were placed
in the Index, asked for a revision on the ground that he taught
nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine. He was stripped of all his
clerical functions, and students were prohibited attending his
lectures. He protested, and his rooms were more crowded than
ever. Subsequently, however, repudiated even by the Old Catholics,
he drifted more and more, not only from the church, but even
from belief in revelation. Against Strauss’ last work he wrote
a tract in which he sought to prove that “the old faith is
indeed untenable,” but that also “the new science” cannot take
its place, that a “new faith” must be introduced by going back
to the Christianity of Christ. =Michelis=, a man of wide culture
in the department of natural science and philology, as well as
theology and philosophy, had in his earlier position as professor
in Paderborn, Münster, and Braunsberg, supported by word and pen
a strictly ecclesiastical tendency; but the Vatican Council made
him one of the first and most zealous leaders of the Old Catholic
movement. His most important work is his “Catholic Dogmatics,”
of 1881, in which the Old Catholic conception of Christianity is
represented as the purified higher unity of the Protestant and
Vatican systems of doctrine.
§ 191.7. =The Chief Representatives of Historical Theology.=--The
first place after Möhler and Döllinger belongs to Möhler’s
scholar Hefele, from 1840 professor at Tübingen and from 1869
Bishop of Rottenburg, distinguished by the liberal spirit of his
researches. His treatises on the Honorius controversy made him
one of the most dangerous opponents of the infallibility dogma,
to which, however, he at last submitted (§ 189, 4). His most
important work is the “History of the Councils.” Hase criticised
the second edition of the work, severely but not without
sufficient grounds, by saying that in it “the bishop chokes
the scholar.” =Werner= of Vienna is a prolific writer in the
department of the history of theological literature; while
=Bach= of Munich and the Dominican =Denifle= have written on
the mediæval mystics, the latter also on the universities of
the Middle Ages. =Hergenröther= of Würzburg, by his monograph
on “Photius and the Greek Schism,” written in the interests of
his party, and by his polemic against the anti-Vatican movement,
and specially by his “Handbook of Church History,” rendered such
service to the papacy and the papal church, that Leo XIII. in
1879 made him a cardinal and librarian of the Vatican, with
the task of reorganizing the library.--Among the Old Catholics,
=Friedrich= of Munich, besides his historical account of the
Vatican Council, had written on Wessel, Huss, and the church
history of Germany. =Huber= of Munich, whose “Philosophy of the
Church Fathers” of 1859 was put in the Index, while his much
more liberal work on Erigena of 1861 passed without censure, in
later years wrote an exhaustive account of the Jesuit order and
a critical reply to Strauss’ “Old and New Faith.” =Pichler= of
Munich, by his conscientious research and criticism, drew down
upon him the papal censure, and his book on the “History of the
Division of the Eastern and Western Churches” had the honour
of being placed in the Index. His later studies and writings
estranged him more and more from Romanism, inspired him with the
idea of a national German church, and fostered in him a love for
the _Protestantenverein_ movement; but his unbridled bibliomania
while assistant in the Royal Library of St. Petersburg in 1871,
brought his public career to a sad and shameful end. The Old
Catholic Professor =Langen= of Bonn, wrote a four-volume work
against the Vatican dogma, discussed the “Trinitarian Doctrinal
Differences between the Eastern and Western Churches,” in the
interests of a union with the Greek church, and published an
able monograph on “John of Damascus,” as well as a thorough and
impartial “History of the Roman Church down to Nicholas I.,”
two vols., 1881, 1885.--In Rome the Oratorian =Aug. Theiner=
atoned for the literary errors of his youth (§ 187, 4) by his
zealous vindication of papal privileges. His chief works were the
continuation of the “_Annales Ecclesiastici_” of Baronius, and
the editing of the historical documents of the various Christian
nations. The Jesuits charged him with giving the anti-Vaticanists
aid from the library and sought to influence the pope against
him so as to deprive him of his office of prefect of the Vatican
archives. He was suspended from his duties, and though he
still retained his title and occupied his official residence
in the Vatican, the doors from it into the library were built
up. His edition of the “Acts of the Council of Trent,” which
was commenced, was also prohibited. But he succeeded in making
a transcript at Agram in Croatia, where in 1874 a portion of it,
the official protocol of the secretary of the Council, Massarelli,
was printed by the help of Bishop Strossmayer in an elegant
style but abbreviated, and therefore unsatisfactory. Cardinal
Angelo =Mai=, as principal Vatican librarian, distinguished
himself by his palimpsest studies in old classical as well as
patristic literature. And quite worthy of ranking with either
in carefulness, diligence, and patience was =De Rossi=, who
has laboured in the department of Christian archæology, and
is well known by his great work, “_Roma sotteranea cristiana_,”
published in 1864 ff.--=Xavier Kraus=, when his “Handbook” had
been adversely criticised, hastened to Rome, submitted all his
utterances to the judgment of the pope, and proclaimed on his
return that in the next edition he would explain what had been
misunderstood and withdraw what was objected to. The question
now rises, whether the more recent work of =Xav. Funk= can
escape a similar censure.
Among Catholic writers on canon lay the most notable are
=Walters= of Bonn, =Phillips= of Vienna, =Von Schulte= of Prague
and Bonn, who till the Vatican Council was one of the most zealous
advocates of the strict Catholic tendency, since then openly on
the side of the opposition, a keen supporter, and by word and pen
a vigorous promoter, of the Old Catholic movement, and =Vering=
of Prague, who occupies the ultramontane Vatican standpoint.
§ 191.8. =The Chief Representatives of Exegetical
Theology.=--=Hug= of Freiburg, in his “Introduction,” occupies
the biblical but ecclesiastically latitudinarian attitude of
Jahn. Leaving dogma unattacked and so himself unattacked, =Mövers=
of Breslau, best known by his work on the Phœnicians, a Richard
Simon of his age, developed a subtlety of destructive criticism
of the canon and history of the Old Testament which astonished
even the father of Protestant criticism, De Wette. =Kaulen= of
Bonn wrote an “Introduction to the Old and New Testament,” in
a fairly scientific spirit from the Vatican standpoint; while
=Maier= of Freiburg, wrote an introduction to the New Testament
and commentaries on some New Testament books.--The Old Catholic
=Reusch= of Bonn wrote “Introduction to the Old Testament,” and
“Nature and the Bible” (2 vols., Edin., 1886). =Sepp= of Munich,
silent since 1867, began his literary career with a “Life of
Christ,” a “History of the Apostles,” etc., in the spirit of
the romantic mystical school of Görres. His “Sketch of Church
Reform, beginning with a Revision of the Bible Canon,” caused
considerable excitement. With humble submission to the judgment
of his church, he demanded a correction of the Tridentine decrees
on Scripture in accordance with the results of modern science,
but the only response was the inclusion of his book in the Index.
§ 191.9. =The Chief Representatives of the New
Scholasticism.=--The official and most masterly representative of
this school for the whole Catholic world was the Jesuit =Perrone=,
1794-1876, professor of dogmatics of the _Collegium Romanum_,
the most widely read of the Catholic polemical writers, but not
worthy to tie the shoes of Bellarmin [Bellarmine], Bossuet, and
Möhler. In his “_Prælectiones Theologicæ_,” nine vols., which has
run through thirty-six editions, without knowing a word of German,
he displayed the grossest ignorance along with unparalleled
arrogance in his treatment of Protestant doctrine, history, and
personalities (§ 175, 2). The German Jesuit =Kleutgen= who, under
Pius IX., was the oracle of the Vatican in reference to German
affairs, introduced the new Roman scholasticism by his work “_Die
Theologie der Vorzeit_,” into the German episcopal seminaries,
whose teachers were mostly trained in the _Collegium Germanicum_
at Rome. Alongside of Perrone and Kleutgen, in the domain of
morals, the Jesuit =Gury= holds the first place, reproducing
in his works the whole abomination of probabilism, _reservatio
mentalis_, and the old Jesuit casuistry (§ 149, 10), with the
usual lasciviousness in questions affecting the sexes. Among
theologians of this tendency in German universities we mention
next =Denzinger= of Würzburg, who seeks in his works “to
lead dogmatics back from the aberrations of modern philosophic
speculations into the paths of the old schools.” His zealous
opposition to Güntherism did much to secure its emphatic
condemnation.
§ 191.10. =The Munich Congress of Catholic Scholars, 1863.=--In
order if possible to heal the daily widening cleft between the
scientific university theologians and the scholastic theologians
of the seminaries, and bring about a mutual understanding and
friendly co-operation between all the theological faculties,
Döllinger and his colleague Haneberg summoned a congress
at Munich, which was attended by about a hundred Catholic
scholars, mostly theologians. After high mass, accompanied with
the recitation of the Tridentine creed, the four days’ conference
began with a brilliant presidential address by Döllinger “On the
Past and Present of Catholic Theology.” The liberal views therein
enunciated occasioned violent and animated debates, to which,
however, it was readily admitted as a religious duty that all
scientific discussions and investigations should yield to the
dogmatic claims of the infallible authority of the church, as
thereby the true freedom of science can in no way be prejudiced.
A telegraphic report to the pope drawn up in this spirit by
Döllinger was responded to in a similar manner on the same
day with the apostolic blessing. But after the proceedings
_in extenso_ had become known, a papal brief was issued which
burdened the permission to hold further yearly assemblies with
such conditions as must have made them utterly fruitless. They
were indeed acquiesced in with a bad grace at the second and
last congress at Würzburg in 1864, but the whole scheme was
thus brought to an end.
§ 191.11. =Theological Journals.=--The most severely scientific
journal of this century is the Tübingen _Theol. Quartalschrift_,
which, however, since the Vatican Council has been struggling
to maintain a neutral position between the extremes of the Old
and the New Catholicism. In order if possible to displace it the
Jesuits Wieser and Stenstrup of Innsbruck [Innsbrück] started in
1877 their _Zeitschrift für Kath. Theologie_. The ably conducted
_Theol. Litteraturblatt_, started in 1866 by Prof. Reusch of Bonn,
had to be abandoned in 1878, after raising the standard of Old
Catholicism.
§ 191.12. =The Popes and Theological Science.=--What kind
of theology =Pius IX.= wished to have taught is shown by his
proclaiming St. Liguori (§ 165, 2) and St. Francis de Sales
(§ 157, 1) _doctores ecclesiæ_. =Leo XIII.=, on the other hand,
in 1879 recommended in the encyclical _Æterni patris_, in the
most urgent way, all Catholic schools to make the philosophy
of the angelical Aquinas (§ 103, 6) their foundation, founded
in 1880 an “Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” three out of its
thirty members being Germans, Kleutgen, Stöckl, and Morgott, and
gave 300,000 lire out of Peter’s pence for an edition of Aquinas’
works with the commentaries of “the most eminent expositors,”
setting aside “all those books which, while professing to be
derived from St. Thomas are really drawn from foreign and unholy
sources;” _i.e._, in accordance with the desires of the Jesuits,
omitting the strictly Thomist expositors (§ 149, 13), and giving
currency only to Jesuit interpretations. No wonder that the
Jesuit General Beckx in such circumstances submitted himself
“humbly,” being praised for this by the pope as a saint. But a
much greater, indeed a really great, service to the documentary
examination of the history of the Christian church and state has
been rendered by the same pope, undoubtedly at the instigation of
Cardinal Hergenröther, by the access granted not only to Catholic
but also to Protestant investigators to the exceedingly rich
treasures of the Vatican archives. Though still hedged round with
considerable limitations, the concession seems liberality itself
as compared with the stubborn refusal of Pius IX. to facilitate
the studies of any inquirer. With honest pride the pope could
inscribe on his bust placed in the library: “_Leo XIII. Pont.
Max. historiæ studiis consulens tabularii arcana reclusit a
1880_.”--But what the ends were which he had in view and what
the hopes that he cherished is seen from the rescript of August,
1883, in which he calls upon the cardinals De Luca, Pitra, and
Hergenröther, as prefects of the committee of studies, of the
library and archives, while proclaiming the great benefits which
the papacy has secured to Italy, to do their utmost to overthrow
“the lies uttered by the sects” on the history of the church,
especially in reference to the papacy, for, he adds, “we desire
that at last once more the truth should prevail.” Therefore
archives and library are to be opened to pious and learned
students “for the service of religion and science in order that
the historical untruths of the enemies of the church which have
found entrance even into the schoolbooks should be displaced by
the composition of good writings.” The firstfruits of the zeal
thus stimulated were the “_Monunenta ref. Lutheranæ ex tabulariis
S. Sedis_,” Ratisbon, 1883, published by the assistant keeper of
the archives P. Balan as an extinguisher to the Luther Jubilee of
that year. But this performance came so far short of the wishes
and expectations of the Roman zealots that by their influence the
editor was removed from his official position. The next attempt
of this sort was the edition by Hergenröther of the papal
_Regesta_ down to Leo X.
IV. Relation of Church to the Empire and to the States.
§ 192. THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION.
The Peace of Luneville of 1801 gave the deathblow to the old German
empire, by the formal cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France,
indemnifying the secular princes who were losers by this arrangement
with estates and possessions on the right of the Rhine, taken from the
neutral free cities of the empire and the secularized ecclesiastical
principalities, institutions, monasteries, and orders. An imperial
commission sitting at Regensburg arranged the details of these
indemnifications. They were given expression to by means of the
imperial commission’s decree or recess of 1803. The dissolution of
the constitution of the German empire thus effected was still further
carried out by the Peace of Presburg of 1805, which conferred upon the
princes of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, in league with Napoleon,
full sovereignty, and to the two first named the rank of kings, and was
completed by the founding of the Confederation of the Rhine of 1806,
in which sixteen German princes formally severed themselves from the
emperor and empire and ranked themselves as vassals of France under the
protectorate of Napoleon. Francis II., who already in 1804 had assumed
the title of Emperor of Austria as Francis I., now that the German
empire had actually ceased to exist, renounced also the name of
German emperor. The unhappy proceedings of the Vienna Congress of the
German Confederation and its permanent representation in the Frankfort
parliament during 1814 and 1815, after Napoleon’s twice repeated defeat,
led finally to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.
§ 192.1. =The Imperial Commission’s Decree, 1803.=--The
significance of this for church history consists not merely
in the secularization of the ecclesiastical principalities
and corporations, but even still more in the alteration
caused thereby in the ecclesiastical polity of the territorial
governments. With the ecclesiastical principalities the most
powerful props of the Catholic church in Germany were lost,
and Protestantism obtained a decided ascendency in the council
of the German princes. The Catholic prelates were now simply
paid servants of the state, and thus their double connexion with
the curia and the state brought with it in later times endless
entanglements and complications. On the other hand, in states
hitherto almost exclusively Protestant, _e.g._ Württemberg, Baden,
Hesse, there was a great increase of Catholic subjects, which
attracted but little serious attention when the confessional
particularism in the consciousness of the age was more unassuming
and tolerant than ever it has been before or since.
§ 192.2. =The Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the
Rhine.=--Baron Carl Theod. von Dalberg, distinguished for his
literary culture and his liberal patronage of art and science,
was made in 1802 Elector of Mainz and Lord High Chancellor of the
German empire. When by the recess of 1803 the territories of the
electorate on the left of the Rhine were given over to France and
those on the right secularized, the electoral rank was abolished.
The same happened with respect to the lord high chancellorship
through the creation of the Rhenish Confederation. Dalberg was
indemnified for the former by the favour of Napoleon by the
gift of a small territory on the right of the Rhine, and for the
latter by the renewal of the prince-primacy of the Confederation
of the Rhine with a seat in the Federal council. He still
retained his episcopal office and fixed its seat at Regensburg.
The founding of a metropolitan chapter at Regensburg embracing
the whole domain of the Rhenish Confederation he did not succeed
in carrying out, and in 1813 he felt compelled to surrender also
his territorial possessions. His spiritual functions, however,
as Archbishop of Regensburg, he continued to discharge until his
death in 1817.
§ 192.3. =The Vienna Congress and the Concordat.=--The Vienna
Congress of 1814, 1815, had assigned it the difficult task of
righting the sorely disturbed political affairs of Europe and
giving a new shape to the territorial and dynastic relations. But
never had an indispensably necessary redistribution of territory
been made more difficult or more complicated by diplomatic
intrigues than in Germany. Instead of the earlier federation of
states, the restoration of which proved impossible, the federal
constitution of June 8th, 1815, created under the name of the
German Confederation a union of states in which all members
of the confederation as such exercised equal sovereign rights.
Their number then amounted to thirty-eight, but in the course
of time by death or withdrawal were reduced to thirty-four. The
new distribution of territory, just as little as the Luneville
Peace, took into account confessional homogeneity of princes and
territories, so that the combination of Catholic and Protestant
districts with the above referred to consequences, occurred in
a yet larger measure. But the federal constitution secured in
Article XVI. full toleration for all Christian confessions in
the countries of the confederation. The claims of the Romish
curia, which advanced from the demand for the restoration of all
ecclesiastical principalities and the return of all impropriated
churches and monasteries to their original purposes, to the
demand for the restoration of the holy Roman-German empire in the
mediæval and hierarchical sense, as well as the solemn protest
against its conclusions laid upon the table of the congress by
the papal legate Consalvi, were left quite unheeded. But also
a proposal urgently pressed by the vicar-general of the diocese
of Constance, Baron von Wessenberg (§ 187, 3), to found a German
Catholic national church under a German primate found no favour
with the congress; and an article recommended by Austria and
Prussia to be incorporated in the acts of the confederation by
which the Catholic church in Germany endeavoured to secure a
common constitution under guarantee of the confederation, was
rejected through the opposition of Bavaria. And since in the
Frankfort parliament neither Wessenberg with his primacy and
national church idea nor Consalvi with a comprehensive concordat
answering to the wishes of the curia, was able to carry through
a measure, it was left to the separate states interested to make
separate concordats with the pope. Bavaria concluded a concordat
in 1817 (§ 195, 1); Prussia in 1821 (§ 193, 1). Negotiations with
the other German states fell through owing to the excessiveness
of the demands of the hierarchy, or led to very unsatisfactory
results, as in Hanover in 1824 (§ 194, 1) and the states
belonging to the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine
in 1837 (§ 196, 1). In the time of reaction against the
revolutionary excesses of 1848 the curia first secured any real
advance. Hesse-Darmstadt opened the list in 1854 with a secret
convention (§ 196, 4); then Austria followed in 1855 with a
model concordat (§ 198, 2) which served as the pattern for the
concordats with Württemberg in 1857 (§ 196, 6), and with Baden
in 1859 (§ 196, 2), as well as for the episcopal convention with
Nassau in 1861 (§ 196, 4). But the revived liberal current of
1860 swept away the South German concordats; the Vatican Council
by its infallibility dogma gave the deathblow to that of Austria,
and the German “_Kulturkampf_” sent the Prussian concordat to the
winds, and only that of Bavaria remained in full force.
§ 192.4. =The Frankfort Parliament and the Würzburg Bishops’
Congress of 1848.=--As in the March diets of 1848 the magic
word “freedom” roused through Germany a feverish excitement,
it found a ready response among the Catholics, whose church
was favoured in the highest degree by the movement. In the
Frankfort parliament the ablest leaders of Catholic Germany
had seats. Among the Catholic population there were numerous
religio-political societies formed (§ 186, 3), and the German
bishops, avowedly for the celebration of the 600th anniversary of
the building of Cologne cathedral, set alongside of the Frankfort
people’s parliament a German bishops’ council. After they had at
Frankfort declared themselves in favour of unconditional liberty
of faith, conscience, and worship, the complete independence
of all religious societies in the ordering and administering
of their affairs, but also of freeing the schools from all
ecclesiastical control and oversight, as well as of the
introduction of obligatory civil marriage, the bishops’ council
met in October at Würzburg under the presidency of Archbishop
Geissel of Cologne with nineteen episcopal assistants and several
able theological advisers. In thirty-six sessions they reached
the conclusion that complete separation between church and state
is not to be desired so long as the state does not refuse to
the church the place of authority belonging to it. On the other
hand, by all means in their power they are to seek the abrogation
of the _placet_ of the sovereign, the full independence of
ecclesiastical legislation, administration and jurisdiction, with
the abolition of the _appellatio tanquam ab abusu_, the direction
and oversight of the public schools as well as the control of
religious instruction in higher schools to be given only by
teachers licensed for the purpose by the bishops, and finally to
demand permission to erect educational institutions of their own
of every kind, etc., and to forward a copy of these decisions
to all German governments. The main object of the Würzburg
assembly to secure currency for their resolutions in the new
Germany sketched out at the Frankfort parliament, was indeed
frustrated by that parliament’s speedy overthrow. Nevertheless
in the several states concerned it proved of great and lasting
importance in determining the subsequent unanimous proceedings
of the bishops.
§ 193. PRUSSIA.
To the pious king Frederick William III. (1797-1840) it was a matter
of heart and conscience to turn to account the religious consciousness
of his people, re-awakened by God’s gracious help during the war of
independence, for the healing of the three hundred years’ rent in the
evangelical church by a union of the two evangelical confessions. The
jubilee festival of the Reformation in 1817 seemed to him to offer the
most favourable occasion. The king also desired to see the Catholic
church in his dominions restored to an orderly and thriving condition,
and for this end concluded a concordat with Rome in 1821. But it was
broken up in 1836 over a strife between canon and civil law in reference
to mixed marriages. Frederick William IV. was dominated by romantic
ideas, and his reign (1840-1858), notwithstanding all his evangelical
Christian decidedness, was wanting in the necessary firmness and
energetic consistency. In the Catholic church the Jesuits were allowed
unhindered to foster ultramontane hierarchical principles, and in
the evangelical church the troubles about constitution, union, and
confession could not be surmounted either by its own proper guardian,
the episcopate, or by the superior church councils created in 1850.
And although the notifications of William I. on his entrance upon the
sole government in 1858 were hailed by the liberals as giving assurance
that a new era had dawned in the development of the evangelical national
church, this hope proved to be premature. With the exaltation of the
victory-crowned royal house of Prussia to the throne of the newly
erected German Empire on January 18th, 1871, a new era was actually
opened for ecclesiastical developments and modifications throughout
the land.
§ 193.1. =The Catholic Church to the Close of the Cologne
Conflict.=--The government of =Frederick William III.= entered
into negotiations with the papal curia, not so much for the old
provinces in which everything was going well, but rather in the
interests of the Rhine provinces annexed in 1814, whose bishops’
sees were vacant or in need of circumscription. The first
Prussian ambassador to the Roman curia (1816-1823) was the famous
historian Niebuhr. Although a true Protestant and keen critic
and restorer of the history of old pagan Rome he was no match
for the subtle and skilful diplomacy of Consalvi. In presence
of the claims of the curia he manifested to an almost incredible
extent trustful sympathy and acquiescence, even taking to do with
matters that lay outside of Prussian affairs, eagerly silencing
and opposing any considerations suggested from the other side. A
complete concordat, however, defining in detail all the relations
between church and state was not secured, but in 1821 an
agreement was come to, with thankful acknowledgment of the “great
magnanimity and goodness” shown by the king, by the bull _De
salute animarum_, sanctioned by the king through a cabinet order
(“in the exercise of his royal prerogative and without detriment
to these rights”), according to which two archbishoprics, Cologne
and Posen, and six bishoprics, Treves, Münster, Paderborn,
Breslau, Kulm, and Ermeland, with a clerical seminary, were
erected in Prussia and furnished with rich endowments. The
cathedral chapter was to have the free choice of the bishop; but
by an annexed note it was recommended to make sure in every such
election that the one so chosen would be a _grata persona_ to the
king. The union thus effected between church and state was of but
short duration. The decree of Trent forbade Catholics to enter
into mixed marriages with non-Catholics. A later papal bull
of 1741, however, permitted it on condition of an only passive
assistance of the clergy at the wedding and an engagement by the
parents to train up the children as Catholics. The law of Prussia,
on the other hand, in contested cases made all the children
follow the religion of their fathers. As this was held in 1825
to apply to the Rhine provinces, and as the bishops there had, in
1828, appealed to the pope, Pius VIII. when negotiations with the
Prussian ambassador Bunsen (1824-1838) proved fruitless, issued
in 1830 a brief which permitted Catholic priests to give the
ecclesiastical sanction to mixed marriages only when a promise
was given that the children should be educated as Catholics, but
otherwise to give only passive assistance. When all remonstrances
failed to overcome the obstinacy of the curia, the government
turned to the Archbishop of Cologne, Count =Spiegel=, a zealous
friend and promoter of the Hermesian theology (§ 191, 1), and
arranged in 1834 a secret convention with him, which by his
influence all his suffragans joined. In it they promised to give
such an interpretation to the brief that its observance would be
limited to teaching and exhortation, but would by no means extend
to the obligation of submitting the children to Catholic baptism,
and that the mere _assistentia passiva_ would be resorted to as
rarely as possible, and only in cases where absolutely required.
Spiegel died in November, 1835. In 1836 the Westphalian Baron
=Clement Droste von Vischering= was chosen as his successor.
Although before his elevation he had unhesitatingly agreed to
the convention, soon after his enthronization he strictly forbad
all the clergy celebrating any marriage except in accordance with
the brief, and blamed himself for having believed the agreement
between convention and brief affirmed by the government, and
having only subsequently on closer examination discovered the
disagreement between the two. At the same time, in order to give
effect to the condemnation that had been meanwhile passed on
the Hermesian theology, he gave orders that at the confessional
the Bonn students should be forbidden to attend the lectures
of Hermesians. When the archbishop could not be prevailed on
to yield, he was condemned in 1837 as having broken his word
and having incited to rebellion, and sent to the fortress of
Minden. =Gregory XIV.= addressed to the consistory a fulminating
allocution, and a flood of controversial tracts on either
side swept over Germany. Görres designated the archbishop “the
Athanasius of the nineteenth century.” The government issued
a state paper justifying its procedure, and the courts of
law sentenced certain refractory priests to several years’
confinement in fortresses or prisons. The moderate peaceful
tone of the cathedral chapter did much to quell the disturbance,
supporting as it did the state rather than the archbishop. The
example of Cologne encouraged also =Dunin=, Archbishop of Gnesen
and Posen, to issue in 1838 a pastoral in which he threatened
with suspension any priest in his diocese who would not yield
unconditional obedience to the papal brief. For this he was
deposed by the civil courts and sentenced to half a year’s
imprisonment in a fortress, but the king prevented the execution
of the sentence. But Dunin fled from Berlin, whither he had
been ordered by the king, to Posen, and was then brought in 1839
to the fortress of Kolberg. While matters were in this state
Frederick William IV. came to the throne in 1840. Dunin was
immediately restored, after promising to maintain the peace.
Droste also was released from his confinement with public marks
of respect, but received in 1841, with his own and the pope’s
approval, in the former Bishop of Spires, Geissel, a coadjutor,
who in his name and with the right of succession administered the
diocese. The government gave no aid to the Hermesians. The law
in regard to mixed marriages continued indeed in force, but
was exercised so as to put no constraint of conscience upon
the Catholic clergy. Of his own accord the king declined
further exercise of the royal prerogative, allowing the bishops
direct intercourse with the papal see, whereas previously all
correspondence had to pass through royal committees, with this
proviso by the minister Eichhorn, “that this display of generous
confidence be not abused,” and with the expectation that the
bishops would not only communicate to the government the contents
of their correspondence with the pope, but also the papal replies
which did not deal exclusively with doctrine, and would not speak
and act against the wish and will of the government. But Geissel,
recommended by Louis of Bavaria to his son-in-law Frederick
William IV. instead of Baron von Diepenbrock (§ 187, 1) who was
first thought of, by his skilful and energetic manœuvring, going
on from victory to victory, raised ultramontanism in Prussia to
the very summit of its influence and glory.
§ 193.2. =The Golden Age of Prussian Ultramontanism,
1841-1871.=--In the Cologne-Posen conflict Rome had won an almost
complete victory, and with all its satellites now thought only
of how it might in the best possible manner turn this victory to
account, in which the all too trustful government sought to aid
it to the utmost. This movement received a further impulse in
the revolution of 1848 (§ 192, 4). In Prussia as well as in other
German lands, and there in a special degree, the Catholic church
managed to derive from the revolutionary movements of those times,
and from the subsequent reaction, substantial advantage. The
constitution of 1850 declared in Article xv.: “The evangelical
and the Roman Catholic Church as well as every other religious
society regulates and administers its affairs independently;”
in Article xvi.: “The correspondence of religious societies
with their superiors is unrestricted, the publication of
ecclesiastical ordinances is subject only to those limitations
which apply to all other documents;” in Article xviii.:
“The right of nomination, proposal, election, and institution
to spiritual office, so far as it belongs to the state, is
abolished;” and in Article xxiv.: “The respective religious
societies direct religious instruction in the public schools.”
Under the screen of these fundamental privileges the Catholic
episcopate now claimed one civil prerogative after another,
emancipated itself wholly from the laws of the state, and, on
the plea that God must be obeyed rather than man, made the canon
law, not only in purely ecclesiastical but also in mixed matters,
the only standard, and the decision of the pope the final appeal.
At last nothing was left to the state but the obligation of
conferring splendid endowments upon the bishops, cathedral
chapters, and seminaries for priests, and the honour of being at
home the executioner of episcopal tyranny, and abroad the avenger
of every utterance unfavourable in the doctrine and worship,
customs and enactments of the Catholic church. With almost
incredible infatuation the Catholic hierarchy was now regarded
as a main support of the throne against the revolutionary
tendencies of the age and as the surest guarantee for the loyalty
of subjects in provinces predominantly Catholic. Under protection
of the law allowing the formation of societies and the right
of assembling, the order of Jesuits set up one establishment
after another, and made up for defects or insufficient energy
of ultramontane pastoral work, agitation and endeavour at
conversion on the part of other peaceably disposed parish
priests, by numerous missions conducted in the most ostentatious
manner (§ 186, 6). Although according to Article xiii. of the
constitution religious societies could obtain corporative rights
only by special enactments, the bishops, on their own authority,
without regarding this provision, established religious orders
and congregations wherever they chose. As these were generally
placed under foreign superiors male or female, to whom in Jesuit
fashion unconditional obedience was rendered, each member being
“like a corpse,” without any individual will, they spread without
hindrance, so that continually new cloisters and houses of the
orders sprang up like mushrooms over the Protestant metropolis
(§ 186, 2). Education in Catholic districts fell more and more
into the hands of religious corporations, and even the higher
state educational institutions, so far as they dealt with the
training of the Catholic youth (theological faculties, gymnasia,
and Training schools), were wholly under the control of the
bishops. From the boys’ convents and priests’ seminaries,
erected at all episcopal residences, went forth a new generation
of clergy reared in the severest school of intolerance, who,
first of all acting as chaplains, by espionage, the arousing
of suspicion and talebearing, were the dread of the old parish
priests, and, as “chaplains at large,” stirred up fanaticism
among the people, and secured the Catholic press to themselves
as a monopoly. For the purposes of Catholic worship and education
the government had placed state aid most liberally at their
disposal, without requiring any account from the bishops as to
their disposal of the money. Although the number of Catholics
in the whole country was only about half that of the Protestants,
the endowment of the Catholic was almost double that of the
evangelical church. The civil authority readily helped the
bishops to enforce any spiritual penalties, and thus the inferior
clergy were brought into absolute dependence upon their spiritual
superiors. In the government department of Public Worship, from
1840 to 1848 under the direction of Eichhorn, there was since
1841 a subsection for dealing with the affairs of the Catholic
church which, although restricted to the guarding of the rights
of the king over against the curia and that of the state over
against the hierarchy, came to be in an entirely opposite
sense “the civil department of the pope in Prussia.” Under Von
Mühler’s ministry, 1862-1872, it obtained absolute authority
which it seems to have exercised in removing unfavourable acts
and documents from the imperial archives. And thus the Catholic
church, or rather the ultramontane party dominant in it since
1848, grew up into a power that threatened the whole commonwealth
in its very foundations.--By the annexation of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau in 1866, four new bishoprics, those of Hildesheim,
Osnabrück, Fulda and Limburg were added to the previous
eight.--Continuation § 197.
§ 193.3. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia down to
1848.=--On the accomplishment of the union by Frederick
William III. and the confusions arising therefrom, see § 177.
=Frederick William IV.= on his accession declared his wish in
reference to the national evangelical church, that the supreme
control of the church should be exercised only in order to secure
for it in an orderly and legal way the independent administration
of its own affairs. The realization of this idea, after a church
conference of the ordinary clergy from almost all German states
had been held in Berlin without result, was attempted at Berlin
by a general synod, opened on Whitsunday, 1846. The synod at
its eighteenth session entered upon the consideration of the
difficult question of doctrine and the confession. The result
of this was the approval of an ordination formula drawn up by
Dr. Nitzsch (§ 182, 10), according to which the candidate for
ordination was to make profession of the great fundamental
and saving truths instead of the church confession hitherto
enforced. And since among these fundamental truths the doctrines
of creation, original sin, the supernatural conception, the
descent into hell and the ascension of Christ, the resurrection
of the body, the last judgment, everlasting life and everlasting
punishment were not included, and therefore were not to be
enforced, since further by this ordination formula the special
confessions of Lutheran and Reformed were really set aside,
and therewith the existence of a Lutheran as well as a Reformed
church within the union seemed to be abolished, a small number
of decided Lutherans in the synod protested; still more decided
and vigorous protests arose from outside the synod, to which
the _Evang. Kirchenzeitung_ opened its columns. The government
gave no further countenance to the decisions of the synod, and
opponents exercised their wit upon the unfortunate _Nicænum_ of
the nineteenth century, which as a _Nitzschenum_ had fallen into
the water. In March, 1847, the king issued a patent of toleration,
by which protection was assured anew to existing churches, but
the formation of new religious societies was allowed to all who
found not in these the expression of their belief.
§ 193.4. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1848-1872.=--When the storms of revolution broke out in 1848,
the new minister of worship, =Count Schwerin=, willingly aided
in reorganizing the church according to the mind of the masses
of the people by a constitutional synod. But before it had met
the reaction had already set in. The transition ministry of
=Ladenberg= was assured by consistories and faculties of the
danger of convoking such a synod of representatives of the people.
Instead of the synod therefore a =Supreme Church Council= was
assembled at Berlin in 1850, which, independent of the ministry,
and only under the king as _præcipuum membrum ecclesiæ_, should
represent the freedom of the church from the state as something
already realized. On March 6th, 1852, the king issued a cabinet
order, in consequence of which the Supreme Church Council
administered not only the affairs of the evangelical national
church as a whole, but also was charged with the interests of the
Lutheran as well as the Reformed church in particular, and was
to be composed of members from both of those confessions, who
should alone have to decide on questions referring to their own
confession. On the _Itio in partes_ thus required in this board,
only Dr. Nitzsch remained over, as he declared that he could find
expression for his religious convictions in neither of the two
confessions, but only in a consensus of both. The difficulty
was overcome by reckoning him a representative equally of both
denominations. Encouraged by such connivance in high places to
entertain still bolder hopes, the Lutheran societies in 1853
presented to the king a petition signed by one hundred and sixty
one clergymen, for restoring Lutheran faculties and the Lutheran
church property. But this called forth a rather unfavourable
cabinet order, in which the king expressed his disapproval of
such a misconception of the ordinances of the former year, and
made the express declaration that it never was his intention to
break up or weaken the union effected by his father, that he only
wished to give the confession within the union the protection
to which it was undoubtedly entitled. After this the separate
Lutheran interest so long highly favoured fell into manifest and
growing disfavour. Still the ministerial department of worship
under =Von Raumer=, 1850-1858, continued to conduct the affairs
of schools and universities in the spirit of the ecclesiastical
orthodox reaction, and issued the endless school regulations
conceived in this spirit of the privy councillor Stiehl. The
Supreme Church Council also exhibited a rare activity and passed
many wholesome ordinances. The evangelical church won great
credit by the care it took of its members scattered over distant
lands, in supplying them with clergy and teachers. The evident
favour with which Frederick William IV. furthered the efforts of
the Evangelical Alliance of 1857 (§ 178, 3) was the last proof
of decided aversion from the confessional movement which he was
to be allowed to give. A long and hopeless illness, of which he
died in 1861, obliged him to resign the government to his brother
=William I.= When this monarch in October, 1855, began to rule
in his own name, he declared to his newly appointed ministers
that it was his firm resolve that the evangelical union, whose
beneficent development had been obstructive to an orthodoxy
incompatible with the character of the evangelical church, and
which had thus almost caused its ruin, should be maintained
and further advanced. But in order that the task might be
accomplished, the organs for its administration must be carefully
chosen and to some extent changed. All hypocrisy and formalism,
which that orthodoxy had fostered, is wherever possible to be
removed. The “new era,” however, marked by the appearance of
liberal journals, by no means answered to the expectations which
those words excited. The ministry of =Von Bethmann-Hollweg=,
1858-1862, filled some theological and spiritual offices in this
liberal spirit; Stahl withdrew from the Supreme Church Council;
the proceedings against the free churches, as well as the severe
measures against the re-marriage of divorced parties, were
relaxed. But the marriage law laid down by the ministry with
permission of civil marriage was rejected by the House of Peers,
and the hated school regulations had to be undertaken by the
minister himself. The ecclesiastically conservative ministry of
=Von Mühler=, 1862-1872, which, however, wanted a fixed principle
as well as self-determined energy of will, and was therefore
often vacillating and losing the respect of all parties, was
utterly unfit to realize these expectations. The Supreme Church
Council published in 1867 the outlines of a provincial synodal
constitution for the six East Provinces which were still without
this institution, which the Rhine Provinces and Westphalia had
enjoyed since 1835. For this purpose he convened in autumn, 1869,
an extraordinary provincial synod, which essentially approved
the sketch submitted, whereupon it was provisionally enacted.
§ 193.5. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1872-1880.=--After the removal of Von Mühler, the minister of
worship, in January, 1872, his place was taken by =Dr. Falk=,
1872-1879. The hated school regulations were now at last set
aside and replaced by new moderate prescriptions, conceived in
an almost unexpectedly temperate spirit. On September 10th, 1873,
the king issued a congregational and synodal constitution
for the eastern provinces, with the express statement that the
position of the confession and the union should thereby be in no
way affected. It prescribed that in every congregation presided
over by a pastor, elected by the ecclesiastically qualified
church members, _i.e._ those of honourable life who had taken
part in public worship and received the sacraments, there should
be a church council of from four to twelve persons, and for
more important matters, _e.g._ the election of a pastor, a
congregational committee of three times the size, half of which
should be reappointed every third year. To the district synod,
presided over by the superintendent, each congregation sends as
delegates besides the pastor a lay representative chosen by the
church council from among its members or from the congregational
committee. According to the same principle the District Synods
choose from their members a clerical and a lay representative to
the provincial synod, to which also the evangelical theological
faculty of the university within the bounds sends a deputy, and
the territorial lord nominates a number of members not exceeding
a sixth part of the whole. The general synod, in which also the
two western provinces, the Rhenish and Westphalian, take part,
consists of one hundred and fifty delegates from the provincial
synods, and thirty nominated by the territorial lords, to which
the faculties of theology and law of the six universities within
the bounds send each one of their members. Although this royal
decree had proclaimed itself final, and only remitted to an
=Extraordinary General Synod= to be called forthwith the task of
arranging for future ordinary general synods, yet at the meeting
of this extraordinary synod in Berlin, on November 24th, 1875,
a draft was submitted of a constitution modified in various
important points. Of the three demands of the liberal party
now violently insisted upon--
1. Substitution of the “filter” system in the election of
provincial and general synod members for that of the
community electorate.
2. Strengthening of the lay element in all synods; and
3. Abolition of the equality of small village communities with
large town communities
the first was by far the most important and serious in its
consequences, but the other two bore fruit through the decree
that two-thirds of the members of the district and provincial
synods should be laymen, and the other one-third should be freely
elected to the district synod from the populous town communities,
for the provincial synods from the larger district synods.
Also in reference to the rights belonging to the several grades
of synods, considerable modifications were made, whereby the
privileges of communities were variously increased (_e.g._ to
them was given the right of refusing to introduce the catechisms
and hymn-books sanctioned by the provincial synods), while those
of the district and provincial synods were lessened in favour
of the general synod, and those of the latter again in favour
of the high church council and the minister of public worship.
After nearly four weeks’ discussion the bill without any serious
amendments was passed by the assembly, and on January 20th, 1876,
received the royal assent and became an ecclesiastical law.
But in order to give it also the rank of a law of the state,
a decision of the States’ Parliament on the relation of church
and state was necessary. The parliament had already in 1874,
when the original congregational and synodal constitution was
submitted to it, in order to advance the movement, approved
only the congregational constitution with provisional refusal
of everything going beyond that. In May, 1876, the bill already
raised by the king into an ecclesiastical law, passed both houses
of parliament, and had here also some amendments introduced with
the effect of increasing and strengthening the prerogative of
the state. The main points in the law as then passed are these:
The general synod, whose members undertake to fulfil their
duties agreeably to the word of God and the ordinances of the
evangelical national church, has the task of maintaining and
advancing the state church on the basis of the evangelical
confession. The laws of the state church must receive its assent,
but any measure agreed upon by it cannot be laid before the king
for his sanction without the approval of the minister of public
worship. It meets every sixth year; in the interval it, as well
as the provincial synods, is represented by a synodal committee
chosen from its members. The head of the church government is
the Supreme Church Council, whose president countersigns the
ecclesiastical laws approved by the king. The right of appointing
to this office lies with the minister of public worship; in
the nomination of other members the president makes proposals
with consent of the minister. Taxation of the general synod for
parliamentary purposes needs the assent of the minister of state,
and must, if it exceeds four per cent. of the class and income
tax, be agreed to by the Lower House, which also annually has
to determine the expenditure on ecclesiastical administration.
§ 193.6. When preparations were being made for the extraordinary
general synod, the king had repeatedly given vigorous expression
to his positive religious standpoint, and from the proposed
lists of members for that synod submitted by the minister of
public worship all names belonging to the _Protestantenverein_
were struck out. Still more decidedly in 1877 did he show
his disapproval in the Rhode-Hossbach troubles (§ 180, 4), by
declaring his firm belief in the divinity of Christ, and when the
then president of the Brandenburg consistory, Hegel, tendered his
resignation, owing to differences with the liberal president of
the Supreme Church Council, Hermann, the king refused to accept
it, because he could not then spare any such men as held by
the apostolic faith. In May, 1878, Hermann was at last, after
repeated solicitations, allowed to retire, Dr. Hermes, member of
the Supreme Church Council, was nominated his successor, and the
positive tendency of the Supreme Church Council was strengthened
by the admission of the court preachers, Kögel and Baur. His
proposals again disagreeing with the royal nominations for the
provincial synod and for the =First Ordinary General Synod= of
autumn, 1879, led the minister of public worship, Dr. Falk, at
last, after repeated solicitation, to accept his resignation.
It was granted him in July, 1879, and the chief president of the
province of Silesia, =Von Puttkamer=, a more decided adherent
of the positive union party, was named as his successor;
but in June, 1881, he was made minister of the interior, and
the undersecretary of the department of public worship, =Von
Gossler=, was made minister. The general synod, October 10th
till November 3rd, consisted of fifty-two confessionalists,
seventy-six positive-unionists, fifty-six of the middle party
or evangelical unionist, and nine from the ranks of the left,
the _Protestantenverein_; three confessionalists, twelve
positive-unionists, and fifteen of the middle party were
nominated by the king. The measures proposed by the Supreme
Church Council:
1. A marriage service without reference to the preceding civil
marriage, with two marriage formulæ, the first a joint
promise, the second a benediction;
2. A disciplinary law against despisers of baptism and marriage,
which threatened such with the loss of all ecclesiastical
electoral rights, and eventually with exclusion from the
Lord’s supper and sponsor rights; and
3. A law dealing with _Emeriti_,
were adopted by the synod and then approved by the king. On the
other hand a series of independent proposals conceived in the
interests of the high-church party remained in suspense. The last
effected elections for the general synod committee resulted in
the appointment of three positive-unionist members, including the
president, two confessionalists, and two of the middle party.[549]
§ 193.7. =The Evangelical Church in the Annexed Provinces.=--In
1866 the provinces of Hanover, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein were
incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia. In these political
particularism, combined with confessional Lutheranism, suspicion
of every organized system of church government as intended
to introduce Prussian unionism, even to the extreme of open
rebellion, led to violent conflicts. The king, indeed, personally
gave assurance in Cassel, Hanover and Kiel that the position of
the church confession should in no way be endangered. “He will
indeed support the union where it already existed as a sacred
legacy to him from his forefathers; he also hopes that it may
always make further progress as a witness to the grand unity of
the evangelical church; but compulsion is to be applied to no
man.” The consistories of these provinces were still to continue
independent of the Supreme Church Council. But the ministerial
order for the restoration of representative synodal constitution
increasingly prevailed, although the wide-spread suspicion and
individual protests against the system of church government,
such as the temporary prohibition of the Marburg consistory of
the mission festival, as avowedly used for agitation against
the intended synodal constitution, helped to intensify the
bitterness of feeling. But on the other hand many preachers by
their unbecoming pulpit harangues, and their refusal to take
the oath of allegiance or service, to pray in church for their
new sovereign, and to observe the general holiday appointed
to be held in 1869 on November 10th (Luther’s birthday),
etc., compelled the ecclesiastical authorities to impose fines,
suspension, penal transportation, and deposition. In the Lutheran
=Schleswig-Holstein= a new congregational constitution was
introduced in 1869 by the minister Von Mühler, as the basis of a
future synodal constitution, which was adopted by the _Vorsynode_
of Rendsburg in 1871, preserving the confessional status laid
down, without discussion. In 1878 an advance was made by the
institution of district or provostship synods, and in February,
1880, the first General Synod was held at Rendsburg. As in Old
Prussia so also here the conservative movement proved victorious.
The laity obtained majorities in all synods, and the supremacy
of the state was secured by the subordination of the church
government under the minister of public worship.
§ 193.8. =In Hanover=, where especially Lichtenberg, president of
the upper consistory, and Uhlhorn, member of the upper consistory
(since 1878 abbot of Loccum), although many Lutheran extremists
long remained dissatisfied, temperately and worthily maintained
the independence and privileges of the Lutheran church, the first
national synod could be convened and could bring to a generally
peaceful conclusion the question of the constitution only in
the end of 1869, after the preliminary labour of the national
synod committee. In 1882 the Reformed communities of 120,000
souls, hitherto subject to Lutheran consistories, obtained an
independent congregational and synodal constitution. Against
the new marriage ordinance enacted in consequence of the
civil marriage law (§ 197, 5), Theod. Harms (brother, and from
1865 successor of L. Harms, § 184, 1), pastor and director of
Hermannsburg missionary seminary, rebelled from the conviction
that civil marriage did not deserve to be recognised as marriage.
He was first suspended, then in 1877 deposed from office, and
with the most of his congregation retired and founded a separate
Lutheran community, to which subsequently fifteen other small
congregations of 4,000 souls were attached. As teacher and pupils
of the seminary made it a zealous propaganda for the secession,
the missionary journals and missionary festivals were misused
for the same purpose, and as Harms answered the questions of the
consistory in reference thereto, partly by denying, partly by
excusing, that court, in December, 1878, forbad the missionary
collections hitherto made throughout the churches at Epiphany
for Hermannsburg, and so completely broke off the connection
between the state church and the institution which had hitherto
been regarded as “its pride and its preserving salt.” A reaction
has since set in in favour of the seminary and its friends on
the assurance that the interests of the separation would not be
furthered by the seminary, and that several other objectionable
features, _e.g._ the frequent employment in the mission service
of artisans without theological training, the sending of them out
in too great numbers without sufficient endowment and salary, so
that missionaries were obliged to engage in trade speculations,
should be removed as far as possible; but since the seminary
life was always still carried on upon the basis of ecclesiastical
secession, it could lead to no permanent reconciliation with the
state church. Harms died in 1885. His son Egmont was chosen his
successor, and as the consistory refused ordination, he accepted
consecration at the hands of five members of the Immanuel Synod
at Magdeburg.
§ 193.9. =In Hesse= the ministry of Von Mühler sought to bring
about a combination of the three consistories of Hanau, Cassel,
and Marburg, as a necessary vehicle for the introduction of a
new synodal constitution. In the province itself an agitation
was persistently carried on for and against the constitutional
scheme submitted by the ministers, which wholly ignored the old
church order (§ 127, 2), which, though in the beginning of the
seventeenth century through the ecclesiastical disturbances of
the time (§ 154, 1), it had passed out of use, had never been
abrogated and so was still legally valid. A _Vorsynode_ convened
in 1870 approved of it in all essential points, but conventions
of superintendents, pastoral conferences and lay addresses
protested, and the Prussian parliament, for which it was not yet
liberal enough, refused the necessary supplies. As these after
Von Mühler’s overthrow were granted, his successor, Dr. Falk,
immediately proceeded in 1873 to set up in Cassel the court
that had been objected to so long. It was constituted after the
pattern of the Supreme Church Council, of Lutheran, Reformed, and
United members with _Itio in partes_ on specifically confessional
questions. The clergy of Upper Hesse comforted themselves
with saying that the new courts in which the confessions were
combined, if not better, were at least no worse than the earlier
consistories in which the confessions were confounded; and they
felt obliged to yield obedience to them, so long as they did not
demand anything contradictory the Lutheran confession. On the
other hand, many of the clergy of Lower Hesse saw in the advance
from a merely eventual to an actual blending of the confessional
status in church government an intolerable deterioration. And so
forty-five clergyman of Lower and one of Upper Hesse laid before
the king a protest against the innovation as destructive of the
confessional rights of the Hessian church contrary to the will
of the supreme majesty of Jesus Christ. They were dismissed with
sharp rebuke, and, with the exception of four who submitted, were
deposed from office for obstinate refusal to obey. There were
about sixteen congregations which to a greater or less extent
kept aloof from the new pastors appointed by the consistories,
and without breaking away from the state church wished to remain
true to the old pastor “appointed by Jesus Christ himself.”--In
autumn, 1884, the movement on behalf of the restoration of a
presbyterial and synodal constitution of the Hessian evangelical
church, which had been delayed for fourteen years, was resumed.
A sketch of a constitution, which placed it under three
general superintendents (Lutheran, Reformed, United) and
thirteen superintendents, and, for the fair co-operation of
the lay element in the administration of church affairs (the
confession status, however, being beyond discussion), provided
suitable organs in the shape of presbyteries and synods, with a
predominance of the lay element, was submitted to a _Vorsynode_
that met on November 12th, consisting of two divisions, like a
Lower and Upper House, sitting together. The first division, as
representative of the then existing church order, embraced, in
accordance with the practice of the old Hessian synods, all the
members of the consistory, _i.e._ the nine superintendents and
thirteen pastors elected by the clergy; the second, consisting at
least of as many lay as clerical members, was chosen by the free
election of the congregation. The royal assent was given to the
decrees of the _Vorsynode_ in the end of December, 1885, and the
confessional status was thereby expressly guaranteed.
§ 194. THE NORTH GERMAN SMALLER STATES.
In most of the smaller North German states, owing to the very slight
representation of the Reformed church, which was considerable only
in Bremen, Lippe-Detmold, and a part of Hesse and East Friesland, the
union met with little favour. Yet only in a few of those provinces did a
sharply marked confessional Lutheranism gain wide and general acceptance.
This was so especially and most decidedly in Mecklenburg, but also in
Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony. On the other hand, since the close of 1860,
in almost all those smaller states a determined demand was made for a
representative synodal constitution, securing the due co-operation of
the lay element.--The Catholic church was strongest in Hanover, and next
come some parts of Hesse, which had been added to the ecclesiastical
province of the Upper Rhine (§ 196, 1), but in the other North German
smaller states it was only represented here and there.
§ 194.1. =The Kingdom of Saxony.=--The present kingdom of Saxony,
formerly an electoral principality, has had Catholic princes
since 1679 (§ 153, 1), but the Catholic church could strike its
roots again only in the immediate neighbourhood of the court.
Indeed those belonging to it did not enjoy civil and religious
equality until 1807, when this distinction was set aside. The
erection of cloisters and the introduction of monkish orders,
however, continued even then forbidden, and all official
publications of the Catholic clergy required the _placet_ of
the government. The administration of the evangelical church,
so long as the king is Catholic, lies, according to agreement,
in the hands of the ministers commissioned _in evangelicis_.
Although several of these have proved defenders of ecclesiastical
orthodoxy, the rationalistic Illumination became almost
universally prevalent not only among the clergy but also
among the general populace. Meanwhile a pietistic reaction
set in, especially powerful in Muldenthal, where Rudelbach’s
labours impressed on it a Lutheran ecclesiastical character.
The religious movement, on the other hand, directed by Martin
Stephan, pastor of the Bohemian church in Dresden, came to a
sad and shameful end. As representative and restorer of strict
Lutheran views he had wrought successfully in Dresden from 1810,
but, through the adulation of his followers, approaching even
to worship, he fell more and more deeply into hierarchical
assumption and neglect of self-vigilance. When the police in
1837 restricted his nightly assemblies, without, however, having
discovered anything immoral, and suspended him from his official
duties, he called upon his followers to emigrate to America. Many
of them, lay and clerical, blindly obeyed, and founded in 1835,
in Missouri, a Lutheran church communion (§ 208, 2). Stephan’s
despotic hierarchical assumptions here reached their fullest
height; he also gave his lusts free scope. Women oppressed or
actually abused by him at length openly proclaimed his shame in
1839, and the community excommunicated him. He died in A.D. 1846.
Taught by such experiences, and purged of the Donatist-separatist
element, a church reaction against advancing rationalism made
considerable progress under a form of church that favoured it,
and secured also influential representatives in members of the
theological faculty of the university of Leipzig distinguished
for their scientific attainments. After repeated debates in
the chamber over a scheme of a new ecclesiastical and synodal
order submitted by the ministry, the first evangelical Lutheran
state synod met in Dresden, in May, 1871. On the motion of
the government, the law of patronage was here modified so that
the patron had to submit three candidates to the choice of the
ecclesiastical board. It was also decided to form an upper or
state consistory, to which all ecclesiastical matters hitherto
administered by the minister of public worship should be given
over; the control of education was to remain with the ministry,
and the state consistory was to charge itself with the oversight
only of religious instruction and ethico-religious training. The
most lively debates were those excited by the proposal to abolish
the obligation resting upon all church teachers to seem to adhere
to the confession of the Lutheran church, led by Dr. Zarncke,
the rector of the state university. The commission of inquiry
sent down, under the presidency of Professor Luthardt, demanded
the absolute withdrawal of this proposal, which aimed at perfect
doctrinal freedom. On the other hand, Professor G. Baur made the
mediate proposal to substitute for the declaration on oath, the
promise to teach simply and purely to the best of his knowledge
and according to conscience the gospel of Christ as it is
contained in Scripture, and witnessed in the confessions of the
Lutheran church. And as even now Luthardt, inspired by the wish
not to rend the first State Synod at its final sitting by an
incurable schism, agreed to this suggestion, it was carried
by a large majority. In consequence of this decision, a number
of “Lutherans faithful to the confession,” withdrew from the
State church, and on the anniversary of the Reformation in 1871,
constituted themselves into an Evangelical Lutheran Free Church,
associated with the Missouri synod (§ 208, 2), from which, on
the suggestion of some of the members of the community who had
returned from America, they chose for themselves a pastor called
Ruhland. There were five such congregations in Saxony: at Dresden,
Planitz, Chemnitz, Frankenberg, and Krimmitschau, to which some
South German dissenters at Stenden, Wiesbaden, Frankfort, and
Anspach attached themselves.
§ 194.2. =The Saxon Duchies.=--The Stephan emigration had
also decoyed a number of inhabitants from Saxe-Altenburg. In
a rescript to the Ephorus Ronneburg, in 1838, the consistory
traced back this separatist movement to the fact that the
religious needs of the congregations found no satisfaction in the
rationalistic preaching, and urged a more earnest presentation
from the pulpit of the fundamental and central doctrines of
evangelical Christianity. This rescript was the subject of
violent denunciation. The government took the opinion of four
theological faculties on the procedure of the consistory and
its opponents, who published it simply with the praise and blame
contained therein, and thus prevented any investigation. Also
in =Weimar= and =Gotha= the rationalism of Röhr and Bretschneider,
which had dominated almost all pulpits down to the middle of
the century, began gradually to disappear, and the more recent
parties of Confessional, Mediation, and Free Protestant theology
to take its place. The last named party found vigorous support
in the university of Jena. A petition addressed to it in 1882
from the Thuringian Church Conference of Eisenach, to call
to Jena also a representative of the positive Lutheran theology,
was decidedly refused, and, in a controversial pamphlet by
Superintendent Braasch, condemned as “the Eisenach outrage”
(_Attentat_). In =Meiningen= the _Vorsynode_ convened there
in 1870 sanctioned the sketch of a moderately liberal synodal
constitution submitted to it, which placed the confession indeed
beyond the reach of legislative interference, but also secured
its rights to free inquiry. The first State Synod, however, did
not meet before 1878. In =Weimar= the first synod was held in
1873, the second in 1879.
§ 194.3. =The Kingdom of Hanover.=--Although the union found no
acceptance in Hanover, after the overthrow of the rationalism of
the _ancien régime_, the union theology became dominant in the
university. The clergy, however, were in great part carried along
by the confessional Lutheran current of the age. The Preachers’
Conference at Stade in 1854 took occasion to call the attention
of the government to the “manifest divergence” between the union
theology of the university and the legal and actual Lutheran
confession of the state church, and urged the appointment
of Lutheran teachers. The faculty, on the other hand, issued
a memorial in favour of liberty of public teaching, and the
curators filled the vacancies again with union theologians.
When in April, 1862, it was proposed to displace the state
catechism introduced in 1790, which neither theologically nor
catechetically satisfied the needs of the church, by a carefully
sifted revision of the Walther catechism in use before 1790,
approved of by the Göttingen faculty, the agitation of the
liberal party called forth an opposition, especially in city
populations, which expressed itself in insults to members of
consistories and pastors, and in almost daily repeated bloody
street fights with the military, and obliged the government at
last to give way.--The negotiations about a concordat with Rome
reached up further in 1824 than obtaining the circumscription
bull _Impensa Romanorum_, by which the Catholic church obtained
two bishoprics, those of Hildesheim and Osnabrück.--In 1886,
Hanover was incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia (§ 193, 8).
§ 194.4. =Hesse.=--Landgrave Maurice, 1592-1627, had forced upon
his territories a modified Melanchthonian Calvinism (§ 154, 1),
but a Lutheran basis with Lutheran modes of viewing things and
Lutheran institutions still remained, and the Lutheran reaction
had never been completely overcome, not even in Lower Hesse,
although there the name of the Reformed Church with Reformed
modes of worship had been gradually introduced in most of the
congregations. The communities of Upper Hesse and Schmalcald,
however, by continuous opposition saved for the most part their
Lutheranism, which in 1648 was guaranteed to them anew by the
Darmstadt Recess, and secured an independent form of church
government in the Definitorium at Marburg. The union movement,
which issued from Prussia in 1817, met with favour also in Hesse,
but only in the province of Hanau in 1818 got the length of a
formal constituting of a church on the basis of the union. In
1821, however, the elector issued the so-called Reorganization
edict, by which the entire evangelical church of the electorate,
without any reference to the confession status, but simply in
accordance with the political divisions of the state, was put
under the newly instituted consistories of Cassel, Marburg,
and Hanau, in the formation of which the confession of the
inhabitants had not been considered. The Marburg Definitorium
indeed protested, but in vain, against this despotic act, which
was felt a grievance, less on account of the wiping out of the
confession than on account of the loss of independent church
government which it occasioned. The government appointed pastors,
teachers and professors without enquiring much about their
confession. In 1838 the hitherto required subscription of the
clergy to the confessional writings, the Augsburg Confession and
its Apology, was modified into a formula declaring conscientious
regard for them. But in this Bickell, professor of law at Marburg,
saw a loss to the church in legal status, an endangering of the
evangelical church; the theological professor, Hupfeld, also
in the further course of the controversy took his side, while
the advocate, Henkel, in Cassel, as a popular agitator opposed
him and demanded a State Synod for the formal abolishing of all
symbolical books. The government ignored both demands, and the
vehement conflict was quieted by degrees. With 1850 a new era
began in the keen controversy over the question, which confession,
whether Lutheran or Reformed, was legally and actually that
of the state. The ministry of Hassenpflug from 1850, which
suppressed the revolution, considered it as legally the Lutheran,
and determined the ecclesiastical arrangements in this sense,
and in this course Dr. Vilmar, member of the Consistory, was the
minister’s right hand. But the elector was from the beginning
personally opposed to this procedure, and on the overthrow of
the ministry in 1855, Vilmar (died 1868) was also transferred to
a theological professorship at Marburg. This, however, only gave
a new impulse to the confessional Lutheran movement in the state,
for the spirit and tendency of the highly revered theological
teacher powerfully influenced the younger generation of the
Hessian clergy. In consequence of the German war, Hesse was
annexed to Prussia in 1866 (§ 193, 9).--On the Catholic church
in this state, compare § 196, 1.
§ 194.5. =Brunswick, Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Lippe-Detmold.=--Much
ado was made also in =Brunswick= over the introduction of a new
constitution for the Lutheran state church in 1869, and at last
in 1871 a synodal ordinance was passed by which the State Synod,
consisting of fourteen clerical and eighteen lay members, was
to meet every four years, so as not to be a too offensive factor
in the ecclesiastical administration and legislation, which
therefore has left untouched the content of the confession. The
first synod of 1872 began by rejecting the injunction to open
the sessions with prayer and reading of scripture. =Oldenburg=,
which in 1849, by a synod whose membership had been chosen by the
original electorate, had been favoured with a democratic church
constitution wholly separate from the state, accepted in 1854
without opposition a new constitution which restored the headship
of the church to the territorial lords, the administration of the
church to a Supreme Church Council and ecclesiastical legislation
to a State Synod consisting of clerical and lay members.--The
prince in the exercise of his sovereign rights gave a charter
in 1878 to the evangelical church of the Duchy of =Anhalt= to
a synodal ordinance which, though approved by the _Vorsynode_ of
1876, had been rejected by parliament, and afterwards it gained
the assent of the national representatives.--In the Reformed
=Lippe-Detmold= there were in 1844 still five preachers who,
wearied of the illuminationist catechism of the state church, had
gone back to the Heidelberg catechism and protested against the
abolition of acceptance on oath of the symbols, as destructive
of the peace of the church. The democratic church constitution
of 1851, however, was abrogated in 1854, and instead of it, the
old Reformed church order of 1684 was again made law. At the same
time, religious pardon and equality were guaranteed to Catholics
and Lutherans. The first Reformed State Synod was constituted
in 1878.
§ 194.6. =Mecklenburg.=--Mecklenburg-Schwerin from 1848 was
in possession of a strictly Lutheran church government under
the direction of Kliefoth, and its university at Rostock
had decidedly Lutheran theologians. When the chamberlain Von
Kettenburg, on going over to the Catholic church, appointed
a Catholic priest on his estate, the government in 1852, on
the ground that the laws of the state did not allow Catholic
services which extended beyond simple family worship, held that
he had overstepped the limits. A complaint, in reference thereto,
presented to the parliament and then to the German _Bund_, was
in both cases thrown out. Even in 1863 the Rostock magistrates
refused to allow tower and bells in the building of a Catholic
church.--An extraordinary excitement was caused by the removal
from office in January, 1858, of Professor M. Baumgarten of
Rostock. An examination paper set by him on 2 Kings xi. by which
the endeavour was made to win scripture sanction for a violent
revolution, obliged the government even in 1856 to remove him
from the theological examination board. At the same time his
polemic addressed to a pastoral conference at Parchim, against
the doctrine of the Mecklenburg state catechism on the ceremonial
law, especially in reference to the sanctification of the Sabbath,
increased the distrust which the clergy of the state, on account
of his writings, had entertained against his theological position
as one which, from a fanatical basis, diverged on all sides into
fundamental antagonism to the confession and the ordinances of
the Lutheran state church. The government finally deposed him
in 1858 (leaving him, however, in possession of his whole salary,
also of the right of public teaching), on the ground and after
the publication of a judgment of the consistory which found him
guilty of heretical alteration of all the fundamental doctrines
of the Christian faith and the Lutheran confession, and sought to
prove this verdict from his writings. As might have been foreseen,
this step was followed by a loud outcry by all journals; but even
Lutherans, like Von Hofmann, Von Scheurl [Scheuerl], and Luthardt,
objected to the proceedings of the government as exceeding the
law laid down by the ecclesiastical ordinance and the opinion
of the consistory as resting upon misunderstanding, arbitrary
supposition and inconsequent conclusion.
§ 195. BAVARIA.
Catholic Bavaria, originally an electorate, but raised in 1806, by
Napoleon’s favour, into a royal sovereignty, to which had been adjudged
by the Vienna Congress considerable territories in Franconia and the
Palatine of the Rhine with a mainly Protestant population, attempted
under Maximilian Joseph (IV.) I., after the manner of Napoleon,
despotically to pass a liberal system of church polity, but found
itself obliged again to yield, and under Louis I. became again the
chief retreat of Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism of the most pronounced
ultramontane pattern. It was under the noble and upright king,
Maximilian II., that the evangelical church of the two divisions of
the kingdom, numbering two-thirds of the population, first succeeded in
securing the unrestricted use of their rights. Nevertheless, Catholic
Bavaria remained, or became, the unhappy scene of the wildest demagogic
agitation of the Catholic clergy and of the Bavarian “Patriots” who
played their game, whose patriotism consisted only in mad hatred of
Prussia and fanatical ultramontanism. Yet King Louis II., after the
brilliant successes of the Franco-German war, could not object to the
proposal of November 30th, 1870, to found a new German empire under a
Prussian and therefore a Protestant head.
§ 195.1. =The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under Maximilian I.,
1799-1825.=--Bavaria boasted with the most unfeigned delight
after the uprooting of Protestantism in its borders as then
defined (§ 151, 1), that it was the most Catholic, _i.e._ the
most ultramontane and most bigoted, of German-speaking lands, and,
after a short break in this tradition by Maximilian Joseph III.
(§ 165, 10), went forth again with full sail, under Charles
Theodore, 1777-1779, on the old course. But the thoroughly
new aspect which this state assumed on the overthrow of the
old German empire, demanded an adapting territorially of the
civil and ecclesiastical life in accordance with the relations
which it owed to its present political position. The new elector
Maximilian Joseph IV., who as king styled himself Maximilian I.,
transferred the execution of this task to his liberal, energetic,
and thoroughly fearless minister, Count Montgelas, 1799-1817.
In January, 1802, it was enacted that all cloisters should
be suppressed, and that all cathedral foundations should be
secularized; and these enactments were immediately carried out
in an uncompromising manner. Even in 1801 the qualification
of Protestants to exercise the rights of Bavarian citizens
was admitted, and a religious edict of 1803 guaranteed to all
Christian confessions full equality of civil and political
privileges. To the clergy was given the control of education,
and to the gymnasia and universities a considerable number of
foreigners and Protestants received appointments. In all respects
the sovereignty of the state over the church and the clergy was
very decidedly expressed, the episcopate at all points restricted
in its jurisdiction, the training of the clergy regulated
and supervised on behalf of the state, the patronage of all
pastorates and benefices usurped by the government, even
public worship subjected to state control by the prohibition
of superstitious practices, etc. But amid many other infelicities
of this autocratic procedure was specially the gradual dying out
of the old race of bishops, which obliged the government to seek
again an understanding with Rome; and so it actually happened
in June, 1817, after Montgelas’ dismissal, that a concordat was
drawn up. By this the Roman Catholic apostolic religion secured
throughout the whole kingdom those rights and prerogatives which
were due to it according to divine appointment and canonical
ordinances, which, strictly taken, meant supremacy throughout the
land. In addition, two archbishoprics and seven bishoprics were
instituted, the restoration of several cloisters was agreed to,
and the unlimited administration of theological seminaries, the
censorship of books, the superintendance of public schools and
free correspondence with the holy see were allowed to the bishops.
On the other hand, the king was given the choice of bishops (to
be confirmed by the pope), the nomination of a great part of
the priests and canons, and the _placet_ for all hierarchical
publications. After many vain endeavours to obtain amendments,
the king at last, on October 17th, ratified this concordat;
but, to mollify his highly incensed Protestant subjects, he
delayed the publication of it till the proclamation of the new
civil constitution on May 18th following. The concordat was
then adopted, as an appendage to an edict setting forth the
ecclesiastical supremacy of the state, securing perfect freedom
of conscience to all subjects, as well as equal civil rights to
members of the three Christian confessions, and demanding from
them equal mutual respect. The irreconcilableness of this edict
with the concordat was evident, and the newly appointed bishops
as well as the clerical parliamentary deputies, declared by papal
instruction that they could not take the oath to the constitution
without reservation, until the royal statement of Tegernsee,
September 21st, that the oath taken by Catholic subjects simply
referred to civil relations, and that the concordat had also the
validity of a law of the state, induced the curia to agree to
it. But the government nevertheless continued to insist as before
upon the supremacy of the state over the church, enlarged the
claims of the royal _placet_, put the free intercourse with
Rome again under state control, arbitrarily disposed of church
property and supervised the theological examinations of the
seminarists, made the appointment of all clergy dependent on
its approbation, and refused to be misled in anything by the
complaints and objections of the bishops.
§ 195.2. =The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under Louis I.,
1825-1848.=--Zealous Catholic as the new king was, he still
held with unabated tenacity to the sovereign rights of the crown,
and the extreme ultramontane ministry of Von Abel from 1837
was the first to wring from him any relaxations, _e.g._ the
reintroduction of free intercourse between the bishops and the
holy see without any state control. But it could not obtain the
abolition of the _placet_, and just as little the eagerly sought
permission of the return of the Jesuits. On the other hand the
allied order of Redemptorists was allowed, whose missions among
the Bavarian people, however, the king soon made dependent
on a permission to be from time to time renewed. His tolerant
disposition toward the Protestants was shown in 1830, by his
refusing the demand of the Catholic clergy for a Reverse in
mixed marriages, and recognising Protestant sponsors at Catholic
baptisms. But yet his honourable desire to be just even to
the Protestants of his realm was often paralysed, partly by
his own ultramontane sympathies, partly and mainly by the
immense influence of the Abel ministry, and the religious
freedom guaranteed them by law in 1818 was reduced and restricted.
Among other things the Protestant press was on all sides gagged
by the minister, while the Catholic press and preaching enjoyed
unbridled liberty. Great as the need was in southern Bavaria the
government had strictly forbidden the taking of any aid from the
_Gustavus Adolphus Verein_. Louis saw even in the name of this
society a slight thrown on the German name, and was specially
offended at its vague, nearly negative attitude towards the
confession. Yet he had no hesitation in affording an asylum in
Catholic Bavaria to the Lutheran confessor Scheibel (§ 177, 2)
whom Prussian diplomacy had driven out of Lutheran Saxony,
and did not prevent the university of Erlangen, after its dead
orthodoxy had been reawakened by the able Reformed preacher
Krafft (died 1845), becoming the centre of a strict Lutheran
church consciousness in life as well as science for all
Germany. The adoration order of 1838, which required even the
Protestant soldiers to kneel before the host as a military salute,
occasioned great discontent among the Protestant population,
and many controversial pamphlets appeared on both sides. When
finally the parliament in 1845 took up the complaint of the
Protestants, a royal proclamation followed by which the usually
purely military salute formerly in use was restored. In 1847 the
ultramontane party, with Abel at its head, fell into disfavour
with the king, on account of its honourable attitude in the
scandal which the notorious Lola Montez caused in the circle of
the Bavarian nobility; but in 1848 Louis was obliged, through the
revolutionary storm that burst over Bavaria, to resign the crown.
§ 195.3. =The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under Maximilian II.,
1848-1864, and Louis II.= (died 1886).--Much more thoroughly
than his father did Maximilian II. strive to act justly toward
the Protestant as well as the Catholic church, without however
abating any of the claims of constitutional supremacy on the
part of the state. In consequence of the Würzburg negotiations
(§ 192, 4), the Bavarian bishops assembled at Freysing, in
November, 1850, presented a memorial, in which they demanded the
withdrawal of the religious edict included in the constitution
of 1818, as in all respects prejudicial to the rights of the
church granted by the concordat, and set forth in particular
those points which were most restrictive to the free and
proper development of the catholic church. The result was
the publication in April, 1852, of a rescript which, while
maintaining all the principles of state administration hitherto
followed, introduced in detail various modifications, which,
on the renewal of the complaints in 1854, were somewhat further
increased as the fullest and final measure of surrender.--The
change brought about 1866 in the relation of Bavaria to North
Germany led the government under Louis II. to introduce liberal
reforms, and the offensive and defensive alliance which the
government concluded with the heretical Prussia, the failure of
all attempts on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war to force
it in violation of treaty to maintain neutrality, and then to
prevent Bavaria becoming part of the new German empire founded in
1871 at the suggestion of her own king, roused to the utmost the
wrath of the Bavarian clerical patriots. In the conflicts of the
German government, in 1872, against the intolerable assumptions,
claims and popular tumults of the ultramontane clergy, the
department of public worship, led by Lutz, inclined to take
an energetic part. But this was practically limited to the
passing of the so-called _Kanzelparagraphen_ (§ 197, 4) in
the _Reichstag_. Comp. § 197, 14.
§ 195.4. =Attempts at Reorganization of the Lutheran
Church.=--Since 1852, Dr. von Harless (§ 182, 13), as president
of the upper consistory at Munich, stood at the head of the
Lutheran church of Bavaria. Under his presidency the general
synod at Baireuth in 1853 showed a vigorous activity in the
reorganization of the church. On the basis of its proceedings
the upper consistory ordered the introduction of an admirable
new hymnbook. This occasioned considerable disagreement. But when,
in 1856, the upper consistory issued a series of enactments on
worship and discipline, a storm, originating in Nuremberg, burst
forth in the autumn of that same year, which raged over the whole
kingdom and attacked even the state church itself. The king was
assailed with petitions, and the spiritual courts went so far in
faint-heartedness as to put the acceptance and non-acceptance of
its ordinances to the vote of the congregations. Meanwhile the
time had come for calling another general synod (1857). An order
of the king as head of the church abolished the union of the
two state synods in a general synod which had existed since 1849,
and forbad all discussion of matters of discipline. Hence instead
of one, two synods assembled, the one in October at Anspach, the
other in November at Baireuth. Both, consisting of equal numbers
of lay and clerical members, maintained a moderate attitude,
relinquishing none of the privileges of the church or the
prerogatives of the upper consistory, and yet contributed greatly
to the assuaging of the prevalent excitement. Also the lay and
clerical members of the subsequent reunited general synods held
every fourth year for the most part co-operated successfully
on moderate church lines. The synod held at Baireuth in 1873
unanimously rejected an address sent from Augsburg inspired by
“Protestant Union” sympathies, as to their mind “for the most
part indistinct and where distinct unevangelical.”
§ 195.5. =The Church of the Union in the Palatine of the
Rhine.=--In the Bavarian =Palatine of the Rhine= the union had
been carried out in 1818 on the understanding that the symbolical
books of both confessions should be treated with due respect, but
no other standard recognised than holy scripture. When therefore
the Erlangen professor, Dr. Rust, in 1832 appeared in the
consistory at Spires and the court for that time had endeavoured
to fill up the Palatine union with positive Christian contents,
204 clerical and lay members of the Diocesan Synod presented
to the assembly of the states of the realm, opportunely meeting
in 1837, a complaint against the majority of the consistory.
As this memorial yielded practically no result, the opposition
wrought all the more determinedly for the severance of the
Palatine church from the Munich Upper Consistory. This was first
accomplished in the revolutionary year 1848. An extraordinary
general synod brought about the separation, and gave to the
country a new democratic church constitution. But the reaction
of the blow did not stop there. The now independent consistory at
Spires, from 1853 under the leadership of Ebrard, convened in the
autumn of that year a general synod, which made the _Augustana
Variata_ of 1540 as representing the consensus between the
_Augustana_ of 1530 and the Heidelberg as well as the Lutheran
catechism, the confessional standard of the Palatine church,
and set aside the democratic election law of 1848. When now the
consistory, purely at the instance of the general synod of 1853,
submitted to the diocesan synod in 1856 the proofs of a new
hymnbook, the liberal party poured out its bitter indignation
upon the system of doctrine which it was supposed to favour.
But the diocesan synods admitted the necessity of introducing
a new hymnbook and the suitability of the sketch submitted,
recommending, however, its further revision so that the recension
of the text might be brought up to date and that an appendix
of 150 new hymns might be added. The hymnbook thus modified was
published in 1859, and its introduction into church use left to
the judgment of presbyteries, while its use in schools and in
confirmation instruction was insisted upon forthwith. This called
forth protest after protest. The government wished from the
first to support the synodal decree, but in presence of growing
disturbance, changed its attitude, recommended the consistory
to observe decided moderation so as to restore peace, and
in February, 1861, called a general synod which, however, in
consequence of the prevailingly strict ecclesiastical tendencies
of its members, again expressed itself in favour of the new
hymnbook. Its conclusions were meanwhile very unfavourably
received by the government. Ebrard sought and obtained liberty
to resign, and even at the next synod, in 1869, the consistory
went hand in hand with the liberal majority.
§ 196. THE SOUTH GERMAN SMALLER STATES AND
RHENISH ALSACE AND LORRAINE.
The Protestant princely houses of South Germany had by the Lüneville
[Luneville] Peace obtained such an important increase of Catholic
subjects, that they had to make it their first care to arrange their
delicate relations by concluding a concordat with the papal curia in a
manner satisfactory to state and church. But all negotiations broke down
before the exorbitant claims of Rome, until the political restoration
movements of 1850 led to modifications of them hitherto undreamed of.
The concordats concluded during this period were not able to secure
enforcement over against the liberal current that had set in with
redoubled power in 1860, and so one thing after another was thrown
overboard. Even in the Protestant state churches this current made
itself felt in the persistent efforts, which also proved successful, to
secure the restoration of a representative synodal constitution which
would give to the lay element in the congregations a decided influence.
§ 196.1. =The Upper Rhenish Church Province.=--The governments
of the South German States gathered in 1818 at Frankfort, to
draw up a common concordat with Rome. But owing to the utterly
extravagant pretensions nothing further was reached than a new
delimitation in the bull “_Provida sollersque_,” 1821, of the
bishoprics in the so-called Upper Rhenish Church Province: the
archbishopric of Freiburg for Baden and the two Hohenzollern
principalities, the bishoprics of Mainz for Hesse-Darmstadt,
Fulda for Hesse-Cassel, Rottenburg for Württemberg, Limburg for
Nassau and Frankfort; and even this was given effect to only
in 1827, after long discussions, with the provision (bull _Ad
dominicæ gregis custodiam_) that the choice of the bishops should
issue indeed from the chapter, but that the territorial lord
might strike out objectionable names in the list of candidates
previously submitted to him. The actual equality of Protestants
and Catholics which the pope had not been able to allow in the
concordat, was now in 1880 proclaimed by the princes as the
law of the land. Papal and episcopal indulgences had to receive
approval before their publication; provincial and diocesan
synods could be held only with approval of the government and
in presence of the commissioners of the prince; taxes could not
be imposed by any ecclesiastical court; appeal could be made to
the civil court against abuse of spiritual power; those preparing
for the priesthood should receive scientific training at the
universities, practical training in the seminaries for priests,
etc. The pope issued a brief in which he characterized these
conditions as scandalous novelties, and reminded the bishops of
Acts v. 29. But only the Bishop of Fulda followed this advice,
with the result that the Catholic theological faculty at Marburg
was after a short career closed again, and the education of the
priests given over to the seminary at Fulda. Hesse-Darmstadt
founded a theological faculty at Giessen in 1830; Baden had one
already in Freiburg, and Würtemberg [Württemberg] had in 1817
affiliated the faculty at Ellwanger with the university of
Tübingen, and endowed it with the revenues of a rich convent. In
all these faculties alongside of rigorous scientific exactness
there prevailed a noble liberalism without the surrender of
the fundamental Catholic faith. The revolutionary year, 1848,
first gave the bishops the hope of a successful struggle for
the unconditional freedom of the church. In order to enforce the
Würzburg decrees (§ 192, 4), the five bishops issued in 1851 a
joint memorial. As the governments delayed their answer, they
declared in 1852 that they would immediately act as if all had
been granted them; and when at last the answer came, on most
points unfavourable, they said in 1853, that, obeying God rather
than man, they would proceed wholly in accordance with canon law.
§ 196.2. =The Catholic Troubles in Baden down to 1873.=--The
Grand Duchy of Baden, with two-thirds of its population Catholic,
where in 1848 the revolution had shattered all the foundations
of the state, and where besides a young ruler had taken the
reins of government in his hands only in 1852, seemed in spite
of the widely prevalent liberality of its clergy, the place best
fitted for such an attempt. The Archbishop of Freiburg, =Herm.
von Vicari=, in 1852, now in his eighty-first year, began by
arbitrarily stopping, on the evening of May 9th, the obsequies of
the deceased grand-duke appointed by the Catholic Supreme Church
Council for May 10th, prohibiting at the same time the saying
of mass for the dead (_pro omnibus defunctis_) usual at Catholic
burials, but in Baden and Bavaria hitherto not refused even to
Protestant princes. More than one hundred priests, who disobeyed
the injunction, were sentenced to perform penances. In the
following year he openly declared that he would forthwith carry
out the demands of the episcopal memorial, and did so immediately
by appointing priests in the exercise of absolute authority;
and by holding entrance examinations to the seminary without
the presence of royal commissioners as required by law. As a
warning remained unheeded, the government issued the order that
all episcopal indulgences must before publication be subscribed
by a grand-ducal special commissioner appointed for the purpose.
Against him, as well as against all the members of the Supreme
Church Council, the archbishop proclaimed the ban, issued a
fulminating pastoral letter, which was to have been read with
the excommunication in all churches, and ordered preaching for
four weeks for the instruction of the people on these matters.
At the same time he solemnly protested against all supremacy
of the state over the church. The government drove the Jesuits
out of the country, forbad the reading of the pastoral, and
punished disobedient priests with fines and imprisonment.
But the archbishop, spurred on by Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz,
advanced more boldly and recklessly than ever. In May, 1854,
the government introduced a criminal process against him,
during the course of which he was kept prisoner in his own house.
The attempts of his party to arouse the Catholic population
by demonstrations had no serious result. At the close of the
investigation the archbishop was released from his confinement
and continued the work as before. The government, however, still
remained firm, and punished every offence. In June, 1855, however,
a provisional agreement was published, and finally in June, 1859,
a formal concordat, the bull _Æterni patris_, was concluded with
Rome, its concessions to the archbishop almost exceeding even
those of Austria (§ 198, 2). In spite of ministerial opposition
the second chamber in March, 1860, brought up the matter before
its tribunal, repudiated the right of the government to conclude
a convention with Rome without the approbation of the states of
the realm, and forbad the grand-duke to enforce it. He complied
with this demand, dismissed the ministry, insisted, in answer
to the papal protest, on his obligation to respect the rights of
the constitution, and on October 9th, 1860, sanctioned jointly
with the chambers a law on the legal position of the Catholic and
Protestant churches in the state. The archbishop indeed declared
that the concordat could not be abolished on one side, and still
retain the force of law, but in presence of the firm attitude
of the government he desisted, and satisfied himself with giving
in 1861 a grudging acquiescence, by which he secured to himself
greater independence than before in regard to imposing of dues
and administration of the church property. Conflicts with the
archbishop, however, and with the clerical minority in the
chamber, still continued. The archbishop died in 1868. His see
remained vacant, as the chapter and the government could not
agree about the list of candidates; the interim administration
was carried on by the vicar-general, Von Kübel (died 1881),
as administrator of the archdiocese, quite in the spirit of
his predecessor. The law of October 9th, 1860, had prescribed
evidence of general scientific culture as a condition of
appointment to an ecclesiastical office in the Protestant as well
as the Catholic church. Later ordinances required in addition:
Possession of Baden citizenship, having passed a favourable
examination on leaving the university, a university course of at
least two and half years, attendance upon at least three courses
of lectures in the philosophical faculty, and finally also an
examination before a state examining board, within one and half
years of the close of the university curriculum, in the Latin
and Greek languages, history of philosophy, general history,
and the history of German literature (later also the so called
_Kulturexamen_). The Freiburg curia, however, protested, and in
1867 forbad clergy and candidates to submit to this examination
or to seek a dispensation from it. The result was, that forthwith
no clergymen could be definitely appointed, but up to 1874 no
legal objection was made to interim appointments of parochial
administrators. The educational law of 1868 abolished the
confessional character of the public schools. In 1869 state
recognition was withdrawn from the festivals of Corpus Christi,
the holy apostles, and Mary, as also, on the other hand, from the
festivals of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In 1870 obligatory
civil marriage was introduced, while all compulsion to observe
the baptismal, confirmational, and funeral rites of the church
was abolished, and a law on the legal position of benevolent
institutions was passed to withdraw these as much as possible
from the administration of the ecclesiastical authorities. On
the subsequent course of events in Baden, see § 197, 14.
§ 196.3. =The Protestant Troubles in Baden.=--The union of the
Lutheran and Reformed churches was carried out in the Grand Duchy
of Baden in 1821. It recognised the normative significance of the
_Augustana_, as well as the Lutheran and Heidelberg catechisms,
in so far as by it the free examination of scripture as the
only source of Christian faith, is again expressly demanded
and applied. A synod of 1834 provided this state church with
union-rationalistic agenda, hymnbook, and catechism. When there
also a confessional Lutheran sentiment began again in the
beginning of 1850 to prevail, the church of the union opposed
this movement by gensdarmes, imprisonment and fines. The pastor
Eichhorn, and later also the pastor Ludwig, with a portion
of their congregations left the state church and attached
themselves to the Breslau Upper Church Conference, but amid
police interference could minister to their flocks only under
cloud of night. After long refusal the grand-duke at last in
1854 permitted the separatists the choice of a Lutheran pastor,
but persistently refused to recognise Eichhorn as such. Pastor
Haag, who would not give up the Lutheran distribution formula
at the Lord’s supper, was after solemn warning deposed in 1855.
On the other hand the positive churchly feeling became more
and more pronounced in the state church itself. In 1854 the old
rationalist members of the Supreme Church Council were silenced,
and Ullmann of Heidelberg was made president. Under his auspices
a general synod of 1855 presented a sketch of new church and
school books on the lines of the union consensus, with an
endeavour also to be just to the Lutheran views. The grand-duke
confirmed the decision and the country was silent. But when in
1858 the Supreme Church Council, on the ground of the Synodal
decision of 1855, promulgated the general introduction of a
new church book, a violent storm broke out through the country
against the liturgical novelties contained therein (extension
of the liturgy by confession of sin and faith, collects,
responses, Scripture reading, kneeling at the supper, the making
a confession of their faith by sponsors), the Heidelberg faculty,
with Dr. Schenkel at its head, leading the opposition in the
Supreme Church Council. Yet Hundeshagen, who in the synod had
opposed the introduction of a new agenda, entered the lists
against Schenkel and others as the apologist of the abused church
book. The grand-duke then decided that no congregation should be
obliged to adopt the new agenda, while the introduction of the
shorter and simpler form of it was recommended. The agitations
these awakened caused its rejection by most of the congregations.
Meanwhile in consequence of the concordat revolution in 1860, a
new liberal ministry had come into power, and the government now
presented to the chambers a series of thoroughly liberal schemes
for regulating the affairs of the evangelical church, which
were passed by large majorities. Toward the end of the year the
government, by deposing the Supreme Church Councillor Heintz,
began to assume the patronage of the supreme ecclesiastical court.
Ullmann and Bähr tendered their resignations, which were accepted.
The new liberal Supreme Church Council, including Holtzmann,
Rothe, etc., now published a sketch of a church constitution on
the lines of ecclesiastical constitutionalism, which with slight
modifications the synod of July, 1861, adopted and the grand-duke
confirmed. It provided for annual diocesan synods of lay and
clerical members, and a general synod every five years. The
latter consists of twenty-four clerical and twenty-four lay
members, and six chosen by the grand-duke, besides the prelate,
and is represented in the interval by a standing committee of
four members, who have also a seat and vote in the Supreme Church
Council.--Dr. Schenkel’s “_Leben Jesu_” of 1864 led the still
considerable party among the evangelical clergy who adhered to
the doctrine of the church to agitate for his removal from his
position as director of the Evangelical Pastors’ Seminary at
Heidelberg; but it resulted only in this, that no one was obliged
to attend his lectures. The second synod, held almost a year
behind time in 1867, passed a liberal ordination formula. At the
next synod in 1871, the orthodox pietistic party had evidently
become stronger, but was still overborne by the liberal party,
whose strength was in the lay element. Meanwhile a praiseworthy
moderation prevailed on both sides, and an effort was made
to work together as peaceably as possible.--In Heidelberg a
considerable number attached to the old faith, dissatisfied
with the preaching of the four “Free Protestant” city pastors,
after having been in 1868 refused their request for the joint use
of a city church for private services in accordance with their
religious convictions (§ 180, 1), had built for this purpose a
chapel of their own, in which numerously attended services were
held under the direction of Professor Frommel of the gymnasium.
When a vacancy occurred in one of the pastorates in 1880, this
believing minority, anxious for the restoration of unity and
peace, as well as the avoidance of the separation, asked to
have Professor Frommel appointed to the charge. At a preliminary
assembly of twenty-one liberal church members this proposal was
warmly supported by the president, Professor Bluntschli, by all
the theological professors, with the exception of Schenkel and
eighteen other liberal voters, and agreed to by the majority of
the two hundred liberals constituting the assembly. But when the
formal election came round the proposal was lost by twenty-seven
to fifty-one votes.
§ 196.4. =Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau.=--In 1819 the government
of the Grand Duchy of =Hesse= recommended the union of all
=Protestant= communities under one confession. Rhenish Hesse
readily agreed to this, and there in 1822 the union was
accomplished. In the other provinces, however, it did not take
effect, although by the rationalism fostered at Giessen among the
clergy and by the popular current of thought in the communities,
the Lutheran as well as the Reformed confession had been robbed
of all significance. But since 1850 even there a powerful
Lutheran reaction among the younger clergy, zealously furthered
by a section of the aristocracy of the state, set in, especially
in the district on the right bank of the Rhine, which has eagerly
opposed the equally eager struggles of the liberal party to
introduce a liberal synodal representative constitution for the
evangelical church of the whole state. These endeavours, however,
were frustrated, and at an extraordinary state synod of 1873, on
all controverted questions, the middle party gave their vote in
favour of the absorptive union. The state church was declared
to be the united church. The clause that had been added to the
government proposal: “Without prejudice to the status of the
confessions of the several communities,” was dropped; the place
of residence and not the confession was that which determined
qualifications in the community; the ordination now expressed
obligation to the Reformation confessions generally, etc. The
members of the minority broke off their connection with the
synod, and seventy-seven pastors presented to the synod a protest
against its decisions. The grand-duke then, on the basis of
these deliberations, gave forthwith a charter to the church
constitution, in which indeed the Lutheran, Reformed, and United
churches were embraced in one evangelical state church with
a common church government; but still also, by restoring the
phrase struck out by the synod from § 1, the then existing
confessional status of the several communities was preserved and
the confession itself declared beyond the range of legislation.
Yet fifteen Lutheran pastors represented that they could not
conscientiously accept this, and the upper consistory hastened to
remove them from office shortly before the shutting of the gates,
_i.e._, before July 1st, 1875, when by the new law (§ 197, 15)
depositions of clergy would belong only to the supreme civil
court. The opposing congregations now declared, in 1877, their
withdrawal from the state church, and constituted themselves as
a “free Lutheran church in Hesse.”--The =Catholic= church in the
Grand Duchy of Hesse, had under the peaceful bishops of Mainz,
Burg (died 1833) and Kaiser (died 1849), caused the government no
trouble. But it was otherwise after Kaiser’s death. Rome rejected
Professor Leopold Schmid of Giessen, favoured at Darmstadt
and regularly elected by the chapter (§ 187, 3), and the
government yielded to the appointment of the violent ultramontane
Westphalian, Baron von Ketteler. His first aim was the extinction
of the Catholic faculty at Giessen (§ 191, 2); he rested not
until the last student had been transferred from it to the
newly erected seminary at Mainz (1851). No less energetic and
successful were his endeavours to free the Catholic church from
the supremacy of the state in accordance with the Upper Rhenish
episcopal memorial. The Dalwigk ministry, in 1854, concluded a
“provisional agreement” with the bishop, which secured to him
unlimited autonomy and sovereignty in all ecclesiastical matters,
and, to satisfy the pope with his desiderata, these privileges
were still further extended in 1856. To this convention, first
made publicly known in 1860, the ministry, in spite of all
addresses and protests, adhered with unfaltering tenacity,
although long convinced of its consequences. The political events
of 1886, however, led the grand-duke in September of that year
to abrogate the hateful convention. But the minister as well
as the bishop considered this merely to refer to the episcopal
convention of 1850, and treated the agreement with the pope of
1856 as always still valid. So everything went on in the old way,
even after Ketteler’s supreme influence in the state had been
broken by the overthrow of Dalwigk in 1871. Comp. § 197, 15.--The
Protestant church in the Duchy of =Nassau= attached itself to
the union in 1817. The conflict in the Upper Rhenish church
overflowed even into this little province. The Bishop of Limburg,
in opposition to law and custom, appointed Catholic clergy on
his own authority, and excommunicated the Catholic officers
who supported the government, while the government arrested the
temporalities and instituted criminal proceedings against bishop
and chapter. After the conclusion of the Württemberg and Baden
concordats, the government showed itself disposed to adopt a
similar way out of the conflict, and in spite of all opposition
from the States concluded in 1861 a convention with the bishop,
by which almost all his hierarchical claims were admitted. Thus
it remained until the incorporation of Nassau in the Prussian
kingdom in 1866.
§ 196.5. In =Protestant Württemberg= a religious movement among
the people reached a height such as it attained nowhere else.
Pietism, chiliasm, separatism, the holding of conventicles,
etc., assumed formidable dimensions; solid science, philosophical
culture, and then also philosophical and destructive critical
tendencies issuing from Tübingen affected the clergy of this
state. Dissatisfaction with various novelties in the liturgy,
the hymnbook, etc., led many formally to separate from the
state church. After attempts at compulsion had proved fruitless,
the government allowed the malcontents under the organizing
leadership of the burgomaster, G. W. Hoffman (died 1846), to form
in 1818 the community of Kornthal, with an ecclesiastical and
civil constitution of its own after the apostolic type. Others
emigrated to South Russia and to North America (§ 211, 6, 7).
Out of the pastoral work of pastor Blumhardt at Möttlingen, who
earnestly preached repentance, there was developed, in connection
with the healing of a demoniac, which had been accompanied with a
great awakening in the community, the “gift” of healing the sick
by absolution and laying on of hands with contrite believing
prayer. Blumhardt, in order to afford this gift undisturbed
exercise, bought the Bad Boll near Göppingen, and officiated
there as pastor and miraculous healer in the way described. He
died in 1880.--After the way to a synodal representation of the
whole evangelical state church had been opened up in 1851 by
the introduction, according to a royal ordinance, of parochial
councils and diocesan synods, the consistory having also in
1858 published a scheme referring thereto, the whole business
was brought to a standstill, until at last in 1867, by means
of a royal edict, the calling of a State Synod consisting of
twenty-five clerical and as many lay members was ordered, and
consequently in February, 1869, such a synod met for the first
time. Co-operation in ecclesiastical legislation was assigned
to it as its main task, while it had also the right to advise
in regard to proposals about church government, also to make
suggestions and complaints on such matters, but the confession
of the evangelical church was not to be touched, and lay entirely
outside of its province. A liberal enactment with regard to
dissenters was sanctioned by the chamber in 1870.
§ 196.6. =The Catholic Church in Württemberg.=--Even after
the founding of the bishopric of Rottenberg [Rottenburg] the
government maintained strictly the previously exercised rights of
sovereignty over the Catholic church, to which almost one-third
of the population belonged, and the almost universally prevalent
liberalism of the Catholic clergy found in this scarcely any
offence. A new order of divine service in 1837, which, with the
approval of the episcopal council, recommended the introduction
of German hymns in the services, dispensing the sacraments in
the German language, restriction of the festivals, masses, and
private masses, processions, etc., did indeed cause riots in
several places, in which, however, the clergy took no part. But
when in 1837, in consequence of the excitement caused throughout
Catholic Germany by the Cologne conflict (§ 193, 1), the hitherto
only isolated cases of lawless refusal to consecrate mixed
marriages had increased, the government proceeded severely to
punish offending clergymen, and transported to a village curacy
a Tübingen professor, Mack, who had declared the compulsory
celebration unlawful. Called to account by the nuncio of Munich
for his indolence in all these affairs and severely threatened,
old Bishop Keller at last resolved, in 1841, to lay before
the chamber a formal complaint against the injury done to the
Catholic church, and to demand the freeing of the church from
the sovereignty of the state. In the second chamber this motion
was simply laid _ad acta_, but in the first it was recommended
that the king should consider it. The bishop, however, and the
liberal chapter could not agree as to the terms of the demand,
contradictory opinions were expressed, and things remained
as they were. But Bishop Keller fell into melancholy and died
in 1845. His successor took his stand upon the memorial and
declaration of the Upper Rhenish bishops, and immediately in 1853
began the conflict by forbidding his clergy, under threats of
severe censure, to submit as law required to civil examinations.
The government that had hitherto so firmly maintained its
sovereign rights, under pressure of the influence which a lady
very nearly related to the king exercised over him, gave in
without more ado, quieted the bishop first of all by a convention
in 1854, and then entered into negotiations with the Roman curia,
out of which came in 1857 a concordat proclaimed by the bull
_Cum in sublimi_, which, in surrender of a sovereign right of
the state over the affairs of the church, far exceeds that of
Austria (§ 198, 2). The government left unheeded all protests and
petitions from the chambers for its abolition. But the example
of Baden and the more and more decided tone of the opposition
obliged the government at last to yield. The second chamber
in 1861 decreed the abrogation of the concordat, and a royal
rescript declared it abolished. In the beginning of 1862 a bill
was submitted by the new ministry and passed into law by both
chambers for determining the relations of the Catholic church to
the state. The royal _placet_ or right of permitting or refusing,
is required for all clerical enactments which are not purely
inter-ecclesiastical but refer to mixed matters; the theological
endowments are subject to state control and joint administration;
boys’ seminaries are not allowed; clergymen appointed to office
must submit to state examination; according to consuetudinary
rights, about two-thirds of the benefices are filled by the
king, one-third by the bishops on reporting to the civil court,
which has the right of protest; clergy who break the law are
removable by the civil court, etc. The curia indeed lodged
a protest, but the for the most part peace-loving clergy reared,
not in the narrowing atmosphere of the seminaries but amid
the scientific culture of the university, in the halls of
Tübingen, submitted all the more easily as they found that in
all inter-ecclesiastical matters they had greater freedom and
independence under the concordat than before.
§ 196.7. =The Imperial Territory of Alsace and Lorraine
since 1871.=--After Alsace with German Lorraine had again, in
consequence of the Franco-Prussian war, been united to Germany
and as an imperial territory had been placed under the rule
of the new German emperor, the secretary of the Papal States,
Cardinal Antonelli, in the confident hope of being able to secure
in return the far more favourable conditions, rights and claims
of the Catholic church in Prussia with the autocracy of the
bishops unrestricted by the state, declared in a letter to the
Bishop of Strassburg, that the concordat of 1801 (§ 203, 1) was
annulled. But when the imperial government showed itself ready
to accept the renunciation, and to make profit out of it in the
opposite way from that intended, the cardinal hasted in another
letter to explain how by the incorporation with Germany a new
arrangement had become necessary, but that clearly the old must
remain in force until the new one has been promulgated. Also a
petition of the Catholic clergy brought to Berlin by the bishop
himself, which laid claim to this unlimited dominion over all
Catholic educational and benevolent institutions, failed of
its purpose. The clergy therefore wrought for this all the
more zealously by fanaticizing the Catholic people in favour of
French and against German interests. On the epidemic about the
appearance of the mother of God called forth in this way, see
§ 188, 7. In 1874 the government found itself obliged to close
the so-called “little seminaries,” or boys’ colleges, on account
of their fostering sentiments hostile to the empire. Yet in
1880 the newly appointed imperial governor, Field-marshal von
Manteuffel (died 1885), at the request of the States-Committee,
allowed Bishop Räss of Strassburg to reopen the seminary at
Zillisheim, with the proviso that his teachers should be approved
by the government, and that instruction in the German language
should be introduced. Manteuffel has endeavoured since, by
yielding favours to the France-loving Alsatians and Lorrainers,
and to their ultramontane clergy, to win them over to the idea of
the German empire, even to the evident sacrifice of the interests
of resident Germans and of the Protestant church. But such
fondling has wrought the very opposite result to that intended.
§ 197. THE SO-CALLED KULTURKAMPF IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE.[550]
Ultramontanism had for the time being granted to the Prussian state,
which had not only allowed it absolutely free scope but readily aided
its growth throughout the realm (§ 193, 2), an indulgence for that
offence which is in itself unatoneable, having a Protestant dynasty.
Pius IX. had himself repeatedly expressed his satisfaction at the
conduct of the government. But the league which Prussia made in 1866
with the “church-robbing Sub-alpine,” _i.e._ Italian, government, was
not at all to the taste of the curia. The day of Sadowa, 3rd July, 1866,
called from Antonelli the mournful cry, _Il mondo cessa_, “The world has
gone to ruin,” and the still more glorious day of Sedan, 2nd September,
1870, completely put the bottom out of the Danaid’s vessel of
ultramontane forbearance and endurance. This day, 18th January, 1871,
had as its result the overthrow of the temporal power of the papacy as
well the establishment of a new and hereditary German empire under the
Protestant dynasty of the Prussian Hohenzollerns. German ultramontanism
felt itself all the more under obligation to demand from the new
emperor as the first expiation for such uncanonical usurpation, the
reinstatement of the pope in his lost temporal power. But when he did
not respond to this demand, the ultramontane party, by means of the
press favourable to its claims, formally declared war against the German
empire and its governments, and applied itself systematically to the
mobilization of its entire forces. But the empire and its governments,
with Prussia in the van, with unceasing determination, supported by
the majority of the States’ representatives, during the years 1871-1875
proceeded against the ultramontanes by legislative measures. The
execution of these by the police and the courts of law, owing to the
stubborn refusal to obey on the part of the higher and lower clergy, led
to the formation of an opposition, commonly designated after a phrase
of the Prussian deputy, Professor Virchow, “_Kulturkampf_,” which was
in some degree modified first in 1887. The imperial chancellor, Prince
Bismarck, uttered at the outset the confident, self-assertive statement,
“We go not to Canossa,”--and even in 1880, when it seemed as if a
certain measure of submission was coming from the side of the papacy,
and the Prussian government also showed itself prepared to make
important concessions, he declared, “We shall not buy peace with Canossa
medals; such are not minted in Germany.” Since 1880, however, the
Prussian government with increasing compliance from year to year set
aside and modified the most oppressive enactments of the May laws, so as
actually to redress distresses and inconveniences occasioned by clerical
opposition to these laws, without being able thereby to obtain any
important concession on the part of the papal curia, until at last in
1887, after the government had carried concession to the utmost limit,
the pope put his seal to definitive terms of peace by admitting the
right of giving information on the part of the bishops regarding
appointments to vacant pastorates, as well as the right of protest
on the part of the government against those thus nominated.
§ 197.1. =The Aggression of Ultramontanism.=--Even in the
revolution year, 1848, German ultramontanism, in order to obtain
what it called the freedom of the church, had zealously seconded
many of the efforts of democratic radicalism. Nevertheless, in
the years of reaction that followed, it succeeded in catching
most of the influential statesmen on the limed twig of the
assurance that the episcopal hierarchy, with its unlimited sway
over the clergy and through them over the feelings of the people,
constituted the only certain and dependable bulwark against the
revolutionary movements of the age, and this idea prevailed down
to 1860, and in Prussia down to 1871. But the overthrow of the
concordat in Baden, Württemberg and Darmstadt by the states of
the realm after a hard conflict, the humiliation of Austria in
1866, and the growth in so threatening a manner since of the
still heretical Prussia, produced in the whole German episcopate
a terrible apprehension that its hitherto untouched supremacy
in the state would be at an end, and in order to ward off this
danger it was driven into agitations and demonstrations partly
secret and partly open. On 8th October, 1868, the papal nuncio in
Munich, Monsignor Meglia, uttered his inmost conviction regarding
the Württemberg resident thus: “Only in America, England, and
Belgium does the Catholic church receive its rights; elsewhere
nothing can help us but the revolution.” And on 22nd April, 1869,
Bishop Senestray [Senestrey] of Regensburg declared plainly in a
speech delivered at Schwandorff: “If kings will no longer be of
God’s grace, I shall be the first to overthrow the throne....
Only a war or revolution can help us in the end.” And war at
last came, but it helped only their opponents. Although at
its outbreak in 1870 the ultramontane party in South Germany,
especially in Bavaria, for the most part with unexampled
insolence expressed their sympathy with France, and after the
brilliant and victorious close of the war did everything to
prevent the attachment of Bavaria to the new German empire, their
North German brethren, accustomed to the boundless compliance of
the Prussian government, indulged the hope of prosecuting their
own ends all the more successfully under the new regime. Even
in November, 1870, Archbishop Ledochowski of Posen visited the
victorious king of Prussia at Versailles, in order to interest
him personally in the restoration of the Papal States. In
February, 1871, in the same place, fifty-six Catholic deputies of
the Prussian parliament presented to the king, who had meanwhile
been proclaimed Emperor of Germany, a formal petition for
the restoration of the temporal power of the pope, and soon
afterwards a deputation of distinguished laymen waited upon
him “in name of all the Catholics of Germany,” with an address
directed to the same end. The _Bavarian Fatherland_ (Dr. Sigl)
indeed treated it with scorn as a “belly-crawling-deputation,
which crawled before the magnanimous hero-emperor, beseeching
him graciously to use said deputation as his spittoon.” And the
_Steckenberger Bote_, inspired by Dr. Ketteler, declared: “We
Catholics do not entreat it as a favour, but demand it as our
right.... Either you must restore the Catholic church to all
its privileges or not one of all your existing governments will
endure.” At the same time as the insinuation was spread that the
new German empire threatened the existence of the Catholic church
in Germany, a powerful ultramontane election agitation in view of
the next Reichstag was set on foot, out of which grew the party
of the “Centre,” so called from sitting in the centre of the hall,
with Von Ketteler, Windthorst, Mallinkrodt (died 1874), and the
two Reichenspergers, as its most eloquent leaders. Even in the
debate on the address in answer to the speech from the throne
this party demanded intervention, at first indeed only diplomatic,
in favour of the Papal States. In the discussion on the new
imperial constitution A. Reichensperger sought to borrow from
the abortive German landowners’ bill of 1848, condemned indeed as
godless by the syllabus (§ 185, 2), principles that might serve
the turn of ultramontanism regarding the unrestricted liberty
of the press, societies, meetings, and religion, with the most
perfect independence of all religious communities of the State.
Mallinkrodt insisted upon the need of enlarged privileges for
the Catholic church owing to the great growth of the empire
in Catholic territory and population. All these motions were
rejected by the Reichstag, and the Prussian government answered
them by abolishing in July, 1871, the Catholic department of
the Ministry of Public Worship, which had existed since 1841
(§ 193, 2). The _Genfer Korrespondenz_, shortly before highly
praised by the pope, declared: If kings do not help the papacy
to regain its rights, the papacy must also withdraw from them
and appeal directly to the hearts of the people. “Understand
ye the terrible range of this change? Your hours, O ye princes,
are numbered!” The Berlin _Germania_ pointed threateningly to
the approaching _revanche_ war in France, on the outbreak of
which the German empire would no longer be able to reckon on
the sympathy of its Catholic subjects; and the _Ellwanger kath.
Wochenblatt_ proclaimed openly that only France is able to guard
and save the Catholic church from the annihilating projects
of Prussia. And in this way the Catholic people throughout all
Germany were roused and incited by the Catholic press, as well as
from the pulpit and confessional, in home and school, in Catholic
monasteries and nunneries, in mechanics’ clubs and peasants’
unions, in casinos and assemblies of nobles. Bishop Ketteler
founded expressly for purposes of such agitations the Mainz
Catholic Union, in September, 1871, which by its itinerant
meetings spread far and wide the flame of religious fanaticism;
and a Bavarian priest, Lechner, preached from the pulpit that
one does not know whether the German princes are by God’s or by
the devil’s grace.
§ 197.2. =Conflicts Occasioned by Protection of the Old Catholics,
1871-1872.=--That the Prussian government refused to assist
the bishops in persecuting the Old Catholics, and even retained
these in their positions after excommunication had been hurled
against them, was regarded by those bishops as itself an act
of persecution of the Catholic church. To this opinion they
gave official expression, under solemn protest against all
encroachments of the state upon the domain of Catholic faith and
law, in a memorial addressed to the German emperor from Fulda, on
September 7th, 1871, but were told firmly and decidedly to keep
within their own boundaries. Even before this Bishop =Krementz
of Ermeland= had refused the _missio canonica_ to Dr. Wollmann,
teacher of religion at the Gymnasium of Braunsberg, on account
of his refusing to acknowledge the dogma of infallibility, and
had forbidden Catholic scholars to attend his instructions.
The minister of public worship, Von Mühler, decided, because
religious instruction was obligatory in the Prussian gymnasia,
that all Catholic scholars must attend or be expelled from the
institution. The Bavarian government followed a more correct
course in a similar case that arose about the same time; for
it recognised and protected the religious instructions of the
anti-infallibilist priest, Renftle in Mering, as legitimate, but
still allowed parents who objected to withhold their children
from it. And in this way the new Prussian minister, Falk,
corrected his predecessor’s mistake. But all the more decidedly
did the government proceed against Bishop Krementz, when
he publicly proclaimed the excommunication uttered against
Dr. Wollmann and Professor Michelis, which had been forbidden by
Prussian civil law on account of the infringement of civil rights
connected therewith according to canon law. As the bishop could
not be brought to an explicit acknowledgment of his obligation
to obey the laws of the land, the minister of public worship
on October 1st, 1872, stripped him of his temporalities.
But meanwhile a second conflict had broken out. The Catholic
field-provost of the Prussian army and bishop _in partibus_,
Namszanowski, had under papal direction commanded the
Catholic divisional chaplain, Lünnemann of Cologne, on pain
of excommunication, to discontinue the military worship in the
garrison chapel, which, by leave of the military court, was
jointly used by the Old Catholics, and so was desecrated. He
was therefore brought before a court of discipline, suspended
from his office in May, 1872, and finally, by royal ordinance
in 1873, the office of field-provost was wholly abolished.
§ 197.3. =Struggles over Educational Questions, 1872-1873.=--In
the formerly Polish provinces of the Prussian kingdom the
Polonization of resident Catholic Germans had recently assumed
threatening proportions. The archbishop of Posen and Gnesen,
Count =Ledochowski=, whom the pope during the Vatican Council
appointed primate of Poland, was the main centre of this
agitation. In the Posen priest seminary he formed for himself,
in a fanatically Polish clergy, the tools for carrying it out,
and in the neighbouring Schrimm he founded a Jesuit establishment
that managed the whole movement. Where previously Polish and
German had been preached alternately, German was now banished,
and in the public schools, the oversight of which, as throughout
all Prussia, lay officially in the hands of the clergy, all means
were used to discourage the study of the German language, and
to stamp out the German national sentiment. But even in the two
western provinces the Catholic public schools were made by the
clerical school inspectors wholly subservient to the designs of
ultramontanism. In order to stem such disorder the government,
in February, 1872, sanctioned the =School Inspection Law=
passed by the parliament, by which the right and duty of school
inspection was transferred from the church to the state, so that
for the sake of the state the clerical inspectors hostile to the
government were set aside, and where necessary might be replaced
by laymen. A pastoral letter of the Prussian bishops assembled
at Fulda in April of that year complained bitterly of persecution
of the church and unchristianizing of the schools, but advised
the Catholic clergy under no circumstances voluntarily to resign
school inspection where it was not taken from them. By a rescript
of the minister of public worship in June, the exclusion of all
members of spiritual orders and congregations from teaching in
public schools was soon followed by the suppression of the Marian
congregations in all schools, and it was enjoined in March, 1873,
that in Polish districts, where other subjects had been taught in
the higher educational institutions in the German language, this
also would be obligatory in religious instruction. Ledochowski
indeed directed all religious teachers in his diocese to use the
Polish language after as they had done before, but the government
suspended all teachers who followed his direction, and gave
over the religious instruction to lay teachers. The archbishop
now erected private schools for the religious instruction of
gymnasial teachers, and the government forbad attendance at them.
§ 197.4. =The Kanzelparagraph and the Jesuit law,
1871-1872.=--While thus the Prussian government took more and
more decided measures against the ultramontanism that had become
so rampant in its domains, on the other hand, its mobile band
of warriors in cassock, dress coat, and blouse did not cease to
labour, and the imperial government passed some drastic measures
of defence applicable to the whole empire. At the instance of
the Bavarian government, which could not defend itself from
the violence of its “patriots,” the Federal Council asked the
Reichstag to add a new article to the penal code of the empire,
threatening any misuse of the pulpit for political agitation
with imprisonment for two years. The Bavarian minister of public
worship, Lutz, undertook himself to support this bill before
the Reichstag. “For several decades,” he said, “the clergy
in Germany have assumed a new character; they are become the
simple reflection of Jesuitism.” The Reichstag sanctioned the
bill in December, 1871. Far more deeply than this so-called
=Kanzelparagraph=, the operation of which the agitation of the
clergy by a little circumspection could easily elude, did the
=Jesuit Law=, published on July 4th, 1872, cut into the flesh
of German ultramontanism. Already in April of that year had a
petition from Cologne demanding the expulsion of the Jesuits
been presented to the Reichstag. Similar addresses flowed in
from other places. The Centre party, on the other hand, organized
a regular flood of petitions in favour of the Jesuits. The
Reichstag referred both to the imperial chancellor, with the
request to introduce a law against the movements of the Jesuits
as dangerous to the State. The Federal Council complied with this
request, and so the law was passed which ordained the removal
of the Jesuits and related orders and congregations, the closing
of their institutions within six months, and prohibited the
formation of any other orders by their individual members, and
the government authorised the banishment of foreign members and
the interning of natives at appointed places. A later ordinance
of the Federal Council declared the Redemptorists, Lazarists,
Priests of the Holy Ghost, and the Society of the Heart of Jesus
to be orders related to the Society of Jesus. Those affected
by this law anticipated the threatened interning by voluntarily
removing to Belgium, Holland, France, Turkey, and America.
§ 197.5. =The Prussian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1873-1875.=--In
order to be able to check ultramontanism, even in its pædagogical
breeding places, the episcopal colleges and seminaries, and at
the same time to restrict by law the despotic absolutism of the
bishops in disciplinary and beneficiary matters, the Prussian
government brought in other four ecclesiastical bills, which in
spite of violent opposition on the part of the Centre and the
Old Conservatives, were successively passed by both houses of
parliament, and approved by the king on May 11th, 12th, 13th,
and 14th, 1873. Their most important provisions are: As a
condition for admission to a spiritual office the state requires
citizenship of the German empire, three years’ study at a German
university, and, besides an exit gymnasial examination preceding
the university course, a state examination in general knowledge
(in philosophy, history, and German literature), in addition to
the theological examination. The episcopal boys’ seminaries and
colleges are abolished. The priest seminaries, if the minister
of worship regards them as fit for the purpose, may take the
place of the university course, but must be under regular state
inspection. The candidates for spiritual offices, which must
never be left vacant more than a year, are to be named to the
chief president of the province, and he can for cogent reasons
lodge a protest against them. Secession from the church is
freely allowed, and releases from all personal obligations
to pay ecclesiastical dues and perform ecclesiastical duties.
Excommunication is permissible, but can be proclaimed only
in the congregation concerned, and not publicly. The power of
church discipline over the clergy can be exercised only by German
superiors and in accordance with fixed processional procedure.
Corporal punishment is not permissible, fines are allowed
to a limited extent, and restraint by interning in so-called
_Demeriti_ houses, but only at furthest of three months, and when
the party concerned willingly consents. Church servants, whose
remaining in office is incompatible with the public order, can
be deposed by civil sentence. And as final court of appeal in all
cases of complaint between ecclesiastical and civil authorities
as well as within the ecclesiastical domain, a royal court
of justice for ecclesiastical affairs is constituted, whose
proceedings are open and its decision final.--But even the
May Laws soon proved inadequate for checking the insolence of
the bishops and the disorders among the Catholic population
occasioned thereby. In December, 1873, therefore, by sovereign
authority there was prescribed a new formula of the episcopal
Oath of Allegiance, recognising more distinctly and decisively
the duty of obedience to the laws of the state. Then next a bill
was presented to the parliament, which had been kept in view in
the original constitution, demanding obligatory civil marriage
and abolition of compulsory baptism, as well as the conducting
of civil registration by state officials. In February, 1874, it
was passed into law. On the 20th and 21st =May, 1874=, two other
bills brought in for extending the May Laws of the previous
year, in consequence of which a bishop’s see vacated by death,
a judicial sentence, or any other cause, must be filled within
the space of a year, and the chapter must elect within ten days
an episcopal administrator, who has to be presented to the chief
president, and to undertake an oath to obey the laws of the
state. If the chapter does not fulfil these requirements, a lay
commissioner will be appointed to administer the affairs of the
diocese. During the episcopal vacancy, all vacant pastorates, as
well as all not legally filled, can be at once validly supplied
by the act of the patron, and, where no such right exists,
by congregational election. Parochial property, on the illegal
appointment of a pastor, is given over to be administered by a
lay commissioner.--The empire also came to the help of the May
Laws by an imperial enactment of May 4th, 1874, sanctioned by the
emperor, which empowers the competent state government to intern
all church officers discharged from their office and not yielding
submission thereto, as well as all punished on account of
incompetence in their official duties, and, if this does not help,
to condemn them to loss of their civil rights and to expulsion
from the German federal territory.--Also in its next session the
imperial house of representatives again gave legislative sanction
to the _Kulturkampf_; for in January, 1875, it passed a bill
presented by the Federal Council on the deposition on oath as
to personal rank, and on divorce with obligatory civil marriage,
which, going far beyond the Prussian civil law of the previous
year, and especially ridding Bavaria of its strait-jacket canon
marriage law enforced by the concordat, abolished the spiritual
jurisdiction in favour of that of the civil courts, and gave it
to the state to determine the qualifications for, as well as the
hindrances to, divorce, without, however, touching the domain of
conscience, or entrenching in any way upon the canon law and the
demands of the church.
§ 197.6. =Opposition in the States to the Prussian May
Laws.=--Bishop Martin of Paderborn had even beforehand refused
obedience to the May Laws of 1873. After their promulgation, all
the Prussian bishops collectively declared to the ministry that
“they were not in a position to carry out these laws,” with the
further statement that they could not comply even with those
demands in them which in other states, by agreement with the pope,
are acknowledged by the church, because they are administered
in a one-sided way by the state in Prussia. On these lines also
they proceeded to take action. First of all, the refractoriness
of several of the seminaries drew down upon them the loss of
endowment and of the right of representation; and in the next
place, the refusal of the bishops to notify their appointment of
clergymen led to their being frequently fined, while the church
books and seals were taken away from clergymen so appointed,
all the official acts performed by them were pronounced invalid
in civil law, and those who performed them were subjected to
fines. But here, too, again Bishop Martin, well skilled in church
history (he had been previously professor of theology in Bonn),
had beforehand in a pastoral instructed his clergy that “since
the days of Diocletian there had not been seen so violent
a persecution of the name of Jesus Christ.” Soon after this
Archbishop Ledochowski, in an official document addressed to
the Chief President of Poland, compared the demand to give
notification of clerical appointments with the demand of ancient
Rome upon Christian soldiers to sacrifice to the heathen gods.
And by order of the pope prayers were offered in all churches for
the church so harshly and cruelly persecuted. And yet the whole
“persecution” then consisted in nothing more than this, that a
newly issued law of the state, under threat of fine in case of
disobedience, demanded again of the bishops paid by the state
what had been accepted for centuries as unobjectionable in the
originally Catholic Bavaria, and also for a long while in France,
Portugal, and other Romish countries, what all Prussian bishops
down to 1850 (§ 193, 2) had done without scruple, what the
bishops of Paderborn and Münster even had never refused to
do in the extra-Prussian portion of these dioceses (Oldenburg
and Waldeck), as also the Prince-Bishop of Breslau, since the
issuing of the similar Austrian May Laws (§ 198, 4) in the
Austro-Silesian part of his diocese, what the episcopal courts
of Württemberg and Baden had yielded to, although in almost all
these states the demand referred to broke up the union with the
papal curia. Yet before a year had passed the cases of punishment
for these offences had so increased that the only very inadequate
fines that could be exacted by the seizure of property had to
be changed into equivalent sentences of imprisonment. The first
prelate who suffered this fate was Archbishop Ledochowski, in
February, 1874. Then followed in succession: Eberhard of Treves,
Melchers of Cologne, Martin of Paderborn, and Brinkmann of
Münster. The ecclesiastical court of justice expressly pronounced
deposition against Ledochowski in April, 1874; against Martin in
January, 1875, and against the Prince-Bishop Förster of Breslau
in October, 1875, who alone had dared to proclaim in his diocese
the encyclical _Quod nunquam_ (§ 197, 7). But the latter had
even beforehand withdrawn the diocesan property to the value
of 900,000 marks to his episcopal castle, Johannisberg, in
Austro-Silesia, where with a truly princely income from Austrian
funds he could easily get over the loss of the Prussian part
of his revenues. Martin, who had been interned at Wesel, fled
in August, 1875, under cloud of night, to Holland, from whence
he transferred his agitations into Belgium, and finally to
London (died 1879). Ledochowski found a residence in the Vatican.
Brinkmann was deposed in March, and Melchers in June, 1876,
after both had beforehand proved their enjoyment of martyrdom
by escaping to Holland. Eberhard of Treves anticipated his
deposition from office by his death in May, 1876. Blum of Limburg
was deposed in June, 1877, and Beckmann of Osnabrück died in
1878.--In the Prussian parliament and German Reichstag the Centre
party, supported by Guelphs, Poles, and the Social Democrats, had
meanwhile with anger, scorn, and vituperation, with and without
wit, fought not only against all ecclesiastical, but also against
all other legislative proposals, whose acceptance was specially
desired by the government. And all the representatives of the
ultramontane press within and without Europe vied with one
another in violent denunciation of the ecclesiastical laws, and
in unmeasured abuse of the emperor and the empire. But almost
without exception the Roman Catholic officials in Prussia, as
well as the Protestants and Old Catholics, carried out “the
Diocletian persecution of Christians” in the judicial and police
measures introduced by the church laws. A number of Catholic
notables of the eastern provinces of their own accord, in a
dutiful address to the emperor, expressly accepted the condemned
laws, and won thereby the nickname of “State Catholics.” The
great mass of the Catholic people, high and low, remained
unflinchingly faithful to the resisting clergy in, for the most
part, only a passive opposition, although even, as the Berlin
_Germania_ expressed it, “the Catholic rage at the Bismarckian
ecclesiastical polity could condense itself into one Catholic
head” in a murderous attempt on the chancellor in quest of health
at Kissingen, on July 13th, 1874. It was the cooper, Kullmann,
who, fanaticised by exciting speeches and writings in the
Catholic society of Salzwedel, sought to take vengeance, as
he himself said, upon the chancellor for the May Laws and “the
insult offered to his party of the Centre.”--In the further
course of the Prussian _Kulturkampf_, however, fostered by
the aid of the confessional, the insinuating assiduity of
the clerical press, and the all-prevailing influence of the
thoroughly disciplined Catholic clergy over the popish masses,
the Centre grew in number and importance at the elections from
session to session, so that from the beginning of 1880, by the
unhappy division of the other parties in the Reichstag as well
as Chamber, it united sometimes with the Conservatives, sometimes
and most frequently with the Progressionists and Democrats
renouncing the _Kulturkampf_, and was supported on all questions
by Poles, Danes, Guelphs, and Alsatian-Lorrainers, as clerical
interest and ultramontane tactics required, in accordance with
the plan of campaign of the commander-in-chief, especially of
the quondam Hanoverian minister, Windthorst, dominated far more
by Guelphic than by ultramontane tendencies. The Centre was thus
able to turn the scale, until, at least in the Reichstag, after
the dissolution and new election of 1887, its dominatory power
was broken by the closer combination of the conservative and
national liberal parties.
§ 197.7. =Share in the Conflict taken by the Pope.=--=Pius IX.=
had congratulated the new emperor in 1871, trusting, as he
wrote, that his efforts directed to the common weal “might bring
blessing not only to Germany, but also to all Europe, and might
contribute not a little to the protection of the liberty and
rights of the Catholic religion.” And when first of all the
Centre party, called forth by the election agitation of German
ultramontanism, opened its politico-clerical campaign in the
Reichstag, he expressed his disapproval of its proceedings upon
Bismarck’s complaining to the papal secretary Antonelli. Yet
a deputation of the Centre sent to Rome succeeded in winning
over both. In order to build a bridge for the securing an
understanding with the curia, now that the conflict had grown
in extent and bitterness, the imperial government in May, 1872,
appointed the Bavarian Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe to the vacant
post of ambassador to the Vatican. But the pope, with offensive
recklessness, rejected the well-meant proposal, and forbade
the cardinal to accept the imperial appointment. From that time
he gave free and public expression on every occasion to his
senseless bitterness against the German empire and its government.
In an address to the German Reading Society at Rome in July, 1872,
he allowed himself to use the most violent expressions against
the German chancellor, and closed with the prophetic threatening:
“Who knows but the little stone shall soon loose itself from
the mountain (Dan. ii. 34), which shall break in pieces the foot
of the colossus?” But even this diatribe was cast in the shade
by the Christmas allocution of that year, in which he was not
ashamed to characterize the procedure of the German statesmen
and their imperial sovereign as “_impudentia_.” And after the
publication of the first May Laws he addressed a letter to the
emperor, in which, founding upon the fact that even the emperor
like all baptized persons belonged to him, the pope, he cast in
his teeth that “all the measures of his government for some time
aimed more and more at the annihilation of Catholicism,” and
added the threatening announcement that “these measures against
the religion of Jesus Christ can have no other result than
the overthrow of his own throne.” The emperor in his answer
made expressly prominent his divinely appointed call as well as
his own evangelical standpoint, and with becoming dignity and
earnestness decidedly repudiated the unmeasured assumptions of
the papacy, and published both letters. In the same style of
immoderate pretension the pope again, in November, 1875, in one
encyclical after another, gave vent to his anger against emperor
and empire, especially its military institutions. In place of
the deposed and at that time imprisoned archbishop, Ledochowski,
he appointed in 1874 a native apostolic legate, who was at last
ascertained to be the Canon Kurowski, when he was in October,
1875, condemned to two years’ imprisonment. But the pope took
the most decided and successful step by the =Encyclical _Quod
nunquam_, of 5th February, 1875=, addressed to the Prussian
episcopate, in which he characterized the Prussian May Laws as
“not given to free citizens to demand a reasonable obedience,
but as laid upon slaves, in order to force obedience by fears of
violence,” and, “in order to fulfil the duties of his office,”
declared quite openly to all whom it concerns and to the
Catholics throughout the world: “_Leges illas irritas esse,
utpote quæ divinæ Ecclesiæ constitutioni prorsus adversantur_;”
but upon those “godless” men who make themselves guilty of the
sin of assuming spiritual office without a divine call, falls _eo
ipso_ the great excommunication. On the other hand he rewarded,
in March, 1875, Archbishop Ledochowski, then still in prison, but
afterwards, in February, 1876, settled in Rome, for his sturdy
resistance of those laws, with a cardinal’s hat, and to the not
less persistent Prince-Bishop Förster of Breslau he presented
on his jubilee as priest the archiepiscopal pall. In the next
Christmas allocution he romanced about a second Nero, who, while
in one place with a lyre in his hand he enchanted the world by
lying words, in other places appeared with iron in his hand,
and, if he did not make the streets run with blood, he fills
the prisons, sends multitudes into exile, seizes upon and with
violence assumes all authority to himself. Also to the German
pilgrims who went in May, 1877, to his episcopal jubilee at Rome,
he had still much that was terrible to tell about this “modern
Attila,” leaving it uncertain whether he intended Prince Bismarck
or the mild, pious German emperor himself.
§ 197.8. =The Conflict about the Encyclical _Quod nunquam_ of
1875.=--By this encyclical the pope had completely broken up the
union between the Prussian state and the curia, resting upon the
bull _De salute animarum_ (§ 193, 1); for he, bluntly repudiating
the sovereign rights of the civil authority therein expressly
allowed, by pronouncing the laws of the Prussian state invalid,
authorized and promoted the rebellion of all Catholic subjects
against them. The Prussian government now issued three new laws
quickly after one another, cutting more deeply than all that went
before, which without difficulty received the sanction of all the
legislative bodies.
I. The so called =Arrestment Act= (_Sperrgesetz_) of
April 22nd, 1875, which ordered the immediate suspension
of all state payments to the Roman Catholic bishoprics and
pastorates until those who were entitled to them had in
writing or by statement declared themselves ready to yield
willing obedience to the existing laws of the state.
II. A law of May 31st, 1875, ordering the =Expulsion of
all Orders and such like Congregations= within eight
months, the minister of public worship, however, being
authorized to extend this truce to four years in the case
of institutions devoted to the education of the young,
while those which were exclusively hospital and nursing
societies were allowed to remain, but were subject to
state inspection and might at any time be suppressed by
royal order.
III. A law of June 12th, 1875, declaring the formal =Abrogation
of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Eighteenth Articles of
the Constitution= (§ 193, 2).
And finally in addition there came the enforcement during this
session of the Chamber of laws previously introduced on the
rights of the Old Catholics (§ 190, 2), and, on June 20th, 1875,
on the administration of church property in Catholic parishes.
The latter measures aimed at withdrawing the administration
referred to from the autocratic absolutism of the clergy, and
transferring it to a lay commission elected by the community
itself, of which the parish priest was to be a member, but not
the president. Although the Archbishop of Cologne in name of
all the bishops before its issue had solemnly protested against
this law, because by it “essential and inalienable rights of
the Catholic church were lost,” and although the recognition
of it actually involved recognition of the May Laws and the
ecclesiastical court of justice, yet all the bishops declared
themselves ready to co-operate in carrying out the arrangements
for surrendering the church property to the administration
of a civil commission. They thus indeed secured thoroughly
ultramontane elections, but at the same time put themselves
into a position of self-contradiction, and admitted that the
one ground of their opposition to the May Laws, that they were
one-sidedly wrought by the state, was null and void.
§ 197.9. =Papal Overtures for Peace.=--=Leo XIII.=, since 1878,
intimated his accession to the Emperor William, and expressed his
regret at finding that the good relations did not continue which
formerly existed between Prussia and the holy see. The Emperor’s
answer expressed the hope that by the aid of his Holiness
the Prussian bishops might be induced to obey the laws of the
land, as the people under their pastoral care actually did;
and afterwards while in consequence of the attempt on his life
of June 2nd, 1873, he lay upon a sickbed, the crown prince on
June 10th answered other papal communications by saying, that
no Prussian monarch could entertain the wish to change the
constitution and laws of his country in accordance with the
ideas of the Romish church; but that, even though a thorough
understanding upon the radical controversy of a thousand
years could not be reached, yet the endeavour to preserve a
conciliatory disposition on both sides would also for Prussia
open a way to peace which had never been closed in other states.
Three weeks later the Munich nuntio Masella was at Kissingen and
conferred with the chancellor, Prince Bismarck, who was residing
there, about the possibility of a basis of reconciliation.
Subsequently negotiations were continued at Gastein, and then
in Vienna with the there resident nuntio Jacobini, but were
suspended owing to demands by the curia to which the state could
not submit. Still the pope attempted indirectly to open the way
for renewed consultation, for he issued a brief dated February
24th, 1880, to “Archbishop Melchers of Cologne” (deposed by
the royal court of justice), in which he declared his readiness
to allow to the respective government boards notification
of new elected priests before their canonical institution.
Thereupon a communication was sent to Cardinal Jacobini that the
state ministry had resolved, so soon as the pope had actually
implemented this declaration of his readiness, to make every
effort to obtain from the state representatives authority to
set aside or modify those enactments of the May Laws which were
regarded by the Romish church as harsh. But the pope received
this compromise of the government very ungraciously and showed
his dissatisfaction by withdrawing his concession, which besides
referred only to the unremovable priests, therefore not to
_Hetzkaplane_ and succursal or assistant priests, and presupposed
the obtaining the “_agrément_,” _i.e._ the willingly accorded
consent, of the state, without by any means allowing the setting
aside of the party elected.
§ 197.10. =Proof of the Prussian Government’s willingness to be
Reconciled, 1880-1881.=--Notwithstanding this brusque refusal
on the part of the papal curia, the government, at the instance
of the minister of public worship, Von Puttkamer (§ 193, 6),
resolved in May, 1880, to introduce a bill which gave a wide
discretionary power for moderating the unhappy state of matters
that had prevailed since the passing of the May Laws, throughout
Catholic districts, where 601 pastorates stood wholly vacant and
584 partly so, and nine bishoprics, some by death and others by
deposition. Although the need of peace was readily admitted on
both sides, the Liberals opposed these “Canossa proposals” as far
too great; the Centre, Poles, and Guelphs as far too small. Yet
it obtained at last in a form considerably modified, through a
compromise of the conservatives with a great part of the national
liberals the consent of both chambers. This law, sanctioned on
=July 14th, 1880=, embraced these provisions:
1. The royal court shall no longer depose from office
any church officers, but simply pronounce incapable of
administering the office;
2-4. The ministry of the state is authorized to give the
episcopal administrator charged by the church with
the interim administration of a vacant bishopric a
dispensation from the taking of the prescribed oath;
further, an administration by commission of ecclesiastical
property may be revoked as well as appointed; also state
endowments that had been withdrawn are to be restored for
the benefit of the whole extent of the diocese;
5. Spiritual official acts of a duly appointed clergyman by
way merely of assistance in another vacant parish are to
be allowed;
6. The minister of the interior and of public worship are
empowered to approve of the erection of new institutions
of religious societies which are devoted wholly to the
care of the sick, as to allow revocably to them the care
and nurture of children not yet of school age; and more
recently added were
7. The particular, according to which Articles 2, 3, and 4
cease to operate after January 1st, 1882.
The government was particularly careful to carry out the
provisions temporarily recognised in Article 3, for the
restoration of orderly episcopal administration by regularly
elected episcopal administrators in bishoprics made vacant by
death. Fulda, which was longest vacant, from October, 1873, had
to be left out of account, since in that case there was only
one member of the chapter left and so a canonical election
was impossible. But without difficulty in March, 1881, the
Vicar-General Dr. Höting for Osnabrück and Canon Drobe for
Paderborn, without taking the oath of allegiance, succeeded in
obtaining independent administration of the property as well as
the restoration of state pay for the entire dioceses, though they
did not give the notification required by the May Laws for the
interim administration. In October, 1881, the deposed Prince
Bishop Förster of Breslau died, and the suffragan bishop, Gleich,
elected by the chapter, undertook with consent of the government
the office of episcopal administrator.--Meanwhile the pope,
by a hearty letter of congratulation to the emperor on his
birthday, March 22nd, had given new life to the suspended
peace negotiations. And now also, when the respective chapters
transferred their right of election to the pope, the orderly
appointments of the Canon Dr. Korum of Metz, a pupil of the
Jesuit faculty of Innspruck [Innsbrück], very warmly recommended
by Von Manteuffel, governor of Alsace and Lorraine, to the
episcopal see of Treves, in August, 1881, of Vicar-General
Kopp of Hildesheim to Fulda in December, 1881, of the episcopal
administrators Höting and Drobe, in March and May, 1882,
respectively to Osnabrück and Paderborn, were duly carried
into effect. For Breslau the chapter drew up a list of seven
candidates, but the government pointed out the Berlin provost,
Rob. Herzog, as a mild and conciliatory person. The chapter now
laid its right of election in the hands of the pope, and in May,
1882, Herzog was raised to the dignity of prince-bishop. There
now remained vacant only the sees of Cologne, Posen, Limburg
and Münster, which had been emptied by the depositions of the
civil courts.--Meanwhile, too, the negotiations carried on at
the instance of the government by privy councillor Von Schlözer,
with the curia at Rome for the restoration of the embassy to the
Vatican had been brought to a close. The chamber voted for this
purpose an annual sum of 90,000 marks, and Schlözer himself was
appointed to the post in March, 1882.
§ 197.11. =Conciliatory Negotiations, 1882-1884.=--With January
1st, 1882, the three enactments of the July law of 1880, which
might be enforced at the discretion of the government, ceased to
operate. Von Gossler, minister of public worship since June, 1881,
on behalf of government, introduced a new bill into the Chamber
on January 16th, 1882, for their re-enactment and extension,
which by a compromise between the Conservatives and the Centre,
after various modifications secured a majority in both houses.
This second revised law embraced the following points:
1. Renewal of the three above-named enactments till
April 1st, 1884;
2. Restoration of the “Bishop’s Paragraph,” lost in 1880, in
this new form: If the king has pardoned a bishop set aside
by the ecclesiastical court, he becomes again the bishop of
his diocese recognised by the state;
3. The setting aside of the examination in general knowledge
(_Kulturexamen_) for those who bring a certificate of
having passed the Gymnasium exit examination, or have
attended with diligence lectures on philosophy, history
and German literature during a three years’ course at a
German university, or at a Prussian seminary of equal rank,
and have given proof of this by presenting evidence to the
chief president;
4. The setting aside of the rights of the patron and
congregation of themselves filling the vacant pastorates
during a vacancy in the episcopal see.
The new law obtained royal sanction on =May 31st, 1882=. But its
two most important articles, 2 and 3, remained for a long time
a dead letter, and even Article 1 was only carried out by the
resumption of the state emoluments for the Hohenzollerns and the
five newly instituted bishoprics (§ 197, 10), but not for the
other seven. But the ill humour of the ultramontane Hotspurs was
raised to the boiling point by the fate of the bill introduced by
the Centre into the Reichstag to set aside the Expatriation Law
of May 4th, 1874, which seemed to the government indispensable
on account of its applicability to the agitations against the
empire of the Polish clergy. This bill, after violent debates,
was carried on January 18th, 1882, by a two-thirds majority;
but it was cast out by the Federal Council on June 6th, almost
unanimously, only Bavaria and Reuss _jüngere Linie_ voting in
its favour. This was the result mainly of the failure of all the
attempts of Von Schlözer to render the government’s concessions
acceptable to the papal curia.--On the other hand, the government
of its own accord brought in a third revision scheme in June,
1883, by which it sought to relieve as far as possible the
troubles of the Catholic church. By adopting this law:
1. The obligation of notification on the part of the bishops
and the right of the state to protest on the change of
temporary assistants and substitutes into regular spiritual
officers, were abolished; as also
2. the competence of the court for ecclesiastical affairs in
appeals against the protest of the chief president, which
now therefore, according to the generally prevailing rule,
are referred to the minister of worship, the whole ministry,
the parliament, the king;
3. the immunity from punishment in the execution of their
office guaranteed in Article 5 of the July law of 1880
(§ 197, 10) was extended to all spiritual offices whether
vacant or not;
4. the ordaining of individual candidates in vacant dioceses
by bishops recognised by the state was declared to be legal.
In spite of repeated declarations of the curia that it could and
would agree to the notification only after a previous sufficient
guarantee of perfectly free training of the clergy and free
administration of the spiritual office, the king while residing
at the Castle of Mainau on Lake Constance, on July 11th, 1883,
sanctioned the so-called Mainau Law that had passed both houses,
and on the 14th, the minister of public worship demanded that
the Prussian bishops, without making notification, should fill up
vacancies in pastorates by appointing assistants, and should name
those candidates who were eligible for such appointment under
the conditions of the May Law of the previous year (§ 197, 3).
The pope at last, in September, 1883, allowed the dispensation
required, but for that time only and without prejudice for the
future. By the end of May, 1,884 applications had been made to
the senior of the Prussian episcopate appointed to receive such,
Marnitz of Kulm, by 1,443 clergymen, of whom the government
rejected only 178 who had studied at the Jesuit institutions of
Rome, Louvain, and Innsbrück.--In December, 1883, Bishop Blum of
Limburg, and in January, 1884, Brinkmann of Münster were restored
by royal grace, and for both dioceses, as well as for Ermeland,
Kulm and Hildesheim, and at last also on March 31st, shortly
before the closing of the door, even for Cologne, in this case,
however, revocably, the arrest of salaries ceased, so that only
the two archiepiscopal sees of Cologne and Posen remained vacant,
and only Posen continued bereft of its endowments. On the other
hand the government allowed the three discretionary enactments
that were in operation till April 1st, 1884, to lapse without
providing for their renewal. Also the proposal for abolishing
the Expatriation Law of November, 1884, introduced anew by the
Centre and again adopted by the Reichstag by a great majority,
was thrown out by the Federal Council; but in the beginning
of December, on the opening of the new Reichstag, it was again
brought in by the Centre and passed, but was left quite unnoticed
by the Federal Council. The repeated motions of the Centre for
payment of the bishops’ salaries from the state exchequer, as
well as for immunity to those who read mass and dispensed the
sacraments, were again thrown out by the House of Deputies in
April, 1885.
§ 197.12. =Resumption on both sides of Conciliatory Measures,
1885-1886.=--The next subject of negotiation with the curia was
the re-institution of the archiepiscopal see of Posen-Gnesen.
In March, 1884, the pope had nominated Cardinal Ledochowski
secretary of the committee on petitions, in which capacity he
had to remain in Rome. He now declared himself willing to accept
Ledochowski’s resignation of the archbishopric if the Prussian
government would allow a successor who would possess the
confidence of the holy see as well as of the Polish inhabitants
of the diocese. But of the three noble Polish chauvinists
submitted by the Vatican the government could accept none. Since
further no agreement could be reached on the question of the
bishop’s obligation to make notification and the state’s right
to protest, the negotiations were for a long time at a standstill,
and were repeatedly on the point of being broken off. But from
the middle of 1885, a conciliatory movement gained power, through
the counsels of the more moderate party among the cardinals.
Archbishop Melchers, who lived as an exile in Maestricht, was
called to Rome, and as a reward for his assistance was made
cardinal, and the pope consecrated as his successor in the
archbishopric of Cologne, Bishop Krementz of Ermeland (§ 197, 2),
who also was acknowledged by the Prussian government and
introduced to Cologne on December 15th, 1885, with great pomp,
with 20,000 torches and twenty bands of music. After a long
list of candidates had been set aside by one side and the other,
some here, some there, the pope at last fell from his demand for
one of Polish nationality, and in March, 1886, appointed to the
vacant see Julius Dinder, dean of Königsberg, a German by nation
but speaking the Polish language.--Meanwhile at other points
advance was made in the peaceful, yea, even friendly, relations
between the pope and the Prussian government. The diplomatist
Leo showed his admiring regard for the diplomatist Bismarck
by sending him a valuable oil-painting of himself by a Münich
[Munich] master, and the latter astonished the world by making
the pope umpire in a threatening conflict with Spain on the
possession of the Caroline islands. His decision on the main
question was indeed in favour of Spain, but not unimportant
concessions were also made to Germany. The pope sent the prince
two Latin poems as _pretium affectionis_, and conferred upon
him, the first Protestant that had ever been so honoured, at
the close of 1885 or beginning of 1886, the highest papal order,
the insignia of the Order of Christ, with brilliants, after the
cardinal secretary of state Jacobini as president of the papal
court of arbitration had been rewarded with the Prussian order
of the Black Eagle, and the other members of the court with other
high Prussian orders; and at the end of April, 1886, the German
emperor sent the pope himself thanks for his mediation, with an
artistic and costly Pectoral (§ 59, 7) worth 10,000 marks.--The
government had, meanwhile, on February 15th, 1886, brought in
a new proposal of revision of church polity, the fourth, and in
order to secure the advice of a distinguished representative of
the Prussian episcopate, called Bishop Kopp of Fulda to the House
of Peers. But as his demands for concessions, suggested to him,
not by the pope, but by the Centre, went far beyond what was
proposed, they were for the most part decidedly opposed by the
minister of worship and rejected by the house. The law confirmed
by the king on May 24th, 1886, made the following changes:
Complete abolition of the examination in general culture;
freeing of the seminaries recognised by the minister as suitable
for clerical training, as well as faculties established in
universities, seminaries and gymnasia from any special state
inspection (as laid down in the May Laws), and subjecting such
to the common laws affecting all similar educational institutions.
Removal of restrictions requiring ecclesiastical disciplinary
procedure to be only before German ecclesiastical courts;
Abolition of the Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs and
transference of its functions partly to the ministry of worship,
which now as court of appeal in matters of church discipline
dealt only with those cases which entailed a loss or reduction
of official income, partly to the Berlin supreme court, which
has jurisdiction in case of a breach of the law of the state by
a church officer as well as in case of a refusal to fulfil the
oath of obedience; The discretionary enactments of the government
of 1880 (§ 197, 10) are again enforced and the modifications
of these in Article 6 of that law are extended to all other
institutions engaged on the home propaganda; All reading of
private masses and dispensing of sacraments are no longer
subjected to the infliction of penalties.--Some weeks before
royal sanction was given to this law, Cardinal Jacobini had,
at the instance of the pope, expressed his profound satisfaction
with the success of the advice in the House of Peers, as also
particularly at the prospect of other concessions promised by the
government. In an official communication to the president of the
House of Deputies, he proposed the addition that the notification
of new appointments to vacant pastorates should begin from that
date. In August there followed, on the part of the government,
the hitherto refused dispensation for those trained by the
Jesuits in Rome and Innsbrück, and in November, with consent of
the minister of public worship, the re-opening of the episcopal
seminaries at Fulda and Treves.
§ 197.13. =Definitive Conclusion of Peace, 1887.=--In February,
1887, the state journal published a new form of oath for the
bishops, sanctioned by royal ordinance, in which the obligation
hitherto enforced “to conscientiously observe the laws of the
state,” was omitted, and the asseveration added, “that I have
not, by the oath, taken to his Holiness the pope and the church,
undertaken any obligation which can be in conflict with the oath
of fidelity as a subject of his Royal Majesty.”--The promised
fifth revision, meanwhile accepted by the pope in its several
particulars and acknowledged by him as sufficient basis for
a definitive peace, was on February 13th, 1887, contrary to
precedent, first laid before the House of Peers. Bishop Kopp
proposed a great number of changes and additions, of which
several of a very important nature were accepted. The most
important provisions of this law, which was passed on =April
29th, 1887=, are the following: The obligation on bishops to
make notification applies only to the conferring of a spiritual
office for life, and the right of protest by the state must
rely upon a basis named and belonging to the civil domain;
All state compulsion to lifelong reinstatement in a vacant
office is unlawful; The previously insured immunity for reading
mass and dispensing the sacraments is now applied to members
of all spiritual orders again allowed in the kingdom; The
duty of ecclesiastical superiors to communicate disciplinary
decisions to the Chief President is given up. Those orders and
congregations which devote themselves to aiding in pastoral work,
the administering of Christian benevolence, and, on Bishop Kopp’s
motion, those which engage in educational work in girl’s high
schools and similar institutions, as well as those which lead
a private life, are to be allowed and are to be also restored
to the enjoyment of their original possessions; The training of
missionaries for foreign work and the erection of institutions
for this purpose are to be permitted to the privileged orders
and congregations.--Bishop Kopp, and also the pope, with lively
gratitude, accepted these ordinances as making the reconciliation
an accomplished fact; but they also expressed the hope that
the success of this peaceful arrangement will be such as shall
lead to further important concessions to the rightful claims
of the Catholic church. After this conclusive revision, besides
the extremely contracted obligation of notification by the
bishops and the almost completely insignificant right of civil
protest, there remain of the _Kulturkampf_ laws only: the
_Kanzelparagraph_, the Jesuit and the exile enactments (all
of them imperial and not Prussian laws), and the abrogation
of the three articles of the Prussian constitution (§ 197, 8).
Insignificant as the concessions of the papal curia may seem
in comparison to the almost complete surrender of the Prussian
government, it can hardly be said that Bismarck has been untrue
to his promise not to go to Canossa. With him the main thing
ever was to restore within the German empire the peace that
was threatened by thunderclouds gathering from day to day in
the political horizon in east and west, and thus, as also by
nurturing and developing the military forces, to set aside the
danger of war from without. But for this end, the sovereignty
of the Centre, which hampered him on every side, allying itself
with all elements in the Chamber and Reichstag hostile to the
government and the empire, must be broken. But this was possible
only if he succeeded in breaking up the unhallowed artificial
amalgamation of Catholic church interests for which the Centre
contended with the political tendencies of the party hostile
to the empire, by recognising those interests in a manner
satisfactory to the pope and to all right-minded loyal German
Catholics, and so estranging them from the political schemes of
the leader of the Centre. This indeed would have scarcely been
possible with Pius IX., but with the much clearer and sharper
Leo XIII. there was hope of success. And the statesmanlike
insight and self-denial of the prince succeeded, though at first
only in a limited measure, and this was a much more important
gain for the state than the papal concessions of episcopal
notification and the state’s right of protest.--When in the
beginning of 1887, at the same time that the fear was greatest of
a war with France and Russia, the renewal and enlargement of the
military budget, hitherto for seven years, was necessary, and its
refusal by the Centre and its adherents was regarded as certain,
Bismarck prevailed on the pope to intervene in his favour. The
pope did it in a confidential communication to the president
of the Centre, in which he urged acceptance of the septennial
act in the Reichstag for the security of the Fatherland and the
conserving of peace on the continent, expressly referring to the
friendly and promising attitude of the imperial government to
the papacy and the Catholic church. But the president kept the
communication secret from the members of his party, and they
continued strenuously and unanimously opposed to the Septennate.
The Reichstag was consequently dissolved. The pope now published
this correspondence with the leaders of the Centre, thirty-seven
Rhenish nobles separated from the party, and the new elections to
the Reichstag were mainly favourable to the government. Although
the Deputy Windthorst as chief leader of the Prussian _Ecclesia
militans_ had on every occasion protested his and his party’s
profoundest reverence for and conditional submission to every
expression of the papal will, and shortly before (§ 186, 3) had
styled the pope “Lord of the whole world,” he opposed himself,
as he had done on the Septennate question, on the fifth revision
of the ecclesiastical laws, to the will of the infallible pope
by publishing a memorial proving the absolute impossibility of
accepting this proposed law, which, however, this time also he
failed to carry out.
§ 197.14. =Independent Procedure of the other German Governments.=
1. =Bavaria’s= energy in the struggle against ultramontanism
(§ 197, 4) soon cooled. Yet in 1873 the Redemptorists were
instructed to discontinue their missionary work (§ 186, 6),
and all theological students were forbidden to attend the
Jesuit German College at Rome (§ 151, 1). Also in 1875,
the jubilee processions organized by the episcopate without
obtaining the royal _Placet_ were inhibited.
2. =Württemberg=, which since 1862 possessed more civil
jurisdiction over Catholic church affairs and exercised it
more freely (§ 196, 6) than Prussia laid claim to in 1873,
could all the more easily maintain ecclesiastical peace,
since its peaceful Bishop Hefele (§ 189, 3, 4; 191, 7)
avoided all occasion of conflict and strife.
3. In =Baden= the _Kulturkampf_ that had here previously
broken out (§ 196, 2) was continued all the more keenly.
In 1873 public teaching, holding of missions and assisting
in pastoral work, had been refused to all religious orders
and fraternities. But the main blow, followed by the
comprehensive church legislation of February 19th, 1874,
which closed all boys’ seminaries and episcopal institutions,
allowed none to hold a clerical office or discharge any
ecclesiastical function without a three years’ course
at a German university and a state examination in general
culture (§ 196, 2), strictly forbad all influencing of
public elections by the clergy, and made deposition follow
the second conviction of a church officer. The expedient
hitherto resorted to of appointing mere deputy priests so
as to avoid the examination, was consequently frustrated.
The rapid increase of vacant pastorates, after five years’
opposition, at last moved the episcopal curia to sue for
peace at the hands of the government, and when the latter
showed an exceedingly conciliatory spirit, the curia
with consent of the pope in February, 1880, withdrew its
prohibition of the request for dispensation from the state
examination, and the government now on its part with the
Chambers passed a law, by which the obligation to undergo
this examination was abolished, and the certificate of
the exit examination, three years’ attendance at a German
university, and diligent attention to at least three
courses of the philosophical faculty, was held as sufficient
evidence of general culture. The Baden _Kulturkampf_ seems
to have been definitely concluded by the election and
recognition of Dr. Orbin to the see of Freiburg, vacant for
fourteen years, when he without scruple took the oath of
allegiance. This, however, did not check, far less put an
end to the tumults of the fanatical ultramontane Irredenta.
§ 197.15.
4. =Hesse-Darmstadt= in 1874 followed the example of Prussia
and Baden in excluding all spiritual orders from teaching
in public schools, and on April 23rd, 1875, issued five
ecclesiastical laws which were directed to restoring under
penal sanctions the state of the law, which before 1850
(§ 196, 4) had been unquestioned. Essentially in harmony with
the Prussian May Laws of 1873 and 1874, they go beyond these
in several particulars. All clergymen receiving appointments,
_e.g._, must have gone through a full university course;
all religious orders and congregations were to be allowed
to die out; public roads and squares could be used
for ecclesiastical festivals only by permission of the
government to be renewed on each occasion. The “contentious”
Bishop Ketteler of Mainz, who stirred up the fire to the
utmost with the Prussian brand, and had kindled also a
similar flame in Hesse over the proposal of this law, held
still that to view martyrdom at a distance was the better
part, and carefully avoided any overt act of disobedience.
But he immediately refused to co-operate in restoring the
Catholic theological faculty at Giessen, and the government
consequently abandoned the idea. The Mainz see after
Ketteler’s death in 1877 remained long vacant, as the
government felt obliged to reject the electoral list
submitted by the chapter. A candidate satisfactory to the
Vatican and the government was only found in May, 1886, in
the person of Dr. Haffner, a member of the chapter. After
Prussia had concluded its definitive peace with Rome, the
Hessian government, in May, 1887, laid before the house of
representatives a revision of ecclesiastical legislation of
1875, like that of Prussia, only not going so far, for which
meanwhile the approval of the papal curia had been obtained.
It agrees to the erection of a Catholic clerical seminary,
and Catholic students’ residences in this seminary and
in the state-gymnasia; erection of independent boys’
institutions preparatory to the seminary for priests is,
however, still refused; the existing duty of bishops to
make notification, and the right of the state to protest
in regard to appointments to vacant pastorates are also
retained. There is no word of rehabilitating religious
orders and congregations, nor of any limitation of the law
about the exercise of ecclesiastical punishment and means
of discipline.
5. Last of all among the German states affected by the
_Kulturkampf_, the kingdom of =Saxony=, with only 73,000
Catholic inhabitants, at the instance of the second Chamber
in 1876, came forward with a Catholic church law modelled
upon the Prussian May Laws, with its several provisions
modified, in spite of the contention of the talented heir
to the throne, Prince George, that the power of the state
in relation to the Catholic church could only be determined
by a concordat with the Roman curia.
§ 198. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
To the emperor of Austria there was left, after the re-organization
of affairs by the Vienna Congress, of the Roman empire, only the
name of defender of the papal see, and the Catholic church, and the
presidency of the German Federal Council. The remnants of the Josephine
ecclesiastical constitution were gradually set aside and Catholicism
firmly established as the state religion; yet the government asserted
its independence against all hierarchical claims, and granted, though
only in a very limited degree, toleration to Protestantism. The
revolution year 1848 removed indeed some of these limits, but the
period of reaction that followed gave, by means of a concordat concluded
with the curia in 1855, to the ultramontane hierarchy of the country
an unprecedented power in almost all departments of civil life, and
prejudicial also to the interests of the Protestant church. After the
disastrous issue of the Italian war in 1859, and still more that of the
German war in 1866, the government was obliged to make an honest effort
to introduce and develop liberal institutions. And after an imperial
patent of 1861 had secured religious liberty, self-administration, and
equal rights to the Protestant church, the constitutional legislation
of 1868 freed Catholic as well as Protestant civil, educational, and
ecclesiastical matters from the provisions of the concordat that most
seriously threatened them, and by the declaration of papal infallibility
in 1870 the government felt justified in regarding the entire concordat
as antiquated and declaring it abolished. In its place a Catholic church
act was passed by the state in 1874. But the _Kulturkampf_ struggle
which was thus made imminent also for Austria was avoided by pliancy on
both sides.
§ 198.1. =The Zillerthal Emigration.=--In the Tyrolese
=Zillerthal= the knowledge of evangelical truth had spread
among several families by means of Protestant books and Bibles.
When the Catholic clergy from 1826 had pushed to its utmost
the clerical guardianship by means of auricular confession, an
opposition arose which soon from the refusal to confess passed on
to the rejection of saint worship, masses for the dead, purgatory,
indulgences, etc., and ended in the formal secession of many to
the evangelical church in 1830, with a reference to the Josephine
edict of toleration. The emperor Francis I., to whom on the
occasion of his visit to Innsbrück in 1832 they presented their
petition, promised them toleration. But the Tyrolese nobles
protested, and the official decision, given at last in 1834,
ordered removal to Transylvania or return to the Catholic church.
The petitioners now applied, as those of Salzburg had previously
done (§ 165, 4), by a deputation to the king of Prussia, who,
after by diplomatic communications securing the emperor’s
consent to emigration, assigned them his estate of Erdmannsdorf
in Silesia for colonization. There now the exiles, 399 in number,
settled in 1837, and, largely aided by the royal munificence,
founded a new Zillerthal.
§ 198.2. =The Concordat.=--After the revolution year 1848,
the government were far more yielding toward the claims of the
hierarchy than under the old Metternich _régime_. In April, 1850,
an imperial patent relieved the papal and episcopal decrees of
the necessity of imperial approval, and on August 18th, 1855,
a concordat with the pope was agreed to, by which unprecedented
power and independence was granted to the hierarchy in Austria
for all time to come. The first article secured to the Roman
Catholic religion throughout the empire all rights and privileges
which they claimed by divine institution and the canon law.
The others gave to the bishops the right of unrestricted
correspondence with Rome, declared that no papal ordinance
required any longer the royal _placet_, that prelates are
unfettered in the discharge of their hierarchical obligations,
that religious instruction in all schools is under their
supervision, that no one can teach religion or theology without
their approval, that in catholic schools there can be only
catholic teachers, that they have the right of forbidding all
books which may be injurious to the faithful, that all cases
of ecclesiastical law, especially marriage matters, belong to
their jurisdiction, yet the apostolic see grants that purely
secular law matters of the clergy are to be decided before a
civil tribunal, and the emperor’s right of nomination to vacant
episcopal sees is to continue, etc. The inferior clergy, who
were now without legal protection against the prelates, only
reluctantly bowed their necks to this hard yoke; the liberal
Catholic laity murmured, sneered, and raged, and the native press
incessantly urged a revision of the concordat, the necessity of
which became ever more apparent from concessions made meanwhile
willingly or grudgingly to the “Non-Catholics.” But only after
Austria, by the issue of the German war of 1866, was restricted
to her own domain, and finally freed from the drag of its
ultramontane Italian interests, found herself obliged to make
every effort to reconcile the opposing parties within her own
territories, could these views prove successful. But since the
government nevertheless held firmly by the principle that the
concordat, as a state contract regularly concluded between two
sovereigns, could be changed only by mutual consent, the liberal
majority of the house of deputies resolved to make it as harmless
as possible by means of domestic legislation, and on June 11th,
1867, the deputy Herbst moved the appointment of a committee for
drawing up three bills for restoring civil marriage, emancipation
of schools from the church, and equality of all confessions
in the eye of the law. The motion was carried by a hundred and
thirty-four votes against twenty-two. The Cisleithan (_i.e._
Austrian excluding Hungary) episcopate, with Cardinal Rauscher
of Vienna at their head, presented an address to his apostolic
majesty demanding the most rigid preservation of the concordat,
denouncing civil marriage as concubinage, and the emancipation
of schools as their dechristianizing. An imperial autograph
letter to Rauscher rebuked with earnest words the inflammatory
proceedings of the bishops, and at the same time the ultramontane
ambassador to Rome, Baron Hübner, was recalled. After the
arrangement with Hungary was completed, the first Cisleithan, the
so-called Burger, ministry was constituted under the presidency
of Prince Auersperg, composed of the most distinguished leaders
of the parliamentary majority. All the three bills were passed
by a large majority, and obtained imperial sanction on =May 25th,
1868=. The papal nuncio of Vienna protested, the pope in an
allocution denounced the new Austrian constitution as _nefanda
sane_ and the three confessional laws as _abominabiles leges_.
“We repudiate and condemn these laws,” he says, “by apostolic
authority, as well as everything done by the Austrian government
in matters of church policy, and determine in the exercise of
the same authority that these decrees with all their consequences
are and shall be null and void.” But all Vienna, all Austria
held jubilee, and the Chancellor von Beust rejected with energy
the assumptions of the curia over the civil domain. The bishops
indeed issued protests and inflammatory pastorals, and forbad the
publication of the marriage act, but submitted to the threats of
compulsion by the supreme court, and Bishop Rudigier of Linz, who
went furthest in inciting to opposition, was in 1869 taken into
court by the police, and sentenced to twelve days’ imprisonment,
but pardoned by the emperor. Toward the Vatican Council Austria
assumed at first a waiting policy, then in vain remonstrated,
warned, threatened, and finally, on July 30th, 1870, after the
proclamation of infallibility, declared that the concordat was
antiquated and abolished, because by this dogma the position of
one of the contracting parties had undergone a complete change.
§ 198.3. =The Protestant Church in Cisleithan Austria.=--Down to
1848 Protestantism of both confessions in Austria enjoyed only a
very limited toleration. The storms of this year first set aside
the hated official name of “Non-Catholics,” and won permission
for Protestant places of worship to have bells and towers.
But the repeated petitions for permission to found branches
of the _Gustavus Adolphus Union_, the persistently maintained
law that Catholic clergymen, even after they had formally become
Protestants, could not marry, because the _character indelibilis_
of priestly consecration attached itself even to apostates, and
many such facts, prove that the government was far from intending
to grant to the Protestants civil equality with the Catholics.
But the unfortunate result of the Sardinian-French war of 1859,
and the fear thereby increased of the falling asunder of the
whole Austrian federation, induced the government to address
itself earnestly to the introduction of liberal institutions,
and also to do justice to the Protestant church. The presidency
of the two Protestant consistories in Vienna, hitherto given to
a Catholic, was now assigned to a Protestant; meetings of the
Gustavus Adolphus Union were now allowed, and a share was given
to the Protestant party in the ministry of public worship by
the appointment of three evangelical councillors. After the
entrance on office of the liberal minister Von Schmerling,
an imperial patent was issued on April 8th, 1864, by which
unrestricted liberty of faith, independent administration of
all ecclesiastical, educational, and charitable matters, free
election of pastors, even from abroad, full exercise of civil and
political rights, and complete equality with Catholics was given
to the Protestants of the German and Slavonian crown territories.
Also in 1868, under the reactionary ministry of Belcredi,
on the expiry of the legal term of the Evangelical Supreme
Church Council, it was reorganized, two evangelical school
councillorships were created, and the pecuniary position of
the evangelical clergy considerably improved. But in spite of
all privileges legally granted to the evangelical church, it
continued in many cases, in presence of the concordat, which
down to 1870 still remained in force, exposed to the whims and
caprice, sometimes of the imperial courts, sometimes of the
Catholic clergy.
§ 198.4. =The Clerical Landtag Opposition in the Tyrol.=--In the
=Tyrol=, after the publication of the imperial patent of April,
1861, a violent movement was set on foot by clerical agitation.
The Landtag, by a great majority, pronounced the issuing of it
the most serious calamity which the country, hitherto honest,
true, and happy in its undivided attachment to the Catholic faith,
could have suffered, and concluded that Non-Catholics in the
Tyrol should only by way of dispensation be allowed, but that
publicity of Protestant worship and formation of Protestant
congregations should be still forbidden. The Schmerling ministry,
indeed, refused to confirm these resolutions. The agitation
of the clergy, however, which fanned in all possible ways the
fanaticism of the people, grew from year to year, until at last
the Belcredi ministry of 1866 came to an agreement with the
Landtag, sanctioned by the emperor, according to which the
creation of an evangelical landed proprietary in the Tyrol was
not indeed formally forbidden, but permission for an evangelical
to possess land had in each case to be obtained from the Landtag.
The ecclesiastical laws of 1868 next called forth new conflicts.
Twice was the Landtag closed because of the opposition thus
awakened, until finally in September, 1870, the estates took
the oath to the new constitution with reservation of conscience.
But now, when in December, 1875, the ministry of worship
gave approval to the formal constituting of two evangelical
congregations in the Tyrol, at Innsbrück and Meran, the clerical
press was filled with burning denunciations, and the majority
of the Landtag meeting in the following March thought to give
emphasis to their protest by leaving the chamber, and so bringing
the assembly to a sudden close. In June, 1880, the three bishops
of the Tyrol uttered in the Landtag a fanatical protest against
the continuance of the meanwhile established congregations, which
the Landtag majority renewed in July, 1883.
§ 198.5. =The Austrian Universities.=--Stremayr, minister
of public worship, introduced in 1872 a scheme of university
reorganization, by which the exclusively Catholic character which
had hitherto belonged to the Austrian universities, especially
those of Vienna and Prague, should be removed. Up to this time
a Non-Catholic could there obtain no sort of academical degree,
but this was now to be obtainable apart from any question of
confession. The office of chancellor, held by the archbishops
of Prague and Vienna, was restricted to the theological faculty,
to the state was assigned the right of nominating all professors,
even in the theological faculty, and the German language
was recommended as the medium of instruction. Candidates of
theology have to pass through a full and comprehensive course
of theological science in a three years’ university curriculum,
before they can be admitted into an episcopal seminary for
practical training. In spite of the opposition of the superior
clergy, the bill passed even in the House of Peers, and became
law in 1873.--In Innsbrück, where according to ancient custom
the rector was chosen from the four faculties in succession, the
other faculties protested against the election when, in 1872,
the turn came to the theological (Jesuit) faculty, and they
carried their point. The new organization law gave the choice
of rector to the whole professoriate, and a subsequent imperial
order withdrew from the general of the Jesuits the right of
nominating all theological professors.--Much was done, too, for
the elevation of the evangelical theological faculty in Vienna
by bringing able scholars from Germany, by giving a right to
the promotion to the degree of doctor of theology, etc. But its
incorporation in the university, though often moved for, was
hindered by the continued opposition of the Catholic theologians
as well as philosophers, and in 1873 it did not meet with
sufficient support in the House of Peers. Even the use of certain
halls in the university buildings, promised by the minister,
could not yet be obtained.
§ 198.6. =The Austrian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1874-1876.=--At last
the government in January, 1874, introduced the long-promised
Catholic church legislation into the Reichstag, intended to
supply blanks occasioned by the setting aside of the concordat.
Its main contents are these:
I. The concordat, hitherto only diplomatically dealt with,
is now legislatively annulled; the bishops have to present
all their manifestoes not before but upon publication to
the state government for its cognisance; every vacancy of
an ecclesiastical office, as well as every new appointment
to such, is to be notified to the civil court, which
can raise objections against such appointment within
thirty days; the minister of worship then decides on the
admissibility or inadmissibility of the candidate; legal
deposition of a church officer involves withdrawal of the
emoluments; the performance of unusual practices in public
worship of a demonstrative character can be prohibited by
the civil court; any misuse of ecclesiastical authority in
restraining any one from obeying the laws of the land or
from exercising his civil rights is strictly interdicted.
II. The ecclesiastical revenues and the income of the
cloisters are subjected to a progressive taxation on
behalf of a religious fund, mainly for improving the
condition of the lower clergy, for which the episcopate
hitherto, in spite of all entreaties, had done practically
nothing.
III. Newly formed religious societies received state
recognition if their denomination and principles contain
nothing contrary to law and morality or offensive to those
of another faith.
IV. The state grants or refuses its approval of the
establishment of spiritual orders, congregations, and
ecclesiastical societies; institutions and legacies for
them amounting to over three thousand gulden require
state sanction; any member is free to quit any order;
all orders must report annually on the personal changes
and disciplinary punishments that have taken place; at any
time when occasion calls for it they may be subjected to
a visitation by the civil court.[551]
In vain did the pope by an encyclical seek to rouse the
episcopate to violent opposition, in vain did he adjure the
emperor in a letter in his own hand not to suffer the church
to be put into such disgraceful bondage; the House of Deputies
approved the four bills, and the emperor in =May, 1874=,
confirmed at least the first three, while the fourth was being
debated in the House of Peers. The bishops now issued a joint
declaration that they could obey these laws only in so far as
they “were in harmony with the demands of justice as stated
in the concordat.” But it did not go to the length of actual
conflict. Neither to the pope and episcopate, nor to the
government was such a thing convenient at the time. Hence the
attitude of reserve on both sides, which kept everything as
it had been. And when notwithstanding Bishop Rudigier of Linz,
threatened with fines on account of his refusal to notify the
newly appointed priests, appealed to the pope, he obtained
through the Vienna nuncio permission to yield on this point,
“_non dissentit tolerari posse_.” But all the more urgently did
the nuncio strive to prevent the passing of the sweeping cloister
law. In January, 1876, it was passed in the House of Peers with
modifications, to which, however, the emperor refused his assent.
Also the revised marriage law of the same date, which removed
the hindrances to marriage incorporated even in the book of civil
law, and no longer recognised differences of religion, Christians
and non-Christians, the remarriage of separated parties of whom
at the time of the first marriage only one party belonged to the
Catholic church, higher consecration and the vows of orders, did
not pass the House of Peers.
§ 198.7. =The Protestant Church in the Transleithan
Provinces.=--In =Hungary= since 1833 the Reichstag had by bold
action won for the Protestants full equality with the Catholics,
but in consequence of the revolution, the military lordship
of the Protestant Haynau in 1850 again put in fetters all
independent life in both Protestant churches. The Haynau decree
was, indeed, again abrogated in 1854, but full return to the
earlier autonomy of the church, in spite of all petitions and
deputations, could never be regained, all the less as Hungary in
all too decided a manner rejected the constitutional proposals
submitted by the Government in 1856. The liberal imperial patent
of September 1st, 1859, which secured independent administration
and development to the Protestant church in the crown possessions
of Hungary, got no better reception. In the German-Slavonian
districts of North Hungary, as well as in Croatia, Slavonia, and
Austrian Servia, it was greeted with jubilation and gratitude,
but the Magyar Hungarians declined on many, for the most part
frivolous, grounds, mainly because it emanated from the emperor,
and did not originate in an autonomous synod. When the government
showed its intention of going forward with it, the opposition was
carried to the utmost extreme, so that the emperor was obliged
temporarily to suspend proceedings in May, 1860. Still the
ecclesiastical joined with the political movement continued
to increase until in 1867 the imperial chancellor, Von Beust,
succeeded in quieting both for a time by the Hungarian Agreement.
On June 8th of that year, the emperor, Francis Joseph, on
ratifying the agreement, was solemnly crowned King of Hungary.
The hated patent had been shortly before revoked by an
imperial edict, with the direction to order church matters
in a constitutional way. After a complete reconciliation, at
a General Protestant Convention in December, 1867, with the
Patent congregations, hitherto denounced as unpatriotic, it was
concluded that to the state belonged only a right of protection
and oversight of the church, which is autonomous in all its
internal affairs, but to all confessions perfect freedom in law,
and that there should be not a separate religious legislation
for each, but a common one for all confessions. A committee
first appointed in 1873 for this purpose, with the motto, “A
Free Church in a Free State,” constituted, and then adjourned
_ad kalendas Græcas_.
§ 199. SWITZERLAND.
The Catholic church of Switzerland, after long continued troubles,
obtained again a regular hierarchical organization in 1828. Since that
time the Jesuits settled there in crowds, and assumed to themselves in
most of the Catholic cantons the whole direction of church and schools.
The unfortunate issue of the cantonal war of 1847 led indeed to their
banishment by law, but, favoured by the bishops, they knew how still to
re-enter by back doors and secretly to regain their earlier influence.
The city of Calvin was the centre of their plots, not only for
Switzerland, but also for all Cisalpine Europe, until at last the
overstrained bow broke, and the Swiss governments became the most
decided and uncompromising opponents of the ultramontane claims. In
1873 the papal nuncio, in consequence of a papal encyclical insulting
the government, was banished.--In Protestant Switzerland, besides the
destructive influence of the Illumination, antagonistic to the church,
and radical liberalism, there appeared a soil receptive of pietism,
separatism, and fanaticism, whose first cultivation has been ascribed
to Madame Krüdener (§ 176, 2). In the Protestant church of German
Switzerland the religious and theological developments stood regularly
in lively connexion with similar movements in Germany, while those in
the French cantons received their impulse and support from France and
England. From France, to which they were allied by a common language,
they learned the unbelief of the encyclopædists (§ 165, 14), while
travelling Englishmen and those residing in the country for a longer
period introduced the fervour and superstition of Methodism and other
sects.
§ 199.1. =The Catholic Church in Switzerland till 1870.=--The
ecclesiastical superintendence of Catholic Switzerland was
previously subject to the neighbouring foreign bishoprics.
But for immediate preservation of its interests the curia had
appointed a nunciature at Lucerne in 1588. When now, in 1814, the
liberal Wessenberg (§ 187, 3), already long suspected of heresy,
was called as coadjutor to Constance, the nuncio manœuvred with
the Catholic confederates till these petitioned the pope for the
establishment of an independent and national bishopric. But when
each of the cantons interested claimed to be made the episcopal
residence negotiations were at last suspended, and in 1828 six
small bishoprics were erected under immediate control of Rome.
At the end of 1833 the diocesan representatives of Basel and
St. Gall assembled in Baden to consult about the restoration
of a national Swiss Metropolitan Union and a common state
church constitution for securing church and state against the
encroachments of the Romish hierarchy. But Gregory XIV. condemned
the articles of conference here agreed upon, which would have
given to Switzerland only what other states had long possessed,
as false, audacious, and erroneous, destructive of the church,
heretical, and schismatic, and among the Catholic people a revolt
was stirred up by ultramontane fanaticism, under the influence
of which the whole action was soon frustrated. On the occasion of
a revision of the constitution of the canton of Aargau, a revolt,
led by the cloisters, broke out in 1841. But the rebels were
defeated, and the grand council resolved upon the closing of all
cloisters, eight in number. Complaint made against this at the
diet was regarded as satisfied by the Aargau Agreement of 1843
restoring three nunneries. An opposition was organized against
the revision of the constitution of Canton =Lucerne= in 1841.
The liberal government was overthrown, and the new constitution,
in which the state insisted on its _placet_ in ecclesiastical
matters and the granting of cantonal civil rights to those
only who professed attachment to the Roman Catholic church, was
submitted to the pope for approval. At last, in 1844, the academy
of Lucerne was given over to the Jesuits, for which Joseph Leu,
the popular agitator, as member of the grand council, had wrought
unweariedly since 1839. In Canton =Vaud= the parties of old or
clerical and young Switzerland contended with one another for
the mastery. The latter suffered an utter defeat in 1844, and the
constitution which was then carried allowed the right of public
worship only to the Catholic church. In consequence of this
victory of the clerical party Catholic Switzerland with Lucerne
at its head became a main centre of ultramontanism and Jesuitism.
At the diet of 1844, indeed, Aargau, supported by numerous
petitions from the people, moved for the banishment of all
Jesuits from all Switzerland, but the majority did not consent.
The Jesuit opponents expelled from Lucerne now organized twice
over a free volunteer corps to overthrow the ultramontane
government and force the expulsion of the Jesuits, but on both
occasions, in 1844 and 1845, it suffered a sore defeat. In face
of the threateningly growing increase of the excitement, which
made them fear a decisive intervention of the diet, the Catholic
cantons formed in 1845 a =separate league= (_Sonderbund_) for
the preservation of their faith and their sovereign rights. This
proceeding, irreconcilable with the Act of Federation, led to
a civil war. The members of the _Sonderbund_ were defeated, the
ultramontane governments had to resign, and the Jesuits departed
in 1847. The new Federal constitution which Switzerland adopted
in 1848, secured unconditional liberty of conscience and equality
of all confessions, and the expulsion of the Jesuits in terms
of the law. But since that time ultramontanism has gained the
supremacy in Catholic Switzerland, and in spite of the existing
law against the Jesuits all the threads of the ultramontane
clerical movements in Switzerland were in the Jesuits’ hands.
These were never more successful than in Canton =Geneva=, where
the radical democratic agitator Fazy leagued himself closely with
ultramontanism to compass the destruction of the old Calvinistic
aristocracy, and by bringing in large numbers the lower class
Catholics from the neighbouring France and Savoy he obtained a
considerable Catholic majority in the canton, and in the capital
itself made Catholics and Protestants nearly equal.
§ 199.2. =The Geneva Conflict, 1870-1883.=--The Catholic church
of Canton Geneva, on the founding of the six Swiss bishoprics
by a papal bull, had been incorporated “for all time to
come,” after the style of the concordat, with the bishopric of
Freiburg-Lausanne. But the government made no objection when the
newly elected priest of Geneva, Mermillod, a Jesuit of the purest
water, assumed the title and rank of an episcopal vicar-general
for the whole canton. But when in 1864 the pope nominated him
bishop of Hebron _in partibus_ and auxiliary bishop of Geneva, it
made a protest. Nevertheless, when, in the following year, Bishop
Marilley of Freiburg by papal orders transferred to him absolute
power for the canton with personal responsibility, and in 1870
formally renounced all episcopal rights over it, so that the pope
now appointed the auxiliary bishop independent bishop of Geneva,
it was evident a step had been taken that could not be recalled.
The government renewed its protest and made it more vehement, in
consequence of which, in January, 1873, by a papal brief which
was first officially communicated to the government after it
had already been proclaimed from all Catholic pulpits, Mermillod
was appointed apostolic vicar-general with unlimited authority
for Canton Geneva, and the district was thus practically made
a Catholic mission field. A demand made of him by the state
to resign this office and title and divest himself of every
episcopal function, was answered by the declaration that he
would obey God rather than man. The _Bund_ then expelled him
from Federal territory until he would yield to that demand.
From Ferney, where he settled, he unceasingly stirred up the
fire of opposition among the Genevan clergy and people, but the
government decidedly rejected all protests, and by a popular vote
obtained sanction for a Catholic church law which restricted the
rights of the diocesan bishop who might reside in Switzerland,
but not in Canton Geneva, and without consent of the government
could not appoint there any episcopal vicar, and transferred the
election of priests and priests’ vicars to the congregations. The
next elections returned Old Catholics, since the Roman Catholic
population did not acknowledge the law condemned by the pope and
took no part in the voting. By decision of the grand council of
1875 the abolition of all religious corporations was next enacted,
and all religious ceremonies and processions in public streets
and squares forbidden. Leo XIII. made an attempt to still
the conflict, for in 1879 he gave Bishop Marilley the asked
for discharge, and confirmed his elected successor, Cosandry,
as bishop of Freiburg, Lausanne, and Geneva, without however
removing Mermillod from his office of vicar apostolic of Geneva.
But this actually took place after the death of Cosandry in 1882
by the appointment of Mermillod as his successor in 1883. As
he now ceased to style himself a vicar apostolic, the Federal
council removed the decree of banishment as the occasion of
it had ceased, but left each canton free as to whether or not
it should accept him as bishop. Freiburg, Neuenburg, and Vaud
accepted him, and Mermillod had a brilliant entry into Freiburg,
which he made his episcopal residence. But Geneva refused to
recognise him, because it had already officially attached itself
to the Old Catholic Bishop Herzog of Berne, and Mermillod went so
far in his ostentatious love of peace as to declare that he would
not in future enter Genevan territory.
§ 199.3. =Conflict in the Diocese of Basel-Soleure,
1870-1880.=--Bishop Lachat of Soleure, whose diocese comprised
the Cantons Bern, Soleure, Aargau, Basel, Thurgau, Lucerne, and
Zug, had been previously in conflict with the diocesan conference,
_i.e._ the delegates of the seven cantons entrusted with the
oversight of the ecclesiastical administration, on account of
introducing the prohibited handbook on morals of the Jesuit Gury
(§ 191, 9), which ended in the closing of the seminary aided
by the government, and the erection of a new seminary at his
own cost. Although the diocesan conference next forbad the
proclamation of the new Vatican dogma, the bishop threatened
excommunicated Egli in Lucerne in 1871, and Geschwind in
Starrkirch in 1872, who refused. The conference ordered the
withdrawal of this unlawful act, and on the bishop’s refusal,
deposed him in January, 1873. The dissenting cantons, Lucerne and
Zug, indeed declared that after as well as before they would only
recognise Lachat as lawful bishop, the chapter refused to make
the required election of administrator of the diocese, the clergy
in Soleure and in =Bernese Jura= without exception took the
side of the bishop, as also by means of a popular vote the
great majority of Catholics in Thurgau. But amid all this the
conference did not yield in the least. Lachat was compelled by
the police to quit his episcopal residence, and withdrew to a
village in Canton Lucerne. The council of the Bernese government
resolved to recall the refractory clergy of the Jura, took their
names off the civil register and forbad them to exercise any
clerical functions. The outbreaks incited by rebel clergy in
the Jura were put down by the military, sixty-nine clergymen
were exiled, and, so far as the means allowed, replaced by
liberal successors introduced by the Old Catholic priest Herzog
(§ 190, 3) in Olten. In November, 1875, permission to return home
was granted to the exiles in consequence of the revised Federal
constitution of 1874, according to which the banishment of Swiss
burghers was no longer allowed. The Bernese government felt all
the more disposed to carry out this enactment of the National
Council, as it believed that it had obtained the legal means for
checking further rebellion and obstinacy among those who should
return. On January, 1874, by popular vote a law was sanctioned
reorganizing the whole ecclesiastical affairs of the =Canton
Bern=. By it all clergy, Catholic as well as Protestant, are
ranked as civil officers, the choice of whom rests with the
congregations, the tenure of office lasting for six years. All
purely ecclesiastical affairs for the canton rest in the last
instance with a synod of the particular denomination, for the
several congregations with a church committee, both composed of
freely elected lay and clerical members. But if a dispute in a
particular congregation should arise about a synodal decree, the
congregational assembly decides on its validity or non-validity
for the particular congregation. All decrees of higher church
courts and pastorals must have state approval, which must never
be refused on dogmatic grounds. If a congregation splits over any
question, the majority claims the church property and pastor’s
emoluments, etc. And this law was next extended in October 31st,
1875, in the matter of penal law by the so-called Police
Worship Law. It imposes heavy fines up to 1000 francs or a
year’s imprisonment for any clerical agitation against the law,
institutions or enactments of the civil courts, as well as for
every outbreak of hostilities against members of other religious
bodies, refuses to allow any interference of foreign spiritual
superiors without leave granted by government in each particular
case, forbids all processions and religious ceremonies outside
of the fixed church locality, etc. In the same year the first
Catholic Cantonal Synod declared its attachment to the Christian
or Old Catholic church of Switzerland. But it was otherwise
after the newly elected Grand Council of the canton of its
own accord, on September 12th, 1878, granted the returned Jura
clergy complete amnesty for all the past, and on the assumption
of future submission to existing laws of state, recognised
them again eligible for election to spiritual offices which had
previously been denied them. Not only did the Roman Catholic
people regularly take part in elections of priests, church
councils, and synods, undoubtedly with the approval of the new
pope Leo XIII., who had in February addressed a conciliatory
letter to the members of the Federal Council, but also the
extremest of the Jura now submitted without scruple to the new
election required by the law, and won therein for the most part
the majority of votes. In the Catholic Cantonal Synod convened in
Bern, in January, 1880, were found seventy-five Roman Catholics
and only twenty-five Old Catholic deputies. The latter were
naturally defeated in all controversies. The synod declared
that the connexion with the Christian Catholic national bishopric
was annulled, that auricular confession was obligatory, that
marriages of priests were forbidden, etc. Since now the law
assigns the state pay of the priest as well as all the church
property in the case of a split to the majority for the time
being, the inevitable consequence was that Old Catholics of the
Jura district were deprived of all share in these privileges,
and had to make provision for their own support. Also in Canton
=Soleure=, the law that all pastors must be re-elected after
the expiry of six years, came in force in 1872, and then the
thirty-two Roman Catholic clergymen concerned were with only two
exceptions re-elected, while, on the other hand, the Old Catholic
priest Geschwind of Starrkirch was rejected.--But all efforts
to restore the bishopric of Basel-Soleure came to grief over the
person of Bishop Lachat, whom the curia would not give up and the
Federal Council would not again allow, until at last a way out of
the difficulty was found. The canton Tessin, which previously in
church matters belonged to the Italian dioceses of Milan and Como,
was, in 1859, by decree of the Federal Council, detached from
these. But Tessin insisted on the founding of a bishopric of its
own, while the Federal Council wished to join it to the bishopric
of Chur. Thus the matter remained undecided, till in September,
1884, the papal curia came to an understanding with the Federal
Council that Lachat should be appointed vicar-apostolic for
the newly founded bishopric of Tessin, and that to the vacated
bishopric of Basel-Soleure the “learned as well as mild” Provost
Fiala of Soleure should be called. In this way all the cantons
referred to, with the exception of Bern, were won.[552]
§ 199.4. =The Protestant Church in German Switzerland.=--Among
all the German cantons, =Basel= (§ 172, 5), which unweariedly
prosecuted the work of home and foreign missions, fell most
completely under the influence of rationalism and then of the
liberal Protestant theology. While pietism obtained powerful
support and encouragement in its missionary institutions and
movements, and there, though developing itself on Reformed soil,
assumed, in consequence of its manifold connection with Germany,
a colour almost more Lutheran than Reformed, the university by
eminent theological teachers of scientific ability represented
the Mediation school in theology of a predominantly Reformed type.
In the Canton =Zürich=, on the other hand, the advanced theology,
theoretical and practical, obtained an increasing and finally
an almost exclusive mastery in the university and church. But
yet, when in 1839 the Grand Council called Dr. David Strauss
to a theological professorship, the Zürich people rose to a man
against the proposal, the appointment was not enforced, the Grand
Council was overthrown, and Strauss pensioned. The victory and
ascendency of this reaction, however, was not of long continuance.
Theological and ecclesiastical radicalism again won the upper
hand and maintained it unchecked. In the other German cantons the
most diverse theological schools were represented alongside of
one another, yet with steadily increasing advantage to liberal
and radical tendencies. The theological faculty at =Bern=
favoured mainly a liberal mediation theology, and an attempt
of the orthodox party in 1847, to set aside the appointment of
Professor E. Zeller by means of a popular tumult, miscarried.
From 1860 ecclesiastical liberalism prevailed in German
Protestant Switzerland, frequently going the length of
the extremest radicalism and showing its influence even in
the cantonal and synodal legislation. The starting of the
“_Zeitstimmen für d. ref. Schweiz_,” in 1859, by Henry Lang,
who had fled in 1848 from Württemberg to Switzerland, and died
in 1876 as pastor in Zürich, marked an epoch in the history of
the radical liberal movement in Swiss theology. In Fred. Langhans,
since 1876 professor at Bern, he had a zealous comrade in the
fight. During 1864-1866, Langhans published a series of violent
controversial tracts against the pietistic orthodox party in
Switzerland, which zealously prosecuted foreign missions, and in
1866 he founded the _Swiss Reform Union_, while Alb. Bitzius, son
of the writer known as Jer. Gotthelf (§ 174, 8) started as its
organ the “_Reformblätter aus d. bernischen Kirche_,” which was
subsequently amalgamated with the _Zeitstimmem_.--After more or
less violent conflicts with pietistic orthodoxy, still always
pretty strongly represented, especially in the aristocracy, the
emancipation of the schools from the church and the introduction
of obligatory civil marriage were accomplished in most cantons,
even before the revised Federal constitution of 1874 and the
marriage law of 1875 gave to these principles legal sanction
throughout the whole of Switzerland. In almost all Protestant
cantons the re-election or new election to all spiritual offices
every six years was ordained by law, in many the freeing of
the clergy from any creed subscription with the setting aside
of confessional writings as well as of the orthodox liturgy,
hymnbooks and catechisms was also carried, and the withdrawing
of the Apostles’ Creed from public worship and from the baptismal
formula was enjoined. The Basel synod in 1883, by thirty-six to
twenty-seven votes, carried the motion to make baptism no longer
a condition of confirmation; and although the Zürich synod in
1882 still held baptism obligatory for membership in the national
church, the Cantonal Council in 1883, on consulting the law of
the church, overturned this decision by 140 against 19 votes.
§ 199.5. =The Protestant Church in French Switzerland.=--The
French philosophy of the eighteenth century had given to the
Reformed church of =Geneva= a prevailingly rationalistic tendency.
Notwithstanding, or just because of this, Madame Krüdener, in
1814, with her conventicle pietism, found an entrance there,
and won in the young theologian Empaytaz a zealous supporter and
an apostle of conversion preaching. In the next year a wealthy
Englishman, Haldane, appeared there as the apostle of methodistic
piety, and inspired the young pastor Malan with enthusiasm for
the revival mission. Empaytaz and Malan now by speech and writing
charged the national church with defection from the Christian
faith, and won many zealous believers as adherents, especially
among students of theology. The _Vénérable Compagnie_ of the
Geneva clergy, hitherto resting on its lees in rationalistic
quiet, now in 1817 thought it might still the rising storm by
demanding of theological candidates at ordination the vow not to
preach on the two natures in Christ, original sin, predestination,
etc., but thereby they only poured oil on the fire. The adherents
of the daily increasing evangelical movement withdrew from
the national church, founded free independent communities and
_Réunions_ under the banner of the restoration of Calvinistic
orthodoxy, and were by their enemies nicknamed _Momiers_, _i.e._
mummery traders or hypocrites. The government imprisoned and
banished their leaders, while the mob, unchecked, heaped upon
them all manner of abuse. The persecution came to an end in
1830. Thereafter settling down in quiet moderation, it founded
in 1831 the _Société évangélique_, which, in 1832, established
an _Ecole de Théologie_, and became the centre of the Free church
evangelical movement. From that time the _Eglise libre_ of Geneva
has existed unmolested alongside of the _Eglise Nationale_, and
the opposition at first so violent has been moderated on both
sides by the growth of conciliatory and mediating tendencies.
Since 1850, two divergent parties have arisen within the bosom
of the free church itself, which without any serious conflict
continued alongside of one another, until in May, 1883, the
majority of the presbytery resolved to make a peaceful separation,
the stricter forming the congregation of the _Pelisserie_, and
the more liberal that of the _Oratoire_. At the same time a
committee was appointed to draw up a confession upon which both
could unite in lasting fellowship. But when this failed, a formal
and complete separation was agreed upon at the new year.--From
Geneva the Methodist revival spread to =Vaud=. The religious
movement got a footing, especially in Lausanne. The Grand
Council, however, did not allow the contemplated formation of
an independent congregation, and in 1824 forbad all “sectarian”
assemblies, while the mob raged even more wildly than at Geneva
against the “_Momiers_.” The excitement increased when, in 1839,
by decision of the Grand Council, the Helvetic Confession was
abrogated. When in 1845 a revolutionary radical government came
into office at Lausanne, the refusal of many clergymen to read
from the pulpit a political proclamation, caused a thorough
division in the church, for the preachers referred to were in
a body driven out of the national church. A Free church of Vaud
now developed itself alongside of the national church, sorely
oppressed and persecuted by the radical government, and spread
into other Swiss cantons. It owed its freedom from sectarian
narrowness mainly to the influence of the talented and thoroughly
independent Alex. Vinet, who devoted his whole energies and
brilliant eloquence to the interests of religious freedom and
liberty of conscience and to the struggle for the separation
of church and state. Vinet was from 1817 teacher of the French
language and literature in Basel, then from 1837 to 1845
professor of practical theology at Lausanne, but on the
reconstruction of the university he was not re-elected. He died
in 1847.[553]--In the canton =Neuchatel= the State Council in
1873 introduced a law, which granted unconditional liberty of
conscience, freedom in teaching and worship without any sort
of restriction on clergy, teachers and congregations. The Grand
Council by forty-seven votes to forty-six gave it its sanction,
notwithstanding the almost unanimous protest of the evangelical
synod, and refused to appeal to a popular vote. When an appeal
to the Federal Council proved fruitless, somewhere about one half
of the pastors, including the theological professors and all the
students, left the state church, and formed an _Eglise libre_;
while the other half regarded it as their duty to remain in the
national church so long as they were not hindered from preaching
God’s word in purity and simplicity. Both parties had a common
meeting point in the _Union évangélique_, and a law originally
passed in favour of the Old Catholics, which secured to all
seceders a right to the joint use of their respective churches,
proved also of advantage to the Free church.--The canton =Geneva=
issued, in 1874, a Protestant law of worship, which with dogma
and liturgy also threw overboard ordination, and maintained that
the clergy are answerable only to their conscience and their
electors. Yet at the new election of the consistory in 1879,
at the close of the legal term of four years, the evangelical
and moderate party again obtained the supremacy, and a law
introduced by the radical party in the Grand Council, demanding
the withdrawal of the budget of worship and the separation of
church and state, was, on July 4th, 1880, thrown out by universal
popular vote, by a majority of 9,000 to 4,000.
§ 200. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.
Among the most serious mistakes in the new partition of states at
the Vienna Congress was the combining in one kingdom of the United
Netherlands the provinces of Holland and Belgium, diverse in race,
language, character, and religion. The contagion of French Revolution
of July, 1830, however, caused an outbreak in Brussels, which ended in
the separation of Catholic Belgium from the predominantly Protestant
Holland. Belgium has since then been the scene of unceasing and
changeful conflicts between the liberal and ultramontane parties, whose
previous combination was now completely shattered. And while, on the
other hand, in the Reformed state church of Holland, theological studies,
leaning upon German science, have taken a liberal and even radical
destructive course, the not inconsiderable Roman Catholic population has
fallen, under Jesuit leading, more and more into bigoted obscurantism.
§ 200.1. =The United Netherlands.=--The constitution of the
new kingdom created in 1814 guaranteed unlimited freedom to all
forms of worship and complete equality of all citizens without
distinction of religious confession. Against this the Belgian
episcopate protested with bishop Maurice von Broglie, of Ghent,
at their head, who refused, in 1817, the prayers of the church
for the heretical crown princess and the _Te Deum_ for the
newborn heir to the throne. As he went so far as to excite
the Catholic people on all occasions against the Protestant
government, the angry king, William I., summoned him to answer
for his conduct before the court of justice. But he eluded
inquiry by flight to France, and as guilty of high treason
was sentenced to death, which did not prevent him from his
exile unweariedly fanning the flames of rebellion. The number
of cloisters grew from day to day and also the multitude of
clerical schools and seminaries, in which the Catholic youth
was trained up in the principles of the most violent fanaticism.
The government in 1825 closed the seminaries, expelled Jesuit
teachers, forbad attendance at Jesuit schools abroad, and founded
a college at Louvain, in which all studying for the church were
obliged to pass through a philosophical curriculum. The common
struggle for maintaining the liberty of instruction promised by
the constitution made political radicalism and ultramontanism
confederates, and the government, intimidated by this combination,
agreed, in a concordat with the pope in 1827, to modify the
obligatory into a facultative attendance at Louvain College.
The inevitable consequence of this was the speedy and complete
decay of the college. But the confederacy of the radicals
and ultramontanes continued, directing itself against other
misdeeds of the government, and was not broken up until in 1830
it attained its object by the disjunction of Belgium and Holland.
§ 200.2. =The Kingdom of Holland.=--In the prevailingly =Reformed=
national church rationalism and latitudinarian supernaturalism
had to such an extent blotted out the ecclesiastical distinctions
between Reformed, Remonstrants, Mennonites, and Lutherans,
that the clergy of one party would unhesitatingly preach in the
churches of the others. Then rose the poet Bilderdijk, driven
from political into religious patriotism, to denounce with
glowing fury the general declension from the orthodoxy of Dort.
Two Jewish converts of his, the poet and apologist Isaac da Costa,
and the physician Cappadose, gave him powerful support. A zealous
young clergyman, Henry de Cock, was theological mouthpiece of
the party. Because he offended church order, especially by
ministering in other congregations, he was suspended and finally
deposed in 1834. The greater part of his congregation and four
other pastors with him formally declared their secession from the
unfaithful church, as a return to the orthodox Reformed church.
As separatists and disturbers of public worship, they were fined
and imprisoned, and were at last satisfied with the recognition
granted them of royal grace in 1839, as a separate or =Christian
Reformed Church=. It consists now of 364 congregations, embracing
about 140,000 souls, with a flourishing seminary at Kampen. The
=Reformed State Church=, with three-fourths of all the Protestant
population, persevered in and developed its liberalistic
tendencies. The State Synod of 1883 expressly declared that
the Netherland Reformed Church demands from its teachers not
agreement with all the statements of the confessional writings,
but only with their spirit, gist, and essence; and the synod
of 1877, by the vote of a majority, stated that no sort of
formulated confession should be required even of candidates for
confirmation. Yet even amid such proceedings from various sides,
a churchly and evangelical reaction of considerable importance
set in. Three great parties within the state church carried on
a life and death struggle with one another:
1. The Strict Calvinists, whose leader is Dr. Kuyper, formerly
pastor in Amsterdam;
2. The so-called Middle Party, which falls into two divisions:
the, just about expiring, Ethical Irenical Party, with
the Utrecht professor Van Oosterzee (died 1882), and the
Evangelical Party with the Gröningen professor Hofstede de
Groot, since 1872 Emeritus, as leaders, of which the former,
subordinating the confession, regards the Christian life
as the main thing in Christianity, and the latter declares
itself prepared to take the gospel alone for its creed and
confession; and
3. The so-called Modern Party, which, with Professors Scholten
and Kuenen as leaders, has its centre at Leyden, and in
theology carries out with reckless energy the destructive
critical principles of the school of Baur and Wellhausen
(§ 182, 7, 18).
The “_Moderns_” are also the founders and leaders of the
“_Protestant Federation_” after the German model (§ 180),
with its annual assemblies since 1873, in opposition to which
a “_Confessional Union_” holds its annual meetings at Utrecht,
and operates by means of evangelists and lay preachers in places
where there are only “Modern” pastors. The higher and cultured
classes in the congregations mostly favour the Gröningen and
some also the Leyden school, but the great majority of the middle
and lower classes are adherents of Kuyper, and have frequently
secured majorities in the Congregational Church Council.--The
Dutch school law of 1856 banished every sort of confessional
religious education from public schools supported by the state,
and so called forth the erection of numerous denominational
schools independent of the state, and the founding of a “_Union
for Christian Popular Education_,” which has spread through
the whole country. The university law sanctioned, after violent
debates in the chamber, in 1876, establishes in place of the old
theological faculties, professorships for the science of religion
generally, with the exception of dogmatics and practical theology,
and left it with the Reformed State Synod to care for these two
subjects, either in a theological seminary or by founding for
itself the two theological professorships in the universities
and supporting them from the sums voted for the state church.
The synod decided on the latter course, and appointed to the new
chairs men of moderate liberal views. The adherents of the strict
Calvinistic party, however, founded a Free Reformed University
at Amsterdam, which was opened in autumn, 1880. Its first rector
was Kuyper.--The =Lutheran Church= of fifty congregations and
sixty-two pastors, with about 60,000 souls, has also had since
1816 a theological seminary. In it neological tendencies prevail.
§ 200.3. The founding of the Free University at Amsterdam,
referred to above, led to a series of violent conflicts
which threatened to break up the whole Reformed church of
the Netherlands by a wild schism. The Reformed State Synod,
consisting mainly of Gröningen theologians, but also numbering
many members belonging to the Modern or Leyden school, and
constituting the supreme ecclesiastical court, had, in spite of
its eleventh rule, which makes “the maintenance of the doctrine”
a main task of all church government, for a long time admitted
the principle of unfettered freedom of teaching, and ordained
that even evidence of orthodoxy on the part of candidates for
confirmation would no longer be regarded as a condition of their
acceptance, their examination referring only to their knowledge,
the examining clergy and not the assisting elders being judges
in this matter. When now the Free University had been founded
in direct opposition to the synod, the latter resolved to reject
all its pupils at the examination of candidates, and when, in
the summer of 1885, its first student presented himself, actually
carried out this resolution. Thereupon the university transferred
the examination to a committee, elected by itself, consisting
of orthodox Reformed pastors and elders, and a small village
congregation agreed to elect the candidate for its poorly
endowed, and so for seventeen years vacant, pastorate. But the
synod refused him ordination. Therefore the director of a strict
Calvinistic Gymnasium, formerly a pastor, performed the ceremony,
and the congregation announced its secession from the synodal
union. At the same time in Amsterdam a second conflict arose over
the question of candidates for confirmation. Three pastors of the
“modern” school demanded the elders subject to them, among them
Dr. Kuyper, to take part as required in the examining of their
candidates; but these refused to give their assistance, because
the previous training had not been according to Scripture and the
confession, and also the majority of the church council approved
of this refusal, as the parents had complained, and declared
that the certificate of morality demanded by other pastors could
be made out only if candidates for confirmation had previously
formally and solemnly confessed their genuine and hearty faith in
Jesus Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour, which these,
however, in accordance with the Dutch practice of the eighteenth
century, declined to do. The controversy was carried by appeal
through all the church courts, and finally the State Synod
ordered the church council to make delivery of the certificates
within six weeks on pain of suspension. But this was brought
about before the expiry of that period by the outbreak of a
far more serious conflict over matters of administration. In
Amsterdam the administration of church property lay with a
special commission, responsible to the church council, consisting
of members, one half from the church council and the other half
from the congregations. If in the beginning of January, 1886,
the threatened suspension and deposition of the church council
should be carried out, in accordance with proper order until
the appointment of a new council all the rights of the same,
therefore also that of supervising that commission, would fall
to the “classical board” (§ 143, 1) as the next highest court.
In order to avoid this, the fateful resolution was passed on
December 14th, 1885, to alter § 41 of the regulations, so that,
if the church council in the discharge of its duty to govern
the community in accordance with God’s word and the legalized
church confession, it would be so hindered therein that it
might feel in conscience obliged to obey God rather than man
and accept suspension and deposition, and a church council should
be appointed, the administrative commission would be obliged
to remain subject, not to this, but to the original commission.
The “classical board” annulled this resolution, suspended on
January 4th, 1886, for continued obstinacy the previous church
council, and constituted itself, pending decision on the part of
discipline, interim administrator of all its rights and duties.
The suspended majority, however, called a meeting for the same
day, and when it found the doors of its meeting place closed,
sent for a locksmith to break them open. They were prevented by
the police, who then, by putting on a safety lock, strengthening
the boards of the door by mailed plates, and setting a watch,
greatly reduced the chances of an entrance. But the opposition
sent to the watchers a letter by a policeman demanding that
the representatives of the church council should be allowed to
pass; upon which these, regarding it as an order of the police,
withdrew. They then had the mailed plates sawn, took possession
of the hall and the archives and treasure box lying there, and
refused admission to the classical board. While then the question
of law and possession was referred to the courts of law, and
there the final decision would not be given before the lapse
of a year, the disciplinary procedure took its course through
all the ecclesiastical courts and ended in the deposition of all
resisting elders and pastors. The latter preached now to great
crowds in hired halls. From the capital the excitement increased
by means of violent publications on both sides, spread over the
whole land and produced discord in many other communities. Wild
and uproarious tumults first broke out in Leidendorf, a suburb of
Leyden. The pastor and the majority of the church council refused
to enter on their congregational list two girls who had been
confirmed by liberal churchmen elsewhere, and with by far the
greater part of the congregation seceded from the synodal union.
The classical board now, in July, 1886, declared the pastorate
vacant, and ordered that a regular interim service should be
conducted on Sundays by the pastors of the circuit. The uproar
among the people, however, was thereby only greatly increased,
so that the civil authorities were obliged to protect the deputed
preachers, by a large military escort, from rude maltreatment,
and to secure quiet during public worship by a company of police
in church. And similar conflicts soon broke out on like occasions
and with similar consequences in many other places throughout
all parts of the land. In December, 1886, the Amsterdam church
council also declared its secession from the state church, and a
numerously attended “Reformed Church Congress” at Amsterdam, in
January, 1887, summoned by Kuyper in the interests of the crowd
of seceders, resolved to accept the decision of the law in regard
to church property.[554]
§ 200.4. Even after the separation of Belgium there was still
left a considerable number of =Catholics=, about three-eighths of
the population, most numerous in Brabant, Limburg, and Luxemburg,
and these were, as of old, inclined to the most bigoted
ultramontanism. This tendency was greatly enhanced when the new
constitutional law of 1848 announced the principle of absolute
liberty of belief, in consequence of which the Jesuits crowded
in vast numbers, and the pope in 1853 organized a new Catholic
hierarchy in the land, with four bishops and an archbishop at
Utrecht, under the control of the propaganda. The Protestant
population went into great excitement over this. The liberal
ministry of Thorbecke was obliged to resign, but the chambers
at length sanctioned the papal ordinance, only securing the
Protestant population against its misapplication and abuse.--On
the withdrawal of the French in 1814 there were only eight
cloisters remaining; but in 1861 there were thirty-nine for monks
and 137 for nuns, and since then the number has considerably
increased.--The Dutch =Old Catholics= (§ 165, 8), on account
of their protest against the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
(§ 185, 2), enjoined upon the Catholic church by the pope, were
anew excommunicated, and joined the German Old Catholics in
rejecting the decrees of the Vatican Council (§ 190, 1).
§ 200.5. =The Kingdom of Belgium.=--Catholic Belgium obtained
after its separation from Holland a constitution by which
unlimited freedom of religious worship and education, and the
right of confessing opinion and of associating, were guaranteed,
and to the state was allowed no interference with the affairs
of the church beyond the duty of paying the clergy. Also in
Leopold I., 1830-1865, of the house of Saxe-Coburg, it had a king
who though himself a Protestant was faithful to the constitution,
and, according to agreement, had his children trained up in
the Roman Catholic church. The confederacy of radicalism and
ultramontanism, however, was broken by the irreconciliable enmity
and violent conflict in daily life and in the chambers among
clerical and liberal ministers. The ultramontanes founded
at Louvain in 1834 a strictly Catholic university, which was
under the oversight of the bishops and the patronage of the
Virgin; while the liberals promoted the erection of an opposition
university for free science at Brussels. That the Jesuits used
to the utmost for their own ends the liberty granted them by the
constitution by means of missions and the confessional, schools,
cloisters, and brotherhoods of every kind is what might have been
expected. But liberalism also knew how to conduct a propaganda
and to bring the clergy into discredit with the educated classes
by unveiling their intrigues, legacy-hunting, etc., while
these exercised a great influence chiefly upon bigoted females.
The number of cloisters, which on the separation from Holland
amounted only to 280, had risen in 1880 in that small territory
to 1,559, with 24,672 inmates, of whom 20,645 were nuns.
§ 200.6. After the ultramontane party had enjoyed eight years
of almost unchallenged supremacy, the Malou ministry favourable
to it was overthrown in June, 1878, and a liberal government,
under the presidency of Frère-Orban, took its place. Then began
the =Kulturkampf= in Belgium. The charge of public education was
taken from the ministry of the interior, and a special minister
appointed in the person of Van Humbeeck. He began by changing
all girls’ schools under the management of sisters of spiritual
orders into communal schools, and in January, 1879, brought in
a bill for reorganizing elementary education, which completely
secularized the schools; deprived the clergy of all official
influence over them, and relegated religious instruction to the
care of the family and the church, the latter, however, having
the necessary accommodation allowed in the school buildings.
The chambers approved the bill, and the king confirmed it, in
spite of all protests and agitation by the clergy. The clerical
journals put a black border on their issue which published it;
the provincial councils under clerical influence nullified as
far as possible all money bequests for the public schools, and
the bishops assembled in August at Mechlin resolved to found
free schools in all communities, and to refuse absolution to all
parents who entrusted their children to state schools and all
teachers in them, in order thus to cause a complete decay of the
public schools, which indeed happened to this extent that within
a few months 1,167 communal schools had not a single Catholic
scholar. On complaint being made by the government to Leo XIII.,
he expressed through the Brussels nuncio his regret and
disapproval of the proceedings of the bishops; but, on the
other hand, he not only privately praised them on account of
their former zeal in opposing the school law, but also incited
them to continued opposition. When this double dealing of the
curia was discovered, the government in June, 1880, broke off
all diplomatic relations with the Vatican by recalling their
ambassador and giving the nuncio his passports. The ministerial
president publicly in the chamber of deputies characterized
the action of the Holy See as “_fourberie_.” Whereupon the pope
at the next consistory called princes and peoples as witnesses
of this insult. In May, 1882, the results of the inquiry into
clerical incitements against the public was read in the chamber,
where such startling revelations were made as these: Priests
taught the children that they should no longer pray for the king
when he had committed the mortal sin of confirming the school law;
the ministers are worse than murderers and true Herods; a priest
even taught children to pray that God might cause their “liberal”
parents to die, etc. Amid such conflicts the Catholic party
in parliament split into the parties of the _Politici_, who
were willing to submit to the constitution, and that of the
_Intransigenti_, who, under the direction of the bishops and the
university of Louvain, held high above everything the standard
of the syllabus. The latter fought with such passionateness, that
the pope felt obliged in 1881 to enjoin upon the episcopate “that
prudent attitude” which the church in such cases always maintains
in “enduring many evils” which for the time cannot be overcome.
But undeterred, the government continued to restrict the claims
of the clergy, so far as these were not expressly guaranteed by
the constitution.--In June, 1884, as the result of the elections
for the chamber of deputies, the clerical party again were in
power. Malou was once more at the head of a ministry in favour of
the clericals, caused the king to dissolve the senate, and in the
new elections won there also a majority for his party. No sooner
were they in power than the clerical ministry, in conjunction
with the majority in the chambers, proceeded with inconsiderate
haste, amid the most violent, almost daily repeated explosions
from the now intensely embittered liberal and radical section
of the population, which only seemed to increase their zeal,
to employ their absolute power to the utmost in the interest of
clericalism. The restoration of diplomatic relations with the
papal curia in the spirit of absolute acquiescence in its schemes
was the grand aim of the reaction, as well as a new school law
by which the schools were completely given over again to the
clergy and the orders. But when at the next communal elections
a liberal majority was returned, and protests of the new communal
councils poured in against the school law on behalf of the vast
number of state certificated teachers reduced by it to hunger and
destitution, the Malou ministry found itself obliged to resign in
October, 1884. Its place was taken by the moderate ultramontane
Beernaert ministry, which sought indeed to quiet the excitement
by mild measures, but held firmly in all essential points to the
principles of its predecessor.
§ 200.7. An exciting episode in the Belgium _Kulturkampf_ is
presented by the appearance of Bishop =Dumont of Tournay=, who,
previously an enthusiastic admirer of Pius IX. and a vigorous
defender of the infallibility dogma, also a zealous patron of
stigmatization miracles at Bois d’Haine (§ 188, 4), now suddenly
turned round on the school question and refused to obey the papal
injunction. For this he was first suspended, and then in 1880
formally deposed by the pope. He afterwards wrote letters in the
most advanced liberal journals with violent denunciations of the
pope, whom he would not recognise as pope, but only as Bishop of
Rome, and so styled him not Leo, but only Pecci. In these letters
Dumont makes the interesting communication that the virgin Louise
Lateau, favoured of God, has threatened with excommunication the
“intruder” Durousseaux, nominated by the pope as his successor,
because she continues to reverence Dumont as the only legitimate
Bishop of Tournay. The Vatican pronounced him insane, and the
chapter appealed to the civil authorities to have him declared
incapable in the sight of the law, which, however, they refused,
because they could not regard Dumont’s insanity as proved. On
the other hand, Dumont refused to renounce his episcopal office,
and accused Durousseaux of having by night, with the help of a
locksmith, obtained entrance to his episcopal palace, and having
taken forcible possession of a casket lying there, which, besides
the diocesan property to the value of five millions, contained
also about one and a half millions of his own private means.
Pending the issue of the conflict, as to which of the two should
be regarded as the true bishop, the palace was now officially
sealed up. The attempt to arrest the robbed casket had to be
abandoned, because meanwhile the canon Bernard, as keeper of the
treasures of the diocese, had fled with its contents to America.
He was, however, on legal warrant imprisoned in Havanna and
brought back to Belgium in 1882. In April, 1884, the dispute
of the bishops was definitively closed by the judgment of
the supreme tribunal, according to which Dumont, having been
legitimately deposed, has no more claim to the title and revenues
of his earlier office; and in 1886 the supreme court of appeal
at Brussels condemned Bernard “on account of serious breach of
trust” to three years’ imprisonment.
§ 200.8. =The Protestant Church= was represented in Belgium
only by small congregations in the chief cities and some Reformed
Walloon village congregations. But for several decades, by the
zealous exertions of the Evangelical Society at Brussels with
thirty-four pastors and evangelists, the work of evangelization
not only among Catholic Walloons, but also among the Flemish
population, has made considerable progress, notwithstanding all
agitation and incitement of the people by the Catholic clergy,
so that several new evangelical congregations, consisting mostly
of converts, have been formed. In two small places indeed the
whole communities, roused by episcopal arbitrariness, have gone
over.--The pastor Byse employed by the Evangelical Society at
Brussels has taken up the idea that all men by the fall have
lost their immortality, and that it could be restored again by
faith in Christ, while all the unreconciled are given over to
annihilation, the second death of Revelation ii. 11, xx. 15. So
long as he maintained this theory merely as a private opinion
the society took no offence at it, but when he began to proclaim
it in his preaching and in his instruction of the young, and
declined to yield to all advice on the matter, the synod of 1882
resolved upon his dismissal. But a great part of his congregation
still remain faithful to him.
§ 201. THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES.
Notwithstanding the common Scandinavian-national and
Lutheran-ecclesiastical basis on which the civil and religious life is
developed, it assumed in the three Scandinavian countries a completely
diversified course. While in Denmark the civil life bore manifold traces
of democratic tendencies and thereby the relations between church and
state were loosened, Sweden, with a tenacity almost unparalleled in
Protestant countries, has for a long period held fast in exclusive
attachment to the idea of a state church. On the other hand Denmark
was far more open to influences from without hostile to the church,
on the one side those of rationalism, on the other, those of the
anti-ecclesiastical sects, especially of the Baptists and Mormons, than
Sweden, which in its certainly barren, if not altogether dead orthodoxy
till after the middle of the century was almost hermetically sealed
against all heterogeneous influences, but yet could not altogether
over-master the pietistically or methodistically coloured movements
of religious yearning that arose among her own people. Norway, again,
although politically united with Sweden, has, both in national character
and in religious development, shown its more intimate relationship with
Denmark.
§ 201.1. =Denmark.=--From the close of last century rationalism
has had a home in Denmark. In 1825 Professor Clausen, a moderate
adherent of the neological school, published a learned work on
the opposition of “Catholicism and Protestantism,” identifying
the latter with rationalism. First of all in that same year
Pastor =Grundtvig= (died 1872), “a man of poetic genius, and
skilled in the ancient history of the land,” inspired with
equal enthusiasm for the old Lutheranism of his fathers and for
patriotic Danism, entered the lists and replied with powerful
eloquence, lamenting the decay of Christianity and the church.
He was condemned by the court of justice as injurious, after he
had during the process resigned his pastoral office. A like fate
befell the orientalist Lindberg, who charged Clausen with the
breach of his ordination vow. The adherents of Grundtvig met
for mutual edification in conventicles, until at last in 1832
he obtained permission again to hold public services. Not less
influential was the work of Sören =Kierkegaard= (died 1855), who,
largely in sympathy with Grundtvig, without ecclesiastical office,
in his writings earnestly pled for a living subjective piety
and unweariedly maintained an uncompromising struggle against
the official Christianity of the secularized clergy. The wild,
unmeasured Danomania of 1848-1849, during the military conflict
with Germany, drew opponents together and made them friends.
Grundtvig declaimed against everything German, and of the two
factors, which he had formerly regarded as the pivots on which
universal history turned, Danism and Lutheranism, he now let
go Lutheranism as of German origin. He therefore proposed the
abrogation of the distinctive German-Lutheran confessions, placed
the Apostles’ Creed before and above the Bible and, pressing
in a one-sided manner the doctrine of baptismal grace, demanded
a “joyous Christianity,” denied the necessity of continued
preaching and exercise of repentance, and wished especially to
introduce into the schools the Norse mythology as introductory
to the study of Christianity. His adherents wrought with the
anti-church party for the abolition of the union of church
and state. The Danish constitutional law of 1849 abolished
the confessional churches of the state church, and Catholics,
Reformed, Moravians, and Jews were granted equal civil rights
with the Lutherans. Since then the Catholic church has made slow
but steady progress in the country, and the increasing Baptist
movement was also favoured by a law of the Volkthing of 1857,
which abolished compulsory baptism, and only required the
enrolment of all children in the church books of their respective
districts within the period of one year. Civil marriage had also
been granted to dissenters in 1851, and in 1868 the peculiar
institution of “electing communities” was founded, by means of
which twenty families from one or more parishes which declare
themselves dissatisfied with the pastors appointed them,
may, without leaving the national church, form an independent
congregation under pastors chosen by themselves and maintained
at their own cost. The =Schleswig-Holstein= revolution in
1848, occasioned enormous confusion and disturbance in the
ecclesiastical conditions of the district. Over a hundred German
pastors were expelled and forty-six Schleswig parishes deprived
of the use of the German language in church and school. In 1864
both provinces were at last by the Austrian and Prussian alliance
rent from the Danish government, and in consequence of the German
war of 1866 were incorporated with Prussia.
§ 201.2. =Sweden.=--In Sweden there was formed in 1803, in
opposition to the barren orthodoxy of the state church, a
religious association which, if not altogether free of pietistic
narrowness, was yet without any heretical doctrinal tendency,
and exercised a quiet and wholesome influence. From the diligent
_reading_ of Scripture and the works of Luther that prevailed
among its members it obtained the name of _Läsare_. The state
proceeded against its members with fines and imprisonment,
according to the old conventicle law of 1726, and the mob treated
them with insults and violence. But in 1842 a fanatical tendency
began to show itself under the leadership of a peasant, Erich
Jansen, who induced many “_Readers_” to quit the church and to
cast into the fire even Luther’s Postils and Catechism as quite
superfluous alongside of Holy Scripture. They mostly emigrated
to America in 1846. The law of the land since 1686 threatened
every Swede who seceded from the Lutheran state church with
imprisonment and exile, loss of civil privileges and the right
of inheritance. As might therefore be supposed the French Marshal
Bernadotte, who in 1818, under the name of Charles XIV., ascended
the throne of Sweden, had been previously in 1810 obliged to
repudiate the Catholic confession. Even in 1857 the Reichstag
rejected a royal proposal to set aside the Secession as well
as the Conventicle Act. But in the very next year, the holding
of conventicles under clerical supervision, and in 1860, the
secession to other ecclesiastical denominations, were allowed by
law. The constitution of 1865 still indeed made adherence to the
Lutheran confession a condition of qualification for a seat in
either of the chambers. The Reichstag of 1870 at last sanctioned
the admission of all Christian dissenters and also of Jews to all
offices of state as well as to the membership of the Reichstag.
On behalf of dissenters, especially of the numerous Baptists
and Methodists, the right of civil marriage was granted in
1879. In 1877, Waldenström, head-master of the Latin school
at Gefle, without ecclesiastical ordination, began zealously
and successfully by speech and writings (to secure the widest
possible circulation of which a joint stock company with large
capital was formed) to work for the revival of the Christian life
in the Lutheran national church. He vigorously contended against
the church doctrine of atonement and justification, repudiating
the idea of vicarious penal suffering, and broke through all
church order by allowing the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to
be dispensed by laymen. He thus put himself, with his numerous
following, directed by lay preachers in their own prayer meetings
and mission halls, into direct opposition to the church, but by
the wise forbearance of the ecclesiastical authorities he has not
yet been formally ejected.[555]
§ 201.3. =Norway.=--In Norway, toward the end of last century,
rationalism was dominant in almost all the pulpits, and only a
few remnants of Moravian revivalism raised a voice against it.
But in 1796, a simple unlearned peasant =Hans Nielsen Hauge=,
then in his twenty-fifth year, made his appearance as a revival
preacher, creating a mighty spiritual movement that spread among
the masses throughout the whole land. He had obtained his own
religious knowledge from the study of old Lutheran practical
theology, and arising at a period of extraordinary spiritual
excitement, “his call,” as Hase says, “to be a prophet was
like that of the herdsman of Tekoa.” From 1799 he continued
itinerating for five years, persecuted, reproached, and
calumniated by the rationalistic clergy, ten times cast into
prison, under a law of 1741, which forbad laymen to preach, and
then set free, until he had gone over all Norway even to its
farthest and remotest corners, preaching unweariedly everywhere
in houses and in the open air often three or four times a
day, and nourishing besides the flame which he had kindled by
voluminous writings and an extensive correspondence. He directed
his preaching not only against the rationalism of the state
clergy, but also against the antinomian religion of feeling, of
“Blood and Wounds” theology introduced in earlier days by the
Moravians, with a one-sided emphasis and exaggeration indeed, but
still in all essentials maintaining the basis and keeping within
the lines of Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1804 he was charged with
tendencies dangerous to church and state, obtaining money from
peasants on false pretences, inciting the people against the
clergy, etc., and again cast into prison. The trial this time was
carried on for ten years, until at last in 1814 the supreme court
sentenced him on account of his invectives against the clergy to
pay a fine, but pronounced him not guilty on the other charges.
Broken down in spirit and body by his long imprisonment, he could
not think of engaging again in his former work. He died in 1824.
Numerous peasant preachers, however, issuing from his school
were ready to go forth in his footsteps, and till this day the
salutary effects of his and their activity are seen in wide
circles. The law of 1741 which had been made to tell against them
was at last abrogated by the Storthing in 1842. In 1845 the right
of forming Christian sects was recognised, and in 1851 even the
Jews were allowed the right of settlement previously refused them,
and the security of all civil privileges. Since that time even
in Norway the Catholic church has made considerable progress;
in June, 1878, it had eleven churches and fourteen priests.
§ 202. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
During the course of the century a breach from without was made upon
the stronghold of the Anglican established church and its legal standing
throughout the United Kingdom. The strong coherence of the Anglican
episcopal church had already been weakened internally by the rise within
its own bosom of High, Low, and Broad tendencies. The advance of the
first-named party to tractarianism and ritualism opened the door to
Romish sympathies, while in the last-named school German rationalism and
criticism found favour, and the low church party was not ashamed to go
hand-in-hand with the evangelical pietistic and methodistic tendencies
of the dissenters. There followed numerous conversions to Rome,
especially from the aristocratic ranks of the upper ten thousand. The
Emancipation Act of 1829 opened the door to both Houses of Parliament to
the Catholics, and in 1858 the same privileges were extended to the Jews.
Also the bulwarks which the state church had in the old universities
of Oxford and Cambridge were undermined, and in 1871 were completely
overthrown by the legal abolition of all confessional tests. Down to
1869 the hierarchy of the episcopal state church, though clearly alien
to the country, maintained its legal position in Catholic Ireland, till
at last the Irish Church Bill brought it there to an end. Repeatedly
have bills been introduced in the House of Commons, though hitherto
without success, by members of the incessantly agitating Liberation
Society, to disestablish the churches of England, Scotland, and
Wales.[556]
§ 202.1. =The Episcopal State Church.=--The two opposing parties
of the state church corresponded to the two political parties
of Tories and Whigs. The _high church party_, which has its most
powerful representatives in the aristocracy, holds aloof from
the dissenters, seeks to maintain the closest connexion between
church and state, and eagerly contends for the retention of all
old ecclesiastical forms and ordinances in constitution, worship,
and doctrine. On the other hand the _evangelical or low church
party_, which is more or less methodistically inclined, holds
free intercourse with dissenters, associating with them in
home and foreign mission work, etc., and with various shades
of differences advocates the claims of progress against those
of immobility, the independence of the church against its
identification with the state, the evangelical freedom and
general priesthood of believers against orthodoxy and hierarchism.
From their midst arose a movement in 1871, occasioned by the
Oxford “Essays and Reviews” and the works of Bishop Colenso,
which resulted in the publication, under the authority of
the bishops, of the “Speaker’s Commentary,” so-called because
suggested by Denison, who had long been speaker of the House
of Commons. It is a learned, thoroughly conservative commentary
on the whole Bible by the ablest theologians of England. On the
revision of the English translation of the Bible see § 181, 4.
Besides these two parties, however, there has arisen a third,
the broad church party. It originated with the distinguished
poet and philosopher, Coleridge (died 1834), and includes many of
the most excellent and scholarly of the clergy, especially those
most eminent for their acquaintance with German theology and
philosophy. They do not form an organized ecclesiastical party
like the evangelicals and high church men, but endeavour not
only to overcome the narrowness and severity of the former, but
also to secure a broader basis and a wider horizon for theology
as well as for the church.[557]--The struggle for the legalizing
of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister has been energetically
pressed since 1850, but though the House of Commons has
repeatedly passed the bill, it has been hitherto by small
majorities, under the influence of the bishops, rejected by
the House of Lords.--A non-official =Pan-Anglican Council=
of English bishops from all parts of the world, excluding
the laity and inferior clergy, with pre-eminently anti-Romish
and anti-ritualistic tendencies, was held in London in 1867
(cf. § 175, 5). When it met the second time in 1878, it was
attended by nearly one hundred bishops, one of them a negro. Of
the three weeks’ debates and their results, however, no detailed
account has been published.
§ 202.2. =The Tractarians and Ritualists.=--The activity of
the dissenters and the episcopal evangelical party’s attachment
to them stirred up the adherents of the high church party to
vigorous guarding of their interests, and drove them into a
one-sided exaggerated accentuation of the Catholic element. The
centre of this movement since 1833 was the university of Oxford.
Its leaders were Professors Pusey and Newman, its literary organ
the _Tracts for the Times_, from which the party received the
name of =Tractarians=. This was a series of ninety treatises,
published 1833-1841, on the basis of Anglo-Catholicism, which
sought, while holding by the Thirty-nine Articles, to affirm
with equal decidedness the genuine Protestantism over against
the Roman papacy, and, in the importance which it attached to
the apostolical succession of the episcopate and priesthood
and the apostolical tradition for the interpretation of
Scripture, the genuine Catholicism over against every form
of ultra-Protestantism. In this way, too, their dogmatics in
all the several doctrines, as far as the Thirty-nine Articles
would by any means allow, was approximated to the Roman Catholic
doctrine, and indeed by-and-by passed over entirely to that type
of doctrine. Newman’s Tract 90 caused most offence, in which,
with thoroughly jesuitical sophistry, it was argued that the
Thirty-nine Articles were capable of an explanation on the basis
of which they might be subscribed even by one who occupied in
regard to the church doctrine and practice an essentially Roman
Catholic standpoint. The university authorities now felt obliged
to declare publicly that the tracts were by no means sanctioned
by them, and that especially the application of the principles of
Tract 90 to the conduct of students in the matter of subscription
of the Thirty-nine Articles is not allowable. Bishop Bagot of
Oxford, hitherto favourable to the tractarians, refused to permit
the continued issue of the tracts. The other bishops also for
the most part spoke against them in their pastorals, and a flood
of controversial pamphlets roused the wrath of the non-Catholic
populace. But on the other hand tractarianism still found favour
among the higher clergy and the aristocracy. In 1845 Newman went
over to the Catholic church, and has since led a retired life
devoted to theological study. Pius IX. paid him no attention,
but in 1879 Leo XIII. acknowledged and rewarded his services to
the Catholic church by elevating him to the rank of cardinal.
The majority of the tractarians disapproved of Newman’s step and
remained in the Anglican church. Thus acted Pusey (died 1882),
the recognised leader of the party, after whom they were now
called =Puseyites=. Many, however, followed Newman’s example,
so that by the end of 1846 no less than one hundred and fifty
clergymen and prominent laymen were received into the widely
opened door of the Catholic church.[558]--The following twelve
years, 1846-1858, were occupied by two dogmatico-ecclesiastical
conflicts vitally affecting the interests of the tractarians.
1. =The Gorham Case.= The Thirty-nine Articles took essentially
Lutheran ground in treating of baptism, recognising it
as a vehicle of regeneration and divine sonship, and the
tractarians laid uncommonly great stress upon this article.
So also the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, refused to
institute the Rev. Cornelius Gorham because of his views on
this subject. Gorham accused him before the Archbishop of
Canterbury, but the Court of Arches decided in favour of the
bishop. The Court of Appeal, however, the judicial committee
of the Privy Council, annulled the episcopal judgment, and
ordered that Gorham should be installed in his office. In
vain did Philpotts, by a protest before the Court of Queen’s
Bench, and then before the Court of Common Pleas, against
the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in this case, in
vain, too, did Blomfield, Bishop of London, insist upon the
revival of Convocation, which for one and a half centuries
had been inoperative as a spiritual parliament with upper
and lower houses, and in vain did a tractarian assembly of
more than 1,500 distinguished clergymen and laymen lodge
a solemn protest. The judgment of the Privy Council stood,
and Gorham was inducted to his office in 1850. Many of
the protesters now went over to the Catholic church, and
about 600 others, like the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers 230
years before (§ 143, 4), under ecclesiastical oppression,
emigrated to New Zealand.
2. =The Denison Eucharist Case.=--The Puseyite Archdeacon
Denison of Taunton, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, had
in 1851 in open defiance of the Thirty-nine Articles, which
represent Calvin’s views of the Lord’s Supper, affirmed in
preaching and writing that unbelievers as well as believers
eat and drink the body and blood of the Lord. Over this
he was involved in a sharp discussion with a neighbouring
clergyman called Ditcher. In 1854 Ditcher accused Denison
before his bishop, who, after vain efforts to reconcile
the parties, referred the matter to the Court of Arches,
which sought, but in vain, to end the strife by compromise.
Ditcher now in 1856 brought his complaint before the
_Queen’s Bench_, which obliged the archbishop to take up the
matter again. A commission appointed by him declared that
the complaint was quite justifiable, and threatened Denison,
when he refused any sort of retraction, with deposition.
But the Court of Appeal in 1858 stayed the judgment on
the ground of a technical error in procedure, and Denison
remained in office.
§ 202.3. From the middle of 1850 the tractarians, who had
hitherto confined themselves to the development of the Romanizing
system of doctrine, began to apply its consequences to the church
ritual and the Christian life, and so won for themselves the name
of =Ritualists=, which has driven out their earlier designation.
Wherever possible they showed their Catholic zeal by introducing
images, crucifixes, candles, holy water, mass dresses, mass
bells, and boy choristers, urged the restoration of the seven
sacraments, especially of extreme unction, auricular confession,
the sacrificial theory and Corpus Christi day, of prayers for
the dead and masses for souls, invocation of saints and the
blessed Virgin; they also praised celibacy and monasticism,
etc. Ritualism has from the first shown singular skill in party
organization. The _English Church Union_, founded in 1860, has
now nearly 200,000 members, of these about 3,000 clergymen and
50 bishops, and it embraces 300 branches over the whole domain
of the Anglican church. Numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods,
guilds and orders, organized after the style of Roman Catholic
monasticism, promote the interests of ritualism, and zealously
prosecute home and foreign mission work. The _Confraternity
of the Blessed Sacrament_ originated in 1862, was able in 1882
to celebrate Corpus Christi day in 250 churches along with the
Romish church, dispensing only with the procession. The _Society
of the Holy Cross_, founded in 1873 consists only of priests,
and forms a kind of directory for all branches of the ritualistic
propaganda. The _English Order of St. Augustine_ has a threefold
division, into spiritual brothers who are preparing for priests’
orders, lay brothers who are being qualified as lay preachers,
both under the strictest vows, and a sort of tertiaries, who are
free from vows. Among the sisterhoods which already supply nurses
to all the great hospitals of the capital, the most important is
that called “by the name of Jesus.” They take, like the Beguines
of the middle ages, the three vows, but not as binding for life.
By the ultra high church party the genuine apostolic succession
of the ordination of the first Protestant archbishop, Matthew
Parker, and so the genuineness of all subsequent ordinations
going back to him, were doubted; three Anglican bishops are
said to have had episcopal consecration anew conferred on them
by a Greek Catholic bishop. The reckless and wilful procedure
of the ritualists in imitating the Roman Catholic ritual in
public worship called forth frequent violent disturbances at
their services, and noisy crowds flocked to their churches.
Most frequent and violent were the riots in 1859 and 1860 in the
parish of St. George’s, London, where scarcely any service was
held without disgraceful scenes of hissing, whistling, stamping,
and cries of “No popery.” The offscouring of all London flocked
to the Sunday services as to a public entertainment. Instead of
hymns, street songs were sung, instead of responses blasphemous
cries were shouted forth, while cushions and prayer-books
were hurled at the altar decorations, etc. These unseemly
proceedings were caused by the ritualistic rector, Bryan King,
who had introduced the objectionable ceremonial, and obstinately
continued it in spite of the decided opposition and protests
of his colleague, Mr. Allen. King’s removal in 1860 first
put an end to these disturbances, which police interference
proved utterly unable to check. The ritualistic _Church Union_,
called into existence by these proceedings, was opposed by an
anti-ritualistic _Church Association_, and from both multitudes
of complaints and appeals were brought before the ecclesiastical
and civil tribunals. The first case they brought up was that of
Rev. A. H. MacConochie, of Holborn, who, having been admonished
by the ecclesiastical courts on account of his ritualistic
practices in 1867, appealed to the Privy Council. And although
this court decided in 1869 that all ceremonies not authorized
by the prayer-book are to be regarded as forbidden, he and
his followers continued to act on the principle that whatever
is not there expressly prohibited ought to be permitted. The
_Public Worship Regulation Bill_, introduced by Archbishop Tait,
and passed by Parliament, which legislatively determined the
procedure in ritualistic cases, did not prevent the constant
advance of this movement. The _Court of Arches_ now issued a
suspension against the accused, and condemned them to prison
when they continued to officiate, until they declared themselves
ready to obey or to demit their office. Tooth of Hatcham, Dale of
London, Enraght of Bordesdale, and Green of Miles Platting were
actually sent to prison in 1880. But the first three were soon
liberated by the Court of Appeal finding some technical flaw
in the proceedings against them, while Green, in whose case no
such flaw appeared, lay in confinement for twenty months. The
ritualists still persistently continued their practice, and their
opponents renewed their prosecutions; these were followed by
appeals to the higher courts, presenting of petitions to both the
Houses of Parliament, addresses with vast numbers of signatures
for and against to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Convocation
which had meanwhile been restored, to the Cabinet, to the
Queen, etc. The result was that many cases were abandoned, some
obnoxious parties transferred elsewhere, and a very few deposed.
§ 202.4. =Liberalism in the Episcopal Church.=--The more liberal
tendency of the broad church party had also many supporters who
scrupled not to pass beyond the traditional bounds of English
orthodoxy. In opposition to the orthodoxy zealousy inculcated
at Oxford, rationalism found favour at the rival university of
Cambridge, and vigorous support was given to the views of the
Tübingen school of Baur in the London _Westminster Review_. And
even in high church Oxford, there were not wanting teachers in
sympathy with the critical and speculative rationalism of Germany.
Great excitement was caused in 1860 by the “_Essays and Reviews_,”
which in seven treatises by so many Oxford professors contested
the traditional apologetics and hermeneutics of English theology,
and set a sublimated rationalism in its place. In Germany these
not very important treatises would probably have excited little
remark, but in the English church they roused an unparalleled
disturbance; more than nine thousand clergymen of the episcopal
church protested against the book, and all the bishops
unanimously condemned it. The excitement had not yet subsided
when from South Africa oil was poured upon the flames. Bishop
Colenso of Natal (died 1883), who had zealously carried on the
mission there, but had openly expressed the conviction that
it is unwise, unscriptural, and unchristian to make repudiation
by Caffres living in polygamy, of all their wives but one, a
condition of baptism, had occasioned still greater offence by
publishing in 1863 in seven vols. a prolix critical disquisition
on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, in which he contested
the authenticity and unconditional credibility of these books
by arguments familiar long ago but now quite antiquated and
overthrown in Germany. During a journey to England undertaken for
his defence he was excommunicated and deposed by a synod of the
South African bishops in Capetown. The Privy Council, as supreme
ecclesiastical court in England, cleared him, as well as the
authors of the Essays, from the charge of heresy. An important
aid for the dissemination of liberal religious views is afforded
by the Hibbert Lectureship. Robert Hibbert (died 1849), a wealthy
private gentleman in London, assigned the yearly interest of
a considerable sum for “the spreading of Christianity in its
simplest form as well as the furthering of the unfettered
exercise of the individual judgment in matters of religion.”
The Hibbert trustees are eighteen laymen who dispense the
revenues in supplementing the salaries of poorly paid clergymen
of liberal views, in providing bursaries for theological students
at home and abroad, and in other such like ways, but since 1878
especially, by advice of distinguished scholars, in the endowment
of annual courses of lectures, afterwards published, on subjects
in the domain of philosophy, biblical criticism, the comparative
science of religion and the history of religion. The first
Hibbert Lecturer was the celebrated Oxford professor, Max Müller,
in 1878. Among other lecturers may be named Renan of Paris in
1880; Kuenen of Leyden in 1882; Pfleiderer of Berlin, in 1885.
The battle waged with great passionateness on both sides since
1869 for and against the removal of the Athanasian Creed, or at
least its anathemas, from the liturgy has not yet been brought
to any decided result.
§ 202.5. =Protestant Dissenters in England.=--Down nearly to the
end of the eighteenth century all the enactments and restrictions
of the Toleration Act of 1689 (§ 155, 3) continued in full force.
But in 1779 the obligation of Protestant dissenters to subscribe
the Thirty-nine Articles was abolished, and the acknowledgment
of the Bible as God’s revealed word substituted. The right of
founding schools of their own, hitherto denied them, was granted
in 1798. In 1813 the Socinians were also included among the
dissenters who should enjoy these privileges. After a severe
struggle the _Corporation and Test Acts_ were set aside in 1826,
affording all dissenters entrance to Parliament and to all civil
offices. The necessity of being married and having their children
baptized in an episcopal church was removed by the Marriage and
Registration Act of 1836 and 1837, and divorce suits were removed
from the ecclesiastical to a civil tribunal in 1857. In 1868
compulsory church rates for the episcopal parish church were
abolished. Lord Russell’s University Bill of 1854, by restricting
subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles to the theological
students, opened the universities of Oxford and Cambridge
to dissenters, while the University Tests Bill of 1871 made
the adherents of all religious confessions eligible for all
university honours and emoluments at both seminaries. Thus
one restriction after another was removed, so that at last the
episcopal church has nothing of her exclusive privileges left
beyond the rank and title of a state church, and the undiminished
possession of all her ancient property, from which her prelates
draw princely revenues.
§ 202.6. =Scotch Marriages in England.=--The saints of the
English Revolution had indeed resolved in 1653 to introduce
civil marriage (§ 162, 1). But the reaction under Cromwell set
this unpopular law aside, and the Restoration made marriage by
an Anglican clergyman, even for dissenters, an indispensable
condition of legal recognition. But in no country, especially
among the higher orders, were private marriages, without the
knowledge and consent of the family, so frequent as here,
and clergymen were always to be found unscrupulous enough to
celebrate such weddings in taverns or other convenient places.
When an end had been put to such irregularities on English soil
by an Act of Parliament of 1753, lovers seeking secret marriage
betook themselves to Scotland. In that country there prevailed,
and still prevails, the theory that a declaration of willingness
on both sides constitutes a perfectly valid marriage. The
Scottish ecclesiastical law indeed requires church proclamation
and ceremony, but failure to observe this requirement is
followed only by a small pecuniary fine. Fugitive English couples
generally made the necessary declaration before a blacksmith
at Gretna-Green, who was also justice of the peace in this
small border village, and were then legitimately married people
according to Scottish law. Only in 1856 were all marriages
performed in this manner without previous residence in Scotland
pronounced by Act of Parliament invalid.
§ 202.7. =The Scottish State Church.=--The Presbyterian Church of
Scotland, from the beginning strictly Calvinistic in constitution,
doctrine and practice, has, generally speaking, preserved
this character. Only in recent times has the endeavour of the
so-called _Moderates_ to introduce a milder type of doctrine won
favour. The Established Church, as a national church properly
so-called and recognised by law, dates from the political union of
England and Scotland in the kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and
the Anglican Episcopal Church there was then reduced to a feebly
represented dissenting denomination. Patronage, set aside indeed
in the Reformation age, but restored under Queen Anne in 1712,
and since then, in spite of all opposition from the stricter
party, continued, because often misused to secure the intrusion
of inacceptable ministers upon congregations, gave occasion
to repeated secessions. Thus the _Secession Church_ broke off
in 1732, and the _Relief Church_ in 1752, the latter going
beyond the former’s protest against patronage by unconditional
repudiation of Erastianism, _i.e._ the theory of the necessary
connection of Church and State (§ 144, 1), and the assertion
of the spiritual independence of the church, and expressed
firmly the principles of Voluntaryism, _i.e._ the payment of all
ecclesiastical officers, etc., by voluntary contributions. Both
parties united in 1847 in the _United Presbyterian Church_, which
now embraces one-fifth of the population.--Twice that number
joined the secession of the Free Church in 1843. The General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland granted to congregations in
1834 the right of vetoing presentations to vacancies. The civil
courts, however, upheld the absolute right of patrons, and at
the Assembly of 1843 about two hundred of the most distinguished
ministers, with the great Dr. Chalmers (died 1847) at their head,
left the state church, and, as _Non-Intrusionists_, founded
the _Free Church of Scotland_, which at its own cost formed new
parishes and distinguished itself by Christian zeal in every
direction. It differs from the _United Presbyterian Church_ in
restricting its opposition to the abuse of patronage, without
repudiating right off every sort of state aid and endowment as
unevangelical. But even to it the law passed in 1846, granting
to all congregations the right of veto, seemed now no longer
a sufficient motive to return to the state church. Even when
in 1874, parliament, at the call of the government, formally
abolished the rights of patronage through all Scotland and gave
to the congregations the right of choosing their own ministers,
the General Assembly of the Free Church by a great majority
refused to reunite with the state church brought so near
it, because it conceded to the civil courts unwarrantable
interference with its internal affairs, especially the right
of suspending its clergy.[559]
§ 202.8. =Scottish Heresy Cases.=--The Glasgow presbytery
lodged before the United Presbyterian Synod in Edinburgh of
1878 a charge against the Rev. Fergus Ferguson of heresy,
because his teaching was in conflict with the church doctrine
of the atonement in saying that sinners, apart from Christ’s
intervention, would not suffer eternal punishment but extinction,
and that the same fate still lay before unbelievers and the
impenitent. After five days’ violent discussion, the majority of
the synod, while strongly dissenting from his views and urging
him to avoid it in his preaching and catechising, resolved
to retain him in office as having proved his adherence to the
orthodox doctrine of the atonement. But when, at next year’s
synod, the Rev. D. Macrae of Gourock asserted that, in spite of
the Westminster Confession, it was allowable for ministers to
deny the eternity of punishment, and would not promise to preach
otherwise, he was unanimously deposed.--Far more exciting and
long continued were the proceedings begun in the Free Church
in 1876, against Professor Robertson Smith of Aberdeen, who was
charged before his presbytery with offensive statements about
angels, but especially with contradicting the inspiration of
Scripture by contesting the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy.
After various proposals of deposition, suspension, rebuke,
acquittal, had been made, the General Assembly of 1880, after
much deliberation and discussion, by a majority found the charge
of heterodoxy not proven, but earnestly exhorted the accused
to greater circumspection and moderation, and the decision was
greeted with thundering applause from the students and waving of
handkerchiefs from the ladies present. But when, very soon after
this acquittal, several other contributions by him appeared
in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, on the Hebrew Language and
Literature, and Haggai, in the spirit of the Wellhausen criticism
(§ 182, 18), as also an article on Animal Worship among the
Arabians and in the Old Testament, in the _Journal of Philology_,
the _Commission_ sitting in Edinburgh reinstituted proceedings
against him. In October, 1880, Smith vindicated before that court
his scientific attitude toward the Old Testament, maintaining
that a moderate criticism of the biblical books was reconcilable
with the maintenance of their inspired authority. The majority of
the Commission, however, voted for his expulsion from his chair.
Smith protested both against the competence and against the
judgment of the Commission, but declared himself ready to submit
to the judgment of the General Assembly. Meanwhile he accepted
an invitation from Glasgow to deliver public lectures there on
the Old Testament, which were received with extraordinary favour.
This course was published under the title: “_The Old Testament
in the Jewish Church_.” The General Assembly of May, 1881, now
decided by a large majority to remove him from his academical
chair, with retention of his license and his professor’s
salary, which latter, however, Smith declined. But his numerous
sympathizers presented him with a scientific library worth
£3,000, and promised an annual stipend equal to his former salary.
In 1883 he received the appointment as Professor of Arabic in
Cambridge and the large revenues of that office allowed him to
decline the offer of his friends.[560]
§ 202.9. =The Catholic Church in Ireland.=--The Catholic
inhabitants of Ireland under Protestant proprietors, and forced
to pay tithes for the support of the Protestant clergy, were
always deprived of civil rights. In 1809 O’Connell (died 1847),
an agitator of great popular eloquence, placed himself at the
head of the oppressed people, in order in a constitutional way
to secure religious and political freedom and equality. At last,
in 1829, the Emancipation Bill, supported by Peel and Wellington,
was passed, which on the basis of the formal declaration of the
whole Catholic episcopate that papal infallibility and papal
sovereignty in civil matters was not part of the Catholic faith
nor could be joined therewith either in Ireland or anywhere else
in the Catholic world, gave to Catholics admission to parliament
and to all civil and military appointments. But the hated tithes
remained, and were enforced, when refused, by military force.
After long debates in both houses of parliament, the Tithes Bill
was adopted in 1838, which transferred the tithe as a land-tax
from tenants to proprietors, which, however, was only a
postponing of the question. It was thus regarded by O’Connell. He
declared that justice for Ireland could only be got by abolishing
the legislative union with Great Britain existing since 1800,
and restoring her independent parliament. For this purpose
he organized the Repeal Association. In 1840 another no less
powerful popular agitator arose in the person of the Irish
Capuchin, Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance, who with
unparalleled success persuaded thousands of those degraded by
drink to take vows of abstinence from spirituous liquors. He
kept apart from all political agitation, but the fruits of his
exertions were all in its favour. O’Connell in 1843 organized
monster meetings, attended by hundreds of thousands. The
government had him tried, the jury found him guilty, but the
House of Lords quashed the conviction and liberated him from
prison in 1844. The Peel ministry now sought to soothe the
excitement by passing in 1845 the Legacy Act, which allowed
Catholics to hold property in their own names, and the Maynooth
Bill, by which the theological seminary at Maynooth received a
rich endowment from the State. Continued famine, and consequent
emigration of several hundreds of thousands to America and
Australia, relieved Ireland of a considerable portion of its
Catholic population, while Protestant missions by Bible and
tract circulation and by schools had some success in evangelizing
those who remained. On November 5th, 1855, the anniversary of
the Gunpowder Plot, the Redemptorists at Kingstown, near Dublin,
erected and burnt a great bonfire in the public streets of Bibles
which they had seized, and the primate archbishop of Ireland
justified it by reference to the example of the believers at
Ephesus (Acts xix. 19).
§ 202.10. The Fenian movement, originating among the American
Irish, which since 1863 created such terror among the English,
was the result of political rather than religious agitation.
Although this movement failed in its proper end, namely the
complete separation of Ireland from England, it yet forced
upon the government the conviction of the absolute necessity of
meeting the just demands of the Irish by thorough-going reforms
and putting an end to the oppressions which the native farmers
suffered at the hands of foreign landowners, and the grievances
endured by the Catholic church by the maintenance of the Anglican
church established in Ireland. The carrying out of these reforms
was the service rendered by the Gladstone ministry. By the Irish
Land Bill of 1870 the land question was solved according to
the demands of justice, and by the Irish Church Bill of 1869,
which deprived the Anglican church in Ireland of the character
of a state church and put it on the same footing as other
denominations, the church question was similarly settled. The
dignitaries of the Anglican church thus lost their position as
state officials and their seats in the House of Lords. The rich
property of the hitherto established church was calculated and
applied partly to compensating for losses caused by this reform,
partly to creating benevolent institutions for the general
good. But neither the Church Bill, nor the Land Bill, nor the
Universities Bill, which in 1880 founded by state aid a Catholic
university in Dublin, secured the reconciliation of the Irish.
“Eternal hatred of England” was and is the battle cry; “Ireland
for the Irish, and only for them,” is their watchword. In order
to carry out this scheme an Irish “National League” was formed,
and innumerable secret “Moonlighters,” under the supposed
leadership of “Captain Moonshine,” committed atrocities by
burning farm steadings and mutilating cattle, murdering and
massacring by dagger and revolver, petroleum and dynamite, and
directed their operations against the representatives of the
government, against proprietors who sought rent, against tenants
who paid rent, against officials who endeavoured to enforce it,
and against everything that was, or was called, English. In order
to cut at the root of this lawlessness, which by proclamation
of a state of siege was only restricted, not overthrown, the
government of 1881 passed further agrarian reforms: All tenant
rights were to be purchased by the surplus of the fund formed by
the disestablishment of the Irish church, and where this did not
suffice, by state grants, and the right to conclude contracts
for rent and to determine its amount was transferred from the
proprietors to a newly-constituted land court, without whose
permission, after the lapse of the fifteen years’ term, no rent
contract could be made. But even this did not stop almost daily
repeated murders and acts of destruction. The government now
sought the aid of the pope through the mediation of a Catholic
member of parliament on a visit to Rome; but these merely
confidential negotiations led to no considerable result. In May,
1883, the curia, on the occasion of a collection promoted by the
National League as a magnificent national present to the great
(Protestant) leader of the agitation, Mr. Parnell, in a circular
letter, forbad “_proprio motu_,” the bishops in the strictest
manner taking any part in the movement, and urged them to
dissuade their members from doing so. But only Archbishop McCabe
of Dublin (died 1885), from the first an opponent of the League,
issued a pastoral against it to be read in all the pulpits of his
diocese. The other bishops ignored the papal command, and among
the Catholic people the opinion obtained that they owed to the
pope obedience in spiritual but not in political matters. The
collections for the Parnell fund were continued with redoubled
zeal. The attempts of dynamitards, supplied with materials by
their American compatriots, and other agrarian offences have not
yet been finally stopped.
§ 202.11. =The Catholic Church in England and Scotland.=--The
Emancipation Act, passed mainly for the relief of the Irish,
naturally also benefited English Catholics, who in 1791 had been
allowed to hold Catholic services. Led by the numerous accessions
of Puseyites to entertain the most extravagant hopes, Pius IX.
in 1850 issued a bull, by which the Roman Catholic hierarchy
in England was reinstituted with twelve suffragan bishoprics
under one archbishop of Westminster. The bull occasioned great
excitement in the Protestant population (_Anti-Papal Aggression_),
and the _Ecclesiastical Titles Bill_ forbade the use of
ecclesiastical titles not sanctioned by the law of the land.
After the first excitement had passed, the Catholic bishops,
at their head the learned and brilliant and zealous ultramontane
Cardinal Archbishop Wiseman (died 1865), and his successor,
surpassing him, if not in genius and learning, at least in
ultramontane zeal, the Puseyite convert Manning, made a cardinal
in 1875, used with impunity their condemned titles, until in 1871
the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was formally revoked by act of
parliament. Conversions in noble families were particularly
numerous in the later decades. Since 1850 the number of Catholics
in England and Scotland has quadrupled. This has been caused in
great part by Irish emigration, for the middle and lower ranks of
the English have scarcely been affected by the conversion fever,
which as the latest form of the fitful humour of the English had
so rich a harvest in the families of the nobility. In 1780 all
London had only one Catholic place of worship, the chapel of the
Sardinian embassy, which on June 2nd of that year was wrecked and
burnt by a raging mob. Now the English capital has two episcopal
dioceses, ninety-four Catholic churches and chapels (besides
about 900 Anglican churches) with 313 clergymen, and forty-four
cloisters. In the House of Lords sit twenty-eight Roman Catholic
peers, and in both countries there are forty-seven Catholic
baronets. Since 1847 England has a specifically Catholic
university at Kensington, under the episcopate, and with the
pope as its supreme head, which, however, with its poor staff
of teachers and its expensive course attracts but a few of
the Catholic youth of England. Since the Anti-Papal Aggression
of 1850 failed, the Protestant people have shown themselves
comparatively indifferent to such assumptions of the papacy.--In
the Act of Union of 1707 (§ 155, 3), =Scotland= was guaranteed
the absolute exclusion of every sort of Roman Catholic hierarchy
for all time to come. But in recent times the number of its
Catholic inhabitants so greatly increased, that Pius IX. in his
last years, not unaided by the English government, eagerly urged
the re-establishment of the hierarchy, and Leo XIII. was able at
his first consistory of the college of cardinals in March, 1878,
to make appointments to the two newly-erected archdioceses and
their bishoprics. On the following Easter Sunday the allocution
relating thereto was read in all Catholic churches in Scotland.
The restoration was thus carried out in spite of all protests and
demonstrations of Scottish Protestants.
§ 202.12. =German Lutheran Congregations in Australia.=--Besides
the dominant Anglican church, emigration has led to the formation
of a considerable number of German Lutheran congregations, which
are distributed in three synods.
1. The Victoria Synod was founded in 1852 by pastor Göthe.
It adopted at first the union platform, but subsequently
attached itself more decidedly to the Lutheran confession.
2. Pastor Karch, who in 1830 emigrated with a number of Prussian
Lutherans, in order to avoid the union, laid the foundation
of the Immanuel Synod. Since 1875 it has been supplied with
preachers from the missionary institute of Neuendettelsau.
It is distinguished by its missionary zeal for the conversion
of the natives, pursues with special interest the study of
the prophetic word, and makes chiliasm an open question which
need not rend the church.
3. The South Australian Synod, on the other hand, is the decided
opponent of any sort of chiliasm, and has assumed an attitude
of violent antagonism to the Immanuel Synod.
§ 203. FRANCE.
In France, lauded as the eldest daughter of the church after the
overthrow of the first Empire, ultramontanism, under the secret and
open co-operation of the Jesuits, has ever arisen with revived youth
and vigour out of all the political convulsions which have since passed
over the land. And though indeed Gallicanism seemed again to obtain
strength under the second Empire and, down to the close of that period,
found many able champions among learned theologians like Bishop Maret
(§ 189, 1), and even among exalted prelates like the noble Archbishop
Darboy of Paris, a martyr of his office under the Commune (§ 212, 4),
its influence faded gradually, and in the latest phase of France’s
political development, the third republic, seems utterly to have
disappeared, so that even the “_Kulturkampf_” which broke out in 1879
could not give it life again.--The number of Protestant churches and
church members, in spite of bloody persecutions during the Bourbon
restoration, and many arbitrary restrictions by Catholic prefects under
the citizen king and the second Empire, by numerous accessions of whole
congregations and groups of congregations through zealous evangelization
efforts, by means of school instruction, itinerant preaching, and Bible
colportage, has increased during the century fourfold. In the Reformed
church the opposition of methodistically tinctured orthodoxy, reinforced
from England and French Switzerland, and rationalistic freethinking,
led to sharp conflicts. Also in the Lutheran church, more strongly
influenced by Germany, similar discussions arose, but a more
conciliatory spirit prevailed and violent struggles were avoided.
§ 203.1. =The French Church under Napoleon I.=--In 1801 Napoleon
as Consul concluded with Pius VII. a =Concordat= which, adopting
the concordat of Francis I. (§ 110, 14), abandoning the pragmatic
sanction of Bourges, and only haggling about the limits to be
fixed for the two powers, gave no consideration to the idea of
a wholesome internal reform of the French Church: Catholicism is
the acknowledged religion of the majority of the French people;
the church property belongs to the state, with the obligation to
maintain the clergy and ordinances; the clergy who had taken the
oath and those who were expatriated were all to resign, but were
eligible for election; new boundaries were to be marked out for
the episcopal dioceses with reference to the political divisions
of the country; the government elects and the pope confirms the
bishops, and these, with approval of the government, appoint the
priests. The one-sided =Organic Articles= of the first Consul of
1802, which were annexed to the publication of the Concordat as
a code of explanatory regulations, made any proclamation of papal
orders and decrees of all foreign councils dependent on previous
permission of the government, as also the calling of synods and
consultative assemblies of the clergy. They further ordained that
all official services of the clergy should be gratuitous, and
transferred to the civil council the right and duty of strict
inquiry into any clerical breach of civil laws and any misuse
or excessive exercise of clerical authority. The thirty-first
article, however, created that unhappy order of _Desservants_
or curates, the result of which was that interim appointments
were made to most of the benefices in order to squeeze state pay
in supplement to the inadequate ecclesiastical endowments, and
so their holders were at the absolute mercy of the bishops who
could transport or dispense with them at any moment. For further
particulars about the friendly and hostile relations of Napoleon
and the pope, see § 185, 1. By an imperial decree of 1810, the
four articles of the Gallican Church (§ 156, 3) were made laws
of the Empire; and a French National Council of 1811 sought to
complete the reconstruction of the church according to Napoleon’s
ideas, but proved utterly incapable for such a task, and was
therefore dissolved by the emperor himself.--To pacify the
Protestants, dissatisfied with the Concordat, amid flattering
acknowledgment of their services to the state, to science and
to the arts, an appendix was attached to the Organic Articles,
securing to them liberty of religious worship and political and
municipal equality with Catholics. For training ministers for the
Reformed Church a theological seminary was founded at Montauban,
and for Lutherans an academy with a seminary at Strassburg.
Napoleon also afterwards proved himself on every occasion ready
to help the Protestants. He was equally forward in recognising
public opinion in France. The National Institute of France in
1804 offered a prize for an essay on the influence of Luther’s
Reformation on the formation and advance of European national
life, and awarded it to the treatise of the Catholic physician
Villers (_Essai sur l’influence de la réf. de Luther_, etc.),
which in all respects glorified Protestantism. Even the Catholic
clergy during the first Empire exhibited an easy temper and
tolerance such as was never shown before or since. The obligatory
civil marriage law introduced by the Revolution in 1792, obtained
place in the _Code Napoléon_ in 1804, and was with it introduced
in Belgium and the provinces of the Rhine.[561]
§ 203.2. =The Restoration and the Citizen Kingdom.=--The =Charter=
of the Bourbon Restoration under Louis XVIII. (1814-1824) and
Charles X. (1824-1830) made Catholicism the state religion and
granted toleration and state protection to the other confessions.
A new concordat concluded with Pius VII. in 1817, by which that
of Napoleon of 1801, with the Organic Articles of the following
year, were abrogated, and the state of matters previous to 1789
restored, was so vigorously opposed by the nation, that the
ministry were obliged to withdraw the measure introduced in both
chambers for giving it legislative sanction. Ultramontanism,
however, in its boldest form, steadily favoured by the
government, soon prevailed among the clergy to such an extent
that any inclination to Gallicanism was denounced as heresy and
intolerance of Protestantism lauded as piety. In southern France
the rekindled hatred of the Catholic mob against the Reformed
broke out in 1815 in brutal and bloody persecution. The
government kept silence till the indignation of Europe obliged
it to put down the atrocities, but the offenders were left
unpunished. Connivance in such lawlessness on the part of the
government contributed largely to its overthrow in the July
revolution of 1830. The Catholic Church then lost again the
privilege of a state religion, and the hitherto persecuted and
oppressed Protestants obtained equal rights with the Catholics.
But even under the new constitutional government of Orleans,
ultramontanism soon reasserted itself. The Protestants had to
complain of much injury and injustice from Catholic prefects,
and the Protestant minister Guizot claimed for France the
protectorate of the whole Catholic world. The Reformed Church
meanwhile flourished, though vacillating between methodistic
narrowness and rationalistic shallowness, growing both inwardly
and outwardly, and also the Lutheran communities, which outside
of Alsace were only thinly scattered, enjoyed great prosperity.
In the February revolution of 1848 the Catholic clergy readily
yielded obedience to the citizen king Louis Philippe, and,
on the ground that the Catholic church is suited to any form
of government which only grants liberty to the church, did
not refuse their benediction to the tree of freedom with the
sovereign people at the barricades.
§ 203.3. =The Catholic Church under Napoleon III.=--Louis
Napoleon, as president of the new republic (1848-1852), and still
more decidedly as emperor (1852-1870), inclined to follow the
traditions of his uncle, regarded the concordat of 1801 as still
legally in force and seemed specially anxious to arouse zeal
for the Gallican liberties. Although his bayonets secured the
pope’s return to Rome (§ 185, 2) and even afterwards supported
his authority there, he did not fulfil the heart’s wish of the
emperor by the people’s grace to place the imperial crown upon
his head in his own person. Severely strained relations between
the imperial court and the episcopate resulted in 1860 from a
pamphlet against the papacy inspired by the government (§ 185, 3).
Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, was one of the oldest and most
determined defenders of the interests of the papal see, and from
Poitiers the emperor was pretty openly characterized as a second
Pilate. The government did not venture directly to interfere
between the two, but reminded the bishops that the emperor’s
differences with the pope referred only to temporal affairs. It
also forbade the forming of separate societies for the collecting
of Peter’s pence, and dissolved the societies of St. Vincent,
instituted for benevolent purposes, but misused for ultramontane
agitations. When Archbishop Desprez of Toulouse, like his
predecessors in 1662 and 1762, on May 16th, 1862, with pompous
phrases of piety appointed the jubilee festival of the “_fait
glorieux_,” by which at Toulouse three hundred years before,
by means of shameful treachery and base breach of pledges 4,000
Protestants were murdered (§ 139, 15), a shout of indignation
rose from almost all French journals and the government forbade
the ceremonial. It also refused permission to proclaim the papal
encyclical with the syllabus (§ 185, 2) and condemned several
bishops who disobeyed for misuse of their office. Under the
influence of the ultramontane empress Eugenie, however, the
relation of the government to the curia and the higher clergy of
the empire, since the one could not do without the other, became
more friendly and intimate, till the day of Sedan, September 2nd,
1870, put an end to the Napoleonic empire and the temporal power
of the papacy which it had maintained.
§ 203.4. =The Protestant Churches under Napoleon III.=--After the
revolution of 1848, the Lutherans at an assembly in Strassburg
and the Reformed in Paris consulted about a new organization of
their churches. But as the latter resolved in order to maintain
constitutional union amid doctrinal diversity, entirely to set
aside symbol and dogma, pastor Fr. Monod and Count Gasparin,
the noble defenders of French Protestantism, lodged a protest,
and with thirty congregations of the strict party constituted
a new council at Paris in 1849, independent of the state, as the
_Union des églises évangéliques de France_ with biennial synods.
Louis Napoleon gave to the Reformed Church a central council in
Paris with consistories and presbyteries; to the Lutheran, an
annual general consistory as a legislative court and a standing
directory as an administrative court. The Lutheran theological
faculty at Strassburg with its vigorous unconfessional science
represents the westernmost school of Schleiermacher’s theology.
The academy at Montauban, with Adolph Monod at its head,
represents Reformed orthodoxy, not strictly confessional but
coloured by methodistic piety, and Coquerel in Paris, was the
head of the rationalistic party of the Reformed national church.
The lead in the reaction against rationalism since 1830 has
been taken by the _Société évangélique_ at Paris, which, aiming
at the Protestantising of France, and using for this end Bible
colportage, tract distribution, the sending out of evangelists,
school instruction, etc., has developed an extraordinarily
restless and successful activity. It has been powerfully
supported by the evangelical society of Geneva. The number of
Protestant clergymen in France has steadily risen, and almost
every year in and out of the Catholic population new evangelical
congregations have been formed, in spite of endless difficulties
put in the way by Catholic courts. In Strassburg, in 1854, the
Jesuits persuaded the Catholic prefects to recall and arrest
the revenues of the former St. Thomas institute, which since the
Reformation had been applied to the maintenance of a Protestant
gymnasium. The prefect of Paris, however, was instructed to
desist from his claims. In the speech from the throne in 1858,
the emperor declared that the government secured for Protestants
full liberty of worship, without forgetting, however, that
Catholicism is the religion of the majority, and the _Moniteur_
commented on this imperial speech so evidently in the spirit
of the _Univers_, that the prefects could not be in doubt how
to understand it. By General Espinasse, who, after the Orsini
attempt on the emperor’s life in 1858, officiated for a long
time as Minister of the Interior, the prefects were expressly
instructed, to extend their espionage of the ill-affected press
to the proceedings of the evangelical societies, and to prohibit
the colportage of Protestant Bibles. On a change of minister,
however, the latter enactment was withdrawn, and only agents
of foreign Bible societies were interfered with. By an imperial
decree of 1859, the right of permitting of the opening of new
Protestant churches and chapels was taken from the local courts
and transferred to the imperial council of state. For every
Protestant congregation, so soon as it numbered 400 souls, the
legal state salary for the clergymen would be paid.
§ 203.5. =The Catholic Church in the Third French
Republic.=--The Gambetta government, the national vindication
of the 4th September, 1870, resigned its power in February, 1871,
into the hands of the National Assembly elected by the whole
nation, which, although through clerical influence upon the
electors predominantly monarchical and clerical, appointed
the old Voltairean Thiers (died, 1877), formerly ministerial
president under Louis Philippe, as alone qualified for the
difficult post of president of the republic. In the necessary
second vote, indeed, there was a considerable increase of the
republican and as such thoroughly anti-clerical party; but even
in its ranks it was admitted that the establishment of France
as leader of all Europe in the fight against ultramontanism
and the co-operation therein of the clergy were the absolutely
indispensable means for the political _Revanche_, after which
the hearts of all Frenchmen longed as the hart for the water
streams. A petition from five bishops and other dignitaries
to the National Assembly for the restoration of the temporal
power of the pope was set aside as inopportune. But Archbishop
Guibert of Paris, without asking the government, proclaimed the
infallibility dogma, and the minister of instruction, Jules Simon,
contented himself with warning the episcopate in a friendly way
against any further illegal steps of that kind. The clerical
party was also successful in its protest to the National Assembly
against the education law, which by raising the standard of
instruction, placing it under the supervision of the state and
making inspection of schools obligatory, proposed to put an end
to the terrible ignorance of the French people as the chief cause
of their deep decay. Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans was appointed
president of the commission for examining it, and so its fate
was sealed. Meanwhile the people, by frequent manifestations of
the Virgin, were roused to a high pitch of religious excitement.
Crowds of pilgrims encouraged by miraculous healings flocked
to our Lady of La Salette, at Lourdes, etc. (§ 188, 6), and the
consecration of _Notre Dame de la Deliverance_ at Bayeux was
celebrated as a brilliant national festival. When in May, 1873,
Thiers gave way before the machinations of his opponents and,
under the new president, Marshal Macmahon, the thoroughly
clerical ministry of the Duc de Broglie got the helm of affairs,
the pilgrimage craze, mariolatry and ultramontane piety, aided
by the prefects and mayors, increased to an unparalleled extent
among all ranks. Under the Buffet ministry of 1875 the influence
of clericalism was unabated. To him it owed its most important
acquisition, the right of creating free Catholic universities
wholly independent of the State, with the privilege of conferring
degrees. But when in 1876 the new elections for the National
Assembly gave an anti-clerical majority, Buffet was obliged to
resign. The new Dufaure ministry, with the Protestant Waddington
as minister of instruction, declared indeed that it continued
the liberty of instruction, but decidedly refused the right
of conferring degrees. The proposal to this effect met with
the hearty support of the new chamber of deputies. But all the
greater was the jubilation of the clericals when the senate by
a small majority refused its consent, and all the more eagerly
was the founding of new free Catholic universities carried on,
at Paris, Angers, Lyons, Lille and Toulouse, but notwithstanding
every effort they only attracted a very small number of
scholars,--in 1879, when they flourished most, at all the five
there were only 742 students.
§ 203.6. =The French “Kulturkampf,” 1880.=--The Dufaure ministry
was succeeded in December, 1876, by the semi-liberal ministry
of Jules Simon, which again was driven out in a summary fashion
by president Macmahon on May 16th, 1877, and replaced, on the
dissolution of the chamber, by a clerical ministry under Duc
de Broglie. But in the newly elected chamber the republican
anti-clerical majority was so overwhelming that Macmahon, on
January 30th, 1879, abandoning his motto of government, _J’y
suis et j’y reste_, was at last obliged, between the alternatives
offered him by Gambetta, _Se soumettre ou se démettre_, to choose
the latter. His successor was Grévy, president of the Chamber,
who entrusted the protestant Waddington with the forming of a new
ministry in which Jules Ferry was minister of instruction. Ferry
brought in a bill in March to abolish the representation of the
clergy in the High Council of Education by four archiepiscopal
deputies, continuing indeed the free Catholic universities,
but requiring their students to enroll in a state university
which alone could hold examinations and give degrees, and
finally enacting by Article 7 that the right of teaching in all
educational institutions should be refused to members of all
religious orders and congregations not recognised by the state.
The chamber deputies accepted this bill without amendment on
July 9th, but the senate on March 7th, 1880, after passing
six articles refused to adopt the seventh. On March 29th, the
president of the republic issued on his own authority two decrees,
based indeed upon earlier enactments (1789-1852), gone into
desuetude indeed, but never abrogated (§ 186, 2), demanded the
dissolution of the Society of Jesus, containing 1,480 members
in 56 institutions, within three months, and insisted that the
orders and congregations not recognised by the State, embracing
14,033 sisters in 602 institutions and 7,444 brothers in 384
institutions, in the same time should by production of their
statutes and rules seek formal recognition or else be broken
up. A storm of protests on the part of the bishops greeted these
“_March Decrees_,” and riotous demonstrations made before the
Minister of Instruction at his residence at Lille expressed the
protests of the students of the Catholic university there. The
pope now broke his reserve and by a nuncio sent the president
of the republic a holograph letter in which he declared that he
must interfere on behalf of the Jesuits and the threatened orders,
because they were indispensably necessary to the wellbeing of
the church. He did not wish that they should have recourse to
unlawful means, but it must be understood that they would appeal
to the courts for protection of their threatened civil liberties.
When therefore on the morning of June 30th the police began their
work of expelling the Jesuits from their houses, these lodged a
complaint before the courts of invasion of their domestic peace
and infringement of their personal liberty. Their schools were
closed on August 31st, the end of the school year; meanwhile
they had taken the precaution to transfer most of them to such as
would be ready afterwards to restore them. The enforcement of the
second of the March Decrees against the other orders was delayed
for a while. A compromise proposed by the episcopate, favoured
by the pope and not absolutely rejected even by the minister
Freycinet, Waddington’s successor, according to which instead
of the required application for recognition all these orders
should sign a declaration of loyalty, undertaking to avoid all
participation in political affairs and to do nothing opposed to
existing order, brought about the overthrow of this ministry in
September, 1880, by the machinations from other motives of the
president of the chamber and latent dictator, Leon Gambetta. At
the head of the new ministry was Ferry, who held the portfolio of
instruction, and under him the carrying out of the second March
Decree began on October 16th, 1880. Up to the meeting of the
chamber in November 261 monasteries had been vacated; the rest,
as from the first all female congregations, were spared, so that
France with its colonies and mission stations still number
4,288 male and 14,990 female settlements of spiritual orders,
the former with about 32,000, the latter with about 166,200
inmates.--The expulsion of the Jesuits, as well as the more
recent of the other orders, was, however, stoutly opposed. The
police told off for this duty found doors shut and barricaded
against them or defended by fanatical peasants and mobs of
shrieking women, so that they had often to be stormed and broken
up by the military. Still more threatening than this opposition
was the reaction which began to assert itself at the instance
of the almost thoroughly ultramontane jurists of the country, a
survival of the times of Napoleon III. and Macmahon. An advocate
Rousse, who publicly stated the opinion that the March Decrees
were illegal and therefore not binding, was supported by 2,000
attorneys and over 200 corporations of attorneys and by many
distinguished university jurists. More than 200 state officials
and many judiciary and police officers, together with several
officers of the army, tendered their resignations so as to avoid
taking part in the execution of the decrees. When it became clear
that unfavourable verdicts would be given by the courts invoked
by the Jesuits against the executors of the decree, as indeed was
soon actually done by several courts, the government lodged an
appeal against their competence before the tribunal of conflicts
which also actually in regard to all such cases pronounced them
incompetent and their decisions therefore null and void; but the
complainers insisted that their complaints should be taken to a
Council of State as the only court suitable to deal with charges
against officials, which, as might be expected, was not done.
§ 203.7. In the future course of the French “Kulturkampf” the
most important proceedings of the government were the following:
The abolition of the institute of military chaplains, highly
serviceable in ultramontanizing the officers, was carried out
in 1880, as well as the requirement that the clergy and teachers
should give military service for one year, and subsequently also
military escorts to the Corpus Christi procession were forbidden.
In 1880 the Municipal Council of Paris, with the concurrence of
the prefect of the Seine, forbad the continuance of the beautiful
building of the church of the Heart of Jesus begun in 1875 on
Montmartre (§ 188, 12), confiscating the site that had been
granted for it. In 1881 the churchyards were relieved of their
denominational character, and the following year the right of
managing them, with permission of merely civil interment without
the aid of a clergyman, was transferred from the ecclesiastical
to the civil authorities. By introducing in 1880 high schools
for girls with boarding establishments an end was put to the
education of girls of the upper ranks in nunneries, which had
hitherto been the almost exclusive practice. Far more sweeping
was the School Act brought in by the radical minister of worship,
Paul Bert, and first enforced in October, 1886, which made
attendance compulsory, relegated religious instruction wholly to
the church and home, and absolutely excluded all the clergy from
the right of giving any sort of instruction in the public schools,
and demanded the removal of all crucifixes and other religious
symbols from the school buildings. In December, 1884, a tax was
imposed on the property of all religious orders, also the state
allowance for the five Catholic seminaries with only thirty-seven
students was withdrawn, and many other important deductions made
upon the budget for Catholic worship, which at first the senate
opposed, but at last agreed to. The Divorce Bill frequently
introduced since 1881, which permitted parties to marry again,
and gave disposal of the matter to the civil court, got the
assent of the senate only in the end of July, 1884. The clericals
were also greatly offended by the decree passed in May, 1885,
which closed the church of St. Genoveva, the former Pantheon,
as a place of worship and made it again a burial place for
distinguished Frenchmen. This resolution was first carried out
by placing there the remains of Victor Hugo. Amid these and many
other injuries to its interests the Roman curia, concentrating
all its energies upon the German “Kulturkampf,” endeavoured to
keep things back in a moderate way. Yet in July, 1883, the pope
addressed to president Grévy a friendly but earnest remonstrance,
which he treated simply as a private letter and, without
communicating it officially to his cabinet, answered that apart
from parliament he could not act, but that so far as he and
his ministry were able they would seek to avoid conflict with
the holy see. And in fact the government, especially after the
overthrow of the Gambetta ministry in 1882, often successfully
opposed the proposal of the radical chamber, _e.g._ the
separation of church and state, the abrogation of the concordat,
the recall of the embassy to the Vatican, the abolition of
religious oaths in the proceedings of the courts, the stopping of
the state subvention of a million francs for payment of salaries
in seminaries for priests, etc.
§ 203.8. =The Protestant Churches under the Third
Republic.=--Since the French Reformed began to emulate their
Catholic countrymen in wild Chauvinism, fanatical hatred of
Germany and unreasoning enthusiasm for the _Revanche_, they
were left by the advancing clerical party unmolested in respect
of life, confession and worship during the time of war. The
Lutherans on the other hand, consisting, although on French
territory, mainly of German emigrants and settlers, even their
French members not so disposed to Chauvinistic extravagance,
were obliged to atone for this double offence by expulsion from
house and home and by various injuries to their ecclesiastical
interests. After the conclusion of peace, especially under
Thiers’ moderate government, this fanaticism gradually cooled
down, so that the expelled Germans returned and the churches and
institutions that had been destroyed were restored, so far as
means would allow. By the decree of Waddington, the minister
of instruction, of date March 27th, 1877, instead of the
theological faculty of Strassburg, now lost for the French
Lutheran church, one for both Protestant churches was founded
in Paris.--The =Lutheran Church=, in consequence of the cession
of Alsace-Lorraine, had only sixty-four out of 278 pastorates
and six out of forty-four consistories remaining. At the general
synod convened at Paris, in July, 1872, by the government for
reorganising the Lutheran church it was resolved: To form two
inspectorates independent of each other--Paris, predominantly
orthodox, Mömpelgard, predominantly liberal; the general assembly,
which meets every third year alternately at Mömpelgard and Paris,
to consist of delegates from both. The two inspectorates are to
correspond in administrative matters directly with the minister
of public instruction, but in everything referring to confession,
doctrine, worship and discipline, the general assembly is the
supreme authority. In regard to the confessional question they
agreed to the statement, that the holy Scripture is the supreme
authority in matters of faith, and the Augsburg Confession
the basis of the legal constitution of the church. An express
undertaking on the part of the clergy to this effect is not,
however, insisted upon. Only in 1879 could this constitution
obtain legal sanction by the State, and that only after
considerable modification in the direction of liberalism,
especially in reference to electoral qualification. In
consequence of this the first ordinary general assembly held
in Paris in May, 1881, found both parties in a conciliatory
mood.--=The Reformed Church=, with about 500 pastorates and
105 consistories, summoned by order of government a newly
constituted General Assembly at Paris, in June, 1872. Prominent
among the leaders of the orthodox party was the aged ex-minister
Guizot; the leaders of the liberals were Coquerel and Colani.
The former supported the proposal of Professor Bois of Montauban,
who insisted on the frank and full confession of holy Scripture
as the sovereign authority in matters of faith, of Christ as
the only Son of God, and of justification by faith as the legal
basis of instruction, worship and discipline; while the latter
protested against every attempt to lay down an obligatory and
exclusive confession. The orthodox party prevailed and the
dissenters who would not yield were struck off the voting lists.
When now in consequence of the complaint of the liberal party
the summoning of an ordinary general assembly was refused by
the government, the orthodox party repeatedly met in “official”
provincial and general assemblies without state sanction. The
council of state then declared all decisions regarding voting
qualifications passed by the synod of 1872 to be null and void,
the minister of worship, Ferry, ordered the readmission of
electors struck from the lists, and his successor Bert legalized,
by a decree of March 25th, 1882, the division of the Parisian
consistorial circuit into two independent consistories of Paris
and Versailles, moved for by the liberal party but opposed by the
orthodox. But upon the elections for the new consistory of Paris,
ordered in spite of all protests, and for the presbyteries of the
eight parishes assigned to it, contrary to all expectation, in
seven of these the elections with great majorities were in favour
of the orthodox, and the first official document issued by the
new consistory was a solemn protest against the decree to which
it owed its existence. Under such circumstances the government
as well as the liberal party had no desire for the calling of an
official general assembly, and the latter resolved at a general
assembly at Nimes, in October, 1882, to institute official
synods of their own for consultation and protection of their
own interests.
§ 204. ITALY.
In Italy matters returned to their old position after the
restoration of 1814. But liberalism, aiming at the liberty and unity
of Italy, gained the mastery, and where for the time it prevailed, the
Jesuits were expelled, and the power of the clergy restricted; where
it failed, both came back with greatly increased importance. The arms
of Austria and subsequently also of France stamped out on all sides
the revolutionary movements. Pius IX., who at first was not indisposed,
contrary to all traditions of the papacy, to put himself at the head of
the national party, was obliged bitterly to regret his dealings with the
liberals (§ 185, 2). Sardinia, Modena and Naples put the severest strain
upon the bow of the restoration, while Parma and Tuscany distinguished
themselves by adopting liberal measures in a moderate degree. Sardinia,
however, in 1840 came to a better mind. Charles Albert first broke
ground with a more liberal constitution, and in 1848 proclaimed himself
the deliverer of Italy, but yielded to the arms of Austria. His son
Victor Emanuel II. succeeded amid singularly favourable circumstances
in uniting the whole peninsula under his sceptre as a united kingdom of
Italy governed by liberal institutions.
§ 204.1. =The Kingdom of Sardinia.=--Victor Emanuel I. after
the restoration had nothing else to do but to recall the Jesuits,
to hand over to them the whole management of the schools, and,
guided and led by them in everything, to restore the church and
state to the condition prevailing before 1789. Charles Felix
(1821-1831) carried still further the absolutist-reactionary
endeavours of his predecessor, and even Charles Albert (1831-1849)
refused for a long time to realize the hopes which the liberal
party had previously placed in him. Only in the second decade
of his reign did he begin gradually to display a more liberal
tendency, and at last in 1848 when, in consequence of the French
Revolution, Lombardy rose against the Austrian rule, he placed
himself at the head of the national movement for freeing Italy
from the yoke of strangers. But the king gloried in as “the sword
of Italy” was defeated and obliged to abdicate. Victor Emanuel II.
(1849-1878) allowed meanwhile the liberal constitution of his
father to remain and indeed carried it out to the utmost. The
minister of justice, Siccardi, proposed a new legislative code
which abolished all clerical jurisdiction in civil and criminal
proceedings, as also the right of asylum and of exacting
tithes, the latter with moderate compensation. It was passed
by parliament and subscribed by the king in 1850. The clergy,
with archbishop Fransoni of Turin at their head, protested with
all their might against these sacrilegious encroachments on the
rights of the church. Fransoni was on this account committed for
a month to prison and, when he refused the last sacrament to a
minister, was regularly sentenced to deposition and banishment
from the country. Pius IX. thwarted all attempts to obtain a
new concordat. But the government went recklessly forward. As
Fransoni from his exile in France continued his agitation, all
the property of the archiepiscopal chair was in 1854 sequestered
and a number of cloisters were closed. Soon all penalties in
the penal code for spreading non-Catholic doctrines were struck
out and non-Catholic soldiers freed from compulsory attendance
at mass on Sundays and festivals. The chief blow now fell on
March 2nd, 1855, in the Cloister Act, which abolished all orders
and cloisters not devoted to preaching, teaching, and nursing
the sick. In consequence 331 out of 605 cloisters were shut up.
The pope ceased not to condemn all these sacrilegious and church
robbing acts, and when his threats were without result, thundered
the great excommunication in July, 1855, against all originators,
aiders, and abettors of such deeds. Among the masses this indeed
caused some excitement, but it never came to an explosion.
§ 204.2. =The Kingdom of Italy.=--Amid such vigorous progress
the year 1859 came round with its fateful Franco-Italian war.
The French alliance had not indeed, as it promised, made Italy
free to the Adriatic, but by the peace of Villafranca the whole
of Lombardy was given to the kingdom of Sardinia as a present
from the emperor of the French. In the same year by popular vote
Tuscany, including Modena and Parma, and in the following year
the kingdom of the two Sicilies, as well as the three provinces
of the States of the Church, revolted and were annexed, so that
the new kingdom of Italy embraced the whole of the peninsula,
with the exception of Venice, Rome and the Campagna. Prussia’s
remarkable successes in the seven days’ German war of 1866 shook
Venice like ripe fruit into the lap of her Italian ally, and the
day of Sedan, 1870, prepared the way for the addition of Rome
and the Campagna (§ 185, 3).--In Lombardy and then also in
Venice, immediately after they had been taken possession of, the
concordat with Austria was abrogated and the Jesuits expelled.
Ecclesiastical tithes on the produce of the soil were abolished
throughout the whole kingdom, begging was forbidden the mendicant
friars as unworthy of a spiritual order, ecclesiastical property
was put under state control and the support of the clergy
provided for by state grants. In 1867 the government began
the appropriation and conversion of the church property; in
1870 all religious orders were dissolved, with exception for
the time being of those in Rome, wherever they did not engage
in educational and other useful works. In May, 1873, this law
was extended to the Roman province, only it was not to be applied
to the generals of orders in Rome. Nuns and some monks were
also allowed to remain in their cloisters situated in unpeopled
districts. The amount of state pensions paid to monks and nuns
reached in 1882 the sum of eleven million lire, at the rate
of 330 lire for each person. The abolition of the theological
faculties in ten Italian universities in 1873, because these
altogether had only six students of theology, was regarded by
the curia rather as a victory than a defeat. The newly appointed
bishops were forbidden by the pope to produce their credentials
for inspection in order to obtain their salaries from the
government. The loss of temporalities thus occasioned was made
up by Pius IX. out of Peter’s pence flowing in so abundantly from
abroad; each bishop receiving 500 and each archbishop 700 lire in
the month. Leo XIII., however, felt obliged in 1879, owing to the
great decrease in the Peter’s pence contributions, to cancel this
enactment and to permit the bishops to accept the state allowance.
In consequence of the civil marriage law passed in 1866 having
been altogether ignored by the clergy, nearly 400,000 marriages
had down to the close of 1878 received only ecclesiastical
sanction, and the offspring of such parties would be regarded
in the eye of the law as illegitimate. To obviate this difficulty
a law was passed in May, 1879, which insisted that in all cases
civil marriage must precede the ecclesiastical ceremony, and
clergymen, witnesses and parties engaging in an illegal marriage
should suffer three or six months’ imprisonment; but all
marriages contracted in accordance merely with church forms
before the passing of this law might be legitimized by being
entered on the civil register.--Finally in January, 1884, the
controversy pending since 1873 as to whether the rich property of
the Roman propaganda (§ 156, 9) amounting to twenty million lire
should be converted into state consols was decided by the supreme
court in favour of the curia, which had pronounced these funds
international because consisting of presents and contributions
from all lands. But not only was the revenue of the propaganda
subjected to a heavy tax, but also all increase of its property
forbidden. In vain did the pope by his nuncios call for the
intervention of foreign nations. None of these were inclined to
meddle in the internal affairs of Italy. The curia now devised
the plan of affiliating a number of societies outside of Italy to
the propaganda for receiving and administering donations and
presents.
§ 204.3. =The Evangelization of Italy.=--Emigrant Protestants
of various nationalities had at an early date, by the silent
sufferance of the respective governments, formed small
evangelical congregations in some of the Italian cities;
in Venice and Leghorn during the seventeenth century, at Bergamo
in 1807, at Florence in 1826, at Milan in 1847. Also by aid of
the diplomatic intervention of Prussia and England, the erection
of Protestant chapels for the embassy was allowed at Rome in 1819,
at Naples in 1825, and at Florence in 1826. When in 1848 Italy’s
hopes from the liberal tendencies of Pius IX. were so bitterly
disappointed, Protestant sympathies began to spread far and
wide through the land, even among native Catholics, fostered by
English missionaries, Bibles and tracts, which the governments
sought in vain to check by prisons, penitentiaries and exile.
Persecution began in 1851 in Tuscany, where, in spite of the
liberty of faith and worship guaranteed by the constitution of
1848, Tuscan subjects taking part in the Italian services in the
chapel of the Prussian embassy at Florence were punished with
six months’ hard labour, and in the following year the pious pair
Francesco and Rosa Madiai were sentenced to four years’ rigorous
punishment in a penitentiary for the crime of having edified
themselves and their household by reading the Bible. In vain did
the Evangelical Alliance remonstrate (§ 178, 3), in vain did even
the king of Prussia intercede. But when, stirred up by public
opinion in England, the English premier Lord Palmerston offered
to secure the requirement of Christian humanity by means of
British ships of war, the grand-duke got rid of both martyrs by
banishing them from the country in 1853. In proportion as the
union of Italy under Victor Emanuel II. advanced, the field for
evangelistic effort and the powers devoted thereto increased.
So it was too since 1860 in Southern Italy. But when in 1866 a
Protestant congregation began to be formed at Barletta in Naples,
a fanatical priest roused a popular mob in which seventeen
persons were killed and torn in pieces. The government put down
the uproar and punished the miscreants, and the nobler portion of
the nation throughout the whole land collected for the families
of those murdered. The work of evangelization supported by
liberal contributions chiefly from England, but also from Holland,
Switzerland, and the German _Gustav-Adolf-Verein_ (§ 178, 1),
advanced steadily in spite of occasional brutal interferences
of the clergy and the mob, so that soon in all the large cities
and in many of the smaller towns of Italy and Sicily there were
thriving and flourishing little evangelical congregations of
converted native Catholics, numbering as many as 182 in 1882.
§ 204.4. The chief factor in the evangelization of Italy as far
as the southern coast of Sicily was the old =Waldensian Church=,
which for three hundred years had occupied the Protestant
platform in the spirit of Calvinism (§ 139, 25). Remnants
consisting of some 200,000 souls still survived in the valleys
of Piedmont, almost without protection of law amid constant
persecution and oppressions (§ 153, 5), moderated only by
Prussian and English intervention. But when Sardinia headed
Italian liberalism in 1848 religious liberty and all civil
rights were secured to them. A Waldensian congregation was then
formed in the capital, Turin, which was strengthened by numerous
Protestant refugees from other parts of Italy. But in 1854 a
split occurred between the two elements in it. The new Italian
converts objected, not altogether without ground, against the old
Waldensians that by maintaining their church government with its
centre in the valleys, the so-called “Tables” and their old forms
of constitution, doctrine and worship, much too contracted and
narrow for the enlarged boundaries of the present, they thought
more of Waldensianizing than of evangelizing Italy. Besides,
their language since 1630, when a plague caused their preachers
and teachers to withdraw from Geneva, had been French, and
the national Italian pride was disposed on this domain also to
unfurl her favourite banner “_Italia farà da se_.” The division
spread from Turin to the other congregations. At the head of the
separatists, afterwards designated the “_Free Italian Church_”
(_Chiesa libera_), stood Dr. Luigi Desanctis, a man of rich
theological culture and glowing eloquence, who, when Catholic
priest and theologian of the inquisition at Rome, became
convinced of the truth of the evangelical confession, joined
the evangelical church at Malta in 1847 and wrought from 1852
with great success in the congregation at Turin. After ten years’
faithful service in the newly formed free church he felt obliged,
owing to the Darbyite views (§ 211, 11) that began to prevail
in it, to attach himself again in 1864 to the Waldensians, who
meanwhile had been greatly liberalised. He now officiated for
them till his death in 1869 as professor of theology at Florence,
and edited their journal _Eco della verità_. This journal was
succeeded in 1873 by the able monthly _Rivista Cristiana_, edited
at Florence by Prof. Emilio Comba.--After Desanctis left the
_Chiesa libera_ its chief representative was the ex-Barnabite
father Alessandro Gavazzi of Naples. Endowed with glowing
eloquence and remarkable popularity as a lecturer, he appeared
at Rome in 1848 as a politico-religious orator, attached himself
to the evangelical church in London in 1850, and undertook the
charge of the evangelical Italian congregation there. He returned
to Italy in 1860 and accompanied the hero of Italian liberty,
Garibaldi, as his military chaplain, preaching to the people
everywhere with his leonine voice with equal enthusiasm of Victor
Emanuel as the only saviour of Italy and of Jesus Christ as
the only Saviour of sinners. He then joined the _Chiesa libera_,
and, as he himself obtained gradually fuller acquaintance
with evangelical truth, wrought zealously in organizing the
congregations hitherto almost entirely isolated from one another.
At a general assembly at Milan in 1870, deputies from thirty-two
congregations drew up a simple biblical confession of faith,
and in the following year at Florence a constitutional code was
adopted which recognised the necessity of the pastoral office,
of annual assemblies, and a standing evangelization committee.
They now took the name “=Unione della Chiesa libere in Italia=.”
The predominantly Darbyist congregations, which had not taken
part in these constitutional assemblies, have since formed a
community of their own as =Chiesa Cristiana=, depending only on
the immediate leading of the Holy Spirit, rejecting every sort of
ecclesiastical and official organization, and denouncing infant
baptism as unevangelical.--Besides these three national Italian
churches, English and American Methodists and Baptists carry on
active missions. On May 1st, 1884, the evangelical denominations
at a general assembly in Florence, with the exception only of the
Darbyist _Chiesa Cristiana_, joined in a confederation to meet
annually in an “Italian Evangelical Congress” as a preparation
for ecclesiastical union. When, however, the various Methodist
and Baptist denominations began to check the progress of the work
of union, the two leading bodies, the Waldensians and the Free
Church party, separated from them. A committee chosen from these
two sketched at Florence in 1885 a basis of union, according to
which the Free Church adopted the confession and church order
of the Waldensians, subject to revision by the joint synods,
their theological school at Rome was to be amalgamated with the
Waldensian school at Florence, and the united church was to take
the name of the “Evangelical Church of Italy.” But a Waldensian
synod in September, 1886, resolved to hold by the ancient name
of the “Waldensian Church.” Whether the “Free Church” will agree
to this demand is not yet known.
§ 205. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.
No European country has during the nineteenth century been the
scene of so many revolutions, outbreaks and civil wars, of changes
of government, ministries and constitutions, sometimes of a clerical
absolutist, sometimes of a democratic radical tendency, and in none
has revolution gone so unsparingly for the time against hierarchy,
clergy and monasticism, as in unfortunate Spain. Portugal too passed
through similar struggles, which, however, did not prove so dreadfully
disordering to the commonwealth as those of Spain.
§ 205.1. =Spain under Ferdinand VII. and Maria Christina.=--Joseph
Bonaparte (1808-1813) had given to the Spaniards a constitution
of the French pattern, abolishing inquisition and cloisters.
The constitution which the Cortes proclaimed in 1812 carried
out still further the demands of political liberalism, but still
declared the apostolic Roman Catholic religion as alone true to
be the religion of the Spanish nation and forbad the exercise of
any other. Ferdinand VII., whom Napoleon restored in December,
1813, hastened to restore the inquisition, the cloisters and
despotism, especially from 1815 under the direction of the
Jesuits highly esteemed by him. The revolution of 1820 indeed
obliged him to reintroduce the constitution of 1812 and to banish
the Jesuits; but scarcely had the feudal clerical party of the
apostolic Junta with their army of faith in the field and Bourbon
French intervention under the Duke of Angoulême again made his
way clear, than he began to crush as before by means of his
Jesuit Camarilla every liberal movement in church and state.
But all the more successful was the reaction of liberalism in
the civil war which broke out after Ferdinand’s death under
the regency of his fourth wife, the intriguing Maria Christina
(1833-1837). The revolution now erected an inquisition, but it
was one directed against the clergy and monks, and celebrated
its _autos de fe_; but these were in the form of spoliation of
cloisters and massacres of monks. Ecclesiastical tithes were
abolished, all monkish orders suspended, the cloisters closed,
ecclesiastical goods declared national property, and the papal
nuncio sent over the frontier. A threatening papal allocution
of 1841 only increased the violence of the Cortes, and when
Gregory XVI. in 1842 pronounced all decrees of the government
null and void, it branded all intercourse with Rome as an offence
against the state.
§ 205.2. =Spain under Isabella II., 1843-1865.=--Ferdinand VII.,
overlooking the right of his brother Don Carlos, had, by
abolishing the Salic law, secured the throne to Isabella, his
own and Maria Christina’s daughter. After the Cortes of 1843
had declared Isabella of age in her thirteenth year, the Spanish
government became more and more favourable to the restoration.
After long negotiations and vacillations under constantly
changing ministries a concordat was at last drawn up in 1851,
which returned the churches and cloisters that had not been
sold, allowed compensation for what had been sold, reduced the
number of bishoprics by six, put education and the censorship of
the press under the oversight of the bishops, and declared the
Catholic religion the only one to be tolerated. But although
in 1854 the Holy Virgin was named generalissima of the brave
army and her image at Atocha had been decorated by the queen
with a band of the Golden Fleece, a revolution soon broke
out in the army which threatened to deal the finishing stroke
to ultramontanism. Meanwhile it had not fully permeated the
republican party. The proposal of unrestricted liberty to all
forms of worship was supported by a small minority, and the new
constitution of 1855 called upon the Spanish nation to maintain
and guard the Catholic religion which “the Spaniards profess;”
yet no Spaniard was to be persecuted on account of his faith, so
long as he did not commit irreligious acts. A new law determined
the sale of all church and cloister property, and compensation
therefore by annual rents according to the existing concordat.
Several bishops had to be banished owing to their continued
opposition; the pope protested and recalled his legates. Clerical
influence meanwhile regained power over the queen. The sale of
church and cloister property was stopped, and previous possessors
were indemnified for what had been already sold. Owing to
frequent change of ministry, each of which manifested a tendency
different from its predecessor, it was only in 1859 that matters
were settled by a new concordat. In it the government admitted
the inalienability of church property, admitted the unrestricted
right of the church to obtain new property of any kind, and
declared itself ready to exchange state paper money for property
that had fallen into decay according to the estimation of the
bishops. The queen proved her Catholic zeal at the instigation
of the nun Patrocinio by fanatical persecution of Protestants,
and hearty but vain sympathies for the sufferings of the pope
and the expatriated Italian princes. Pius IX. rewarded Isabella,
who seemed to him adorned with all the virtues, by sending her
in 1868 the consecrated rose at a time when she was causing
public scandal more than ever by her private life, and by her
proceedings with her paramour Marforio had lost the last remnant
of the respect and confidence of the Spanish nation. Eight months
later her reign was at an end. The provisional government now
ordered the suppression of the Society of Jesus, as well as
of all cloister and spiritual associations, and in 1869 the
Cortes sanctioned the draught of a new civil constitution, which
required the Spanish nation to maintain the Catholic worship,
but allowed the exercise of other forms of worship to strangers
and as cases might arise even to natives, and generally made all
political and civil rights independent of religious profession.
§ 205.3. =Spain under Alphonso XII., 1875-1885.=--When Isabella’s
son returned to Spain in January, 1875, in his seventeenth
year, he obtained the blessing of his sponsor the pope on his
ascending the throne, promised to the Catholic church powerful
support, but also to non-Catholics the maintenance of liberty
of worship. How he meant to perform both is shown by a decree
of 10th February, 1875, which, abolishing the civil marriage law
passed by the Cortes in 1870, gave back to the Catholic church
the administration of marriage and matters connected therewith;
for all persons living in Spain, however, “who professed another
than the true faith,” as well as for “the bad Catholics,” to whom
ecclesiastical marriage on account of church censures is refused,
liberty was given to contract a civil marriage; but this did not
apply to apostate priests, monks, and nuns, to whom any sort of
marriage is for ever refused, and whose previously contracted
marriages are invalid, without, however, affecting the legitimacy
of children already born of such connections.--Against the
draught of the new constitution, whose eleventh article indeed
affords toleration to all dissenting forms of worship, but
prohibits any public manifestation thereof outside of their place
of worship and burial grounds, Pius IX. protested as infringing
upon the still existing concordat in its “noblest” part, and
aiming a serious blow at the Catholic church. The Cortes, however,
sanctioned it in 1876.
§ 205.4. =The Evangelization of Spain.=--A number of Bibles
and tracts, as well as a religious paper in Spanish called _el
Albo_, found entrance into Spain from the English settlement at
Gibraltar, without Spain being able even in the most flourishing
days of the restoration to prevent it, and evangelical sympathies
began more or less openly to be expressed. Franc. Ruat, formerly
a lascivious Spanish poet, who was awakened at Turin by the
preaching of the Waldensian Desanctis, and by reading the Bible
had obtained knowledge of evangelical truths, appeared publicly
after the publication of the new constitution of 1855 as a
preacher of the gospel in Spain. The reaction that soon set in,
however, secured for him repeated imprisonments, and finally in
1856 sentence of banishment for life. He then wrought for several
years successfully in Gibraltar, next in London, afterwards in
Algiers among Spanish residents, till the new civil constitution
of 1868 allowed him to return to Spain, where, in the service
of the German mission at Madrid, he gathered around him an
evangelical congregation, to which he ministered till his death
in 1878. While labouring in Gibraltar he won to the evangelical
faith among others the young officer Manuel Matamoros, living
there as a political refugee. This noble man, whose whole career,
till his death in exile in 1866, was a sore martyrdom for the
truth, became the soul of the whole movement, against which
the government in 1861 and 1862 took the severest measures. By
intercepted correspondence the leaders and many of the members
of the secret evangelical propaganda were discovered and thrown
into prison. The final judgment condemned the leaders of the
movement to severe punishment in penitentiaries and the galleys.
Infliction of these sentences had already begun when the
queen found herself obliged, by a visit to Madrid in 1863 of a
deputation of the Evangelical Alliance (§ 178, 3), consisting of
the most distinguished and respected Protestants of all lands, to
commute them to banishment.--After Isabella’s overthrow in 1868,
permission was given for the building of the first Protestant
church in Madrid, where a congregation soon gathered of more than
2,000 souls. In Seville an almost equally strong congregation
obtained for its services what had been a church of the Jesuits.
Also at Cordova a considerable congregation was collected, and
in almost all the other large cities there were largely attended
places of worship. Several of those banished under Isabella,
who had returned after her overthrow, Carrasco, Trigo, Alhama,
and others, increased by new converts who had received their
theological training at Geneva, Lausanne, etc., and supported
by American, English and German fellow-labourers, such as the
brothers F. and H. Fliedner, wrought with unwearied zeal as
preachers and pastors, for the spreading and deeper grounding
of the gospel among their countrymen. With the restoration of the
monarchy in 1875, the oppression of the Protestants was renewed
with increasing severity. The widest possible interpretation
was given to the prohibition of every public manifestation
of dissenting worship in Article XI. of the constitution. The
excesses and insults of the mob, whose fanaticism was stirred up
by the clergy, were left unpunished and uncensured. Even the most
sorely abused and injured Protestants were themselves subjected
to imprisonment as disturbers of the peace. No essential
improvement in their condition resulted from the liberal ministry
of Sagasta in 1881. Nevertheless the number of evangelical
congregations continued steadily though slowly to increase, so
that now they number more than sixty, with somewhere about 15,000
native Protestant members.--Besides these an _Iglesia Española_
arose in 1881, consisting of eight congregations, which may
be regarded to some extent as a national Spanish counterpart
to the Old Catholicism of Germany. Its founder and first bishop
is Cabrera, formerly a Catholic priest, who, after having
wrought from 1868 in the service of the Edinburgh (Presbyterian)
Evangelization Society as preacher in Seville, and then in Madrid,
received in 1880 episcopal consecration from the Anglican bishop
Riley of Mexico (§ 209, 1), then visiting Madrid. Although thus
of Anglican origin, the church directed by him wishes not to be
Anglican, but Spanish episcopal. It attaches itself therefore,
while accepting the thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church,
in the sketch of its order of service in the Spanish language,
more to the old Mozarabic ritual (§ 88, 1) than to the Anglican
liturgy.[562]
§ 205.5. =The Church in Portugal.=--Portugal after some months
followed the example of the Spanish revolution of 1820. John VI.
(1816-1826) confirmed the new constitution, drawn up after the
pattern of the democratic Spanish constitution of 1812, enacting
the seizure of church property and the suppression of the
monasteries. But a counter revolution, led by the younger son of
the king, Dom Miguel, obliged him in 1823 to repudiate it and to
return to the older constitution. But he persistently resisted
the reintroduction of the Jesuits. After his death in 1826, the
legitimate heir, Pedro I. of Brazil, abandoned his claims to the
Portuguese throne in favour of his daughter Donna Maria II. da
Gloria, then under a year old, whom he betrothed to his brother
Dom Miguel. Appointed regent, Dom Miguel took the oath to
the constitution, but immediately broke his oath, had himself
proclaimed king, recalled the Jesuits, and, till his overthrow
in 1834, carried on a clerical monarchical reign of terror. Dom
Pedro, who had meanwhile vacated the Brazilian throne, as regent
again suppressed all monkish orders, seized the property of
the church, and abolished ecclesiastical tithes, but died in
the same year. His daughter Donna Maria, now pronounced of age
and proclaimed queen (1834-1853), amid continual revolutions
and changes of the constitution, manifested an ever-growing
inclination to reconciliation with Rome. In 1841 she negotiated
about a concordat, and showed herself so submissive that the pope
rewarded her in 1842 with the consecrated golden rose. But the
liberal Cortes resisted the introduction of the concordat, and
maintained the right of veto by the civil government as well as
the rest of the restrictions upon the hierarchy, and the _Codigo
penal_ of 1882 threatened the Catholic clergy with heavy fines
and imprisonment for every abuse of their spiritual prerogatives
and every breach of the laws of the State. In 1857 a concordat
was at last agreed to, which, however, was adopted by the
representatives of the people not before 1859, and then only by
a small majority. Its chief provisions consist in the regulating
of the patronage rights of the crown in regard to existing and
newly created bishoprics. The relation of government to the curia,
however, still continued strained. The constitution declares
generally that the Catholic Apostolic Romish Church is the
state religion. A Portuguese who passes over from it to another
loses thereby his civil rights as a citizen. Yet no one is to be
persecuted on account of his religion. The erection of Protestant
places of worship, but not in church form, and also of burial
grounds, where necessary, is permitted.--Evangelization has
made but little progress in Portugal. The first evangelical
congregation, with Anglican episcopal constitution, was founded
at Lisbon by a Spanish convert, Don Angelo Herrero de Mora, who
in the service of the Bible Society had edited a revision of the
old Spanish Bible in New York, and had there been naturalized
as an American citizen. Consisting originally of American and
English Protestants, about a hundred Spanish and Portuguese
converts have since 1868 gradually attached themselves to it,
the latter after they had been made Spanish instead of Portuguese
subjects. After the pattern of this mother congregation, two
others have been formed in the neighbourhood of Lisbon and one
at Oporto.
§ 206. RUSSIA.
The Russian government since the time of Alexander I. has sought
amid many difficulties to advance the education and enlightenment of
the people, and to elevate the orthodox church by securing a more highly
cultured clergy, and to increase its influence upon the life of the
people; a task which proved peculiarly difficult in consequence of the
wide-spread anti-ecclesiastical spirit (§ 210, 3) and the incomparably
more dangerous antichristian Nihilism (§ 212, 6).--The Catholic church,
mainly represented in what had before been the kingdom of Poland, had,
in consequence of the repeated revolutionary agitation of the Poles,
in which the clergy had zealously taken part by stirring up fanaticism
among the people and converting their religion and worship into a
vehicle of rebellion, so compromised itself that the government, besides
taking away the national political privileges, reduced more and more
the rights and liberties granted to the church as such.--The prosperous
development of the evangelical church in Russia, which, through the
absolutely faultless loyalty of its members, had hitherto enjoyed the
hearty protection of the government, in 1845 and 1846, and afterwards
in 1883, in consequence of numerous conversions among Esthonian and
Livonian peasants, was checked by incessant persecutions.
§ 206.1. =The Orthodox National Church.=--The evangelical
influences introduced from the West during the previous century,
especially among the higher clergy, found further encouragement
under Alexander I., A.D. 1801-1825. Himself affected by the
evangelical pietism of Madame Krüdener (§ 176, 2), he aimed at
the elevation of the orthodox church in this direction, founded
clerical seminaries and public schools, and took a lively
interest in Bible circulation among the Russian people. But under
Nicholas I., A.D. 1825-1855, a reaction proceeding from the holy
synod set in which unweariedly sought to seal the orthodox church
hermetically against all evangelical influences. Also during
the reign of Alexander II., A.D. 1855-1881, a reign singularly
fruitful in civil reforms, this tendency was even more rigidly
illustrated, while with the consent and aid of the holy synod
every effort was put forth to improve the church according to its
own principles. Specially active in this work was Count Tolstoi,
minister of instruction and also procurator of the holy synod. A
committee presided over by him produced a whole series of useful
reforms in 1868, which were approved by the synod and confirmed
by the emperor. While the inferior clergy had hitherto formed
an order by themselves, all higher ranks of preferment were
now opened to them, but, on the other hand, the obligation
of priests’ sons to remain in the order of their fathers was
abolished. The clamant abuse of putting mere clerks and sextons
to do the work of priests was also now put a stop to, and
training in clerical seminaries or academies was made compulsory.
Previously only married men could hold the offices of deacon and
priest; now widowers and bachelors were admitted, so soon as they
reached the age of forty years. In order to increase the poor
incomes many churches had not their regular equipment of clergy,
and instead of the full set of priest, deacon, sub-deacon, reader,
sexton, and doorkeeper, in the poorer churches there were only
priest and reader. Order was restored to monastic life, now
generally grown dissolute, by a fixed rule of a common table
and uniform dress, etc. In 1860 an Orthodox Church Society for
Missions among the peoples of the Caucasus, and in 1866 a second
for Pagans and Mohammedans throughout the empire, were founded,
both under the patronage of the empress. The Russian church
also cleverly took advantage of political events to carry on
missionary work in Japan (§ 184, 6). A society of the “Friends
of Intellectual Enlightenment,” founded in St. Petersburg
in 1872, aimed chiefly at the religious improvement of the
cultured classes in the spirit of the orthodox church by means
of tracts and addresses, while agreeing with foreign confessions
as to the nature and characteristics of the true church.
Under Alexander III., since A.D. 1881, the emperor’s former
tutor Pobedownoszew, with the conviction of the incomparable
superiority of his church, and believing that by it and only
by it could the dangerous commotions of the present be overcome
(§ 212, 6) and Russia regenerated, as procurator of the holy
synod has zealously wrought in this direction.--But meanwhile a
new impulse was given to the evangelical movement in aristocratic
circles by Lord Radstock, who appeared in St. Petersburg in 1870.
The addresses delivered by him in French in the salons of the
fashionable world won a success scarcely to be looked for. The
most famous gain was the conversion of a hitherto proud, worldly,
rich and popular Colonel of the Guards, called Paschcow, who now
turned the beautiful ball-room of his palatial residence into a
prayer-meeting room, and with all the enthusiasm of a neophyte
proclaimed successfully among high and low the newly won saving
truth in a Biblical evangelical spirit, though not without a
methodistic flavour. The excitement thus created led to police
interference, and finally, when he refused to abstain from
spreading his religious views among the members of the orthodox
church by the circulation of evangelical tracts in the Russian
language, he was, at the instigation of the holy synod and its
all powerful procurator, banished first from St. Petersburg and
then in 1884 from the empire, whereupon he withdrew to London.
§ 206.2. =The Catholic Church.=--After the Greeks in the old
West Russian provinces (§ 151, 3), who had been forcibly united
to Rome in 1596, had again in 1772, in consequence of the first
partition of Poland, come under Russian rule, the government
sought to restore them also to the orthodox national church.
This was first accomplished under Nicholas I., when at the synod
of Polosk in 1839 they themselves spontaneously expressed a wish
to be thus reunited with the mother church. Rome thus lost two
million members. But the allocution directed against this robbery
by Gregory XVI. was without effect, and the public opinion
of Europe saw a case of historical justice in this reunion,
though effected not without severe measures against those who
proved obstinate and rebellious. Yet there always remained a
considerable remnant, about one-third of a million, under the
bishop of Chelun, in the Romish communion. But even these in 1875,
after many disturbances with the prelate Popiel at their head,
almost wholly severed their connection with the pope, and were
again received into the bosom of the orthodox national church.
In a memorial addressed to the emperor for this purpose, they
declared they were led to this on the one hand by the continual
endeavour of the curia and its partisans, by Latinizing their old
Greek liturgy and Polandizing the people, to overthrow their old
Russian nationality, and on the other hand, by their aversion to
the new papal dogmas of the immaculate conception of Mary and the
infallibility of the pope.--The insurrection of the Poles against
Russian rule in 1830, which even Pope Gregory XVI. condemned,
bore bitter fruits for the Catholic church of that country.
The organic statute of 1832 indeed secured anew to the Poles
religious liberty, but the bishops were prohibited holding
any direct communication with Rome, the clergy deprived of all
control over the schools, and the Russian law regarding mixed
marriages made applicable to that province. By an understanding
with the curia in 1847 the choice of the bishops was given to the
emperor, their canonical investiture to the pope. The mildness
with which Alexander II. treated the Poles and the political
troubles in the rest of Europe fostered the hope of restoring
the old kingdom of Poland. Reckless demonstrations were made in
the beginning of 1861, pilgrimages to the graves of the martyrs
of freedom were organized, political memorial festivals were
celebrated in churches, a general national mourning was enjoined,
mourning services were held, revolutionary songs were sung
in churches, etc. The Catholic clergy headed the movement and
canonized it as a religious duty. In vain the government sought
to put it down by making liberal concessions, in vain they
applied to Pius IX. to discountenance it. When in October the
country lay in a state of siege, and the military forced their
way into the churches to apprehend the ringleaders of rebellion,
the episcopal administrator, Bialobezeski, denounced that as
church profanation, had all the Catholic churches in Warsaw
closed, and answered the government’s request to reopen them by
making extravagant demands and uttering proud words of defiance.
The military tribunal sentenced him to death, but the emperor
commuted this to one year’s detention in a fortress, with loss
of all his dignities and orders. Meanwhile the eyes of the pope
had at length been opened. He now confirmed the government’s
appointment of Archbishop Felinsky, who entered Warsaw in
February, 1862, and reopened the churches. After the suppression
of the revolt in 1864, almost all cloisters, as nurseries of
revolution, were abolished; in the following year the whole
property of the church was taken in charge by the State, and
the clergy supported by state pay. The pope, enraged at this,
gave violent expression to his feelings to the Russian ambassador
at Rome during the New Year festivities of 1866, whereupon the
government completely broke off all relations with the curia.
Consequently in 1867 all the affairs of the Catholic church
were committed to the clerical college at St. Petersburg, and
intercourse between the clergy and the pope prohibited. Hence
arose many conflicts with Catholic bishops, whose obstinacy was
punished by their being interned in their dioceses. In 1869 the
Russian calendar was introduced, and Russian made the compulsory
language of instruction. But in 1870 greater opposition was
offered to the introduction of Russian in the public services by
means of translations of the common Polish prayer and psalm-books.
Pietrowitsch, dean of Wilna, read from the pulpit the ukase
referring to this matter, but then cast it together with the
Russian translations into the flames, with violent denunciations
of the government, and gave information against himself to the
governor-general. He was agreeably to his own desire imprisoned,
and then transported to Archangel. The same sentence was
pronounced against several other obstinate prelates and clergy,
among them Archbishop Felinsky, and thus further opposition was
stamped out.--Leo XIII. soon after entering on his pontificate
in 1878 took the first step toward reconciliation. His efforts
reached a successful issue first in February, 1883. The deposed
prelates were restored from their places of banishment, with
promise of a liberal pension, and were allowed to choose their
residences as they pleased, only not within their former dioceses.
In their stead the pope consecrated ten new bishops nominated
by the emperor, who amid the jubilation of the people entered
their episcopal residences. With reference to the Roman Catholic
seminaries and clerical academies at Warsaw, the curia granted
to the government the right of control over instruction in
the Russian language, literature and history, but committed
instruction in canonical matters solely to the bishops, who,
after obtaining the approval of the government, appointed the
rector and inspector and canonical teachers. Vacant pastorates
were filled by the bishops, and only in the case of the more
important was the approval of the government required. As to the
language to be used, it was resolved that only where the people
speak Russian were the clergy obliged to employ that language in
preaching and in their pastoral work.
§ 206.3. =The Evangelical Church.=--The Lutheran church in Russia,
comprising two and a half millions of Germans, Letts, Esthonians
and Finns, is strongest in Livonia, Esthonia and Courland, is the
national church in Finland, and is also largely represented in
Poland, in the chief cities of Russia, and in the numerous German
colonies in South Russia. In 1832 it obtained, for the Baltic
provinces and the scattered congregations in central Russia, a
church constitution and service book, the latter on the basis of
the old Swedish service book, the former requiring all religious
teachers in church and school to accept the Formula of Concord.
Annual provincial synods have the initiative in calling in,
when necessary for legislative purposes, the aid of the general
synod.--In Poland the Reformed and Lutheran churches were in 1828
united under one combined consistory. By an imperial ukase of
1849, however, the independent existence of both churches was
restored. Protestants enjoyed all civil rights and had absolute
liberty in the exercise of their religion; but in central Russia
down to recent times, when a more liberal spirit began to prevail,
they were prohibited putting bells in their churches. The old
prohibition of evangelical preaching and the teaching of religion
in the Russian tongue also continued; but the attempt made for
some decades in St. Petersburg and the surrounding district to
preach the gospel to Germans who had lost their mother tongue, in
the Russian language, has been hitherto ungrudgingly allowed by
the government. Quitting the national church or returning from
it to a church that had been left before, is visited by severe
penalties, and children of mixed marriages, where one parent
belongs to the national orthodox church, are claimed by law for
that church. Only Finland counts among her privileges the right
of assigning children of mixed marriages to the church of the
father. The Lutheran church in Livonia, with the island of Oesel,
suffered considerable, and according to the law of the land
irreparable, loss by the secession of sixty or seventy thousand
Letts and Esthonians to the orthodox church under the widespread
delusion that thereby their economic position would be improved.
Disillusions and regret came too late, and the ever increasing
desire for restoration to the church forsaken in a moment
of excitement could only obtain arbitrary and insufficient
satisfaction in Lutheran baptism of infants seemingly near death,
and in permission at irregular intervals and without previous
announcement to sit at the Lord’s Table according to the Lutheran
rite. In 1865, not indeed legislatively but administratively,
the contracting of mixed marriages in the Baltic provinces
was permitted without the enforcement of the legal enactment
requiring that the children should be trained in the Greek
church. In Esthonia, however, in 1883 there was a new outbreak
of conversions in Leal, where five hundred peasants went over to
the orthodox church, declaring their wish to be of the same faith
as the emperor and the whole of the Russian people. By imperial
decree in 1885 the suspension of the law against withdrawing
again from the national church, which had existed for twenty
years, was abolished. At the instigation of Pobedownoszew the
Imperial Council granted an annual subsidy of 100,000 roubles for
furthering orthodoxy in the Baltic provinces. No evangelical
church could be built in these provinces without the approval of
the orthodox bishop of the diocese, and any evangelical pastor
who should dissuade a member of his church from his purpose
of joining the orthodox church, was liable to punishment.--In
order to supply the want of churches and schools, preachers
and teachers in the Lutheran congregations of Russia, a society
was formed in 1858 similar to the _Gustav-Adolfs-Verein_, under
the supervision of the General Consistory of St. Petersburg,
which has laboriously and zealously endeavoured to improve the
condition of the oppressed church.[563]
§ 207. GREECE AND TURKEY.
In the spirited struggle for liberty Greece freed herself from the
tyranny of the Turkish Mohammedan rule and obtained complete civil
independence. But the same princes representing all the three principal
Christian confessions, who in 1830 gave their sanction to this
emancipation within lamentably narrow limits, in 1840 conquered again
the Holy Land for the Turks out of the hands of a revolting vassal.
And so inextricable were, and still are, the political interests of
the Christian States of Europe with reference to the East, that in
the London parliament of 1854 it could be affirmed that the existence
of Turkey in a condition of utter impotence was so necessary, that
if it did not exist, it would require to be created. On two occasions
has Russia called out her whole military force to emancipate from the
Turkish yoke her Slavic brethren of a common race and common faith,
without being able to give the finishing blow to the “sick man” who
had the protection of European diplomacy.
§ 207.1. =The Orthodox Church of Greece.=--Deceived in their
expectations from the Vienna Congress, the Greeks tried to
deliver themselves from Turkish tyranny. In 1814 a _Hetairia_ was
formed, branches of which spread over the whole land and fostered
among the people ideas of freedom. The war of independence broke
out in 1821. Its first result was a fearful massacre, especially
in Constantinople. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory] with his
whole synod and about 30,000 Christians were in three months
with horrid cruelty murdered by the Turks. The London Conference
of 1830 at last declared Greece an independent state, and
an assembly of Greek bishops at Nauplia in 1833 freed the
national church of Greece from the authority of the patriarch of
Constantinople, who was under the control of Turkey. Its supreme
direction was committed to a permanent Holy Synod at Athens,
instituted by the king but in all internal matters absolutely
independent. The king must belong to the national church, but
otherwise all religions are on the same footing. Meanwhile the
orthodox church is fully represented, the Roman Catholic being
strongest, especially in the islands. The University of Athens,
opened in 1856 with professors mostly trained in Germany, has not
been unsuccessful in its task even in the domain of theology.
§ 207.2. =Massacre of Syrian Christians, 1860.=--The Russo-Turkish
war ending in the beginning of 1856, in which France and England,
and latterly also Sardinia took the part of the sick man, left
the condition of the Christians practically unchanged. For though
the Hatti Humayun of 1856 granted them equal civil rights with
the Moslems, this, however well meant on the part of the Sultan
of that time, practically made no improvement upon the equally
well meant Hatti Sherif of Gülhane of 1839. The outbreak of 1860
also proved how little effect it had in teaching the Moslems
tolerance towards the Christians. Roused by Jesuit emissaries
and trusting to French support, the Maronites of Lebanon indulged
in several provoking attacks upon their old hereditary foes the
Druses. These, however, aided by the Turkish soldiery were always
victorious, and throughout all Syria a terrible persecution
against Christians of all confessions broke out, characterized by
inhuman cruelties. In Damascus alone 8,000, in all Syria 16,000
Christians were murdered, 3,000 women taken to the harems, and
100 Christian villages destroyed. After the massacre had been
stopped, 120,000 Christians wandered about without food, clothing,
or shelter, and fled hither and thither in fear of death. Fuad
Pasha was sent from Constantinople to punish the guilty, and
seemed at first to proceed to business energetically; but his
zeal soon cooled, and French troops, sent to Syria to protect
the Christians, were obliged, yielding to pressure from England,
where their presence was regarded with suspicion, to withdraw
from the country in June, 1861.
§ 207.3. =The Bulgarian Ecclesiastical Struggle.=--The Bulgarian
church, with somewhere about two and a half million souls, was
from early times subject to the patriarch of Constantinople
(§ 73, 3), who acted toward it like a pasha. He sold the Bulgarian
bishoprics and archbishoprics to the highest bidders among
the Greek clergy, who were quite ignorant of the language of
the country, and had only one end in view, namely to recoup
themselves by extorting the largest possible revenue. No thought
was given to the spiritual needs of the Bulgarians, preaching
was wholly abandoned, the liturgy was read in a language unknown
to the people. It was therefore not to be wondered at that the
Bulgarian church was for years longing for its emancipation and
ecclesiastical independence, and made every effort to obtain this
from the Porte. Turkey, however, sympathized with the patriarch
till the revolt in Crete in 1866-1869 and threatening political
movements in Bulgaria broke out. Then at last in 1870 the sultan
granted the establishment of an independent Slavic ecclesiastical
province under the designation of the Bulgarian Exarchate, with
liberty to attach itself to the other Slavic provinces upon a
two-thirds majority of votes. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory]
protested, but the Sublime Porte would not thereby be deterred,
and in May, 1872, Anthimos the Exarch elect was installed. The
patriarch and his synod now stigmatized _Phyletism_, the struggle
for a national church establishment, as accursed heresy, and
excommunicated the exarch and the whole Bulgarian church. Only
the patriarch Cyril of Jerusalem dissented, but he was on that
account on his return home treated with indignity and abuse and
was deposed by a synod at Jerusalem.
§ 207.4. =The Armenian Church.=--To the Gregorian-Armenian
patriarch at Constantinople (§ 64, 3), equally with his orthodox
colleague (§ 67, 7), had been assigned by the Sublime Porte
civil jurisdiction as well as the primacy over all members
of his church in the Turkish empire. When now in 1830, at the
instigation of France, an independent patriarchate with equal
rights was granted to the United Armenians (§ 72, 2), the
twofold dependence on the Porte and on the Roman curia created
difficulties, which in the meantime were overcome by giving the
patriarch, who as a Turkish official exercised civil jurisdiction,
a primacy with the title of archbishop as representative of the
pope. The United Armenians, like the other united churches of
the East, had from early times enjoyed the liberty of using their
ancient liturgy, their old ecclesiastical calendar, and their
own church constitution with free election of their bishops and
patriarchs, and these privileges were left untouched down to 1866.
But when in that year the Armenian Catholic patriarch died,
the archbishop Hassun was elected patriarch, and then a fusion
of the two ecclesiastical powers was brought about, which was
expected to lead to absolute and complete subjection under
papal jurisdiction and perfect assimilation with the Romish
constitution and liturgy, at the same time Hassun with a view
to securing a red hat showed himself eager and zealous in this
business. By the bull _Reversurus_ of 1867 Pius IX. claimed the
right of nominating the patriarchs of all united churches of
the East, of confirming bishops chosen by these patriarchs, in
cases of necessity even choosing these himself, and deciding
all appeals regarding church property. But the Mechitarists of
St. Lazzaro (§ 164, 2) had already discovered the intriguing
designs of France and made these known among their countrymen
in Turkey. These now, while Monsignore Hassun was engaged
combating the infallibility dogma at the Vatican Council of
1870, drove out his creatures and constituted themselves into
a church independent of Rome, without however, joining the
Gregorian-Armenians. The influence of France being meanwhile
crippled by the Prussian victory, the Porte acquiesced in
the accomplished fact, confirmed the appointment of the newly
chosen patriarch Kupelian, and refused to yield to the pope’s
remonstrances and allocutions. In 1874, however, it also
recognised the Hassun party as an independent ecclesiastical
community, but assigned the church property to the party of
Kupelian, and banished Hassun as a fomenter of disturbance, from
the capital. The hearty sympathies which on the outbreak of the
Russo-Turkish war the Roman curia expressed so loudly and openly
for the victory of the crescent over the schismatic Russian cross,
made the Sublime Porte again regard the Hassunites with favour,
so that Hassun in September, 1877, returned to Constantinople,
where the churches were given over to his party and a great
number of the Kupelianists were won over to his side. He was
eagerly aided not only by the French but also by the Austrian
ambassador, and the patriarch Kupelian, now sorely persecuted
from every side, at last resigned his position and went in March,
1879, to Rome to kneel as a penitent before the pope. By an irade
of the sultan, Hassun was now formally restored, and in 1880 he
was adorned with a red hat by Leo XIII. Shortly before this the
last of the bishops of the opposing party, with about 30,000
souls, had given in his submission.
§ 207.5. =The Berlin Treaty, 1878.=--Frequent and severe
oppression, refusal to administer justice, and brutal violence
on the part of the Turkish government and people toward the
defenceless vassals drove the Christian states and tribes of
the Balkan peninsula in 1875 into a rebellion of desperation,
which was avenged, especially in Bulgaria in 1876, by
scandalous atrocities upon the Christians. When the half-hearted
interference of European diplomacy called forth instead of actual
reforms only the mocking sham of a pretended free representative
constitution, Russia held herself under obligation in 1877 to
avenge by arms the wrongs of her brethren by race and creed, but
owing to the threats of England and Austria could not fully reap
the fruits of her dearly bought victory as had been agreed upon
in the Treaty of San Stefano. By the =Berlin Conference=, however,
of 1878 the principalities of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro,
hitherto under the suzerainty of Turkey, were declared
independent, and to them, as well as to Greece, at the cost of
Turkey, a considerable increase of territory was granted, the
portion between the Balkans and the Danube was formed into the
Christian principality of Bulgaria under Turkish suzerainty, but
East Roumelia, south of the Balkans, now separated from Bulgaria,
obtained the rank of an autonomous province with a Christian
governor-general. To Thessaly, Epirus, and Crete were granted
administrative reforms and throughout the European territory
left to the Porte it was stipulated that full religious and
political rights be granted to members of all confessions.
The administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina was given over
to Austria, and that of Cyprus, by means of a separate treaty,
to England. The greater part of Armenia, lying in Asia, belongs
to Russia.
§ 208. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.[564]
The Republic of the United States of America, existing since the
Declaration of Independence in 1776, and recognised by England as
independent since the conclusion of Peace in 1783, requires of her
citizens no other religious test than belief in one God. Since the
settlers had often left their early homes on account of religious
matters, the greatest variety of religious parties were gathered
together here, and owing to their defective theological training
and their practical turn of mind, they afforded a fruitful field
for religious movements of all sorts, among which the revivals
systematically cultivated by many denominations play a conspicuous
part. The government does not trouble itself with religious questions,
and lets every denomination take care of itself. Preachers are therefore
wholly dependent on their congregations, and are frequently liable to
dismissal at the year’s end. Yet they form a highly respected class,
and nowhere in the Protestant world is the tone of ecclesiastical
feeling and piety so prevailingly high. In the public schools, which are
supported by the State, religious instruction is on principle omitted.
The Lutheran and Catholic churches have therefore founded parochial
schools; the other denominations seek to supply the want by Sunday
schools. The candidates for the ministry are trained in colleges and
in numerous theological seminaries.
§ 208.1. =English Protestant Denominations.=--The numerous
Protestant denominations belong to two great groups, English
and German. Of the first named the following are by far the most
important:
1. =The Congregationalists= are the descendants of the Pilgrim
Fathers who emigrated in 1620 (§ 143, 4). They profess the
doctrines of the Westminster Confession (§ 155, 1).
2. =The Presbyterians=, of Scotch origin, have the same
confession as the Congregationalists, but differ from them
by having a common church government with strict Synodal
and Presbyterial constitution. By rejecting the doctrine of
predestination the Cumberland Presbyterians in 1810 formed
a separate body and have since grown so as to embrace in the
south-western states 120,000 communicants.
3. =The Anglican Episcopal Church= is equally distinguished
by moderate and solid churchliness. Even here, however,
Puseyism has entered in and the Romish church has made
many proselytes. But when at the general conference of the
Evangelical Alliance at New York in 1873, bishop Cummins
of Kentucky took part in the administration of the Lord’s
Supper in the Presbyterian church and was violently attacked
for this by his Puseyite brethren, he laid the foundation
of a “Reformed Episcopal Church,” in which secession other
twenty-five Episcopal ministers joined. They regard the
episcopal constitution as an old and wholesome ordinance
but not a divine institution, also the Anglican liturgy
and _Book of Common Prayer_, though capable of improvement,
while they recognise the ordinations of other evangelical
churches as valid, and reject as Puseyite the doctrine of
a special priesthood of the clergy, of a sacrifice in the
eucharist, the presence of the body and blood of Christ in
the elements, and of the essential and invariable connection
between regeneration and baptism.
4. =The Episcopal Methodists= in America formed since 1784
an independent body (§ 169, 4). Their influence on the
religious life in the United States has been extraordinarily
great. They have had by far the most to do with the revivals
which from the first they have carried to a wonderful
pitch with their protracted meetings, inquiry meetings,
camp meetings, etc. They reached their climax in the camp
meetings which, under the preaching mostly of itinerant
Methodist preachers frequently in the forest under the
canopy of heaven, produced religious awakening among the
multitudes gathered from all around. Day and night without
interruption they continued praying, singing, preaching,
exhorting; all the horrors of hell are depicted, the
excitement increases every moment, penitent wrestlings with
sighs, sobs, groans, convulsions and writhings, occur on
every side; grace comes at last to view; loud hallelujahs,
thanksgivings and ascription of praise by the converted
mix with the moanings of those on “the anxious bench”
pleading for grace, etc. In San Francisco in 1874 there were
“=Baby-Revivals=,” at which children from four to twelve
years of age, who trembled with the fear of hell, sang
penitential hymns, made confession of sin, and wrote their
names on a sheet in order to engage themselves for ever
for Jesus. Since 1847 the Methodist church had been divided
into two hostile camps, a southern and a northern. The
first named tolerated slavery, while the members of the
latter were decided abolitionists and excommunicated all
slave-owners as unworthy of the name of Christian. Another
party, the Protestant Methodists, has blended the episcopal
and congregational constitution.
5. =The Baptists= are split up into many sects. The most
numerous are the Calvinistic Baptists. Their activity in
proselytising is equally great with their zeal for missions
to the heathen. In opposition to them the Free-Will Baptists
are Arminian and the Christian Baptists have adopted
Unitarian views.[565]
§ 208.2. =The German Lutheran Denominations.=--The German
emigration to America began in Penn’s time. In the organization
of church affairs, besides Zinzendorf and the Herrnhut
missionaries, a prominent part was taken by the pastor
Dr. Melchior Mühlenberg (died 1787), a pupil of A. H. Francke,
and the Reformed pastor Schlatter from St. Gall; the former
sent by the Halle Orphanage, the latter by the Dutch church.
The Orphanage sent many earnest preachers till rationalism broke
in upon the society. As at the same time the stream of German
emigration was checked almost completely for several decades,
and so all intercourse with the mother country ceased, crowds
of Germans, impressed by the revivals, went over to the
Anglo-American denominations, and in the German denominations
themselves along with the English language entered also English
Puritanism and Methodism. In 1815 German emigration began again
and grew from year to year. At the synod of 1857 the Lutheran
church with 3,000 pastors divided into three main divisions:
1. The American Lutheran church had become in language,
customs, and doctrine thoroughly Anglicised and Americanized;
Zwinglian in its doctrine of the sacraments, it was Lutheran
in scarcely anything but the name, until in its chief
seminary at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in 1850 a reaction
set in in favour of genuine Lutheran and German tendencies.
2. A greatly attenuated Lutheranism with unionistic sympathies
and frequent abandonment of the German language also found
expression in the congregations of the Old Pennsylvanian
Synod.
3. On the other hand, the strict Lutheran church held
tenaciously to the exclusive use of the German language
and the genuine Lutheran confession. The Prussian emigration
with Grabau and the Saxon Lutheran settlers with Stephan
constituted its backbone (§ 194, 1). To them a number of
Bavarian Lutherans attached themselves who had emigrated
under the leadership of Löhe, whose missionary institute
at Neuendettelsau supplied them with pastors. The Saxon
Lutherans were meanwhile grouped together in the Missouri
Synod, which Löhe’s missionaries also joined, so that it
soon acquired much larger proportions than the Buffalo Synod
formed previously by the Prussian Lutherans under Grabau.
But very soon the two synods had a violent quarrel over
the idea of office and church which, owing to the reception
by the Missouri Synod of several parties excommunicated
by the Buffalo Synod, led to the formal breach of church
fellowship between the two parties. The Missouri Synod, with
Dr. Walther at its head, attached all importance to sound
doctrine; the clerical office was regarded as a transference
of the right of the congregation and excommunication as
a congregational not a clerical act. The Buffalo Synod,
on the other hand, in consequence of serious conflict with
pietistic elements, had been driven into an overestimation
of external order, of forms of constitution and worship, and
of the clerical office as of immediately divine authority,
and carried this to such a length as led to the dissolution
of the synod in 1877. Löhe’s friends, who had not been able
to agree with either party, formed themselves into the Synod
of Iowa, with their seminary at Wartburg under Fritschel.
On all questions debated between the synods they took
a mediating position. The Missourians, however, would
have nothing to do with them, while those of Buffalo long
maintained tolerably friendly relations with them. But the
historical view of the symbols taken by the Iowans, their
inclination toward the new development of Lutheran theology,
and above all their attitude toward biblical chiliasm, which
they wished to treat as an open question, seemed to those of
Buffalo, as well as to the Missourians, a falling away from
the church confession, and led to their excommunication by
that party also.
In opposition to all this splitting up into sections a General
Council of the Lutheran Church in America was held in 1866, which
sought to combine all Lutheran district synods, of which twelve,
out of fifty-six, with 814 clergymen, joined it, Iowa assuming
a friendly and Missouri a distinctly hostile attitude. The
ninth assembly at Galesburg in Illinois in 1875 laid down as
its fundamental principle, “Lutheran pulpits only for Lutheran
preachers, and Lutheran altars only for Lutheran communicants.”
The native Americans, however, insisted upon exceptions being
allowed, _e.g._ in peril of death, etc. On the question of the
limits of these exceptions, however, subsequent assemblies have
not been able to agree.
§ 208.3. But also in the Synodal Conference founded and
led by the Missouri Synod, embracing five synods, doctrinal
controversies sprang up in 1860. A large number with Dr. Walther
at their head held a strict doctrine of =predestination= which
they regarded as the mark of genuine Lutheranism. God has,
they taught, chosen a definite number of men from eternity to
salvation; these shall and must be saved. Salvation in Christ
is indeed offered to all, but God secures it only for His elect,
so that they are sure of it and cannot lose it again, not indeed
_intuitu fidei_ but only according to His sovereign grace.
Even one of the elect may seem temporarily to fall from grace,
but he cannot die without returning into full possession of it.
Prof. Fritschel protested against this in 1872 as essentially
Calvinistic, and opposition also arose in the Missouri Pastoral
Conference. Prof. Asperheim, of the seminary of the Norwegian
Synod at Madison in Wisconsin, who first pronounced against it
in 1876, was deprived of his office and obliged to withdraw from
the synod. The controversy broke out in a violent form at the
conferences of about 500 pastors held at Chicago in 1880 and
at Milwaukee three months later in 1881, at the former of which
Prof. Stellhorn of Fort Wayne, at the latter Prof. Schmidt
of Madison, offered a vigorous opposition. Walther closed the
conference with the words: “You ask for war, war you shall have.”
The result was that the whole of the Ohio Synod and a large
portion of the Norwegian Wisconsin Synod, broke away from
communion with the Missouri Synod.--Walther and his adherents
went so far in their fanaticism as to pronounce not only their
American opponents but all the most distinguished Lutheran
theologians of Germany, Philippi as well as Hofmann, Luthardt
as well as Kahnis, Vilmar as well as Thomasius, Harms as well
as Zöckler, etc., bastard theologians, semipelagians, synergists
and rationalists, and to refuse church fellowship not only with
all Lutheran national churches in Europe, but also with German
Lutheran Free Churches, which did not unconditionally attach
themselves to them. These Missouri separatist communities, though
everywhere quite unimportant, are in Europe strongest in the
kingdom of Saxony; they have also a few representatives in Nassau,
Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse.
§ 208.4. =German-Reformed and other German-Protestant
Denominations.=--The German-Reformed church has its seminary
at Mercersburg in Pennsylvania. Its confession of faith is
the Heidelberg Catechism, its theology an offshoot of German
evangelical union theology, but with a distinctly positive
tendency. Although the union theology there prevailed among the
Reformed as well as the Lutherans, a German Evangelical Church
Union was formed at St. Louis in 1841 which wished to set aside
the names Reformed and Lutheran. It established a seminary at
Marthasville in Missouri. The Herrnhuters are also represented in
America. Several German Methodist sects have recently sprung up:
1. The “United Brethren in Christ,” with 500 preachers, founded
by a Reformed preacher Otternbein (died 1813).
2. The “Evangelical Communion,” commonly called
_Albrechtsleute_, founded by Jac. Albrecht, originally a
Lutheran layman, whom his own followers ordained in 1803,
with 500 or 600 preachers working zealously and carrying
on mission work also in Germany (§ 211, 1).
3. The Weinbrennians or Church of God, founded by an
excommunicated Reformed pastor of that name in 1839. They
carry the Methodist revivalism to the most extravagant
excess and are also fanatical opponents of infant baptism.
§ 208.5. =The Catholic Church.=--A number of English Catholics
under Lord Baltimore settled in Maryland in 1634. The little
community grew and soon filled the land. There alone in the whole
world did the Roman Catholic church though dominant proclaim
the principle of toleration and religious equality. Consequently
Protestants of various denominations crowded thither, outnumbered
the original settlers, and rewarded those who had hospitably
received them with abuse and oppression. The Catholics were
also treated in other states as idolaters and excluded from
public offices and posts of honour. Only after the Declaration
of Independence in 1783 was this changed by the sundering of the
connection of church and state and the proclamation of absolute
religious liberty. The number of Catholics was greatly increased
by numerous emigrations, specially from Ireland and Catholic
Germany. They now claim seven million members, with a cardinal
at New York, 13 archbishops, 64 bishops, about 7,000 churches and
chapels. A beautiful cathedral was erected in New York in 1879,
the immense cost of which, exceeding all expectation, was at last
defrayed by very unspiritual and unecclesiastical methods, _e.g._
lotteries, fairs, dramatic exhibitions, concerts, and even dearly
sold kisses, etc. The Roman Catholics have also a university at
St. Louis, 80 colleges, and 300 cloisters.
§ 209. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC STATES OF SOUTH AMERICA.
To the predominantly Protestant North America the position of the
Roman Catholic states of South America forms a very striking contrast.
Nowhere else was the influence and power of the clergy so wide-spread
and deeply rooted, nowhere else has the depravation of Catholicism
reached such a depth of superstition, obscurantism, and fanaticism.
During the second and third decades of our century the Spanish states,
favoured by the revolutionary movement in the mother country, one
after another asserted their independence, and the Portuguese Brazil
established herself as an independent empire under the legitimate
royal prince of Portugal, Pedro I. in 1822. Although the other new
states adopted a republican constitution, they could not throw aside
the influence of the Catholic clergy and carry out the principles of
religious freedom proclaimed in their constitutions. The Catholicism of
the Creoles, half-castes, and mulattoes was of too bigoted a kind and
the power of the clergy too great to allow any such thing. Mexico went
furthest in the attempt, and Brazil, under Dom Pedro II. from 1831,
astonished the world by the vigorous measures of its government
in 1874 against the assumptions of the higher clergy.--In spite of
all hindrances a not inconsiderable number of small evangelical
congregations have been formed in Romish America, partly through
emigration and partly by evangelization.
§ 209.1. =Mexico.=--Of all the American states, Mexico, since its
independence in 1823, has been most disturbed by revolutions and
civil wars. The rich and influential clergy, possessing nearly
a half of all landed property, was the factor with which all
pretenders, presidents and rulers had to reckon. After most
of the earlier governments had supported the clergy and been
supported by them, the ultimately victorious liberal party
under president Juarez shook off the yoke in 1859. He proclaimed
absolute religious freedom, introduced civil marriage, abolished
cloisters, pronounced church possessions national property and
exiled the obstinate bishops. The clerical party now sought
and obtained foreign aid. Spain, France and England joined in
a common military convention in 1861 in supporting certain claims
of citizens repudiated by Juarez. Spain and England soon withdrew
their troops, and Napoleon III. openly declared the purpose of
his interference to be the strengthening of the Latin race and
the monarchical principle in America. At his instigation the
Austrian Grand-Duke Maximilian was elected emperor, and that
prince, after receiving the pope’s blessing in Rome, began
his reign in 1864. Distrusted by all parties as a stranger,
in difficulties with the curia and clergy because he opposed
their claims to have their most extravagant privileges restored,
shamefully left in the lurch by Napoleon from fear of the
threatening attitude of the North American Union, and then
sold and betrayed by his own general Bazaine, this noble
but unfortunate prince was at last sentenced by Juarez at a
court-martial to be shot in 1867. Juarez now maintained his
position till the end of his life in 1872, and strictly carried
out his anticlerical reforms. After his death clericalism again
raised her head, and the Jesuits expelled from Guatemala swarmed
over the land. Yet constitutional sanction was given to the
Juarez legislation at the congress of 1873. The Jesuits were
driven across the frontiers, obstinate priests as well as a great
number of nuns, who had gathered again in cloisters and received
novices, were put in prison.--Also =Evangelization= advanced
slowly under sanction of law, though regarded with disfavour
by the people and interfered with often by the mob. It began
in 1865 with the awakening of a Catholic priest Francisco
Aguilar and a Dominican monk Manuel Aguas, through the reading
of the Scriptures. They laid the foundation of the “_Iglesia
de Jesus_” of converted Mexicans, with evangelical doctrine and
apostolic-episcopal constitution, which has now 71 congregations
throughout the whole country with about 10,000 souls. This
movement received a new impulse in 1869, when a Chilian-born
Anglican episcopal minister of a Spanish-speaking congregation
in New York, called Riley, took the control of it and was in 1879
consecrated its bishop. Besides this independent “_Church of
Jesus_” North American missionaries of various denominations
have wrought there since 1872 with slow but steady success.
§ 209.2. =In the Republics of Central and Southern America=, when
the liberal party obtained the helm of government through almost
incessant civil wars, religious freedom was generally proclaimed,
civil marriage introduced, the Jesuits expelled, cloisters shut
up, etc. But in =Ecuador=, president Moreno, aided by the clergy,
concluded in 1862 a concordat with the curia by which throughout
the country only the Catholic worship was tolerated, the bishops
could condemn and confiscate any book, education was under the
Jesuits, and the government undertook to employ the police in
suppressing all errors and compelling all citizens to fulfil all
their religious duties. And further the public resolved in 1873,
although unable to pay the interest of the national debt, to hand
over a tenth of all state revenues to the pope. But Moreno was
murdered in 1875. The Jesuits, who were out of favour, left Quito.
The tithe hitherto paid to the pope was immediately withheld,
and in 1877 the concordat was abrogated. As Ecuador in Moreno,
so =Peru= at the same time in Pierola had a dictator after the
pope’s own heart. The republic had his misgovernment to thank for
one defeat after another in the war with Chili.--=Bolivia=
in 1872 declared that the Roman Catholic religion alone would
be tolerated in the country, and suffered, in common with Peru,
annihilating defeats at the hand of Chili.--When at St. Iago in
Chili, during the festival of the Immaculate Conception in 1863,
the Jesuit church La Compania was burnt and in it more than 2,000
women and children consumed, the clergy pronounced this disaster
an act of grace of the blessed Virgin, who wished to give the
country a vast number of saints and martyrs. But here, too,
the conflicts between church and state continued. In 1874 the
Chilian episcopate pronounced the ban against the president and
the members of the national council and of the Lower House who
had favoured the introduction of a new penal code which secured
liberty of worship, but it remained quite unheeded. When then the
archiepiscopal chair of St. Iago became vacant in 1878, the pope
refused on any condition to confirm the candidate appointed by
the government. After the decisive victory over Peru and Bolivia,
the government again in December, 1881, urgently insisted upon
their presentation. The curia now sent to Chili, avowedly to
obtain more accurate information, an apostolic delegate who
took advantage of his position to stir up strife, so that the
government was obliged to insist upon his recall. As the curia
declined to do so, his passports were sent to the legate in
January, 1883, and a presidential message was addressed to the
next congress which demanded the separation of the church and
state, with the introduction of civil marriage and register of
civil station, as the only remaining means for putting down the
confusion caused by papal tergiversation. The result of the long
and heated debates that followed was the promulgation of a law
by which Catholicism was deprived of the character of the state
religion and the perfect equality of all forms of worship was
proclaimed.--=Guatemala= in 1872 expelled the Jesuits whose power
and wealth had become very great. In 1874 the president Borrias
opened a new campaign against the clergy by forbidding them to
wear the clerical dress except when discharging the duties of
their office, and closing all the nunneries.--In =Venezuela=, in
1872, Archbishop Guevara of Caracas, who had previously come into
collision with the government by favouring the rebels, forbade
his clergy taking part in the national festival, and put the
cathedral in which it was to be celebrated under the interdict.
Deposed and banished on this account, he continued from the
British island of Trinidad his endeavours to stir up a new
rebellion. The president, Guzman Blanco, after long fruitless
negotiations with the papal nuncio, submitted in May, 1876, to
the congress at St. Domingo the draft of a bill, which declared
the national church wholly independent of Rome. The congress
not only homologated his proposals, but carried them further,
by abolishing the episcopal hierarchy and assigning its revenues
to the national exchequer, for education. Now at last the Roman
curia agreed to the deposition of Guevara and confirmed the
nomination of his previously appointed successor. But president
Blanco now asked congress to abolish the law, and this was agreed
to.--In the United States of =Colombia= since 1853, and in the
=Argentine Republic= since 1865, perfect liberty of faith and
worship have been constitutionally secured. From the latter state
the Jesuits had been banished for a long time but had managed
to smuggle themselves in again. When in the beginning of 1875
Archbishop Aneiros of Buenos Ayres addressed to the government
which favoured the clerical party rather than to the congress
which was the only competent court, a request to reinvest the
Jesuits with the churches, cloisters, and properties held by them
before their expulsion, a terrible outbreak took place, which
the archbishop intensified to the utmost by issuing a violent
pastoral. A mob of 30,000 men, convened by the students of the
university, wrecked the palace of the archbishop, then attacked
the Jesuit college, burnt all its furniture and ornaments on
the streets and by means of petroleum soon reduced the building
itself to flames. Only with difficulty did the military succeed
in preventing further mischief. In October, 1884, the papal
nuncio was expelled, because, when the government decidedly
refused his request to prevent the spread of Protestant teaching
and to place Sunday schools under the oversight of the bishops,
he replied in a most violent and passionate manner. About the
same time the republic of =Costa-rica= issued a law forbidding
all religious orders, pronouncing all vows invalid, and
threatening banishment against all who should contravene these
enactments, and also an education act which forbade all public
instruction apart from that provided by the State.
§ 209.3. =Brazil.=--In Brazil down to 1884, the “Catholic
Apostolic Roman Religion” was, according to the constitution,
the religion of the empire. But from 1828 there was a Protestant
congregation in Rio de Janeiro, and through the inland districts,
in consequence of immigration, there were 100 small evangelical
congregations, with twenty-five ordained pastors, whose forms
of worship were of various kinds. In earlier times Protestant
marriage was regarded as concubinage, but in 1851 a law was
passed which gave it civil recognition. But the bishops held
to their previous views and demanded of married converts a
repetition of the ceremony. Since 1870, however, the government
has energetically opposed the claims of the clergy who wished
only to acknowledge the authority of Rome. Protestant marriages
were pronounced equally legitimate with Catholic marriages,
no civil penalties are incurred by excommunication, all papal
bulls are subject to the approval of the government, and it was
insisted that announcement should be made of all clergy nominated.
The clergy considered freemasonry the chief source of all this
liberal current, and against it therefore they directed all their
forces. The pope assisted by his brief of May, 1873, condemning
freemasonry. At the head of the rebel prelates stood Don
Vitalis Gonsalvez de Oliveira, bishop of Olinda and Pernambuco.
He published the papal brief without asking the imperial
permission, pronounced the ban upon all freemasons and suspended
the interdict over all associations which refused to expel
masonic brothers from their membership. In vain the government
demanded its withdrawal. It then accused him of an attack
upon the constitution. The supreme court ordered his detention,
and he was placed in the state prison at Rio de Janeiro in
January, 1874. The trial ended by his being sentenced to four
years’ imprisonment, which the emperor as an act of grace
commuted to detention in a fortress, and set him free in a
year and a half. In consequence of this occurrence the Jesuits
were, in 1874, expelled from the country. The increasing advent
of monks and nuns from Europe led the government, in 1884, to
appoint a commission to carry out the law already passed in 1870,
for the secularization of all monastic property after providing
pensions for those entitled to support. In the same year all
naturalized non-Catholics were pronounced eligible for election
to the imperial parliament and to the provincial assemblies. The
members belonging to the evangelical churches now number about
50,000, of whom 30,000 are Germans.[566]
V. Opponents of Church and of Christianity.
§ 210. SECTARIANS AND ENTHUSIASTS IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC
AND ORTHODOX RUSSIAN DOMAINS.
It cannot be denied that since the Tridentine attempt to define
the church doctrine far fewer sects condemning the church as such
have sprung from Roman Catholicism than from Protestantism. Yet such
phenomena are not wanting in the nineteenth century. Their scarcity
is abundantly made up for by the numberless degenerations and errors
(§ 191) which the Catholic church or its representatives in the
higher and lower grades of the clergy not only fell into, but actually
provoked and furthered, and thus encouraged an unhealthy love for
religious peculiarities. Were the absence of new heretical, sectarian
and fanatical developments something to be gloried in for itself alone,
the Eastern church, with its absolute stability, would obtain this
distinction in a far higher degree. In the Russian church, however,
the multitude of sects which amid manifold oppressions and persecutions
continue to exist to the present day, in spite of many persistent and
even condemnable errors, witnesses to a deep religious need in the
Russian people.
§ 210.1. =Sects and Fanatics in the Roman Catholic Domain=
(§ 187, 6-8, § 190).--On the Catholic Irvingites see § 211, 10.
1. =The Order of New Templars= sprang from the Freemasons
(§ 172, 2). Soon after their establishment in France the
Jesuits sought to carry out their own hierarchical ideas.
The fable of an uninterrupted connection between freemasonry
as a “temple of humanity” and the Templars of the Middle
Ages, and the introduction therewith in their secret
ceremonies of exercises, borrowed from the chivalry of
romance, afforded a means toward this end. The idea was
started in the Jesuit college at Claremont and was approved
and accepted by the local lodge. In A.D. 1754 a great
number of their noble members, who were disgusted with the
Jesuit templar farce, withdrew in order as “New Templars”
to continue the old order in the spirit of modern times. In
consequence, however, of the revolution that broke out in
A.D. 1789 they could no longer hold their ground as a band
of nobles. Napoleon favoured the reorganization of the order
freed from those limits. The day of Molay’s death (§ 112, 7)
was publicly celebrated with great pomp in Paris, A.D. 1808
and the order spread among all French populations. On the
Bourbon restoration the grand-master was, at the instigation
of the Jesuits, cast into prison and the order suppressed.
After the July revolution he was liberated and a new temple
was opened in Paris in A.D. 1833. The show-loving Parisians
for a long time took pleasure in the peculiar rites and
costume of the templars. When this interest declined the
order passed out of view. Its religion, which professed
to be a primitive revelation carried down in the Greek and
Egyptian mysteries, from which Moses borrowed, then further
developed by Christ and transmitted in esoteric tradition by
John and his successors the grand-masters of the templars,
taught a divine trinity of being, act and consciousness, the
eternity of the world alongside of God and an indwelling of
God in man. It declared the Roman Catholic church to be the
only true Christianity (_église chrétienne primitive_). Its
sacred book consisted of an apocryphal gospel of John in
accordance with its own notions.
2. On the communistic society of =St. Simonians=, which also
sprang up in France, see § 212, 2.
3. St. Simon’s secretary was =Aug. Comte=, the founder of the
Positivist philosophical school (§ 174, 2) and he maintained
intimate relations with his master all through life. In
his later years he undertook by carrying his philosophical
doctrine into the practical domain to sketch out a “religion
of humanity,” and thus became the founder of a Positivist
religious sect. The men of science indeed who had adopted
his philosophical principles (Littré, Renan, Taine, Lewes,
Leslie Stephens, Tyndall, Huxley, Draper, etc.), repudiate
it; but in the middle and lower ranks some were found
longing for an object of worship, who endeavoured on the
basis of his _Calendrier positiviste_ and _Catechisme
positiviste_ to form a religious society for the worship
of humanity. His festival calendar divides the year into
thirteen months of four weeks each, named after the thirteen
great benefactors of mankind (among whom Christ does not
appear), while the weeks are named after lesser heroes. By
the profound veneration of woman, which savours greatly of
Mariolatry, as well as by the fantastic worship of heroes,
geniuses and scholars, which is a mimicry of the popish
saint worship, and by the adoption of a sacerdotalism like
that of Catholicism, this religion of humanity shows itself
to be an antichristian growth on Roman Catholic soil.
§ 210.2.
4. =Thomas Pöschl=, in the second decade of the century,
presents an instance of a degeneration of originally
pietistic tendencies into mischievous fanaticism. A
Catholic priest at Ampfelwang near Linz, he sought under
the influence of Sailer’s mysticism to awaken in his
congregation a more lively Christianity by means of
prayer meetings and the circulation of tracts, in which
he proclaimed the approaching end of the world. When the
district in which he lived was, in 1814, attached to Austria,
he was committed to prison, and his followers accepted as
their leader the peasant =Jos. Haas=, who led them further
still into fanatical excesses. His fanaticism at length went
so far that on Good Friday of 1817 a young maiden belonging
to their party suffered a voluntary death after the example
of Christ for her brothers and sisters. Pöschl professed the
deepest horror at this cruel deed for which he was blamed.
He died in close monastic confinement in 1837.
5. The Antinomian sect of the =Antonians=, most numerous in
the Canton Bern, had its beginning among the Roman Catholics.
Its founder was Antoni Unternährer, born and reared at
Shüpfheim, near Lucerne, in the Catholic faith. From 1802
he resided at Amfoldingen, near Thun, where he stood in
high repute among the peasants as a quack doctor, gave
himself out as the son of God a second time become man, and
proclaimed by word and writing the perfect redemption from
the curse of the law by the introduction of the true freedom
of the sons of God, which was to show itself first of all
in the absolutely unrestricted intercourse of the sexes.
After two years’ confinement in a house of correction he was
banished from the Canton Bern and transported to his native
place, where, abandoning all pastoral duties, he died in a
police cell in 1814. The sect, which had meanwhile spread
widely, and at Gsteig near Interlaken had obtained a new
leader in the person of Benedict Schori, a third incarnation
of Christ, could not be finally suppressed, notwithstanding
the liberal use of the prison, till the beginning of 1840.
Even at this day scattered remnants of Antonians are to be
found in Canton Bern.
6. When the Austrian constitution of 1849 gave unconditional
religious toleration, the Bohemian =Adamites= (§ 115, 5),
of whom remnants under the mask of Catholicism had continued
down to the nineteenth century, ventured again publicly
to engage in proselytising efforts. An official enquiry
instituted on this occasion declared that the sect,
consisting of Bohemian peasants and artisans, had its
headquarters among the mystics of the Krüdener school,
that its religious doctrine was a mixture of communism,
freethinking and quietism, and that its members were in
their ordinary public life blameless, but that in their
secret nightly assemblies, where they dispensed with
clothes, they celebrated orgies regardless of marriage
or relationship.
7. =David Lazzaretti=, formerly a carrier in Tuscany,
appeared in his native place after an absence of several
years, in 1872, declaring that he was descended from a
natural son of Charlemagne and had been entrusted by the
Apostle Peter with a message to the pope, pointing to a
cross that had been burnt upon his brow by the apostle
himself. He startled those of the Vatican, where he was
quite unknown, by declaring that the bones of his ancestors
lay under the ruins of an old Franciscan cloister in Sabina,
of whose existence nobody was aware, the discovery of
which seemed to vouch for his claims. These were all the
more readily admitted when it was found that he made the
restoration of the Pope’s temporal power his main task. The
number of his adherents, mostly peasants, soon increased
immensely, reaching, it is said, 40,000. On Monte Labro they
built a church with a strong “David’s Tower,” over which
“St. David” appointed two priests who, when they had made
certain changes in worship at the call of the prophet, were
excommunicated by the bishop. David now began to spread
his socialistic and communistic ideas. He insisted that
his adherents should surrender their goods to him as
representative of the society, and promised down to
December 31st, 1890, the introduction of community of goods
throughout Italy and afterwards in other countries. In
Arcidosso, the prophet’s birthplace, a beginning was to be
made, but in its overthrow on August 18th, 1878, he met his
death, and his befooled followers waited in vain for the
fulfilment of his dying promise that he would rise again
on the third day.
§ 210.3. =Russian Sects and Fanatics.=--After the attempt under
Nicholas I. at the forcible conversion of the =Raskolniks=,
especially the purely schismatic =Starowerzians= or Old Believers
(§ 163, 10), had proved fruitless, the government of Alexander II.
by patience and concession took a surer way to reconciliation and
restoration. In October, 1874, their marriages, births and deaths,
which had hitherto been without legal recognition, were put on
the regular register and so their lawful rights of inheritance
were secured. Under Alexander III. in 1883 an imperial decree was
issued, which gave them permission to celebrate divine service
after their own methods in their chapels, which had not before
the legal standing of churches, and declared them also eligible
for public appointments.--To the =Duchoborzians= (§ 166, 2),
sorely oppressed under Catherine II. and Paul I., Alexander I.,
after they had laid before him the confession which they had
adopted, granted toleration, but assigned them a separate
residence in the Taurus district. Under Nicholas I. they were to
the number of 3,000 transported to the Transcaucasian mountains
in 1841, where they were called Duchoborje.--The Württemberg
Pietist colonists of South Russia originated among the peasants
the widespread sect of the =Stundists= soon after the abolition
of serfdom in 1863. The originator of those separatist meetings
for the study of Scripture, which led first of all to the
condemnation of image worship and making the sign of the cross
as unbiblical, and subsequently to a complete withdrawal from the
worship of the orthodox church and the forming of conventicles,
was the peasant and congregational elder Ratusny of Osnowa near
Odessa, to whom, at a later period, with equal propagandist zeal,
the peasant Balabok attached himself. The latter was, in 1871,
sentenced to one year’s imprisonment at Kiev and the loss
of civil rights, and in 1873, at Odessa, a great criminal
prosecution was instituted against Ratusny and all the other
leaders of the sect, which, however, after proceeding for five
years ended in a verdict of acquittal. A process started in 1878
against the so-called =Schaloputs= had a similar issue. This sect,
spread most widely among the Cossacks of Cuban, rejects the Old
Testament, the sacraments and the doctrine of the resurrection,
but believes in a continued effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the
prophets of the church who have prepared themselves for their
vocation by complete abstinence from flesh and spirituous liquor
as well as by incessant prayer and frequent fasting.
§ 210.4. About the middle of the eighteenth century among the
“_Men of God_,” the strict interpretation of the prescriptions of
their founder Danila Filipow (§ 163, 10) had led many to abstain
wholly from sexual relations; when a peasant Andrew Selivanov
appeared as a reformer and founded the sect of the =Skopzen=
or mutilators, who, building on misinterpreted passages of
Scripture (Matt. v. 28-30, xix. 12; Rev. xiv. 4) insisted upon
the destruction of sexual desire by castration and excision of
the female breasts, generally performed under anæsthetics, as a
necessary condition of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The
first Skopzic congregation was gathered round him in the village
of Sosnowka. The “men of God” enraged at his success denounced
him to the government. He was punished with the knout and
condemned in 1774 to hard labour at Irkutzk. The idea that
Peter III., who died in 1762, was still alive, then widely
prevailed. The “men of God” had also adopted this opinion,
and proclaimed him their last-appearing Christ, who would soon
return from his hiding-place to call to account all unbelievers.
Selivanov, who knew of this, now gave himself out for the exiled
monarch, and was accepted as such by his adherents in his native
place. When Paul I., Peter’s son, assumed the reins of government
in 1796, a Skopzic merchant of Moscow told him secretly that his
father was living at Irkutzk under the name of Selivanov. The
emperor therefore brought him to Petersburg and shut him up as an
imbecile in an asylum. After Paul’s death, however, his adherents
obtained his release. He now lived for eighteen years in honour
at Petersburg, till in 1820 the court again interfered and had
him confined in a cloister at Suzdal, where after some years
he died. Sorely persecuted by Nicholas I. many of his followers
migrated to Moldavia and Walachia where they, dwelling in
separate quarters at Jassy, Bucharest and Galatz, lived as owners
of coach-hiring establishments, and by rich presents obtained
proselytes. Still more vigorously was the propaganda carried on
in the Moscow colonies on the Sea of Azov. There in Morschansk
lived the spiritual head of all Russian Skopzen, the rich
merchant Plotizyn. After the government got on the track of
this society, Plotizyn’s house was searched and a correspondence
revealing the wide extension of the sect was found, together with
a treasure of several, some say as much as thirty, millions of
roubles, which, however, in great part again disappeared in a
mysterious manner. Plotizyn and his companions were banished
to Siberia and sentenced to hard labour, the less seriously
implicated to correction in a cloister.--The secret doctrine of
the Skopzen so far as is known is as follows: God had intended
man to propagate not by sexual intercourse but by a holy kiss.
They broke this command and this constituted the fall. In the
fulness of time God sent his Son into the world. The central
point of his preaching transmitted to us in a greatly distorted
form was the introduction of the baptism of fire (Matt. iii. 11),
_i.e._ mutilation by hot irons for which, in consideration
of human weakness, a baptism of castration may be substituted
(Matt. xix. 12). Origen is regarded by them as the greatest saint
of the ancient church; to his example all saints conformed who
are represented as beardless or with only a slight beard. The
promised return of the Christ (in this alone diverging from the
doctrine of the “men of God”), took place in the person of the
emperor Peter III. whom an unstained virgin bore, who was called
the empress Elizabeth Petrovna. The latter after some years
transferred the government to a lady of the court resembling her
and retired into private life under the name of Akulina Ivanovna,
where she still remains invisible behind golden walls, waiting
for the things that are to come. Her son Peter III., who had
also himself undergone the baptism of fire, escaped the snares of
his wife, reappeared under the name of Selivanov, performed many
miracles and converted multitudes, obtained as a reward the knout,
and was at last sent to Siberia. Emperor Paul recalled him and
was converted by him. Under Alexander I. he was again arrested
and imprisoned in the cloister of Suzdal. But he was conveyed
thence by a divine miracle to Irkutzk, where he now lives in
secret, whence at his own time he shall return to judge the
living and the dead.--They kept up an outward connection with the
state church although they regarded it as the apocalyptic whore
of Babylon. In their own secret services inspired psalms were
sung, and after exciting dances prophecies were uttered.[567]
§ 211. SECTARIES AND ENTHUSIASTS IN THE PROTESTANT DOMAIN.
The United States of America with their peculiar constitution formed
the favourite ground for the gathering and moulding of sects during
this age. There, besides the older colonies of Quakers, Baptists and
Methodists from England, we meet with Swedenborgianism and Unitarianism,
while Baptists and Methodists began to send missionaries into Europe,
and from England the Salvation Army undertook a campaign for the
conquest of the world. But also on the European continent independent
fanatical developments made their appearance.--A new combination of
communism with religious enthusiasm is represented by the Harmonists and
by the Perfectionists in North America. The Grusinian Separatists and
the Bavarian Chiliasts are millenarians of German extraction, of whom
the former sought deliverance from the prevailing antichristian spirit
in removal from, and the latter in removal to, South Russia. The
Amen churches sought to gather God’s people of the Jewish Christian
communities together in Palestine, while the so-called German Temple
sought to gather the Gentile Christians. As Latter Day Saints, besides
the Adventists, the Darbyites established themselves on an independent
basis; the Irvingites, with revival of the apostolic offices and
charisms, and their American caricature, the Mormons, with the addition
of socialistic and fantastic gnostic tendencies. The religion of the
Taiping rebellion in China presented the rare phenomenon of a national
Chinese Christianity of native growth, and a still rarer manifestation
is met with in American-European spiritualism with pretended spirit
revelations from the other world.
§ 211.1. =The Methodist Propaganda.=--From 1850 the American
Methodists, both the Albrechtsleute (§ 208, 4) and the Episcopal
Methodists, have sent out numerous missionaries, mostly Germans
into Germany, whose zeal has won considerable success among
the country people. In North-West Germany Bremen is their chief
station, whence they have spread to Sweden, Central and Southern
Germany, and Switzerland, and have stations in Frankfort,
Carlsruhe, Heilbronn, and Zürich.--Of a more evanescent character
was the attempt made on Germany by the so-called =Oxford Holiness
Movement=. In 1866 the North American Methodists celebrated their
centenary in New York by the appointment of a great revival and
holiness committee, in which were also members of many other
denominations. Among them the manufacturer, =Pearsall Smith=, of
Philadelphia, converted in 1871, exhibited extraordinary zeal. In
September, 1874, he held at Oxford great revival meetings, from
which the designation of the Oxford movement had its origin. By
some Germans there present his opinions were carried to Germany.
In spring, 1875, he began his second European missionary tour.
While his two companions, the revivalists Moody and Sankey,
travelled through England for the conversion of the masses, Smith
went to Germany, and proceeding from Berlin on to Switzerland,
gave addresses in English, that were interpreted, in ten of the
large cities. The most pious among clergy and laity flocked from
far and near to hear him. The new apostle’s journey became more
and more a triumphal march. He was lauded as a reformer called
to complete the work of Luther; as a prophet, who was to fructify
the barren wastes of Germany with the water of life. The core of
his doctrine was: Perfect holiness and the attainment of absolute
perfection, not hereafter, but now! now! now! with the constant
refrain: “_Jesus saves me now_;” not remission of sins through
justification by faith in the atoning efficacy of Christ’s blood,
which only avails for outward sinful actions, but immediate
extinction of sins by Christ in us, proved in living, unfaltering,
inner, personal experience, etc. By a great international and
interconfessional meeting at Brighton, lasting for ten days, in
June, 1875, at which many German pastors, induced by the payment
of travelling expenses, were present, the crown was put upon
the work. But at the height of his triumph, under the daily
increasing tension and excitement the apostle of holiness showed
himself to be a poor sinful son of man, for he strayed into
errors, “if not practically, at least theoretically,” which his
admirers at first referred to mental aberration, but which they
hid from the eyes of the world under a veil of mystery. Toward
the end of the Brighton conference he declared to his hearers:
“Thus plunge into a life of divine unconcern!” and, “All Europe
lies at my feet.” And in subsequent private conversations he
developed a system of ethics that “would suit Utah rather than
England,” to which he then so conformed his own conduct that
his admirers, “although satisfied of the purity of his own
intentions,” were obliged energetically to repudiate and with
all speed send away across the sea the man whom their own
unmeasured adulation had deceived.
§ 211.2. =The Salvation Army.=--An extremely fantastic caricature
of English Methodism is the =Salvation Army=. The Methodist
evangelist, =William Booth=, who in 1865 founded in one of the
lowest quarters of London a new mission station, fell upon the
idea in 1878, in order to make an impression on the rude masses,
to give his male and female helpers a military organisation,
discipline and uniform, and with military banners and music
to undertake a campaign against the kingdom of the devil. The
General of the Salvationists is Booth himself, his wife is his
adjutant, his eldest daughter field-marshal; his fellow-workers
male and female are his soldiers, cadets and officers of various
ranks; chief of the staff is Booth’s eldest son. Their services
are conducted according to military forms; their orchestra of
trombone, drum and trumpet is called the Hallelujah Brass Band.
Their journal, with an issue of 400,000, is the _War Cry_;
another for children, is _The Little Soldier_, in which Jane,
four years old, dilates on the experiences of her inner life; and
Tommy, eleven years old, is sure that, having served the devil
for eleven years, he will now fight for King Jesus; and Lucy,
nine years old, rejoices in being washed in the blood of the Lamb.
The army attained its greatest success in England. Its numerous
“prisoners of war” from the devil’s army (prostitutes, drunkards,
thieves, etc.) are led at the parade as trophies of war, and
tell of their conversion, whereupon the command of the general,
“Fire a Volley,” calls forth thousands of hallelujahs. Liberal
collections and unsought contributions, embracing several
donations of a £1,000 and more, are given to the General, not
only to pay his soldiers, but also to rent or to purchase and fit
up theatres, concert halls, circuses, etc., for their meetings,
and to build large new “barracks.” Its wonderful success has
secured for the army many admirers and patrons, even in the
highest ranks of society. Queen Victoria herself testified to
Mrs. Booth her high satisfaction with her noble work. At the
Convocation, too, in the Upper as well as the Lower House,
distinguished prelates spoke favourably of its methods and
results, and so encouraged the formation of a Church Army, which,
under the direction of the mission preacher Aitken, pursues
similar ways to those of the Salvation Army, without, however,
its spectacular displays, and has lately extended its exertions
to India. The temperance party after the same model has formed a
Blue Ribbon Army, the members of which, distinguished by wearing
a piece of blue ribbon in the buttonhole, confine themselves
to fighting against alcohol. In opposition to it public-house
keepers and their associates formed a Yellow Ribbon Army, which
has as its ensign the yellow silk bands of cigar bundles. Soon
after the first great success of the Salvation Army, a Skeleton
Army was formed out of the lowest dregs of the London mob,
which, with a banner bearing the device of a skeleton, making
a noise with all conceivable instruments, and singing obscene
street songs to sacred melodies, interrupted the marches of the
Salvation, and afterwards of the Church, Army: throwing stones,
filthy rotten apples and eggs, and even storming and demolishing
their “barracks.”--In 1880 a detachment of the Salvation
Army, with Railton at its head, assisted by seven Hallelujah
Lasses, made a first campaign in America, with New York as
its head-quarters. In the following year, under Miss Booth, it
invaded France, where it issues a daily bulletin, “_En Avant_.”
In 1882 it appeared in Australia, then in India, where Chunder
Sen, the founder of the Brama-Somaj, showed himself favourable.
In Switzerland it broke ground in 1882, in Sweden in 1884, and
in Germany, at Stuttgart, in November, 1886. Africa, Spain, Italy,
etc., followed in succession. These foreign corps outside of
England also found considerable success. Almost everywhere they
met with opposition, the magistrates often forbidding their
meetings, and inflicting fines and imprisonment, and the mob
resorting to all sorts of violent interference. Nowhere were both
sorts of opponents so persistent as in Switzerland in 1883 and
1884, especially in Lausanne, Geneva, Neuenburg, Bern, Beil, etc.
Although General Booth himself at the annual meeting in April,
1884, boasted that £393,000 had been collected during the past
year for the purposes of the army, and over 846 barracks in
eighteen countries of the world had been opened, and now even
spoke of strengthening the army by establishing a Salvation Navy,
the increasing extravagances caused by the army itself, as well
as the far greater improprieties of those more or less associated
with it, has drawn away many of its former supporters.
§ 211.3. =Baptists and Quakers.=--=Baptist= sympathies
and tendencies often appeared in Germany apart from an
anti-ecclesiastical pietism or mysticism. But this aberration
first assumed considerable proportions when a Hamburg merchant,
Oncken, who had been convinced by his private Bible reading of
the untenableness of infant baptism, was baptized by an American
baptist in 1834, and now not only founded the first German
baptist congregation in Hamburg, but also proved unwearied in
his efforts to extend the sect over all Germany and Scandinavia
by missions and tract distribution. Oncken died in 1884. Thus
gradually there were formed about a hundred new Baptist German
congregations in Mecklenburg, Brandenburg (Berlin), Pomerania,
Silesia, East Prussia (Memel, Tilsit, etc.), Westphalia,
Wupperthal, Hesse, Württemberg and Switzerland. In Sweden
(250 congregations with 18,000 souls) they were mainly recruited
from the “Readers,” who after 1850 went over in crowds (§ 201, 2).
They also found entrance into Denmark and Courland, but in
all cases almost exclusively among the uncultured classes
of labourers and peasants. After long but vain attempts at
suppression by the governments during the reactionary period
of 1850, they obtained under the liberal policy of the next two
decades more or less religious toleration in most states. They
called themselves the society of “baptized Christians,” and
maintained that they were “the visible church of the saints,”
the chosen people of God, in contrast to the “hereditary
church and the church of all and sundry,” in which they saw the
apocalyptic Babylon. Even the Mennonites who “sprinkle,” instead
of immersing, “all,” _i.e._ without proper sifting, they regard
as a “hereditary” church. With the Anglo-American Baptists they
do indeed hold fellowship, but take exception to them in several
points, especially about open communion.--A peculiar order of
Baptists has arisen in Hungary in the =Nazarenes= or Nazirites,
or as they call themselves: “Followers of Christ.” Founded
in 1840 by Louis Henefey originally a Catholic smith, who had
returned home from Switzerland, the sect obtained numerous
adherents from all three churches, most largely from the Reformed
church, favoured perhaps by the not yet altogether extinguished
reminiscences of the Baptist persecutions of the eighteenth
century (§ 163, 2). They practised strict asceticism, refused
to take oaths or engage in military service, and kept the bare
Puritan forms of worship, in which any one was allowed to preach
whom the Holy Spirit enlightened. Their congregations embraced
weak and strong friends, and also weak and strong brethren.
The strong friends after receiving baptism joined the ranks of
weak brethren, and then again became strong brethren on their
admission to the Lord’s Supper. The church officers were singers,
teachers, evangelists, elders, and bishops.--In North America
=Quakerism=, under the influence of increasing material
prosperity, had lost much of its primitive strictness in life
and manners. The more lax were styled _Wet-_, and their more
rigorous opponents _Dry-Quakers_. Enthusiasm over the American
War of Independence of 1776-1783, spreading in their ranks, led
to further departures from the rigid standard of early times.
Those who took weapons in their hands were designated _Fighting
Quakers_. The General Assembly disapproved but tolerated these
departures; neither the Wet nor the Fighting Quakers were
excommunicated, but they were not allowed any part in the
government of the community. In 1822 a party appeared among
them, led by Elias Hicks, which carried the original tendency of
Quakerism to separate itself from historical Christianity so far
as to deny the divinity of Christ, and to allow no controlling
authority to Scripture in favour of the unrestricted sway
of reason and conscience. This departure from the traditions
of Quakerism, however, met with vigorous opposition, and the
protesting party, known as _Evangelical Friends_, pronounced more
decidedly than ever for the authority of Scripture. In England,
notwithstanding the wealth and position of its adherents,
Quakerism, since the second half of the eighteenth century, has
suffered a slow but steady decrease, while even in America, to
say the least, no advance can be claimed. In Holland, Friesland,
and Holstein, Quaker missionaries had found some success
among the Mennonites, without, however, forming any separate
communities. In 1786 some English Quakers succeeded in winning
a small number of proselytes in Hesse, who in 1792, under the
protection of the prince of Waldeck, formed a little congregation
at Friedersthal, near Pyrmont, which still maintains its
existence.--On the sects of Jumpers and Shakers, variously
related to primitive, fanatical Quakerism, see § 170, 7.[568]
§ 211.4. =Swedenborgians and Unitarians.=--In the nineteenth
century =Swedenborgianism= has found many adherents. In England,
Scotland and North America the sect has founded many missionary
and tract societies. In Württemberg the procurator Hofacker
and the librarian Tafel, partly by editions and translations of
the writings of Swedenborg, partly by their own writings, were
specially zealous in vindicating and spreading their views. A
general conference of all the congregations in Great Britain and
Ireland in 1828 published a confession of faith and catechism,
and thirteen journals (three English, seven American, Tafel’s
in German, one Italian and one Swedish) represent the interests
of the party. The liberal spirit of modern times has in various
directions introduced modifications in its doctrine. Its
Sabellian opposition to the church doctrine of the Trinity
and its Pelagian opposition to the doctrine of justification,
have been retained, and its spiritualising of eschatological
ideas has been intensified, but the theosophical magical
elements have been wholly set aside and scarcely any reference
is ever made to revelations from the other world.--From early
times the =Unitarians= had a well ordered and highly favoured
ecclesiastical institution in Transylvania (§ 163, 1). But in
England the law still threatened them with a death sentence. This
law had not indeed for a long time been carried into effect, and
in 1813 it was formally abrogated. There are now in England about
400 small Unitarian congregations with some 300,000 souls. The
famous chemist Jos. Priestly may be regarded as the founder of
North American Unitarianism (§ 171, 1), although only after his
death in 1804 did the movement which he represented spread widely
through the country. Then in a short time hundreds of Unitarian
congregations were formed. Their most celebrated leaders were
W. Ellery Channing, who died in 1842, and Theodore Parker, who
died in 1860, both of Boston.
§ 211.5. =Extravagantly Fanatical Manifestations.=--The English
woman Johanna Southcote declared that she was the “woman in the
sun” of Revelation xii. or the Lamb’s wife. In 1801 she came
forth with her prophecies. Her followers, the =New Israelites= or
Sabbatarians, so called because they observed the Old Testament
law of the Sabbath, founded a chapel in London for their worship.
A beautiful cradle long stood ready to receive the promised
Messiah, but Johanna died in 1814 without giving birth to him.--A
horrible occurrence, similar to that recorded in § 210, 2, took
place some years later, in 1823, in the village of Wildenspuch in
Canton Zürich. =Margaret Peter=, a peasant’s daughter, excited by
morbid visions in early youth, was on this account expelled from
Canton Aargau, and was carried still farther in the direction
of extreme mysticism by the vicar John Ganz, by whom she was
introduced to Madame de Krüdener (§ 176, 2). Amid continual
heavenly visions and revelations, as well as violent conflicts
with the devil and his evil spirits, she gathered a group of
faithful followers, by whom she was revered as a highly gifted
saint, among them a melancholy shoemaker, Morf, whom Ganz
introduced to her. The spiritual love relationship between the
two in an unguarded hour took a sensual form and led to the
birth of a child, which Morf’s forbearing wife after successfully
simulating pregnancy adopted as her own. This deep fall, for
which she wholly blamed the devil, drove her fanaticism to
madness. The ridiculous proceedings in her own house, where for a
whole day she and her adherents beat with fists and hammers what
they supposed to be the devil, led the police to interfere. But
before orders arrived from Zürich, she found refuge in an asylum,
and there the end soon came. Margaret assured her followers that
in order that Christ might fully triumph and Satan be overthrown,
blood must be shed for the salvation of many thousand souls. Her
younger sister Elizabeth voluntarily allowed herself to be slain,
and she herself with almost incredible courage allowed her hands
and feet to be nailed to the wood and then with a stroke of the
knife was killed, under the promise that she as well as her
sister should rise again on the third day. The tragedy ended
by the apprehension and long confinement of those concerned in
it.--The sect of =Springers= in Ingermannland had its origin
in 1813. Arising out of a religious excitement not countenanced
by the church authorities, they held that each individual
needed immediate illumination of the Holy Spirit for his soul’s
salvation. So soon as they believed that this was obtained,
the presence of the Spirit was witnessed to by ecstatic prayer,
singing and shouting joined with handshaking and springing
in their assemblies. The special illumination required as its
correlate a special sanctification, and this they sought not only
in repudiation of marriage, but also in abstinence from flesh,
beer, spirits and tobacco. The “holy love,” prized instead of
marriage, however, here also led to sensual errors, and the
result was that many after the example of the Skopzen (§ 210, 4)
resorted to the surer means of castration.--Among the Swedish
peasants in 1842 appeared the singular phenomenon of the =Crying
Voices= (_Röstar_). Uneducated laymen, and more particularly
women and even children, after convulsive fits broke out into
deep mutterings of repentance and prophesyings of approaching
judgment. The substance of their proclamations, however, was not
opposed to the church doctrine, and the criers were themselves
the most diligent frequenters of church and sacrament.--In the
beginning of 1870 the wife of a settler at Leonerhofe, near San
Leopoldo in Brazil, =Jacobina Maurer=, became famous among the
careless colonists of that region as a pious miracle-working
prophetess. In religious assemblies which she originated, she
gave forth her fantastic revelations based upon allegorical
interpretations of Scripture, and founded a congregation of the
“elect” with a communistic constitution, in which she assumed
to herself all church offices as the Christ come again. Rude
abuse and maltreatment of these “Muckers” on the part of the
“unbelieving,” and the interference of the police, who arrested
some of the more zealous partisans of the female Christ, brought
the fanaticism to its utmost pitch. Jacobina now declared it the
duty of believers to prepare for the bliss of the millennium by
rooting out all the godless. Isolated murders were the prelude
of the night of horror, June 25th-26th, 1874, on which well
organized Mucker-bands, abundantly furnished with powder and shot,
went forth murdering and burning through the district for miles
around. The military sent out against them did not succeed in
putting down the revolt before August 2nd, after the prophetess
with many of her adherents had fallen in a fanatically brave
resistance.
§ 211.6. =Christian Communistic Sects.=--The only soil upon which
these could flourish was that of the Free States of North America.
Besides the small Shaker communities (§ 170, 7) still surviving
in 1858, the following new fraternities are the most important:
1. The =Harmonites=. The dissatisfaction caused among the
Württemberg Pietists by the introduction of liturgical
innovations led to several migrations in the beginning
of the century. Geo. Rapp, a simple peasant from the
village of Iptingen, went to America in 1803 or 1804
with about six hundred adherents, and settled in the valley
of Connoquenessing, near Pittsburg in Pennsylvania. As a
fundamental principle of this “Harmony Association,” which
honoured father Rapp as autocratic patriarch, prophet and
high priest, and with him believed in the near approach of
the second advent, the community of goods holds a prominent
place. By diligence and industry in agriculture, labour
and manufactures, they reached great prosperity under the
able leadership of their patriarch. In 1807 the community,
by a resolution of its own to which Rapp agreed, resolved
to abstain from marriage, so that henceforth no children
were born nor marriages performed. A falling off in numbers
was made up in 1817 by new arrivals from Württemberg and
afterwards by the adoption of children. Industrial reasons
led the community in 1814 to colonize Wabashthal in Indiana,
where they built the town of Harmony, which, however, in
1823, on account of its unhealthy situation, they sold
to the Scotchman Robert Owen (§ 212, 3), and then founded
for themselves the town of Economy, not far from Pittsburg,
where they still reside. In 1831 an adventurer, Bernard
Müller, appeared among them, who, at Offenbach, had, for
a long time, under the name of Proli, played a brilliant
part as a prophet called to establish universal spiritual
monarchy, and then, when in danger from the courts of law,
had fled to America. In Economy, where he passed himself
off as Count Maximilian von Leon, persecuted on account
of his belief in the second coming, he found as such a
hearty welcome, and within a year, by his agitation for
the reintroduction of marriage and worldly enjoyments, drew
away a third part of the community, embracing 250 souls.
The dissentients with 105,000 dollars from the common
purse withdrew and settled under the leadership of the
pseudo-count as a New Jerusalem society in the neighbouring
village of Philippsburg. But the new patriarch conducted
himself so riotously that he was obliged in 1833 to flee to
Louisiana, where in the same year he died of cholera. His
people now in deep distress turned to Dr. Keil, a mystic
come from Prussia, who reorganised them after the pattern
of Rapp’s communistic society, but with liberty to marry,
and brought them to a prosperous condition in two colonies
mainly founded by him at Bethel in Missouri and Aurora
in Oregon. Economy, too, flourished in spite of the heavy
losses it sustained, so that now the common property of the
populace, which through celibacy had been reduced to about
eighty persons, amounts to eight million dollars. Father
Rapp died in 1847, in his ninetieth year, confident to the
end that he would guide his church unto the hourly expected
advent of Christ.
2. When in 1831 a wave of revival passed over North America,
J. H. Noyes, an advocate’s assistant, applied himself to the
study of the Bible and became the founder of a new sect, the
=Bible Communists= or =Perfectionists= of the Oneida Society.
He taught that the promised advent of Christ took place
spiritually soon after the destruction of Jerusalem; by it
the kingdom of Adam was ended and the kingdom of God in the
heart of those who knew and received him was established.
The official churches were only state churches, but the
true church was scattered in the hearts of individual saints,
until Noyes collected and organized it into a Bible family.
For them there is no more law, for laws are for sinners
and the saints no longer sin. Each saint can do and suffer
whatever the Spirit of God moves him to. All the members of
the congregation constitute one family, live, eat, and work
together. Goods, wives and children are in common. It lies
with the wife to accept or refuse the approaches of a man.
But soon this proclaimed freedom from law sent everything
into confusion and disunion; schism―apostasy prevailed.
But Father Noyes now saved his church from destruction
by introducing a correction to this freedom from law in
_Sympathy_, _i.e._ in the agreement of all members of
the family. The odium which fell upon the community from
without on account of its “complex marriages,” induced him
at last in August, 1879, although he still always maintained
the soundness of his principle of free love and its final
victory over prejudice, to ordain the introduction of
monogamic marriages, and the community acquiesced. With
regard to community of goods, meals and children, however,
they kept to the old lines. The parent community has its
seat at Lenox in Oneidabach in New York State. Alongside of
it are three daughter communities. They have their prophets
and prophetesses, but no ritual service and no Sunday. Their
employment (they number about 300 souls) is mainly fruit
culture and the manufacture of snares of every kind for wild
and other animals.[569]
§ 211.7. =Millenarian Exodus Communities.=
1. The =Georgian Separatists=. The stream of Württemberg
emigrants above referred to turned also toward Southern
Russia. The settlers in Transcaucasian Georgia in the long
absence of regular pastors fell into fanatical separation,
which the clergy who followed in 1820 could not overcome.
Under the direction of three elders (one of them an old
woman) as representing the Holy Trinity, they lived quietly,
refused to baptize their children, to give their dead burial
according to the rites of the church, to call in physicians
in sickness, and at last rejected the marriage relation. In
1842 their female elder, Barbara Spohn, wife of a cartwright,
appeared in the rôle of a prophet, proclaiming the near
approach of the end of the world and calling upon her
followers to pass through the wilderness to the promised
land, there to enter into the millenial kingdom. They were
to take with them no money, no bread, etc., but only a staff;
their clothes and shoes would not wear old in the desert,
they could eat manna and quails, and in the holy land Christ
would dress them in the bridal robe. The government sought
in vain to bring them to reason and to obstruct their way,
when about three hundred of them wished at Pentecost, 1843,
to start on their journey. They were allowed to send three
men to Constantinople and Palestine to seek permission from
the Turkish government to settle in a spot near Jerusalem.
But these returned before the close of the year with the
news, that Palestine is not the land that would suit them.
This brought the majority to their senses and they rejoined
the church.
2. Equally unfortunate was the attempt at colonization made
in 1878 by some =Bavarian Chiliasts=. The pastor Clöter
in Illenschwang had for a long time in the “_Brüderbote_,”
edited by him, urged the emigration of believers to
South Russia, where, according to his exposition of the
apocalyptic prophecy, a secure place of refuge had been
provided by God for believers of the last times during the
near approaching persecutions of antichrist. In June, 1878,
the tailor Minderlein with his family and nineteen other
persons started to go thither. Minderlein died by the way,
and his companions after enduring great hardships were
obliged to return, and reached Nuremberg again in October,
absolutely destitute. Clöter, however, was not discouraged
by this misfortune. In December he called his adherents
from Bavaria, Württemberg and Switzerland, together to a
conference at Stuttgart, where they formed themselves into
the “=German Exodus Church=.” In the summer, 1880, Clöter
himself travelled to South Russia and thought that he found
in the Crimea the fittest place of refuge. On his return he
was banished, but after some days liberated, though deprived
of his clerical office. A final stop was then put to the
exodus movement.
§ 211.8.
3. The =Amen Community= owed its feeble existence to a
Christian Jew, Israel Pick of Bohemia. Believing that he
was not required in baptism to renounce his Judaism, but
that rather thereby he first became a true Jew, through
a onesided interpretation of Old Testament promises to his
nation, he wished to found a colony of the people of God
in the Holy Land on Jewish-Christian principles. The whole
Mosaic law, excluding the observance of the Sabbath and
circumcision, was to be the basis, together with baptism and
the Lord’s Supper, of ecclesiastical and civil organization.
He succeeded in winning a few converts here and there, to
whom he gave the name of the Amen Community, because in
Christ (the אֱלֹהֵי אָמֵן Isa. lxv. 16) all the prophecies of
the old covenant are Yea and Amen. Its chief seat was at
Munich-Gladbach. In 1859 Pick travelled to Palestine in
order to choose a spot for the settlement of his followers
and there all trace of him was lost.
4. The founder of the =German Temple Communities= in Palestine
was Chr. Hoffmann, brother of General Superintendent
Hoffmann of Berlin, and son of the founder of the Kornthal
Community (§ 196, 5), in connection with Chr. Paulus, nephew
of the well known Heidelberg professor Paulus (§ 182, 2).
In 1854 they issued an invitation to a conference at
Ludwigsburg, for consultation about the means for gathering
the people of God in Palestine. A great crowd of believers
from all parts, numbering some 10,000 families, was to
embark for the holy land to form there a new people of God
which, on the foundation of prophets and apostles, should
strictly practise the public law of the old covenant in
all points of civil administration, including the laws
of the sabbath and the jubilee. The conference besought
of the German League that it would use its influence with
the Sultan to secure permission for colonization with
self-government and religious freedom. As the German League
simply declined the request, the committee bought the estate
of Kirschenhardthof near Marbach, in order there temporarily
and in a small way to form a social commonwealth observing
the Mosaic law. In 1858 Hoffmann went with two of his
followers to Jerusalem in order to look out a place there
suitable for their purpose. The result was unsatisfactory.
Therefore he issued in 1861 a summons to take part in a
German Temple. Consequently a number of men from Württemberg,
Bavaria, and Baden, Protestants and Catholics, forsook
their churches, ordained priests and elders, and appointed
Hoffmann their bishop and held regular synods. The final
aim of this procedure, however, was always still to find
a settlement in Palestine and erect a temple in Jerusalem
which, according to prophecy, is to form the central
sanctuary for the whole world. Colonization in the East
was tried as a means to this end. Since 1869 there have
been five organized colonies, with a Temple Chief and
a congregational school, embracing about 1,000 souls,
established in Palestine, _viz._ at Jaffa, Haifa, Sarona,
Beyrout, and in 1878 even in Jerusalem, whither the original
colony at Jaffa was transferred. The German Imperial
Government refused indeed in 1879 to give the recognition
sought for to the civil and political organization of the
Palestinian colonies, as in a foreign country beyond its
jurisdiction, but granted to its Lyceum at Jerusalem a
yearly contribution of 1,500 marks and to the schools
of Jaffa, Haifa and Sarona from 650 to 1,000. In 1875
Hoffmann published at Stuttgart a large apologetical and
polemical work, “_Occident und Orient_,” which contained
many thoughtful remarks. But since then, in the central
organ of all the Temple Communities inspired by him,
the “_Süddeutsche Warte_,” he has openly and distinctly
attached himself to Ebionitic rationalism, by denying
and opposing the fundamental evangelical doctrine of the
trinity, redemption, and the sacraments. These theological
views, however, were by no means shared in by all the
Templars, and caused a split in the community, one section
at Haifa with the chief templar there, Hardegg, at its
head, separating from the central body as an independent
“Imperial Brotherhood.” The seceders, joined by many German
and American templar friends, again drew nearer to the
Evangelical church and ultimately became reconciled with
it. But Hoffmann has, in his last work, _Bibelforschungen_
i. ii.: _Röm.- u. Kol. br., Jerus._ 1882, 1884, carried his
polemic against the church doctrine to the utmost extreme of
cynical abuse. He died in December, 1885. At the head of the
denomination now stands his fellow-worker Paulus. From year
to year several drop back into the Evangelical church so
that the community is evidently approaching extinction.
§ 211.9. =The Community of “the New Israel.”=--The Jewish
advocate Jos. Rabinowitsch at Kishenev in Bessarabia, who had
long occupied himself with plans for the improvement of the
spiritual and material circumstances of his fellow-countrymen,
at the outbreak of the persecution of the Jews in 1882 in South
Russia eagerly urged their return to the holy land of their
fathers and himself undertook a journey of inspection. There
definite shape seems to have been given to the long cherished
thought of seeking the salvation of his people in an independent
national attachment to their old sacred historical development,
broken off 1850 years before, by acknowledging the Messiahship
of Jesus. At least after his return he gave expression to the
sentiment, based on Romans xi.: “The keys of the holy land are
in the hands of our brother Jesus,” which, in consequence of
the high esteem in which he was held by his countrymen, was
soon re-echoed by some 200 Jewish families. His main endeavour
now was the formation of independent national Jewish-Christian
communities, after the pattern of the primitive church of
Jerusalem, as “_New Israelites_,” observing all the old Jewish
rites and ordinances compatible with New Testament apostolic
preaching and reconcilable with modern civil and social
conditions. The Torah, the prophets of the Old Testament and the
New Testament writings, are held as absolutely binding, whereas
the Talmud and the post-apostolic Gentile Christian additions to
doctrine, worship, and constitution are not so regarded. Jesus,
Rabinowitsch teaches, is the true Messiah who, as Moses and
prophets foretold, was born as Son of David by the Spirit of God
and in the power of that Spirit lived and taught in Israel, then
for our salvation suffered, was crucified and died, rose from the
dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven. The
trinity of persons in God as well as the two natures in Christ
he rejects, as not taught in the New Testament and originating
in Gentile Christian speculation. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
(and that “according to the example of Christians of the pure
Evangelical confession in England and Germany”) are recognised
as necessary means of grace; but the Lord’s Supper is to
be, according to its institution, a real meal with the old
Jewish prayers. As to the doctrine of the Supper, Rabinowitsch
agrees with the views of the Lutheran church. Circumcision and
the observance of the Sabbath and the feasts (especially the
Passover), are retained, not indeed as necessary to salvation,
therefore not binding on Gentile Christians, but patriotically
observed by Jewish-Christians as signs of their election from and
before all nations as the people of God. In January, 1885, with
consent of the Russian Government, the newly-erected synagogue
of “the holy Messiah Jesus Christ” for the small congregation
of Rabinowitsch’s followers at Kishenev was solemnly opened,
the Russian church authorities, the Lutheran pastor Fultin and
many young Jews taking part in the service. Soon afterwards
Rabinowitsch received Christian baptism in the chapel of the
Bohemian church at Berlin at the hands of Prof. Mead of Andover,
probably in recognition of the aid sent from America.--A
Jewish-Christian religious communion with similar tendencies
has been formed in the South Russian town of Jellisawetgrad under
the designation of a “_Biblical Spiritual Brotherhood_.”
§ 211.10. =The Catholic Apostolic Church of the
Irvingites.=--Edward Irving, 1792-1834, a powerful and popular
preacher of the Scotch-Presbyterian church in London, maintained
the doctrine that the human nature of Christ like our own was
affected by original sin, which was overcome and atoned for
by the power of the divine nature. At the same time he became
convinced that the spiritual gifts of the apostolic church could
and should still be obtained by prayer and faith. A party of his
followers soon began to exercise the gift of tongues by uttering
unintelligible sounds, loud cries, and prophecies. His presbytery
suspended him in 1832 and the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland excommunicated him. Rich and distinguished friends from
the Episcopal church, among them the wealthy banker, Drummond,
afterwards prominent as an apostle (died 1859), rallied round
the man thus expelled from his church, and gave him the means to
found a new church, but, in spite of Irving’s protests, brought
with them high church puseyite tendencies, which soon drove
out the heretical as well as the puritanic tendencies, and
modified the fanatical element into a hierarchical and liturgical
formalism. The restoration of the office of apostle was the
characteristic feature of the movement. After many unsuccessful
attempts they succeeded by the divine illumination of the
prophets in calling twelve apostles, first and chief of whom
was the lawyer Cardale (died 1877). By the apostles, as chief
rulers and stewards of the church, evangelists and pastors (or
angels, Rev. ii. 1, 8, etc.) were ordained in accordance with
Eph. iv. 11; and subordinate to the pastors, there were appointed
six elders and as many deacons, so that the office bearers of
each congregation embraced thirteen persons, after the example
of Christ and His twelve disciples. In London seven congregations
were formed after the pattern of the seven apocalyptic churches
(Rev. i. 20). Prominent among their new revelations was the
promise of the immediately approaching advent of the Lord. The
Lord, who was to have come in the lifetime of the first disciples
and so was looked for confidently by them, delayed indefinitely
His return on account of abounding iniquity and prevented the
full development of the second apostolate designed for the
Gentiles and meanwhile represented only by Paul, because the
church was no longer worthy of it. Now at last, after eighteen
centuries of degradation, in which the church came to be the
apocalyptic Babylon and ripened for judgment, the time has
come when the suspended apostolate has been restored to prepare
the way for the last things. Very confidently was it at first
maintained that none of their members should die, but should live
to see the final consummation. But after death had removed so
many from among them, and even the apostles one after another,
it was merely said that those are already born who should see the
last day. It may come any day, any hour. It begins with the first
resurrection (Rev. xx. 5) and the “changing” of the saints that
are alive (the wise virgins, _i.e._ the Irvingites), who will
be caught up to the Lord in the clouds and in a higher sphere be
joined with the Lord in the marriage supper of the Lamb. They are
safely hidden while antichrist persecutes the other Christians,
the foolish virgins, who only can be saved by means of painful
suffering, and executes judgment on Babylon. This marks the end
of the Gentile church; but then begins the conversion of the Jews,
who, driven by necessity and the persecution of sinful men, have
sought and found a refuge in Palestine. After a short victory of
antichrist the Lord visibly appears among the risen and removed.
The kingdom of antichrist is destroyed, Satan is bound, the
saints live and reign with Christ a thousand years on the earth
freed from the curse. Thereafter Satan is again let loose for
a short time and works great havoc. Then comes Satan’s final
overthrow, the second resurrection and last judgment. Their
liturgy, composed by the apostles, is a compilation from the
Anglican and Catholic sources. Sacerdotalism and sacrifice are
prominent and showy priestly garments are regarded as requisite.
Yet they repudiate the Romish doctrine of the bloodless
repetition of the bleeding sacrifice, as well as the doctrine of
transubstantiation. But they strictly maintain the contribution
of the tenth as a duty laid upon Christians by Heb. vii. 4.
Their typical view of the Old Testament history and legislation,
especially of the tabernacle, is most arbitrary and baseless.
Their first published statement appeared in 1836 in an apostolic
“_Letter to the Patriarchs, Bishops, and Presidents of the Church
of Christ in all Lands, and to emperors, kings, and princes of
all baptized nations_,” which was sent to the most prominent
among those addressed, even to the pope, but produced no result.
After this they began to prosecute their missionary work openly.
But they gave their attention mainly to those already believers,
and took no part in missions to the heathen, as they were sent
neither to the heathen nor to unbelievers, but only to gather and
save believers. In their native land of England, where at first
they had great success, their day seems already past. In North
America they succeeded in founding only two congregations. They
prospered better in Germany and Switzerland, where they secured
several able theologians, chief of all Thiersch, the professor
of Theology in Marburg, the Tertullian of this modern Montanism
(died 1885), and founded about eighty small congregations with
some 5,000 members, chief of which are those of Berlin, Stettin,
Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Cassel, Basel, Augsburg, etc.
Even among the Catholic clergy of Bavaria this movement found
response; but that was checked by a series of depositions and
excommunications during 1857.--In 1882 the Lutheran pastor
Alpers of Gehrden in Hanover was summoned to appear before the
consistory to answer for his Irvingite views. He denied the
charge and referred to his good Lutheran preaching. As, however,
he had taken the sacramental “sealing” from Irvingite apostles,
the court regarded this as proof of his having joined the party
and so deposed him.[570]
§ 211.11. =The Darbyites and Adventists.=--Related on the
one hand to Irvingism by their expectation of the immediately
approaching advent and by their regarding themselves as the
saints of the last time who would alone be saved, the =Darbyites=,
on the other hand, by their absolute independentism form a
complete contrast to the Irvingite hierarchism. John Darby,
1800-1882, first an advocate, then a clergyman of the Anglican
church, breaking away from Anglicanism, founded between 1820 and
1830 a sectarian, apocalyptic, independent community at Plymouth
(whence the name =Plymouth Brethren=), but in 1838 settled in
Geneva, and in 1840 went to Canton Vaud, where Lausanne and Vevey
have become the headquarters of the sect. All clerical offices,
all ecclesiastical forms are of the evil one, and are evidence
of the corruption of the church. There is only one office, the
spiritual priesthood of all believers, and every believer has
the right to preach and dispense the sacraments. Not only the
Catholic, but also the Protestant church is a “Balaam Church,”
and since the departure of the apostles no true church has
existed. In doctrine they are strictly Calvinistic.[571]--The
=Adventists=. Regarding the 2,300 days of Dan. viii. 14 as so
many years, W. Miller of New York and Boston proclaimed in 1833
that the second advent would take place on the night of October
23rd, 1847, and convinced many thousands of the correctness of
his calculations. When at last the night referred to arrived
the believers continued assembled in their tabernacles waiting,
but in vain, for the promise (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31; 1 Cor. xv. 52;
1 Thess. iv. 16, 17), at “the voice of the archangel and the
trump of God to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord
in the air.” This miscalculation, however, did not shake the
Adventists’ belief in the near approach of the Lord, but their
number rather increased from year to year. Most zealous in
propagating their views by journals and tracts, evangelists
and missionaries, is a branch of the sect founded by James White
of Michigan, whose adherents, because they keep the Sabbath in
place of the Lord’s Day, are called _Seventh Day Adventists_.
§ 211.12. =The Mormons or Latter Day Saints.=--Jos. Smith, a
broken down farmer of Vermont, who took to knavish digging for
hid treasures, affirmed in 1825, that under direction of divine
revelations and visions, he had excavated on Comora hill in
New York State, golden tablets in a stone kist on which sacred
writings were engraved. A prophet’s spectacles, _i.e._, two
pierced stones which as a Mormon Urim and Thummim lay beside
them, enabled him to understand and translate them. He published
the translation in “the Book of Mormon.” According to this
book, the Israelites of the ten tribes had migrated under their
leader, Lehi, to America. There they divided into two peoples;
the ungodly Lamanites, answering to the modern Redskins, and
the pious Nephites. The latter preserved among them the old
Israelitish histories and prophecies, and through miraculous
signs in heaven and earth obtained knowledge of the birth
of Christ that had meanwhile taken place. Toward the end
of the fourth century after Christ, however, the Lamanites
began a terrible war of extermination against the Nephites,
in consequence of which the latter were rooted out with the
exception of the prophet Mormon and his son Moroni. Mormon
recorded his revelations on the golden tablets referred to, and
concealed them as the future witness for the saints of the last
days on the earth. Smith proclaimed himself now called on of God,
on the basis of these documents and the revelations made to him,
to found the church of _The Latter Day Saints_. The widow of a
preacher in New York proved indeed that the Book of Mormon was
almost literally a plagiarism from a historico-didactic romance
written by her deceased husband, Sal. Spaulding. The MS. had
passed into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, formerly a Baptist
minister and then a bookseller’s assistant, subsequently Smith’s
right-hand man. But even this did not disturb the believers. In
1831 Smith with his followers settled at Kirtland in Ohio. To
avoid the daily increasing popular odium, he removed to Missouri,
and thence to Illinois, and founded there, in 1840, the important
town of Nauvoo with a beautiful temple. By diligence, industry
and good discipline, the wealth, power and influence of their
commonwealth increased, but in the same proportion the envy,
hatred and prejudices of the people, which charged them with
the most atrocious crimes. In 1844, to save bloodshed the
governor ordered the two chiefs, Jos. and Hiram Smith, to
surrender to voluntary imprisonment awaiting a regular trial.
But furious armed mobs attacked the prison and shot down both.
The roughs of the whole district then gathered in one great troop,
destroyed the town of Nauvoo, burned the temple and drove out
the inhabitants. These, now numbering 15,000 men, in several
successive expeditions amid indescribable hardships pressed on
“through the wilderness” over the Rocky Mountains, in order to
erect for themselves a Zion on the other side. Smith’s successor
was the carpenter, Brigham Young. The journey occupied two full
years, 1845-1847. In the great Salt Lake basin of Utah they
founded _Salt Lake City_, or the New Jerusalem, as the capital
of their wilderness state _Deseret_. The gold digging of the
neighbouring state of California did not allure them, for their
prophet told them that to pave streets, build houses and sow
fields was better employment than seeking for gold. So here
again they soon became a flourishing commonwealth.
§ 211.13. In common with the Irvingites, who recognised in them
their own diabolic caricature, the Mormons restored the apostolic
and prophetic office, insisted upon the continuance of the gift
of tongues and miracles, expected the speedy advent of the Lord,
reintroduced the payment of tithes, etc. But what distinguished
them from all Christian sects was the proclamation of polygamy as
a religious duty, on the plea that only those women who had been
“sealed” to a Latter-day Saint would share in the blessedness
of life eternal. This was probably first introduced by Young in
consequence of a new “divine revelation,” but down to 1852 kept
secret and denied before “the Gentiles.” The ambiguous book of
Mormon was set meanwhile more and more in the background, and
the teachings and prophecies of their prophet brought more and
more to the front. “The Voice of Warning to all Nations” of the
zealous proselyte Parly Pratt, formerly a Campbellite preacher,
exercised a great influence in spreading the sect. But the most
gifted of them all was Orson Pratt, Rigdon’s successor in the
apostolate. To him mainly is ascribed the construction of its
later, highly fantastic religious system which, consisting of
elements gathered from Neo-platonism, gnosticism, and other forms
of theosophical mysticism, embraces all the mysteries of time and
eternity. Its fundamental ideas are these: There are gods without
number; all are polygamists and their wives are sharers of their
glory and bliss. They are the fathers of human souls who here on
earth ripen for their heavenly destiny. Jesus is the first born
son of the highest god by his first wife; he was married on earth
to Mary Magdalene, the sisters Martha and Mary and other women.
Those saints who here fulfil their destiny become after death
gods, while they are arranged according to their merit in various
ranks and with prospect of promotion to higher places. At the
end of this world’s course, Jesus will come again, and, enthroned
in the temple of Salt Lake City, exercise judgment against all
“Gentiles” and apostates, etc.--The constitution of the Mormon
State is essentially theocratic. At the head stood the president,
Brigham Young, as prophet, patriarch, and priest-king, in whose
hands are all the threads of the spiritual as well as secular
administration. A high council alongside of him, consisting of
seventy members, as also the prophets and apostles, bishops and
elders, and generally the whole richly organized hierarchy, are
only the pliable instruments of his all-commanding will. Every
one on entering the society surrenders his whole property, and
after that contributes a tenth of his yearly income and personal
labour to the common purse of the community. Soon numerous
missionaries were sent forth who crossed the Atlantic, and
attained great success, especially in Scotland, England and
Scandinavia, but also in North-West Germany and in Switzerland.
On removing the misunderstanding that prevailed about their
social and political condition, and supplying the penniless out
of the rich immigration fund with the means to make the journey,
they persuaded great crowds of their new converts to accompany
them to Utah.
§ 211.14. In 1849 the Mormons had asked Congress for the
apportioning of the district colonized by them as an independent
and autonomous “State” in the union, but were granted, in
1850, only the constitution of a “territory” under the central
government at Washington, and the appointment of their patriarch,
Young, as its governor. Accustomed to absolute rule, in two years
he drove out all the other officers appointed by the union. He
was then deprived of office, but the new governor, Col. Sefton,
appointed in 1854, with the small armament supplied him could not
maintain his position and voluntarily retired. When afterwards in
1858 Governor Cumming, appointed by president Buchanan, entered
Utah with a strong military force, Young armed for a decisive
struggle. A compromise, however, was effected. A complete amnesty
was granted to the saints, the soldiers of the union entered
peacefully into the Salt-Lake City, and Young assumed tolerably
friendly relations with the governor, who, nevertheless, by the
erection of a fort commanding the city made the position safe for
himself and his troops. On the outbreak of the war of Secession
in 1861 the troops of the union were for the most part withdrawn.
But all the more energetically did the central government at the
close of the war in 1865 resolve upon the complete subjugation of
the rebel saints, having learnt that since 1852 numerous murders
had taken place in the territory, and that the disappearance of
whole caravans of colonists was not due to attacks of Indians,
who would have scalped their victims, but to a secret Mormon
fraternity called Danites (Judges xviii.), brothers of Gideon
(Judges vi. ff.) or Angels of Destruction, which, obedient to
the slightest hint from the prophet, had undertaken to avenge
by bloody terrorism any sign of resistance to his authority,
to arrest any tendency to apostasy, and to guard against the
introduction of any foreign element. The Union Pacific Railway
opened in 1869 deprived the “Kingdom of God” of its most powerful
protection, its geographical isolation, while the rich silver
mines discovered at the same time in Utah, peopled city and
country with immense flocks of “Gentiles.” The nemesis, which
brought the Mormon bishop Lee, twenty years after the deed,
under the lash of the high court of justiciary as involved in
the horrible massacre of a large party of emigrants at Mountain
Meadows in 1857, would probably have also befallen the prophet
himself as the main instigator of this and many other crimes had
he not by a sudden death two months later, in his seventy-fifth
year, escaped the jurisdiction of any earthly tribunal (died
1877). A successor was not chosen, but supreme authority is
in the hands of the college of twelve apostles with the elder
John Taylor at their head.--Repeated attempts made since 1874
by the United States authorities by penal enactments to root out
polygamy among the Mormons have always failed, because its actual
existence could never be legally proved. The witness called could
or would say nothing, since the “sealing” was always secretly
performed, and the women concerned denied that a marriage had
been entered into with the accused, or if one confessed herself
his married wife she refused to give any evidence about his
domestic relations.--Recently a split has occurred among the
Mormons. By far the larger party is that of the “Salt Lake
Mormons,” which holds firmly by polygamy and all the other
institutions introduced by Young and since his time. The other
party is that of the Kirtland, or Old Mormons, headed by the son
of their founder, Jos. Smith, who had been passed over on account
of his youth, which repudiates all these as unsupported novelties
and restores the true Mormonism of the founder. The Old Mormons
not only oppose polygamy, but also all more recently introduced
doctrines. They are called Kirtland Mormons from the first temple
built by their founder at Kirtland in 1814, which having fallen
into ruins, was restored by Geo. Smith, jun., and became the
centre of the Old Mormon denomination. In April 1885 they held
there their first synod, attended by 200 deputies.[572]
§ 211.15. =The Taepings in China.=--Hung-sen-tsenen, born in
1813 in the province of Shan-Tung, was destined for the learned
profession but failed in his examination at Canton. There he
first, in 1833, came into contact with Protestant missionaries,
whose misunderstood words awakened in him the belief that he was
called to perform great things. At the same time he there got
possession of some Christian Chinese tracts. Failing in his
examination a second time in 1837, he fell into a dangerous
illness and had a series of visions in which an old man with a
golden beard appeared, handing to him the insignia of imperial
rank, and commanding him to root out the demons. After his
recovery he became an elementary teacher. A relative called Li
visited him in 1843. The Christian tracts were again sought out
and carefully studied. Sen now recognised in the old man of his
visions the God of the Christians and in himself the younger
brother of Jesus. The two baptized one another and won over
two young relatives to their views. Expelled from their offices,
they went in 1844 to the province of Kiang Se as pencil and
ink sellers, preached diligently the new doctrine and founded
numerous small congregations of their sect. The American
missionaries at Canton heard of the success of their preaching,
and Sen accepted an invitation to join them in 1847. The
missionary Roberts had a great esteem for him and intended to
baptize him, when in consequence of stories spread about him
their relations became strained. Sen now returned in 1848 to
his companions in Kiang Se, who had diligently and successfully
continued their preaching. In 1850 they began to attract
attention by the violent destruction of idols. When now all the
remnants of a pirate band joined them as converts, they were in
common with these persecuted by the government and proclaimed
rebels. The expulsion of the hated Mantshu dynasty, which two
hundred years before had displaced the Ming dynasty, and the
overthrow of idolatry were now their main endeavour, and in 1857
they organized under Sen a regular rebellion for the setting up
of a Taeping dynasty, _i.e._, of universal peace. The Taeping
army advanced unhindered, all Mantschu soldiers who fell into
its hands were massacred, and of the inhabitants of the provinces
conquered, only those were spared who joined their ranks. In
March, 1853, they stormed the second capital of the empire,
Nankin, the old residence of the Ming dynasty. There Sen fixed
his residence and styled himself Tien-Wang, the Divine Prince.
He assigned to ten subordinate princes the government of the
conquered provinces, almost the half of the immense empire.
Thousands of bibles were circulated; the ten commandments
proclaimed as the foundation of law, many writings, prayers
and poems composed for the instruction of the people, and these
with the bible made subjects of examination for entrance to the
learned order. An Arian theory of the trinity was set forth; the
Father is the one personal God, whose likeness in bodily human
form Sen strictly forbade, destroying the Catholic images as well
as the Chinese idols. Jesus is the first-born son of God, yet
not himself God, sent by the Father into the world in order to
enlighten it by his doctrine and to redeem it by his atoning
sufferings. Sen, the younger brother of Jesus, was sent into the
world to spread the doctrine of Jesus and to expel the demons,
the Mantschu dynasty. Reception takes place through baptism. The
Lord’s Supper was unknown to them. Bloody and bloodless offerings
were still tolerated. The use of wine and tobacco was forbidden;
the use of opium and trafficking in it were punished with death.
But polygamy was sanctioned. Saturday, according to the Old
Testament, was their holy day. Their service consisted only
of prayer, singing and religious instruction; but also written
prayers were presented to God by burning.
§ 211.16. Sen himself had no more visions after 1837. But other
ecstatic prophets arose, the eastern prince Yang and the western
prince Siao. The revelations of the latter were comparatively
sober, but those of the former were in the highest degree
blasphemously fanatical. He declared himself the Paraclete
promised by Jesus, and taught that God himself, as well as Jesus,
had a wife with sons and daughters. He was at the same time a
brave and successful general, and the mass of the Taepings were
enthusiastically attached to him. Sen humbly yielded to the
extravagances of this fanatic, even when Yang sentenced him to
receive forty lashes. Sen’s overthrow was already resolved upon
in Yang’s secret council, when Sen took courage and gave the
northern prince secret orders to murder Yang and his followers
in one night. This was done, and Sen was weak enough to allow the
executioner of his secret order to be publicly put to death so as
to appease the excited populace. But he thus again in 1856 became
master of the situation.--One of the oldest apostles of Sen,
his near relative Hung Yin, had been turned off at Hong Kong.
He there attached himself to the Basel missionary, Hamberg, who
in 1852 baptized him and made him his native helper. In hope of
winning his cousin to the true Christian faith, he travelled in
1854 to Nankin, which however he did not reach till January, 1859.
Sen received him gladly and made him his war minister. But his
efforts to introduce a purer Christianity among the Taepings were
unsuccessful, for he tried the slippery way of accommodation, and
under pressure from Sen set up for himself a harem. In October,
1860, on Sen’s repeated invitation, his former teacher, the
missionary Roberts of Nankin, arrived and was immediately made
minister for foreign affairs. The Shanghai missionaries, several
of whom visited Nankin, had interesting interviews with Yin in
1860, but not with the emperor, as they refused to go on their
knees before him. They were encouraged by Yin to hope for a
future much needed purifying of Taeping Christianity. Yang’s
revelations, however, held their ground after as well as
before, and were increased by further absurdities. To such
crass fanaticism was now added the inhuman cruelty with which
they massacred the vanquished and wasted the conquered cities
and districts. Had the European powers ranged themselves in a
friendly and peaceful attitude alongside of the Taepings, China
might now have been a Christian empire. Instead of this the
English, on account of the extreme opposition of the Taepings
to the opium traffic, took up a hostile position toward them,
while they were also in disfavour with the French, who had been
denounced by them as idolaters on account of their Romish image
worship. Down to the beginning of 1862, however, Yin’s influence
had prevented any hostile proceedings against the Europeans in
spite of many provocations given. But after that the Taepings
refused them any quarter. Roberts fled by night to save his life.
Against disciplined European troops the rebels could not hold
their ground. One city after another was taken from them, and at
last, in July 1864, their capital Nankin. Sen was found poisoned
in his burning palace.[573]
§ 211.17. =The Spiritualists.=--The shoemaker’s apprentice,
Andrew Jackson Davis of Poughkeepsie on the Hudson, in his
nineteenth year fell into a magnetic sleep and composed his
first work, “The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations
and a Voice to Mankind,” in 1845. He declared its utterances
to be spiritual revelations from the other world. But his
later writings composed in working hours made the same claim,
especially the five volume work, “Great Harmonia, being a
Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial
Universe,” 1850 ff. Both went through numerous editions and
were translated into German. The great spiritual manifestation
promised in the first work was not long delayed. In a house
bought by the family of Fox in Hydesville in New York State a
spectral knocking was often heard. Through the intercourse which
the two youngest daughters, aged nine and twelve years, had with
the ghosts, the skeleton of a murdered five years’ old child of
a pedlar was discovered buried in the cellar, and when the family
soon thereafter left the house, the ghosts went with them and
continued their communications by table turning, table rapping,
table writing, etc. The thing now became epidemic. Hundreds
and thousands of male and female _mediums_ arose and held an
extremely lively and varied intercourse with innumerable departed
ones of earlier and later times. The believers soon numbered
millions, including highly educated persons of all ranks, even
such exact chemists as Mapes and Hare. An abundant literature
in books and journals, as well as Sunday services, frequent
camp-meetings and annual congresses formed a propaganda for
the alleged spiritualism, which soon found its way across the
ocean and won enthusiastic adherents for all confessions in
all European countries, especially in London, Paris, Brussels,
St. Petersburg, Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig, etc. They now broke
up into two parties called respectively Spiritualists and
Spiritists. The former put in the foreground physical experiments
with astonishing results and miraculous effects; the latter,
with the Frenchman Allan Kardec (_Rivail_) as their leader, give
prominence to the teaching of spirits by direct communication.
The former in reference to the origin of the human soul held by
the theory of traducianism; the latter to that of pre-existence
in connection with a doctrine of re-incarnation of spirits
by reason of growing purity and perfection. The latter see
in Christ the incarnation of a spirit of the highest order;
the former merely the purest and most perfect type of human
nature. But neither admit the real central truth of Christianity,
the reconciliation of sinful humanity with God in Christ.
Both evaporate the resurrection into a mere spectral spirit
manifestation; and the disclosures and utterances of the spirits
with both are equally trivial, silly, and vain.--In England the
famous palæontologist and collaborateur of Darwin, Alfr. Russel
Wallace, and the no less celebrated physicist Wm. Crookes, are
apologists of spiritualism. The latter declared in 1879 that
to the three well-known conditions of matter, solid, fluid and
gaseous, should be added a fourth, “radiant,” and that there is
the borderland where force and matter meet. And in Germany the
acute Leipzig astrophysicist Fr. Zöllner, after a whole series
of spiritualistic séances conducted by the American medium
Slade in 1877 and 1878 had been carefully scrutinized and
tested by himself and several of his most accomplished scientific
colleagues, was convinced of the existence and reality of higher
“four dimension” space in the spirit world, to which by reason
of its fourth dimension the power belonged of passing through
earthly bodily matter. The philosophers I. H. Fichte of Stuttgart
and Ulrici of Halle have admitted the reality of spiritualistic
communications and allege them as proofs of immortality.
Among German theologians Luthardt of Leipzig regards it all
as the work of demons who take advantage for their own ends
of the moral-religious dissolution of the modern world and its
consequent nerve shaking that prevails, just as in the ancient
world in the beginnings of Christianity. Zöckler of Greifswald
finds an analogy between it and the demoniacal possession of
New Testament times; so too Martensen in his “Jacob Boehme,”
and on the Catholic side W. Schneider; while Splittgerber refers
most of the manifestations in question to a merely subjective
origin in “the right side of the human soul life,” but puts
the materialization of spirits in the category of delusive
jugglery. Spiritualism has scarcely rallied from the obloquy
cast upon it by the unmasking of the tricks of the famous medium
Miss Florence Cook in London in 1880 and of the distinguished
spirit materialiser Bastian by the Grand-duke John of Austria
in 1884.[574]
§ 211.18. To the domain of unquestionable illusion belongs
also the spiritualistic movement of Indian =Theosophism= or
=Occultism=. The American Col. Olcott of New York had already
moved for twenty-two years in spiritualist circles when in 1874
he met with Madame Blavatsky, widow of a Russian general who had
been governor of Erivan in Armenia. She professed to have been
from her eighth year in communication with spirits, then to
have had secret intercourse with the Mahatmas, _i.e._ spirits
of old Indian penitents, during a seven years’ residence on the
Himalayas. She now promised to introduce the colonel to them.
Olcott and Blavatsky founded at New York in 1875 a society for
research in the department of the mystic sciences, travelled in
1878 to Further India and Ceylon, and settled finally in Madras,
whence by word and writing they proclaimed through the whole
land theosophism or occultism as the religion of the future,
which, consisting in a medley of Hinduism and Buddhism, enriched
by spiritualistic revelations of Mahatmas, vouched for by
spiritualistic signs and miracles and conformed to the most
recent philosophical and scientific researches in America and
Europe, aimed at heaping contempt upon Christianity and finally
driving it from the field. As fanatical opponents of Christian
missions in India they were strongly supported by the Brahman
and Buddhist hierarchy, and soon obtained for the theosophical
society founded by them not only numerous adherents from
among the natives, but also many Englishman befooled by their
spiritualistic swindle. As apostle and literary pioneer of the
new religion appeared an Anglo-Indian called Sinnett. In spring,
1884, Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott went on a propagandist
tour to Europe, where, in England, France, Austria, and Hungary,
they won many converts, while Col. Olcott at Elberfeld and
Madame Blavatsky at Odessa founded branches of their theosophical
society.--But meanwhile in India affairs assumed a threatening
aspect. Blavatsky on her departure had entrusted the keys of
her dwelling and her mysterious cabinet with its various panels,
falling doors, etc., to Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, who had been
hitherto her assistants in all her juggleries. Madame Coulomb,
however, quarrelled with the board of theosophists at Madras, and
revenged herself by placing in the hands of the Scottish mission
letters addressed by Blavatsky to herself and her husband which
supplied evidence that all her spiritualistic manifestations
were only common tricks. In addition she gave public exhibitions
in which she demonstrated to the spectators _ad oculos_ the
spiritual manifestations of the Mahatmas, and subsequently
published an “Account of My Acquaintanceship with Madame
Blavatsky, 1872-1884,” with discoveries of her earlier rogueries.
Meanwhile the swindler had herself in December, 1884, returned to
Madras in company with several believers gathered up in England,
among others a young English clergyman, Leadbeater, who some
days previously in Ceylon had formally adopted Buddhism. The
theosophists now demanded that the reputed cheat and deceiver
should be brought before a civil court. The president, however,
declared that the investigations and judgment of a profane
court of law could not be accepted to the mysteries of occultism,
but promised a careful examination by a commission appointed by
himself, and Blavatsky thought it advisable “for the restoration
of her health in a cooler climate” to make off from the scene of
conflict.[575]
§ 212. ANTICHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.
While the antichristian spirit of the age breaks out in various
theoretical forms in our literature, there also abound social and
communistic movements of a practical kind. Socialism and communism both
aim at a thorough-going reform of the rights of property and possession
in strict proportion to the labour spent thereon. They are, however,
distinguished in this, that while communism declares war against all
private property and demands absolute community of goods, socialism, at
least in its older and nobler forms, proceeding from the idea of precise
correspondence between capital and labour, seeks to have expression
given to this in fact. From the older socialism, which endeavoured
to reach its end in a peaceful way within the existing lines of civil
order, a later social democracy is to be distinguished by its decidedly
politico-revolutionary character and tendency to attach itself more
to communism. This modern socialism thinks to open the way to the
realization of its hare-brained ideas by the confusion and overthrow
of existing law and order.
§ 212.1. =The Beginnings of Modern Communism.=--As early as
1796 Babeuf published in Paris a communistic manifesto which
maintained the thesis that natural law gives all men an equal
right to the enjoyment of all goods. His ideas were subsequently
systematized and developed by Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, and Louis
Blanc in France, and by Weibling and Stirner in Germany. In
a treatise of 1840 Proudhon answered the question, _Qu’est-ce
que la propriété?_ in words which afterwards became proverbial,
and formed the motto of communism: _La propriété c’est le vol._
But the mere negation of property affords no permanent standing
ground. All altars must be thrown down; all religion rooted
out as the plague of humanity; the family and marriage, as the
fountain of all selfishness, must be abolished; all existing
governments must be overthrown; all Europe must be turned into
one great social democracy. A secret communistic propaganda
spread over all western Europe, had its head centres in Belgium
and Switzerland, crossed the Alps and the Pyrenees, as well as
the Channel, and found a congenial soil even in Russia.
§ 212.2. =St. Simonism.=--The Count St. Simon of Paris, reduced
to poverty by speculation, proposed by means of a thorough
organization of industry to found a new and happy state of things
in which there would be pure enjoyment without poverty and care.
An attempted suicide, which led however to his death in 1825,
made him in the eyes of his disciples a saviour of the world. The
July revolution of 1830 gave to the new universal religion, which
reinstated the flesh in its long lost rights and sought to assign
to each individual the place in the commonwealth for which he
was fitted, some advantage. “Father” Enfantin, whom his followers
honoured as the highest revelation of deity, contended with
pompous phrases and in fantastic style for the emancipation of
woman and against the unnatural institution of marriage. But
St. Simonism soon excited public ridicule, was pronounced immoral
by the courts of justice, and the remnants of its votaries fled
from the scorn of the people and the vengeance of the law to
Egypt, where they soon disappeared.
§ 212.3. =Owenists and Icarians.=--The Scotch mill-owner
=Rob. Owen= went in 1829 to America, in order there, unhindered
by religious prejudices, clerical opposition, and police
interference, to work out on a large scale his socialistic
schemes for improving the world, which in a small way he believed
he had proved already among his Scotch mill-operatives. He
bought for this purpose from the Württemberger Rapp the colony
of Harmony (§ 211, 6); but wanting the necessary capital for
the socialistic commonwealth there established, and failing to
realize his expectations, discontent, disorder, and opposition
got the upper hand, and in 1826 Owen was obliged to abandon all
his property. He now returned to England, and addressed himself
in treatises, tracts, and lectures to the working classes of
the whole land, in order to win them over to his ideas. A vast
brotherhood for mutual benefit and for the enjoyment of their
joint earnings was to put an end to earth’s misery, which the
positive religions had not lessened but only increased. In 1836,
in the great industrial cities socialist unions with nearly half
a million members were formed, with their head centre and annual
congress at Birmingham. The practical schemes of Owen, however,
had no success in England, and his societies no permanency. He
died in 1858.--Still more disastrous was the fate of the Icarian
Colony, founded in Texas in 1848 by the Frenchman =Stephen Cabet=,
author of “_Voyage en Icarie, Roman philos. et social_,” 1840,
as an attempt to realize his communistic-philanthropic ideas on
the other side of the Atlantic. The colonists soon found their
sanguine hopes bitterly disappointed, and hurled against their
leader reproaches and threats. Some ex-Icarians accused him in
1849 before the Paris police-court as a swindler, and he was
condemned to two years’ imprisonment and five years’ loss of
civil privileges. Cabet now hastened to France, and on appeal
obtained reversion of his sentence in 1851. Returning to America,
he founded a new Icarian colony at Nauvoo in Illinois. But there,
too, everything went wrong, and a revolt of the colonists obliged
him to flee. He died in 1856.[576]
§ 212.4. =The International Working-Men’s Association.=--Local
and national working-men’s unions with a socialistic organization
had for a long time existed in England, France, and Germany.
The idea of a union embracing the whole world was first broached
at the great London Exhibition in 1862, and at a conference in
London on September 28th, 1864, at which all industrial countries
of Europe were represented, it assumed a practical shape by the
founding of a universal international working-men’s association.
Its constitution was strictly centralistic. A directing committee
in London, Carl Marx of Treves, formerly _Privatdocent_ of
philosophy at Bonn, standing at its head as dictator, represented
the supreme legislative and governing authority, while alongside
of it a general standing council held the administrative and
executive power. The latter was divided into eight sections,
English, American, French, German, Belgian, Dutch, Italian,
and Spanish, and annual international congresses at Geneva,
Lausanne, Brussels, Basel, and the Hague gave opportunity for
general consultation on matters of common interest. Reception as
members was granted by the giving of a diploma after six months’
trial, and involved unconditional obedience to the statutes
and ordinances of the central authorities and the payment of
an annual fee. The number of members, not, however, exclusively
drawn from the working classes, is said to have reached two and
a half millions. The society adopted the current socialistic
and communistic ideas and tendencies. The religious principle
of the association was therefore: atheism and materialism; the
political: absolute democracy; the social: equal rights of labour
and profit, with abolition of private property, hereditary rights,
marriage, and family; and as means for realizing this programme,
unaccomplishable by peaceable methods, revolution and rebellion,
fire and sword, poison, petroleum and dynamite. Such means have
been used already in various ways by the international throughout
the Romance countries; but specially in the brief Reign of Terror
of the Paris Commune, March and April, 1871, in the relatively
no less violent attempted revolt at Alcoy in Southern Spain in
July, 1873. But meanwhile differences appeared within the society,
which were formulated at the Hague Congress in 1872, and led to
splits, which greatly lessened its unity, influence, and power to
do mischief, so that this congress may perhaps be regarded as the
first beginning of its end.[577]
§ 212.5. =German Social Democracy.=--=Ferd. Lassalle=, son of
a rich Jewish merchant of Breslau, after a full course of study
in philosophy and law, began in 1848 to take a lively part in
the advanced movements of the age, and when he found among the
liberal citizens no favour for his socialistic ideas turned
exclusively to the working classes. In answer to the question
as to what was to be done, by the central committee of a
working-men’s congress at Leipzig, he wrought out in 1863 with
great subtlety in an open letter the fundamental idea of his
universal redemption. All plans of self-help to relieve the
distress of working men hitherto proposed (specially that of
Schulze-Delitzsch) break down over the “iron economic law of
wages,” in consequence of which under the dominion of capital and
the large employers of labour wages are always with fatalistic
necessity reduced to the point indispensable for supplying a
working man’s family with the absolute necessaries of life.
The working classes, however, have the right according to the
law of nature to a full equivalent for their labour, but in
order to reach this they must be their own undertakers, and
where self-help is only a vain illusion, state help must afford
the means. By insisting on the right to universal suffrage
the working classes have obtained a decided majority in the
legislative assemblies, and there secured a government of the
future in accordance with their needs. On these principles the
Universal German Society of Working Men was constituted, with
Lassalle as its president, which position he held till his
death in a duel in 1864. Long internal disputes and personal
recriminations led to a split at the Eisenach Congress in
1869. The malcontents founded an independent “Social Democratic
Working-Men’s Union,” under the leadership of Bebel and
Liebknecht, which, particularly successful in Saxony, Brunswick,
and South Germany, represents itself as the German branch
of the “International Working-Men’s Association.” It adhered
indeed generally to Lassalle’s programme, but objected to the
extravagant adulation claimed for Lassalle by their opponents,
the proper disciples of Lassalle, who had Hasenclaver as
their leader and Berlin as their headquarters, substituted a
federal for a centralistic organization, and instead of a great
centralised government in the future desired rather a federal
republic embracing all Europe. But both declared equally in
favour of revolution; they vied with one another in bitter hatred
of everything bearing the name of religion; and wrought out
with equal enthusiasm their communistic schemes for the future.
At the Gotha Congress of 1875 a reconciliation of parties was
effected. The social-democratic agitation thus received a new
impulse and assumed threatening proportions. Yet it required such
extraordinary occurrences as the twice attempted assassination of
the aged emperor, by Hodel on May 11th, and Nobiling on June 2nd,
1878, to rouse the government to legislative action. On the basis
of a law passed in October, 1878, for two and a half years (but
in May, 1880, continued for other three and a half years, and in
May, 1884, and again in April, 1886, on each occasion extended
to other two years), 200 socialist societies throughout the
German empire were suppressed, sixty-four revolutionary journals,
circulated in hundreds of thousands and with millions of readers,
and about 800 other seditious writings, were forbidden. But that
the social- democratic organization and agitation was not thereby
destroyed is proved by the fact that in August, 1880, in an
uninhabited Swiss castle lent for the purpose, in Canton Zürich,
a congress was held, attended by fifty-six German socialists,
with greetings by letter from sympathisers in all European
countries, which among other things passed the resolution
unanimously, no longer as had been agreed upon at Gotha, to seek
their ends by lawful methods, as by the law of the socialists
impossible, but by the way of revolution.--On the other hand, the
German Imperial Chancellor Prince Bismarck in the Reichstag, 1884,
fully admitted the “right of the worker to work,” as well as the
duty of the state to ameliorate the condition of working men as
far as possible, and in three propositions: “Work for the healthy
workman, hospital attendance to the sick, and maintenance to the
invalided,” granted all that is asked for by a healthy social
policy.
§ 212.6. =Russian Nihilism.=--In Russia, too, notwithstanding a
strictly exercised censorship, the philosophico-scientific gospel
of materialism and atheism found entrance through the writings
of Moleschott, Feuerbach, Büchner, Darwin, etc. (§ 174, 3),
especially among the students. In 1860, Nihilism, springing
from this seed, first assumed the character of a philosophical
and literary movement. It sought the overthrow of all religious
institutions. Then came the women’s question, claiming
emancipation for the wife. The example of the Paris Commune
of 1871 contributed largely to the development of Nihilistic
idealism, its political revolutionary socialism. The Nihilist
propaganda, like an epidemic, now seized upon the academic youth,
male and female, was spread in aristocratic families by tutors
and governesses, won secret disciples among civil servants as
well as officers of the army and navy, and was enthusiastically
supported by ladies in the most cultured and exalted ranks. In
order to spread its views among the people, young men and women
disguised in peasant’s dress went out among the peasants and
artisans, lived and wrought like them, and preached their gospel
to them in their hours of rest. But their efforts failed through
the antipathy and apathy of the lower orders, and the energetic
interference of the government by imprisonment and banishment
thinned the ranks of the propagandists. But all the more closely
did those left bind themselves together under their central
leaders as the “Society for Country and Freedom,” and strove
with redoubled eagerness to spread revolutionary principles
by secretly printing their proclamations and other incendiary
productions, and scattering them in the streets and houses. On
January 24th, 1878, the female Nihilist _Vera Sassulitsch_ from
personal revenge dangerously wounded with a revolver General
Trepoff, the dreaded head of the St. Petersburg police. Although
she openly avowed the deed before the court and gloried in it,
she was amid the acclamations of the public acquitted. This was
the hour when Nihilism exercised its fellest terrorism. The fair,
peaceful phrase, “To work, fight, suffer, and die for the people,”
was silenced; it was now, sword and fire, dagger and revolver,
dynamite and mines for all oppressors of the people, but above
all for the agents of the police, for their spies, for all
informers and apostates. An “executive committee,” unknown to
most of the conspirators themselves, issued the death sentence;
the lot determined the executioner, who himself suffered death
if he failed to accomplish it. What was now aimed at was the
assassination of higher state officials; then the sacred person
of the emperor. Three bold attempts at assassination miscarried;
the revolver shot of Solowjews on April 14th, 1879; the mine on
the railway near Moscow that exploded too late on November 30th,
1879; the horrible attempt to blow up the Winter Palace with
the emperor and his family on February 17th, 1880; but the
fourth, a dynamite bomb thrown between the feet of the emperor
on March 13th, 1881, destroyed the life of this noble and humane
monarch, who in 1861-1863 had freed his people from the yoke of
serfdom. As for years nothing more had been heard of Nihilist
attempts, it was hoped that the government had succeeded in
putting down this diabolical rebellion, but in 1887 the news
spread that an equally horrible attempt had been planned for
the sixth anniversary of the assassination of Alexander II.,
but fortunately timely precautions were taken against it.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES.
FIRST CENTURY.
A.D.
14-37. The Emperor Tiberius, § 22, 1.
41-54. The Emperor Claudius, § 22, 1.
44. Execution of James the Elder, § 16.
51. The Council at Jerusalem, § 18, 1.
54-68. The Emperor Nero, § 23, 1.
61. Paul’s Arrival at Rome, § 15.
63. Stoning of James the Just, § 16, 3.
64. Persecution of Christians in Rome, § 22, 1.
66-70. Jewish War, § 16.
81-96. The Emperor Domitian, § 22, 1.
SECOND CENTURY.
98-117. The Emperor Trajan, § 22, 2.
115. (?) Ignatius of Antioch, Martyr, § 22, 2.
117-138. The Emperor Hadrian, § 22, 2.
Basilides, Valentinus, § 22, 2, 4.
132-135. Revolt of Barcochba [Bar-Cochba], § 25.
Abt. 150. Celsus, § 23, 3.
Marcion, § 27, 11.
138-161. The Emperor Antoninus Pius, § 22, 2.
155. Paschal Controversy between Polycarp and Amicetus
[Anicetus], § 37, 2.
161-180. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, § 22, 3.
165. Justin Martyr, § 30, 9.
166. (155?) Martyrdom of Polycarp, § 22, 3.
172. (156?) Montanus appears as a Prophet, § 40, 1.
177. Persecution of Christians at Lyons and Vienne,
§ 22, 3.
178. Irenæus made Bishop of Lyons, § 31, 2.
180-192. The Emperor Commodus, § 22, 3.
196. Paschal Controversy between Victor and Polycrates,
§ 37, 2.
THIRD CENTURY.
202. Tertullian becomes Montanist, § 40, 2.
Pantænus dies, § 31, 4.
220. Clement of Alexandria dies, § 31, 4.
235. Settlement of the Schism of Hippolytus, § 41, 1.
235-238. The Emperor Maximinus Thrax, § 22, 4.
243. Ammonius Saccus [Saccas] dies, § 25, 2.
244. Arabian Synod against Beryllus, § 33, 7.
249-251. The Emperor Decius, § 22, 5.
250. The Schism of Felicissimus, § 41, 2.
251. The Novatian Schism, § 41, 3.
253-260. The Emperor Valerian, § 22, 5.
254. Origen dies, § 31, 5.
255-256. Controversy about Heretics’ Baptism, § 35, 5.
258. Cyprian dies, § 31, 11.
260-268. The Emperor Gallienus.
The Toleration Edict, § 22, 5.
262. Synod at Rome against Sabellius and Dionysius of
Alexandria, § 33, 7.
269. Third Synod of Antioch against Paul of Samosata,
§ 33, 8.
276. Mani dies, § 29, 1.
284-305. The Emperor Diocletian, § 22, 6.
FOURTH CENTURY.
303. Beginning of Diocletian Persecution, § 22, 6.
306. Synod of Elvira, § 38, 3; 45, 2.
Meletian Schism in Egypt, § 41, 4.
Constantius Chlorus dies, § 22, 7.
311. Galerius dies, § 22, 6.
312. Constantine’s Expedition against Maxentius, § 22, 7.
Donatist Schism in Africa, § 63, 1.
313. Edict of Milan, § 22, 7.
318. Arius is Accused, § 50, 1.
323-337. Constantine the Great, Sole Ruler, § 42, 2.
325. First Œcumenical Council at Nicæa, § 50, 1.
330-415. Meletian Schism at Antioch, § 50, 8.
335. Synod at Tyre, § 50, 2.
336. Athanasius Exiled. Arius dies, § 50, 2.
341. Council at Antioch, § 50, 2.
343. Persecution of Christians under Shapur [Sapor] II.,
§ 64, 2.
344. Synod at Sardica, § 46, 3; 50, 2.
346. Council at Milan against Photinus, § 50, 2.
348. Ulfilas, Bishop of the Goths, § 76, 1.
350-361. Constantius, Sole Ruler, § 42, 2.
351. First Council at Sirmium against Marcellus, § 50, 2.
357. Second Council at Sirmium, Homoians, § 50, 3.
358. Third Council at Sirmium, § 50, 3.
359. Synods at Seleucia and Rimini, § 50, 3.
361-363. Emperor Julian the Apostate, § 42, 3.
362. Synod at Alexandria against Athanasius, § 50, 4.
366-384. Damasus I., Bishop of Rome, § 46, 4.
368. Hilary of Poitiers dies, § 47, 14.
373. Athanasius dies, § 47, 3.
379. Basil the Great dies, § 47, 4.
379-395. Theodosius the Great, Emperor, § 42, 4.
380. Synod at Saragossa, § 54, 2.
381. Second Œcumenical Council at Constantinople, § 50, 4.
Ulfilas dies, § 76, 1.
384-398. Siricius, Bishop of Rome, § 46, 4.
385. Priscillian beheaded at Treves, § 54, 2.
390. Gregory Nazianzen dies, § 47, 4.
391. Destruction of the Serapeion at Alexandria, § 42, 6.
393. Council at Hippo Rhegius, § 59, 1.
397. Ambrose dies, § 47, 15.
399. Rufinus Condemned at Rome as an Origenist, § 51, 2.
400. Martin of Tours dies, § 47, 15.
FIFTH CENTURY.
402-417. Innocent I. of Rome, § 46, 5.
403. _Synodus ad Quercum_, § 51, 3.
Epiphanius dies, § 47, 10.
407. Chrysostom dies, § 47, 8.
408-450. Theodosius II. in the East, § 52, 3.
411. _Collatio cum Donatistis_, § 63, 1.
412. Synod at Carthage against Cœlestius, § 53, 4.
415. Synods at Jerusalem and Diospolis against Pelagius,
§ 53, 4.
416. Synods at Mileve and Carthage against Pelagius,
§ 53, 4.
418. General Assembly at Carthage, § 53, 4.
Roman Schism of Eulalius and Bonifacius, § 46, 6.
420. Jerome dies, § 47, 16.
Persecution of Christians under Behram [Bahram] V.,
§ 64, 2.
422-432. Cœlestine I., Bishop of Rome, § 46, 6.
428. Nestorius is made Patriarch of Constantinople,
§ 52, 3.
429. Theodore of Mopsuestia dies, § 47, 9.
The Vandals in North Africa, § 76, 3.
430. Cyril’s Anathemas, § 52, 3.
Augustine dies, § 47, 18.
431. Third Œcumenical Council at Ephesus, § 52, 3.
432. St. Patrick in Ireland, § 77, 1.
John Cassianus dies, § 47, 21.
440-461. Leo I., the Great, § 46, 7; 47, 22.
444. Cyril of Alexandria dies, § 47, 6.
Dioscurus succeeds Cyril, § 52, 4.
445. Rescript of Valentinian III., § 46, 7.
448. Eutyches excommunicated at Constantinople, § 52, 4.
449. Robber Synod at Ephesus, § 52, 4.
Attack of Angles and Saxons upon Britain, § 77, 4.
451. Fourth Œcumenical Synod at Chalcedon, § 52, 4.
457. Theodoret dies, § 47, 9.
475. Semipelagian Synods at Arles and Lyons, § 53, 5.
476. Overthrow of the West Roman Empire, § 46, 8; 76, 6.
Monophysite Encyclical of Basiliscus, § 52, 5.
482. Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno, § 52, 5.
Severinus dies, § 76, 6.
484-519. The Thirty-five Years’ Schism between the East and
West, § 52, 5.
492-496. Gelasius I., Bishop of Rome, § 46, 8; 47, 22.
496. Battle of Zülpich. Clovis baptized, § 76, 9.
SIXTH CENTURY.
502. _Synodus Palmaris_, § 46, 8.
517. Council at Epaon, § 76, 5.
527-565. Justinian I., Emperor, § 46, 9; 52, 6.
529. Synods at Oranges and Valence, § 53, 5.
Monastic Rule of Benedict of Nursia, § 85.
Suppression of the University of Athens, § 42, 4.
533. The Theopaschite Controversy, § 52, 6.
Overthrow of the Vandal Empire, § 76, 3.
544. Condemnation of the “Three Chapters,” § 52, 6.
553. Fifth Œcumenical Council at Constantinople, § 52, 6.
554. Overthrow of the Ostrogoth Empire in Italy, § 76, 7.
563. Council at Braga, § 54, 2.
St. Columba among the Picts and Scots. § 77, 2.
567. Founding of the Exarchate of Ravenna, § 46, 9.
568. The Longobards under Alboin in Italy, § 76, 8.
589. Council at Toledo under Reccared, § 76, 2.
Columbanus and Gallus in the Vosges Country, § 77, 7.
590-604. Gregory I., the Great, § 46, 10; 47, 22.
595. Gregory of Tours dies, § 90, 2.
596. Augustine goes as Missionary to the Anglo-Saxons,
§ 77, 4.
597. St. Columba dies, § 77, 2.
Ethelbert baptized, § 77, 4.
SEVENTH CENTURY.
606. Emperor Phocas recognises the Roman Primacy, § 46, 10.
611-641. Heraclius, Emperor, § 52, 8.
615. Columbanus dies, § 77, 7.
622. Hejira, § 65.
625-638. Honorius I., Pope, § 46, 11.
636. Isidore of Seville dies, § 90, 2.
637. Omar conquers Jerusalem, § 65.
638. Monothelite Ecthesis of Heraclius, § 52, 8.
640. Omar conquers Egypt, § 65.
642-668. Constans II., Emperor, § 52, 8.
646. St. Gallus dies, § 78, 1.
648. The Typus of Constans II., § 52, 8.
649-653. Martin I., Pope, § 46, 11.
649. First Lateran Council under Martin I., § 52, 8.
652. Emmeran at Regensburg, § 78, 2.
657. Constantine of Mananalis, § 71, 1.
662. Maximus Confessor, dies, § 47, 13.
664. Synod at Streoneshalch (_Syn. Pharensis_), § 77, 6.
668-685. Constantinus Pogonnatus, § 52, 8; 71, 1.
677. Wilfrid among the Frisians, § 78, 3.
678-682. Agatho, Pope, § 46, 11.
680. Sixth Œcumenical Council at Constantinople
(Trullanum I.), § 52, 8.
690. Wilibrord among the Frisians, § 78, 3.
692. Concilium Quinisextum (Trullanum II.), § 63, 2.
696. Rupert in Bavaria (Salzburg), § 78, 2.
EIGHTH CENTURY.
711. The Saracens conquer Spain, § 81.
715-731. Pope Gregory II., § 66, 1; 78, 4.
716. Winifrid goes to the Frisians, § 78, 4.
717-741. Leo III., the Isaurian, Emperor, § 66, 1.
718. Winifrid in Rome, § 78, 4.
722. Winifrid in Thuringia and Hesse, § 78, 4.
723. Winifrid a second time at Rome, consecrated Bishop,
etc., § 78, 4.
724. Destruction of the Wonder-working Oak at Geismar,
§ 78, 4.
726. Leo’s First Edict against Image Worship, § 66, 1.
730. Leo’s Second Edict against Image Worship, § 66, 1.
731. Gregory III., Pope, § 66, 1; 78, 4; 82, 1.
732. Boniface, Archbishop and Apostolic Vicar, § 78, 4.
Battle at Poitiers, § 81.
Separation of Illyria from the Roman See by Leo the
Isaurian, § 66, 1.
735. The Venerable Bede dies, § 90, 2.
739. Wilibrord dies, § 78, 3.
741. Charles Martel dies, § 78, 5.
Gregory III. dies. Leo the Isaurian dies.
741-752. Pope Zacharias, § 78, 5, 7; 82, 1.
741-775. Constantinus Copronymus, Emperor, § 66, 2.
742. Concilium Germanicum, § 78, 5.
743. Synod at Liptinä, § 78, 5; 86, 2.
744. Synod at Soissons, § 78, 5.
745. Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, § 78, 5.
752. Childeric III. deposed, Pepin the Short, King,
§ 78, 5; 82, 1.
754. Iconoclastic Council at Constantinople, § 66, 2.
Pepin’s donation to the Chair of St. Peter, § 82, 1.
755. Boniface dies, § 78, 7.
Abt. 760. Rule of St. Chrodegang of Metz, § 84, 4.
767. Synod at Gentilliacum, § 91, 2; 92, 1.
768-814. Charlemagne, § 82, 2, 4; 90, 1, etc.
772-795. Pope Hadrian I., § 82, 2.
772. Destruction of Eresburg, § 78, 9.
774. Charlemagne’s donation to the Chair of St. Peter,
§ 82, 2.
785. Wittekind and Alboin are baptized, § 78, 9.
787. Seventh Œcumenical Council at Nicæa, § 66, 3.
Founding of Cloister and Cathedral Schools, § 90, 1.
790. _Libri Carolini_, § 92, 1.
792. Synod at Regensburg, § 91, 1.
794. General Synod at Frankfort, § 91, 1; 92, 1.
795-816. Leo III., Pope, § 82, 3.
799. Alcuin’s disputation with Felix at Aachen, § 91, 1.
800. Leo III. crowns Charlemagne, § 82, 3.
NINTH CENTURY.
804. End of the Saxon War, § 78, 9.
Alcuin dies, § 90, 3.
809. Council at Aachen, on the _Filioque_, § 91, 2.
813-820. Leo the Armenian, Emperor, § 66, 4.
814-840. Louis the Pious, § 82, 4.
817. Reformation of Monasticism by Benedict of Aniane,
§ 85, 2.
820-829. Michael Balbus, Emperor, § 66, 4.
825. Synod at Paris against Image Worship, § 92, 1.
826. Theodorus Studita dies, § 66, 4.
Ansgar in Denmark, § 80, 1.
827. Establishment of Saracen Sovereignty in Sicily, § 81.
829-842. Theophilus, Emperor, § 66, 4.
833. Founding of the Archbishopric of Hamburg, § 80, 1.
835. Synod at Didenhofen, § 82, 4.
839. Claudius of Turin dies. Agobard of Lyons dies,
§ 90, 4.
840-877. Charles the Bald, § 90, 1.
842. Feast of Orthodoxy, § 66, 4.
Theodora recommends the out-rooting of the
Paulicians, § 71, 1.
843. Compact of Verdun, § 82, 5.
844. Eucharist Controversy of Paschasius Radbertus,
§ 91, 3.
845-882. Hincmar of Rheims, § 83, 2; 90, 5.
847. Archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, § 80, 1.
848. Synod of Mainz against Gottschalk, § 91, 5.
850-859. Persecution of Christians in Spain, § 81, 1.
851-852. The Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore, § 87, 2, 3.
853. Synod of Quiersy. _Capitula Carisiaca_, § 91, 5.
855. Synod at Valence in favour of Gottschalk, § 91, 5.
856. Rabanus Maurus dies, § 90, 4.
858-867. Pope Nicholas I., § 82, 7.
858. Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, § 67, 1.
859. Synod of Savonnières, § 91, 5.
861. Methodius goes to the Bulgarians, § 73, 3.
863. Cyril and Methodius go to Moravia, § 79, 2.
865. Ansgar dies, § 80, 1.
866. Encyclical of Photius, § 67, 1.
867-886. Basil the Macedonian, Emperor, § 67, 1.
867-872. Hadrian II., Pope, § 82, 7.
869. Eighth Œcumenical Council of the Latins at
Constantinople § 67, 1.
870. Treaty of Mersen, § 82, 5.
871. Basil the Macedonian puts down the Paulicians,
§ 71, 1.
Borziwoi and Ludmilla baptized, § 79, 3.
871-901. Alfred the Great, § 90, 9.
875. John VIII. crowns Charles the Bald Emperor, § 82, 8.
879. Eighth Œcumenical Council of the Greeks at
Constantinople, § 67, 1.
886-911. Leo the Philosopher, Emperor, § 67, 2.
891. Photius dies, § 67, 1.
TENTH CENTURY.
910. Abbot Berno founds Clugny, § 98, 1.
911. The German Carolingians die out, § 82, 8.
911-918. Conrad I., King of the Germans. § 96, 1.
914-928. Pope John X., § 96, 1.
919-936. Henry I., King of the Germans, § 96, 1.
934. Henry I. enforced toleration of Christianity in
Denmark, § 93, 2.
936-973. Otto I., Emperor, § 96, 1.
942. Odo of Clugny founds the Clugniac Congregation,
§ 98, 1.
950. Gylas of Hungary baptized, § 93, 8.
955. Olga baptized in Constantinople, § 73, 4.
960. Atto of Vercelli dies, § 100, 2.
962. Founding of the Holy Roman Empire of the German
Nation, § 96, 1.
963. Synod at Rome deposes John XII., § 96, 1.
966. Miecislaw of Poland baptized, § 93, 7.
968. Founding of Archbishopric of Magdeburg, § 93, 9.
970. Migration of Paulicians to Thrace, § 71, 1.
973-983. Otto II., Emperor, § 96, 2.
974. Ratherius of Verona dies, § 100, 2.
983-1002. Otto III., Emperor, § 96, 2, 3.
983. Mistewoi destroys all Christian establishments among
the Wends, § 93, 9.
987. Hugh Capet is made King of France, § 96, 2.
988. Wladimir Christianizes Russia, § 73, 4.
992-1025. Boleslaw Chrobry of Poland, § 93, 7.
996-999. Pope Gregory V., § 96, 2.
997-1038. Stephen the Saint, § 93, 8.
997. Adalbert of Prague, Apostle of Prussia, dies,
§ 93, 13.
999-1003. Pope Sylvester II., § 96, 3.
1000. Olaf Tryggvason dies, § 93, 4.
Christianity introduced into Iceland and Greenland,
§ 93, 5.
Stephen of Hungary secures the throne, § 93, 8.
ELEVENTH CENTURY.
1002-1024. Henry II., Emperor, § 96, 4.
1008. Olaf Skautkoning of Sweden baptized, § 93, 3.
1009. Bruno martyred, § 93, 13.
1012-1024. Pope Benedict VIII., § 96, 4.
1014-1036. Canute the Great, § 93, 2.
1018. Romuald founds the Camaldulensian Congregation,
§ 98, 1.
1024-1039. Conrad II., Emperor, § 96, 4.
1030. Olaf the Thick of Norway dies, § 93, 4.
1031. Overthrow of the Ommaides in Spain, § 95, 2.
1039-1056. Henry II., Emperor, § 96, 4, 5.
1041. Treuga Dei, § 105, 1.
1046. Synod at Sutri, § 96, 4.
1049-1054. Pope Leo IX., § 96, 5.
1050. Synods at Rome and Vercelli against Berengar,
§ 101, 2.
1053. Epistle of Michael Cærularius, § 67, 3.
1054. Excommunication of Greek Church by Papal Legates,
§ 67, 3.
1056-1106. Henry IV., Emperor, § 96, 6-11.
1059. Pope Nicholas II. assigns the choice of Pope to the
College of Cardinals, § 96, 6.
1060. Robert Guiscard founds the Norman Sovereignty in
Italy, § 95, 1.
1066. Murder of Gottschalk, King of the Wends, § 93, 9.
1073-1085. Pope Gregory VII., § 96, 7-9.
1075. Gregory’s third Investiture Enactment, § 96, 7.
1077. Henry IV. as a Penitent at Canossa, § 96, 8.
1079. Berengar subscribes at Rome the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, § 101, 2.
1086. Bruno of Cologne founds the Carthusian Order, § 98, 2.
1088-1099. Pope Urban II., § 96, 10.
1095. Synod at Clermont, § 94.
1096. First Crusade. Godfrey of Boulogne, § 94, 1.
1098. Synod at Bari. Anselm of Canterbury, § 67, 4.
Robert of Citeaux founds the Cistercian Order,
§ 98, 1.
1099. Conquest of Jerusalem, § 94, 1.
1099-1118. Pope Paschalis II., § 96, 11.
TWELFTH CENTURY.
1106-1125. Henry V., Emperor, § 96, 11.
1106. Michael Psellus dies, § 68, 5.
1109. Anselm of Canterbury dies, § 101, 1, 3.
1113. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, § 98, 1; 102, 3.
1118. Founding of the Order of Knights Templar.
Knights of St. John, § 98, 7.
Basil, head of Bogomili, sent to the stake, § 71, 4.
1119-1124. Calixtus II., Pope, § 96, 11.
1121. Norbert founds the Præmonstratensian Order, § 98, 2.
1122. Concordat of Worms, § 96, 11.
1123. Ninth Œcumenical Council (First Lateran), § 96, 11.
1124. First Missionary Journey of Otto of Bamberg,
§ 93, 10.
1126. Peter of Bruys burnt, § 108, 7.
1128. Second Missionary Journey of Otto of Bamberg,
§ 93, 10.
1130-1143. Pope Innocent II., § 96, 13.
1135. Rupert of Deutz dies, § 102, 8.
1139. Tenth Œcumenical Council (Second Lateran), § 96, 13.
1141. Synod at Sens condemns Abælard’s writings, § 102, 2.
Hugo St. Victor dies, § 102, 4.
1142. Abælard dies, § 102, 2.
1143. Founding of the Roman Commune, § 96, 13.
1145-1153. Pope Eugenius III., § 96, 13.
1146. Fall of Edessa, § 94, 2.
1147. Second Crusade. Conrad III. Louis VII., § 94, 2.
1149. Henry of Lausanne dies, § 108, 7.
1150. _Decretum Gratiani_, § 99, 5.
1152-1190. Frederick I., Barbarossa, § 96, 14.
1153. Bernard of Clairvaux dies, § 102, 3.
1154. Vicelin [Vicelinus] dies, § 93, 9.
1154-1159. Hadrian IV., Pope, § 96, 14.
1155. Arnold of Brescia put to death, § 96, 14.
1156. Peter the Venerable dies, § 98, 1.
Founding of Carmelite Order, § 98, 3.
1157. Introduction of Christianity into Finland, § 93, 11.
1159-1181. Pope Alexander III., § 96, 15, 16.
1164. Peter the Lombard dies, § 102, 5.
Council of Clarendon, § 96, 16.
1167. Council at Toulouse (Cathari), § 108, 2.
1168. Christianity of the Island of Rügen, § 93, 10.
1169. Gerhoch of Reichersberg dies, § 102, 6, 7.
1170. Thomas Becket murdered, § 96, 16.
Founding of the Waldensian sect, § 108, 10.
1176. Battle of Legnano, § 96, 15.
1179. Eleventh Œcumenical Council (Third Lateran), § 96, 15.
1180. John of Salisbury dies, § 102, 9.
1182. Maronites are attached to Rome, § 73, 3.
1184. Meinhart in Livonia, § 93, 12.
1187. Saladin conquers Jerusalem, § 94, 3.
1189. Third Crusade. Frederick Barbarossa, § 94, 3.
1190-1197. Henry VI., Emperor, § 96, 16.
1190. Founding of Order of Teutonic Knights, § 98, 8.
1194. Eustathius of Thessalonica dies, § 68, 5.
1198-1216. Pope Innocent III., § 96, 17, 18.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
1202. Joachim of Floris dies, § 108, 5.
Founding of Order of the Brothers of the Sword,
§ 93, 12.
Genghis Khan destroys Kingdom of Prester John,
§ 72, 1.
1204-1261. Latin Empire in Constantinople, § 94, 4.
1207. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, § 96, 18.
1208. Peter of Castelnau slain, § 109, 1.
1209-1229. Albigensian Crusade, § 109, 1.
1209. Council of Paris against Sect of Amalrich of Bena,
§ 108, 4.
1212. Battle at Tolosa, § 95, 2.
1213. John Lackland receives England as a Papal Fief,
§ 96, 18.
1215-1250. Frederick II., Emperor, § 96, 17, 19, 20.
1215. Twelfth Œcumenical Council (Fourth Lateran),
§ 96, 18.
1216. Confirmation of the Dominican Order, § 98, 5.
1216-1227. Pope Honorius III., § 96, 19.
1217. Fourth Crusade. Andrew II. of Hungary, § 94, 4.
1223. Confirmation of Franciscan Order, § 98, 3.
1226. Francis of Assisi dies, § 98, 3.
1226-1270. Louis IX., the Saint, § 94, 6; 93, 15.
1227-1241. Pope Gregory IX., § 96, 19.
1228. Fifth Crusade. Frederick II., § 94, 5.
Settlement of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia,
§ 93, 13.
1229. Synod at Toulouse, § 109, 2.
1231. St. Elizabeth dies, § 105, 3.
1232. Inquisition Tribunal set up, § 109, 2.
1233. Conrad of Marburg slain, § 109, 3.
1234. Crusade against Stedingers, § 109, 3.
1237. Union of the Order of Sword with that of Teutonic
Knights, § 98, 8.
1243-1254. Pope Innocent IV., § 96, 20.
1245. Thirteenth Œcumenical Council (first of Lyons),
§ 96, 20.
Alexander of Hales died, § 103, 4.
1248. Foundation stone of Cathedral of Cologne laid,
§ 104, 13.
Sixth Crusade, Louis IX., § 94, 6.
1253. Robert Grosseteste dies, § 103, 1.
1254. Condemnation of the “_Introductorius in evangelium
æternum_,” § 108, 5.
1260. First Flagellant Campaign in Perugia, § 107, 1.
1260-1282. Michael Paläologus, Emperor, § 67, 4.
1261-1264. Urban IV., Pope, § 96, 20.
1262. Arsenian Schism, § 70, 1.
1268. Conradin on the Scaffold. § 96, 20.
1269. Pragmatic Sanction of Louis IX., § 96, 21.
1270. Seventh Crusade, Louis IX., § 94, 6.
1271-1276. Pope Gregory X., § 96, 21.
1272. Italian Mission to the Mongols. Marco Polo, § 93, 15.
David of Augsburg dies, § 103, 10.
Bertholdt [Berthold] of Regensburg dies, § 104, 1.
1273-1291. Rudolph of Hapsburg, Emperor, § 96, 21, 22.
1274. Fourteenth Œcumenical Council (second of Lyons),
§ 96, 21.
Thomas Aquinas dies, § 103, 6.
Bonaventura dies, § 103, 4.
1275. Strassburg Minster, § 104, 13.
1280. Albert the Great dies, § 103, 5.
1282. Sicilian Vespers, § 96, 22.
1283. Prussia subdued, § 93, 13.
1286. Barhabraeus [Barhebræus] dies, § 72, 2.
1291. Fall of Acre, § 94, 6.
John of Montecorvino among the Mongols, § 93, 16.
1294. Roger Bacon dies, § 103, 8.
1294-1303. Boniface VIII., Pope, § 110, 1.
1296. Bull _Clericis laicos_, § 110, 1.
1300. First Roman Jubilee, § 117.
Lollards at Antwerp, § 116, 2.
Gerhard Segarelli burnt, § 108, 8.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
1302. Bull _Unam Sanctam_, § 110, 1.
1305-1314. Pope Clement V., § 110, 2.
1307. Dolcino burnt, § 108, 4.
1308. Duns Scotus dies, § 113, 1.
1309-1377. Residence of Popes at Avignon, § 110, 2-4.
1311-1312. Fifteenth Œcumenical Council at Vienne, § 110, 2.
Suppression of Templar Order, § 112, 7.
1314-1347. Louis the Bavarian, Emperor, § 110, 3, 4.
1315. Raimund Lullus dies, § 93, 16; 103, 5.
1316-1334. Pope John XXII., § 110, 3; 112, 2.
1321. Dante dies, § 115, 10.
1322. Split in the Franciscan Order, § 112, 2.
1327. Meister Eckhart dies, § 114, 1.
1334-1342. Pope Benedict XII., § 110, 4.
1335. Bishop Hemming in Lapland, § 93, 11.
1338. Electoral Union at Rhense, § 110, 5.
1339. Union negotiations at Avignon. Barlaam, § 67, 5.
1340. Nicholas of Lyra dies, § 113, 7.
1341-1351. Hesychast Controversy in Constantinople, § 69, 1.
1342-1352. Pope Clement VI., § 110, 4.
1346-1378. Charles IV., Emperor, § 110, 4.
1347. Rienzi, § 110, 4.
Emperor Louis dies, § 110, 4.
1348. Founding of University of Prague, § 119, 3.
1348-1350. Black Death. Flagellant Campaign, § 116, 3.
1349. Thomas Bradwardine dies, § 113, 2.
1352-1362. Pope Innocent VI., § 110, 4.
1356. Charles IV. issues the Golden Bull, § 110, 4.
1360. Wiclif against the Begging Friars, § 119, 1.
1361. John Tauler dies, § 114, 2.
1362-1370. Pope Urban V., § 110, 4.
1366. Henry Suso dies, § 114, 5.
1367-1370. Urban V. in Rome, § 110, 4.
1369. John Paläologus passes over to the Latin Church,
§ 67, 5.
1370-1378. Pope Gregory XI., § 110, 4.
1374. Dancers, § 116, 3.
1377. Return of the Curia to Rome, § 110, 4.
1378-1417. Papal Schism, § 110, 6.
1380. Catharine of Siena dies, § 112, 4.
1384. Wiclif dies, § 119, 1.
Gerhard Groot dies, § 112, 9.
1386. Introduction of Christianity into Lithuania,
§ 93, 14.
1400. Florentius Radewin dies, § 112, 9.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
1402. Hus becomes Preacher in the Bethlehem Chapel,
§ 119, 3.
1409. Œcumenical Council at Pisa, § 110, 6.[578]
Withdrawal of the Germans from Prague, § 119, 3.
1410-1415. John XXIII., Pope, § 110, 7.
1410-1437. Sigismund, Emperor, § 110, 7, 8.
1412. Traffic in Indulgences in Bohemia, § 119, 4.
1413. Papal Ban against Hus, § 119, 4.
1414-1418. Sixteenth Œcumenical Council at Constance, § 110, 6;
119, 5.
1415. Hus obtains the crown of martyrdom, § 119, 5.
1416. Jerome of Prague martyred, § 119, 5.
1417-1431. Pope Martin V., § 110, 7.
1420. Calixtines and Taborites, § 119, 7.
1423. General Councils at Pavia and Siena, § 110, 7.
1424. Ziska dies, § 119, 7.
1425. Peter D’Ailly dies, § 118, 3.
1429. Gerson dies, § 118, 3.
1431-1447. Pope Eugenius IV., § 110, 7.
1431-1449. Seventeenth Œcumenical Council at Basel, § 110, 8;
119, 5-7.
1433. Basel Compacts, § 119, 7.
1434. Overthrow of Hussites at Böhmischbrod, § 119, 7.
1438. Papal Counter-Council at Ferrara, § 110, 8.
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, § 110, 9.
1439. Council at Florence, § 67, 6.
1448. Concordat of Vienna, § 110, 9.
1453. Fall of Constantinople, § 67, 6.
1457. Laurentius Valla dies, § 120, 1.
1458-1464. Pope Pius II., § 110, 11.
1459. Congress of Princes at Mantua, § 110, 10.
1464-1471. Pope Paul II., § 110, 11.
1467. Convention of Bohemian Brethren at Lhota, § 119, 8.
1471. Thomas à Kempis dies, § 114, 5.
1471-1484. Sixtus IV., Pope, § 110, 11.
1483. Luther born on November 10th, § 122, 1.
Spanish Inquisition, § 117, 1.
Close of _Corpus juris canonici_, § 99, 5.
1484-1492. Innocent VIII., Pope, § 110, 11.
1484. Zwingli born January 1st, § 130, 1.
Bull _Summis desiderantes_, § 117, 4.
1485. Rudolph Agricola dies, § 120, 3.
1489. John Wessel dies, § 119, 10.
1492-1503. Alexander VI., Pope, § 110, 12.
1492. Fall of Granada, § 95, 2.
1493-1519. Maximilian I., Emperor, § 110, 13.
1497. Melanchthon born, § 122, 5.
1498. Savonarola sent to the stake, § 119, 11.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
1502. Founding of University of Wittenberg, § 122, 1.
1508-1513. Pope Julius II., § 110, 13.
1506. Rebuilding of St. Peter’s at Rome, § 115, 13.
1508. Luther becomes Professor at Wittenberg, § 122, 1.
1509. Calvin born on July 10th, § 138, 2.
1509-1547. Henry VIII. of England, § 139, 4.
1511. Luther’s journey to Rome, § 122, 1.
Council at Pisa, § 110, 13.
1512. Luther made Doctor of the Holy Scriptures and
Preacher, § 112, 1.
1512-1517. Fifth Lateran Council, § 110, 13, 14.
1513-1521. Pope Leo X., § 110, 14.
1514. Reuchlin’s contest with the Dominicans, § 120, 4.
1516. _Epistolæ Obscur. virorum_, § 120, 5.
Erasmus edits the New Testament, § 120, 6.
Zwingli preaches at Mariä Einsiedeln, § 130, 1.
1517. Luther’s Theses, October 31st, § 122, 2.
1518. Luther at Heidelberg and before Cajetan at Augsburg,
§ 122, 3.
Melanchthon Professor at Wittenberg, § 122, 5.
1519. Miltitz, § 122, 3.
Disputation at Leipzig, § 122, 4.
Zwingli in Zürich, § 130, 1.
Olaf and Laurence Peterson in Sweden, § 139, 1.
1519-1556. Emperor Charles V., § 123, 5.
1520. Bull of Excommunication against Luther, § 123, 2.
Christian II. in Denmark, § 139, 2.
1521. Luther at Worms, § 123, 7.
Melanchthon’s _Loci_, § 124, 1.
Beginning of Reformation in Riga, § 139, 3.
1521-1522. The Wartburg Exile, § 123, 8.
1522. The Prophets of Zwickau in Wittenberg, § 124, 1.
Reuchlin dies, § 120, 4.
1522-1523. Pope Hadrian VI., § 126, 1.
1523. Thomas Münzer in Allstädt, § 124, 4.
Luther’s contest with Henry VIII., § 125, 3.
First Martyrs, Voes and Esch, § 128, 1.
Sickingen’s defeat, § 124, 2.
1523-1534. Pope Clement VII., § 149, 1.
1524. Staupitz dies, § 112, 2.
Carlstadt in Orlamünde, § 124, 3.
Erasmus against Luther, § 125, 2.
Diet of Nuremberg, § 126, 2.
Regensburg League, § 126, 3.
Hans Tausen in Denmark, § 139, 2.
Founding of Theatine Order, § 149, 7.
1525. Eucharist Controversy, § 131, 1.
Luther’s Marriage, § 129.
Albert of Prussia, Hereditary Duke, § 126, 4.
Founding of the Capuchin Order, § 149, 7.
1525-1532. John the Constant, Elector of Saxony, § 124, 5.
1526. Synod at Hamburg, § 127, 2.
Torgau League, § 126, 5.
Diet at Spires, § 126, 6.
Disputation at Baden, § 130, 6.
1527. Diet at Odense, § 139, 2;
and at Westeräs, § 139, 1.
1528. The Pack incident, § 132, 1.
Disputation at Bern, § 130, 7.
1529. Church Visitation of Saxony, § 127, 1.
Diet at Spires, § 132, 3.
Marburg Conference, § 132, 4.
First Peace of Cappel, § 130, 9.
1530. Diet at Augsburg. _Conf. Augustana_, June 25th,
§ 132, 6, 7.
1531. Schmalcald League, § 133, 1.
Zwingli dies. Second Peace of Cappel, § 130, 10.
1532-1547. John Frederick the Magnanimous, Elector of Saxony,
§ 133, 2.
1532. Religious Peace of Nuremberg, § 133, 2.
Farel at Geneva, § 138, 1.
Henry VIII. renounces authority of the Pope, § 139, 4.
1534. Luther’s complete Bible Translation, § 129, 1.
Reformation in Württemberg, § 133, 3.
1534-1535. Anabaptist Troubles in Münster, § 133, 6.
1534-1549. Pope Paul III., § 149, 2.
1535. Vergerius in Wittenberg, § 134, 1.
Calvin’s _Institutio rel. Christ._, § 138, 5.
1536. Erasmus dies, § 120, 6.
Wittenberg Concord, § 133, 8.
Calvin in Geneva, § 138, 2.
Diet at Copenhagen, § 139, 2.
Menno Simons baptized, § 147, 1.
1537. Schmalcald Articles, § 134, 1.
Antinomian Controversy, § 141, 1.
1538. Nuremberg League, § 134, 2.
Calvin Expelled from Geneva, § 138, 3.
1539. Outbreak at Frankfort, § 134, 3.
Reformation in Albertine Saxony, § 134, 4.
Joachim II. reforms Brandenburg, § 134, 5.
Diet at Odense, § 139, 2.
1540. The Society of Jesus, § 149, 8.
Double Marriage of the Landgrave, § 135, 1.
Religious Conferences at Spires, Hagenau, and Worms,
§ 135, 2.
1541. Carlstadt dies, § 124, 3.
Interim of Regensburg, § 135, 3.
Naumburg Episcopate, § 135, 5.
Calvin returns to Geneva, § 138, 3, 4.
1542. Reformation in Brunswick, § 135, 6.
National Assembly at Bonn, § 135, 7.
Francis Xavier in the East Indies, § 150, 1.
Roman Inquisition, § 139, 23.
1544. Diet at Spires, Peace of Crespy, Wittenberg
Reformation, § 135, 9.
Diet at Westeräs, § 139, 1.
1545. Synod at Erdöd, § 139, 20.
1545-1547. Nineteenth Œcumenical Council at Trent, § 136, 4;
149, 2.
1546. Regensburg Conference: Murder of John Diaz, § 135, 10.
Luther dies, February 18th, § 135, 11.
Reformation in the Palatinate, § 135, 6.
1546-1547. Schmalcald War, § 136.
1547-1553. Edward VI. of England, § 139, 5.
1547. Hermann of Cologne resigns, § 136, 2.
1548-1572. Sigismund Augustus, of Poland, § 139, 18.
1548. Interim of Augsburg, § 136, 5.
Adiaphorist Controversy, § 141, 5.
Priests of the Oratory, § 149, 7.
1549. _Consensus Tigurinus_, § 138, 7.
Andrew Osiander at Königsburg, § 141, 2.
Jesuit Mission in Brazil, § 150, 3.
The first Jesuits in Germany (Ingolstadt), § 151, 2.
1550-1555. Pope Julius III., § 136, 8.
1550. Brothers of Mercy, § 149, 7.
1551. Resumption of Tridentine Council, § 136, 8; 149, 2.
1552. Compact of Passau, § 137, 3.
Outbreak of Crypto-Calvinist Controversy, § 141, 9.
Francis Xavier dies, § 150, 1.
1553-1558. Mary the Catholic of England, § 139, 5.
1553. Elector Maurice dies, § 137, 4.
Servetus burnt, § 148, 2.
1554. _Consensus Pastorum Genevensium_, § 138, 7.
John Frederick the Magnanimous dies, § 137, 3.
1555. Religious Peace of Augsburg, § 137, 5.
Outbreak of Synergist Controversies, § 141, 7.
1555-1598. Philip II. of Spain, § 139, 21.
1556-1564. Ferdinand I, Emperor, § 137, 8.
1556. Loyola dies, § 149, 8.
1557. National Assembly at Clausenburg and _Confessio
Hungarica_, § 139, 20.
1558. Frankfort Recess, § 141, 11.
1558-1603. Elizabeth of England, § 139, 6.
1559. Gustavus Vasa’s Mission to the Lapps, § 142, 7.
_Confessio Gallicana_, § 139, 14.
The English Act of Uniformity, § 139, 6.
1560-1565. Pope Pius IV., § 149, 2.
1560. _Confessio Scotica_, § 139, 9.
John a Lasco dies, § 139, 18.
Calvinizing of the Palatinate, § 144, 1.
Melanchthon dies, § 141, 10.
1561. Gotthard Kettler, Duke of Courland, § 139, 3.
Religious Conference at Poissy, § 139, 14.
Mary Stuart in Scotland, § 139, 10.
Princes’ Diet at Naumburg, § 141, 11.
1562-1563. Resumption and Close of Tridentine Council, § 149, 2.
1562. _Confessio Belgica_, § 139, 12.
The XXXIX. Articles of the English Church, § 139, 6.
Calvinizing of Bremen, § 144, 2.
Heidelberg Catechism, § 144, 1.
Lælius Socinus dies, § 148, 4.
1564. Calvin dies, § 138, 4.
_Professio fidei Tridentinæ_, § 149, 14.
Cassander’s Union Proposals, § 137, 8.
Maulbronn Convention, § 144, 1.
1564-1576. Emperor Maximilian II., § 137, 8.
1566. _Catechasimo Romanus_, § 149, 10.
_Confessio Helvetica posterior_, § 138, 7.
The League of “the Beggars,” § 139, 12.
1567. The writings of Michael Baius condemned, § 149, 13.
1570. General Synod at Sendomir, § 139, 13.
Peace of St. Germains, § 139, 15.
1572-1585. Pope Gregory XIII., § 149, 3.
1572. John Knox dies, § 139, 11.
Bloody Marriage of Paris, August 24th, § 139, 16.
1573. _Pax dissidentium_ in Poland, § 139, 18.
1574. Maulbronn Convention, § 141, 12.
Restoration of Catholicism in Eichsfelde, § 151, 1.
1575. _Confessio Bohemica_, § 139, 19.
1576. Book of Torgau, § 141, 12.
Pacification of Ghent, § 139, 12.
1576-1612. Rudolph II., Emperor, § 137, 8.
1577. The Formula of Concord, § 141, 12.
Restoration of Catholicism in Fulda, § 151, 1.
1578. The Jesuit Possevin in Sweden, § 151, 3.
1579. The Union of Utrecht, § 139, 12.
1580. Book of Concord, § 141, 12.
1582. Second Attempt at Reformation in Cologne, § 137, 6.
Matthew Ricci in China, § 150, 1.
Reform of Calendar, § 149, 3.
1585-1590. Pope Sixtus V., § 149, 3.
1587. Mary Stuart on the Scaffold, § 139, 10.
1588. Louis Molina, § 149, 13.
1589-1610. Henry IV. of France, § 139, 17.
1589. Patriarchate at Moscow, § 73, 4.
1592. Saxon Articles of Visitation, § 141, 13.
1593. Assembly of Representatives at Upsala, § 139, 1.
1595. Synod at Thorn, § 139, 18.
1596. Synod at Brest, § 151, 3.
1597. Calvinizing the Principality of Anhalt, § 144, 3.
_Congregatio de auxiliis_, § 149, 13.
1598. Edict of Nantes, § 139, 17.
1600. Giordano Bruno at the Stake, § 146, 3.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
1604. Faustus Socinus dies, § 148, 4.
1605. Landgrave Maurice calvinizes Hesse Cassel, § 154, 1.
Gunpowder Plot, § 153, 6.
1606. The Treaty of Vienna, § 139, 10.
Interdict on the Republic of Venice, § 156, 2.
1608. Founding the Jesuit State of Paraguay, § 156, 10.
1609. The Royal Letter, § 139, 19.
1610-1643. Louis XIII. of France, § 153, 3.
1610. Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants, § 160, 2.
1611. Pères de l’Oratoire, § 156, 7.
1612-1619. Matthias, Emperor, § 153, 1.
1613. Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg goes over to
Reformed Church, § 154, 3.
George Calixtus in Helmstädt [Helmstadt], § 159, 2.
1614. _Confessio Marchica_, § 154, 3.
1616. Leonard Hutter dies, § 159, 4.
1618. Monks of St. Maur in France, § 156, 7.
1618-1648. The Thirty Years’ War, § 153, 2.
1618-1619. Synod of Dort, § 161, 2.
1619-1637. Ferdinand II., Emperor, § 153, 2.
1620. The Valteline Massacre, § 153, 3.
The Pilgrim Fathers, § 143, 2.
1621. John Arndt dies, § 160, 1.
1622. Francis de Sales dies, § 157, 1.
_Congregatio de propaganda fide_, § 156, 9.
1624. End of Controversy over κένωσις and κρύψις, § 159, 1.
Jac. Böhme dies, § 160, 2.
1628. Adam Schall in China, § 156, 12.
1629. Edict of Restitution, § 153, 2.
1631. Religious Conference at Leipzig, § 154, 4.
1632. Gustavus Adolphus falls at Lützen, § 153, 2.
1637. John Gerhard dies, § 159, 4.
Rooting out of Christianity in Japan, § 156, 11.
1638. Overthrow of Racovian Seminary, § 148, 4.
Cyril Lucar strangled, § 152, 2.
Scottish Covenant, § 155, 1.
1641. Irish Massacre, § 153, 5.
1642. Condemnation of the “Augustinus” of Jansen, § 157, 5.
1643-1715. Louis XIV. of France, § 153, 2; 157, 2, 3, 5.
1643. Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogilas, § 152, 3.
Opening of Westminster Assembly, § 155, 1.
1645. Hugo Grotius dies, § 153, 7.
Religious Conference at Thorn, § 153, 7.
Peace of Linz, § 153, 3.
1645-1742. Accommodation Controversy, § 156, 12.
1647. George Fox appears as Leader of the Quakers, § 163, 4.
1648. Peace of Westphalia, § 153, 2.
Close of Westminster Assembly, § 155, 1.
1649. Execution of Charles I. of England, § 155, 1.
1650. Descartes dies, § 164, 1.
1652. Liturgical Reform of the Patriarch Nikon, § 163, 10.
1653. Innocent X. condemns the Five Propositions of Jansen,
§ 157, 5.
Barebones’ Parliament, § 155, 2.
1654. Christina of Sweden becomes a Catholic, § 153, 1.
John Val. Andreä dies, § 160, 1.
1655. The Bloody Easter in Piedmont, § 153, 5.
_Consensus repetitus fidei vere Lutheranæ_, § 159, 2.
1656. George Calixtus dies, § 159, 2.
Pascal’s _Lettres Provinciales_, § 157, 5.
1658. Outbreak of Cocceian Controversies, § 161, 5.
1660. Vincent de Paul dies, § 156, 8.
Restoration of Royalty and Episcopacy in England,
§ 155, 3.
1661. Religious Conference at Cassel, § 154, 4.
1664. Founding of Order of Trappists, § 156, 8.
1669. Cocceius dies, § 161, 3.
1670. The Labadists in Herford, § 163, 7.
1673. The Test Act, § 153, 6.
1675. _Formula consensus Helvetici_, § 161, 2.
Spener’s _Pia Desideria_, § 159, 3.
1676. Paul Gerhardt dies, § 154, 4.
Voetius dies, § 161, 3.
1677. Spinoza dies, § 164, 1.
1682. _Quatuor propositiones Cleri Gallicani_, § 156, 1.
Founding of Pennsylvania, § 163, 4.
1685. Revocation of Edict of Nantes and Expulsion of
Waldensians from Piedmont, § 153, 4, 5.
1686. Spener at Dresden and _Collegia philobiblica_ in
Leipzig, § 159, 3.
Abraham Calov dies, § 159, 4.
1687. Michael Molinos forced to Abjure, § 157, 2.
1689. English Act of Toleration, § 155, 3.
Return of banished Waldensians, § 153, 5.
1690. The Pietists Expelled from Leipzig, § 159, 3.
1691. Spener in Berlin, § 159, 3.
1694. Founding of University of Halle, § 159, 3.
1697. Frederick Augustus the Strong of Saxony becomes
Catholic, § 153, 1.
1699. Propositions of Fénelon Condemned, § 157, 3.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
1701. Thomas of Tournon in the East Indies, § 156, 12.
1702. Löscher’s “_Unschuldige Nachrichten_,” § 167, 1.
Buttlar Fanatical Excesses, § 170, 4.
1703. _Collegium caritativum_ at Berlin, § 169, 1.
Peter Codde deposed, § 165, 8.
1704. Bossuet dies, § 153, 7; 157, 3.
1705. Spener dies, § 159, 3.
1706. Founding of Lutheran Mission at Tranquebar, § 167, 9.
1707. The Praying Children at Silesia, § 167, 8.
1709. Port Royal suppressed, § 157, 5.
1712. Richard Simon dies, § 158, 1.
Mechitarist Congregation, § 165, 2.
1713. The Constitution _Unigenitus_, § 165, 7.
1717-1774. Louis XV. of France, § 165, 5.
1715. Fénelon dies, § 157, 3.
1716. Leibnitz dies, § 164, 2.
1717. French Appellants, § 165, 7.
Madame Guyon dies, § 157, 3.
Gottfried Arnold dies, § 160, 2.
Inspired Communities in the Cevennes, § 170, 2.
1721. Holy Synod of St. Petersburg, § 166.
Hans Egede goes as Missionary to Greenland, § 167, 9.
1722. Founding of Herrnhut, § 168, 2.
1727. A. H. Francke dies, § 167, 8.
Thomas of Westen dies, § 160, 7.
Founding of the Society of United Brethren, § 168, 2.
1728. Callenberg’s Institute for Conversion of Jews,
§ 167, 9.
1729. Buddeus dies, § 168, 2.
Methodist Society formed, § 169, 4.
1731. Emigration of Evangelicals of Salzburg, § 165, 4.
1740-1786. Frederick II. of Prussia, § 171, 4.
1741. Moravian Special Covenant with the Lord Jesus,
§ 168, 4.
1750. Sebastian Bach dies, § 167, 7.
End of Jesuit State of Paraguay, § 165, 3.
1751. Semler, Professor in Halle, § 171, 6.
1752. Bengel dies, § 167, 4.
1754. Christ. v. Wolff dies, § 167, 3.
Winckelmann becomes a Roman Catholic, § 165, 6.
1755. Mosheim dies, § 167, 3.
1758-1769. Pope Clement XIII., § 165, 9.
1759. Banishment of Jesuits from Portugal, § 165, 9.
1760. Zinzendorf dies, § 168, 3.
1762. Judicial Murder of Jean Calas, § 165, 5.
1765. Universal German Library, § 171, 4.
1769-1774. Pope Clement XIV., § 165, 9.
1772. Swedenborg dies, § 170, 5.
1773. Suppression of Jesuit Order, § 165, 9.
1774. Wolfenbüttel Fragments, § 171, 6.
1775-1799. Pius VI., Pope, § 165, 9, 10.
1775. C. A. Crusius dies, § 167, 3.
1776. Founding of the Order of the Illuminati, § 165, 13.
1778. Voltaire and Rousseau die, § 165, 14.
1780-1790. Joseph II., sole ruler, § 165, 10.
1781. Joseph’s Edict of Toleration, § 165, 10.
1782. Pope Pius VI. in Vienna, § 165, 10.
1786. Congress at Ems and Synod at Pistoja, § 165, 10.
1787. Edict of Versailles, § 165, 4.
1788. The Religious Edict of Wöllner, § 171, 5.
1789. French Revolution, § 165, 15.
1791. Wesley dies, § 169, 5.
Semler dies, § 171, 6.
1793. Execution of Louis XVI. and his Queen. Abolition of
Christian reckoning of time and of the Christian
religion in France. _Temple de la Raison_,
§ 165, 15.
1794. _Le peuple français reconnait l’Etre suprème et
l’immortalité de l’âme_, § 165, 15.
1795. Founding of London Missionary Society, § 172, 5.
1799. Schleiermacher’s “_Reden über die Religion_,”
§ 182, 1.
1800. Stolberg becomes a Roman Catholic, § 165, 6.
NINETEENTH CENTURY.
1800-1823. Pope Pius VII., § 185, 1.
1801. French Concordat, § 203, 1.
1803. Recess of Imperial Deputies, § 192, 1.
1804. Founding of British and Foreign Bible Society,
§ 183, 4.
Kant dies, § 171, 10.
1806. End of Catholic German Empire, § 192.
1809. Napoleon under Ban; the Pope Imprisoned, § 185, 1.
1810. Founding of American Missionary Society at Boston,
§ 184, 1.
Schleiermacher professor at Berlin, § 182, 1.
1811. French National Council, § 185, 1.
1814. Vienna Congress. Restoration of the Pope, § 185, 1.
Restoration of the Jesuits, § 186, 1.
1815. The Holy Alliance, § 173.
1816. Mission Seminary at Basel, § 184, 1.
1817. The Theses of Harms, § 176, 1.
Union Interpellation of Frederick William III.,
§ 177, 1.
1822. Introduction of the Prussian Service Book, § 176, 1.
Lyons Association for Spreading the Faith, § 186, 7.
1823-1829. Pope Leo XII., § 185, 1.
1825. Book of Mormon, § 211, 12.
1827. Hengstenberg’s _Evangel. Kirchenzeitung_, § 176, 1.
1829. English Catholic Emancipation Bill, § 202, 9.
Founding of Barmen Missionary Institute, § 184, 1.
1829-1830. Pope Pius VIII., § 185, 1.
1830. July Revolution, § 203, 2.
Halle Controversy, § 176, 1.
Abbé Chatel in Paris, § 187, 6.
1831-1846. Gregory XVI., Pope, § 185, 1.
1831. Hegel dies, § 174, 1.
1833. Beginning of Puseyite Agitation, § 203, 2.
1834. Conflict at Hönigern, § 177, 2.
Schleiermacher dies, § 182, 1.
1835. Strauss’ first Life of Jesus, § 182, 6.
Condemnation of Hermesianism, § 193, 1.
Edward Irving dies, § 211, 10.
Persecution of Christians in Madagascar, § 184, 3.
1836. Founding of Dresden Missionary Institute, § 184, 1.
1837. Emigrants of Zillerthal, § 198, 1.
Beginning of Troubles at Cologne, § 193, 1.
1838. Archbishop Dunin of Posen, § 193, 1.
Rescript of Altenburg, § 194, 2.
J. A. Möhler dies, § 191, 4.
English Tithes’ Bill, § 202, 9.
1839. Call of Dr. Strauss to Zürich, § 199, 4.
Bavarian order to give Adoration, § 195, 2.
Synod at Polozk, § 206, 2.
1810-1861. Frederick William IV. of Prussia, § 193.
1841. Schelling at Berlin, § 174, 1.
Constitution of Lutherans separated from National
Church of Prussia, § 177, 2.
Founding of Evangelical Bishopric of Jerusalem,
§ 184, 8.
Founding of Gustavus Adolphus Association, § 178, 1.
1843. Disruption and Founding of the Free Church of
Scotland, § 202, 7.
1844. German-Catholic Church, § 187, 1.
Wislicenus’ “Ob Schrift, ob Geist?” § 176, 1.
1845. Founding Free Church of Vaud, § 199, 2.
1845-1846. Conversions in Livonia, § 206, 3.
1846-1878. Pope Pius IX., § 185, 2-4.
1846. Founding of Evangelical Alliance in London, § 178, 3.
Fruitless Prussian General Synod in Berlin, § 193, 3.
1847. Prussian Patent of Toleration, § 193, 3.
War of Swiss Sonderbund, § 199, 1.
1848. Revolution of February and March, § 192, 4.
Founding of _Evangel. Kirchentag_, § 178, 4.
Founding of Catholic “Pius Association,” § 186, 3.
Bishops’ Congress of Würzburg, § 192, 4.
1849. Roman Republic, § 185, 2.
First Congress for Home Missions, § 183.
1850. Institution of Berlin “Oberkirchenrat,” § 193, 4.
Return of Pope to Rome, § 185, 2.
English Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, § 202, 11.
1851. Memorial of Upper Rhine Bishops, § 196, 1.
Taeping Rebellion in China, § 211, 15.
1852. Conference at Eisenach, § 178, 2.
1852-1870. Napoleon III., Emperor of the French, § 203, 3, 5.
1853. The _Kirchentag_ at Berlin acknowledges the
_Augustana_, § 178, 4.
Missionary Institute at Hermannsburg, § 185, 1.
New Organization of the Catholic Hierarchy in
Holland, § 200, 4.
1855. Sardinian Law about Monasteries, § 204, 1.
Austrian Concordat, § 198, 2.
1857. The Evangelical Alliance in Berlin, § 178, 3.
1858. Disturbances in Baden about Service Book, § 196, 3.
The Mother of God at Lourdes, § 188, 7.
1859. Franco-Austrian War in Italy, § 204, 2.
1860. Persecution of Syrian Christians, § 207, 2.
Abrogation of Baden Concordat, § 196, 2.
1861. The Austrian Patent, § 198, 3.
Introduction of a Constitutional Church Order into
Baden, § 196, 3.
Radama II. in Madagascar, § 184, 3.
Schism among Separatist Lutherans in Prussia,
§ 177, 3.
1862. Hanoverian Catechism Scandal, § 194, 3.
Renan’s Life of Jesus, § 182, 8.
Württemberg Ecclesiastical Law, § 196, 6.
1863. Congress of Catholic Scholars at Munich, § 191, 10.
1864. Encyclical and Syllabus, § 185, 2.
Strauss’ and Schenkel’s Life of Jesus, § 182, 8, 17.
1865. The first _Protestantentag_ at Eisenach, § 180, 1.
1866. Founding of the North German League.
1867. St. Peter’s Centenary Festival at Rome, § 185, 2.
1869. Irish Church Bill, § 202, 10.
Opening of Vatican Council, § 189, 2.
1870. Proclamation of Doctrine of Infallibility, July 18th,
§ 189, 3.
Revocation of the Austrian Concordat. § 198, 2.
Overthrow of the Church States, § 185, 3.
1871. Founding of the new German Empire, January 18th,
§ 197.
The first Old Catholic Congress at Munich, § 190, 1.
“The Kanzelparagraph,” § 197, 4.
First Lutheran National Synod in the kingdom of
Saxony, § 194, 1.
1872. Dr. Falk, Prussian Minister of Worship, § 193, 5.
The Prussian School Inspection Law, § 199, 3.
The Roman Disputation, § 175, 3.
The German Jesuit Law, § 197, 4.
Epidemic of Manifestations of the Mother of God in
Alsace-Lorraine, § 188, 6.
1873. The four Prussian Ecclesiastical Laws, § 197, 5.
Mermillod and Lachat Deposed from office, § 199, 2, 3.
Constitution of Old Catholic Church in German Empire,
§ 190, 1.
1874. The Austrian Ecclesiastical Laws, § 198, 6.
Union Conference at Bonn, § 175, 6.
1875. The Encyclical _Quod numquam_ and the Embargo Act,
§ 197, 8.
Berlin Extraordinary General Synod, § 193, 5.
Pearsall Smith, § 211, 1.
1876. Marpinger Mother-of-God trick, § 188, 7.
The Dutch University Law, § 202, 2.
1878. Leo XIII. ascends the Papal chair, § 185, 5.
Organization of a Catholic Hierarchy in Scotland,
§ 202, 11.
Congress of Berlin, § 207, 5.
Amnesty to the recalcitrant Clergy of the Jura,
§ 199, 3.
First appearance of the Salvation Army, § 205, 2.
1879. The Belgian Liberal Education Act, § 200, 6.
1880. Abolition of the “_Kulturexamen_” in Baden, § 197, 14.
French Decree of March, § 203, 6.
1881. Robertson Smith’s Heresy Case, § 202, 8.
1882. The Confessional Lutheran Conflict with the Ritschlian
School, § 182, 21.
1883. The Luther Jubilee, § 175, 10.
1884. The Belgian Clerical Education Act, § 200, 6.
Conclusion of the “Kulturkampf” in Switzerland,
§ 199, 2, 3.
1887. Prussian and Hessian Governments conclude Peace with
Papal Curia, § 197, 13, 15.
Founding of Evangelical _Bund_, § 178, 5.
INDEX.
Aachen, Council of, § 91, 1, 2.
Aargau, § 199, 1.
Abælard, § 102, 1, 2; 104, 10.
Abbacomites, § 85, 5.
Abbadie, § 161, 7.
Abbate, Abbé, § 111, 2.
Abbo of Fleury, § 100, 2.
Abbot, § 44, 3.
Abbuna, § 52, 7.
Abdas of Susa, § 64, 2.
Abdelmoumen, § 95, 2.
Abderrhamann [Abderrhaman], § 81; 95, 2.
Abdias, § 32, 5.
Abel, von, § 195, 2.
Abelites, § 44, 7.
Abgar Bar Maanu, § 21.
” of Edessa, § 13, 2.
About, E., § 185, 3.
Abraham a St. Clara, § 158, 2.
Abrahamites, § 165, 16.
Abrasax, § 27, 3.
Abrenunciatio diaboli, § 35; 58, 1.
Absolution, Formula of, § 89, 5.
Abstinence, Days of, § 56, 2.
Abulfarajus, § 72, 2.
Abyssinian Church, § 64, 1; 72, 2; 150, 4; 152, 1; 160, 7;
166, 3; 184, 9.
Acacius of Amida, § 64, 2.
Acacius of Constantinople, § 52, 5.
Acceptants, § 165, 7.
Accommodation Controversy, § 156, 12.
Acceptants, § 165, 7.
d’Achery, § 158, 2.
Achterfeld, § 191, 1.
Acindynos, § 69, 2.
Acoimetæ, § 44, 3; 52, 5, 6.
Acolytes, § 34, 3.
Acominatus, § 68, 5.
Acosta, Uriel, § 156, 14.
_Acta facientes_, § 22, 5.
Acta Pilati, § 22, 7; 32, 4.
Acta Sanctorum, § 158, 2.
Acton, Lord, § 189, 2.
Acts of Apostles, Apocryphal, § 32, 5, 6.
Acts of Martyrs, § 32, 8.
Adalbert of Bremen, § 96, 6; 97, 2.
” the Heretic, § 78, 6.
” of Prague, § 93, 13.
” of Tuscany, § 96, 1.
Adam, Book of, § 32, 3.
Adam, St. Victor, § 104, 10.
Adamantius (Origen), § 31, 5.
Adamites, § 27, 8.
” Bohemian, § 116, 5; 210, 2.
Adamnan, § 77, 8.
Addai [Addæi], § 32, 6.
Adeodatus, § 47, 18.
Adiaphorist Controversy, § 141, 5.
Adoptionists, § 91, 1; 102, 6.
Adrianus, § 48, 1.
Adrumetum, § 53, 5.
Advent, § 56, 5.
Adventists, § 211, 11.
Advocatus diaboli, § 104, 8.
” ecclesiæ, § 86.
Aedesius, § 64, 1.
Aelfric, § 100, 1.
Aeneas [Æneas] of Gaza, § 47, 7.
” [Æneas] of Sylvius, _see_ Pius II.
Aeons [Æons], § 26, 2.
Aepinus [Æpinus], § 141, 3.
Aërius, § 62, 2.
_Aeternus [Æternus] ille_, § 149, 4.
Aetius [Aëtius], § 50, 3.
Africa, § 76, 3.
Africanus, § 31, 8.
Agape, § 17, 7; 36, 1.
Agapetæ, § 39, 3.
Agapetus, § 46, 9; 52, 6.
Agathangelos, § 64, 3.
Agatho, § 46, 11; 52, 8.
Agenda Controversy in Prussia, § 177, 1.
Agenum, Synod of, § 50, 3.
Agilulf, § 76, 8.
Agnostics, § 174, 2.
Agobard, § 90, 4, 9; 91, 1; 92, 2.
Agreda, § 156, 5.
Agricola, John, § 141, 1.
” Rudolph, § 120, 3.
Agrippa of Nettesheim, § 146, 2.
Aguas, § 209, 1.
Aguilar, § 209, 1.
Aguirre, § 158, 2.
Ahle, Rud., § 160, 5.
Aidan, § 77, 5.
d’Ailly, § 110, 7; 118, 4; 119, 5.
Aistulf, § 82, 1.
Aizanas, § 64, 1.
Ἀκέφαλοι, § 52, 5.
Ἀκρόασις, § 39, 2.
Ἀκροώμενοι, § 35, 1.
Alacoque, § 156, 6.
Alanus ab Insulis, § 102, 5.
Alaric, § 76, 2.
Alaviv, § 76, 1.
Alba, § 59, 7.
” Duke of, § 136, 3; 139, 12.
_Albati_, § 116, 3.
Alberich, § 96, 1.
Albert the Great, § 103, 5.
” of Apeldern, § 93, 12.
” the Bear, § 93, 9.
” of Buxhöwden, § 93, 12.
” of Franconia-Brandenburg, § 137, 2, 4.
” of Mainz, § 122, 2; 123, 8; 134, 5.
” of Prussia, § 126, 4; 127, 3; 141, 2.
” of Suerbeer, § 73, 6; 93, 12.
Alberti, § 160, 3.
Albigensians, § 109, 1.
Albinus, § 160, 4.
Alboin, § 76, 8.
Albrechtsleute, § 208, 4; 211, 1.
Alcantara, Peter of, § 149, 16.
Alcantarmes [Alcantara], § 98, 8; 149, 6.
Alcibiades, § 40, 1.
Alcuin, § 90, 3; 91, 1, 2; 92, 1.
Aldgild, § 78, 3.
Aleander, § 123, 6, 7.
d’Aleman, Cardinal, § 110, 8; 118, 4.
Alemanni, § 78, 1.
d’Alembert, § 165, 14.
Alexander II., § 96, 6.
” III., § 96, 15, 16.
” IV., § 96, 20.
” V., § 110, 6; 119, 4.
” VI., § 110, 12.
” VII., § 156, 1, 2, 4, 5; 157, 5.
” VIII., § 156, 1, 3.
” I., Czars I., II., III., § 203, 1; 207, 3.
” of Alexandria, § 50, 1.
” ” Antioch, § 50, 8.
” ” Hales, § 103, 4.
” ” Newsky, § 73, 6.
” ” Parma, § 139, 12.
” Severus, § 22, 3.
Alexandrian School, § 31, 4; 47, 2, 3.
Alexis, § 73, 5.
Alexius Comnenus, § 71, 1, 4.
Alfarabi, § 103, 1.
Alfred the Great, § 90, 10.
Algazel, § 103, 1, 2.
Alger of Liege, § 102, 7.
Alkindi, § 103, 1.
Allatius, Leo, § 158, 2.
Allégri, § 158, 3.
Allen, W., § 139, 6.
Allendorf, § 167, 6.
Alliance, The Holy, § 173.
” The Evangelical, § 178, 2.
All Saints’ Day, § 57, 1; 88, 5.
All Souls’ Day, § 104, 7.
Almansor, § 95, 2.
Almohaden [Almohades], § 95, 2.
Almoravides, § 95, 2.
Alms, Dispensers of, § 17, 2.
Alogians, § 33, 2.
Alpers, § 211, 10.
Alphonso the Catholic, § 81, 1.
” the Chaste, § 81, 1.
” of Aragon [Arragon], Castile, and Portugal, § 95, 2.
Alphonso XII., § 205, 3.
Alsace-Lorraine, § 196, 7.
Altar, § 38; 60, 5; 88, 5.
Altenburg, § 194, 2.
Alting, § 160, 7.
Alumbrados, § 149, 16.
Alvarus, § 81, 1; 90, 6.
” Pelagius, § 118, 2.
Alzog, § 5, 6.
Amadeus of Savoy, § 110, 8.
Amalarius, § 90, 4; 91, 5.
Amalrich of Bena, § 108, 4.
Amandus, § 78, 3.
Ambo, § 60, 5.
Ambrose, § 47, 15; 50, 4; 57, 2, 3; 59, 5.
Ambrosian Chant, § 59, 5.
Ambrosiaster, § 47, 15.
Amen Sect, § 211, 8.
America, § 150, 3; 208; 209.
Amesius, § 161, 7; 162, 4.
Amling, § 144, 3.
Ammon, § 182, 2.
Ammonius, § 44, 3.
” Saccas, § 24, 2.
Amort, § 165, 12.
Amsdorf, § 127, 4; 135, 5; 141, 4, 6, 7.
Amulets, § 188, 13.
Amyrald [Amyrault], § 161, 3, 7.
Anabaptists, § 124, 1; 130, 5; 133, 6; 147; 148, 1; 163, 1, 2.
Anacletus I., § 17, 1.
” II., § 96, 13.
Ἀνάδοχαι, § 35, 3.
Ἀναγνώσται, § 34, 3.
Anastasius Biblioth. [ Bibliothecarius], § 90, 6.
” I., § 46, 4; 51, 2.
” II., § 46, 8.
” IV., § 96, 10.
” Sinaita, § 47, 12; 60, 6.
Anathema, § 52, 3.
Anatolius, § 46, 7.
Anchorets, § 44.
Ancyra, Council of, § 50, 3.
Anderledy [Anderlady], § 182, 1.
Anderson, § 139, 1.
Andreä, Jac., § 141, 12.
” Val., § 160, 1.
Andrew II. of Hungary, § 94, 4.
” of Crain, § 110, 11.
” “ Crete, § 70, 2.
Andronicus Paläologus, § 67, 5.
Angela of Brescia, § 149, 7.
Angelicals, § 149, 7.
Angels, Worship of, § 57, 3.
Angelo, Michael, § 115, 13; 149, 15.
Angelus Silesius, § 157, 4; 160, 3.
Angilram [Angilramnus], § 87, 1.
Anglican Church, § 139, 6; 155; 202.
Anglo-Saxon Church, § 77, 4, 5, 6.
Anhalt, Reformation in, § 133, 4; 144, 3.
Anicetus, § 37, 2.
Anjou, § 96, 21, 22.
Ann, Veneration of St., § 57, 2; 115, 1.
Anna of Russia, § 73, 4.
” ” Prussia, § 154, 3.
Annats, § 110, 15.
Anno of Cologne, § 96, 6; 97, 2.
Annunciation, Order of the, § 112, 8.
Anomæans [Anomœans], § 50, 3.
Ansbert [Ausbert] of Milan, § 83, 3.
Ansegis, § 87, 1.
Anselm of Canterbury, § 67, 4; 96, 12; 101, 1, 3.
Anselm of Havelberg, § 67, 4.
” ” Laon, § 101, 1.
” ” Lucca, § 96, 6.
Ansgar, § 80, 1.
Anthimus of Constantinople, § 52, 6.
Anthimus [Anthimos], Exarch, § 207, 3.
Anthony, St., § 44, 1.
” of Padua, § 98, 4.
” Order of St., § 98, 2.
Anthusa, § 47, 1.
Antidicomarianites, § 62, 2.
Ἀντίδωρα, § 58, 4.
Antilegomena, § 36, 8.
Ἀντιμήνσιον, § 60, 5.
Antinomianism, § 27, 8.
Antinomian Controversy, § 141, 1.
Antioch, Council of, § 50, 2.
Antiochean School, § 31, 1; 47, 1; 52, 2.
Antiphonal Music, § 59, 5.
_Antiphonarium_, § 59, 5.
Antitrinitarians, § 148.
Anton of Bourbon, § 139, 14.
Anton Paul, § 159, 3.
Antonelli, § 185, 2, 4; 189, 1; 196, 7; 197.
Antonians, § 207, 2.
Antoninus Pius, § 22, 3.
” [Antonine] of Florence, § 113, 7.
Apelles, § 27, 12.
Aphraates, § 47, 13.
Apiarius, § 46, 5, 6.
Apocrisiarians, § 46, 1.
Apocrypha, Non-Canonical, § 32.
” Deutero-Canonical, § 59, 1; 136, 4.
Apocryphal Controversy, § 161, 8; 183, 4.
Apollinaris, § 47, 5; 52, 1.
” Claudius, § 30, 8.
Apollonius of Tyana, § 24, 1.
Apollos, § 18, 3.
Apologists, Early Christian, § 30, 8.
Apology of Augsburg Confession, § 132, 7.
Apostles of the Lord, §§ 14-16.
Apostles, New Testament Office of, § 17, 5; 37, 1.
Apostles, Teaching of XII., § 30, 7.
Apostles, Doctrine of the, § 18, 2.
Apostles’ Creed, § 35, 2; 59, 2.
Apostolic Age, Beginning and Close of, § 14.
Apostolic Church, Constitution of, § 17.
Apostolic Epistles, § 32, 7.
” Fathers, § 30, 3-6.
” Constitutions and Canons, § 43, 4.
Apostolics, § 62, 1.
Appellants, § 165, 7.
_Appellatio ab abusu_, § 185, 4; 192, 4; 197, 9.
Appenfeller, § 170, 4.
Apse, § 60, 1.
Aquarii, § 27, 10.
Aquaviva, § 149, 8, 10, 12; 156, 13.
Arabia, § 21.
Arbues [Arbires], § 117, 2.
Arcadius, Emperor, § 42, 4; 51, 3.
Archbishop, § 46, 1.
Arch-chaplain, § 84, 1.
Archdeacon, § 45, 3; 84, 2; 97, 3.
Archelaus of Cascar, § 29, 1.
Archimandrite, § 44, 3.
Architecture, § 60, 1; 88, 6; 104, 12; 115, 13; 149, 15;
158, 3; 174, 9.
Archpresbyter, § 45, 3.
Areopagite, Dionysius the, § 47, 11.
Arialdus [Ariald], § 97, 5.
Arians, § 50; 76.
Aribert, § 76, 8.
Aristides, § 30, 8.
Aristobulus, § 10, 1.
Ariston of Pella, § 30, 8.
Aristotle, § 7, 4; 68, 2; 103, 1.
Arius, § 50, 1, 2.
Arles, Synod at, § 50, 2.
Armenian Church, § 64, 3; 72, 2; 82, 8; 207, 4.
Arminians, § 161, 2.
Arnaud, § 153, 4.
Arnauld, § 157, 5.
Arndt, E. M., § 174, 6; 181, 1.
” John, § 160, 1.
Arno of Salzburg, § 79, 1.
” ” Reichersberg, § 102, 6, 7.
Arnobius, § 31, 12,
” the Younger, § 53, 5.
Arnold of Brescia, § 96, 13.
” ” Citeaux, § 109, 1.
” the Dominican, § 108, 6.
” Gottfried, § 5, 3; 159, 4; 160, 2, 4.
Arnoldi, Bishop, § 187, 6.
Arnoldists, § 108, 7.
Arnulf of Carinthia, § 82, 8.
” ” Rheims, § 96, 2.
Arran, Earl of, § 139, 8.
Ars Magna, § 103, 7.
” Moriendi, § 115, 5.
Arsacius, § 51.
Arsenius, § 70, 1.
Art, Early Christian and Mediæval, § 38, 3; 60.
Artemon, § 33, 3.
Articles of English Church, The XXXIX., § 139, 6.
Articles, Organic, § 203, 1.
Artotyrites, § 40, 4.
Ascension, Festival of, § 56, 4.
” of Mary, § 32, 4; 57, 2.
Asceticism, § 39, 3; 44, 6; 70, 3; 107.
Aschaffenberg [Aschaffenburg] Concord, § 110, 8.
Ash Wednesday, § 56, 4.
Asia Minor, Theological School of, § 31, 1.
Asinarii, § 23, 2.
Asseburg, § 170, 1.
Assemani, § 165, 12.
Assenath, § 32, 3.
Asses, Feast of, § 105, 2.
Asterius, § 50, 6.
” of Amasa, § 57, 4.
Astruc, § 165, 11.
Asylum, Right of, § 43, 1.
Athanaric, § 76.
Athanasian Creed, § 59, 2.
Athanasius, § 44; 47, 3; 50; 52, 2.
Athenagoras, § 30, 10.
Athos, Monks of Mount, § 70, 3; 69, 1.
_Atrium_, § 60, 1.
Attila, § 46, 7.
Atto of Vercelli, § 100, 2.
d’Aubigné, Merle, § 178, 2.
” Th. A., § 139, 17.
Audians, § 62, 1.
_Audientes_, § 35, 1.
_Audientia episc._, § 43, 1.
Augsburg Confession, § 132, 7.
Augsburg Religious Peace, § 137, 5.
Augustus of Saxony, § 141, 12.
Augusta, § 139, 19.
Augusti, § 182, 5.
Augustine, § 47, 18, 19; 53, 2-5; 54, 1; 61, 1, 4; 63, 1.
Augustine, Missionary to England, § 77, 4.
Augustinus Triumphus, § 118, 2.
Augustinian Order, § 98, 6; 112, 5.
August Conference, § 179, 1.
Aurelian, Emperor, § 22, 5; 33, 8.
” Bishop, § 63, 1.
Auricular Confession, § 61, 1; 104, 4.
Aurifaber, § 129, 1.
_Ausculta fili_, § 110, 1.
Australia, § 184, 7; 202, 12.
Austria, § 165, 9; 190, 3; 198.
Autbert, § 81, 1.
Auto al nasciemento, § 115, 12.
” de fé, § 117, 2.
” sacramentale, § 115, 12.
Autocephalic Bishops, § 46, 1.
Auxentius of Dorostorus, § 76, 1.
” of Milan, § 47, 14.
Avars, § 79, 1.
Avenarius, § 142, 6.
Aventin [Aventinus], § 120, 3.
Averrhoes [Averroes], § 103, 1, 2.
Avicenna, § 103, 1, 2.
Avignon, § 110, 2-5.
Avitus, § 53, 5; 76, 5.
Azimites [Azymites], § 67, 3.
Baader, Francis, § 175, 5; 187, 3; 191, 2.
Baanes, § 71, 1.
Babäus, § 52, 3.
Babeuf, § 212, 1.
Babylonian Exile of Popes, § 110, 2-5.
Bach, Sebastian, § 167, 7.
Bacon, Roger, § 103, 8.
Bacon, Lord Verulam, § 164, 1.
Baden, § 196, 2, 3; 197, 13.
Bahrdt, § 170, 4, 7.
Baius, Michael, § 149, 13.
Bajazet, § 110, 11.
Baläus, § 48, 7.
Balde, Jac., § 158, 3.
Baldwin of Jerusalem, § 94, 1; 98, 7.
” of Flanders, § 94, 4.
” the Heretic, § 108, 4.
Balsamon, § 68, 5.
Balthazar of Fulda, § 151, 2.
Baltic Provinces of Russia, § 139, 3; 206, 3.
Baltimore, Lord, § 208, 5.
Baltzer, § 191, 1, 3.
Baluzius, § 158, 2.
Bampfield, § 163, 3.
Ban, § 89, 6; 106, 1.
Bañez, § 149, 13.
Bangor, § 85, 4.
Baphomet, § 112, 7.
Baptism, § 35, 2-4; 58, 1, 4; 141, 13.
Baptismal Font, § 60, 4; 88, 5.
_Baptismus Clinicorum_, § 35, 3.
Baptists, § 163, 3; 170, 6; 208, 1; 211, 3.
Baptistries, § 60, 4.
Bär, David, § 170, 4.
Baradai, § 52, 7.
Barbatianus, § 62, 2.
Barbs, § 108, 10.
Barckhausen, § 169, 1.
Barclay, § 163, 5.
Bar-Cochba, § 25.
Bardesanes, § 27, 5.
Barefooted Friars, § 98, 3; 149, 6.
Bar Hanina, § 47, 15.
Bar Hebræus, § 72, 2.
Bari, Synod at, § 67, 4.
Barkers, § 170, 7.
Barlaam, § 67, 5; 69, 2.
Barlaam and Josaphat, § 68, 6.
Barletta, § 115, 2.
Barnabas, § 14; 30, 4.
Barnabites, § 149, 7.
Barnim, § 133, 4.
Baronius, § 5, 2; 149, 14.
Barriere [Barrière], § 149, 6.
Barrow, § 143, 4.
Barsumas, § 52, 3.
Bartholomew, Massacre of St., § 139, 16.
Bartholomew of Pisa, § 98, 3.
Bartolemeo [Bartolomeo], Fra, § 115, 13.
Basedow, § 171, 4.
Basel, § 130, 3, 8; 196, 4.
” Council of, § 110, 8, 9; 119, 7.
Basil the Great, § 44; 47, 4; 59, 6.
” chief of Bogomili, § 71, 4.
” of Ancyra, § 50, 3.
” the Macedonian, § 67, 1; 68, 1; 71, 1; 73, 1.
Basilica, § 60, 1, 2.
Basilicus, § 139, 26.
Basilides, the Gnostic, § 27, 2.
” the Martyr, § 22, 4.
Basnage, § 5, 2; 161, 7.
Basrelief [Bas-relief], § 60, 6.
Bassi, § 149, 6.
Bathori, Steph., § 139, 18.
Bauer, Bruno, § 174, 1; 182, 6.
” Lor., § 171, 7.
Baumgarten-Crusius, § 182, 4.
” M., § 180, 1; 194, 6.
” Sigism. Jac., § 167, 4.
Baumstark, § 175, 7.
Baur, Chr. F., § 182, 7; 5, 4.
” Gust., § 194, 1.
Bautain, § 91, 1.
Bavaria, § 78, 2; 151, 2; 165, 10; 195; 197, 14.
Bavo, § 78, 3.
Baxter, § 162, 3.
Bayle, § 164, 4.
Bayly, Lewis, § 162, 3.
Beatification, § 104, 8.
Beaton, § 139, 8.
Beaumont, § 165, 7.
Bebel, § 212, 5.
Bebenburg, § 118, 2.
Beccus, § 67, 4.
Beck, Tob., § 182, 12.
Becket, § 96, 16.
Bede, The Venerable, § 90, 2.
Beethoven, § 174, 10.
Begging Friars, § 98, 3-6; 103, 3-6; 112, 2-6.
Beghards and Beguins [Beguines], § 98, 7; 116, 5.
Bekker, Balthaz., § 161, 5.
Belgium, § 200, 4-7.
Bellarmine, § 149, 4, 10, 14.
Beller, Card., § 188, 13.
Bellini, § 115, 13.
Bells, § 60, 5.
” Baptism of, § 88, 5.
Βῆμα, § 60, 1.
Bembo, § 120, 1.
Benard [Bernard], Lor., § 156, 7.
Bender, § 176, 4.
Benedetto of Mantova, § 139, 23.
Benedict III., § 82, 5.
” V., § 96, 1.
” VI., VII., § 96, 2.
” VIII., IX., 96, 4.
” X., § 96, 6.
” XI., § 110, 1.
” XII., § 110, 4; 67, 5; 112, 1.
” XIII., XIV., § 165, 1.
” of Aniane, § 85, 2.
” Levita, § 87, 1.
” of Nursia, § 85, 1.
Benedictines, § 85; 98, 1; 112, 1; 186, 2.
Benedict Medal, § 188, 13.
Benefice System, § 86, 2.
Bengel, § 167, 3.
Benno of Meissen, § 93, 9; 129, 1.
Berengar, § 101, 1, 2.
Berengar, I., II., § 96, 1.
Berg, John, § 153, 7.
” Book of, § 141, 12.
Berlage, § 188, 6.
Berleburger [Berleburg] Bible, § 170, 1.
Bern, § 130, 4; 199, 3, 4.
Bernard of Clairvaux, § 102, 2, 3; 94, 2; 96, 13; 104, 10;
108, 2, 3, 7; 109.
Bernard the Missionary, § 93, 10.
” Sylvester, § 102, 9.
” de Saisset, § 110, 1.
” Tolomei, § 112, 1.
Bernardino of Siena, § 112, 3.
Bernardines, § 98, 1.
Berno of Clugny, § 98, 1.
Berruyer, § 165, 14.
Bertha, § 77, 4.
Bertheau, § 182, 11.
Berthold of Limoges, § 98, 6.
” of Loccum, § 93, 12.
” of Regensburg, § 104, 1.
” Leonard, § 171, 7.
Berti, § 165, 15.
Bertrada, § 96, 10.
Bertrand de Got, § 110, 2.
Berylle [Barylla], Pet., § 156, 7.
Beryllus, § 33, 6.
Bespopowtschini, § 163, 10.
Bessarion, § 67, 6; 68, 2; 120, 1.
Besser, § 181, 4.
Bestmann, § 182, 21.
Bethel, § 183, 1.
Bethman [Bethmann]-Hollweg, § 193, 4.
Beuggen, § 183, 1.
Beust, von, § 198, 2, 4.
Beyschlag, § 182, 10.
Beza, § 138, 8; 139, 14; 143, 2, 5.
Bianchi, § 116, 3.
Bible Societies, § 183, 4; 185, 1.
” Communists, § 211, 6.
” Revision, § 181, 4.
” Translations, § 37, 1; 59, 1; 115, 4.
Bible reading forbidden, § 105, 3; 185, 1.
_Biblia pauperum_, § 115, 3.
Bickell, § 194, 4.
Biedermann, § 182, 19.
Biel, Gebr [Gabriel], § 113, 3.
Bienemann, § 142, 4.
Bilderdijk, § 200, 2.
Billicanus, § 122, 2.
Bilocation, § 105, 4.
Bingham, § 169, 6.
Bischof, Conrad, § 175, 2.
Bishops, § 17, 5; 34, 2; 45; 84; 97.
” Election of, § 34, 3; 45; 84; 97, 3.
Bishops’ Bible, § 202, 1.
” Paragraph, § 197, 11, 12.
Bismarck, § 197; 212, 5.
Bittner, § 175, 2.
Blackburne, § 171, 1.
Blahoslaw, § 139, 19.
Blanc, Louis, § 212, 1.
Blandina, § 22, 3.
Blandrata, § 148, 3.
Blasilla, § 44, 4.
Blastus, § 37, 2.
Blau, Dr., § 165, 13.
Blaurer, § 125, 1; 133, 3; 143, 2.
Blaurock, § 147, 3.
Blavatski [Blavatsky], § 211, 18.
Bleek, § 182, 11.
Blondel, § 161, 7.
Blood vases, § 35, 2.
” baptism, § 35, 4.
” revenge, § 88, 5.
Bloody Marriage, § 139, 16.
Blot-Sweyn, § 93, 3.
Blount, § 168, 3.
Blue Ribbon Army, § 211, 2.
Blum, Bishop, § 197, 6, 11.
Blumhardt, § 196, 5.
Bluntschli, § 180, 1; 196, 3.
Boabdil, § 95.
Bobadilla, § 149, 8.
Bobbio, § 78, 1; 85, 4.
Boccaccio, § 115, 10.
Bochart, § 161, 6.
Bodelschwingh, § 183, 1.
Bodin, § 117, 4; 148, 3.
Boeckh, § 181, 3.
Boethius [Boëthius], § 47, 23.
Bogatzky [Bogatsky], § 167, 6, 8.
Bogomili, § 71, 4.
Bogoris, § 72, 3.
Böhl v. Faber, § 174, 7.
Böhme, Jacob, § 160, 2.
” Mart., § 142, 4.
Bohemia, § 79, 3; 93, 6; 139, 19; 153, 2.
Bohemian Brethren, § 119, 8; 139, 19.
Böhmer, § 167, 5.
Böhringer, § 5, 4.
Bois, Professor, § 203, 8.
Bolanden, Cour. v., § 175, 2.
Boleslaw of Poland, § 93, 7.
” ” Bohemia, § 93, 6.
” Chrobry, § 93, 7.
Boleyn, Anne, § 139, 4.
Bolingbroke, § 170, 1.
Bolivia, § 209, 2.
Bollandists, § 158, 2.
Bolsec, § 138, 3.
Bolsena, Mass of, § 104, 7.
Bomberg, § 120, 9.
Bomelius, § 125, 2.
Bona, § 158, 2.
Bonald, § 188, 1.
Bonaventura, § 103, 4; 104, 10.
Boniface, Apostle of Germany, § 78, 4-8.
” I., § 46, 6.
” II., § 46, 8.
” III., IV., § 46, 10.
” VI., § 82, 8.
” VII., § 96, 2.
” VIII., § 110, 1; 99, 4; 117, 1.
” IX., § 110, 6; 117, 2.
_Boni homines_, § 108, 2.
Bonner, Bp., § 139, 4, 5.
Bonosus, § 62, 2.
Book of Discipline, § 139, 9.
Boos, Mart., § 187, 2.
Booth, General, § 211, 2.
Bordelum, Sectaries at, § 170, 4.
Borgia, § 110, 10, 12.
” Francis, § 149, 8.
Borromeo, § 149, 17; 151, 2.
” Society, § 186, 4.
Borsenius, § 170, 4.
Boruth, § 79, 1.
Borziwoi, § 79, 3.
Bosio, Ant., § 38, 1.
Boso, § 95, 3.
Bossuet, § 5, 2; 153, 7; 156, 3; 157, 3; 158, 2.
Bost, Pastor, § 156, 1.
Bothwell, § 139, 10.
Bourdaloue, § 159, 2.
Bourgos, Pragmatic Sanction of, § 110, 9.
Bourignon, § 157, 4.
Bouthillier de Rancé, § 156, 8.
Boyle, § 164, 3.
Bradacz, M. v., § 119, 8.
Bradwardine, § 113, 2.
Braga, Syn. of, § 76, 4.
Brakel, § 169, 2.
Bramante, § 115, 3; 149, 15.
Brandenburg, § 134, 5; 154, 3.
Brandt, § 181, 4.
Braniss, § 174, 2.
Brant, Seb., § 115, 11.
Braun, Hermesian, § 191, 1.
Brazil, § 150, 3; 209, 3.
Breckling, § 163, 9.
Breithaupt, § 159, 3.
Breitinger, § 162, 6.
Bremen, § 127, 4; 144, 2.
Brendel, § 151, 1.
Brentano, § 188, 3.
Brenz, § 131, 1; 133, 3; 141, 8; 142, 2, 6.
Brest, Synod of, § 72, 4; 151, 3.
Brethren, The four long, § 51, 3.
” of the Free Spirit, § 116, 5.
” of the Common Life, § 112, 9.
” Bohemian and Moravian, § 119, 7.
” The United, § 168.
Bretschneider, § 174, 3; 182, 2.
Bretwalda, § 77, 4.
Breviary, § 56, 2; 149, 14.
Briçonnet, § 120, 8; 138, 1.
Bridaine, § 158, 1.
Bridge-Brothers, § 98, 9.
Bridget, St., § 110, 5; 112, 4, 8.
Bridgewater Treatises, § 174, 3.
Brief, Papal, § 110, 16.
Briesmann, § 139, 3.
Brinckerinck, § 112, 9.
Brinkmann, § 197, 6, 11.
Britons, Ancient, § 77.
Broad Churchmen, § 202, 1.
Broglie, Duc de, § 203, 5, 6.
” Bishop, § 200, 1.
Brothers of the Common Life, § 112, 9.
” of Mercy, § 149, 7.
” of the Free Spirit, § 116, 5.
Brown, Archbishop, of Dublin, § 139, 7.
” Rob. (Brownist), § 143, 4.
” Thomas, § 164, 3.
Bruccioli, § 115, 4.
Brück, Dr., § 132, 7.
Brucker, Jac., § 167, 8.
Bruggeler, Sectaries, § 170, 4.
Brunehilde [Brunehilda], § 77, 7; 46, 10.
Bruneleschi, § 115, 13.
Bruno of Cologne, § 97, 2.
” the Missionary, § 93, 13.
” of Rheims, § 98, 2.
” of Toul, § 96, 5.
” Giordano, § 146, 3.
Brunswick, § 127, 4; 135, 6; 194, 5.
Bucer, § 122, 2; 124, 3; 131, 1; 133, 8; 135, 1, 3, 7; 139, 5.
Buchel, Anna v., § 170, 4.
Buchführer, § 128, 1.
Büchner, § 174, 3.
Budæus [Buddæus], § 120, 8.
Buddeus, § 167, 1, 4.
Buffalo Synod, § 208, 4.
Bugenhagen, § 125, 1; 127, 4; 133, 4; 139, 2; 142, 2.
Bülau, § 139, 3.
Bulgaria, § 67, 1; 73, 3; 175, 4; 207, 3.
_Bulgari_, § 108, 1.
Bulls, Papal, § 110, 16.
Bull, The Golden, § 97, 2; 110, 4.
Bullinger, § 133, 8; 138, 7; 161, 4.
Bunsen, § 181, 1, 4; 182, 17; 198, 1.
Bunyan, § 162, 3.
Büren, § 144, 2.
Burgundians, § 76, 5.
Burmann, § 161, 7.
Burnet, Bishop, § 161, 3.
Bursfeld, Congregation of, § 112, 1.
Busch, John, § 112, 1.
Busembaum, § 158, 1; 149, 10.
Buttlar Sectaries, § 170, 4.
Butter week, § 56, 7.
Buxhöwden, § 93, 12.
Buxtorf, § 161, 3, 6.
Byron, § 174, 7.
Byse, § 200, 8.
Caballero, § 174, 7.
Cabasilas, § 68, 5; 70, 4.
Cabet, § 212, 3.
Cabrera, § 205, 4.
Cadan, Peace of, § 133, 3.
Cæcilius, § 63, 1.
Cædmon, § 89, 3.
Cæsarius of Arles, § 47, 20; 53, 5; 61, 4.
” of Heisterbach, § 103, 9.
Cainites, § 27, 6.
Caius, § 31, 7; 33, 9.
Cajetan, Card., § 122, 3.
” of Thiene, § 149, 7.
Calas, § 165, 5.
Calatrava, Order of, § 98, 8.
Calderon, § 158, 3.
Calendar Reform, § 149, 3.
Calixt, Geo., § 153, 7; 159, 2, 4.
Calixtines, § 119, 7.
Calixtus II., § 96, 11.
” III., § 96, 15; 110, 10.
Callinice, § 71, 1.
Callistus, § 33, 5; 41, 1.
Calmet, § 165, 14.
Calov, § 153, 7; 159, 2, 4, 5; 160, 2.
Calvin, § 138; 143, 5.
Camaldulensian Order, § 98, 1.
_Camera Romana_, § 110, 16.
Camerarius, § 142, 6.
Camisards, § 153, 4.
Campanella, § 164, 1.
Campanus, § 148, 1.
Campbellites, § 170, 6.
Campe, § 171, 4.
Campegius, § 126, 2, 3; 132, 6.
Campello, § 190, 3.
Camp-Meeting, § 208, 1.
_Cancellaria Romana_, § 110, 16.
Canisius, § 149, 14; 151, 1.
” Society, § 186, 4.
Canon, Biblical, § 36, 8; 59, 1.
” of the Mass, § 59, 5.
” in Music, § 115, 8.
” Law, § 43, 2.
_Canones Apostt._, § 43, 4.
Canonesses, § 85, 3.
Canonical Age, § 45, 1.
” Life, § 84, 4; 97, 3.
_Canonici_, § 84, 4; 97, 3.
Canossa, § 96, 8.
Canova, § 174, 9.
Canstein, § 167, 8.
_Cantores_, § 34, 3.
_Cantus Ambros._, § 59, 5.
_Cantus_ figuratus, § 104, 11.
” firmus, § 59, 5.
Canute the Great, § 93, 2, 4.
Canus, § 149, 14.
Canz, § 167, 2.
Capistran, § 112, 3.
Capito, § 124, 3; 130, 3; 131, 1.
_Capitula Carisiaca_, § 91, 5.
” _Clausa_, § 111.
” _episcoporum_, § 87, 1.
Capitularies, § 87, 1.
Cappadocians, The Three, § 47, 5.
Cappadose, § 200, 2.
Cappel, Peace of, § 130, 9, 10.
Cappellus, § 161, 3, 6.
Capuchins, § 149, 6.
Caraccioli, § 139, 24.
Caraffa, § 149, 2, 7; 139, 22, 23.
Carantanians, § 79, 1.
Carbeas, § 71, 1.
Cardale, § 211, 10.
Cardinals, § 97, 1.
Carey, § 172, 5.
Carl, Dr., § 170, 1.
Carlomann, § 78, 5.
Carlstadt, § 122, 4; 124, 1, 3; 131, 1; 139, 2.
Carmelites, § 98, 6; 149, 6.
Carnesecchi, § 139, 22, 23.
Carnival, § 56, 4; 105, 2.
Carpentarius, § 128, 1.
Carpocrates, § 27, 8.
Carpov, § 167, 4.
Carpzov, J. B., § 117, 4, 158, 3; 167, 1.
Carpzov, J. G., § 167, 4.
Carranza, § 139, 21.
Carrasco, § 205, 4.
Carthusians, § 98, 2; 112.
las Casas, § 150, 3.
Casimir of Berleburg, § 170.
” ” Brunswick, § 126, 4.
Cassander, § 137, 8.
Cassel, Religious Conference of, § 154, 4.
Cassianus, § 44, 4; 47, 21; 53, 5.
Cassiodorus, § 47, 23.
Castellio, § 138, 4; 143, 5.
Castellus, § 161, 6.
Castelnau, Pet. v., § 109, 1.
Casuists, § 113, 4.
Casula, § 59, 7.
Catacombs, § 38, 1-3.
Cataphrygians, § 40, 1.
Catechetical School, § 31, 1.
Catechism, Heidelberg, § 144, 1.
” Luther’s, § 127, 1.
Catechisms, § 115, 5.
Catechismus Genevensis, § 138, 2.
” Romanus, § 149, 14.
Catechoumens, § 35, 1.
_Catenæ_, § 48, 1.
Cathari, § 108, 1.
Catharine of Aragon [Arragon], § 139, 4.
” Bora, § 129.
” de Medici, § 139, 13 ff.
” II. of Russia, § 165, 9.
” St., of Sweden, § 112, 8.
” of Siena, § 112, 4; 110, 5, 6.
Cathedral, § 84, 4.
” Schools, § 90, 8.
Catholicus, § 52, 7.
Catholicity, § 20, 2; 34, 7.
Cave, § 161, 7.
Celbes, § 28, 4.
Celibacy, § 39, 3; 45, 2; 84, 3; 96, 7; 111, 1; 187, 4.
Cellites, § 116, 3.
Celsus, § 23, 3.
Celtes, Conrad, § 120, 3.
Celtic Church, § 77.
Cemeteries, § 38; 60, 2.
Cencius, § 96, 7.
Centuries, The Magdeburg, § 5, 2.
Ceolfrid, § 77, 3, 8.
Cerdo, § 27, 11.
Cerinthus, § 17, 3; 27, 1.
Cesarini, § 110, 7.
Cesena, § 112, 2.
Cevennes, Prophets of the, § 153, 4; 170, 2, 7.
Chaila, du, § 153, 4.
Chalcedon, Council of, § 46, 1, 7; 52, 4.
Chaldean Christians, § 52, 3; 72, 1; 150, 4.
Chalmers, § 178, 2; 202, 7.
Chalybæus, § 174, 2.
_Chambre ardente_, § 139, 13.
Chamier, § 161, 7.
Chandler, § 171, 1.
Channing, § 208, 4.
Chantal, § 156, 7; 157, 1.
Chapels, § 84, 1, 2.
Chaplain, § 84, 1, 2.
Chapter of Cathedral, § 84, 4; 97, 2; 111.
Chapters, Controversy of the three, § 52, 6.
Charlemagne, § 78, 9; 79, 1; 81, 1; 82, 2, 3; 89, 2; 90, 1;
92, 1.
Charles of Anjou, § 96, 20-22.
” the Bald, § 82, 4, 5, 8; 90, 1.
” Martel, § 81; 82, 1.
” IV., Emperor, § 110, 4, 5; 117, 2.
” VII. of France, § 110, 9.
” V., Emperor, § 123, 5.
” I., II. of England, § 153, 6; 155, 1, 3.
” IX. of France, § 139, 14-16.
” IX. of Sweden, § 139, 1.
” XII. of Sweden, § 165, 4.
” Albert of Sardinia, § 204, 1.
” Felix of Sardinia, § 204, 1.
” Alexander of Württemberg, § 165, 5.
” Theodore of Bavaria, § 165, 10.
” of Lorraine, Cardinal, § 139, 13; 149, 2, 17.
Charisms, § 17, 1.
Chastel, § 5, 5.
Chateaubriand, § 174, 7.
Chatel, Abbé, § 187, 6.
Chatimar, § 79, 1.
Chazari, § 73, 2.
Chemnitz, § 141, 2, 12; 142, 2, 6.
Cherbury, § 164, 3.
Children, The Praying, § 167, 1.
” Baptism of, § 17, 7; 35, 4; 58, 1.
Children’s Communion, § 36, 3; 58, 4.
Children’s Crusade, § 94, 4.
Chili, § 209, 2.
Chiliasm, § 33, 9; 40, 4; 108, 5; 162, 1; 211, 7.
Chillingworth, § 161, 3.
China, § 93, 15; 150, 1; 156, 12; 165, 3; 184, 6; 186, 7.
Chinese Rites, § 156, 12.
Choir, § 60, 1.
Chorale, § 142, 5; 160, 5; 181, 2.
_Chorepiscopi_, § 34, 3; 45; 84; 97, 3.
Choristers, § 97, 3.
_Chorisantes_, § 116, 2.
Chosroes, § 11; 64, 2.
Chrism, § 35, 4.
Christ, Order of, § 112, 8.
Christian Association (German), § 172, 5.
Christian, Bishop, § 93, 13.
” II., III. of Denmark, § 139, 2.
Christian Baptists, § 170, 6; 208, 1.
Christina of Sweden, § 153, 1.
Christopher of Württemberg, § 133, 3.
_Christo sacrum_, § 172, 4.
Χριστὸς πάσχων, § 48, 5.
Chrodegang of Metz, § 48, 4.
_Chronicon paschale_, § 48, 2.
Chrysolaras, § 120, 1.
Chrysologus, § 47, 17.
Chrysostom, § 47, 8; 51, 3; 53, 1.
Chubb, § 171, 1.
Churches, § 38.
Church Army, § 211, 2.
” Discipline, § 39; 61; 89, 6; 106.
” History, Idea, Periods, Sources, etc., of, §§ 1-5.
” Law, Catholic, § 43, 3-5; 68, 5; 87; 99, 5.
” Law, Protestant, § 167, 5.
” Property, § 45, 4; 86, 1; 96, 15.
” States, § 82, 1; 185, 3.
” Year, § 56, 6.
Chytræus, § 141, 12; 142, 6.
_Ciborium_, § 60, 5.
Cilicium, § 106.
Cimabue, § 104, 14.
Circumcelliones, § 63, 1.
Cistercians, § 98, 1.
Ciudad, § 147, 7.
Clara of Assisi, § 98, 3.
” Nuns of St., § 98, 3.
Clarendon, Council at, § 96, 16.
Clarke, Sam., § 171, 1.
_Classes_, § 143, 1.
Classical Synods, § 143, 1.
Claude, § 161, 3, 7.
Claudius Apollinaris, § 30, 4.
” I., Emperor, § 22, 1.
” II., ” § 22, 5.
” of Savoy, § 148, 3.
” ” Turin, § 90, 4; 92, 2.
” Matthias, § 171, 11.
Clausen, § 201, 1.
Clemangis, § 110, 3; 118, 4.
Clemens, F. J., § 191, 3.
Clement of Alexandria, § 31, 4.
” of Rome, § 30, 3.
” II., § 96, 4, 5.
” III., § 96, 8, 16.
” IV., § 96, 20; 103, 8.
” V., § 110, 2; 112, 7.
” VI., § 110, 4, 5.
” VII., § 110, 6; 126, 2; 132, 2; 149, 1.
” VIII., § 110, 7; 149, 2, 13, 14.
” IX., X., § 156, 1.
” XI., § 165, 1, 7.
” XIII., XIV., § 165, 9.
” a Heretic of Britain, § 78, 6.
Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, § 28, 3, 4.
_Clementinæ_, § 99, 5.
Cleomenes, § 33, 5.
Clergy, § 34, 4.
_Clerici vagi_, § 84, 2.
_Clericis laicos_, § 110, 1.
Clericus, § 169, 6.
Clermont, Synod at, § 94; 96, 7.
Climacus, § 47, 12.
_Clinici_, § 34, 3; 45, 1.
Cloister Schools, § 90, 8.
Cloots, Anach., § 165, 12.
Clothilda, § 76, 5, 9.
Clovis, § 76, 9.
Clugny, § 98, 1; 165, 2.
Cluniacs, § 98, 1.
Cocceius, § 161, 4, 6; 162, 5.
Cochlæus, § 129, 1; 135, 10.
Cock, H. de, § 200, 2.
Codde, § 165, 8.
Codex Alexandrinus, § 152, 2.
” Sinaiticus, § 182, 11.
Cœlestine I., § 46, 1; 52, 3; 53, 4.
” II., § 96, 13.
” III., § 96, 16.
” IV., § 96, 19.
” V., § 96, 22.
Cœlestines, § 98, 2.
” Eremites, § 98, 4.
Cœlestius, § 53, 4.
Cœlicolæ, § 42, 6.
Cœnobites, § 44.
Coisi, § 77, 4.
Coke, § 169, 4.
Colani, § 203, 8.
Colenso, § 202, 4.
Coleridge, § 202, 1.
Colet, § 120, 6, 7.
_Colidei_, § 77, 8.
Coligny, § 139, 14, 16; 143, 6.
_Collatio cum Donatist._, § 63, 1.
_Collegia philobibl._, § 159, 3.
” _pietatis_, § 159, 3.
Collegial System, § 167, 5.
Collegiants, § 163, 1.
Collegiate Foundations, § 84, 4.
_Collegium caritativum_, § 169, 1.
” _Germanicum_, § 151, 1.
” _Helveticum_, § 151, 2.
Collenbusch, § 172, 3.
Collins, § 171, 1.
Collyridian Nuns, § 57, 2.
Colman, § 77, 6.
Cologne, Cathedral of, § 104, 13.
” Conflict of, § 190, 1.
” Reformation of, § 135, 7; 136, 2; 137, 7.
Colombière, § 156, 6.
Colonna, § 110, 1, 3.
” Vittoria, § 139, 22.
Columba, § 77, 2.
Columbanus, § 77, 7.
Columbus, § 116.
Comenius, § 163, 9; 168, 2.
_Comes Hieron._, § 59, 3.
Commendatory Abbots, § 85, 5; 111, 2.
Commodian, § 31, 12; 33, 9.
Commodus, § 22, 2.
Common Prayer, Book of, § 139, 5, 6.
_Communicatio idiomatum_, § 141, 9.
Communism, § 211, 6; 212, 1.
Compact, The Basel, § 119, 7.
Competentes, § 35, 1.
Compiegne, Diet of, § 82, 4.
Composition, § 89, 5, 6.
Compromise, Belgian, § 139, 12.
Comte, § 174, 2; 210, 1.
Concha, § 60, 1.
_Concilium Germanicum_, § 78, 5.
Conclave, § 96, 21.
Concomitantia, § 105, 1.
Concord of Wittenberg, § 133, 8.
” Formula of, § 141, 12.
Concordat of Austria, § 198, 2.
” ” Baden, § 196, 2.
” ” Bavaria, § 195, 1.
” ” France, § 203, 1.
” ” Holland, § 200, 1.
” ” Portugal, § 205, 5.
” ” Prussia, § 193, 1.
” ” Spain, § 205, 1.
” ” Upper Rhine, § 196, 1.
” ” Vienna, § 110, 7.
” ” Worms, § 96, 5.
” ” Württemberg, § 96, 5.
Condé, § 139, 14, 16, 17.
” Louise de, § 186, 2.
Conference, Evangelical, § 178, 4.
_Confessio_, § 57, 1.
Confession, § 36, 3; 61, 1; 89, 6; 104, 4.
_Confessio Augustana_, § 132, 7.
” ” _Variata_, § 141, 4, 7.
” _Belgica_, § 139, 12.
” _Bohemica_, § 139, 19.
” _Czengeriana_, § 139, 20.
” _Gallicana_, § 139, 14.
” _Hafnica_, § 139, 2.
” _Helvetica_ I., § 133, 8.
” ” II., § 138, 7.
” _Hungarica_, § 139, 20.
” _Marchica_, § 154, 3.
” _Saxonica_, § 136, 8.
” _Scotica_, § 139, 9.
” _Sigismundi_, § 154, 3.
” _Tetrapolit._, § 132, 7.
Confession, Westminster, § 155, 1.
” Württemberg, § 136, 8.
_Confessores_, § 22, 5; 39, 2, 5.
Confirmation, § 35, 4; 139, 19; 167, 2.
_Confutatio Conf. August._, § 132, 7.
Congregatio de auxiliis, § 149, 13.
” _de propag. fides_, § 156, 9.
Congregationalists, § 143, 4; 162, 1; 202, 5.
Congregations, § 98, 1; 186, 2.
Conon, Pope, § 46, 11.
Cononites, § 57, 2.
Conrad I., Emperor, § 96, 1.
” II., § 96, 4.
” III., § 96, 13; 94, 2.
” IV., § 96, 20.
” of Hochsteden, § 104, 13.
” ” Marburg, § 109, 3.
” ” Massovia, § 93, 13.
” ” Megenburg, § 118, 2.
Conradin, § 96, 20.
Consalvi, § 185, 1; 192, 3.
Conscientiarii, § 164, 4.
Consensus Dresdensis, § 141, 10.
” Genev., § 138, 7.
” Sendomir, § 139, 18.
” repetitus, § 159, 2.
” Tigurinus, § 138, 7.
Consilia evangelica, § 39.
Consistories, § 142, 1.
_Consolamentum_, § 108, 2.
Constance, Council of, § 110, 7; 119, 5, 7.
Constantia, § 50, 2.
Constantine the Great, § 22, 7; 42, 1, 2; 60, 1; 63, 1.
” I., Pope, § 46, 11.
” II., “ § 82, 2.
” Chrysomalus, § 70, 4.
” Copronymus, § 66, 2.
” of Mananalis, § 71, 1.
” Monomachus [Monómachus], § 67, 3.
” Pogonnatus, § 52, 8.
” Porphyrogenneta, § 68, 1.
Constantinople, Second Œcum. Council at, § 46, 1; 50, 4, 5; 52, 2.
” Fifth Œcum. Council at, § 52, 6.
” Sixth Œcum. Council at, § 52, 8.
” Seventh Œcum. Council at, § 66, 2, 3.
” Eighth Œcum. Council at, § 67, 1.
Constantius, § 42, 2; 50, 2.
” Chlorus, § 22, 6.
_Constitutio Rom._, § 82, 4.
Constitution of Early Church, § 17.
Constitutiones apost., § 43, 4.
Contarini, § 135, 2; 139, 22.
_Continentes_, § 39, 3.
Contraremonstrants, § 161, 2.
_Convenensa_, § 108, 2.
Conventuals, § 112, 3.
_Conversi_, § 98.
Converts, Romish, § 153, 1; 165, 6; 175, 7.
Convocation, English, § 202, 3.
Copts, § 52, 7; 72, 2.
Coquerel, § 203, 4, 8.
Coracion, § 33, 9.
Coran, § 65.
Corbinian, § 78, 2.
Cordeliers, § 149, 6.
Cornelius, Bishop, § 42, 3.
Coronation, Papal, § 96, 23; 110, 15.
_Corporale_, § 60, 5.
Corporations Act, § 155, 3; 202, 5.
_Corpus Cathol. et Evangel._, § 153, 1.
” _Christi_ Festival, § 104, 7.
” _doctr. Misnicum_, § 141, 10.
” _juris canon._, § 99, 5.
” _Pruthen._, § 141, 2.
_Correctores Rom._, § 99, 5.
Correggio, § 115, 13.
Cosmas of Jerusalem, § 70, 2.
” Indicopleustes, § 48, 2.
” Patr., § 70, 4.
” Usurpator, § 66, 1.
Cossa, Cardinal, § 110, 7.
Costa, Is. da, § 200, 2.
Coster, § 149, 14.
Cotta, Urs., § 122, 1.
Councils, Œcumenical, § 43, 2.
Counter-Reformation, § 151; 153; 165, 4.
Cour, Did. de la, § 156, 4.
Courland, § 93, 12; 139, 3.
Court, Ant., § 165, 5.
Covenant, § 139, 8; 155, 1.
Cowper, § 172, 4.
Cranach, § 142, 2.
Cranmer, § 139, 4, 5.
Cranz, § 115, 8.
Crasselius, § 167, 6.
Crato of Crafftheim, § 141, 10; 137, 8.
Creationism, § 53, 1.
Crell, J., § 148, 4.
” Nich., § 141, 13.
” Paul, § 141, 10.
Crescens, § 30, 9.
Crescentius, § 96, 2, 4.
Creuzer, § 174, 4.
Cromwell, § 153, 5, 6; 155, 1-3.
Crookes, § 211, 17.
Cross, § 38, 2; 60, 6.
” Discovery of the, § 57, 5.
” Ordeal of the, § 88, 5.
” Sign of the, § 39, 1; 59, 8; 73, 5.
Crotus, Rubianus, § 120, 2, 5.
Crucifix, § 60, 6.
Cruciger, § 136, 7.
Cruco, § 93, 9.
Crüger, § 160, 5.
Crusaders, § 98, 8.
Crusades, § 94; 105, 3.
Crusius, Mart., § 139, 26.
” Chr. Aug., § 167, 4.
Crypto-Calvinists, § 141, 10, 13.
Crypts, § 38, 1; 60, 1.
Cubricus, § 29, 1.
Cudworth, § 164, 3.
Culdees, § 77, 8.
_Cum ex apostolatus officio_, § 149, 2.
Cummins, § 208, 1.
Cunæus, § 161, 6.
Cupola, § 60, 3.
_Curati_, § 84, 2.
Curæus, § 141, 10.
Curci, § 187, 5.
Curia, The Papal, § 110, 15.
Curio, § 139, 24.
Cursores, § 60, 5.
Cusa, Nich. of, § 113, 6.
Cynewulf, § 89, 3.
Cyprian, St., § 22, 5; 31, 11; 34, 1, 7, 8; 35, 3; 39, 2;
41, 2, 3.
” of Antioch, § 48, 8.
” Sal., § 167, 4; 169, 1.
Cyran, St., § 157, 2.
Cyriacus, § 104, 9.
Cyril of Alexandria, § 47, 6; 52, 2, 3.
” of Jerusalem, § 47, 10; 52, 2, 3.
” Lucar, § 152, 2.
” and Methodius, § 73, 2, 3; 79, 2, 3.
Cyrillonas, § 48, 7.
Cyrus of Alexandria, § 52, 8.
Czersky, § 186, 6.
Dach, Sim., § 160, 3.
Dächsel, § 186, 4.
Dagobert I., § 78, 1.
Daillé, § 161, 3, 7.
Dalberg, J. v., § 120, 2, 3.
” K. Th. v., § 187, 3; 192, 2.
Dale, § 202, 3.
_Dalmatica_, § 59, 7.
Damascus I., § 46, 4; 59, 1, 4.
” II., § 96, 5.
_Dames du Cœur sacré_, § 186, 1.
Damiani, Petrus [Peter], § 97, 4; 104, 10; 106, 4.
Damiens, § 158, 1.
Dandalo [Dandolo], § 94, 4.
Daniel of Winchester, § 78, 4.
Danites, § 211, 14.
Dankbrand, § 93, 5.
Dannecker, § 174, 9.
Dannhauer, § 159, 5.
Dante, § 115, 10.
Danzig, § 139, 18.
Darboy, § 189, 3; 203.
Darbyites, § 211, 11.
Darnley, § 139, 10.
Darwin, § 174, 3.
_Dataria Rom._, § 110, 16.
Daub, § 182, 6.
Daumer, § 175, 7.
David of Augsburg, § 103, 10.
” ” Dinant, § 108, 4.
” Christian, § 167, 9.
Davidis, Fr., § 148, 3.
Davis, § 211, 17.
Deacon, § 17, 5; 34, 3.
Deaconess, § 34, 3.
Deaconess-institutes, § 183, 1.
Dean, § 84, 2.
Decius, Emperor, § 22, 5.
” Nich., § 142, 3.
Declaratio Thornuensis, § 153, 7.
Decretals, § 46, 3.
Decretists, § 99, 5.
Decretum Gelasianum, § 47, 22.
” Gratiani, § 99, 5.
_Defensores_, § 45, 3.
Deism, § 164, 3; 171, 1.
Delicieux, § 117, 2.
Delitzsch, § 182, 14.
Delrio, § 149, 11.
Demetrius of Alexandria, § 31, 5.
” Cydonius, § 68, 5.
” Mysos, § 139, 26.
Demiurge, § 26, 2.
Denek, § 148, 1.
Denecker, § 160, 1.
Denifle, § 191, 7.
Denison, § 202, 2.
Denmark, § 80; 93, 2; 139, 2; 201, 1.
Denzinger, § 191, 9.
Derezer, § 165, 11.
Dernbach, § 151, 1.
_De salute animarum_, § 193, 1.
Desanctis, § 204, 4.
Descant, § 104, 11.
Descartes, § 161, 3; 164, 1.
Deseret, § 211, 12.
Desiderius, § 82, 1.
Desprez, § 203, 3.
Dessau, Convention of, § 126, 5.
Dessler, § 167, 6.
Deutinger, § 191, 6.
“Deutsche Theologie,” § 114, 2.
De Valenti, § 174, 3.
Devay, § 139, 20.
Dhu Nowas, § 64, 4.
Diana of Poitiers, § 139, 13.
Diatessaron, § 30, 9; 36, 7.
Diaz, Juan, § 135, 10.
Didache, § 30, 7.
_Didascalia Apost._, § 43, 4.
Didenhofen, Synod of, § 82, 4.
Diderot, § 165, 12.
Didier de la Cour, § 156, 7.
Didymus of Alexandria, § 47, 5.
” Gabr, § 124, 1.
Dieckhoff, § 182, 21.
Diedrich, § 177, 3.
Diepenbrock, § 189, 1.
Dieringer, § 191, 6.
_Dies Stationum_, § 37; 56, 1.
Diestel, Past., § 176, 3.
Dietrich, Meister, § 103, 10.
” Veit, § 142, 2.
Dillmann, § 182, 11.
Dinant, David of, § 108, 4.
Dinder, Archbishop, § 197, 12.
Dinkel, Bishop, § 187, 3.
Dinter, § 174, 8.
Diocletian, Emperor, § 22, 6.
Diodorus of Tarsus, § 47, 8.
Diognetus, § 30, 6.
Dionysius of Alexandria, § 31, 6; 32, 8; 33, 7, 9; 35, 3.
” the Areopagite, § 47, 11; 90, 8.
” _Exiguus_, § 47, 23.
” of Paris, § 25.
” ” Rome, § 33, 7.
Dioscurus of Alexandria, § 52, 4.
” ” Rome, § 46, 8.
Dippel, § 170, 3.
Diptychs, § 59, 6.
_Disciplina arcani_, § 36, 4.
Disputation at Baden, § 130, 6.
” ” Basel, § 130, 3.
” ” Bern, § 130, 7.
” ” Leipzig, § 122, 4.
” ” Rome, § 175, 3.
” ” Zürich, § 130, 2.
Dissenters, § 143, 3, 4; 155, 1-3; 202, 5.
Dober, § 168, 3, 4, 11.
Docetism, § 26, 2.
_Doctor acutus_, § 113, 2.
” _angelicus_, § 103, 6.
” _audientium_, § 33, 1.
” _Christianiss._, § 113, 4.
” _ecstaticus_, § 114, 5.
” _invincibilis_, § 113, 3.
” _irrefragibilis_, § 103, 4.
” _melifluus_, § 102, 2.
” _mirabilis_, § 103, 8.
” _profundus_, § 103, 8; 116, 2.
” _resolutissimus_, § 113, 3.
” _seraphicus_, § 103, 4.
” _subtilis_, § 113, 1.
” _universalis_, § 103, 5.
_Doctores audientium_, § 34, 3.
” _ecclesiæ_, § 47, 22.
Döderlein, § 171, 8.
Dodwell, § 161, 7.
Dolcino, § 108, 8.
Döllinger, § 190, 1; 191, 5, 9; 175, 6; 5, 6.
Domenichino, § 149, 15.
Domenico da Pescia, § 119, 11.
Dominic, St., § 98, 4; 106, 3.
Dominicans, § 98, 5; 109, 2; 112, 4; 186, 2.
_Dominus ac redemt._, § 165, 9.
Domitian, Emperor, § 22, 1.
” Abbot, § 52, 6.
Domnus of Antioch, § 52, 4.
_Donatio Constantini_, § 87, 4.
Donatists, § 63, 1.
Donnet, Card., § 190, 3.
Doré, Gustav, § 174, 9.
Doring, Matt., § 113, 7.
_Dormitoria_, § 38, 2; 60, 4.
Dorner, § 182, 10.
Dorotheus, § 30, 6.
Dort, Synod of, § 161, 2.
Dositheus of Samaria, § 25, 2.
” ” Jerusalem, § 152, 3.
Drabricius, § 163, 9.
Dragonnades, § 153, 3.
Drake, § 174, 9.
Drey, § 191, 6.
Druids, § 77, 2.
Drummond, § 211, 10.
Drusius, § 161, 6.
Druthmar, Christ., § 90, 4, 9; 91, 3.
Dualism, § 26, 2.
Dualistic Heretics, § 71.
Dubois, Pet. v., § 118, 1.
” Card., § 165, 7.
Ducange, § 158, 2.
Duchoborzians, § 166, 2; 210, 3.
Dufay, § 115, 8.
Dufresne, § 158, 2.
Dulignon, § 163, 8.
Dumont, Bishop, § 200, 7.
Dumoulin, § 161, 3, 7.
Dungal, § 92, 2.
Dunin, § 193, 1.
Duns Scotus, § 113, 1.
Dunstan, § 97, 4; 100, 1.
Dupanloup, § 189, 3; 203, 3-5.
Duplessis-Mornay, § 139, 17.
Duræus, § 154, 4.
Durandus of Osca, § 108, 10.
” William, § 113, 3.
Dürer, Albert, § 115, 13; 142, 2.
Durousseaux, § 200, 7.
Düsselthal, § 183, 1.
Dutoit, § 171, 9.
Duvergier, § 157, 5.
Eadbald, § 77, 4.
Eanfled, § 77, 6.
Eardley, § 178, 2.
Easter-Festival, § 37, 1; 56, 3, 4.
” Reckoning of, § 56, 3; 77, 3.
East Friesland, § 170, 3.
East Indies, § 64, 4; 150, 1; 156, 11; 165, 3; 167, 9; 168, 6;
184, 5.
Ebed Jesu, § 72, 1.
Ebel, § 176, 3.
Eber, Paul, § 141, 10; 142, 3.
Eberhard of Bamberg, § 102, 6.
” J. A., § 171, 4-7.
” Bishop of Treves, § 197, 6.
Eberlin, § 125, 1.
Ebionites, § 28, 1.
Ebner, § 114, 6.
Ebo of Rheims, § 80; 87, 3.
Ebrard, § 182, 16; 195, 5; 5, 5.
Ecbert of Schönau, § 107, 1.
Eccart, John, § 142, 5.
_Ecclesia Christi_ Bull, § 203, 1.
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, § 202, 11.
Ecetæ, § 70, 3.
Echter, Jul., § 151, 1.
Echternach Procession, § 188, 11.
Eck, § 122, 1, 4; 123, 1; 130, 6; 135, 2, 3; 149, 14.
Eckhart, Meister, § 114, 1.
Ecthesis, § 52, 8.
Edelmann, § 171, 3.
Edessa, School of, § 31, 1; 47, 1.
Edward VI. of England, § 139, 5.
Edwin, § 77, 4.
Egbert, § 77, 8; 78, 3.
Egede, § 167, 9.
Egli, § 199, 3.
Eichhorn, J. G., § 171, 7.
” Minister, § 196, 2.
” Nich., § 174, 5.
Eichsfeld, § 151, 1.
Einhard, § 88, 6.
εἰρήνη, § 39, 2.
Eisenach, Conference at, § 172, 2.
” Attentat, § 194, 2.
Eisenmenger, § 161, 7.
Eisleben, Magister, § 141, 1.
Elagabalus, § 22, 4.
Eleesban, § 64, 4.
Eleutherus, § 40, 2.
Elias of Cortona, § 98.
Eligius, § 78, 3.
Elipandus, § 91, 1.
Elisæus [Elisaeus], § 64, 3.
Elizabeth, St., § 105, 3.
” of Brandenburg, § 128, 1.
” ” Calenberg, § 134, 5.
” ” England, § 139, 6-8.
” ” Herford, § 163, 7, 8.
” ” Schönau, § 104, 9; 107, 1.
Elizabeth-Society, § 186, 4.
Elkesaites, § 28, 2.
Eller, § 170, 4.
Elliot, § 162, 7.
Eltz, Jac. v., § 151, 1.
Elvenich, § 191, 1.
Elvira, Syn. of, § 38, 3; 45, 2.
Elxai, § 27, 2.
Elzevir, § 161, 6.
Emanation, § 26, 2.
Emancipation Bill, § 202, 9.
Emmerau, § 78, 2.
Emmerich, § 188, 3.
Empaytaz, § 199, 5.
Emser, Jerome, § 123, 4; 149, 14.
Encratites, § 27, 10.
Encyclicon, § 52, 5.
Encyclopædists, § 165, 14.
Endemic Synods, § 43, 2.
Energumens, § 35, 3.
_Enfans sans souci_, § 115, 12.
Enfantin, § 212, 2.
England, § 139, 4; 143, 1; 154, 4; 155; 162, 1; 202.
Ennodius, § 46, 8; 59, 4.
Enoch, Book of, § 32, 2.
Enraght, § 202, 3.
Eoban, St., § 78, 7.
Epaon, Council of, § 76, 5.
Ephesus, Council of, § 52, 3; 53, 4.
Ephraem [Ephraim], § 47, 13; 48, 7; 59, 4.
Epigonus, § 33, 5.
Epiphanes, § 27, 8.
Epiphanius, § 47, 10; 51, 2, 3; 57, 4.
Episcopal System, § 167, 5.
_Episcopi in partibus_, § 97, 3.
Episcopius, § 161, 2.
_Epistolæ decretales_, § 46, 3.
” _formatæ_, § 34, 6.
” _obscur. vir._, § 120, 5.
” _paschales_, § 34, 6; 56, 3.
” _synodales_, § 34, 6.
_Epulæ Thyesteæ_, § 22.
Erasmus, § 120, 6; 123, 3; 125, 3.
Erastianism, § 202, 7.
Erastus, § 117, 4; 144, 1.
Erfurt, University of, § 120, 2.
Eric of Calenberg, § 136, 1.
” ” Sweden, § 80, 1; 93, 2.
” St., § 93, 3, 11.
” the Red, § 93, 5.
Erigena, § 90, 7; 91, 5.
Erimbert, § 81, 1.
Erlembald, § 97, 5.
Ernest the Pious, § 160, 6.
” of Lüneburg, § 126, 4; 127, 3.
Ernesti, § 171, 6.
Ernestine Bible, § 160, 6.
Esch, John, § 128, 1.
Eschenmayer, § 176, 2.
Escobar, § 149, 16; 158, 1.
Essenes, § 8, 4; 28, 2.
Essenius, § 161, 5.
Established Church, § 139, 6; 202, 1.
Esthonia, § 93, 2; 205, 3.
Estius, § 149, 14.
Ethelberga, § 77, 4.
Ethelbert, § 77, 4.
Ethelwold, Bishop, § 100, 1.
Etherius of Osma, § 91, 1.
Ethiopia, § 64, 1.
Etshmiadzin, § 72, 2.
Εὐχαριστία, § 17, 7; 36, 3.
Εὐχέλαιον, § 61, 3.
Eucherius, § 47, 21.
Euchites, § 44, 7; 71, 3.
Eudocia, § 48, 5; 52, 3, 4, 5.
Eudoxia, § 51, 3.
Eudoxius, § 50, 8.
Eugenius II., § 82, 4.
” III., § 96, 13.
” IV., § 67, 6; 110, 8, 9.
Eulalius, § 46, 6.
Euler, § 171, 8.
Eulogies, § 58, 4.
Eulogius of Cæsarea, § 53, 4.
” ” Cordova, § 81, 1; 90, 6.
Eunapius, § 42, 5.
Eunomius, § 50, 3.
Euphemites, § 42, 6.
Euphrates, § 28, 4.
Euric, § 76, 2.
Eusebians, § 50, 2.
Eusebius of Cæsarea, § 36, 8; 47, 2; 50, 1; 59, 1.
” ” Doryläum, § 52, 3.
” ” Emesa, § 47, 8.
” ” Nicomedia, § 50, 1.
” ” Vercelli, § 50, 2.
Eustasius of Luxeuil, § 78, 2.
Eustathians, § 44, 7.
Eustathius of Antioch, § 50, 8.
” ” Sebaste, § 44, 3, 7; 62, 1.
” ” Thessalonica, § 68, 5; 70, 4.
Euthalius, § 59, 1.
Euthymius Zigabenus, § 68, 5.
Eutyches, § 52, 4.
Euzoius, § 50, 8.
Evagrius, § 5, 1.
Evangelical-Party, § 202, 1, 4.
Evangelists, § 17, 5; 34, 1.
_Evangelium æternum_, § 108, 4.
Evolutionists, § 174, 2.
Ewald, The black and white, § 78, 9.
” H., § 182, 3.
Exarchate, § 46, 9; 76, 7; 82, 1.
Exarchs, Episcopal, § 46, 1.
_Execrabilis_, § 110, 10.
Exemption, § 98.
Exercises, Spiritual, § 149, 9; 188, 1.
Excommunication, § 35, 2; 88, 5; 106, 1.
Exodus-Churches, § 211, 6, 7.
ἐξομολόγησις, § 32, 2.
Exorcism, § 35, 4; 58, 1; 142, 2; 167, 2.
Exorcists, § 33, 3.
_Exsurge Domini_, § 123, 2.
_Extra_, § 99, 5.
_Extraneæ_, § 39, 3.
_Extravagantes_, § 99, 5.
Eyck, § 115, 13.
Eznik, § 64, 3.
Ezra, Fourth Book of, § 32, 2.
Faber, John, § 130, 2, 6.
” Stapulensis, § 120, 8.
Fabian, Bishop of Rome, § 22, 5.
Facundus of Hermiane, § 47, 19; 52, 6.
Fagius, § 139, 5.
Falk, Dr., § 174, 8; 193, 5, 6; 197, 2, 3, 5.
Familists, § 146, 5.
Farel, § 130, 3; 138, 1.
Fasts, Ascetic, § 44, 4; 107.
” Ecclesiastical, § 37, 3; 56, 4, 7; 115, 1, 12.
Fatak, § 29, 1.
Faustus of Mileve, § 54, 1.
” ” Rhegium, § 47, 21; 53, 5.
Favre, Pet., § 149, 8.
Fawkes, Guy, § 153, 6.
Fazy, § 199, 1.
Febronius, § 165, 10.
Fecht, § 167, 1.
Federal Theology, § 161, 4.
Felicissimus, § 41, 2.
Felicitas, § 22, 4.
Felix II., § 46, 4.
” III., § 46, 8; 52, 5.
” IV., § 46, 8.
” V., § 110, 8.
” of Aptunga, § 63, 1.
” the Manichæan, § 54, 1.
” Pratensis, § 120, 9.
” of Urgellis, § 91, 1.
Fell, Marg., § 163, 4.
Feneberg, § 187, 1.
Fénelon, § 157, 3; 158, 2.
Fenian-movement, § 202, 10.
Ferdinand I., § 137, 8; 126, 2, 3; 139, 19, 20.
” II., § 151, 1; 153, 2.
” VII. of Spain, § 205, 1.
” I. of Castile, § 95, 2.
” III. of Castile, § 95, 2.
” the Catholic, § 95, 2; 117, 2; 118, 7.
Ferguson, Fergus, § 202, 8.
Ferrara, Council of, § 67, 6; 110, 8.
Ferrer, Bonif., § 115, 4.
” Vincent, § 115, 2; 110, 6.
Ferry, Minister, § 203, 6.
_Ferula_, § 60, 1.
Fessler, Bishop, § 189, 3.
” Ign., § 165, 13.
Feudalism, § 86, 1.
Feuerbach, § 174, 1, 3; 182, 6.
Feuillants, § 149, 6.
Feyin, Synod of, § 64, 3.
Fichte, J. G., § 171, 10.
” J. H., § 174, 2; 211, 15.
Fiesole, § 115, 13.
Fifth Monarchy Men, § 162, 1.
_Filioque_, § 50, 7; 67, 1; 91, 2.
Finkenstein, § 176, 3.
Finland, § 93, 11; 139, 1; 206, 3.
Firmian, § 165, 4.
Firmcius Maternus, § 47, 14.
Firmilian, § 34, 3; 35, 3.
Fischart, § 142, 7.
Fisher, Bishop, § 139, 4.
Fisherman’s Ring, § 110, 16.
Fitzgerald, § 189, 3.
Five Mile Act, § 155, 3.
Flacius, § 141, 4-8; 142, 6; 5, 2.
Flagellants, § 106, 4; 116, 3; 149, 17.
Flagellation, § 106, 4; 116, 3; 149, 17.
Flavia Domitilla, § 22, 1.
Flavian of Antioch, § 50, 8.
” of Constantinople, § 52, 4.
Flechier, § 158, 2.
Flemming, § 160, 3.
Fletcher, § 169, 3.
Fleury, § 5, 2; 158, 2; 165, 7.
Fliedner, § 183, 1.
Flora, § 27, 5.
Florence, Council of, § 67, 6; 72; 110, 8.
Florentius Radewin, § 112, 9.
Florinus, § 31, 2.
Florus Magister, § 90, 5; 91, 5.
Folmar, § 102, 6.
Fontevraux, Order of, § 98, 2.
Fools, Festival of, § 105, 2.
Formosus, § 82, 8.
_Formula Concordiæ_, § 141, 9.
” Consensus Helvet., § 161, 3.
Förster, J., § 142, 6.
” prelate, § 118, 3; 197, 6.
Fortunatus, § 48, 6.
Fouque, de la M., § 174, 5.
Fourier, § 212, 1.
Fox, George, Quaker, § 163, 4, 5.
” American Spiritualist, § 211, 17.
France, § 139, 13-17; 153, 4; 165, 5; 203.
Francis, St., § 93, 16; 98, 3; 104, 10; 105, 4.
” de Paula, § 112, 8.
” ” Sales, § 156, 6; 157, 1.
” I., of France, § 110, 9, 14; 120, 8; 126, 5, 6; 139, 13.
” II., of France, § 139, 14.
Francisca Romana, § 112, 1.
Franciscans, § 98, 3; 112, 2; 149, 6.
Francis Xavier Society, § 186, 4.
Franck, Seb. § 146, 3.
” John, § 160, 4.
” Michael, § 160, 4.
” Sal., § 167, 6.
Francke, A. H., § 159, 3; 167, 2, 8, 9; 160, 7.
Franco of Cologne, § 104, 11.
Frank, J. H., § 182, 15.
Frankists, § 165, 17.
Franks, The, § 76, 9.
Frankfort, Synod of, § 91, 1; 92, 1.
” Concordat of, § 110, 9, 14.
” Parliament of, § 189, 4.
” Recess of, § 141, 11.
” Troubles of, § 134, 3.
_Fratres de communi vita_, § 112, 9.
” _minores_, § 98, 3.
” _pontifices_, § 98, 9.
” _praedicatores_, § 98, 5.
_Fraticelli_, § 112, 2.
Fredigis, § 90, 4.
Frederick I., Barbarossa, § 96, 14, 15; 94, 3.
” II., Emperor, § 94, 5; 96, 20; 97, 2; 99, 3; 109, 2.
” III., Emperor, § 110, 9.
” III., of Austin, § 110, 3.
” I., of Prussia, § 169, 1.
” II., “ § 165, 9; 171, 4.
” I., of Denmark, § 139, 2.
” IV., “ § 167, 9.
” of Palatinate, § 153, 3.
” Aug. the Strong, § 153, 1.
” the Wise, § 122, 3; 123, 9.
” William, the Great Elector, § 154, 4.
” William II., § 171, 5.
” ” III., § 171, 5; 172, 3; 177, 1; 193.
” ” IV., § 177, 2; 193.
Freemasons, § 171, 2; 104, 13.
Free-will Baptists, § 162, 3; 208, 1.
Free-thinkers, § 164, 2; 171, 2.
Freiligrath, § 174, 5.
Fresenius, § 167, 8.
Freylinghausen, § 167, 6-8.
Fricke, § 182, 21.
Fridolin, § 77, 7; 78, 1.
Friedewalt, Convention of, § 126, 6.
Friedrich, John, § 190, 1; 191, 7.
Fries, § 174, 1.
Frisians, § 78, 3.
Frith, § 139, 4.
Frithigern, § 76, 1.
Fritzlar, § 78, 4.
Fritzsche, § 183, 3.
Frobenius, § 120, 6.
Frohschammer, § 191, 6.
Froment, § 138, 1.
Fronto, § 23.
Frumentius, § 64, 1.
Fry, Elizabeth, § 183, 1.
Fugue, Musical, § 115, 8.
Fulbert of Chartres, § 101, 1.
Fulco, Canonist, § 102, 1.
” of Neuilly, § 104, 1.
Fulda, § 78, 5; 151, 2.
Fulgentius, Ferr., § 47, 20.
” of Ruspe, § 47, 20.
Gabler, Andr., § 182, 6.
” Th. A., § 171, 5.
Gabriel, Didymus, § 124, 1.
Galen, § 23.
Galerius, § 22, 6.
Galileo, § 156, 4.
Gall, St., § 130, 4, 8.
Galle, Peter, § 139, 1.
Gallienus, § 22, 5.
Gallican Church, § 156, 3; 203.
Gallizin, Am. v., § 172, 2.
Gallus, St., § 178.
” Emperor, § 22, 5.
Ganganelli, § 165, 8.
Gangra, Synod of, § 44, 7; 45, 2.
Gardiner, Allen, § 184, 2.
” Bishop, § 139, 4, 5.
Garibaldi, § 185, 3.
Garve, § 170, 4.
Gasparin, § 203, 4.
Gannilo, § 101, 3.
Gauzbert, § 81, 1.
Gavazzi, § 204, 4.
Gebhardt of Eichstedt [Eichstadt], § 96, 5.
” ” Cologne, § 137, 7.
” ” Salzburg, § 97, 2.
Gedike, § 154, 3.
Gedimin, § 93, 14.
Geibel, § 174, 6.
Geier, § 159, 4.
Geiler of Kaisersb., § 115, 2, 11.
Geisa, § 93, 8.
Geismar, § 78, 4.
Geissel, § 194, 1.
Gelasius, I., § 46, 8; 47, 22; 59, 6.
” II., § 96, 11.
Gelimar, § 76, 3.
Gellert, § 171, 11; 172, 1.
Genesis, The little, § 32, 2.
Genesius, § 71, 1.
Geneva, § 138; 199, 1, 2, 5.
Genghis-Khan, § 72, 1.
Gennadius, § 47, 16; 48, 3.
” Patr., § 68, 5; 67, 7.
Genseric, § 76, 3.
Gentile Christians, § 18.
Gentilis, § 148, 3.
Gentilly, Synod of, § 91, 2; 92, 1.
_Genuflectentes_, § 35, 1.
George Acyndynos [Acindynos], § 69, 1.
” of Brandenburg, § 127, 3; 132, 6.
” of Saxony, § 122, 4; 126, 5; 128; 134, 2.
” Bishop of the Arabs, § 72, 2.
” of Trebizond, § 68, 2.
Gerbert, § 96, 2; 100, 2.
Gereuth, § 188, 6.
Gerhard Groot, § 112, 9.
” John, § 159, 4; 160, 1.
” Segarelli, § 108, 8.
” Zerbolt, § 112, 9.
Gerhardt, Paul, § 154, 4; 160, 4.
Gerike, P., § 139, 18.
Gerlach, L. v., § 175, 1; 176, 1.
” Otto v., § 181, 4.
” Stephen, § 139, 26.
St. Germains, Peace of, § 139, 15.
German Empire, § 192; 197.
” Catholics, § 187, 6.
Germany, Young, § 174, 5.
Germanus, Patr., § 66, 1.
Gerson, § 110, 6, 7; 112, 6; 113, 3; 118, 4; 119, 5.
Gertrude the Great, § 107, 1.
” of Hackeborn, § 107, 1.
Gesenius, W., § 182, 3.
” Just., § 160, 3.
Gewilib of Mainz, § 78, 4.
Geysa, § 93, 2.
Gfrörer, § 5, 4; 175, 7.
Ghazali, § 103, 1.
Ghent, Pacific. of, § 139, 12.
Ghetto, § 95, 3; 185, 1.
Ghiberti, § 115, 13.
Gichtel, § 163, 9.
Gieseler, § 5, 4.
Giessen, University of, § 154, 1; 196, 1, 5.
Gil, Juan, § 139, 21.
Gilbertines, § 98, 2.
Gilbertus Porretanus, § 102, 3.
Gildas, § 90, 8.
Giotto, § 115, 13.
Gisela, § 93, 8.
Gladstone, § 202, 10.
Glass, Painting on, § 104, 14; 174, 9.
Glassius, § 159, 4.
γλωσσαῖς λαλεῖν, § 17, 1.
Gnesen, Archbishopric of, § 93, 2.
Gnosimachians, § 62, 3.
Gnosticism, § 18, 3; 26-28.
Goar, St., § 78, 3.
Gobat, Bishop, § 184, 8, 9.
Gobel, § 165, 15.
Goch, John of, § 119, 10.
God, Friends of, § 116, 4.
Godfrey of Bouillon, § 94, 1.
” ” Strassburg, § 105, 6.
Goethe, § 171, 11.
Goetze, § 171, 8.
Gomarus, § 161, 2.
Gonzago, Cardinal, § 149, 2.
Gonzalo of Berceo, § 105, 6.
Good Friday, § 56, 4.
Goodwin, § 161, 6.
Gordianus, § 22, 4.
Görg, Junker, § 123, 8.
Gorm the Old, § 93, 2.
Görres, Jos., § 174, 4; 181, 1; 5, 6.
Göschel, § 179, 1, 2; 182, 6, 15.
Gossler, § 193, 6; 197, 11.
Gossner, § 187, 2; 184, 1.
Gothic Architecture, § 104, 12.
Goths, § 76.
Gotter, § 167, 6.
Gottschalk, Prince of Wends, § 93, 9.
” Monk, § 91, 5, 6.
Goudimel, § 143, 2; 149, 15.
Grabau, § 208, 2.
Grabow, § 210, 10.
Graf, § 182, 18.
_Graffiti_, § 38, 1; 39, 5.
γράμματα τετυπωμένα, § 34, 6.
Grammont, Order of, § 98, 2.
Grant, § 184, 9.
Granvella, § 135, 1, 2, 3.
Gratian, Emperor, § 42, 4.
” Canonist, § 99, 5; 104, 4.
Gratius Ortuinus, § 120, 5.
Graumann, § 142, 3.
Grebel, § 130, 5.
Greece, § 207.
Greeks, United, § 151; 206, 2.
Green, § 202, 3.
Greenland, § 93, 1; 167, 9; 184, 2.
Gregentius, § 48, 3.
Gregoire, Bishop, § 165, 15.
Gregory I., § 46, 10; 47, 22; 57, 4; 58, 3; 59, 5, 6, 9; 61, 4;
76, 8; 77, 4.
Gregory II., III., § 66, 1; 78, 4; 82, 1.
” IV., § 82, 4.
” V., § 96, 2.
” VI., § 96, 4.
” VII., § 96, 7-9; 94; 101, 2.
” VIII., § 96, 16; 94, 3.
” IX., § 96, 19; 99, 4; 109, 2.
” X., § 96, 21; 67, 4.
” XI., § 110, 5; 114, 4; 117, 2.
” XII., § 110, 6, 7.
” XIII., § 139, 17; 149, 3, 4, 17.
” XIV., § 149, 3.
” XV., § 156, 1, 4, 5.
” XVI., § 185, 1.
” Abulfarajus, § 72, 2.
” Acindynos, § 69, 2.
” of Constantinople, § 207, 1.
” of Heimburg, § 118, 5.
” Illuminator, § 64, 3.
” Palamas, § 69, 2.
” Scholaris, § 68, 5.
” Thaumaturgus, § 31, 6.
” Nazianzen, § 47, 4; 48, 5, 8; 59, 4.
” of Nyssa, § 47, 4.
” of Tours, § 90, 2.
” of Utrecht, § 78, 3.
Gregorian Chant, § 59, 3.
Gretna-Green, § 202, 6.
Grévy, § 203, 5.
Grey, Lady Jane, § 139, 5.
Griesbach, § 171, 7.
Groot, Gerh., § 112, 9.
Gropper, § 135, 3, 7.
Grosseteste, § 97, 4.
Grotius, § 153, 7; 161, 2, 6, 7.
Gruber, § 170, 1, 2.
Gruet, Jac., § 138, 4.
Grundtvig, § 201, 1.
Grunthler, § 139, 24.
Grynäus, § 133, 8.
Gualbertus, § 98, 1.
Guardian, § 98, 5.
Guatemala, § 209, 2.
Guelphs, § 96, 7.
Guericke, § 5, 5; 176, 1; 177, 2; 182, 13.
Guerin, § 98, 2.
Guevara, § 209, 2.
Guiana, § 184, 2.
Guibert, Archbishop, § 203, 5.
” of Nogent, § 101, 1.
Guido of Arezzo, § 104, 11.
” de Castello, § 102, 2; 108, 7.
” of Siena, § 104, 9, 14.
Guigo, § 98, 2.
Guise, Dukes of, § 139, 13-17.
Guizot, § 185, 3; 203, 2, 8.
Gundiberge, § 76, 8.
Gundioch, § 75, 5.
Gundobald, § 76, 5.
Gundulf, § 108, 2.
Gunpowder Plot, § 153, 6.
Gunthamund, § 76, 3.
Gunther of Cologne, § 82, 7.
Günther, Ant., § 191, 3.
” Cyriacus, § 160, 4.
Günzburg, Eberlin of, § 125, 1.
Gury, § 191, 9.
Gustavus Adolphus, § 153, 2; 160, 7.
” ” Society, § 178, 1.
Gützlaf, § 184, 6.
Guyon, § 157, 3.
Gylas, § 93, 8.
Gyrovagi, § 44, 7.
Haag, Pastor, § 196, 3.
Haas, Jos., § 210, 2.
” Charles, § 175, 7.
Haco the Good, § 93, 4.
Hadrian, Emperor, § 28, 3; 25; 39, 6.
” I., § 66, 3; 82, 2; 91, 1.
” II., § 67, 1; 79, 2; 82, 7; 83, 2.
” III., § 82, 8.
” IV., § 96, 14.
” V., § 96, 22.
” VI., § 149, 1; 126, 1.
Hagenau, § 135, 2.
Hagenbach, § 182, 9; 5, 5.
Hahn, Aug., § 176, 1.
” Michael, § 172, 3.
” Missionary, § 184, 3.
Hahn-Hahn, Ida, § 175, 7.
Hakem, § 95, 2.
Haldane, § 199, 5.
Haldanites, § 170, 6.
Halle, University of, § 167, 1.
Haller, Alb., § 171, 8.
” Berth., § 130, 4.
” L. v., § 175, 7.
Hamann, § 171, 11.
Hamburg, Bishopric, § 80, 1.
Hamilton, Patrick, § 139, 8.
Hammerschmidt, § 160, 5.
Handel, § 167, 7.
Haneberg, § 189, 4; 197, 6.
Hanne, Dr., § 180, 3.
Hannington, Bishop, § 184, 4.
Hanover, § 193, 8; 194, 3.
Hans, Brother, § 115, 11.
Harald the Apostate, § 80.
” Blaatand, § 93, 2.
Hardenberg, § 144, 2.
Hard-Shell Baptists, § 170, 6.
Hardouin, § 165, 11.
Hare, § 211, 17.
Harless, § 182, 13; 195, 4.
Harmonites, § 211, 6.
Harmonius, § 27, 5.
Harms, Claus, § 176, 1.
” Louis, § 184, 1.
Harnack, Th., § 182, 13.
Hartmann, E. v., § 174, 2.
Hase, § 5, 4; 176, 1; 182, 5.
Hasse [Hase], § 5, 5.
Hassun, § 207, 4.
Hattemists, § 170, 8.
Hatto of Reichenau, § 90, 3.
” I. of Mainz, § 83, 3.
Hatty-Humayun, § 207.
Hätzer, § 130, 5; 148, 1.
Haug, § 170, 1.
Hauge, § 201, 3.
Hauser, § 188, 5.
Hausmann, Nich., § 133, 4.
Hausrath, § 182, 17.
Haydn, § 174, 10.
Haymo of Halberstadt, § 90, 5.
Hebel, § 171, 11.
Heber, Bishop, § 184, 5.
Hebræans, Sect of, § 170, 8.
Hebrews, Gospel of the, § 32, 4.
Heddo of Strassburg, § 84, 2.
Hedinger, § 170, 1.
Hedio, § 130, 3.
Hedwig of Poland, § 93, 14.
” St. of Silesia, § 105, 3.
Heermann, § 160, 3.
Hefele, § 189, 3, 4; 191, 7.
Hefter, § 184, 8.
Hegel, § 174, 1.
Hegesippus, § 31, 7.
Hegius, § 120, 3.
Heidanus, § 161, 5, 7.
Heidegger, § 161, 3.
Heidelberg Catechism, § 144, 1.
” University, § 120, 3.
Heine, § 174, 5.
Heinrichs, § 171, 5.
Hejira, § 65.
Held, H., § 159, 3.
” Imperial Orator, § 134, 2.
Helding, § 136, 5.
Helena, Empress, § 57, 5, 6.
” of Russia, § 73, 4.
Heliand, § 89, 3.
Hell, § 106, 3.
Hellenists, § 10, 1.
Helmstedt [Helmstadt], § 159, 2.
Heloise, § 102, 1.
Helvetius, § 165, 12.
Helvidius, § 62, 2.
Hemero-baptists, § 25, 1.
Hemmerlin, § 118, 5.
Hemming of Upsala, § 93, 11.
” Professor, § 141, 10.
Hengstenberg, § 176, 1; 182, 4.
Henke, § 5, 3; 171, 7.
Henoticon, § 52, 2.
Henricians, § 108, 7.
Henry I., Emperor, § 93, 2; 96, 1.
” II., § 96, 4.
” III., § 96, 4; 97, 1.
” IV., § 96, 6.
” V., § 96, 11 ff.
” VI., § 96, 16.
” VII., § 110, 2.
” I. of England, § 96, 12.
” II. ” ” § 96, 16; 94, 3.
” VIII. ” § 125, 3; 139, 4, 7, 8.
” II. of France, § 139, 13.
” III. ” ” § 139, 17, 18.
” IV. ” ” § 139, 17.
” of Brunswick, § 126, 5; 135, 6, 10.
” of Saxony, § 134, 4.
” _de Hessia_, § 118, 5.
” of Langenstein, § 118, 5.
” of Lausanne, § 108, 7.
” of Nördlingen, § 114, 6.
” of Upsala, § 93, 11.
” the Lion, § 93, 9.
” Wendish Prince, § 93, 9.
” of Zütphen, § 128, 1.
Hensel, Louise, § 174, 6.
Heppe, § 170, 3; 182, 16.
Heracleon, § 27, 5.
Heraclius, § 52, 8; 57, 5; 64, 2.
Herbart, § 174, 2.
Herder, § 171, 11.
Heretic’s Baptism, § 35, 5.
Hergenröther, § 5, 6; 191, 7.
Heriger, § 80, 1.
Hermann von Fritzlar, § 114.
” Premonstrat., § 95, 3.
” of Cologne, § 133, 5.
” von Wied, § 133, 5; 135, 7; 136, 2.
Hermannsburg, § 184, 1; 193, 8.
Hermas, § 30, 4.
Hermes, § 191, 1.
Hermias, § 30, 10.
Hermogenes, § 27, 13.
Herrero de Mora, § 205, 5.
Herrmann, § 182, 20.
Herrnhut, § 168; 169, 3.
Hervæus, § 102, 8.
Herzog, Old Catholic Bishop, § 190, 3; 199, 3.
” Prelate, § 197, 10, 11.
” J. J., § 5, 5.
Hess, J. Jac., § 171, 6.
Hesse, § 127, 2.
” Darmstadt, § 196, 4; 197, 15.
” Cassel, § 154, 1; 193, 9; 194, 4.
Hesshus, § 144, 1, 2.
Hesychasts, § 69, 2.
_Hetæræ_, § 22, 2.
Hettinger, § 191, 6.
Heubner, § 184, 5.
Heumann, § 167, 4.
Hexapla, § 31, 5.
Hibbert Trust, § 202, 4.
Hicks, § 211, 3.
Hieracas, § 39, 3.
Hierocles, § 23, 3.
Hieronomites, § 112, 8.
High-Churchmen, § 202, 1.
Hilarion, § 44, 3.
Hilary of Arles, § 46, 7.
” ” Poitiers, § 47, 14.
Hildebert of Tours, § 101, 1; 104, 4, 10.
Hildebrand, § 96, 4 ff.; 101, 2.
Hildegard, § 97; 107, 1; 109.
Hilderic, § 76, 9.
Hilduin, § 90, 8.
Hilgenfeld, § 182, 7.
Hilgers, § 191, 6.
Hiller, § 167, 6.
Hinemar of Laon, § 83, 2.
” ” Rheims, § 82, 7; 83, 2; 87, 3; 90, 5; 91, 5.
Hippolytus, § 31, 3; 33, 5; 40, 2; 41, 1.
Hirschberger Bible, § 167, 8.
Hirscher, § 187, 3; 191, 6.
Hitzig, § 182, 3.
Hobbes, § 164, 3.
Hoe v. Hoenegg, § 154, 4; 159, 1.
Hofacker, § 211, 4.
Hoffmann, Christ., § 211, 8.
” Fr., § 191, 2.
” G. W., § 196, 5.
” Melch., § 147, 1.
” Chr. K. v., § 182, 14.
” Dan., § 141, 15.
Hofmeister, Seb., § 130, 4.
Hofstede de Groot, § 200, 2.
Hohenlohe, § 188, 2.
” Card., § 189, 1; 197, 7.
Holbach, § 165, 12.
Holbein, § 115, 6, 13; 113, 5; 142, 2.
Holland, § 165, 7; 200, 2, 3.
Hollaz, § 167, 4, 8.
Holtzmann, § 182, 17.
Homberg, Synod of, § 127, 2.
Homoians, § 50, 3.
Homoiousians, § 50, 3.
Homologoumena, § 36, 8.
Homoousians, § 33, 1; 50, 1.
Hönigern, § 177, 2.
Honorius, Emperor, § 42, 4; 53, 4.
” I., § 46, 11; 52, 8, 9.
” II., § 96, 13.
” III., § 96, 19.
” IV., § 96, 22.
Honter, Jac., § 139, 20.
Hontheim, § 165, 10.
Hoogstraten, § 120, 4; 122, 3.
Hooper, § 139, 5.
Hormisdas of Rome, § 46, 8; 52, 5, 6.
Horsley, § 171, 1.
Hosius, Bishop, § 50, 1, 2, 3.
” Cardinal, § 139, 18.
Hospinian, § 161, 7.
Hospital Brothers, § 98, 8.
Hossbach, § 180, 4.
Host, § 104, 2.
Höting, § 197, 10.
Hottinger, § 5, 2; 161, 6.
Howard, Catherine, § 139, 4.
Huber, J., § 189, 1; 190, 1; 191, 7.
” Sam., § 141, 14.
Hubmeier, § 130, 5; 147, 3.
Huebald, § 104, 11.
Huetius, § 158, 1.
Hug, § 191, 8.
Hugh Capet, § 96, 2.
Huguenots, § 139, 14 ff.; 153, 4; 165, 5.
Hugo a St. Caro, § 103, 9.
” of St. Victor, § 102, 4; 104, 2, 4.
_Hugo de Payens_, § 98, 8.
Hülsemann, § 153, 7; 159, 2.
Humanists, § 120.
Humbert, § 67, 3; 101, 2.
Humboldt, Alex. v., § 174, 3.
Hume, § 171, 1.
Humiliates, § 98, 7; 101, 2.
Hundeshagen, § 196, 3.
Hungary, § 93, 8; 139, 20; 153, 3; 198, 6.
Hunneric, § 76, 3; 54, 1.
Hunnius, Ægid. [Ægidius], § 141, 13.
” Nich., § 159, 5.
Huntingdon, Lady, § 169, 3.
Hupfeld, § 182, 3; 194, 4.
Hurter, § 175, 1.
Husig, § 64, 3.
Huss, § 113, 7; 119, 3-6.
Hutten, Ulr. v., § 120, 2, 3; 122, 4.
Hy, § 77, 2.
Hyacinth, § 93, 13.
Hylists, Anc. Materialists, § 26, 2.
Hymn Music, § 142, 3; 171, 1; 180, 1.
Hymnology, § 17, 7; 36, 10; 59, 4; 89, 2; 104, 10; 115, 7.
Hymns, Catholic, § 149, 15.
” Protestant, § 142, 3; 143, 2; 160, 3; 162, 6; 167, 6;
175, 10.
Hypatia, § 42, 4.
Hyperius, § 143, 5; 154, 1.
Hypophonic singing, § 59, 5.
Hypostasianism, § 33, 1.
Hypsistarians, § 42, 6.
Hystaspes, § 32, 1.
Iamblichus, § 24, 2.
Ibas, § 47, 13; 52, 3.
Iberians, § 64, 4.
Icarians, § 212, 3.
Iceland, § 93, 5; 139, 2.
Idacius, § 54, 2.
Iglesia Española, § 205, 4.
Ignatius of Antioch, § 22, 2; 30, 5; 34, 1, 7.
” Patr. of Constant., § 67, 1.
Ignatius Loyola, § 149, 8.
_Ignorantins_, § 165, 2.
Ijejasu, § 150, 2; 156, 11.
Ildefonsus, § 90, 2, 9.
Illuminati, § 165, 11.
Illyria, § 46, 5, 9.
Images, § 38, 4.
” Controversy about, § 66; 92, 1.
Image-worship, § 57, 4; 89, 4.
Immaculate Conception, § 104, 7; 112, 4; 113, 2; 149, 13;
156, 6; 185, 2.
Immanuel Synod, § 177, 3.
Immunity, § 84, 1.
_Impostores tres_, § 148, 4.
Incense, § 59, 8.
_Inclusi_, § 85, 6.
_In Cœna Domini_, § 117, 3.
_In commendam_, § 85, 5; 110, 15.
Independents, § 143, 4; 155, 1; 162, 1.
_Index prohibitorius_, § 149, 14.
Indulgences, § 106, 2; 117, 1.
_Ineffabilis_, § 185, 2.
_In eminenti_, § 157, 5.
Infallibility, § 96, 23; 110, 14; 149, 4; 165, 8; 189, 3.
Infant Baptism, § 35, 3; 58, 1.
Infralapsarianism, § 161, 1.
_Infula_, § 84, 1.
Inge, § 93, 3.
Ingolstadt, § 120, 3.
_Innocentum festum_, § 57, 1; 105, 2.
Innocent I., § 46, 5; 51, 3; 53, 4; 61, 2, 3.
” II., § 96, 13.
” III., § 96, 17, 18; 94, 4; 102, 9; 108, 10; 109, 1.
” IV., § 96, 20; 73, 6.
” V., § 96, 22.
” VI., § 110, 4, 5.
” VII., § 110, 6.
” VIII., § 110, 11; 115, 4.
” IX., § 149, 3.
” X., § 156, 1; 153, 2; 157, 5.
” XI., § 156, 1, 3; 157, 2.
” XII., § 156, 1, 3; 157, 3.
” XIII., § 165, 1.
_In partibus infidelium_, § 97, 3.
Inquisition, § 109, 2; 117, 2; 139, 22; 149, 2; 151; 156, 3.
Inspiration, Doctrine of, § 36, 9.
_Insula sanctorum_, § 77, 1.
Intentionalism, § 149, 10.
Interdict, § 106, 1.
Interim, The Augsburg, § 136, 5, 6.
” ” Leipzig, § 136, 7.
” ” Regensburg, § 135, 3.
International, § 212, 4.
Interpreters, § 34, 3.
Investiture, § 45, 1; 84; 96, 7, 11, 12.
Iona, § 77, 2.
Ireland, § 77, 1; 139, 7; 153, 6; 202, 9.
Irenæus, § 31, 2; 33, 9; 34, 8; 40, 2.
Irene, § 66, 3.
Irish Massacre, § 153, 6.
Irvingites, § 211, 10.
Isaac, the Great, § 64, 3.
” of Antioch, § 48, 7.
Isabella of Castile, § 95, 2; 117, 2; 118, 7.
” II. of Spain, § 205, 2.
Isenberg, § 184, 9.
Isidore the Gnostic, § 28, 2.
” of Pelusium, § 47, 6; 44, 3.
” the Presbyter, § 51, 2, 3.
” Russ. Metropol., § 73.
” of Seville, § 90, 2.
Islam, § 65; 81; 95.
Issy, Conference of, § 157, 3.
_Itala_, § 36, 8.
Italy, § 139, 22; 187, 7; 204.
Ithacius, § 54, 2.
Ivo of Chartres, § 99, 5.
Jablonsky, § 168, 3.
Jacob el Baradai, § 52, 7.
” Basilicus, § 139, 26.
” a Benedictis, § 104, 10.
” of Brescia, § 112, 3.
” ben Chajim, § 120, 8.
” the Conqueror, § 95.
” of Edessa, § 47, 13.
” ” Harkh, § 71, 2.
” ” Jüterbegk [Jüterbock], § 118, 5.
” ” Maerlant, § 105, 5.
” ” Marchia, § 112, 4.
” ” Misa, § 119, 7.
” ” Nisibis, § 47, 13.
” ” Sarug, § 48, 7.
Jacobi, § 171, 10.
Jacobini, § 197, 9, 12.
Jacobites, § 52, 7; 72, 2.
Jacopone da Todi, § 104, 10.
Jaldabaoth, § 27, 7.
James the Just, § 16, 3.
” V. of Scotland, § 139, 8.
” I. of England, § 117, 4; 139, 11; 153, 6; 155, 1.
” II. of England, § 153, 6; 155, 3.
” III. of Baden, § 153, 1.
” Molay, § 112, 7.
” a Voragine, § 104, 8.
Jansen, Cornel., § 157, 5.
Jansenists, § 157, 5; 165, 6.
Januarius, St., § 188, 10.
Janus, § 189, 1.
Japan, § 150, 2; 156, 11; 184, 6; 186, 7.
Jaroslaw I., § 72, 4.
” II., § 73, 6.
Jason and Papiscus, § 30, 8.
Java, § 184, 5.
Jay, le, § 158, 1.
Jazelich, § 52, 3.
Jena, Univ. of, § 141, 1, 6.
Jeremias II., § 73, 4; 139, 26.
Jerome, § 17, 6; 33, 9; 47, 16; 48, 1; 51, 2; 53, 4; 59, 3.
” of Prague, § 119, 4, 5.
Jerusalem, Bishopric, § 184, 8.
” Church of the New, § 170, 4.
Jesuates, § 112, 8.
Jesuits, § 149, 8-12; 150; 151; 156, 2-9; 157, 2, 5; 165, 7-9;
186, 1; 197, 4; 199, 1.
Jewish Christians, § 18; 28; 211, 9.
” Missions, § 167, 9; 184, 8.
Jews in Middle Ages, § 90, 9; 95, 3.
Joachim of Floris, § 108, 5.
” ” Brandenburg, § 128, 1; 134, 5.
” II. of Brandenburg, § 134, 5; 136, 5.
Joan of Arc, § 116, 2.
Joanna, Popess, § 82, 6.
” of Valois, § 112, 8.
John I., Pope, § 46, 8.
” VIII. and IX., § 82, 8; 79, 2; 67, 1.
” X., XII., XIII., § 96, 1.
” XIV., XV., XVI., § 96, 2.
” XVII., XVIII., § 96, 4.
” XIX., § 96, 4; 57, 1.
” XXI., § 96, 22; 82, 6.
” XXII., § 110, 3; 112, 2; 113, 1; 114, 1.
” XXIII., § 110, 7; 119, 4.
” the Constant, § 124, 5.
” Frederick, the Magnanimous, § 133, 2; 136, 3; 137, 3.
” Lackland, § 96, 18.
” VII. of Portugal, § 205, 4.
” Sigismund, § 154, 3.
” the Apostle, § 16, 2.
” of Antioch, § 52, 3.
” Beccos [Beccus], § 67, 3.
” of Capistrano, § 112, 3.
” ” Climacus, § 47, 12.
” ” the Cross, § 149, 6, 16.
” ” Damascus, § 66, 1; 68, 2-5.
” ” Ephesus, § 5, 1.
” ” God, § 149, 7.
” ” Hagen, § 112, 1.
” ” Jandun, § 118, 1.
” Jejunator, § 46, 10; 61, 1.
” of Leyden, § 133, 6.
” de Monte Corvino, § 93, 15.
” Moschus, § 47, 12.
” of Nepomuc, § 116, 1.
” Ozniensis, § 72, 2.
” V., Paläologus, § 67, 5.
” VII., ” § 67, 6.
” of Paris, § 118, 1.
” ” Parma, § 108, 5.
” Philoponus, § 47, 11.
” the Presbyter, § 16, 3; 30, 6.
” Prester, § 72, 4.
” of Ravenna, § 83, 3.
” ” Salisbury, § 102, 9.
” Scholasticus, § 43, 3.
” Scotus Erigena, § 90, 7; 91, 5.
” Talaja, § 52, 5.
” of Trani, § 67, 3.
” ” Turrecremata, § 110, 15.
” Tzimiskes [Tzimisces], § 71, 1.
” of Wesel, § 119, 10.
John, St., Festival of, § 57, 1.
” Disciples of, § 25, 1.
” Knights of, § 98, 8.
Jonas of Bobbio, § 77, 3.
” ” Orleans, § 90, 4; 92, 2.
” Justus, § 123, 7; 134, 5; 142, 2.
Jones, § 182, 3.
Jordanes, § 90, 8.
Joris, David, § 148, 1.
Joseph, Patr., § 67, 4; 70, 1.
” I., Emperor, § 165, 1.
” II., § 165, 10; 186, 2.
Josephus, § 10, 2; 13, 2.
Jovi, § 80, 1.
Jovinian, § 62, 2.
Juarez, § 209, 1.
Jubilee Year, § 117, 1.
Jubilees, Book of, § 32, 2.
_Jubili_, § 85, 2.
Judä, Leo, § 130, 2; 143, 5.
Judson, § 184, 5.
Julia Mammæa, § 22, 4; 31, 5.
Juliana, § 104, 7.
Julianists, § 52, 7.
Julian, Emperor, § 42, 3, 5; 63, 1.
” of Eclanum, § 47, 21; 53, 4.
” ” Toledo, § 90, 2, 9.
” St., § 188, 8.
July Law, Pruss., § 197, 10, 11.
Julius I., § 46, 3; 50, 2.
” II., § 110, 13.
” III., § 149, 2.
” Africanus, § 31, 8.
Jumpers, § 170, 7.
Jung-Stillung, § 171, 11.
Junilius, § 48, 1.
Junius, Fr., § 143, 5.
Jurieu, § 161, 7.
_Jus circa sacra_, § 43, 1; 167, 3.
” _primarum prec._, § 165, 1.
” _regaliæ_, § 156, 1.
” _spoliorum_, § 110, 15.
Justin I., § 52, 5.
” Martyr, § 30, 9; 33, 9; 36, 3, 7.
” the Gnostic, § 27, 6.
Justina, St., § 48, 8.
” Empress, § 50, 4.
Justinian I., § 42, 4; 45, 2; 46, 9; 52, 6.
” II., § 46, 11.
Juvenal of Jerusalem, § 53, 3.
Juvencus, § 48, 6.
Kähler, § 176, 3.
Kahnis, § 182, 15.
Kaiser, § 128, 1.
Kaiserwerth, § 183, 1.
Kamehameha, § 184, 7.
Kamel, Sultan, § 94, 4, 5.
Kanitz, § 176, 3.
Kant, § 171, 10.
Karaites, § 72, 1.
Kardec, § 211, 17.
Karg, Controversy of, § 141, 3.
Katerkamp, § 5, 6.
Kaulen, § 191, 8.
Keil, § 182, 13.
Keim, § 182, 17.
Keller, Bishop, § 196, 6.
Kellner, § 177, 2.
Kempen, Stephen, § 125, 1.
Kempis, Thomas à, § 112, 9; 114, 7.
Kenrick, § 189, 3.
Kerner, Just., § 176, 2.
Kessler, § 124, 1; 130, 4.
Ketteler, § 175, 2; 187, 3; 189, 3; 196, 1-4; 197, 1, 4, 15.
Kettler, § 139, 3.
Kierkegaard, § 201, 1.
Kiev, § 73, 4.
Kilian, § 78, 2.
Kings, § 160, 4.
” the Three Holy, § 56, 5.
Klebitz, § 144, 1.
Klee, § 191, 6.
Kleuker, § 171, 8.
Kleutzen, § 191, 9.
Kliefoth, § 181, 3; 182, 14; 194, 6.
Klopstock, § 171, 11.
Knapp, A., § 181, 1.
” G. Ch., § 171, 8.
Knights, Teutonic, § 98, 8; 93, 13.
” of St. John, § 98, 8.
Knox, § 139, 9, 11.
Knutzen, § 164, 4.
Kohlbrügge, § 179, 3.
Kohler, § 170, 4.
Köllner, § 5, 5.
Königsberg, Relig. Process., § 176, 3.
Köppen, § 171, 8.
Körner, § 141, 12.
Kornthal, § 196, 5.
Krafft, § 195, 2.
Kraus, Xav., § 5, 6.
Krüdener, § 176, 2; 199, 5.
Krummacher, G. D., § 179, 3.
” F. W., § 178, 2.
Kübel, § 196, 2.
Kublai-Khan, § 93, 15.
Kuenen, § 182, 20.
Kuhn, § 191, 6.
“Kulturkampf,” German, § 197.
” Belgian, § 200, 5.
” French, § 203, 6.
Kuyper, § 200, 2.
Labadie, § 163, 7, 8.
Labarum, § 22, 7.
Labrador, § 184, 2.
Labyrinth, The Little, § 31, 3.
Lachat, § 199, 3.
Lacordaire, § 187, 4; 188, 1.
Lactantius, § 31, 12; 33, 9.
Ladislaus, St., § 93, 2.
” of Naples, § 110, 7.
Laforce, § 183, 1.
Lainez, § 149, 8.
Laity, § 34, 4.
Lamartine, § 174, 7.
Lambert le Begue [Bèghe], § 98, 7.
” of Avignon, § 127, 2; 130, 2.
Lambeth Articles, § 143, 5.
Lamennais, § 187, 4; 188, 1.
Lämmer, § 175, 2.
Lammists, § 163, 1.
Lampe, § 169, 2, 6.
Lancelot, § 159, 5.
Landulf, § 97, 5.
Lanfranc, § 96, 8; 101, 1, 2.
Lang, H., § 199, 4.
Lange, Joach., § 167, 1, 4.
” J. Pet., § 182, 9.
Langen, Rud. v., § 120, 3.
Laplace, § 161, 2.
Lapland, § 93, 11; 163, 4; 184, 2.
Lapsi, § 22, 5.
Lardner, § 171, 1.
Lasalle, § 165, 2; 212, 5.
Lasaulx, Am. v., § 188, 4.
Las Casas, § 150, 3.
Lasco, J. a, § 139, 18.
Lateran, § 110, 15.
” Synods I., § 52, 8; 96, 11.
” ” II., § 96, 13.
” ” III., § 96, 15.
” ” IV., § 96, 18; 101, 2; 104, 3-5; 106, 1; 109, 2.
Latimer, § 139, 5.
Latitudinarians, § 161, 3.
Latter-day Saints, § 211, 10, 12-14.
Laud, § 155, 1.
Laurence, Martyr, § 22, 5.
” Bishop, § 46, 8.
” Archbishop, § 77, 4.
Laurentius Valla, § 120, 1.
Lausanne, § 196, 5.
Lauterbach, § 129, 1.
Lavater, § 171, 11.
Lay Abbots, § 85, 5.
” Brethren, § 98.
Lazarists, § 156, 8.
Leade, Jane, § 163, 9.
Leander of Seville, § 76, 2; 90, 2.
Lectionaries, § 33; 59, 3.
Ledochowski, § 197, 3, 6, 7, 12.
Lee, Anna, § 170, 7.
” Bishop, § 211, 14.
Lefebvre, § 188, 4.
Legates, § 96, 23.
_Legenda aurea_, § 104, 8.
Legends, § 57, 1.
_Legio fulminatrix_, § 22, 3.
” _Thebaica_, § 22, 6.
Lehnin, Prophecy of, § 153, 8.
Leibnitz, § 153, 7; 160, 7; 164, 2.
Leidecker, § 161, 5.
Leidrad of Lyons, § 90, 3; 91, 1.
Leipzig Disputation, § 123, 4.
” Relig. Conference, § 154, 4.
Leland, § 169, 6; 171, 1.
Lenau, Nich. v., § 174, 6.
Lentulus, § 13, 2.
Leo I., the Great, § 45, 2; 46, 7; 47, 22; 52, 4; 54, 1, 2;
61, 1.
Leo II., § 46, 11.
” III., § 82, 3; 91, 2.
” IV., § 82, 5.
” VIII., § 96, 1.
” IX. § 67, 6; 96, 5.
” X., § 110, 14; 121, 1; 122, 2, 3; 194, 4.
” XI., § 149, 3.
” XII., § 185, 1.
” XIII., § 175, 2; 185, 5; 188, 8, 9; 191, 12; 197, 9;
200, 5; 203, 6.
Leo of Achrida, § 67, 3.
” the Armenian, § 66, 4.
” Chazarus, § 66, 3.
” the Isaurian, § 66, 1; 71, 1.
” the Philosopher, § 67, 2; 68, 1.
” the Thracian, § 52, 5.
” Henry, § 175, 1.
Leonardo da Vinci, § 115, 13.
Leonidas, § 22, 4.
_Leonistæ_, § 108, 10.
Leontius of Byzant., § 47, 12.
Leopardi, § 174, 7.
Leopold I., Emperor, § 153, 3, 7.
” of Tuscany, § 165, 9.
Leovigild, § 76, 2.
Leporius, § 52, 2.
Lessing, § 171, 6, 8, 11.
Lestines, Synod of, § 78, 5; 86, 2.
Lestrange, § 186, 2.
Leucius, § 32, 4, 5.
Levellers, § 162, 2.
Leyser, § 141, 14; 142, 6.
Libanius, § 42, 4.
_Libellatici_, § 22, 5.
_Libelli pacis_, § 39, 2.
_Liber confirmitat._, § 98, 3.
” _diurnus_, § 46, 11; 52, 9.
” _paschalis_, § 56, 3.
” _pontificalis_, § 90, 6.
Liberal Arts, § 90, 8.
Liberation Society, § 202.
Liberatus of Carthage, § 52, 6.
Liberius of Rome, § 46, 4; 50, 2, 3.
Libertins, § 146, 4.
_Libri Carolini_, § 92, 1.
_Licet ab initio_, § 139, 23.
Licinius, § 22, 7.
Lightfoot, § 161, 6.
Light, Friends of, § 176, 1.
Liguorians, § 165, 2; 186, 1.
Limborch, § 161, 7.
Limbus infantium, § 106, 3.
” patrum, § 106, 3.
_Limina apostt._, § 57, 6.
Linus, § 17, 1.
Linz, Peace of, § 153, 3.
Lippe, Princes’ Diet of, § 154, 2; 194, 5.
Lipsius, § 182, 19.
Liptinä, Synod of, § 78, 5; 86, 2.
Lisco, § 181, 4.
Litany, § 59, 9.
Lithuanians, § 93, 14.
_Litteræ formatæ_, § 34, 6.
Liturgical dress, etc., § 59, 7; 60, 3.
Liturgy, § 36, 1; 59, 6; 89, 1; 104, 1.
Liudger, § 78, 3.
Liutprand, § 82, 1.
Livingstone, § 184, 4.
Livinus, § 78, 3.
Livonia, § 93, 12; 139, 3; 153, 3; 168, 5; 206, 3.
Locke, § 164, 2.
Lodges, Free Masons’, § 104, 3.
Löhe, § 175, 1; 183, 1; 208, 2.
Lola Montez, § 195, 2.
Lollards, § 116, 3; 119, 1.
Lombardus [Lombard], § 102, 7.
Longobards, § 76, 8.
Lope de Vega, § 158, 3.
Loretto, § 115, 9.
Löscher, § 167, 1, 2, 4.
Louis the Bavarian, § 110, 3, 4.
” ” German, § 82, 5, 7.
” ” Pious, § 82, 4; 90, 1.
” II., Emperor, § 82, 5.
” VII. of France, § 94, 2.
” IX., the Saint, § 93, 15; 94, 6; 96, 21.
” XI., § 110, 13.
” XII., § 110, 13, 14.
” XIII., § 153, 4.
” XIV., § 153, 4; 156, 3; 157, 2, 3, 5.
” I. of Bavaria, § 195, 2.
” II. “ § 195, 3.
” V. of Hesse, § 154, 1.
” VI. of Palatinate, § 143, 6.
Lourdes, § 188, 14; 203, 5.
Lothair I., Emperor, § 82, 5.
” II., of Lothringia, § 82, 5, 7.
” III., the Saxon, § 96, 13.
Lotze, § 174, 2.
Low Churchmen, § 202, 1.
Loyola, § 149, 8.
Loyson, § 187, 8.
Lübeck, § 127, 4.
Lübker, § 174, 4.
Lucar, Cyr., § 152, 2.
Lucerne, § 199, 1.
Lucian, Martyr, § 31, 9.
” of Samosata, § 23, 1.
Lucidus, § 53, 5.
Lucifer of Calaris, § 47, 14; 50, 2, 8.
Luciferians, § 50, 8.
Lucilla, § 63, 1.
Lucius II., Pope, § 96, 13.
” III., § 96, 16.
Lucrezia Borzia, § 110, 10.
Ludmilla, § 79, 3; 93, 6.
Luis de Leon, § 149, 14, 15.
Luke of Prague, § 115, 7; 119, 8; 139, 19.
Lullus of Mainz, § 78, 7.
Lullus Raimund, § 93, 16; 103, 7.
Lüneburg, § 127, 3.
Luthardt, § 182, 14, 21; 194, 1.
Luther, § 122-135.
Lutherans, Separatists, Pruss., § 177, 2, 3.
Luther-Memorial, § 178, 1.
” Jubilee, § 175, 10.
Lütkemann Controversy, § 159, 1.
Lutz, Minister, § 195, 3; 197, 4.
Luxeuil, § 78, 1.
Lyons, Council of, § 67, 4; 96, 20, 21.
Lyra, Nich. v., § 113, 7.
Mabillon, § 158, 2.
Macarius the Elder, § 47, 7.
” Magnes, § 47, 6.
Maccabees, Fest. of, § 57, 1.
Macedonius, § 50, 5.
Macchiavelli, § 120, 1.
Maccovius, § 161, 7.
MacConochie, § 202, 3.
Macmahon, § 203, 5, 6.
Macrae, § 202, 8.
Macrianus, § 22, 5.
Macrina, § 47, 5.
Madagascar, § 184, 3.
Madiai, § 204, 3.
Maerlant, § 105, 5.
Magdeburg, § 127, 4; 137, 1.
_Magister historiarum_, § 105, 3.
” _sententiarum_, § 102, 4.
_Magna Charta_, § 96, 18.
Magnoald, § 78, 1.
Magnus the Good, § 93, 4.
” of Mecklenburg, § 134, 5.
” ” Upsala, § 139, 1.
Mai, Cardinal, § 191, 7.
Maid of Orleans, § 116, 2.
Maimbourg, § 158, 2.
Maimonides, § 103, 1.
Mainau Law, § 197, 11.
Maintenon, § 157, 3.
Mainz Cath. Union, § 186, 4; 197, 1.
Majorist Controversy, § 141, 6, 10.
Maistre, § 187, 9.
Malachi, Proph. of, § 149, 5.
Malakanians, § 166, 2.
Malan, § 199, 5.
Malchion, § 33, 8.
Maldonatus, § 149, 14.
Maltese, § 98, 8.
Mamertus, § 59, 9.
Mandæans, § 25, 1; 28, 2.
Mandeville, § 171, 1.
Manfred, § 96, 20.
Manichæans, § 29; 54, 1.
Manning, § 189, 3; 202, 2, 11.
Mansi, § 165, 15.
Mantua, Council of, § 96, 6.
” Congress of, § 110, 10.
Manuel Comnenus, § 69, 1.
Manzoni, § 174, 7.
Maphrian, § 52, 7.
Mara, § 13, 2.
Marburg Bible, § 170, 1.
” Church Order, § 127, 2.
” Colloquy, § 132, 4.
Marcellus of Ancyra, § 50, 2.
” II., § 149, 2.
Marcia, § 22, 3; 41, 1.
Marcian, § 52, 4.
Marcion, § 27, 11.
Marcionites, § 27, 12; 54, 1; 64, 3.
Marco Polo, § 93, 15.
Marcosians, § 27, 5.
Marcus Aurelius, § 22, 3.
” Eremita, § 47, 7.
” Eugenicus, § 67, 6; 68, 5.
Maresius, § 161, 3, 7.
Margaret of Navarre, § 120, 6; 146, 4.
Marheincke, § 182, 6.
Maria Theresa, § 165, 9.
Mariana, § 149, 10, 14.
Marinus, § 63, 1.
Mariolatry, § 57, 2; 104, 8.
Marius Mercator, § 47, 20.
” Victorinus, § 47, 14.
Marloratus, § 143, 3.
Marnix, Ph. v., § 139, 12.
Maronites, § 52, 8; 72, 3.
Marot, § 143, 2.
Marozia, § 96, 1.
Marriage, Christian, § 39, 1; 61, 2; 70, 2; 88, 3; 89, 4;
104, 6.
Marsden, § 184, 7.
Marsilius of Inghem, § 113, 3.
” ” Padua, § 118, 1.
Martensen, § 182, 10.
Martin I., § 46, 11; 52, 8.
” IV., § 96, 22.
” V., § 110, 6.
” of Braga, § 76, 4; 90, 2.
” ” Mainz, § 114, 4.
” ” Paderborn, § 175, 2; 189, 3; 197, 6.
” ” Tours, § 47, 14; 54, 2.
” St., § 165, 14.
Martyrs, § 22, 5.
” Acts of, § 32, 8.
” Veneration of, § 39, 5.
Martyrologies, § 57, 1; 90, 9.
Marx, § 212, 4.
Mary of England, § 139, 5.
” ” Guise, § 139, 8.
” ” Jesus, § 156, 5.
” ” Scotland, § 139, 6, 8, 10.
Maryland, § 208, 5.
Mass, Canon of, § 59, 6.
” Sacrifice of, § 36, 6; 58, 3; 88, 3.
Massacre, Irish, § 153, 6.
” of St. Bartholomew, § 139, 16.
” ” Stockholm, § 139, 1.
” ” Thorn, § 165, 4.
Massilians, § 53, 5.
Massillon, § 158, 2.
Mastricht, § 161, 7.
Matamoros, § 205, 4.
Maternus, Jul. Firm., § 47, 14.
” Pistorius, § 120, 2.
Mathesius, § 142, 2, 3.
Matilda, Margravine, § 96, 8, 10.
Matthias, Emperor, § 153, 2.
Matthys, Jan., § 147, 8, 9.
Maulbronn, Formula, § 141, 12.
” Conference, § 144, 1.
Maur, Monks of St., § 156, 7.
” St., § 85.
Maurice of Hesse, § 154, 1.
” ” Orange, § 139, 12; 161, 2.
” ” Saxony, § 136; 137.
Mauritius, St., § 22, 6.
” Emperor, § 46, 10.
Maxentius, § 22, 7.
Maximianus [Maximian] Herculius, § 22, 6.
Maximilian I., § 110, 13.
” II, § 137, 8; 139, 9.
” I., Duke of Bavaria, § 151, 1.
” III., Elector of Bavaria, § 165, 10.
” I., King of Bavaria, § 195, 1.
” II., King of Bavaria,
” Francis of Cologne, § 165, 13.
” Emperor of Mexico, § 209, 1.
Maximilla, § 40, 1.
Maximinus Daza, § 22, 6, 7.
” Thrax, § 22, 4.
Maximus, Emperor, § 54, 2.
” Confessor, § 47, 12; 52, 8.
Mayer, Seb., § 130, 4.
May Laws, Prussian, § 197, 5, 6.
” ” Austrian, § 198, 6.
Maynooth Bill, § 202, 9.
Mayhew, § 162, 7.
Mechitarists, § 165, 2.
Mechthild, § 107, 2.
Mecklenburg, § 134, 5; 194, 6.
Medici, § 110, 11.
Meinhart, § 93, 12.
Meinrad, § 85, 6.
Mel, Conrad, § 169, 1.
Melanchthon, § 122, 5; 139, 13; 141, 7, 9.
Melchers, § 188, 12; 189, 3; 197, 6, 12.
Melchiades, § 46, 3; 63, 1.
Melchionites, § 147, 1.
Melchisedecians, § 33, 3.
Melchites, § 52, 7.
Meletius of Antioch, § 50, 8.
” ” Lycopolis, § 41, 4.
Melissander, § 142, 3.
Melito, § 30, 8; 36, 8; 40, 1.
Memnon of Ephesus, § 52, 5.
Menander, § 25, 2.
Mendelssohn, § 171, 3.
” Bartholdy, § 174, 10.
Mendez, § 152, 1.
Mendicant Friars, § 98, 3.
Menius, § 141, 6.
Menken, § 172, 3.
Mennas, § 52, 6.
Mennonites, § 147, 2; 163, 1.
Menologies, § 57, 1.
Menot, § 115, 2.
Mensurius, § 63, 1.
Mercedarians, § 98, 9.
Mercerus, § 143, 5.
Merlan, § 170, 1.
Merle d’Aubigné, § 178, 2.
Mermillod, § 189, 3; 199, 2.
Mersen, Treaty of, § 82, 5.
Merswin, § 114, 2, 4.
Mesmer, § 174, 2.
Mesrop, § 64, 3.
Messalians, Christian, § 44, 7.
” Pagan, § 42, 6.
Meth, § 163, 9.
Methodists, § 169, 4, 5; 208, 1; 211, 1.
Methodius, § 73, 3; 79, 2.
” of Olympus, § 31, 9; 33, 9.
Metraphanes, § 67, 6.
” Critop., § 152, 2.
Metropolitans, § 34, 3; 83, 3.
Mettrie, la, § 165, 12.
Mexico, § 209, 1; 190, 3.
Meyer, H. A. W., § 182, 11.
Meyffart, § 160, 3.
Michael, Archangel, § 88, 4.
” Acominatus, § 68, 5.
” Balbus, § 66, 4.
” of Bradacz, § 119, 8.
” Cærularius, § 119, 8.
” of Cesnea, § 112, 2.
” the Drunkard, § 67, 1.
” Palæologus, § 67, 6.
Michael Angelo, § 149, 15.
Michaelis, Chr. Ben., § 167, 3.
” J. D., § 171, 6.
” J. H., § 167, 3.
Michaelmas, § 57, 3.
Michaud, § 190, 3.
Michelians, § 171, 3.
Michelis, § 190, 1; 191, 6.
Micislas, § 93, 7.
Milicz, § 119, 2.
_Militia Christi_, § 37.
Mill, Walter, § 139, 8.
Millennium, § 33, 9.
Milman, § 182, 4.
Miltiades of Athens, § 30, 8; 37, 3.
” ” Rome, § 46, 3.
Miltiz, § 122, 3.
Milton, § 172, 3.
Minimi, § 112, 8.
Minnesingers, § 105, 6.
Minorites, § 98, 3.
Minster, § 84, 4.
Minucius Felix, § 31, 12.
” Fundanus, § 22, 2.
_Missa Catechum. et fidelium_, § 36, 2, 3; 58, 4.
_Missa Solitaria_, § 58, 3.
” _Sponsorum_, § 61, 2; 88, 3; 104, 6.
Missa Marcelli, § 149, 15.
_Missale Rom._, § 149, 14.
Missionary Societies, § 172, 5; 5; 184, 1; 186, 6.
Missions, Foreign, § 75-78; 93.
” ” Catholic, § 150; 156, 10, 12; 165, 3; 186, 7.
Missions, Foreign, Protest., § 142, 8; 143, 7; 160, 7; 162, 7;
167, 9; 168, 11: 184.
Missions, Home, Catholic, § 149, 7; 156, 4; 186, 4, 5.
” ” Protest., § 183.
Missions, Priests of the, § 156, 8.
Missouri Synod, § 208, 2, 3.
Mistewoi, § 93, 9.
Mitre, § 84, 1.
Mizetius, § 91, 1.
Modalists, § 33.
Moderates, § 202, 7.
Mogilas, § 152, 3.
Mogtasilah, § 28, 2.
Mohammed, § 65.
” II., § 67, 7; 110, 10.
Mohammedans, § 184, 9.
Möhler, § 191, 4, 5, 6.
Molanus, § 153, 7.
Molay, § 112, 7.
Moleschott, § 174, 3.
Molina, § 149, 13.
Molinæus, § 161, 3.
Molinos, § 157, 2.
Momiers, § 199, 5.
Mommers, § 169, 2.
Mömpelgard, Relig. Confer., § 138, 8.
_Monarcha theologor._, § 103, 3.
Monarchians, § 33.
_Monasterium Clericor._, § 45, 1.
Monasticism, § 44; 70; 85; 98; 112; 149; 156; 165; 186.
Mongols, § 93, 15.
Monica, § 47, 13.
_Monita Secreta_, § 149, 9.
Monod, § 203, 4.
Monogram, § 38, 4.
Monophysites, § 52, 5, 7; 72, 2.
Monothelites, § 52, 8.
Montalembert, § 188, 1; 189, 1.
Montalte, § 157, 5.
Montalto, § 149, 3.
Montanists, § 40.
Montanus, Arias, § 149, 14.
Monte, del, § 149, 2.
Monte Cassino, § 85.
” Corvino, § 93, 15.
Montesquieu, § 165, 14.
Montfaucon, § 165, 11.
Montfort, Sim. de, § 109, 1.
Montmorency, § 139, 13, 14.
Moody, § 211, 1.
Moors, § 81; 95.
Moralities, § 105, 5.
Morata, § 139, 24.
Moravia, § 79, 2.
Moravian Brethren, § 119, 5.
Moray, The Regent, § 139, 11.
More, Sir Thomas, § 120, 7; 139, 4.
Morel, § 139, 25.
Moreno, § 209, 2.
Morgan, § 171, 1.
Morinus, § 158, 1.
Moriscoes, § 95, 2.
Morland, § 153, 5.
Mormons, § 211, 12-14.
Morone, § 135, 2; 137, 5; 139, 22.
Morison, § 184, 6.
Mortara, § 175, 8.
Morton, § 139, 11.
Morus, § 171, 8.
Mosaics, § 60, 6; 104, 14.
Moser, J. F. v., § 167, 6, 8.
” K. F. v., § 171, 10; 172, 2.
Moses of Chorene, § 64, 3.
Mosheim, § 5, 3; 167, 4; 169, 1.
Moslems, § 65.
Moulin, du, § 161, 3.
Mouls, § 190, 3.
Movers, § 191, 8.
Mozarabians, § 81, 1.
Mozarabic Liturgy, § 88, 1; 104, 1.
Mozart, § 174, 10.
Mtesa, § 184, 4.
“_Mucker_,” § 176, 3.
Mühlenberg, § 208, 2.
Mühler, v., § 193, 4; 197, 2.
Müller, Ad., § 175, 7.
” Bem., § 211, 6.
” G., § 183, 1.
” H., § 160, 1.
” J. v., § 171, 11.
” J. G., § 171, 8.
” Jul., § 182, 10.
Münster, City, § 133, 6.
” Seb., § 143, 5.
Münzer, Thos., § 124, 4, 5.
Muratori, § 165, 12.
Muratorian Canon, § 36, 8.
Murillo, § 158, 3.
Murner, Thos., § 125, 4; 130, 6.
Murrone, § 112, 4.
Musæus, § 141, 7; 144, 2.
Musculus, Andr., § 141, 12.
” Wolfg., § 141, 14.
Music, § 59, 3; 104, 11; 115, 8; 149, 15; 158, 3; 172, 1;
174, 10.
Muspilli, § 89, 3.
Mutianus, § 120, 2, 3.
Mwanga, § 184, 4.
Myconius, § 125, 1.
” Oswald, § 133, 8.
Mysos, § 139, 26.
Mysteries, § 105, 5; 115, 12.
Mystics, Eastern, § 92; 102; 103; 107; 114.
Mystics, Grecian, § 47, 7, 11; 68, 3.
Mystics, Catholic, § 149, 16; 156, 1-4.
Mystics, Protest., § 146; 160, 2; 169, 3.
Naassenes, § 27, 6.
Nägelsbach, § 174, 4.
Namszanowski, § 197, 2.
Nantes, Edict of, § 139, 17; 153, 4.
Napoleon I., § 165, 5; 185, 1; 203, 1.
Napoleon III., § 185, 3; 203, 3, 4; 209, 1.
Narthex, § 60, 1.
Nassau, § 193, 6; 196, 4.
_Natales episc._, § 45, 1.
” _Martyrum_, § 39, 5.
Natalis, Alexander, § 5, 2; 157, 2.
Natalius, § 33, 3.
National Assembly, French, § 165, 15.
National Convention, § 165, 15.
Natorp, § 181, 2.
Naumburg, Bishopric of, § 135, 5.
” Princes’ Diet, § 141, 11.
Nauplia, Syn., § 207, 1.
Nauvoo, § 211, 10.
Naylor, § 163, 4.
Nazareans, § 28, 1.
Neander, § 5, 5; 182, 4.
” Joach., § 162, 6.
Nectarius, § 61, 1.
Nemesius, § 47, 6.
Nennius, § 90, 8.
Neophytes, § 34, 3.
Neo-Platonists, § 24, 2; 42.
Nepomuk, § 116, 1.
Nepos of Arsinoë [Arsinoe], § 33, 9.
Nepotism, § 110.
Neri, Philip, § 149, 7; 158, 3.
Nero, § 22, 1.
Nerses I., § 64, 3.
” IV., Clajensis, § 72, 2.
” of Lampron, § 72, 2.
Nerva, § 22, 1.
Nestor, § 73, 4.
Nestorians, § 52, 3; 64, 2; 72, 1; 150, 4; 184, 9.
Nestorius, § 52, 3.
Netherlands, § 139, 12; 162, 4; 169, 2; 184, 5; 200.
Neuendettelsau, § 183, 1.
Neumann, § 160, 4.
Neumark, § 160, 4.
Newman, § 202, 2.
New Year, § 56, 5.
Nicæa, Council of, § 40, 1; 41, 4; 46, 3; 50, 1; 56, 3.
Nicephorus Gregoras, § 69, 2.
” Callisti, § 5, 1.
Nicetas Acominatus, § 68, 5.
” of Nicomedia, § 67, 4.
” Pectoratus, § 67, 3.
Nicholas I., § 67, 1; 73, 3; 82, 7; 83, 3; 91, 5.
Nicholas II., § 96, 6.
” III., IV., § 96, 22.
” V., § 110, 9, 10.
” of Basel, § 114, 4.
” Cabasilas, § 68, 5; 70, 4.
” of Clemanges, § 118, 4.
” ” Cusa, § 113, 6.
” v. d. Flüe, § 116, 1.
” of Lyra, § 113, 7.
” ” Methone, § 68, 5.
” Mysticus, § 67, 2.
” of Pisa, § 110, 12.
” I., Czar, § 206, 1, 2; 210, 2.
Nicolai, Publisher. § 171, 4.
” Henry, § 146, 5.
” Philip, § 142, 4.
Nicolaitanism, § 96, 5.
Nicolaitans, § 18, 3; 27, 8.
Nicole, § 158, 1.
Niebuhr, § 193, 1.
Niedner, § 5, 4.
Niemeyer, § 171, 7.
Nightingale, § 183, 1.
Nihilism, § 102, 8.
Nihilists, § 212, 6.
Nikon, § 163, 10.
Nilus Sinaiticus, § 44, 3; 47, 10.
” the Younger, § 100.
Nimbus, § 60, 6.
Ninian, § 77, 2.
Niphon, Monk, § 70, 4.
” Patriarch, § 70, 1.
Nismes, Edict of, § 154, 4.
Nitschmann, § 168, 3, 11.
Nitzsch, § 182, 10; 193, 3, 4.
Noailles, § 165, 7.
Nobili, § 156, 11.
Nobla leiczon, § 108, 14 (vol. ii., p. 471).
Nobreja, § 150, 3.
Nobunaja [Nobunaga], § 150, 2.
Noetus, § 33, 5.
Nogaret, § 110, 1.
Nolasque, § 98, 9.
Nominalists, § 99, 2; 113, 3.
Nomo-Canon, § 43, 3.
_Nonæ_, § 86, 2.
Non-Intrusionists, § 202, 7.
Nonconformists, § 143, 2, 3; 155, 1, 2.
Nonna, § 47, 4.
Nonnus of Panopolis, § 48, 5.
Norbert, § 98, 2; 96, 13.
Normans, § 93, 1; 95, 1.
North African School, § 31, 1.
North America, § 208.
Norwegians, § 93, 4; 139, 2; 201, 3.
Nösselt, § 171, 8.
Noting of Verona, § 91, 5.
Notker Balbulus, § 88, 2.
” Labeo, § 100, 1.
Novalis, § 174, 5.
Novatian, § 31, 12; 41, 3.
Novatus, § 38, 2, 3.
Noviciate, § 44, 2; 86, 1.
Noyes, § 211, 6.
Nuñez de Arca, § 175, 2.
Nunia, § 64, 4.
Nuns, § 44, 5.
Nuntio, § 151, 1.
Nuremberg, Relig. Peace of, § 133, 2.
” Diet of, § 126, 1, 2.
Oak, Synod of the, § 51, 3.
Oates, Titus, § 153, 6.
_Oberammergau_, § 174, 10.
Oberlin, § 172.
_Oblati_, § 85, 1.
Oblations, § 36; 39, 5; 61, 4.
Obotrites, § 93, 9.
Observants, § 112, 2; 149, 6.
Occam, § 112, 2; 113, 3; 118, 2.
Occultists, § 211, 18.
Ochino, § 139, 24; 147, 6; 149, 6.
O’Connell, § 202, 9.
Octaves, § 56, 4.
October Assembly, § 178, 3.
Odensee, Diet of, § 139, 2.
Odilo of Bavaria, § 78, 5.
Odo of Clugny, § 98, 1; 100, 2; 104, 10, 11.
Odoacer, § 46, 8.
Œcolampadius, § 130, 3, 6; 131, 1.
Œcumenius, § 68, 4.
Oersted, § 174, 3.
Oetingen, § 182, 15.
Oetinger, § 170, 5; 171, 9.
Oehler, § 182, 14.
_Œuvres_, § 186, 4.
_Officium S. Mariæ_, § 104, 8.
Οἰκόνομοι, § 45, 3.
Oischinger, § 191, 6.
Oktai-Khan, § 93, 15.
Olaf, § 80, 1.
” Haraldson, § 93, 4, 5.
” Schosskönig, § 93, 3.
” Trygvason, § 93, 4, 5.
” St., § 93, 4.
Olcott, § 211, 18.
Oldcastle, § 119, 1.
Oldenbarneveldt, § 161, 2.
Oldenburg, § 194, 5.
Olevian, § 144, 1; 161, 4.
Olga, § 73, 4.
Olgerd, § 93, 14.
Oliva, § 108, 6.
Olivet, Monks of Mount, § 112, 1.
Olivetan, § 138, 1; 143, 5.
Olshausen, § 176, 3.
Ommaiades, § 81; 95, 2.
Oncken, § 211, 3.
Oneida-sect, § 211, 6.
_Onochoetes Deus_, § 23, 2.
Oosterzee, § 200, 2.
Ophites, § 27, 6, 7.
Opitz, § 160, 3.
Optatus of Mileve, § 63, 1.
Opzoomer, § 200, 3.
Orange, Synod of, § 53, 5.
Oratories, § 84, 2.
Oratory of Divine Love, § 139, 22.
” Fathers of the, § 156, 7.
” Priests of the, § 149, 7.
Ordeals, § 89, 5.
Ordericus Vitalis, § 5, 1.
Ordination, § 45, 1.
_Ordines majores et minores_, § 34, 3.
_Ordo Romanus_, § 59, 6.
Organs, § 88, 2; 104, 11; 115, 8; 154, 3.
Origen, § 31, 5; 33, 6-9; 36, 9; 61, 4.
Origenist Controversy, § 51.
Original Sin, Controversy about, § 141, 8.
Orosius, § 47, 19.
Ortlibarians, § 103, 4.
Ortuinus Gratus, § 120, 5.
_Osculum pacis_, § 35.
Osiander, Andr., § 126, 4; 135, 6; 141, 2.
Osiander, Luc., § 159, 1.
Osiandrian Controversy, § 141, 2.
_Ostiarii_, § 34, 3.
Ostrogoths, § 76, 7.
Oswald, § 77, 5.
Oswy, § 77, 5, 6.
Ota, § 78, 2.
Otfried, § 89, 3.
Otgar of Mainz, § 87, 3.
Otternbein, § 208, 4.
Ottheinrich, § 135, 6.
Otto I., § 93, 2, 8; 96, 1.
” II., III., § 96, 2, 3.
” IV., § 96, 17.
” of Bamberg, § 93, 10.
” ” Passau, § 114, 6.
Overbeek, Painter, § 174, 9.
” Dr., § 175, 5.
Overberg, § 172, 2.
Owen, Rob., § 212, 3.
Oxford, § 202, 2.
” Movement, § 211, 1.
Pabst, § 191, 3.
_Pabulatores_, § 44, 7.
Paccanari, § 186, 1.
Pachomius, § 44, 1, 3, 5.
Pacianus, § 47, 15.
Pacifico, Fra, § 104, 10.
Pack, O. v., § 132, 1.
Paderborn, § 133, 5.
Paez, § 152, 1.
_Pagani_, § 42, 4.
Pagi, § 158, 2; 5, 2.
Pagninus, § 149, 14.
Pajon, § 161, 3.
Palamas, § 69, 2.
Palatinate, § 135, 6; 144, 1; 153, 1, 3; 196, 4.
Paleario, § 139, 22, 23.
Palestrina, § 149, 15.
Paley, § 171, 8.
Palladius, § 47, 10.
Pallium, § 46, 1; 59, 7; 97, 3.
Palm Sunday, § 56, 4.
Pamphilus, § 31, 6.
Pan-Anglicanism, § 202, 1.
Pandulf, § 96, 18.
Pan-Presbyterianism, § 179, 3.
Pantänus, § 31, 4.
Pantheon, § 46, 10.
_Papa_, § 46, 1.
Papacy, § 34, 8; 46, 2; 82; 96; 110; 149; 156; 165; 185.
Papal Elections, § 46, 8, 11; 82, 4; 96, 6, 15, 21.
Papebroch, § 155, 2.
Paphnutius, § 45, 2.
Papias, § 30, 6; 33, 9.
_Parabolani_, § 45, 3.
Paracelsus, § 146, 2.
Paraguay, § 156, 10; 165, 3.
Pareus, § 159, 5.
Parker, Matt., § 139, 6.
” Theodore, § 211, 4.
Parnell, § 202, 10.
_Parochia_, § 84, 2.
_Parochus_, § 84, 2.
Parsimonius, § 141, 8.
Pasagians, § 108, 3.
Pascal, § 157, 5; 158, 1.
Pascale, § 139, 25.
Πάσχα σταυρώσιμων and ἀναστάσιμον, § 56, 4.
Paschal Controversy, § 37, 2.
Paschalis I., § 82, 4.
” II., § 96, 11.
” III., § 96, 15.
Paschasius, § 99, 5; 91, 3.
Paschkow, § 206, 1.
Pasquino, § 149, 1.
Passaglia, § 187, 5.
Passau, Treaty of, § 137, 3.
Passion Play, § 105, 5; 115, 12; 174, 10.
Pastor, § 84, 2.
_Pastor æternus_, § 189, 3.
_Patareni_, § 108, 1.
Pataria, § 97, 5.
Patent, Austrian, § 198, 3.
” Hungarian, § 198, 6.
_Pater Orthodoxiæ_, § 47, 4.
Patriarchs, § 46.
Patriciate, Roman, § 82, 1.
Patrick, St., § 77, 1.
_Patrimonium pauperum_, § 45, 4.
” _Petri_, § 46, 10; 82, 1.
Patripassians, § 33, 4.
Patronage, § 84.
Patronus, § 57, 1.
Paul, the Apostle, § 15.
” Burgensis, § 113, 7.
” Diaconus [Warnefrid], § 90, 3.
” Orosius, § 47, 20.
” the Persian, § 48, 1.
” of Samosata, § 33, 8; 39, 3.
” Silentiarius, § 48, 5.
” of Thebes, § 39, 4.
” Warnefried, § 90, 3.
” I., § 82, 1.
” II., § 110, 11, 15; 119, 4.
” III., § 149, 2; 134, 1; 139, 23.
” IV, § 149, 2.
” V., § 156, 1, 2, 4; 149, 13.
” I. of Russia, § 186, 2.
Paula, St., § 44, 5.
” Francis de, § 112, 8.
” Vinc. de, § 156, 8.
Pauli, Greg., § 148, 3.
Paulicians, § 71, 1.
Paulinus of Antioch, § 50, 8.
” ” Aquileia, § 90, 3.
” ” Milan, § 47, 20; 53, 4.
” Missionary, § 77, 4.
” of Nola, § 48, 6; 60, 5.
Paulus, Dr., § 182, 2.
_Pauperes de Lugduno_, § 108, 10.
” _Catholici_, § 108, 10.
Payens, § 98, 7.
_Pax dissid._, § 139, 18.
Pearson, § 161, 6, 7.
Peasants’ War, § 124, 5.
Pectorale, § 59, 7.
Pelagius, § 47, 21; 53, 3, 4.
” I., Pope, § 46, 9; 52, 6.
” II., ” § 46, 9.
Pelayo, § 81, 1.
Pellicanus, § 120, 4, note.
Pellico, Silvio, § 174, 7.
Penance, § 104, 4.
Penda, § 77, 4.
Penitential Books, § 61, 1; 89, 6; 103, 6.
Penn, § 163, 5.
Pentecost, § 37, 1; 56, 4.
Pepin, § 78, 5; 82, 1.
Pepucians, § 40, 1.
Peraldus, § 103, 9.
Perates, § 27, 6.
Peregrinus Proteus, § 23, 1.
_Pères de la foi_, § 186, 1.
Perfectionists, § 211, 6.
Perfectus, § 81, 1.
Pericopes, § 59, 2; 167, 2.
Peristerium, § 60, 5.
Perkins, § 143, 5.
Peroz, § 64, 2.
Perpetua, § 22, 5.
Perrone, § 175, 2; 191, 9.
Persecution of Christians, § 23; 64.
Persia, § 64, 2; 93, 15.
Perthes, § 183, 1.
Peschito, § 36, 8.
Pestalozzi, § 171, 12.
Petavius, § 158, 1.
Peter the Apostle, § 16, 1.
” d’Ailly, § 118, 4.
” of Alcantara, § 149, 5, 16.
” ” Alexandria, § 41, 4.
” ” Amiens, § 94, 1.
” ” Aragon [Arragon], § 96, 18.
” ” Bruys, § 108, 7.
” Cantor, § 103, 3.
” of Castelnau, § 109, 1.
” ” Chelczic, § 119, 7.
” ” Clugny, § 96, 13.
” Chrysolanus, § 67, 4.
” Chrysologus, § 47, 16.
” Comestor, § 105, 5.
” Damiani, § 97, 4; 104, 10; 106, 4.
” Dresdensis, § 115, 7.
” of Dubois, § 118, 1.
” Fullo, § 52, 5.
” Hispanus, § 96, 22.
” the Lombard, § 102, 5; 104, 2, 4.
” Mongus, § 52, 5.
” of Murrone, § 98, 2.
” ” Pisa, § 90.
” ” Poitiers, § 102, 5.
” Siculus, § 71, 1.
” the Venerable, § 98, 1; 102, 2; 109.
” I. of Russia, § 166.
” and Paul, Festival of, § 57, 1.
” Fest. of Chair of St., § 57, 1.
” Church of St., § 115, 13.
Peter’s Pence, § 82.
Petersen, § 170, 1.
Peterson, § 139, 1.
Petilian, § 63, 1.
Petrarch, § 115, 10.
Petrejus, § 120, 2.
Petrikan, Synod, § 139, 18; 148, 3.
Petrobrusians, § 108, 7.
Petrow, § 163, 10.
Petrucci, § 157, 2.
Peucer, § 141, 10; 144, 3.
Peyrerius, § 161, 7.
Peysellians, § 170, 6.
Pfaff, § 167, 4, 5, 8.
Pfefferkorn, § 120, 4.
Pfeffinger, § 141, 7.
Pfeiffer, Aug., § 159, 4.
Pfenninger, § 171, 8.
Pfleiderer, § 182, 19.
Pflugk, § 135, 3, 5; 136, 5; 137, 6.
_Pharensis Syn._, § 77, 6.
Pharisees, § 8, 4.
Philadelphia, § 60, 4.
Philadelphian Churches, § 170, 1.
” Period, § 168, 4.
” Sect, § 163, 8.
Philaster, § 47, 14.
Philip, § 14; 17, 2.
” the Arabian, § 22, 4.
” I. of France, § 96, 8, 10.
” II., Aug., § 94, 3; 96, 18.
” the Fair, § 110, 1, 2; 112, 7.
” II. of Spain, § 139, 12, 21.
” of Swabia, § 96, 17.
” the Magnanimous, § 126, 4, 5; 135, 1, 3; 137, 3.
Philippi, § 182, 13.
Philippists, § 141, 4 ff.
Philippones, § 163, 10.
Philippopolis, Synod of, § 50, 2.
Philipps, § 175, 7; 191, 7.
Phillpotts, § 202, 2.
Philo, § 10, 1.
Philopatris, § 42, 5.
Philoponus, § 47, 11.
Philosophical Sin, § 149, 10.
Philosophoumena, § 31, 3.
Philostorgius, § 4, 1.
Philoxenus, § 59, 1.
Philumena, § 27, 12.
Phocas, § 46, 10.
Phœbe, § 17, 4.
Photinus, § 50, 2.
Photius, § 67, 1; 68, 5.
Phyletism, § 207, 3.
Φωτιζόμενοι, § 35, 1.
Φθαρτολάτραι, § 52, 7.
Piacenza, Council, § 94.
Piarists, § 156, 7.
Picards, § 116, 5; 119, 8.
Pichler, § 191, 7.
Pick, § 211, 8.
Picts, § 77, 2.
Picus of Mirandola, § 120, 1.
Pideritz, § 133, 5.
Piedmont, § 204, 3.
Pietism, Lutheran, § 159, 3; 167, 1.
” Reformed, § 162, 3, 4.
” in 19th Century, § 176, 2.
Pilate, Acts of, § 13, 2; 31, 2.
Pilgrim of Passau, § 93, 8.
” Fathers, § 143, 4; 208, 1.
Pilgrimages, § 57, 6; 89, 4; 104, 8; 115, 9; 188, 5, 6.
Pin, du, § 158, 2.
Pionius, § 30, 5.
Pirkheimer, § 120, 3.
Pirminius, § 78, 1, 5.
Pirstinger, § 125, 5; 149, 14.
Pisa, Council of, § 110, 6.
Piscator, § 143, 5.
Pistis, Sophia, § 27, 7.
Pistoja, Synod of, § 165, 10.
Pistorius, § 135, 3.
” Maternus, § 120, 2.
Pius II., § 110, 10; 118, 6; 119, 4.
” III., § 110, 13.
” IV., § 149, 2.
” V., § 149, 3; 139, 23.
” VI., § 165, 9, 10, 15.
” VII., § 185, 1; 203, 1.
” VIII., § 184, 1; 193, 1.
” IX., § 185, 2 ff.; 175, 2; 188, 8; 189, 3; 197, 7; 202, 11.
Placæus, § 161, 3.
Planck, § 171, 8.
_Planeta_, § 59, 7.
Plastic Arts, § 60, 6; 89, 6; 104, 14; 115, 13.
Plato, § 7, 4; 47, 5; 68, 3; 99, 2.
Platon, § 166, 1.
Platter, § 130, 4.
_Plebani_, _Plebs_, § 84, 2.
Plenaries, § 115, 4.
Pleroma, § 26, 2.
Pletho, § 68, 2; 120, 1.
Pliny the Younger, § 22, 2.
Plotinus, § 24, 2.
Plotizin, § 210, 4.
Plutschau, § 167, 9.
Plymouth Brethren, § 211, 11.
Pneumatomachians, § 50, 5.
Pobedonoszew, § 206, 1.
Poblenz, § 184, 5.
Pocquet, § 146, 4.
Pococke, § 161, 6.
Podiebrad, § 119, 7, 8.
Poetry, Christian, § 48, 5, 6; 105, 4; 174, 6.
Poggio, § 120, 1; 119, 5.
Poiret, § 163, 9.
Poissy, Relig. Confer., § 139, 14.
Poland, § 93, 7; 139, 18; 165, 4; 206, 2, 3.
Pole, § 139, 5, 22.
Polemon, § 47, 6.
Polenz of Samland, § 125, 1.
Poliander, § 142, 3.
Polo, Marco, § 93, 15.
Polozk, Synod of, § 206, 2.
Polycarp, § 22, 3; 30, 6; 37, 2.
Polychronius, § 47, 9.
Polycrates, § 37, 2.
Polyglott, Antwerp, § 149, 14.
” Complutensian, § 120, 8.
” London, § 161, 6.
” Paris, § 158, 1.
Pomare, § 184, 7.
Pombal, § 165, 9.
Pommerania, § 93, 10; 134, 4.
Pomponazzo, § 120, 1.
Ponce de la Fuente, § 139, 21.
_Pœnitentiaria Rom._, § 110, 16.
Pontianus, § 38, 1.
Ponticus, § 22, 3.
Pontius, § 98, 1.
Popiel, § 206, 1.
Popular Philosophy, § 171, 4.
Pordage, § 163, 9.
Porphyry, § 23, 3; 24, 2.
Portig, § 180, 3.
Portiuncula, § 98, 3.
Port Royal, § 157, 5.
Portugal, § 165, 9; 205, 5.
Positivism, § 174, 2; 210, 1.
Possessor of Carthage, § 53, 5.
Possevin, § 139, 1; 151, 2, 3.
Possidius, § 47, 18.
Post-Apostolic Age, § 20, 1.
_Postilla_, § 103, 9; 108, 6.
Potamiæna, § 22, 4.
Pothinus, § 22, 3.
_Præceptor Germaniæ_, § 122, 5.
_Præpositi_, § 84, 2.
Prætorius, § 160, 1.
Praxeas, § 33, 4.
Prayer, § 37; 39, 1.
Preaching, § 36, 2; 59, 3; 89, 1; 104, 1; 115, 2; 142, 2.
Preaching Orders, § 98, 5; 112, 4.
Pre-Adamites, § 161, 4.
Prebends, § 84, 4.
Precaria, § 86, 1.
Precists, § 96, 23.
Predestination, § 53; 91, 4; 125, 3; 141, 12; 161, 2, 3; 168, 1;
208, 3.
Prepon, § 27, 12.
Presburg, Peace of, § 192.
Presbyter, § 17, 2, 5; 34, 3; 45.
Presbyterians, § 143, 3; 162, 1; 202, 4; 208, 1.
Prierias, § 122, 3.
Priestley, § 211, 4.
Primacy, Papal, § 34, 8; 46, 2, 3.
Primasius, § 48, 1.
Primian, § 63, 1.
Prisca, § 40, 1.
Priscillianists, § 54, 2.
Probabilism, § 149, 10; 113, 4.
Procession of Holy Spirit, § 50, 6; 67, 1; 91, 2.
Processions, § 59, 9.
Prochorus, § 32, 6.
Procidians, § 27, 8.
Proclus, Montanist, § 31, 7; 40, 2.
” Neoplaton., § 24, 2; 42, 5.
Procopius of Gaza, § 48, 1.
” the Great, § 119, 7.
Procopowicz, § 166.
_Professio fid. Trid._, § 149, 14.
Proles, § 112, 5.
Proli, § 211, 16.
Propaganda, § 156, 9; 204, 2.
Prophecy, § 143, 3, 5.
_Propositt. Cleri Gallicani_, § 156, 3; 203, 1.
Proselytes of Gate and Righteousness, § 10, 2.
Πρόσκλαυσις, § 39, 2.
Προσφοραί, § 36.
Prosper Aquit., § 47, 20; 48, 6; 53, 5.
Proterius, § 52, 5.
Protestants, § 132, 3.
“_Protestantenverein_,” § 180.
Proudhon, § 212, 1.
_Provida sollersque_, § 196, 1.
Prudentius, Poet, § 48, 6.
” of Troyes, § 91, 5.
Psellus, § 68, 5; 71, 3.
Pseudepigraphs, § 32.
Pseudo-Basilideans, § 27, 3.
” Clement, § 28, 3; 43, 4.
” Cyril, § 96, 23.
” Dionysius, § 47, 11.
” Ignatius, § 43, 5.
” Isidore, § 87, 2.
” Tertullian, § 31, 3.
Psychians, § 26, 2; 40, 5.
_Publicani_, § 108, 1.
Pufendorf, § 167, 5.
Pulcheria, § 52, 4.
Pullus, Rob., § 102, 5.
Punctation of Ems, § 165, 10.
Purcell, § 186, 5.
Purgatory, § 61, 4; 67, 6; 104, 4; 106, 2, 3.
Purists, § 159, 4.
Puritans; § 143, 3, 4; 155.
Puseyites, § 202, 2.
Puttkamer, v., § 174, 8; 193, 6; 197, 10.
Quadragesima, § 37, 1; 56, 4, 5, 7.
Quadratus, § 30, 8.
_Quadrivium_, § 90, 8.
Quakers, § 163, 4, 5, 6; 211, 3.
_Quanta cura_, § 185, 2.
Quartodecimans, § 37, 2; 56, 3.
Quenstedt, § 159, 5.
_Quercum_, _Synod ad_, § 51, 3.
Quesnel, § 165, 7.
_Quicunque_, § 50, 7.
Quietists, § 157.
_Quinisextum_, § 63, 2.
_Quinquagesima_, § 37, 1; 56, 4.
Quintin, § 146, 4.
_Quod numquam_, § 197, 7.
Rabanus, § 90, 4; 91, 3, 5.
Rabaut, § 165, 5.
Rabinowitz, § 211, 9.
Rabulas, § 52, 3; 48, 7.
Racovian Catechism, § 148, 4.
Radama I., II., § 184, 3.
Radbertus, § 90, 5; 91, 3, 4.
Radbod, § 78, 3.
Radewins, Flor., § 112, 9.
Radstock, § 206, 1.
Raimund Lullus, § 93, 16; 103, 7.
” Martini, § 103, 9.
” of Pennaforte, § 93, 16; 99, 5; 113, 4.
” du Puy, § 93, 8.
” of Sabunde, § 113, 5.
Rakoczy, § 153, 3.
Rambach, § 167, 6, 8.
Ramus, § 143, 6.
Ranavalona, § 184, 3.
Rancé, de, § 156, 8.
Raphael, § 115, 13.
” Union, § 186, 4.
Rapp, § 211, 6.
Raskolniks, § 163, 10; 210, 3.
Rasoherina, § 184, 3.
Raspe, § 105, 3.
Räss, Bishop, § 196, 7.
Rastislaw, § 79, 2.
Ratherius, § 100, 2.
Rationalism, § 171; 176, 1; 182, 2, 3.
Ratramnus, § 67, 1; 90, 5; 91, 3, 4, 5.
“_Rauhes Haus_,” § 183, 1.
Rauscher, Card., § 189, 3; 198, 2.
Ravaillac, § 139, 17.
Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse, § 109, 1.
Raynaldi, Oderic, § 5, 2.
Realism and Nominalism, § 99, 2; 113, 2.
Recafrid, § 81, 1.
Reccared, § 76, 2.
Rechiar, § 76, 4.
_Reclusi_, § 85, 6.
_Recognit. Clem._, § 27, 4.
_Reconciliatio_, § 39, 2.
_Recursus ab abusu_, § 185, 4; 192, 4; 194, 9; 197, 9.
Redemptions, § 88, 5.
Redemptorists, § 165, 2; 186, 1.
Reformation in head and members, § 118, 3.
Refugees, French Huguenot, § 153, 4.
Regensburg Colloquy, § 130, 3, 10.
” Convention, § 126, 3.
” Declaration, § 135, 4.
” Diet, § 133, 2; 135, 3.
” Reformation, § 135, 6.
” Synod, § 91, 1.
Regino of Prüm, § 90, 5.
Reginus, § 104, 11.
Regionary Bishops, § 84.
_Regula fidei_, § 35, 2.
Reichenau, § 78, 1.
Reimarus, § 171, 6.
Reinerius Sachoni, § 108, 1.
Reinhard, Mart., § 139, 2.
Reinhard, Fr. Volk., § 171, 8.
Reinkens, § 190, 1.
Reiser, Fred., § 119, 9; 118, 5.
Reland, § 169, 6.
Relics, Worship of, § 39, 5; 57, 5; 88, 4; 104, 8; 115, 9.
_Religiosi_, § 44.
Remigius of Auxerre, § 90, 5.
” ” Lyons, § 91, 5.
” ” Rheims, § 76, 9.
Remismund, § 76, 4.
Remoboth, § 44, 7.
Remonstrants, § 161, 2.
Renaissance, § 115, 13; 149, 15.
Renan, § 182, 8.
Renata of Ferrara, § 138, 2; 139, 22.
Renaudot, § 165, 11.
Reni, Guido, § 149, 15.
Reparatus of Carthage, § 52, 6.
Repeal Association, § 202, 9.
_Reservatio mentalis_, § 149, 10.
Reservations, § 110, 15.
_Reservatum ecclest._, § 137, 5.
Restitution Edict, § 153, 2.
Reuchlin, § 120, 3, 4.
Reuss, § 182, 18.
Revenues of the Church, § 45, 6; 86, 1.
_Reversurus_, § 207, 4.
Revivals, § 208, 1.
Revolution, French, § 165, 14.
” English, § 155.
_Rex Christianiss._, § 110, 13.
Rhaw, § 142, 5.
Rhegius Urbanus, § 120, 3; 127, 3; 125, 1.
Rheinwald, § 83, 2.
Rhenius, § 184, 5.
Rhense, Elector. Union of, § 110, 4.
Rhetorians, § 62, 3.
Rhine League, § 192.
Rhodoald, § 67, 1; 82, 7.
Rhodon, § 27, 12.
Rhyming Bible, § 105, 5.
” Legends, § 105, 5.
Riccabona, § 175, 2.
Ricci, Laur., § 165, 9.
” Matt., § 150, 1.
” Scipio, § 165, 10.
Richard Cœur de Leon, § 94, 3.
” of Cornwallis, § 94, 5.
” ” St. Victor, § 102, 4; 104, 4.
Richelieu, § 153, 4.
Richter, C. F., § 167, 6.
” Emil, § 182, 22.
” Greg., § 160, 2.
” Jean Paul, § 171, 11.
” Louis, § 174, 9.
Ridley, § 139, 5.
Rieger, § 167, 8.
Rienzi, § 110, 5.
Rietschel, § 174, 9.
Riga, § 93, 12; 139, 3.
Rigdon, Sidney, § 211, 12, 13.
Riley, § 209, 1.
Rimbert, § 80, 2.
Rimini, Syn., § 50, 3.
Rinck, Melch., § 147, 1.
Ring and Staff, § 96, 6, 7.
Ringold, § 93, 14.
Rinkart, § 160, 3.
Rist, § 160, 3.
_Risus Paschales_, § 105, 2.
Ritschl, § 182, 7, 20.
Ritter, Erasm., § 130, 4, 8.
” J. J., § 5, 6.
” Carl, § 174, 4.
Ritualists, § 199, 2.
Rizzio, § 139, 10.
Robber Synod, § 52, 4.
Robert of Arbrissel, § 98, 2.
” ” Citeaux, § 98, 1.
” Grosseteste, § 103, 1.
” Guiscard, § 95, 1; 98, 6, 8.
” Pullus, § 102, 5.
” of the Sorbonne, § 103, 9.
Robert of France, § 104, 10.
Robespierre, § 165, 15.
Robinson, § 143, 4.
Rodigast, § 160, 4.
Rodriguez, § 149, 8; 150, 4.
Roëll, § 161, 5.
Roger of Sicily, § 95, 1; 96, 13.
Röhr, § 176, 1; 182, 2.
Rokycana, § 119, 7.
Rollo, § 93, 1.
Romanz, § 174, 2.
Roman Architecture, § 104, 12.
Romanus, Pope, § 96, 1.
Romuald, § 98, 1.
Ronge, § 187, 6.
Roos, § 171, 8.
Rosary, § 104, 8; 115, 1.
Roscelinus [Roscelin], § 101, 3.
Rose, The Consecrat. Golden, § 96, 23.
Rosenkranz, § 182, 6.
Rosicrucians, § 160, 1.
Rossi de, § 191, 7; 38, 1.
Röstar, § 211, 5.
Roswitha, § 100, 1.
_Rota Romana_, § 110, 16.
Rothad of Soissons, § 83, 2.
Rothe, A., § 167, 6; 168, 2.
” Rich., § 5, 4; 180, 1; 182, 10.
Rothmann, § 147, 9.
Röublin, § 130, 5; 147, 3.
Roundheads, § 155, 1.
Rousseau, § 165, 14.
Rubianus Crotus, § 120, 2, 5.
Rückert, § 174, 6.
Rudelbach, § 182, 13; 194, 1.
Rudolph of Hapsburg, § 96, 21, 22.
Rudolph II., § 139, 19; 137, 8.
” of Swabia, § 96, 8.
Ruet, § 205, 4.
Rufinus, § 5, 1; 47, 17; 48, 2; 51, 2.
Ruge, § 174, 1.
Rügen, § 93, 10.
Rugians, § 76, 6.
Ruinart, § 158, 2.
Rulman Merswin, § 114, 2, 4.
Rupert, § 78, 2.
” of Deutz, § 102, 8.
Rupp, § 176, 1; 178, 1.
Russel, Lord, § 202, 1, 5.
Russia, § 73, 5-6; 151, 3; 163, 8; 166; 206; 210, 3, 4; 212, 6.
Rust, § 195, 5.
Ruysbroek, John of, § 114, 7.
” William of, § 93, 15.
_Sabatati_, § 108, 10.
Sabbath, § 56, 1.
Sabbatarians, § 163, 3; 211, 5.
Sabeans, § 22, 1.
Sabellius, § 33, 5, 7.
Sabinianus, § 60, 5.
_Sacco di Roma_, § 132, 2.
Sachs, Hans, § 142, 3, 7.
Sack, K. H., § 182, 9.
Sacramentalia, § 58; 104, 2.
Sacraments, § 58; 70, 2; 104, 2-5.
_Sacramentarium_, § 59, 6.
_Sacrificati_, § 22, 5.
_Sacrum rescript._, § 53, 3.
Sacy, de, § 158, 1.
Sadducees, § 8, 4.
Sadolet, § 138, 3; 139, 22.
Sagittarius, § 159, 4.
Sailer, § 165, 12; 187, 1.
Saints, Worship of, § 57, 1; 88, 4; 104, 8.
Saladin, § 94, 3.
Sales, Francis de, § 156, 7; 157, 1.
” Nuns of, § 156, 7.
Salisbury, John of, § 102, 9.
Salmeron, § 149, 8.
Salt Lake, § 211, 10.
Salvation Army, § 211, 2.
Salvianus, § 47, 21.
Salzburg, § 78, 2; 79.
” Emigrants of, § 164, 4.
Samaritans, § 10; 22.
Sampseans, § 28, 2.
Sanbenito, § 117, 2.
Sanchez, § 149, 10.
Sanction, Pragmatic, § 96, 21; 110, 9, 14.
_Sanctissimum_, § 104, 3.
Sandwich Islands, § 182, 7.
Sankey, § 211, 1.
Sapor I., § 29, 1.
Sapores [Sapor], § 64, 2.
Sarabaites, § 44, 7.
Saracens, § 81; 95.
Sardica, Council of, § 46, 3; 50, 2.
Sardinia, § 204, 1, 3.
Sarmatio, § 62, 2.
Sarpi, § 156, 2; 158, 2.
Sartorius, § 182, 13.
Saturnalia, § 56, 5.
Saturninus, § 27, 9.
Saunier, § 138, 1; 139, 25.
Saurin, § 169, 6.
Savonarola, § 119, 11.
Savonières [Savonnières], Syn. of, § 91, 5.
Sbynko, § 119, 3, 4.
_Scala santa_, § 115, 9.
Schaffhausen, § 130, 8.
Schelling, § 171, 10; 174, 1.
Schenkel, § 182, 17; 196, 3, 4; 180, 1.
Schiller, § 171, 11.
Schirmer, § 160, 4.
Schism, Papal, § 110, 6.
” between East and West, § 67.
Schisms in the Ancient Church, § 41; 50, 8; 52, 5; 63.
Schlegel, Fr., § 174, 5; 175, 7.
” J. Ad., § 172, 1.
Schleiermacher, § 5, 4; 182, 1; 174, 3.
Schleswig-Holstein, § 127, 3; 156, 2; 201, 1; 193, 7.
Schlichting, § 148, 4.
Schmalcald Articles, § 134, 1.
” League, § 133, 1, 7.
” War, § 136.
Schmerling, § 198, 3, 4.
Schmid, Leop., § 187, 3; 191, 2; 196, 4.
Schmidt, Erasm., § 159, 4.
” Lor., § 171, 3.
” Seb., § 159, 4.
Schmolck, § 167, 6, 8.
Schnepf, § 122, 2; 131, 1; 133, 3.
Schnorr, § 174, 9.
Schöberlein, § 181, 3.
_Schola palatina_, § 90, 1.
” _Saxonica_, § 82.
Scholastica, St., § 85, 3.
Scholasticism, Greek, § 47, 6; 68, 3.
” Latin, § 99 ff.; 113.
Scholasticus, John, § 43, 3.
Scholten, § 200, 2.
Schools.
Schopenhauer, § 174, 2.
Schortinghuis, § 169, 3.
Schroeckh [Schröckh], § 5, 3; 171, 8.
Schubert, § 174, 3, 8.
Schultens, § 169, 6.
Schultz, Herm., § 182, 20.
Schulz, Dav., § 183, 3.
Schwartz, § 167, 9.
Schwarzenberg, § 189, 3.
Schweizer, § 182, 9.
Schwenkfeld, § 146, 1.
Scotists, § 113, 2.
Scotland, § 77, 2; 139, 8; 202, 7, 8, 11.
Scots, § 77, 2.
Scottish Cloister, § 98, 1; 112.
Scotus, John Duns, § 113.
” Erigena, § 90, 7; 91, 5.
Scriver, § 160, 1.
Scythianus, § 29, 1.
_Seculum obscurum_, § 100.
Secundus, § 50, 1.
_Sedes Apostolicæ_, § 34.
Sedulius, § 48, 6.
Segarelli, § 108, 8.
Segneri, § 157, 2.
Seiler, § 171, 8.
Selden, § 161, 6.
Selnecker, § 141, 12; 142, 4.
Sembat, § 71, 2.
Semi-arians, § 50, 3.
Semi-jejunia, § 37, 2.
Semi-pelagians, § 53, 5.
Semler, § 171, 6; 5, 3.
Sendomir Compact, § 139, 18.
Seneca’s Correspondence, § 32, 7.
Sententiarists, § 102, 5.
Sepp, § 191, 8; 174, 4.
Septimius Severus, § 22, 4.
Septuagint, § 10, 2; 36, 8; 48, 1.
Sequences, § 88, 2.
Serapeion, § 42, 4.
Seraphic Order, § 98, 3.
Serenius Granian., § 22, 2.
Serenus of Marsilia, § 57, 4.
Sergius of Constantinople, § 52, 8.
” ” Ravenna, § 83, 2.
” I. of Rome, § 46, 11; 63, 2.
” II., § 82, 5.
” III., § 96, 1.
” IV., § 96, 4.
Serrarius, § 149, 14.
Servatus Lupus, § 90, 5; 91, 5.
Servetus, § 148, 2.
Servites, § 98, 6.
_Servus servorum Dei_, § 46, 10.
Sethians, § 27, 6.
Seventh-Day Adventists, § 211, 1.
” ” Baptists, § 163, 3.
Severa, § 22, 4; 26.
Severians, § 52, 7.
Severina, § 28, 4.
Severinus, Missionary, § 76, 6.
” Pope, § 46, 11.
Severus, Emperor, § 22, 6.
” Wolfg., § 137, 8.
Shaftesbury, § 171, 1.
Shakers, § 170, 7.
Sherlock, § 171, 1.
Shiites, § 65, 1.
Ship of the Church, § 60, 1.
Sibylline Books, § 32, 1.
Sicily, § 81; 95.
Sickingen, § 120, 4; 122, 4; 123, 7; 124, 2.
Siena, Syn., § 110, 7.
Sieveking, § 183, 1.
Sigfrid, § 93, 1.
Sigillaria, § 56, 5.
Sigismund of Burgundy, § 76, 5.
” Emperor, § 110, 7, 8; 119, 5.
Sigismund I. of Poland, § 139, 18.
” Aug. ” § 139, 18.
” III. ” § 139, 18.
Sigurd, § 93, 3.
Silesia, § 127, 3; 153, 2; 165, 4.
Silesius, Angelus, § 157, 4; 160, 4.
Silverius, § 46, 9.
Simeon of Jerusalem, § 22, 2.
” Stylites, § 44, 6.
” called Titus, § 71, 1.
” Czar, § 73, 3.
” Metaphrastes, § 68, 4.
” of Thessalonica, § 68, 5.
” ” Tournay, § 103, 2.
” VI., VII.; Counts of Lippe, § 154, 2.
Simeoni, § 205, 4.
Simon Magus, § 25, 2.
” Rich., § 158, 2.
” St., § 212, 2.
Simonians, § 27, 8.
Simons, Menno, § 147, 2.
Simony, § 96, 5.
Simplicius, § 42, 5.
Siricius, § 45, 2; 46, 4.
Sirmium, Syn., § 50, 2, 3.
Sirmond, § 158, 2.
Sisters of Mercy, § 156, 8; 186, 2.
Sixtus II., § 22, 5.
” III., § 46, 6.
” IV., § 110, 11; 112, 3; 115, 1.
” V., § 149, 3, 4, 14.
” of Siena, § 149, 14.
Skeleton Army, § 211, 2.
Smith, Jos., § 211, 10.
” Pearsall, § 211, 1.
” Robertson, § 202, 8.
Socialism, § 212.
Socinians, § 148, 4; 202, 5.
Soissons, Syn., § 78, 4; 102, 8.
_Sollicitudo omnium_, § 185, 1.
Somerset, § 139, 5.
Sophia, Church of, § 60, 3.
Sophronius, § 52, 8.
Sorbonne, § 103, 9.
Soter, § 36, 8.
Southcote, Joanna, § 211, 5.
Spain, § 76, 2, 3; 95, 2; 139, 21; 205.
Spalatin, § 122, 6.
Spalding, Bishop, § 189, 3.
Spangenberg, John, § 142, 6.
” Bishop, § 168, 7.
Spanheim, § 5, 2; 161, 3, 7.
Speaker’s Bible, § 202, 1.
Spencer, John, § 161, 6.
” Herbert, § 174, 2.
Spener, § 158, 3; 167, 5.
Spiera, Fr., § 139, 2, 4.
Spinoza, § 164, 1.
Spires, Diet, § 126, 6; 132, 3; 135, 9; 147, 4.
Spirit, Sect of the New, § 108, 2.
_Spiritales_, § 40, 5.
Spirituals, § 164, 1.
_Spirituels_, § 146, 4.
Sponsors, § 35, 5; 58, 1.
Sufis, § 61, 1.
Stackhouse, § 168, 6.
Stahl, § 182, 15; 193, 6.
Stancarns, § 141, 2.
Stanislaus, St., § 93, 2.
” Znaim, § 119, 4.
Stanley, § 184, 4.
Stapfer, § 169, 6.
Stapulensis, § 120, 7, 8.
Starck, § 175, 7.
Starowerzi, § 163, 10; 210, 3.
Staudenmaier, § 191, 6.
Stäudlin, § 171, 8.
Staupitz, § 112, 6; 122, 1.
Stedingers, § 109, 3.
Steffens, § 174, 3; 177, 2.
Stein, Baron v., § 176, 1.
Steinbart, § 171, 4, 6.
Steinmetz, § 167, 8.
Stephan I., § 35, 3.
” II., § 66, 2; 78, 7; 82, 1.
” III., § 60, 2; 82, 1.
” IV., § 82, 4.
” V., VI., § 82, 8.
” IX., § 96, 6.
” St., § 93, 8; 96, 3.
” of Palecz, § 119, 4, 5.
” ” Sunik [Sünik], § 72, 2.
” ” Tigerno, § 98, 2.
” Mart., § 194, 1.
Stephanas, § 17, 4.
Stephen Langton, § 96, 18.
Stier, § 181, 1; 183, 4.
Stigmatization, § 105, 4; 188, 3.
Stirner, Max., § 212, 1.
Stolberg, § 5, 6; 165, 6.
Storch, Nich., § 124, 1.
Storr, § 171, 8.
Strassburg, § 125, 1.
” Minster, § 104, 13.
Strauss, Dav. Fr., § 174, 1; 182, 6, 8; 199, 4.
Streoneshalch, Syn., § 77, 6.
Strossmayer, § 189, 3, 4.
Stuart, Mary, § 139, 5.
Studites, § 44, 4.
Sturm of Fulda, § 78, 4, 5.
Stylites, § 44, 6; 78, 3; 85, 6.
Suarez, § 149, 14.
_Subintroductæ_, § 39, 3.
Subordinationists, § 33, 1.
Suevi, § 76, 4.
Suffragan Bishops, § 84.
Sully, § 139, 17.
Sulpicius Severus, § 47, 17.
_Summa_ of Holy Scripture, § 125, 2.
Summaries, Württemb., § 160, 6.
_Summis desiderantes_, § 117, 4.
Summists, § 102, 4.
_Summus Episcopus_, § 167, 3.
Sun, Children of, § 71, 2.
Sunday, Fest. of, § 17, 7; 37; 56, 1.
Sunnites, § 65, 1.
_Supplicationes_, § 59, 9.
Supralapsarians, § 161, 1.
Supernaturalists, § 171, 8; 182, 4, 5.
Suso, H., § 114, 5.
Sutri, Syn., § 96, 4.
Swabian Articles, § 132, 5.
” Halle, Sect in, § 108, 6.
Sweden, § 80; 93, 3; 139, 1; 201, 2.
Swedenborgians, § 170, 5; 211, 4.
Sweyn, § 93, 2.
Switzerland, § 78, 1; 130; 138; 162, 6; 169, 2; 190, 3; 199.
Sydow, § 180, 4.
Syllabus, § 185, 2.
Sylvester I., § 42, 1; 46, 3; 59, 5; 82, 2.
Sylvester II., § 94; 96, 3.
” III., § 96, 4.
” Bern., § 102, 9.
_Symbolum Apost._, § 35, 2; 59, 2.
” _Athan._, § 59, 2.
” _Nic. Constant._, § 59, 2.
” _Nicænum_, § 50, 1.
Symmachus, Pope, § 46, 8.
” Prefect, § 42, 4.
Sympherosa, § 32, 8.
Synagogues, § 8, 3.
Syncretist Controv., § 159, 3.
Synergists, § 53, 1.
Synesius, § 47, 7; 59, 4.
_Syngramma Suevic._, § 131, 1.
Synod, Holy Russian, § 166.
” The Holy Athens, § 207, 1.
Synods, § 34, 5; 43, 2.
_Synodus palmaris_, § 46, 8.
Syrians, § 184, 9; 207, 2.
Syzigies, § 27, 3; 28, 3.
Tabernaculum, § 104, 3.
Taborites, § 119, 7.
Taepings, § 211, 15.
Tafel, Imm., § 211, 4.
Tahiti, § 184, 6.
Talmud, § 25.
Tamerlane, § 72, 1; 93, 15.
Tamuls, § 184, 5.
Tanchelm, § 108, 9.
Tartars, § 73, 1.
Tasso, § 149, 15.
Tatian, § 27, 10; 30, 10.
Tauler, § 114, 2.
Teellinck, § 161, 4.
Teetotallers, § 202, 9.
Telesphorus, § 22, 2.
Teller, § 171, 4, 7.
Templars, § 98, 8; 112, 7.
Terminants, § 98, 3.
Terminism, § 167, 2.
Territorial System, § 167, 5.
Tersteegen, § 169, 1.
Tertiaries, § 93, 3, 5.
Tertullian, § 31, 10; 33, 4, 9; 34, 8; 40, 3.
Tertullianists, § 40, 3.
_Tessareskaidecatites_, § 37, 2.
Test Act, § 153, 6; 155, 3; 202, 5.
Testam. of XII. Patri., § 32, 3.
Tetzel, § 122, 2.
Teutonic Knights, § 98, 8; 93, 13.
Theatines, § 149, 7.
Thecla, § 32, 6.
Theiner, § 186, 1; 187, 4; 191, 7.
Theodelinde, § 76, 8.
Theodemir, § 92, 2.
Theodo I., II., § 78, 2.
Theodora, § 46, 9; 52, 6; 71, 1.
Theodore of Abyssinia, § 182, 9.
Theodoret, § 47, 9; 52, 3, 4.
Theodoric, § 46, 8; 76, 7.
” of Freiburg, § 103, 10.
” of Niem, § 118, 5.
Theodorus, Pope, § 52, 1.
” Ascidas, § 52, 8.
” Balsamon, § 43, 3.
” Lector, § 5, 1.
” of Mopsuestia, § 47, 9; 48, 1; 52, 3; 53, 4.
” Studita, § 66, 4.
” of Tarsus, § 90, 8.
Theodosius the Great, § 42, 4; 47, 15; 50, 4.
Theodosius II., § 42, 4.
Theodotians, § 33, 3.
Theodulf of Orleans, § 89, 2; 90, 2.
Theognis of Nicæa, § 50, 1.
Theonas, § 50, 1.
Theopaschites, § 52, 6.
Theophanies, § 96, 2.
Theophilus, Emperor, § 66, 4.
” of Alexandria, § 42, 4; 51, 2, 3.
” ” Antioch, § 30, 10.
” ” Din, § 64, 4.
” ” Moscow, § 166, 1.
Theophylact, § 68, 5.
Θεοτόκος, § 52, 2, 3.
Therapeutæ, § 10, 1.
Theresa, St., § 149, 6, 15, 16.
_Thesaurus supererogat._, § 106, 2.
Thiers, § 203, 5.
Thiersch, § 211, 10.
Thietberga, § 82, 7.
Thietgaut of Treves, § 82, 7.
Thilo, § 160, 3.
Tholuck, § 182, 4.
Thomas Aquinas, § 103, 6; 96, 23; 104, 4, 10.
Thomas Becket, § 96, 16.
” Bradwardine, § 113, 2.
” of Celano, § 104, 10.
” à Kempis, § 112, 9; 114, 7.
Thomas Christians, § 52, 3.
Thomasius, Chr., § 117, 4; 159, 3; 167, 4, 5.
Thomasius, Gottfr., § 182, 13.
Thomassinus, § 158, 1.
Thomists, § 113, 3.
Thontracians, § 71, 2.
Thorn, Declarat., § 153, 7.
” Massacre, § 165, 4.
” Relig. Confer., § 153, 7; 154, 4.
Thorwaldsen, § 174, 9.
Thrasimund, § 76, 3.
_Thuribulum_, § 60, 5.
_Thurificati_, § 22, 5.
Tiara, Papal, § 96, 23.
Tiberius, § 22, 1.
Tieck, § 174, 5.
Tieftrunk, § 171, 7.
Tillemont, § 158, 2; 5, 2.
Tillotson, § 161, 3.
Timotheus Älurus [Aëlurus], § 52, 5.
Tindal, Matt., § 171, 1.
” William, § 139, 4.
Tiridates III., § 64, 3.
Tischendorf, § 182, 11.
Titian, § 115, 13; 149, 11.
_Tituli_, § 84, 2.
Titus of Bostra, § 54, 1.
Toland, § 171, 1.
Toledo, Syn., § 76, 2.
Toleration Acts, English, § 155, 3; 202, 5.
” Edict, Austr., § 165, 10.
” Patent, Pruss., § 193, 3.
Tolomeo of Lucca, § 5, 1.
Tolstoi, § 206, 1.
Tonsure, § 45, 1; 77, 3.
Tooth, Arth., § 202, 3.
Torgau, Articles of, § 132, 7.
” Book of, § 141, 12.
” League of, § 126, 5.
Torquemada, John, § 110, 15; 112, 4.
” Thomas, § 117, 2.
Toulouse, Syn., § 105, 5; 108, 2; 109, 2.
Tours, Syn., § 101, 2; 110, 13.
Tractarianism, § 202, 2.
Tradition, § 33, 4.
Traditors, § 22, 6.
Traducianism, § 53, 1.
Trajan, § 22, 2.
Tranquebar, § 167, 9.
Translations, § 57, 1.
Transept, § 60, 1.
Transubstantiation, § 58, 2; 104, 3.
Transylvania, § 139, 20.
Trappists, § 156, 8.
Tremellius, § 143, 5.
Trent, Council of, § 149, 2; 136, 4.
_Treuga Dei_, § 105, 1.
Tribur, Princes’ Diet, § 96, 7.
” Syn., § 83, 3.
Trinitarian Controversy, § 32; 50.
” Order, § 98, 2.
Trinity, Festival of the, § 104, 7.
” Order of the Holy, § 149, 4.
Trishagion, § 52, 5, 6.
Trithemius, § 113, 7.
_Trivium_, § 90, 8.
Troparies, § 59, 4.
Troubadours, § 105, 6.
_Trullanum, I. Conc._, § 52, 8.
” _II. ” _, § 63, 2; 45, 2.
Tübingen, § 120, 3.
Turkey, § 207.
Turrecremata [Torquemada], John, § 110, 15; 112, 4.
Turrecremata [Torquemada], Thos., § 117, 2.
Turretin, J. A., § 169, 2, 6.
Turribius, § 54, 2.
Tutilo, § 88, 6.
Twesten, § 182, 10.
Tychonius, § 48, 1.
Typus, § 52, 8.
Tyrol, § 193, 4.
Tyre, Syn., § 50, 2.
Ubertino de Casale, § 108, 6.
_Ubiquitas Corp. Chr._, § 141, 9.
Udo, § 62, 1.
Ugolino, § 165, 12.
Uhlhorn, § 193, 8.
Uhlich, § 176, 1.
Ulenberg, § 149, 15.
Ulfilas, § 76, 1.
Ullmann, § 182, 10; 196, 3.
Ulrich of Augsb., § 84, 3.
” ” Württemb., § 133, 3.
Ulrici, § 174, 2; 211, 17.
Ultramontanism, § 188; 197.
Umbreit, § 182, 11.
_Unam Sanctam_, § 110, 1.
_Unctio extrema_, § 61, 3; 70, 2; 104, 5.
Uniformity, Act of, § 139, 6; 155, 3.
Unigenitus, § 165, 7.
Union Attempts in the Eastern Church, § 67, 4, 5; 152, 2;
175, 4-6.
Union, Catholic Protestant, § 137, 8; 153, 7.
Union, Lutheran Reformed, § 154, 4; 167, 4; 169, 1, 2.
Union, Prussian, § 177, 1.
Unitarians, § 148; 163, 1; 211, 4.
United Brethren, § 119, 8.
” Greeks, § 72, 4; 151, 3; 206, 2.
Universities, § 99, 3.
” Bill, § 199, 5.
Urban II., § 96, 10; 94.
” III., § 96, 16.
” IV., § 96, 20.
” V., § 110, 5; 117, 2.
” VI., § 110, 6.
” VII., § 149, 3.
” VIII., § 156, 1, 4, 9; 157, 5.
Urbanus Rhegius, § 127, 3.
Ursacius, § 50, 3.
Ursinus of Rome, § 46, 4.
” Zach., § 144, 1; 169, 1.
Ursula, St., § 104, 9.
Ursuline Nuns, § 149, 7.
Ussher, § 161, 6, 7.
Utah, § 211, 10.
Utraquists, § 119, 6.
Utrecht, Church of, § 165, 7.
” Union of, § 139, 12.
Vadian, § 130, 4.
Valdez, § 108, 10.
Valence, Syn., § 91, 5.
Valens, Emperor, § 50, 4; 42, 4.
Valentinian I., § 42, 4.
” II., § 42, 4.
” III., § 46, 3; 46, 7.
Valentinus, § 27, 4.
Valerian, § 22, 5.
Valla, § 120, 1.
Vallombrosians, § 98, 1.
Valsainte, § 186, 2.
Valteline Massacre, § 153, 3.
Vandals, § 76, 3.
Vanne, Congreg. of, § 156, 7.
Varanes I., § 29, 1.
” III., § 64, 2.
_Variata_, § 141, 4.
Vasa, Gustavus, § 139, 1; 142, 8.
Vasquez, § 149, 10.
Vatican, § 110, 15.
” Council, § 189.
Vatke, § 182, 18.
Vaud, Canton, § 199, 5.
Vega, Lope de, § 158, 3.
Velasquez, § 98, 8.
Venantius Fortunatus, § 48, 6.
Venema, § 169, 6.
Venezuela, § 209, 2.
Vercelli, Syn., § 101, 2.
Verdun, Treaty of, § 82, 5.
Vergerius, § 134, 1; 139, 24.
Vermilius, Pet. Mart., § 139, 5, 24.
Veronica, § 18, 2.
Versailles, Edict of, § 165, 5.
Vespers, Sicilian, § 96, 22.
_Vestibulum_, § 60, 1.
Vestments, Ecclest., § 59, 7.
Veuillot, § 188, 1; 203, 3.
_Viaticum_, § 104, 5.
Vicelinus, § 93, 9.
Victor I., § 33, 3, 4; 37, 2; 40, 2; 41, 1.
Victor II., § 96, 5.
” III., § 96, 10.
” IV., § 96, 15.
” of Vita, § 48, 2.
” Emmanuel I., § 204, 1.
” ” II., § 185, 3; 204, 1, 2.
Victor, St., Monastery of, § 102, 4, 8.
Victorinus, Marius, § 47, 14.
” of Pettau, § 31, 12; 33, 9.
Victorius, § 56, 3.
Vienna, Congress of, § 192, 3.
” Peace of, § 139, 20.
Vienne, Council of, § 110, 2; 112, 1, 2, 7.
Vigilantius, § 62, 2.
Vigilius, § 46, 9; 52, 6.
Vigils, § 35; 56, 4.
Vikings, § 93, 1.
Villegagnon, § 143, 7.
Vilmar, § 182, 14; 194, 4.
Vincent of Beauvais, § 99, 6.
Vincent Ferrari, § 115, 2; 110, 6.
” of Lerins, § 47, 21; 53, 5.
” de Paula, § 156, 8.
Vinci, Leon. da, § 115, 13.
Vinet, § 199, 5.
Viret, § 138, 1.
Virgilius of Salzburg, § 78, 6.
Virgins, The 11,000, § 104, 9.
Visigoths, § 76, 2.
Visitation, Articles of, § 141, 13.
_Vita quadragesimalis_, § 112, 8.
Vitalis Ordenicus, § 5, 1.
Vitus, § 46, 3.
Vitringa, § 161, 6.
Vladimir, § 73, 4.
Vladislaw, § 119, 7.
” IV., § 153, 7.
Voetius, § 161, 4, 5, 7; 162, 4; 163, 7.
Volkmann, § 169, 1.
Voltaire, § 165, 5, 14, 15.
Vorstius, § 161, 2.
Vossius, § 171, 11.
Vulgate, § 59, 1; 136, 4; 149, 14.
Waddington, § 203, 5, 8.
Wafers, § 104, 3.
Wagner, Rich., § 174, 10.
Wala, § 82, 5.
Walafrid Strabo, § 90, 4; 91, 3.
Walch, J. G., § 167, 4.
” Fr., § 171, 8.
Waldemar I., § 93, 10.
” II., § 93, 12.
Waldensians, § 108, 10-12; 119, 9, 10; 139, 25; 153, 5; 204, 4.
Waldrade, § 82, 8.
Wallace, § 211, 17.
Walter of Habenichts, § 94, 1.
” ” St. Victor, § 102, 9.
” v. d. Vogelweide, § 105, 6.
Walther, Hans, § 142, 5.
” Mich., § 159, 4.
” Dr., § 208, 2, 3.
Walton, Brian, § 161, 6.
Warburton, § 171, 1.
Ward, § 156, 8.
Warnefried, § 90, 3.
Wartburg, § 123, 8.
Watts, Isaac, § 169, 6.
Wazo of Liege, § 109.
Wearmouth, § 85, 4.
Weber, F. W., § 174, 6.
Wecelinus, § 95, 3.
Wechabites, § 65, 1.
Wegelin, § 160, 3.
Wegscheider, § 182, 2.
Weigel, Val., § 146, 2.
Weingarten, § 5, 5.
Weiss, Bern., § 182, 11.
Weissel, § 160, 3.
Wellhausen, § 182, 18.
Wends, § 93, 9.
Wendelin, § 161, 7.
Wenilo, § 91, 5.
Wenzel, § 119, 3.
Wenzeslaw, § 93, 6.
Wertheimer Bible, § 171, 2.
Wesel, John of, § 119, 10.
Wesley, § 169, 3, 4.
Wessel, § 119, 10.
Westeräs, Diet of, § 139, 1.
Westminster Assembly, § 155, 1.
Westphal, § 141, 10.
Westphalia, Peace of, § 153, 2.
” Reform, § 133, 5.
Wette, de, § 182, 3.
Wetterau, § 170.
Wettstein, § 169, 6.
Whitaker, § 143, 5.
Whitefield, § 169, 3, 4.
Whitgift, § 143, 5.
Wibert, § 96, 6, 8.
Wichern, § 183, 1.
Wiclif, § 119, 1.
Wido of Milan, § 97, 5.
Wied, H. v., § 133, 5; 135, 7.
Wieland, § 171, 11.
Wigand, § 141, 10.
Wilberforce, § 184.
Wilfrid, § 77, 6; 78, 3; 83, 3.
Wilgard, § 100.
Wilibrord, § 78, 3.
Willehad, § 78, 3.
William of St. Amour, § 103, 3.
” ” Aquitaine, § 98, 1.
” ” Champeaux, § 101, 1.
” ” Conches, § 102, 9.
” the Conqueror, § 96, 8, 12.
” Durandus, § 113, 3.
” of Modena, § 93, 13.
” ” Nogaret, § 110, 1.
” ” Occam, § 112, 2; 113, 3; 118, 2.
” Rufus, § 96, 12.
” Ruysbroek, § 93, 15.
” of Thierry, § 102, 2, 9.
” ” Tyre, § 94, 3.
” ” Bavaria, § 135, 8; 136, 2, 6; 151, 1.
” IV., V., of Hesse, § 154, 1.
” I. of Orange, § 139, 12.
” III. of Orange, § 153, 6; 155, 3.
” I., German Emperor, § 193; 197.
Williams, John, § 184, 7.
” Roger, § 162, 2; 163, 3.
Willigis, § 96, 2; 97, 2.
Wilsnack, Mirac, host of, § 119, 3.
Wilson, § 172, 5.
Winckelmann, § 165, 6; 174, 9.
Windesheim, § 112, 9.
Windthorst, § 197, 1, 6; 188, 3.
Winer, § 182, 4.
Winfrid, § 78, 4-8.
Wion, § 149, 3.
Wiseman, § 202, 11.
Wishart, § 139, 8.
Wislicenus, § 176, 1.
Witch Hammer, § 117, 4.
” Process, § 117, 4.
Witsius, § 161, 7; 169, 4.
Wittenberg, § 120, 3.
” Catech., § 141, 10.
” Concord., § 133, 8.
” Sketch of Reform, § 135, 9.
Witzel, § 137, 8; 149, 15.
Wolf, J. Chr., § 167, 4.
Wolfenbüttel Fragments, § 171, 6.
Wolff, Chr. v., § 167, 4; 171, 10.
Wolfgang, William, of Palatine Neuburg, § 153, 1.
Wolfram of Eschenb., § 105, 6.
Wöllner, § 171, 5.
Wolmar, Melch., § 138, 2, 8.
Wolsey, § 120, 7.
Woltersdorf [Woltersdorff], § 167, 6, 8.
Woolston, § 171, 1.
Worms Edict, § 123, 7.
” Concordat, § 96, 11.
” Consultation, § 137, 6.
” Relig. Confer., § 135, 2.
Wratislaw, § 79, 3.
Wulflaich, § 78, 3.
Wulfram, § 78, 3.
Württemberg, § 133, 3; 193, 5, 6; 197, 14.
Würzburg, Bish. Congress, § 192, 4.
Wyttenbach, Dan., § 169, 6.
” Thomas, § 130, 1.
Xavier, § 119, 8; 150, 1.
Xenaias, § 59, 1.
Ximenes, § 117, 2; 118, 7; 120, 8, 9.
Young, Brigham, § 211, 12.
Yvon, § 163, 8.
Zacharias, Pope, § 78, 5, 6; 82, 1.
” of Anagni, § 67, 1.
Zapolya, § 139, 20.
_Zelatores_, § 98, 4.
Zell, Matt., § 125, 1.
Zeller, Ed., § 182, 9; 199, 4.
_Zelus domus Dei_, § 153, 2.
Zeno, Philos., § 8, 4.
” Emp., § 52, 5.
” of Verona, § 47, 14.
Zenobia, § 32, 8.
Zephyrinus, § 33, 3, 5; 41, 1.
Zeschwitz, § 182, 14.
Ziegenbalg, § 167, 9.
Zillerthal, § 198.
Zimmermann, § 178, 1; 182, 2.
Zinzendorf, § 168; 170, 2, 3; 171, 3.
Zionites, § 170, 4.
Ziska, § 119, 7.
Zollikofer, § 171, 7.
Zosimus, § 46, 5; 53, 4.
Zschokke, § 176, 1.
Zulu Kaffres, § 184, 3.
Zürich, § 130, 2; 199, 4.
Zwick, § 143, 2.
Zwickau, Prophets of, § 124, 1.
Zwingli, § 130; 131, 1; 132, 4.
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
FOOTNOTES.
[1] Dowling, “Introduction to Study of Eccl. Hist.; its
Progress and Sources.” Lond., 1838.
Smedt, “Introd. generalis ad Hist. Eccl. critice
tractandam.” Gandavi, 1876.
[2] See Sermon on The Pharisees in Mozley’s “Univ. Sermons.”
Lond., 1876; also
Schürer, Div. II., vol. ii., pp. 1-43, “Pharisees and
Sadducees.”
[3] See Lightfoot, _Ep. to the Col._, 5th ed., Lond., 1880,
Diss. on “Essenes, their Name, Origin, and Relation to
Christianity.” pp. 349-419; also
Schürer, Div. II., vol. ii., pp. 188-218, “The Essenes.”
[4] Nutt, _Sketch of Samaritan History, Dogma, and
Literature_. Lond., 1874.
[5] On Philo, see Schürer, Div. II., vol. iii., pp. 321-381.
[6] J. Bannerman, “The Church of Christ.” 2 vols.,
Edin., 1868.
Jacob, “Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament.”
Lond., 1871.
Hatch, “The Organization of the Early Chr. Churches.”
Lond., 1881; 2nd ed., 1883.
D. D. Bannerman, “The Doctrine of the Church.”
Edin., 1887.
Hodge, “The Church and its Polity.” Edin., 1879.
Binnie, “The Church.” Edin., 1882.
Pressensé, “Life and Pract. of Early Church.” Lond., 1879.
Lightfoot, “Comm. on Philip.” “Essay on Christian
Ministry.” 6th ed., Lond., 1881, pp. 181-269.
[7] Mommsen, “De collegiis et sodaliciis Rom.” Kiel, 1843.
Foucart, “Les associat. relig. chez les Grecs.”
Paris, 1873.
Hatch, “Organization of Early Chr. Churches.” pp. 26-39.
[8] Lightfoot, “Epistle to Phil.” 6th ed., Lond., 1881,
p. 95. Detached notes on the synonyms “bishop” and
“presbyter.” “Diss. on Christian Ministry.”
pp. 187-200.
[9] Blondel, “Apologia pro sententia Hieron. de episcop. et
presbyt.” Amst., 1646.
[10] The φίλημα ἅγιον of Rom. xvi. 16; 1 Cor. xvi. 20.
[11] Of these we probably find fragments in Eph. ii. 14;
1 Tim. iii. 16; 2 Tim. ii. 11-13; and perhaps also in
1 Tim. iii. 1, 16; Jas. i. 17; Rev. i. 4; iv. 11; v. 9;
xi. 15; xv. 3; xxi. 1; xxii. 10.
[12] Acts ii. 4, 6; xx. 7.
[13] John xx. 26; Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 2; Rev. i. 10.
[14] Acts ii. 39; xvi. 33; 1 Cor. vii. 14.
[15] Acts viii. 17; vi. 6; xiii. 3; 1 Tim. iv. 14.
[16] On the subject of this section consult:
Pressensé, “Early Years of Christianity.” Vol. 2,
“Apostolic Age.” Lond., 1879, pp. 361-381.
Lechler, “Apostolic and Post Apostolic Times.” 2 vols.,
Edin., 1886; Vol. i., pp. 37-67, 130-144.
[17] Burton, “Heresies of the Apostolic Age.” Oxford, 1829.
[18] As authorities for this period consult:
Moshemii, “Commentarii de reb. Christianor. ante
Constant.” Helmst., 1753.
Baur, “First Three Centuries of the Christian Church.”
Lond., 1877.
Milman, “Hist. of Chr. to Abol. of Pag. in Rom. Emp.”
3 vols., Lond., 1840.
Pressensé, “Early Years of Christianity.” 4 vols.,
Lond., 1879.
[19] Consult:
Killen, “The Ancient Church.” Edin., 1859; “The Old
Catholic Church.” Edin., 1871.
Lechler, “Apost. and Post-Apost. Times.” 2 vols.,
Edin., 1886; Vol. ii., pp. 260-379.
Robertson, “Hist. of Chr. Church.” Vol. i., (A.D. 64-590),
Lond., 1858.
[20] Although the Post-Apostolic and Old Catholic Ages are
sharply enough distinguished from one another in point
of time and of contents along many lines of historical
development, and are rightly partitioned off from each
other, so that they might seem to require treatment as
independent periods; yet, on the one hand, passing over
from the one to the other is so frequent and is for the
most part of so liquid and incontrollable a nature, while
on the other hand, the opposition of and the distinction
between these two periods and the œcumenical Catholic
Imperial Church that succeeds are so thorough-going,
that we prefer to embrace the two under one period and
to point out the boundary lines between the two wherever
these are clearly discernible.
[21] Inge, “Society in Rome under the Cæsars.” Lond., 1887.
[22] Uhlhorn, “Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism.”
Steere, “Account of the Persecutions of the Church under
the Roman Emperors.”
[23] Renan, “Antichrist.” Lond., 1874.
Merivale, “Hist. of Rom. Emp.” Vols. v. vi.,
Lond., 1856, 1858.
Farrar’s “Early Days of Christianity.” Lond., 1884;
Bk. I., pp. 1-44.
Mommsen, “Hist. of Rome.” 6 vols., Lond., 1875 ff.
[24] Renan, “Marcus Aurelius.” Lond., 1883.
Lightfoot, “Ignatius and Polycarp.” 3 vols., Lond., 1885.
[25] Lightfoot, “Ignatius.” Vol. i., pp. 469-476.
[26] “Kirchengesch. v. Dtschl.” I. 94.
[27] Mason, “The Persecution of Diocletian.” Cambridge, 1876.
[28] Cotterill, “Peregrinus Proteus.” Edin., 1879; Engl.
Transl. of Lucian’s works, by Dr. Francklin, 4 vols.,
Lond., 1781.
[29] Baur, “Christian Church in First Three Centuries.”
Lond., 1877.
“Celsus and Origen.” in vol. iv. of Froude’s “Short
Studies.”
[30] Philostratus, “Life of Apollonius of Tyana.” First 2 bks.,
Transl. by Blount, Lond., 1680.
Newman, “Hist. Sketches.” Vol. i., chap. ii., “Apollonius
of Tyana.”
[31] The works of Plotinus consist of 54 treatises arranged
in 6 Enneads, “Opera Omnia.” ed. Creuzer, 3 vols.,
Oxon., 1835. Several of the treatises transl. into
English by H. Taylor, Lond., 1794 and 1817.
[32] Zeller, “History of Eclecticism in Greek Philosophy.”
Lond., 1831.
Ueberweg, “Hist. of Phil.” Lond., 1872; Vol. i.,
pp. 240-252.
[33] “Narratio orig. rituum et error. Christianor. S. Joannis.”
Rom., 1652.
[34] Ewald, “Hist. of Israel.” Lond., 1886; Vol. viii., p. 120.
[35] In de Sacy’s “Chrestom. Arabe.” 2 ed., I. 333.
[36] 1 Cor. xvi. 3; 2 Cor. viii. 19; Gal. ii. 9.
[37] Burton, “Heresies of the Apostolic Age.” Oxford, 1829.
Zeller, “Acts of the Apostles.” 2 vols., London,
1875, 1876.
Pressensé, “Apostolic Age.” London, 1879, pp. 66-73;
318-330.
[38] Neander’s “First Planting of Christianity and
Antignostikus.” (Bohn), 2 vols., Lond., 1851.
Mansel, “Gnostic Heresies of First and Second Centuries.”
Ed. by Bishop Lightfoot, Lond., 1875.
King, “Remains of the Gnostics.” Lond., 1864;
new ed., 1887.
Ueberweg, “Hist. of Phil.” 2 vols., Lond., 1872, Vol. i.,
pp. 280-290.
[39] These are published among the works of Origen. Recently
Caspari discovered an admirable Latin translation of them
made by Rufinus, and published it in his “Kirchenhist.
Anecdota.” I., (Christ., 1883).
[40] Lipsius, “Valentinus and his School.” in Smith’s “Dict.
of Biography.” Vol. iv., Lond., 1887.
[41] In Cureton’s “Spicil. Syr.” Lond., 1855.
[42] In its extant Coptic form, ed. by Petermann, Brl., 1851.
In a Latin transl. by Schwartze, Brl., 1853.
In English transl. in King’s “Remains of the Gnostics.”
Lond., 1887.
[43] Yet the school of Baur regard this Gospel of Marcion as
the original of Luke. Hilgenfeld thinks that both our
Luke and Marcion drew from one earlier source. Hahn
has sought to restore the Marcionite Gospel in Thilo’s
“Cod. Apoc. N.T.” I. 401.
Sanday, “Gospels in the Second Century.” London, 1876.
[44] Salmon, “Introd. to the N.T.” London, 1885, pp. 242-248.
Reuss, “Hist. of N.T.” Edin., 1884, §§ 291, 246, 362, 508.
[45] Lightfoot, “Comm. on Galatians.” Camb., 1865; Diss.
“St. Paul and the Three.”
[46] Lechler, “Apost. and Post-Apostol. Times.” Vol. ii.,
p. 263 ff.
Ewald, “Hist. of Israel.” Lond., 1886, Vol. viii.,
p. 152.
[47] Ewald, “Hist. of Israel.” Vol. viii., p. 122.
[48] We possess this work in the original Greek. The first
complete edition was that of Cotelerius in his “Pp.
Apost.” The latest and most careful separate ed., is by
Lagarde, Lps., 1865; Eng. transl. in Ante Nicene Lib.,
Edin., 1871.
[49] Existing only in the Latin transl. of Rufinus. Published
in Cotelerius, “Pp. Apost.”
Separate ed. by Gersdorf, Lps., 1838; Eng. transl.
Ante-Nicene Lib., Edin., 1867.
[50] See de Sacy, “Mem. sur diverses antiqu. de la Perse.”
Par., 1794.
The most important of these Arabic works are the Literary
History of An-Naddim, Kitab al Fihrist, ed. Flügel and
Roediger, Lps., 1871; then
Al-Shurstani’s “Hist. of relig. and phil. sects.” ed.
Cureton, Lond., 1842; and
Al-Biruni’s “Chron. d. Orient Völker.” ed. Sachau,
Lps., 1878.
[51] Among the Mandeans _mana rabba_ means one of the highest
æons, and is thus perhaps identical with the name
Paraclete borrowed from the Christian terminology,
which Manes assumed.
[52] Ueberweg, “Hist. of Phil.” 2 vols., Lond., 1872, Vol. i.,
pp. 290-325. Patristic. Phil. down to Council of Nicæa.
[53] Donaldson, “Apostolic Fathers.” Lond., 1874.
Lightfoot, “Clement of Rome.” 2 vols., Lond., 1869, 1877;
Ignatius and Polycarp, 3 vols., Lond., 1885.
Sanday, “The Gospels in the Second Century.” Lond., 1876.
[54] Luke i. 1; § 32, 4; 36, 7; 59, 1.
[55] “Patrum Apost. Opera.” Ed. Gebhardt, Harnack and Zahn,
3 vols., Lps., 1876 ff.
“Apostolic Fathers.” Engl. transl. in Ante-Nicene Library,
Edin., 1867.
Donaldson, “Apostolic Fathers.” Edin., 1874.
[56] At Constantinople, 1875.
[57] Comp. Lightfoot, “St. Clement of Rome, An Appendix.” etc.,
Lond., 1877.
[58] Donaldson, “History of Christian Literature.” Vol. i.,
Lond., 1864.
Cunningham, “Dissertation on Epistle of St. Barnabas.”
Lond., 1877.
[59] “Hermæ Pastor.” ed. Hilgenfeld, 2 ed., Lps., 1881. Down
to the middle of the 19th century it was known only in
a Latin translation, but since then the Greek original
has been accessible in two recensions, as well as
in an ancient Ethiopic translation (ed. d’Abbadie,
Lps., 1860). One of the Greek recensions almost complete
was found in the monastery of Athos; and an older, but
less perfect one, was found in the _Codex Sinaiticus_.
Schodde, “Hermâ Nabî; The Ethiopic version of Pastor
Hermæ examined.” Lps., 1876.
[60] Comp.
Harnack in _Expositor_ for March, 1886, pp. 185-192.
Lightfoot, “Ignatius and Polycarp.” Lond., 1885, vol. ii.,
pp. 433-470.
[61] Cureton, “Corpus Ignatianum.” (Rom., Eph., and Ep. to
Polyc.), Lond., 1819.
[62] Against their genuineness:
Dallæus, “De scrr. quæ sub Dionysii et Ignatii nom.
circumfer.” Gen., 1666.
Killen, “Ignatian Epistles entirely Spurious.”
Edin., 1886.
In favour:
Pearson, “Vindiciæ St. Ignat.” Cantab., 1672.
Lightfoot, “Ignatius and Polycarp.” 3 vols., Lond., 1885.
[63] Salmon, “Introd. to the New Testament.” Lond., 1885,
pp. 104-126.
Sanday, “Gospels in Second Century.” Lond., 1876.
[64] Schaff, “The Oldest Church Manual.” Edin., 1886.
Hitchcock and Brown, “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.”
New York, 1884.
Taylor, “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles with Illus.
from the Talmud.” Cambr., 1886.
_Expositor_, April and June, 1886, pp. 319 f. and
401 ff.; Nov., 1887, pp. 359-371.
[65] Donaldson, “Hist. of Chr. Lit. from death of App. to Nic.
Council.” 3 vols., Lond., 1864, Vols. ii. and iii.,
“The Apologists.”
[66] The Syriac translation of a treatise of Melito’s given
in Cureton’s “Spicileg. Syr.” Lond., 1853, which gives
itself out as an address delivered before Antoninus
Cæsar, is not identical with his Apology to Antoninus
Pius, of which Eusebius has preserved three fragments,
as these passages are not found in it.
[67] The fragments of Melito’s works are collected by Routh,
“Reliquiæ Sacr.” L., Oxon., 1814.
[68] “Opera.” ed. Otto, 3 vols., Jena, 1876; Engl. transl. in
Ante-Nicene Library, Edin., 1867.
Semisch, “Just. Mart.” 2 vols., Edin., 1843.
Kaye, “Writings and Opin. of Just. Mart.” Lond., 1853.
[69] Salmon, “Introd. to New Test.” On Tatian, pp. 96-104.
Wace on “Zahn’s Tatian’s Diatessaron.” in _Expositor_
for Sept. and Oct., 1882.
[70] Bigg, “The Christian Platonists of Alexandria.” Bampton
Lect. for 1886, Oxf., 1886.
Kingsley, “Alexandria and her Schools.” Camb., 1854.
[71] “Opera.” ed. Harvey, Cantab., 1857; Introd. II.
“Life and Wr. of Irenæus.” Engl. transl. in Ante-Nicene
Lib., 2 vols., Edin., 1868, 1869.
Lightfoot, “Churches of Gaul.” in _Contemp. Review_,
Aug. 1876.
Lipsius, “Irenæus.” in Smith’s “Dict. of Chr. Biog.”
III., pp. 253-279.
[72] Many works ascribed to him have been lost; whatever fragments
of these exist have been collected by Fabricius and Lagarde.
These were:
_Exeget._, a Com. on Daniel;
_Apolog._, Πρὸς Ἰουδαίους;
_Polem._,
against Gnostics and Monarchians,
against the Asiatic Observance of Easter (§ 37, 2);
_Dogmat._,
Περὶ τῆς τοῦ πάντος οὐσίας,
Περὶ τοῦ Ἀντιχρίστου,
Περὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως (§ 22, 4),
Περὶ χαρισμάτων;
Hist.-chron.,
Chronicle, and Easter-Canon.
On Philosophoumena:
Döllinger, “Hippolytus and Callistus.” Edin., 1876.
[73] “Opera.” ed. Dindorf, 4 vols., Oxon., 1868.
“Supplementum Clementinum, in Zahn’s Forsch.” Vol. iii.,
Engl. transl. in Ante-Nicene Lib., 2 vols., Edin., 1867.
Bigg, “Chr. Plat. of Alex.” Lectt. II. III., Oxf., 1886.
Kaye, “Clement of Alexandria.” London, 1855.
Reuss, “Hist of Canon.” Edin., 1884, pp. 112-116.
[74] Jerome reckons them at 2,000; Epiphanius at 6,000; these
must include the thousands of separate epistles and
homilies.
Bigg, “Chr. Platonists of Alex.” Lectt. IV.-VI.,
Oxf., 1886.
[75] _Hexaplorum quæ supersunt._ Ed. Field, Oxon., 1871.
[76] Ed. Selwyn, Cantab., 1876; Engl. transl. of C. Celsum
and De Principiis, in Ante-Nicene Library, 2 vols.,
Edin., 1869-1872.
[77] “Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of Alex. and Archelaus.”
transl. by Prof. Salmond, Edin., 1871.
[78] Neander, “Antignosticus, or the Spirit of Tertull.”
appended to “Hist. of Planting of Chr. Church.”
2 vols., Lond., 1851.
Kaye, “Eccles. Hist. of 2nd and 3rd Cents. illustr. from
Wr. of Tertull.” 2 ed., Camb., 1829.
Tertullian, “Works.” 3 vols., Ante-Nicene Lib.,
Edin., 1869.
[79] “Cyprian’s Treatises and Epistles.” Lib. of Fathers,
2 vols., Oxf., 1839, 1844.
“Writings of Cyprian.” Ante-Nicene Lib., 2 vols.,
Edin., 1868.
Poole, “Life and Times of C.” Oxf., 1840.
Pressensé, “Martyrs and Apologists.” Lond., 1879,
pp. 414-438.
[80] Dillmann, “Pseudepigraph. des A. Ts.” Herzog, xii. 341.
Reuss, “Hist. of the N. T.” Edin., 1884.
Salmon, “Introd. to N. T.” 2nd ed., Lond., 1886.
[81] “Fabricius, Codex pseudepigr. V.T.” Ed. 2., Hamb., 1722.
[82] Drummond, “Jewish Messiah.” Lond., 1877.
Lawrence, “Book of Enoch.” Oxf., 1821.
Schodde, “Bk. of Enoch.” Andover, 1882.
Schurer, “Hist. of Jew. Peo. in Times of J. Chr.”
Div. II., Vol. 3., pp. 59 ff., 73 ff., 93 ff., 134 ff.;
(Enoch, Assumptio, Ezra, Bk. of Jub.).
Bensly, “Missing Fragment of Lat. Transl. of 4th Bk. of
Ezra.” Cambr., 1875.
[83] Sinker, “Test. XII. Patriarchum.” Cambr., 1869;
Appendix, 1879.
Malan, “Book of Adam and Eve.” Lond., 1882.
Hort on Bks. of Adam, in Smith’s “Dict. of Chr. Biog.”
Lond., 1877.
[84] Salmon, “Introd. to N.T.” Lond., 1885; Lect. XII.,
“Apoc. and Her. Gospels.” pp. 226-248.
[85] Nicholson, “The Gosp. acc. to the Hebrews.” Lond., 1879.
[86] Giles, “Cod. Apoc. N. T.” 2 vols., Lond., 1852.
Tischendorf, “Evv. Apocr.” Ed. 2, Lps., 1876.
[87] Wright, “Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.” Syriac and
English, 2 vols., Lond., 1871.
Malan, “The Conflicts of the Holy Apostles.” Lond., 1871.
Tischendorf, “Acta app. Apocr.” Lps., 1851.
[88] Phillips, “Addai the Apostle.” Syriac and English,
Lond., 1876.
[89] Lightfoot, “Comm. on Phil.” 6th ed., Lond., 1881; “Diss.
on Paul and Seneca.” pp. 270-328; “Letters of Paul
and Seneca.” pp. 329-333.
Lightfoot, “Comm. on Col.” 5 ed., Lond., 1880;
pp. 274-300, “The Epistle from Laodicea.”
[90] Dorner, “Hist. of Dev. of Doctr. of Person of Chr.”
5 vols., Edin., 1862.
Pressensé, “Heresy and Christian Doctrine.” Lond., 1879.
[91] Deut. xviii. 15; Isa. liii. 3; Matt. xii. 32; Luke i. 35;
John viii. 40; Acts ii. 22; 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[92] Tertullian says: _Ita duo negotia diaboli Praxeas Romæ
procuravit, prophetiam expulit et hæresim intulit,
paracletum fugavit et patrem crucifixit._--Ps.-Tertull.:
_Hæresim introduxit, quam Victorinus corroborare
curavit._
[93] Dorner, “Person of Christ.” Vol. ii.
[94] Pressensé, “Life and Practice in the Early Church.”
Lond., 1872.
[95] Hatch, “The Organization of the Early Christian
Churches.” Lond., 1881; “The Growth of Church
Institutions.” Lond., 1887.
Bannerman, “Doctr. of the Church.” 2 vols., Edin., 1858;
espec. vol. i., pp. 277-480.
Lightfoot, “Comm. on Phil.” 6th ed., Lond., 1881:
“Dissertat. on Chr. Ministry.”
Papers in _Expositor_, 1887, on “Origin of Chr. Ministry.”
by Sanday, Harnack and others.
[96] We are not carried further than this by Irenæus, iii. 3.
Similarly, too, Cyprian, _De Unitate Ecclesiæ_, iv.
Tertullian also does not accept the Roman tradition
as of supreme authority, but prefers that of Asia
Minor in regard to the Easter Controversy, and, in the
_De Pudicitia_, he opposes with bitter invective the
penitential discipline of the Roman bishop Zephyrinus or
Callistus. So, too, Cyprian repudiates the Roman practice
in regard to heretics’ baptism (§ 35, 5); and on the same
subject Firmilian of Cæsarea in Cappadocia hesitates not
to write: _Non pudet Stephanum, Cyprianum pseudo-christum
et pseudo-apostolum et dolosum operarium dicere:
qui omnia in se esse conscius prævenit, ut alteri
per mendacium objiceret, quæ ipse ex merito audire
deberet._--Consult:
Blondel, “Traité hist. de la primauté.” Gen., 1641.
Salacious, “De Primatu Papæ.” Lugd. Bat., 1645.
Kenrick, “The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated.”
New York, 1848.
“The Pope and the Council.” by Janus, Lond., 1869.
[97] Wall, “Hist. of Infant Baptism.” with Gale’s Reflections,
and Wall’s Defence, 4 vols., Oxf., 1836.
Wilberforce, “Doctr. of Holy Baptism.” Lond., 1849.
[98] Funk’s assertion that the ἀκροᾶσθαι and the γονυκλίνειν
were not stages in the Catechumenate, but penal ranks
in which offending Catechumens were placed, and that
there was only one order of Catechumens is untenable
for these reasons:
1. Because the penitential institution presupposes a
falling away from the grace of baptism;
2. Because the Canon of Neo-Cæsarea with its
κατηχούμενος ἁμαρτάνων, ἐὰν μὲν γονυκλίνων, ἀκροάσθω,
necessarily implies that γονυκλίνειν is a stage in
the Catechumenate;
3. Because this Canon provides that after the first
penal procedure, not after passing through two
penitential orders, the sinner will be expelled;
4. Finally, because the γονυκλίνειν of the Catechumens,
just like that of the congregation in prayer, is
even in expression something quite different from
the ὑπόπτωσις of the penitents.--Consult:
Pressensé, “Life and Practice in the Early Church.”
Lond., 1879, pp. 5-36, 333.
[99] Pressensé, “Life and Practice in the Early Church.”
pp. 201-216, 263-286.
Lechler, “Apostolic and Post-Apost. Times.” 2 vols.,
Edin., 1886; Vol. ii. 298.
Jacob, “Ecclest. Polity of N. T.” Lond., 1871,
pp. 187-319.
[100] Jacob, “Ecclest. Polit. of N.T.” Lond., 1871, Lect. vii.,
“The Lord’s Supper.”
Waterland, “Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist.”
Lond., 1737.
[101] See, _De Doctr. Christiana._ II. ii. 15.--“Old Latin
Biblical Texts.” Edited by John Wordsworth, Bp. of
Salisbury, Oxford, 1885, etc.
[102] Lechler, “Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times.”
Edin., 1886, Vol. ii., pp. 301-310.
[103] Bosio, “Roma Sotteranea.” Rom., 1632.
De Rossi, “Roma sott. crist.” 3 vols., Rome, 1864-1877.
Northcote and Brownlow, “Roma Sotteranea.” Lond., 1869.
Withrow, “The Catacombs of Rome.” Lond., 1876.
[104] Marriott, “Testimony of the Catacombs.” Lond., 1877.
[105] Zöckler, “The Cross of Christ.” Lond., 1877.
Allen, “Early Christian Symbolism.” Lond., 1887.
Didson, “Chr. Iconography.” 2 vols., Lond., 1886.
[106] Schmidt, “The Social Results of Early Christianity.”
Lond., 1886.
Brace, “Gesta Christi.” Lond., 1883.
Uhlhorn, “Chr. Charity in the Ancient Church.”
Edin., 1883.
Pressensé, “Life and Practice in Early Church.”
Lond., 1879, pp. 345-477.
Ryan, “Hist. of the Effects of Relig. upon Mankind.”
Dublin, 1820.
[107] Morinus, “De discipl. in administr. s. pœnitentiæ.”
Par., 1651.
Marshall, “Penitential Discipline of the Prim. Church for
the First Four Centuries.” Lond., 1844 (1st ed., 1718).
Tertullian, “De Pœnitentia.” See Transl. in Library of
Fathers, Tertullian, vol. i., “Apologetic and Practical
Treatises.” Oxf., 1843; XI. Of Repentance, with long
and valuable notes by Dr. Pusey, pp. 349-408.
[108] J. de Soyres, “Montanism and the Primitive Church.”
Cambr., 1878.
Cunningham, “The Churches of Asia.” Lond., 1880,
p. 159 ff.
[109] Bunsen, “Hippolytus and his Age.” Lond., 1854.
Wordsworth, “St. Hippolytus and the Church of Rome.”
Lond., 1852.
Döllinger, “Hippolytus and Callistus.” Edin., 1876
(orig. publ. 1853).
[110] “Library of Fathers.” Oxf., 1843, Cyprian’s Treatises:
v.“On Unity of the Church.” vi. “On the Lapsed.” with
prefaces.
Also, “Epp. of S. Cyprian.” (1844) xli.-xlv., lii.
and lix.
[111] “Library of Fathers.” Oxf., 1844; “Epp. of S. Cyprian.”
Ep. lii., also Ep. lv.
[112] Merivale, “Conversion of the Roman Empire.” Lond., 1864.
Milman, “Hist. of Christianity to Abol. of Pag. in Rom.
Emp.” 3 vols., Lond.
Lecky, “Hist. of Eur. Morals.” Vol. ii., “From Constantine
to Charlemagne.”
[113] Döllinger, “Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle
Ages.” Lond., 1871.
[114] Original source is Eusebius, “Life of Constantine.”
Trans. Lond., 1842.
See interesting lect. on Constantine in Stanley’s “Hist.
of Eastern Church.” Lond., 1861.
Madden, “Christian Emblems on Coins of Constantine I.”
Lond., 1878.
[115] Neander, “The Emperor Julian and his Generation.”
Lond., 1850.
G. H. Rendall, “The Emperor Julian.” Lond., 1879.
Newman, “Miracles in Eccl. Hist.” Oxf., 1842.
Bp. Wordsworth, “Julian.” in Smith’s Dict. of Biog.,
vol. iii., pp. 484-523.
[116] On this whole period consult: Histories of Theodoret,
Sozomen, Socrates, and Evagrius (containing much
fabulous matter, but useful as contemporary records
extending down to A.D. 594). Transl. in 4 vols.,
Lond., 1812-1846.
For Theodosius I. see Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.”
vol. ii., p. 341 ff., Edin., 1876.
[117] A careful reconstruction of the whole as far as
possible has been attempted by Neumann (Leipz., 1880),
accompanied by prolegomena and a German translation.
[118] Hefele, “Hist. of Church Councils.” Edin., 1872, Vol. i.,
pp. 1-48.
Pusey, “Councils of Ch. from A.D. 51 to A.D. 381: their
constit., obj., and history.” Oxf., 1857.
[119] Its original form is probably preserved in a Syriac
translation; see Bunsen’s “Analecta Antenicæna.”
ii. 45-338, Lond., 1854.
[120] First published in the Greek original by Bickell under
the title, inapplicable to the first part: Αἱ διαταγαὶ
αἱ διὰ Κλήμεντος καὶ κανόνες ἐκκλησιαστικοὶ τῶν ἁγίων
ἀποστόλων.
[121] Maitland, “The Dark Ages.” Lond., 1844.
Ozanam, “Hist. of Civilization in 5th Cent.” Transl.
by Glyn, 2 vols.
Montalembert, “Monks of the West, from Benedict to
Bernard.” 7 vols., Edin., 1861 ff.
[122] Stephens, “Chrysostom: his Life and Times.” 3rd ed.,
London, 1883, pp. 59 ff., 294 ff.
[123] Hatch, “Organization of the Early Christian Churches.”
London, 1881, pp. 124-139.
Hatch, “Ordination.” in Smith’s “Dict. of Bibl. Antiq.”
Vol. ii.
[124] Hatch, “Organization of Chr. Ch.” p. 161.
Bede, “Eccles. Hist.” iv. 1.
[125] Dale, “Synod of Elvira, and Christ. Life in the 4th cent.”
London, 1882.
Lea, “Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy.” Philad., 1867.
Lecky, “Hist. of Europ. Morals.” London, 1877, Vol. ii.,
pp. 328 ff.
Hefele, “Hist. of Christ. Councils.” Edin., 1872, Vol. i.,
pp. 150, 380, 435.
[126] Neale, “Hist. of the Holy Eastern Church.” 5 vols.,
London, 1847-1873.
Stanley, “Lect. on the Eastern Church.” London, 1861.
[127] Greenwood, “Cathedra Petri: Pol. Hist. of Great Latin
Patriarchate from 1st to 16th cent.” 6 vols., London,
1856 ff.
[128] Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” Vol. ii., Edin., 1876,
pp. 231 ff., 483 ff.
[129] Comp. Döllinger, “Fables Respecting the Popes of the
Middle Ages.” Lond., 1871.
[130] Milman, “Latin Christianity.” Vol. i.
[131] Bright, “Hist. of Church from A.D. 313-451.” 2 ed.,
Cambr., 1869.
Milman, “Latin Christianity.” Vol. i.
[132] Kellett, “Pope Gregory the Great and his Relations with
Gaul.” (Cambridge Essays, No. ii.), Cambridge, 1889.
[133] Engl. Transl.:
“Eccles. Hist. with Life of Euseb. by Valesius.”
Lond., 1843.
“Theophania, or Div. Manifest. of the Lord.” from Syr.
by Dr. Sam. Lee, Lond., 1843.
“Life of Constantine.” Lond., 1844.
“Life of Eusebius.” by Bright, prefixed to Oxf. ed.
of Eccl. Hist. of 1872.
[134] “Festal Epp. of Athanasius.” (transl. from Syriac
discovered in 1842 by Tattam, and first edited by
Cureton in 1848), Oxf., 1854.
[135] “Treatises against Arians.” 2 vols., Oxf., 1842 (new ed.,
1 vol., 1877).
“Historical Tracts.” Oxf., 1843; “Select Tracts,” with
Newman’s Notes, 2 vols., Lond., 1881.
[136] Newman’s, “Hist. Sketches.” Vol. ii., chap. v; Sketches
of Basil, Gregory, etc. Originally publ. under title
“Church of the Fathers.” Lond., 1842.
[137] Ullmann, “Gregory Nazianzen.” Oxford, 1855; and Newman
“Church of the Fathers.”
[138] Cyril’s Comm. on Luke is transl. from the Syriac by
Dr. Payne Smith, Oxf., 1859.
[139] A very full and admirable account of Synesius and his
writings is given by Rev. T. R. Halcomb in Smith’s
“Dict. of Chr. Biog.” Vol. iii., pp. 756-780.
[140] Neander, “Life of Chrysostom.” Lond., 1845.
Stephens, “Life of Chrysostom.” 3rd ed., Lond., 1883.
Chase, “Chrysostom: a Study.” Cambr., 1887.
His Homilies and Addresses are transl. in 15 vols. in
the “Lib. of the Fathers.” Oxf., 1839-1851.
Various Eng. translations of the tract “On the
Priesthood.”
[141] Newman’s “Historical Sketches.” Vol. ii., chap. i.,
“Theodoret.”
[142] Translated by Dean Church in “Lib. of the Fathers.”
Oxf., 1838; with interesting and instructive Preface
by Newman.
[143] Ueberweg, “Hist. of Philosophy.” Lond., 1872, Vol. i.,
pp. 349-352.
Colet, “On the Hierarchies of Dionysius.” ed. by
Lupton, Lond., 1869.
Wescott, “Dionysius the Areopagite.” in _Contemp.
Review_ for May, 1867.
[144] Etheridge, “The Syrian Churches: their Early Hist.,
Liturg. and Lit.” Lond., 1846.
[145] Morris, “Select Writings of Ephraim the Syrian.”
Oxford, 1817.
Burgess, “Repentance of Nineveh, Metrical Homily by
Ephraem.” Lond., 1853.
“Select Metrical Hymns and Homilies of Eph. Syr.”
Lond., 1853.
[146] Newman, “Church of the Fathers.” 2nd ed., London, 1842.
Reprinted in Hist. Sketches, vol. ii.
Gilly, “Vigilantius and his Times.” London, 1844.
[147] “Lib. of Fathers.” in vol. of Cyprian’s Epps., Oxf., 1844,
pp. 318-384. For phrase quoted, see p. 322.
[148] A good account of the writings of Jerome is given by the
late Prof. William Ramsay in Smith’s “Dict. of Grk. and
Rom. Biogr.” Vol. ii., p. 460.
Milman, “Hist. of Chr.” Vol. iii., ch. xi.
Cutts, “St. Jerome.” Lond., 1877.
Gilly, “Vigilantius and his Times.” Lond., 1844.
[149] Gilly, “Vigilantius and his Times.” London, 1844.
[150] Newman’s “Arians of the 4th Century.” London, 1838.
Gwatkin, “Studies of Arianism.” Camb., 1882.
Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” Vols. i. ii., Edin.,
1872, 1876.
Newman’s “Tracts Theolog. and Eccles.” Chap. ii.; Doctrinal
Causes of Arianism.
“Select Treatises of Athanasius.” Ed. by Newman, 2 vols.,
London, 1881, Vol. 2 containing notes on Arius,
Athanasius, etc.
[151] Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” I., pp. 231-447.
Kaye, “Hist. of Council of Nicæa.” London, 1853.
Tillemont, “Hist. of Arians and Council of Nice.”
London, 1721.
[152] Newman’s “Select Treat. of Athanasius.” Vol. ii., p. 196 f.
Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” Vol. ii., Edin., 1876, p. 193.
[153] Newman’s “Select Treat. of Athanasius.” Vol. ii., p. 282 ff.
Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” ii., p. 217.
[154] Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” ii., pp. 340-373.
Hort, “Two Dissertations.” ii., On the Constantinople Creed
and other Eastern Creeds of the 4th cent., Camb., 1874.
[155] Swete, “The Hist. of the Doctr. of the Procession of the
Holy Spirit from Apost. Age to Death of Charlemagne.”
Cambr., 1876.
Pusey, “On the clause ‘And the Son.’” Oxf., 1876.
[156] Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” ii., p. 348 ff., § 97, The
Tome and the Creed.
[157] Stephens, “Chrysostom.” pp. 287-305.
Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” ii., p. 430 ff.
[158] The most useful and complete account of Chrysostom is
that of Stephens. Consult also Milman, “Hist. of Chr.”
Vol. iii., pp. 206 ff.
[159] Dorner, “Hist. of the Development of the Doctr. of the
Person of Christ.” 5 vols., Edin., 1861.
[160] Newman, “Tracts Theological and Ecclesiastical.”
Chap. iii., Apollinarianism.
[161] Hefele, “Hist. of Councils.” Vol. iii., pp. 1-156.
[162] Most informing about all these transactions is Hefele, “Hist.
of Councils.” iii., Edin., 1883; (Robber Synod, p. 241 ff.;
Chalcedon, p. 451 ff.).
Perry, “Second Council of Ephesus.” London, 1877.
Bright, “Hist. of Church from A.D. 313-451.” Cambr., 1869.
[163] Butler, “Ancient Coptic Churches.” 2 vols., London, 1884.
[164] Döllinger, “Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle
Ages.” Lond., 1871.
Willis, “Pope Honorius and the New Roman Dogma.” Lond., 1879.
Bottalla, “Pope Honorius before the Tribunal of Reason and
History.” London, 1868.
[165] Wiggers, “Augustinianism and Pelagianism.” Andover, 1840.
Müller, “Chr. Doctrine of Sin.” 2 vols., Edin., 1868.
Ritschl, “Hist. of Chr. Doctr. of Justific. and
Reconciliation.” Edin., 1872.
[166] Laidlaw, “The Bible Doctrine of Man.” Edin., 1879.
Heard, “Tripartite Nat. of Man.” 3rd ed., Edin., 1870,
pp. 189-200.
Delitzsch, “Biblical Psychology.” 2nd ed., Edin., 1869,
pp. 128-142.
Beck, “Outlines of Biblical Psychology.” Edin., 1877, p. 10.
[167] For an entirely different representation of the Augustinian
system see Cunningham, “S. Austin and his Place in Hist.
of Chr. Thought.” Lond., 1886; esp. chaps. ii. and iii.,
pp. 45-107.
A good outline and defence in Hodge’s “System. Theol.”
Edin., 1874, Vol. ii., pp. 333-353.
Mosheim, “Eccl. Hist.” ed. by Dr. J. S. Reid, Lond., 1880,
p. 210, notes 3 and 4; (pt. II., chap. v., § 25.)
Mozley, “Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination.”
Lond., 1855.
[168] Hodge, “Systematic Theology.” Vol. ii., pp. 166-168.
[169] Lardner, “Credibility of the Gospel Hist.” Vol. iv.,
London, 1743.
[170] Butcher, “The Ecclesiastical Calendar.” London.
Hampson, “Medii Ævi Kalend.”
[171] Gieseler, “Ecclesiastical History.” Edinburgh, 1848,
Vol. ii., pp. 141-145.
[172] Tyler, “Image Worship of Ch. of Rome contrary to Scripture
and the Prim. Ch.” London, 1847.
[173] Tyler, “Worship of Virgin Mary contrary to Script. and
Faith of Ch. of first 5 Cents.” London, 1851.
Clagett, “Prerogatives of Anna the Mother of God.”
London, 1688. Also by same: “Discourse on Worship of
Virgin and Saints.” London, 1686.
[174] Cosin, “Scholastic History of Popish Transubstantiation.”
Lond., 1676.
[175] Reuss, “History of the N.T. Scriptures.” Edin., 1884,
§ 377.
Keil, “Introduction to the O.T.” Edin., 1870, Vol. ii.,
pp. 201-203.
[176] Swainson, “The Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds.” Camb., 1875.
Westcott, “The Historic Faith.” Lond., 1883, note iii.,
the Creeds.
Harvey, “Hist. and Theology of the three Creeds.”
Camb., 1854.
Hort, Two Dissertations: II. “The Constantinopolitan Creed
and the Eastern Creeds of 4th cent.” Camb., 1876.
Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom.” Edin., 1877, vol. i.
Lumby, “History of the Creeds.” Camb., 1873.
Waterland, “Crit. Hist. of Athanasian Creed.” Camb., 1724.
Heurtley, “The Athanasian Creed.” Oxf., 1872.
Ommaney, “Ath. Creed: an Exam. of Recent Theories
respecting its Date and Origin.” Lond., 1875.
[177] Neale, “Hymns of the Eastern Church.” Lond., 1863.
“Mediæval Hymns and Sequences.” Lond., 1863.
Gieseler, “Ecclesiastical History.” Vol. iii., p. 353.
[178] Hawkins, “History of Music.” Lond., 1853.
[179] Hammond, “Ancient Liturgies.” Oxf., 1878.
Neale and Littledale, “Translations of Primitive Liturgies.”
Lond., 1869.
Neale, “Essays on Liturgiology.” Lond., 1867.
[180] Marriott, “Vestiarium Christianum: Origin and gradual
development of Dress of Holy Ministry of Church.”
Lond., 1868.
[181] Woltmann and Woermann, “History of Painting.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1886; vol. i., “Anc., Early Chr. and Mediæval
Painting.” ed. by Prof. Sidney Colvin.
“Handbook of Painting: Italian Schools. Based on Kügler’s
Handbook.” by Eastlake; new ed. by Layard, 2 vols.,
Lond., 1886.
[182] Ozanam, “Hist. of Civilization during the 5th Century.”
2 vols.
Lecky, “Hist. of European Morals.” Vol. ii.
[183] Smith’s “Dictionary of Christian Biography.” vol. iii.,
p. 367.
[184] Gilly, “Vigilantius and his Times.” Lond., 1840.
[185] Gieseler, “Eccl. Hist.” ii. 148.
[186] Ludolphus, “History of Ethiopia.” London, 1684.
[187] Malan, “Gregory the Illuminator: his Life and Times.”
London, 1868.
Article by Lipsius on Eznik in Smith’s “Dictionary of Chr.
Biography.” Vol. ii., p. 439.
[188] Muir, “Life of Mohammed and Hist. of Islam.” 4 vols., Lond.
Bosworth Smith, “Mohammed and Mohammedanism.” Lond., 1874.
Mühleisen-Arnold, “Islam, its Hist., Chr. and Rel. to
Christianity.” 3rd ed., Lond., 1874.
Deutsch, “Literary Remains: Islam.” Lond., 1874.
Stephens, “Christianity and Islam.” Lond., 1877.
Mills, “Hist. of Mohammedanism.” Lond., 1817.
[189] Muir, “Annals of the Earlier Khalifate.”
[190] Finlay, “Hist. of Greece from Rom. Conquest.” 7 vols.,
Lond., 1864, new ed., 1877; vols. ii. and iii.
Bower’s “Lives of Popes.” Vols. iii. and iv., Lond., 1754.
Comber, “Disc. on 2nd Council of Nicæa.” Reprinted in
Gibson’s “Preserv. from Popery.” Lond., 1848.
Didron, “Christian Iconography.” 2 vols., Lond., 1886.
[191] Mendham, “The Seventh General Council, the Second of
Nicæa.” in which the worship of images was established.
[192] Allatius, “De eccl. occid. et orient. perpetua
consensione.” Colon., 1669.
Swete, “Hist. of the Procession of the Holy Spirit.”
Camb., 1876.
Ffoulkes, “Christendom’s Divisions.” London.
Neale, “Holy Eastern Church.” 5 vols., London, 1847.
[193] Popoff, “Hist. of Council of Florence.” Transl. from
Russian by Neale, London, 1861.
[194] Lupton, “St. John of Damascus.” London, 1882.
[195] Badger, “The Nestorians and their Rituals.” 2 vols.,
London, 1852.
[196] Baring-Gould, “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.”
Lond., 1881.
[197] Murawieff, “Hist. of the Church of Russia.” Trans. from
the Russ., Lond., 1842.
Romanoff, “Sketches of the Rites and Customs of the
Græco-Russian Church.” Lond., 1869.
[198] Potthast, “Biblioth. Hist. Modii Ævi.” Berol., 1862, with
suppl. in 1868.
D’Achery, “Vett. Script. Spicilegium.” (1655), 3 vols.,
Par., 1783.
Eccard, “Corpus Hist. Medii Ævi.” 2 vols., Lps., 1723.
Du Chesne, “Hist. Francorum Serr.” 5 vols., Par., 1636.
Parker, “Rer. Brit. Serr. Vetust.” Lugd. B., 1587.
Gale, “Hist. Brit., Saxon., Anglo-Dan. Scrr.” 2 vols.,
Oxf., 1691.
Wharton, “Anglia Sacra.” 2 vols., Lond., 1691.
Wilkins, “Conc. Brit. et Hib.” 4 vols., Lond., 1737.
Haddan and Stubbs, “Councils and Eccles. Documents.”
(Revision of Wilkins), Lond., 1879 ff.
Maitland, “The Dark Ages: Essays on the State of Relig. and
Lit. in 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th Centuries.” Lond., 1844.
[199] Bryce, “The Holy Roman Empire.” Lond., 1866.
Ranke, “History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations.”
Lond., 1886.
[200] Ebrard, “Christian Apologetics.” 3 vols., Edin., 1886-1887,
Vol. ii., p. 407; “The Religion of the Germans and that
of the Slavs.”
[201] Mallet, “Northern Antiquities.” London, 1848.
Hallam, “Europe during the Middle Ages.”
Guizot, “Hist. of Civiliz. in Europe.”
[202] Hodgkin, “Italy and her Invaders: A.D. 376-476.” 2 vols.,
London, 1880.
[203] Scott, “Ulfilas, the Apostle of the Goths.” Cambr., 1885.
Douse, “Introduction to the Gothic of Ulfilas.” London, 1886.
Bosworth’s “Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels.” Oxf., 1874.
[204] Gibbon, “Decline and Fall of Roman Empire.” Chaps. xxxiii.,
xxxvi., xxxvii.
[205] Freeman, “Historical Essays.” 3rd series, Lond.; “The Goths
at Ravenna.”
[206] Ussher, “Brit. Eccl. Antiqu.” Lond., 1639.
Perry, “Hist. of English Church.” i., Lond., 1882.
Lanigan, “Eccl. Hist. of Ireland.” 4 vols., 2nd ed.,
Dublin, 1829.
Stokes, “Ireland and the Celtic Ch.” Lond., 1886.
Lingard, “Hist. and Antiqu. of Anglo-Sax. Ch.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1845.
Maclauchlan, “Early Scottish Church.” Edinb., 1865.
Reeves, “The Culdees of the British Islands.” Dublin, 1864.
Skene, “Celtic Scotland.” 3 vols., Edin., 1876; 2 ed., 1886.
Bright, “Chapters of Early Eng. Ch. Hist.” Oxf., 1878.
Pryce, “Ancient British Church.” Lond., 1886.
[207] Todd, “Life of St. Patrick.” Dublin, 1864.
Cusack, “Life of St. Patrick.” Lond., 1871.
O’Curry, “Lects. on Anc. Irish History.” Dublin, 1861.
Writings of St. Patrick. Transl. and ed. by Stokes and
Wright, Lond., 1887.
[208] Maclauchlan, “Early Scottish Church.” Pp. 145-205.
Adamnan, “Life of Columba.” Ed. by Dr. Reeves, Dublin, 1857.
Smith, “Life of Columba.” Edin., 1798.
Forbes, “Lives of Ninian, Columba, Kentigern.” in series of
Historians of Scotland.
[209] Ussher, “Discourse of the Religion anciently Professed by
the Irish and British.” Lond., 1631.
Maclauchlan, “Early Scottish Church.” Pp. 239-250.
Warren, “Ritual and Liturgy of the Celtic Church.”
Oxf., 1881.
[210] Soames, “The Anglo-Saxon Church.” 4th ed., Lond., 1856.
Stanley, “Historical Memorials of Canterbury.” Lond., 1855.
Hook, “Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury.” Vol. i.
Sharon Turner, “Hist. of Anglo-Saxons to the Roman
Conquest.” 6 ed., 3 vols., Lond., 1836.
[211] Lappenburg, “Anglo-Saxon Kings.” Lond., 1845.
Bede, “Eccles. History.” Book III.
Maclauchlan, “Early Scottish Church.” Pp. 217-238.
[212] Gildas († A.D. 570), “De excidio Britanniæ.” Engl. transl.
by Giles, London, 1841.
Bede († A.D. 735), “Eccles. Hist. of Engl.” Transl. by
Giles, London, 1840.
[213] Lanigan, “Eccl. Hist. of Ireland.” iii., ch. 13.
Innes, “Ancient Inhab. of Scotland.” in the Series of
Historians of Scotland.
[214] Maclauchlan, “Early Scottish Church.” p. 435.
Reeves, “The Culdees of the British Islands.” Dublin, 1864.
Robertson, “Scotland under her Early Kings.” Edin.,
2 vols., 1862.
[215] Merivale, “Conversion of the Northern Nations.”
London, 1866.
Maclear, “Apostles of Mediæval Europe.”
[216] That he first received the Latin name after his consecration
as bishop in A.D. 723 is rendered more than doubtful by
the fact that it is found in letters of earlier date. It
is probably only a Latinizing of the Anglo-Saxon Winfrid
or Wynfrith (from Vyn=fortune, luck, health; frid or
frith=peace; therefore: peaceful, wholesome fortune)
into the name, widely spread in Christian antiquity, of
_Bonifatius_ (from _bonumfatum_, Greek: Eutyches, good
luck). But the transposition into the form Bonifacius
which might seem the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon word
“Benefactor” of the German people, is first met with,
although even then only occasionally, in the 8th century,
but afterwards always more and more frequently, and then
is given to the popes and other earlier bearers of the name.
By the 15th century the original and etymological style of
writing the name and that used in early documents had been
completely discarded and forgotten, till modern philology,
diplomatics and epigraphies have again clearly vindicated
the earlier form.
[217] Wright, “Biog. Britannica Literaria.” Lond., 1842.
Cox, “Life of Boniface.” Lond., 1853.
Hope, “Boniface.” London, 1872.
Maclear, “Apostles of Mediæval Europe.”
[218] Trench, “Lectures on Mediæval Church History.” Lond., 1877.
Hardwick, “History of Christian Church during Middle Ages.”
[219] Mosheim, “Eccl. Hist.” Ed. by Reid, London, 1880, p. 285,
Cent. viii., pt. ii., ch. 5.
Wright, “Biographia Brit. Literaria.” London, 1842.
[220] Milman, “Hist. of Latin Christianity.” Vol. ii., Trench’s
“Lectures on Mediæval Church History.”
[221] “William of Malmesbury’s Chronicle of Kings of England.”
Bk. I., ch. 4.
[222] Freeman, “Historical Essays.” 2nd series: “The Southern
Slavs.”
[223] Adam of Bremen, “Gesta Hammaburgensia.” A.D. 788-1072.
Pontoppidan, “Annales Eccles. Danicæ.” Copenhag., 1741.
Merivale, “Conversion of the Northern Nations.”
London, 1865.
[224] Geijer, “History of the Swedes.” Transl. by Turner,
Lond., 1847.
[225] Muir, “Annals of Early Khalifate.”
Ockley, “Hist. of Saracens and their Conquests in Syria,
Persia and Egypt.”
[226] Condé, “History of Dominion of Arabs in Spain.” 3 vols.
Freeman, “Hist. and Conquests of the Saracens.” 2nd ed.,
Lond., 1876.
Abd-el-Hakem, “History of the Conquest of Spain.” Tr. from
Arabic by Jones, Gött., 1858.
[227] Kingsley, “Roman and Teuton.” Lectures in Univ. of Cambr.:
“The Popes and the Lombards.”
[228] Crakenthorp, “The Defence of Constantine, with a Treatise
on the Pope’s Temporal Monarchy.” Lond., 1621.
[229] Platina, “Lives of Popes.” Under John VII.
Bower, “Lives of Popes.” Vol. iv.
Blondel, “Joanna Papissa.” Amst., 1657.
Hase, “Church History.” New York, 1855, p. 186.
[230] Cunningham, “Discussions on Church Principles.”
Edin., 1863, pp. 101-163; “Temporal Supremacy of the Pope
and Gallican Liberties.”
Barrow, “Pope’s Supremacy.” London, 1683.
[231] Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions.” ch. viii., National
Churches, pp. 139-154.
[232] Hefele, “History of Councils.” iii. 69, 131, 149.
Field, “Of the Church.” Reprint by Eccl. Hist. Society,
5 vols., London, 1847; vol. iii., pp. 7, 245 ff.
Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions.” ch. vii., The
Metropolitan, pp. 128-135.
[233] Lea, “Studies in Church History.” Philad., 1869.
Lecky, “History of European Morals.” 3rd ed., 2 vols.,
London, 1877.
[234] Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions.” London, 1887,
p. 43.
[235] Marriott, “Vestiarium Christianum.” P. 187 ff.,
London, 1868.
[236] Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions.” Ch. v., The Parish,
pp. 89-97.
[237] Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions.” Ch. ix., The
Canonical Rule, pp. 157-172; Ch. x., The Cathedral
Chapter, pp. 175-190.
[238] Hatch, “Growth of Ch. Instit.” Ch. xi., The Chapter of the
Diocese, pp. 193-208.
Stubbs, “Constit. Hist. of England.” Vol. iii.
[239] Walcott, “Cathedralia.”
_Ibid._, “Sacred Archæology.”
Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions.” Ch. iii., Fixed
Tenure of Parish Priest; Ch. iv., The Benefice.
[240] Lecky, “Hist. of Europ. Morals.” ii., 183-248.
Montalembert, “Monks of West from Benedict to Bernard.”
7 vols., Edin., 1861 ff.
[241] Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions.” Ch. vi., Tithes and
their Distribution, pp. 101-117.
[242] Roth, however, regards this _divisio_ as putting a complete
stop to the secularization of church property.
[243] Hatch, “Growth of Ch. Institutions.” Ch. iv., The Benefice,
pp. 61-77.
Art. “Benefice.” in Smith’s “Dict. of Chr. Antiquities.”
[244] Ayliffe, “Parergon Juris Canonici.” Lond., 1726.
Guizot, “Hist. of Civilization.” Transl. by Hazlitt,
Lond., 1846.
Walcott, “Sacred Archæology.”
[245] Blondel, “Pseudo-Isid. et Turrianus vapulantes.”
Genev., 1628.
[246] Hopkins, “The Organ, its hist. and construct.” Lond., 1855.
[247] Guest, “History of English Rhythms.” Vol. ii.,
London, 1838.
Wright, “Biogr. Brit. Lit. Anglo-Saxon Period.”
London, 1842.
Thorpe, “Cædmon’s Paraphrase in Anglo-Saxon with Engl.
Transl.” London, 1832.
Conybeare, “Illustr. of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.” London, 1827.
[248] Evans, “Treatise on Chr. Doct. of Marriage.” New
York, 1870.
Hammond, “On Divorces.” In his Works, vol. i.,
London, 1674.
Cosin, “Argument on the Dissolution of Marriage.” Works,
vol. iv., Oxf., 1854.
Tertullian, Treatise in “Lib. of Fath.” Oxf., 1854, with
two Essays by Pusey, “On Second Marriages of the Clergy.”
and “On Early Views as to Marriage after Divorce.”
[249] Babington, “Influence of Chr. in promoting the Abolition
of Slavery in Europe.” London, 1864.
Edwards, “Inquiry into the State of Slavery in the Early
and Middle Ages of the Christian Era.” Edin., 1836.
[250] Smith’s “Dict. of Chr. Antiq.” Vol. i., pp. 785-792; Arts.:
“Hospitality, Hospitals, Hospitium.”
[251] Haddan and Stubbs, “Councils and Eccl. Documents.”
Vol. iii., Oxf., 1871.
[252] Barington, “Lit. Hist. of the Middle Ages.” Lond., 1846.
Hallam, “Europe in Middle Ages.” 2 vols., Lond., 1818.
Trench, “Lect. on Med. Ch. Hist.” Lond., 1877.
[253] Lorentz, “Life of Alcuin.” Transl. by Slee, Lond., 1837.
[254] Kingsley, “Roman and Teuton: Paulus Diaconus.”
[255] Hampden, “The Scholastic Philosophy in its rel. to Chr.
Theology.” Oxf., 1833.
Ueberweg, “Hist. of Philosophy.” Vol. i., pp. 358-365.
[256] Mullinger, “Schools of Charles the Great and Restoration
of Education in the 9th cent.” Cambr., 1877.
[257] Cassiodorus’ work in 12 bks., _De rebus gestes Gotorum_,
has indeed been lost, but about A.D. 550 Jornandes, who
also used other documents, embodied this work in his
_De Getarum orig. et reb. gestis_.
[258] Gildas wrote about A.D. 560 his: _Liber querulis de
excidio Britanniæ_ (Eng. transl. in “Six Old English
Chronicles.” London, Bohn).
[259] Nennius wrote about A.D. 850 his: _Eulogium Britanniæ s.
Hist. Britonum_ (Engl. transl. in “Six Old Engl. Chron.”).
[260] Collected Ed. of Alfred’s works, by Bosworth, 2 vols.,
Lond., 1858.
Fox, “Whole Wks. of Alfred the Great, with Essays on Hist.,
Arts and Manners of 9th cent.” 3 vols., Oxf., 1852.
Spelman, “Life of Alfred the Great.” Oxf., 1709.
Pauli, “Life of Alfred the Gt.” transl. with Alfred’s
Orosius, Lond., 1853.
Hughes, “Alfred the Great.”
Giles, “Life and Times of King Alfred the Great.”
Lond., 1848.
[261] Robertson, “Hist. of Chr. Church.” Vol. ii., London, 1856;
pp. 154 ff.
Dorner, “Hist. Development of Person of Chr.” Div. II.,
vol. i.
[262] Ussher, “Gotteschalci et controv. ab eo motæ hist.”
Dubl., 1631.
[263] Principal authorities for last two sections:
Adam of Bremen, “Gesta Hamburg eccl. Pontificum.” and
Saxo Grammaticus, “Hist. Danica.”
[264] Snorro Sturleson’s, “Heimskringla, or Chronicle of the
Kings of Norway.” Transl. from the Icelandic by Laing,
3 vols., London, 1844.
[265] Cosmas of Prague [† A.D. 1125], “Chronicon Prag.”
[266] “The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian.” Edited with
Commentary by Col. Yule, 2 vols., London, 1871.
[267] Michaud, “History of the Crusades.” Transl. by Robson,
3 vols., London, 1852.
Mill, “History of the Crusades.” 2 vols., London, 1820.
“Chronicles of the Crusades: Contemporary Narratives of
Richard Cœur de Lion, by Richard of Devizes and Geoffrey
de Vinsauf, and of the Crusade of St. Louis, by Lord
John de Joinville.” London (Bohn).
Gibbon, “History of Crusades.” London, 1869.
[268] _Pulleni dicuntur, vel quia recentes et novi, quasi pulli
respectu Surianorum reputati sunt, vel quia principaliter
de gente Apuliæ matres habuerunt. Cum enim paucas mulieres
adduxissent nostri, qui in terras remanserunt, de regno
Apuliæ, eo quod propius esset aliis regionibus, vocantes
mulieres, cum eis matrimonia contraxerunt._
[269] Stubbs, “Chronicle and Memorials of Richard I.”
London, 1864.
[270] Prescott, “History of Ferdinand and Isabella.” Good edition
by Kirk, in 1 vol., London, 1886.
Geddes, “History of Expulsion of Moriscoes.” In “Miscell.
Tracts.” Vol. i., London, 1714.
McCrie, “Hist. of Prop. and Suppr. of Reformation in Spain.”
London, 1829.
Ranke, “History of Reformation.” Transl. by Mrs. Austin,
vol. iii., London, 1847.
[271] Milman, “History of the Jews.” Book xxiv. 1, “The Feudal
System.”
[272] “De sua conversione.” In Carpzov’s edit. of the “Pugio
Fidei” of Raimund Martini, § 103, 9.
[273] Milman, “History of the Jews.” 3 vols., London, 1863;
bks. xxiv., xxvi.
Prescott, “Ferdinand and Isabella.” Pt. I., ch. xvii.
[274] Bryce, “The Holy Roman Empire.” London, 1866.
O’Donoghue, “History of Church and Court of Rome, from
Constantine to Present Time.” 2 vols., London, 1846.
Bower’s “History of the Popes.” Vol. v.
[275] For Lanfranc, see Hook, “Lives of Archbishops of
Canterbury.” Vol. ii., London, 1861.
[276] Bowden, “Life and Pontificate of Gregory VII.” 2 vols.,
London, 1840.
Villemain, “Life of Gregory VII.” Transl. by Brockley,
2 vols., London, 1874.
Stephen, “Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.” 2 vols.,
London, 1850.
Hallam, “Middle Ages.” Vol. i., London, 1840.
Milman, “Latin Christianity.” Vol. iii., London, 1854.
[277] Church, “St. Anselm.” London, 1870.
Rule, “Life and Times of St. Anselm.” 2 vols., London, 1883.
Hook, “Lives of Archb. of Canterbury.” Vol. ii., London,
1879, pp. 169-276.
[278] “Vita et Epistolæ Thomæ Cantuari.” Edited by Giles, 4 vols.,
London, 1846.
Morris, “Life and Martyrdom of Thomas à Becket.”
London, 1859.
Robertson, “Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.”
London, 1859.
“Materials for Life of Thomas à Becket.” 2 vols.,
London, 1875.
Hook, “Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury.” Vol. ii.,
London, 1879, pp. 354-507.
Stanley, “Memorials of Canterbury.” London, 1855.
Freeman, “Historical Essays.” First Series, Essay IV.
[279] On Stephen Langton see
Pearson, “History of England during Early and Middle Ages.”
Vol. ii.
Milman, “History of Latin Christianity.” Vol. iv.,
London, 1854.
Hook, “Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury.” Vol. ii.,
4th edition, London, 1879, pp. 657-761.
Maurice, “Lives of English Popular Leaders. 1. Stephen
Langton.” London.
[280] Kingston, “History of Frederick II., King of the Romans.”
London, 1862.
[281] Stubbs, “Memorials of St. Dunstan. Collection of six
Biographies.” London, 1875.
Soames, “Anglo-Saxon Church.” London, 1835.
Hook, “Lives of Archb. of Canterbury.” Vol. i., pp. 382-426,
London, 1860.
[282] Luard, “Roberti Grosseteste, Episcopi quondam Lincolniensis
Epistolæ.” London, 1862.
[283] According to Giordano of Giano, who himself was there, the
number of brothers present was about 3,000, and the people
of the neighbourhood supplied them so abundantly with food
and drink that they had at last to put a stop to their
bringing. But soon the tradition of the order multiplied
the 3,000 into 5,000, and transformed the quite natural
account of their support into a “_miraculum stupendum_,”
parallel to the feeding of the 5,000 in the wilderness
(Matt. xiv. 15-21).
[284] Trench, “The Mendicant Orders.” in “Lectures on Mediæval
Church History.” London, 1878.
[285] Milman, “History of Latin Christianity.” Vol. v.
Wadding, “Annales Minorum Fratrum.” 8 vols., Lugd., 1625.
Stephen, “St. Francis of Assisi.” In “Essays in
Ecclesiastical Biography.” London, 1860.
[286] “Annales Ordinis Prædicatorum.” Vol. i., Rome, 1746.
[287] Gieseler, “Ecclesiastical History.” § 72, Edin., 1853,
vol. iii., pp. 268-276.
[288] Addison, “History of the Knights Templars.” etc.,
London, 1842.
[289] Taafe, “Order of St. John of Jerusalem.” 4 vols.,
London, 1852.
[290] Ueberweg, “History of Philosophy.” Vol. i., pp. 355-377.
Hampden, “The Scholastic Philosophy considered in its
relation to Christian Theology.” Oxford, 1832.
Maurice, “Mediæval Philosophy.” London, 1870.
Harper, “The Metaphysics of the School.” London, 1880 f.
[291] Kirkpatrick, “The Historically Received Conception of a
University.” London, 1857.
Hagenbach, “Encyclopædia of Theology.” Transl. by Crooks
and Hurst, New York, 1884, § 18, pp. 50, 51.
[292] Cunningham, “Historical Theology.” Edinburgh, 1870,
vol. i., ch. xv., “The Canon Law.” Pp. 426-438.
[293] Räbiger, “Theological Encyclopædia.” Vol. i., p. 28,
Edin., 1884.
[294] Maitland, “The Dark Ages: a Series of Essays, to Illustrate
the State of Religion and Literature in the Ninth, Tenth,
Eleventh, and Twelfth Centuries.” London, 1844.
[295] The Aelfric Society founded in 1842 has edited his
Anglo-Saxon writings and those of others. The Homilies
were edited by Thorpe in 2 vols., in 1843 and 1846.
“Select Monuments of Doctrine and Worship of Catholic
Church in England before the Norman Conquest, consisting
of Aelfric’s Paschal Homily.” Etc., London, 1875.
On Aelfric and Ethelwold see an admirable sketch, with
full references to and appropriate quotations from
early chronicles, in Hook’s “Lives of the Archbishops
of Canterbury.” Vol. i., pp. 434-455.
[296] Macpherson on “Anselm’s Theory of the Atonement; its Place
in History.” In _Brit. and For. Evang. Review_ for 1878,
pp. 207-232.
[297] Church, “St. Anselm.” London, 1870.
Rule, “Life and Times of St. Anselm.” 2 vols., London, 1883.
[298] On Anselm’s and Abælard’s theories of atonement, see
Ritschl, “History of Christian Doctrine of Justification
and Reconciliation.” Pp. 22-40., Edin., 1872.
[299] Berington, “History of the Lives of Abælard and Heloise.”
London, 1787.
Ueberweg, “History of Philosophy.” Vol. i., pp. 386-397,
London, 1872.
[300] Neander, “St. Bernard and his Times.” London, 1843.
Morison, “Life and Times of St. Bernard.” London, 1863.
[301] Räbiger “Theological Encyclopædia.” Vol. i., p. 27,
Edin., 1884.
[302] Westcott, “Epistles of St. John.” London, 1883.
Dissertation on “The Gospel of Creation.” Pp. 277-280.
Bruce, “Humiliation of Christ.” Edin., 1876,
pp. 354 ff., 487 f.
[303] This work is entitled _Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciæ,
Seu contra novas hæreses, quas Abælardus, Lombardus,
Petrus Pictaviensis, et Gilbertus Porretanus libris
sententiarum acuunt limant, roborant Ll. IV._
[304] Ueberweg, “History of Philosophy.” London, 1872, Vol. i.,
pp. 405-428.
Ginsburg, “The Kabbalah, its doctrines, development, and
literature.” London, 1865.
Palmer, “Oriental Mysticism.” A treatise on the Suffistic
and Unitarian Theosophy of the Persians, compiled from
native sources, London, 1867.
[305] Sighart, “Albert the Great: his Life and Scholastic
Labours.” Translated from the French by T. A. Dixon,
London, 1876.
[306] Hampden, “Life of Thomas Aquinas: a Dissertation of the
Scholastic Philosophy of the Middle Ages.” London, 1848.
Cicognani, “Life of Thomas Aquinas.” London, 1882.
Townsend, “Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages.” London, 1882.
Vaughan, “Life and Labours of St. Thomas of Aquino.”
2 vols., London, 1870.
[307] “Monumenta Franciscana.” in “Chronicles and Memorials of
Great Britain and Ireland.” Edited for the “Master of the
Rolls Series.” By Brewer, London, 1858.
In addition to the _Opus Majus_ referred to above, Brewer
has edited _Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quædum inedita_,
vol. i., containing _Opus Tertium_, _Opus Minus_, and
_Compendium Philosophiæ_.
[308] Neubauer, “Jewish Controversy and the ‘Pugio Fidei.’” In
_Expositor_ for February and March, 1888.
[309] Hodge, “Systematic Theology.” Vol. iii., pp. 492-497.
[310] Preuss, “The Romish Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
traced from its Source.” Edinburgh, 1867.
[311] Maccall, “Christian Legends of Middle Ages, from German of
von Bulow.” London.
Cox and Jones, “Popular Romances of the Middle Ages.”
London.
Baring Gould, “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.”
London, 1884.
“The Legend of St. Ursula and the Virgin Martyrs of
Cologne.” London, 1860.
[312] “Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St. Victor.” With transl. into
English, and notes, by Wrangham, 3 vols., London, 1881.
Bird, “The Latin Hymns of the Church.” In the _Sunday
Magazine_ for 1865, pp. 530 ff., 679 ff., 776 ff.
Trench, “Sacred Latin Poetry.” London, 1849.
Neale, “Mediæval Hymns.”
[313] “Christus ist erstanden von der Marter Banden.”
[314] Eastlake, “History of the Gothic Revival.” London, 1872.
Norton, “Historical Studies of Church Building in the
Middle Ages.” New York, 1880.
Didron, “History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages.”
London, 1851.
[315] Kügler, “Handbook of Painting: Italian Schools.” Translated
by Eastlake, London, 1855.
Warrington, “History of Stained Glass.” London, 1850.
[316] Kingsley, “The Saint’s Tragedy.” London, 1848. A dramatic
poem founded on the story of St. Elizabeth’s life.
[317] On Hilarius, an English monk, author of several plays,
see Morley’s “Writers before Chaucer.” London, 1864,
pp. 542-552.
[318] Delepierre, “History of Flemish Literature from the 12th
Century.” London, 1860.
[319] Cooper, “Flagellation and the flagellants.” London, 1873.
[320] Perrin, “History of the Vaudois.” London, 1624.
Muston, “Israel of the Alps.” 2 vols., Glasgow, 1858.
Monastier, “History of the Vaudois Church from its Origin.”
New York, 1849.
Peyran, “Historical Defence of the Waldenses or Vaudois.”
London, 1826.
Todd, “The Waldensian Manuscripts.” London, 1865.
Wylie, “History of the Waldensians.” London, 1880.
Comba, “History of the Waldenses.” London, 1888.
[321] Sismondi, “History of Crusades against the Albigenses of
the 13th Century.” London, 1826.
[322] Limborch, “History of the Inquisition.” 2 vols.,
London, 1731.
Lea, “History of the Inquisition.” 3 vols., Philad. and
London, 1888.
Baker, “History of Inquisition in Portugal, Spain, Italy.”
Etc., London, 1763.
Prescott, “History of Ferdinand and Isabella.” Pt. i.,
ch. vii.
Llorente, “Histoire critique de l’Inquisition d’Espagne.”
Paris, 1818.
Rule, “History of Inquisition.” 2 vols., London, 1874.
[323] Creighton, “History of the Papacy during the Reformation.”
Vols. i.-iv., A.D. 1378-1518, London, 1882 ff.
Gosselin, “The Power of the Popes during the Middle Ages.”
2 vols., London, 1853.
Reichel, “See of Rome in the Middle Ages.” London, 1870.
[324] On Boniface VIII. see a paper in Wiseman’s “Essays on
Various Subjects.” London, 1888.
[325] Lenfant, “History of the Council of Constance.” 2 vols.,
London, 1730.
[326] Jenkins, “The Last Crusader; or, The Life and Times of
Cardinal Julian of the House of Cesarini.” London, 1861.
Creighton, “History of the Papacy.” Vol. ii., “The Council
of Basel: the Papal Restoration, A.D. 1418-1464.”
[327] Creighton, “History of the Papacy.” Vols. iii. and iv.,
“The Italian Princes, A.D. 1464-1518.”
[328] Roscoe, “Life and Pontificate of Leo X.” 4 vols.,
Liverpool, 1805.
[329] Salmon, “The Infallibility of the Church.” London, 1888.
[330] Haye, “Persecution of the Knights Templars.” Edin., 1865.
[331] Kettlewell, “Thomas à Kempis and the Brothers of the Common
Life.” 2 vols., London, 1882.
[332] Hook, “Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury.” Vol. iv.,
“Bradwardine.”
[333] Ueberweg, “History of Philosophy.” Vol. i., pp. 460-464.
[334] Luther’s Catholic opponents said, _Si Lyra non lyrasset,
Lutherus non saltasset_. This saying had an earlier
form: “Si Lyra non lyrasset, nemo Doctorum in Biblia
saltasset;” “Si Lyra non _lyrasset, totus mundus
delirasset_.”
[335] Dalgairns, “The German Mystics in the 14th Century.”
London, 1850.
Vaughan, “Hours with the Mystics.” 3rd ed., 2 vols.,
London, 1888.
[336] See an admirable account of Eckhart by Dr. Adolf Lasson in
Ueberweg’s “History of Philosophy.” Vol. i., pp. 467-484.
[337] Winkworth, “Life and Times of Tauler, with Twenty-five
Sermons.” London, 1857.
Herrick, “Some Heretics of Yesterday.” London, 1884.
[338] Kettlewell, “The Authorship of the ‘Imitation of Christ.’”
London, 1877.
Kettlewell, “Thomas à Kempis and the Brothers of the Common
Life.” 2 vols., London, 1882.
Ullmann, “Reformers before the Reformation.” Vol. ii.,
Edin., 1855.
Cruise, “Thomas à Kempis: Notes of a Visit to the Scenes
of his Life.” London, 1887.
[339] Baring-Gould, “Mediæval Preachers: Some Account
of Celebrated Preachers of the 15th, 16th, and
17th Centuries.” London, 1865.
[340] “Biblia Pauperum.” Reproduced in facsimile from MS. in
British Museum, London, 1859.
[341] Douce, “The Dance of Death.” London, 1833.
[342] Symonds, “Renaissance in Italy.” 2 vols., London, 1881.
[343] Church, “Dante and other Essays.” London, 1888.
Plumptre, “Commedia, etc., of Dante, with Life and Studies.”
2 vols., London, 1886-1888.
Oliphant, “Dante.” Edinburgh, 1877.
Ozanam, “Dante and the Catholic Philosophy of the
13th Century.” London, 1854.
Barlow, “Critical, Historical, and Philosophical
Contributions to the Study of the _Divina Commedia_.”
London, 1884.
Botta, “Dante as Philosopher, Patriot, and Poet.”
New York, 1865.
M. F. Rossetti, “A Shadow of Dante.” Boston, 1872.
[344] Reeve, “Petrarch.” Edinburgh, 1879.
Simpson, article on Petrarch in _Contemporary Review_
for July, 1874.
[345] Wratislaw, “Life and Legend of St. John Nepomucen.”
Lon., 1873.
[346] Gairdner and Spedding, “Studies in English History.” I.,
“The Lollards.”
[347] Baker, “History of the Inquisition in Portugal, Spain,
Italy.” Etc., London, 1763.
Llorente, “History of the Inquisition from its Establishment
to Ferdinand VII.” Philadelphia, 1826.
Mocatta, “Jews in Spain and Portugal, and the Inquisition.”
London, 1877.
[348] Lewis, “Hist. of Life and Sufferings of John Wiclif.”
Lond., 1720.
Vaughan, “John de Wycliffe. A Monograph.” London, 1853.
Lechler, “John Wiclif and his English Precursors.” 2 vols.,
London, 1878.
Buddensieg, “John Wyclif, Patriot and Reformer; his Life
and Writings.” London, 1884.
Burrows, “Wiclif’s Place in History.” London, 1882.
Storrs, “John Wycliffe and the first English Bible.”
New York, 1880.
[349] Gillet, “Life and Times of John Huss.” Boston, 2 vols., 1870.
Wratislaw, “John Huss.” London, 1882.
[350] Palacky, “Documenta Mag. J. H., Vitam, Doctrinam, Causam.”
Etc., illust., Prag., 1869.
Gillett, “Life and Times of John Huss.” 2 vols., Boston, 1863.
Loserth, “Wiclif and Huss.” London, 1884.
[351] On these three consult
Ullmann, “Reformers before the Reformation.” 2 vols.,
Edin., 1855.
Brandt, “History of the Reformation in the Low Countries.”
Vol. i., London, 1720.
[352] Heraud, “Life and Times of Savonarola.” London, 1843.
Villari, “History of Savonarola.” 2 vols., London, 1888.
Madden, “The Life and Martyrdom of Savonarola.” 2 vols.,
London, 1854.
MacCrie, “History of Reformation in Italy.” Edin., 1827.
Roscoe, “Lorenzo de Medici.” London, 1796.
See also chapters on Savonarola in Mrs. Oliphant’s “Makers
of Florence.” London, 1881.
Milman, “Savonarola, Erasmus.” Etc., Essays, London, 1870.
[353] Roscoe, “Leo X.” London, 1805.
[354] Villari, “Niccolo Macchiavelli, and his Times.” 4 vols.,
Lond., 1878.
[355] Strauss, “Ulrich von Hutten.” Trans. by Mrs. Sturge,
London, 1874.
Hausser, “Period of the Reformation.” 2 vols., London, 1873.
[356] A young Minorite, =Conrad Pellicanus= of Tübingen, had
as early as A.D. 1501 composed a very creditable guide
to the study of the Hebrew language, under the title _De
modo legendi et intelligendi Hebræum_, which was first
printed in Strassburg in A.D. 1504. Amid inconceivable
difficulties, purely self taught, and with the poorest
literary aids, he had secured a knowledge of the Hebrew
language which he perfected by unwearied application to
study and by intercourse with a baptized Jew. He attained
such proficiency, that he won for himself a place among the
most learned exegetes of the Reformed Church as professor
of theology at Basel in A.D. 1523 and at Zürich from
A.D. 1525 till his death, in A.D. 1556. His chief work
is _Commentaria Bibliorum_, 7 vols. fol., 1532-1539.
[357] Strauss, “Ulrich von Hutten.” London, 1874, pp. 120-140.
[358] Erasmus, “Colloquies.” Trans. by Bailey, ed. by Johnson,
Lond., 1877.
“Praise of Folly.” Trans. by Copner, Lond., 1878.
Seebohm, “Oxford Reformers of 1498: Colet, Erasmus, and
More.” Lond., 1869.
Drummond, “Erasmus, His Life and Character.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1873.
Pennington, “Life and Character of Erasmus.” Lond., 1874.
Strauss, “Ulrich von Hutten.” Lond., 1874, pp. 315-346.
Dorner, “Hist. of Prot. Theology.” 2 vols., Edin., 1871,
vol. i., p. 202.
[359] Seebohm, “Oxford Reformers.” Lond., 1869.
Walter, “Sir Thomas More.” Lond., 1840.
Mackintosh, “Life of Sir Thomas More.” Lond., 1844.
[360] Beard, “The Reformation of the 16th Cent. in its Relation
to Modern Thought and Knowledge.” Lond., 1883.
Wylie, “History of Protestantism.” 3 vols., Lond., 1875.
Merle d’Aubigné, “History of Reformation in the 16th Cent.
in Switzerland and Germany.” 5 vols., Lond., 1840.
D’Aubigné, “History of Reformation in Times of Calvin.”
8 vols., Lond., 1863.
Ranke, “History of Reformation in Germany.” 3 vols.,
Lond., 1845.
Häusser, “The Period of the Reformation.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1873.
Hagenbach, “History of the Reformation.” 2 vols.,
Edinburgh, 1878.
Köstlin, “Life of Martin Luther.” Lond., 1884.
Bayne, “Martin Luther: his Life and Work.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1887.
Rae, “Martin Luther, Student, Monk, Reformer.” Lond., 1884.
Dale, “Protestantism: Its Ultimate Principle.” Lond., 1875.
Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” 2 vols.,
Edinburgh, 1871.
Cunningham, “Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation.”
Edinburgh, 1862.
Tulloch, “Leaders of the Reformation.” Edinburgh, 1859.
[361] Ledderhose, “Life of Melanchthon.” Trans. by Krotel,
Philad., 1855.
[362] Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. i.,
pp. 98-113.
“The First Principles of the Reformation Illustrated
in the Ninety-five Theses and Three Primary Works of
Martin Luther.” Edited with historical and theological
introductions by Wace and Bucheim, Lond., 1884.
[363] Morris, “Luther at the Wartburg and Coburg.” Philad., 1882.
[364] Weber, “Luther’s Treatise, _De Servo Arbitrio_.” In _Brit.
and For. Evan. Review_, 1878, pp. 799-816.
[365] Myconius, “Vita Zwinglii.” Basel, 1536.
Hess, “Life of Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer.” London, 1832.
Christoffel, “Zwingli; or, The Rise of the Reformation in
Switzerland.” Edin., 1858.
Blackburn, “Ulrich Zwingli.” London, 1868.
[366] Blackburn, “William Farel (1487-1531): The Story of the
Swiss Reformation.” Edin., 1867.
[367] Burrage, “History of the Anabaptists in Switzerland.”
Philad., 1882.
[368] Cunningham, “Reformers and Theology of the Reformation.”
Edin., 1862, pp. 212-291; “Zwingli and the Doctrine of
the Sacraments.”
[369] Calvin, “Tracts relating to the Reformation, with Life of
Calvin by Beza.” 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1844-1851.
Henry, “Life of John Calvin.” 2 vols., London, 1849.
Audin (Cath.), “History of Life, Writings, and Doctrines
of Calvin.” 2 vols., London, 1854.
Dyer, “The Life of John Calvin.” London, 1850.
Bungener, “Calvin: his Life, Labours, and Writings.”
Edinburgh, 1863.
[370] M’Crie, “The Early Years of John Calvin, A.D. 1509-1536.”
Ed. by W. Fergusson, Edinburgh, 1880.
[371] “English Translation of Calvin’s Works.” By Calvin
Translation Society, in 52 vols., Edinburgh, 1842-1853.
For a more sympathetic and true estimate of Calvin as a
commentator, see Farrar, “History of Interpretations.”
London, 1886.
Also papers by Farrar on the “Reformers as Commentators.”
In _Expositor_, Second Series.
[372] See Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. i.,
pp. 384-414, for a much truer outline of Calvin’s
doctrine from another Lutheran pen.
[373] Cunningham, “Reformers and Theology of the Reformation.”
Essay vii., “Calvin and Beza.” Pp. 345-412, Edin., 1862.
[374] Butler, “The Reformation in Sweden, its Rise, Progress, and
Crisis, and its Triumph under Charles IX.” New York, 1883.
Geijer, “History of the Swedes.” Trans. from the Swedish by
Turner, Lond., 1847.
[375] Pontoppidan, “Annales eccles. Dan.” ii., iii., Han., 1741.
Ranke, “History of the Reformation.” Vol. iii.
[376] The chief documentary authorities for the whole period are
the State Papers edited by Brewer and others. See also
Froude, “History of England from Fall of Wolsey till Death
of Elizabeth.” 12 vols., Lond., 1856-1869.
Burnet, “History of Reformation of Church of England.”
2 vols., Lond., 1679.
Blunt, “Reformation of the Church of England.” 4th ed.,
Lond., 1878.
Strype, “Ecclesiastical Memorials.” 3 vols., Lond., 1721.
“Annals of the Reformation.” 4 vols., 1709-1731.
Foxe, “Acts and Monuments.” (Pub. A.D. 1563), 8 vols.,
Lond., 1837-1841.
[377] Demaus, “Life of William Tyndal.” London, 1868.
Fry, “A Bibliographical Description of the Editions of the
N.T., Tyndale’s Version in English, etc., the notes in
full of the Edition of 1534.” London, 1878.
“Facsimile Edition of Tyndale’s first printed N.T.” Edited
by Arber, London, 1871.
[378] Gasquet, “Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries.”
2 vols., London, 1888.
[379] Hook, “Lives of Archb. of Canterbury.” Vols. vi., vii.
Bayly, “Life and Death of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.”
London, 1655.
Dixon, “History of Church of England.” London, 1878,
vol. i., “Henry VIII.”
Froude, “History of England.” Vols. i.-iii.
[380] Heppe, “The Reformers of England and Germany in the
Sixteenth Century; their Intercourse and Correspondence.”
London, 1859.
[381] Phillip, “History of the Life of Reg. Pole.” 2 vols.,
London, 1765.
Hook, “Lives of Archb. of Cant.” Vol. viii.
Lee, “Reginald Pole, Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury:
an Historical Sketch.” London, 1888.
[382] Demaus, “Life of Latimer.” London, 1869.
[383] Hayward, “Life of Edward VI.” London, 1630.
Hook, “Lives of Archb. of Cant.” Vols. vii. and viii.
Froude, “History of Eng.” Vols. iv. and v.
Strype, “Life of Cranmer.” London, 1694.
Norton, “Life of Archb. Cranmer.” New York, 1863.
Foxe, “Acts and Monuments.”
Maitland, “Essays on the Reformation in England.”
London, 1849.
[384] Procter, “History of Book of Common Prayer.” Cambr., 1855.
Hole, “The Prayer Book.” London, 1887.
Hardwick, “History of the Articles of Religion.”
Cambr., 1851.
Stephenson, “Book of Common Prayer.” 3 vols., London, 1854.
Burnet, “Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles.”
London, 1699.
Browne, “Exposition of Thirty-Nine Articles.” London, 1858.
[385] Froude, “History of England.” Vols. vi.-xii.
Hook, “Lives of Archb. of Cant.” Vol. ix.
[386] Killen, “Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from Earliest
to Present Times.” 2 vols., Lond., 1875.
Mant, “Hist. of Church of Ireland from Reformation.”
London, 1839.
Ball, “Hist. of the Church of Ireland.”
[387] Lorimer, “Patrick Hamilton, First Preacher and Martyr of
the Scottish Reformation.” Edinburgh, 1857.
[388] It was certainly at St. Andrews that the execution took
place. The best and fullest account of Walter Mill is
given by Mr. Scott, of Arbroath, in his “Martyrs of Angus
and Mearns.” London, 1885, pp. 210-271.
For George Wishart, see same book, pp. 99-209; and
Rogers, “Life of George Wishart.” Edinburgh, 1876.
[389] Strickland, “Life of Mary Stuart.” 5 vols., Lond., 1875.
Hosack, “Mary Queen of Scots and Her Accusers.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1874.
Schiern, “Life of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, from the
Danish.” Edin., 1880.
Skelton, “Maitland of Lethington and the Scotland of Mary
Stuart.” 2 vols., Edin., 1887 f.
[390] “The Works of John Knox.” Collected and edited by David
Laing, 7 vols., Edin., 1846-1864.
M’Crie, “Life of Knox.” 2 vols., Edin., 1811.
Lorimer, “John Knox and the Church of England.” Lond., 1875.
Calderwood, “History of Church of Scotland.” Lond., 1675.
Stuart, “History of Reformation in Scotland.” Lond., 1780.
Cook, “History of Church of Scot. from Ref.” 3 vols.,
Edin., 1815.
M’Crie, “Sketches of Scottish Church History.” 2 vols.,
Lond., 1841.
Cunningham, “History of the Church of Scotland.” 2 vols.,
Edin., 1859.
Lee, “Lectures on History of Church of Scotland from Ref.
to Rev.” 2 vols., Edin., 1860.
General Histories of Scotland:
“Robertson.” 2 vols., Edin., 1759.
“Tytler.” 9 vols., Edin., 1826.
“Burton.” 8 vols., Edin., 1873.
“Mackenzie.” Edin., 1867.
[391] Brandt, “History of the Reformation in the Low Countries.”
4 vols., Lond., 1720.
Motley, “Rise of the Dutch Republic.” 3 vols., Lond., 1856.
[392] Bersier, “Coligny: the Earlier Life of the Great Huguenot.”
Lond., 1884.
White, “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.” 2 vols.,
London, 1868.
Lord Mahon, “Life of Louis, Prince of Condé.”
New York, 1848.
Baird, “History of the Rise of the Huguenots.” 2 vols.,
London and New York, 1880.
[393] The following have been translated into English:
“Treatise on the Church.” London, 1579.
“The Truth of the Christian Religion, partly by
Sir Phil. Sydney.” London, 1587.
“On the Eucharist.” London, 1600.
[394] De Felice, “History of Protestants in France from Beginning
of Reformation to the Present Time.” London, 1853.
Jervis, “History of the Gallican Church from A.D. 1516 to
the Revolution.” 2 vols., London, 1872.
Baird, “Huguenots and Henry of Navarre.” 2 vols.,
New York, 1886.
Ranke, “Civil Wars and Monarchy in France in the 16th and
17th Centuries.” 2 vols., London, 1852.
Smedley, “History of the Reformation in France.” 3 vols.,
London, 1832.
Weiss, “History of the Protestant Reformation in France.”
2 vols., London and New York, 1854.
“Memoirs of Duke of Sully, Prime Minister to Henry IV.”
4 vols., London (Bohn).
[395] Dalton, “John à Lasco: His Earlier Life and Labours.”
London, 1886.
Krasinski, “Historical Sketch of the Rise, Progress,
and Decline of the Reformation in Poland.” 2 vols.,
London, 1838.
[396] “History of Persecutions in Bohemia from A.D. 894 to
A.D. 1632.” London, 1650.
[397] Bauhoffer, “History of the Protestant Church of Hungary,
from the beginning of the Reformation to 1850, with
Reference also to Transylvania.” Trans. by Dr. Craig of
Hamburg, with introd. by D’Aubigné, Lond., 1854.
[398] Bochmer, “Spanish Reformers, Lives and Writings.” 2 vols.,
Strassburg, 1874.
M’Crie, “History of the Progress and Suppression of
Reformation in Spain.” Edin., 1829.
De Castro, “The Spanish Protestants, and their Persecutions
by Philip II.” Lond., 1852.
Prescott, “History of the Reign of Philip II.” 3 vols.,
Boston, 1856.
[399] M’Crie, “History of the Progress and Suppression of the
Reformation in Italy.” 2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1833.
Wiffen, “Life and Writings of Juan Valdez.” London, 1865.
Young, “Life and Times of Aonio Paleario.” 2 vols.,
London, 1860.
[400] Benrath, “Bernardius Ochino of Siena.” London, 1876.
Gordon, “Bernardius Tommassini (Ochino).” In _Theological
Review_ for October, 1876, pp. 532-561.
[401] Bonnet, “Life of Olympia Morata: an Episode of the
Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy.” Edin., 1854.
[402] Krauth, “The Conservative Reformation and its Theology.”
Philadelphia, 1872.
Döllinger, “The Church and the Churches.” Lond., 1862.
[403] Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. i.,
pp. 338-383.
[404] Calvin, “Institutes.” Bk. iii., ch. xi. 5-12.
Ritschl, “History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification
and Reconciliation.” Edin., 1872, pp. 214-233.
[405] All the hymns of Luther quoted above are translated by
George Macdonald in his “Luther the Singer.” Contributed
to the _Sunday Magazine_ for 1867.
[406] On Speratus, Decius, and Eber, see an interesting paper by
the late Dr. Fleming Stevenson in _Good Words_ for 1863,
p. 542.
[407] All the hymns referred to above, as well as those which
are given in the next paragraph, are translations by
Miss Winkworth in “Lyra Germanica.” New edition,
London, 1885.
[408] Warneck, “Outlines of the History of Protestant Missions
from the Reformation to the Present Time.” Edinburgh,
1884.
[409] Hodge, “The Church and its Polity.” Edin., 1879, page 114.
[410] Morley, “Clement Marot.” London, 1871.
[411] Lee, “The Church under Queen Elizabeth.” 2 vols.,
London, 1880.
M’Crie, “Annals of English Presbytery from the Earliest
Period to the Present Time.” London, 1872.
[412] Neal, “History of the Puritans.” 4 vols., London, 1731.
Paul, “Life of Whitgift.” London, 1699.
Brook, “Lives of the Puritans.” 3 vols., London, 1813.
Marsden, “The Early Puritans.” London, 1852; “The Later
Puritans.” London, 1853.
Hopkins, “The Puritans.” 3 vols., London, 1860.
Walker, “History of Independency.” 3 vols., London, 1648.
Hanbury, “Memorials relating to the Independents.” 3 vols.,
London, 1839.
Fletcher, “History of Independ. in England.” 4 vols.,
London, 1862.
Waddington, “Congregational History.” London, 1874.
Dexter, “The Congregationalism of the last Three Hundred
Years, as seen in its Literature.” London, 1880.
Marshall, “History of the Mar-Prelate Controversy.”
London, 1845.
Robinson, “Apologie, or Defence of Christians called
Brownists.” 1604.
Ashton, “Works of John Robinson, Pastor of Pilgrim Fathers,
with Memoir and Annotations.” 3 vols., London, 1851.
Mather, “Ecclesiastical History of New England, from its
Planting in 1620 till 1698.” London, 1702.
Doyle, “The English in America: The Puritan Colonies.”
2 vols., London, 1888.
Bancroft, “History of the United States.”
[413] Parkman, “Pioneers of France in the New World.”
London, 1885.
Baird, “Rise of the Huguenots of France.” Vol. i.,
p. 291 ff.
[414] The “Heidelberg Catechism” was translated into English,
and published at Oxford, 1828.
Ursinus’ expositions of the catechism have been translated:
“The Summe of Christian Religion.” Etc., Lond., 1611.
[415] An English translation of Erastus’ treatise was published
in 1699, and re-issued with a preface by Dr. Rob. Lee,
Edin., 1844.
One of the fullest and ablest statements on “The Erastian
Controversy” is that given in chap. xxvii. of Principal
Cunningham’s “Historical Theology.” (Edin., 1870),
vol. ii., pp. 557-587.
[416] Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. i.,
pp. 182-189: “The False Theoretical Mystics: Schwenkfeld.”
Ritschl, “History of the Chr. Doctr. of Justification and
Reconciliation.” Edinburgh, 1872, p. 292.
[417] Morley, “Life of Agrippa von Nettesheim.” 2 vols.,
London, 1856.
[418] Symmonds, “The Age of the Despots.”
Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. i.,
pp. 191-195.
See also two articles in the July and October parts of the
_Scottish Review_ for 1888, pp. 67-107, 244-270: “Giordano
Bruno before the Venetian Inquisition,” and “The Ultimate
Fate of Giordano Bruno.”
[419] More, “Mystery of Godliness.” Bk. vi., chaps. xii.-xviii.
Also _Enthusiasmus Triumphatus_ in his “Coll. Phil.
Works.” London, 1662.
Rutherford, “A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist, opening
the Secrets of Familism and Antinomianism.” London, 1648.
[420] Mosheim, “Ecclesiastical History.” Cent. xvi., sect. iii.,
part ii., chap. iii.
Ranke, “History of the Reformation.” Vol. iii., bk. vi.,
chap. ix.
Brandt, “History of the Reformation in the Low Countries.”
Vol. i.
[421] Burrage, “History of the Anabaptists in Switzerland.”
Philadelphia, 1882.
[422] Wallace, “Antitrinitarian Biography.” 3 vols., London, 1850.
Dorner, “Hist. Dev. of Doctr. of Person of Christ.”
Ritschl, “Hist. of Chr. Doctr. of Justification.” P. 289.
[423] The sketch of Servetus given above is based upon the
one-sided and wholesale eulogies of his resolute apologist
Tollin.
A thoroughly impartial and objective statement of his
doctrinal system is given by Dorner, “History of Prot.
Theology.” Vol. i., pp. 189-191.
Principal Cunningham, in a very thorough manner, examines
the grounds upon which his enemies seek to fix upon
Calvin the odium of Servetus’ death in “Reformers and
Theology of Reformation.” Essay VI., pp. 314-333.
Rilliet, “Calvin and Servetus.” Trans. by Dr. Tweedie,
Edinburgh, 1846.
Drummond, “Life of Servetus.” London, 1848.
Willis, “Servetus and Calvin.” London, 1876.
[424] Aretius, “History of Val. Gentilis, the Tritheist, put to
Death at Bern.” London, 1696.
[425] Toulmin, “Memoirs of the Life, Char., etc., of Faustus
Socinus.” London, 1777.
[426] Ritschl, “Hist. of Chr. Doctr. of Justification.”
Pp. 298-309.
Cunningham, “Historical Theology.” Chap. xxiii., “The
Socinian Controversy,” pp. 155-236.
Stillingfleet gives an account of the Racovian Catechism
in the preface to his work on “Christ’s Satisfaction.”
2nd ed., London, 1697.
[427] Ranke, “History of the Popes.” Bk. ii., “Beginnings of a
Regeneration of Catholicism.”
[428] Pasquino was a statue which shortly before had been dug up
and placed on the spot where formerly had stood the booth
of a cobbler of that name, dreaded for his pungent wit.
It was used for the posting up of “pasquins” of every
sort, especially about the popes and the curia.
[429] An admirable paper by Hase on Theiner’s “Acts of the
Council of Trent” has been translated in the _Brit.
and For. Evan. Review_ for 1876, pp. 358-369.
Mendham, “Memoirs of the Council of Trent.” London, 1834.
Father Paul Sarpi’s “History of the Council of Trent.”
3rd ed. fol., London, 1640.
Bungener, “History of the Council of Trent.” Edin., 1852.
Buckley, “Canons and Decrees of Council of Trent.”
London, 1851.
Buckley, “Catechism of Council of Trent.” London, 1852.
[430] Mendham, “The Life and Pontificate of Pius V.” London, 1832.
[431] Hübner, “The Life and Times of Sixtus V.” Trans. by
Jerningham, 2 vols., London, 1872.
[432] In “Spanish Mystics.” (London, 1886), there is an admirable
sketch of Theresa, pp. 39-86, and of John of the Cross,
pp. 106-113.
[433] “Spanish Mystics.” P. 7, note.
[434] “Life of St. Philip Neri, Apostle of Rome, and Founder of
the Congregation of the Oratory.” 2 vols., London, 1847.
[435] Coleridge, “Life of Ignatius Loyola.” London, 1872.
Ranke, “History of the Popes.” Vol. i.
[436] Rose, “Ignatius Loyola, and the Early Jesuits.” London, 1870.
Nicolini, “History of the Jesuits.” Edin., 1853.
Sir James Stephens on “The Founders of Jesuitism.” In his
“Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography.” Vol. i., p. 249.
[437] Cartwright, “The Jesuits, their Constitution and Teaching.”
London, 1876.
[438] Griesinger, “The Jesuits: from the Foundation of the Order
to the Present Time.” London, 1885.
Pascal, “Provincial Letters.” Translated by Dr. M’Crie,
Edin., 1851.
“The Jesuits’ Morals, collected out of the Jesuit’s own
Books.” London, 1670.
[439] Gibbings, “An Exact Reprint of the Roman Index
Expurgatorius.” The only Vatican Index of this kind ever
published. Dublin, 1837.
[440] Butler, “Life of Cardinal Borromeo.” London, 1835.
Martin, “Life of Borromeo.” London, 1847.
[441] Venn, “Missionary Life and Labours of Xavier.” Lond., 1863.
[442] Legge, “Christianity in China: Nestorianism, Roman
Catholicism, Protestantism; with the Chinese and
Syriac Texts of the Nestorian Monument of Hsi-an-Fû.”
London, 1888.
[443] Adams, “History of Japan from the Earliest Period.”
2 vols., London, 1874.
On the religion of Japan before the introduction of
Christianity, see Ebrard, “Apologetics.” Vol. iii.,
pp. 66-73, Edin., 1887.
[444] Helps, “Life of Barth. de las Casas.” 2nd ed., Lond., 1868.
Prescott, “History of Conquest of Mexico.” London, 1886,
pp. 178-184.
[445] Merimée, “The Russian Impostors: the False Demetrius.”
London, 1852.
[446] Neale, “History of the Holy Eastern Church.” Vol. ii.,
p. 356 ff.
Cyrillus Lucaris, “_Confessio Christianæ Fidei_.”
Geneva, 1633.
Smith, “_Collectanea de Cyrillo Lucario_.” London, 1707.
[447] Stevens, “Life and Times of Gustavus Adolphus.”
New York, 1884.
Trench, “Gustavus Adolphus in Germany, and other Lectures
on the Thirty Years’ War.” London.
Gardiner, “The Thirty Years’ War” in “Epochs of Modern
History.” London, 1881.
[448] Bray, “Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes.”
London, 1870.
Poole, “History of the Huguenots of the Dispersion.”
London, 1880.
Agnew, “Protestant Exiles from France in the Reign of
Louis XIV.” 3 vols., London, 1871.
Weiss, “History of French Protestant Refugees.”
London, 1854.
[449] Macaulay, “History of England from the Accession of
James II.” London, 1846.
Hassencamp, “History of Ireland from the Reformation to
the Union.” London, 1888.
Adair, “Rise and Progress of the Presbyterian Church of
Ireland from 1623 to 1670.” Belfast, 1866.
Hamilton, “History of Presbyterian Church in Ireland.”
Edin., 1887.
[450] Butler, “Life of Hugo Grotius.” London, 1826.
Motley, “John of Barneveld.” Vol. ii., New York, 1874.
[451] “An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church in
Matters of Controversy.” London, 1685.
“Variations of Protestantism.” 2 vols., Dublin, 1836.
Butler, “Some Account of the Life and Writings of Bishop
Bossuet.” London, 1812.
[452] “The Work of John Durie in behalf of Christian Union in
the Seventeenth Century.” By Dr. Briggs in _Presbyterian
Review_, vol. viii., 1887, pp. 297-300. To which is
attached an account by Durie himself, never before
published, of his own union efforts from July, 1631, till
September, 1633. See pp. 301-309.
[453] Clarendon, “History of the Rebellion in England,
1649-1666.” 3 vols., Oxford, 1667.
Burnet, “History of his Own Time, 1660-1713.” 2 vols.,
London, 1724.
Guizot, “History of English Revolution of 1640.”
London, 1856.
Gardiner, “History of England, 1603-1642.” 10 vols.,
London, 1885.
Marsden, “History of Early and Later Puritans, down to
the Ejection of the Nonconformists in 1662.” 2 vols.,
London, 1853.
Masson, “Life of Milton.” 4 vols., London, 1859 ff.
[454] Mitchell, “The Westminster Assembly.” London, 1882.
Mitchell and Struthers, “Minutes of Westminster Assembly.”
Edinburgh, 1874.
Macpherson, “Handbook to Westminster Confession.” 2nd ed.,
Edinburgh, 1882.
Hetherington, “History of Westminster Assembly.” 4th ed.,
Edinburgh, 1878.
[455] Carlyle, “Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches.” 2 vols.,
London, 1845.
Guizot, “Life of Cromwell.” London, 1877.
Paxton Hood, “Oliver Cromwell.” London, 1882.
Picton, “Oliver Cromwell.” London, 1878.
Harrison, “Oliver Cromwell.” London, 1888.
Barclay, “The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the
Commonwealth.” London, 1877.
[456] Guizot, “Richard Cromwell and the Restoration of
Charles II.” 2 vols., London, 1856.
Macpherson, “History of Great Britain from the
Restoration.” London, 1875.
[457] Bargraves, “Alexander VII. and His Cardinals.” Ed. by
Robertson, London, 1866.
[458] Cunningham, “Discussions on Church Principles.”
Edin., 1863, chap. v.: “The Liberties of the Gallican
Church.” Pp. 133-163.
[459] Von Gebler, “Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia.” Transl.
by Sturge, London, 1879.
Madden, “Galileo and the Inquisition.” London, 1863.
Brewster, “Martyrs of Science.” Edin., 1841.
Von Gebler denies that any condemnation _ex cathedra_
was given.
[460] Wilson, “Life of Vincent de Paul.” London, 1874.
[461] Marsolier, “Life of Francis de Sales.” Translated by
Coombes, London, 1812.
[462] “Golden Thoughts from the ‘Spiritual Guide’ of Molinos.”
With preface by J. H. Shorthouse, London, 1883.
[463] Upham, “Life, Religious Opinions, and Experience of
Madame de la Mothe Guyon, with an account of Fénelon.”
London, 1854.
Brooke, “Exemplary Life of the Pious Lady Guion.”
Bristol, 1806.
Butler, “Life of Fénelon.” London, 1810.
[464] Beard, “Port Royal.” 2 vols., London, 1861.
St. Amour, “Journal in France and Rome, containing Account
of Five Points of Controversy between Jansenists and
Molinists.” London, 1664.
Schimmelpenninck, “Select Memoirs of Port Royal.” Fourth
edition, 2 vols., London, 1835.
[465] Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. ii.,
pp. 98-251.
[466] Bruce, “Humiliation of Christ.” P. 131, Edin., 1876.
[467] Dowding, “German Theology during the Thirty Years’ War:
Life and Correspondence of G. Calixt.” 2 vols.,
Oxford, 1863.
[468] Wildenhahn, “Life of Spener.” Translated by Wenzel,
Philadelphia, 1881.
Guericke, “Life of A. H. Francke.” London, 1847.
[469] Jennings, “The Rosicrucians: their Rites and Mysteries.”
London, 1887.
[470] Martensen, “Life and Works of Jacob Boehme.” London, 1886.
[471] All the translations of hymns referred to in this and the
preceding section are from Miss Winkworth’s “_Lyra
Germanica_.” London, 1885.
[472] The “Works of Arminius.” Transl. by Nicholls, to which
are added Brandt’s “Life of Arminius.” Etc., 3 vols.,
London, 1825.
Scott, “Translation of Articles of Synod of Dort.”
London, 1818.
Hales, “Letters from the Synod of Dort.” Glasgow, 1765.
Calder, “Life of Simon Episcopius.” New York, 1837.
Cunningham, “Reformation and Theology of Reformation.”
Essay VIII., “Calvinism and Arminianism.” Pp. 412-470.
Motley, “John of Barneveldt.” 2 vols., London, 1874.
[473] Barclay, “The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the
Commonwealth.” Second ed., London, 1877.
Dr. Stoughton’s “History of Religion in England from
Opening of Long Parliament to End of Eighteenth Century.”
London.
[474] See Macpherson, “Presbyterianism.” (Edin., 1883), pp. 8-10,
where charges of intolerance such as those made against
Presbyterianism in the text are repudiated.
[475] Masson, “Life of John Milton.” 4 vols., London, 1859.
Pattison, “Milton.” In “English Men of Letters” series,
London, 1880.
[476] “_Relquiæ Baxterianæ_: Baxter’s Narrative of most Memorable
Passages in his own Life.” London, 1696.
Orme, “Life and Times of Richard Baxter, with Critical
Examination of his Writings.” London, 1830.
Stalker, “Baxter” in “Evangelical Succession Lectures.”
Second series, Edinburgh, 1883.
[477] Froude disputes this, and says, p. 12, that probably he
was on the side of the Royalists. Brown has shown it to
be almost certain that in 1644, not 1642, Bunyan, then
in his sixteenth year, joined the Parliamentary forces.
See Brown’s “Life.” Pp. 42-52.
[478] Brown, “Life of Bunyan.” London, 1885.
Autobiography in “Grace Abounding.” 1622.
Southey, “Life of John Bunyan.” London, 1830.
Macaulay, “Essay on Bunyan.” In _Edinburgh Review_, 1830.
Froude, “Bunyan,” in “English Men of Letters.” London, 1880.
Nicoll, “Bunyan,” in “Evangelical Succession Lectures.”
Third series, Edinburgh, 1883.
[479] “Life of John Eliot, Apostle of the Indians.” By John
Wilson, afterwards of Bombay, Edin., 1828.
[480] Crosby, “History of the English Baptists.” 4 vols.,
London, 1728.
Ivimey, “History of the English Baptists from 1688-1760.”
2 vols., London, 1830.
Cramp, “History of the Baptists to end of 18th Century.”
3 vols., London, 1872.
[481] Backus, “History of the English-American Baptists.”
2 vols., Boston, 1777.
Cox and Hoby, “The Baptists in America.” New York, 1836.
Hague, “The Baptists Transplanted.” Etc., New York, 1846.
[482] Of special importance for the early history of the
Quakers are,
“Letters of Early Friends.” Edited by Robert Barclay,
a descendant of the Quaker apostle, London, 1841.
“Fox’s Journal; or, Historical Accounts of his Life,
Travels, and Sufferings.” London, 1694.
Penn, “Summary of History, Doctrines, and Discipline of
Friends.” London, 1692.
Tallack, “George Fox; the Quakers and the Early Baptists.”
London, 1868.
Bickley, “George Fox and the Early Quakers.” London, 1884.
Stoughton, “W. Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania.” London, 1883.
[483] Sewel, “History of the Quakers.” 2 vols., London, 1834.
Cunningham, “The Quakers, from their Origin in 1624 to the
Present Time.” London, 1868.
Barclay, “Apology for the True Christian Divinity: a
Vindication of Quakerism.” 4th ed., London, 1701.
Clarkson, “A Portraiture of Quakerism.” 3 vols.,
London, 1806.
Rowntree, “Quakerism, Past and Present.” London, 1839.
[484] Heard, “The Russian Church and Russian Dissent.”
London, 1887.
Mackenzie Wallace, “Russia.” Chaps. xiv., xx., 2 vols.,
London, 1877.
Palmer, “The Patriarch and the Tsar.” 6 vols., London,
1871-1876.
[485] Ueberweg, “History of Philosophy.” Vol. ii., pp. 31-135.
Pünjer, “History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion
from the Reformation to Kant.” Edin., 1887.
Pfleiderer, “Philosophy of Religion.” Vol. i., London, 1887.
Erdmann’s “History of Philosophy.” 3 vols., London, 1889.
[486] “Bacon’s Works.” Ed. by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath,
14 vols., London, 1870.
Spedding, “Letters and Life of Lord Bacon.” 2 vols.,
London, 1862.
Macaulay on Bacon in _Edinburgh Review_ for 1837.
Church, “Bacon,” in vol. v. of “Collected Works.”
London, 1888.
Nichol, “Bacon: Life and Philosophy.” 2 vols., Edin., 1888.
[487] “Descartes’ Method, Meditations, and Principles of
Philosophy.” Transl. by Prof. Veitch, Edin., 1850 ff.
Fischer, “Descartes and his School.” London, 1887.
[488] Willis, “Spinoza: his Ethics, Life, and Influence on Modern
Thought.” London, 1870.
Pollock, “Spinoza: his Life and Philosophy.” London, 1880.
Martineau, “Spinoza.” London, 1882.
“Spinoza, Four Essays by Land, Von Floten, Fischer, and
Renan.” Edited by Prof. Knight, London, 1884.
[489] “Locke’s Complete Works.” 9 vols., London, 1853.
Cousin, “Elements of Psychology: a Critical Examination of
Locke’s Essay.” Edin., 1856.
Webb, “Intellectualism of Locke.” London, 1858.
[490] Guhrauer, “Leibnitz: a Biography.” Transl. by Mackie,
Boston, 1845.
[491] Leland, “View of Principal Deistical Writers in England.”
2nd ed., 2 vols., London, 1755.
Halyburton, “Natural Religion Insufficient; or, A Rational
Inquiry into the Principles of the Modern Deists.”
Edin., 1714.
Tulloch, “Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in
England in the 17th Century.” 2 vols., Edin., 1872.
Cairns, “Unbelief in the 18th Century.” Chap. ii.,
“Unbelief in the 17th Century.” Edin., 1881.
[492] Lecky, “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe.” 2 vols., London, 1873.
Hagenbach, “German Rationalism.” Edin., 1865.
Hagenbach, “History of Church in 18th and 19th Centuries.”
2 vols., London, 1870.
Leslie Stephen, “History of English Thought in the
18th Century.” 2 vols., London, 1876.
Cairns, “Unbelief in the 18th Century.” Edin., 1881.
[493] Wilson, “The Christian Brothers, their Origin and Work.
With a Sketch of the Life of their Founder, the Venerable
Jean Baptiste de la Salle.” London, 1883.
[494] Neale, “History of the so called Jansenist Church of
Holland.” Oxford, 1858.
[495] Cairns, “Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century.” Chap. iv.,
“Unbelief in France.” Edinburgh, 1881.
Morley, “Diderot and the Encyclopedists.” 2 vols.,
London, 1878.
Morley, “Voltaire.” London, 1872.
Lange, “History of Materialism.” 3 vols., London, 1877.
[496] This saying is usually attributed to Voltaire. He used the
expression in attacking Pierre Bayle.
Erdmann’s “Hist. of Phil.” Vol. ii., p. 158.
Ueberweg, “Hist. of Phil.” Vol. ii., p. 125.
[497] Pressensé, “The Church and the Revolution.” London, 1869.
Jervis, “The Gallican Church and the Revolution.”
London, 1882.
[498] Hagenbach, “History of Church in the 18th and
19th Centuries.” Vol. i., pp. 109, 116; 2 vols.,
New York, 1869.
Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. ii., p. 208.
[499] Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. ii.,
pp. 208-227.
[500] Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. ii.,
pp. 266-279.
Hagenbach, “History of Church in 18th and 19th Centuries.”
Vol. i., pp. 117-127.
[501] Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. ii.,
pp. 259-261.
Geffcken, “Church and State.” 2 vols., Lon., 1887; vol. i.,
pp. 456-503.
[502] Burney, “Life of Handel.” London, 1784.
[503] Kelly, “Life and Work of Von Bogatsky: a Chapter from the
Religious Life of the Eighteenth Century.” London, 1889.
[504] Hough, “The History of Christianity in India.” 5 vols.,
London, 1839.
Sherring, “History of Missions in India.” Edited by Storrow.
London, 1888.
Pearson, “Memoirs, Life, and Correspondence of Chr. Fr.
Schwartz.” Etc., 2 vols., London, 1834.
[505] Hagenbach, “History of the Christian Church in the 18th
and 19th Centuries.” New York, 1869; Lectures XVIII.
and XIX., pp. 398-445.
[506] Spangenberg, “Life of Count Zinzendorf.” London, 1838.
[507] Spangenberg, “Account of Manner in which the _Unitas
Fratrum_ Propagate the Gospel, and Carry on their
Missions among the Heathen.” London, 1788.
Holmes, “Historical Sketch of the Missions of the United
Brethren for the Propagation of the Gospel among the
Heathen from their Commencement down to 1817.”
London, 1827.
[508] “Tersteegen: Life and Character, with Extracts from His
Letters and Writings.” London, 1832.
Winkworth, “Christian Singers of Germany.” London, 1869.
[509] For a slightly different account see Tyerman, vol. i.,
p. 66.
[510] Wesley himself continued to preach in the open air till
nearly the end of the year 1790.
[511] Further details as to the organization of the societies
are given in Tyerman, 1st ed., vol. i., pp. 444, 445.
[512] Southey, “Life of John Wesley.” London, 1820.
Isaac Taylor, “Wesley and Wesleyanism.” London, 1851.
Tyerman, “Wesley’s Life and Times.” 2 vols., 4th ed.,
London, 1877.
Urlin, “Churchman’s Life of Wesley.” London, 1880.
Abbey and Overton, “English Church in 18th Century.”
2 vols., London, 1879.
Lecky, “History of England in the 18th Century.” 2 vols.,
London, 1878.
Stoughton, “History of Religion in England to End of
18th Century.” 6 vols., London, 1882.
Jackson, “Life of Charles Wesley.” 2 vols., London, 1841.
Tyerman, “Life of Whitefield.” 2 vols., London, 1877.
Macdonald, “Fletcher of Madeley.” London.
Smith, “History of Methodism.” 3 vols., London, 1857.
Stevens, “History of Methodism.” 3 vols., New York, 1858.
Stevens, “History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the
United States.” 4 vols., New York, 1864.
Bangs, “History of the Methodist Episcopal Church.” 4 vols.,
New York, 1839.
[513] Hagenbach, “History of Church in 18th and 19th Centuries.”
Vol. i., pp. 159-164.
[514] Hagenbach, “History of the Church in the 18th and
19th Centuries.” Vol. i., pp. 168-175.
[515] Tafel, “Documents concerning the Life and Character of
Swedenborg.” 3 vols., London, 1875.
White, “Emanuel Swedenborg, his Life and Writings.”
2 vols., London, 1867.
[516] Evans, “Shakers: Compendium of Origin, History, Principles,
and Doctrines of the United Society of Believers in
Christ’s Second Coming.” New York, 1859.
Dixon, “New America.” 2 vols., 8th ed., London, 1869.
Nordhoff, “The Communistic Societies of the United States.”
London, 1874.
[517] Pusey, “Historical Inquiry into the Causes of the Prevalence
of Rationalism in Germany.” London, 1828.
Rose, “The State of Protestantism in Germany.” Oxford, 1829.
Saintes, “A Critical History of Rationalism in Germany, from
its Origin till the Present Time.” London, 1849.
Lecky, “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe.” 2 vols., London, 1873.
Farrar, “Critical History of Free Thought in Reference to
the Christian Religion.” London, 1863.
Hagenbach, “German Rationalism.” Edinburgh, 1865.
Hurst, “History of Rationalism.” New York, 1865.
Gostwick, “German Culture and Christianity, their
Controversy, 1770-1880.” New York, 1882.
[518] Stephen, “History of English Thought in the 18th Century.”
2 vols., London, 1876.
Cairns, “Unbelief in the 18th Century.” Edinburgh, 1881.
Pünjer, “History of Christian Philosophy of Religion from
Reformation to Kant.” § 5, “The English Deists.”
Edinburgh, 1887.
[519] Halliwell, “The Early History of English Freemasonry.”
London, 1840.
[520] Ritschl, “History of Christian Doctr. of Justification and
Reconciliation.” Pp. 347-426.
Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. ii.,
pp. 277-292.
Hagenbach, “History of The Church in The 18th and
19th Centuries.” Vol. i., pp. 251-321.
[521] Chalybæus, “Historical Development of Speculative
Philosophy, from Kant to Hegel.” Edin., 1854.
Räbiger, “Theological Encyclopædia.” Vol. i., pp. 73-76.
[522] Stahr, “Lessing: his Life and Works.” Translated by
G. Evans, 2 vols., Boston, 1866.
Sime, “Lessing, his Life and Writings.” 2 vols.,
London, 1877.
Zimmern, “G. E. Lessing: his Life and Works.” London, 1878.
Smith, “Lessing as a Theologian.” In the _Theological
Review_, July, 1868.
[523] Russell, “A Short Account of the Life and History of
Pestalozzi.” Based on De Guemp’s “_L’Histoire de
Pestalozzi_.” London, 1888. To be followed by a complete
English translation of De Guemp’s work.
[524] Marshman, “Life and Times of Marshman, Carey, and Ward.”
2 vols., London, 1859.
Smith, “Life of William Carey.” London, 1886.
Wilson, “Missionary Voyage of the Ship _Duff_.”
London, 1799.
Morison, “Fathers and Founders of the London Missionary
Society.” London, 1844.
[525] Baur, “Religious Life in Germany.” London, 1872,
pp. 177-196.
[526] Kahnis, “Internal History of German Protestantism since
the Middle of Last Century.” Edin., 1856.
[527] Hagenbach, “History of Church in Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries.” Vol. ii., pp. 413-416.
[528] Mombert, “Faith Victorious, being an Account of the Life,
Labour, and Times of Dr. J. W. Ebel, 1714-1861, compiled
from authentic sources.” London, 1882.
Dixon, “Spiritual Wives.” London, 1868.
[529] Strack, “The Work of Bible Revision in Germany.” In
_Expositor_, third series, vol. ii., pp. 178-187.
[530] See papers by Driver, Cheyne, Davidson, Kirkpatrick, in
_Expositor_ for 1886-1888, on various books in Revised
Old Testament.
Westcott, “Some Lessons of Revised Version of New
Testament.” In _Expositor_, third series, vol. v.,
pp. 81, 241, 453.
Jennings and Lowe, “Revised Version of Old Testament:
a Critical Estimate.” In _Expositor_, third Series,
vol. ii., pp. 57, etc.
[531] “Schleiermacher’s Life in Letters.” Translated by Rowan,
London, 1860.
Baur, “Religious Life in Germany.” London, 1872, pp. 197 ff.
Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” Vol. ii.,
pp. 374-395.
[532] Cheyne, “Life and Works of Heinrich Ewald.” In _Expositor_,
third series, vol. iv., pp. 241 ff., 361 ff.
[533] There are English translations of his “Life of Christ.”
“First Planting of Christianity.” “Antignostikus.”
“History of Christian Dogmas.” “Christian Life in the
Early and Middle Ages.” All published by Bohn.
[534] Zeller, “David Frederick Strauss, in his Life and
Writings.” London, 1874. Translations: “Life of Jesus
Critically Treated.” 1846; “Life of Jesus for the German
People.” 1865; “The Old Faith and the New.” 1874; “Ulrich
von Hutten.” 1874.
[535] Simon, “Isaac August Dorner.” In _Presbyterian Review_ for
October, 1887, pp. 569-616.
[536] Rothe, “Still Hours.” Translated by Miss Stoddart, with
Introductory Essay on Rothe by Rev. J. Macpherson.
London, 1886.
[537] Galloway, “The Theology of Ritschl.” In _Presbyterian
Review_ for April, 1889, pp. 192-209.
[538] Series of papers in _Good Words_ for 1860, pp. 377 ff.
[539] Fleming Stevenson, “The Blue Flag of Kaiserswerth.” In
_Good Words_ for 1861, pp. 121 ff., 143 ff.
[540] Owen, “History of the First Ten Years of the Bible
Society.” 3 vols., London, 1816.
[541] Wiseman, “Recollections of the Last Four Popes.” 3 vols.,
London, 1853.
Mendham, “Index of Prohibited Books by order of
Gregory XVI.” London, 1840.
[542] Legge, “Pius IX. to the Restoration of 1850.” 2 vols.,
London, 1872.
Trollope, “Life of Pius IX.” 2 vols., London, 1877.
Shea, “Life and Pontificate of Pius IX.” New York, 1877.
[543] Geffcken, “Church and State.” Vol. ii., pp. 269-293: “The
Italian Question and the Papal States.”
[544] Geffcken, “Church and State.” Vol. ii., pp. 236-238.
[545] Bridges, “Life of Martin Boos.” London, 1836.
[546] Hamberger, “Sketch of the Character of the Theosophy
of Baader.” Translated in _American Presbyterian and
Theological Review_, 1869.
[547] Laing, “Notes on the Rise, Progress, etc., of the German
Catholic Church of Ronge and Czerski.” London, 1845.
[548] Manning, “The True History of the Vatican Council.”
London, 1877.
Pomponio Leto, “The Vatican Council, being the impressions
of a contemporary (Card. Vitelleschi), translated from
the Italian with the original documents.” London, 1876.
Quirinus, “Letters from Rome on the Council.” London, 1870.
Janus, “The Pope and the Council.” London, 1869.
Bungener, “Rome and the Council in the Nineteenth Century.”
Edinburgh, 1870.
Arthur, “The Pope, the Kings, and the People, a History
of the Movement to make the Pope Governor of the World,
1864-1871.” 2 vols., London, 1877.
Acton, “History of the Vatican Council.” London, 1871.
Friedrich, “_Documenta ad illum. Conc. Vat._” Nördling, 1871.
Martin (Bishop of Paderborn), “_Omnium Conc. Vat. quæ ad
doctr. et discipl. pertin. docum. Collectio_.” 1873.
[549] Geffcken, “Church and State.” Vol. ii., pp. 501-531.
Smith, “The Falk Legislation from the Political Point of
View.” In the _Theological Review_ for October, 1875.
[550] Geffcken, “Church and State.” 2 vols., London, 1877;
vol. ii., pp. 488-531.
[551] The Austrian May Laws were in some respects more sweeping
than the Prussian (§ 197, 5); but the former were framed
with reference to the police, the latter with reference to
the law. In Prussia the decision, judgment, and sentence in
all cases of contravention and collision were assigned to
the court of law; in Austria they were assigned to the court
of administration, in the last instance to the minister. The
Austrian laws could thus be urged and ignored at pleasure.
[552] Geffeken, “Church and State.” Vol. ii., pp. 469-488.
[553] R. J. Sandeman, “Alexander Vinet.” In “Evangelical
Succession Lectures.” Third Series, Edinburgh, 1884.
Dorner, “History of Protestant Theology.” ii., 470, 478.
[554] Cairns, “The Present Struggle in the National Church of
Holland.” In _Presbyterian Review_ for January, 1888,
pp. 87-108.
Wicksteed, “The Ecclesiastical Institutions of Holland.”
London.
[555] Lumsden, “Sweden, its Religious State and Prospects.”
London, 1855.
[556] Stoughton, “Religion in England during the First Half of
the Present Century, with a Postscript on Subsequent
Events.” 2 vols., London, 1876.
Molesworth, “History of England from 1830 to 1874.”
3 vols., London.
[557] Littledale, “Church Parties.” Art. in the _Contemporary
Review_ for July, 1874, pp. 287-320.
Mozley, “Reminiscences of Oriel College.” London, 1882.
[558] Newman, “_Apologia pro Vita Sua_.” London, 1864.
Weaver, “Puseyism, a Refutation and Exposure.” London, 1843.
[559] The very confused, wholly inadequate, and in some points
positively incorrect statements in the above paragraph
may be supplemented and amended by reference to the
following literature:
Buchanan, “Ten Years’ Conflict.” 2 vols., Edin., 1852.
Moncrieff, “Vindication of the Claim of Right.” Edin., 1877.
Moncrieff, “The Free Church Principle: its Character and
History.” Edin., 1883.
Mackerrow, “History of the Secession Church.” Glasgow, 1841.
[560] Smith’s appointment was to the Lord Almoner’s Professorship,
with a merely nominal salary; but he was afterwards elected
to the more remunerative office of University librarian, and
more recently has succeeded Prof. Wright in the Chair of
Arabic in the University.
[561] Jarvis, “The Gallican Church and the Revolution.”
Pp. 324-395, London, 1882.
[562] Borrow, “The Bible in Spain.” 2 vols., London, 1843.
[563] Lendrum, “_Ecclesia Pressa_: or, the Lutheran Church in the
Baltic Provinces.” In _The Theological Review and Free
Church College Quarterly_, vol. ii., 310-330.
C. H. H. Wright, “The Persecution of the Lutheran Church
in the Baltic Provinces of Russia.” In the _British and
Foreign Evangelical Review_, January, 1887.
[564] Baird, “Religion in the United States.” Glasgow, 1844.
“Progress and Prospects of Christianity in the United
States.” London, 1851.
Gorrie, “Churches and Sects in the United States.”
New York, 1850.
[565] Stevens, “History of the Episcopal Methodist Church in
North America.” Philadelphia, 1868.
Gorrie, “History of the Episcopal Methodist Church in the
United States.” New York, 1881.
[566] A full account of the recent development of Protestantism
in Brazil is given in an article in the _Presbyterian
Review_ for January, 1889, pp. 101-106: “The Organization
of the Synod of Brazil,” by Dr. J. Aspinwall Hodge.--On
15th November, 1889, the emperor was expelled and a
republic proclaimed.
[567] Hepworth Dixon, “Free Russia.” 2 vols., London, 1870.
Heard, “The Russian Church and Russian Dissent.” 2 vols.,
London, 1887.
[568] Rowntree, “Quakerism Past and Present.” London, 1859.
[569] Dixon, “New America.” 2 vols., 8th edition, London, 1869.
Nordhoff, “The Communistic Societies of the United States.”
London, 1874.
[570] Oliphant, “Life of Ed. Irving.” 3rd edition, London, 1865.
Carlyle, in “Miscellaneous Essays.”
Brown, “Personal Reminiscences of Ed. Irving.” in
_Expositor_, 3 ser., vol. vi., pp. 216, 257.
Miller, “History and Doctrine of Irvingism.” 2 vols.,
London, 1878.
[571] Darby, “Personal Recollections.” London, 1881.
[572] Stenhouse, “An Englishwoman in Utah, the story of a Life’s
Experience in Mormonism.” 2nd ed., London, 1880.
Gunnison, “The Mormons.” New York, 1884.
Burton, “The City of the Saints.” London, 1861.
[573] Wilson, “The ‘Ever-Victorious Army:’ a History of the
Chinese Campaign under Lieut.-Col. C. G. Gordon, and of
the Suppression of the Taeping Rebellion.” Edinburgh.
[574] Edmonds, “American Spiritualism.” 2 vols., New York, 1858.
Cox, “Spiritualism answered by Science.” London, 1872.
Crookes, “Spiritualism and Science.” London, 1874.
Wallace, “A Defence of Spiritualism.” London, 1874.
Owen, “The Debatable Land.” New York, 1872.
Carpenter, “Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc., Historically and
Scientifically Considered.” London, 1877.
Mahan, “The Phenomena of Spiritualism Scientifically
Explained and Exposed.” London, 1875.
Horne, “Incidents in His Life.” London, 1863.
“Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism.” London, 1877.
[575] Sinnett, “Esoteric Buddhism.” London, 1883.
[576] Sargent, “Rob. Owen and his Social Philosophy.”
London, 1860.
Nordhoff, “Communistic Societies in the United States.”
London, 1875.
[577] Onslow-Yorke, “The Secret History of the International
Working-Men’s Association.” London, 1872.
Lissagaray, “History of the Commune of 1871.” Translated
by Aveling, London, 1886.
[578] From the fifteenth century the numbering of the General
Councils is so variable and uncertain that even Catholic
historians are not agreed upon this point. They are at
one only about this, that the anti-papal councils claiming
to be œcumenical, of Pisa A.D. 1409, Basel A.D. 1438,
and Pisa A.D. 1511, should be designated schismatical
“_Conciliabula_.” Hefele, in his “History of the Councils,”
counts eighteen down to the Reformation. He makes the
Constance Council in its first and last sessions the
sixteenth, but does not count the middle session held
without the pope. He makes that of Basel the seventeenth
down to A.D. 1438 with its papal continuation at Ferrara
and Florence. Finally, as eighteenth he gives the fifth
Lateran Council of A.D. 1512-1517. But others strike
Basel and Constance out of the list altogether; and many,
especially the Gallicans, reject also the fifth Lateran
Council, because occupied with matters of slight or merely
local interest.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
The following corrections have been made in the text:
§ 7, 1.
Sentence starting: There are mysterious phenomena....
- added omitted Word ‘to’
(which seemed to establish)
§ 14.
Sentence starting: The Levite Barnabas,...
- ‘ministery’ replaced with ‘ministry’
(and strengthened his own ministry)
§ 16, 1.
Sentence starting: That Babylon is mentioned....
- ‘23’ replaced with ‘13’
(1 Pet. v. 13)
§ 20.
Sentence starting: As the history of....
- ‘beginings’ replaced with ‘beginnings’
(the beginnings of the church)
§ 25, 2b.
Sentence starting: The school of Baur....
- ‘§ 183, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 182, 7’
(school of Baur (§ 182, 7))
§ 26, 4.
Sentence starting: The most important of extant....
- ‘Hippolylus’ replaced with ‘Hippolytus’
(and of Hippolytus Ἔλεγχος)
§ 27, 2.
Sentence starting: After him there arose...
- ‘Hebdomes’ replaced with ‘Hebdomas’
(the so-called Hebdomas)
§ 27, 11.
Sentence starting: He consequently developed...
- ‘irreconcileable’ replaced with ‘irreconcilable’
(the irreconcilable opposition of righteousness)
§ 31, 1.
Sentence starting: The latter especially gave....
- ‘gramatico’ replaced with ‘grammatico’
(grammatico-historical examination of scripture.)
§ 31, 8.
Sentence starting: Sextus Julius Africanus,...
- ‘Septimus’ replaced with ‘Septimius’
(campaign of Septimius Severus)
§ 32, 6 f.
Sentence starting: It assigns the founding....
- ‘§ 12, 2’ replaced with ‘§ 13, 2’
(Christ’s promise (§ 13, 2).)
§ 35, 2.
Sentence starting: Only a few unimportant....
- ‘immobolis’ replaced with ‘immobilis’
(immobilis et irreformabilis)
§ 38, 1.
Sentence starting: Thereafter they were used....
- ‘were’ replaced with ‘where’
(and spots where martyr’s relics)
§ 40, 1.
Sentence starting: Themison, Alcibiades’ successor,...
- ‘ἐπστολή’ replaced with ‘ἐπιστολή’
(a Καθολικὴ ἐπιστολή,)
§ 40, 4.
Sentence starting: The following are some of....
- ‘§ 57, 3’ replaced with ‘§ 37, 3’
(On _dies stationum_ (§ 37, 3) nothing)
§ 44, 4.
Sentence starting: But twenty years later....
- ‘portea’ replaced with ‘postea’
(esset postea gloriæ)
Sentence starting: Martin of Tours....
- ‘§ 47, 15’ replaced with ‘§ 47, 14’
(Martin of Tours (§ 47, 14) established)
§ 45, 4.
Sentence starting: But the Council at Macon....
- ‘§ 85, 1’ replaced with ‘§ 86, 1’
(Carolingian legislation (§ 86, 1).)
§ 46, 3.
Sentence starting: In this year, however,...
- ‘§ 53, 2’ replaced with ‘§ 50, 2’
(the Council of Sardica (§ 50, 2),)
§ 46, 6.
Sentence starting: To his legates at the Council....
- ‘Ephesns’ replaced with ‘Ephesus’
(at the Council of Ephesus)
§ 47, 15.
Sentence starting: He deserves special credit for....
- ‘§ 69, 4-6’ replaced with ‘§ 59, 4-6’
(Hymn Composition, § 59, 4-6)
§ 47, 22c.
Sentence starting: Ordained deacon against his....
- ‘apocrisarius’ replaced with ‘apocrisiarius’
(a papal _apocrisiarius_ in Constantinople)
§ 48, 2.
Sentence starting: For the history of heresies....
- ‘§ 57, 21h’ replaced with ‘§ 47, 21f’
(the author of _Prædestinatus_ (§ 47, 21f).)
§ 48, 7.
Sentence starting: This cannot, however, be said....
- ‘Eutchyes’ replaced with ‘Eutyches’
(against Nestorius and Eutyches)
§ 50, 4.
Sentence starting: For the restoration of church....
- ‘followship’ replaced with ‘fellowship’
(received back into church fellowship)
§ 50, 6.
Sentence starting: Basil the Great wrote 4 bks....
- ‘Eunonius’ replaced with ‘Eunomius’
(4 bks. against Eunomius)
- ‘Amphilochum’ replaced with ‘Amphilochium’
(Ad Amphilochium, against the)
§ 52, 4.
Sentence starting: He appealed to an œcumenical....
- ‘§ 467’ replaced with ‘§ 46, 7’
(to =Leo the Great= (§ 46, 7) at Rome)
§ 52, 5.
Sentence starting: The strict Monophysites of....
- ‘Diophysites’ replaced with ‘Dyophysites’
(at the head of the Dyophysites)
§ 56, 4.
Sentence starting: The pre-eminence of the Christian....
- ‘Quadrigesma’ replaced with ‘Quadragesima’
(the whole Quadragesima season)
§ 59 1,
Sentence starting: This view prevailed....
- ‘§ 160, 8’ replaced with ‘§ 161, 8’
(referred to by the Protestants (§ 161, 8))
§ 59, 4.
Sentence starting: Under the name of Troparies,...
- ‘§ 71, 2’ replaced with ‘§ 70, 2’
(church service of Psalms (§ 70, 2).)
§ 63.
Sentence starting: Owing to various diversities....
- ‘§ 61, 7’ replaced with ‘§ 61, 1’
(and discipline (§ 61, 1),)
§ 67, 7.
Sentence starting: For the executing of his spiritual....
- ‘divisons’ replaced with ‘divisions’
(holders of the four divisions)
§ 71, 1.
Sentence starting: The Catholic polemists of the....
- ‘Manichiæan’ replaced with ‘Manichæan’
(to a Manichæan family)
§ 73, 5.
Sentence starting: Secret remnants of this sect,...
- ‘§ 162, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 163, 10’
(a new departure (§ 163, 10))
§ 76, 8.
Sentence starting: Pope Gregory the Great,...
- ‘694’ replaced with ‘604’
(Gregory the Great, A.D. 590-604)
§ 77.
Sentence starting: This, however, is certain,...
- ‘§ 23, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 22, 6’
(end of the 3rd century (§ 22, 6))
§ 77, 4.
Sentence starting: Two princes of the Jutes....
- removed duplicate ‘of’
(led a horde of Angles and Saxons)
§ 77, 6.
Sentence starting: His wife Eanfled, Edwin’s daughter....
- ‘decidly’ replaced with ‘decidedly’
(most decidedly preferred it)
§ 78, 8.
Sentence starting: Thus he lets himself be informed....
- ‘forbiden’ replaced with ‘forbidden’
(and storks is absolutely forbidden)
§ 86.
Sentence starting: This institution, however,...
- ‘ust’ replaced with ‘just’
(just as they chose)
§ 87, 3.
sentence starting: Langen fixes the date....
- ‘§ 290, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 90, 5’
(to Servatus Lupus (§ 90, 5))
§ 91, 2.
Sentence starting: At a Synod at Gentiliacum....
- ‘Gentiliscum’ replaced with ‘Gentiliacum’
(At a Synod at Gentiliacum)
§ 93, 5.
Sentence starting: This catastrophe, and the....
- ‘§ 166, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 167, 9’
(overthrow of the colony.--Continuation, § 167, 9.)
§ 94, 3.
Sentence starting: Frederick had already fallen,...
- ‘brillant’ replaced with ‘brilliant’
(gained a brilliant victory)
§ 96, 1.
Sentence starting: =Sergius III.=, A.D. 904-911,...
- ‘disagraceful’ replaced with ‘disgraceful’
(starts this disgraceful series.)
§ 96, 3.
Sentence starting: On a pilgrimage to the grave....
- ‘§ 83, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 93, 13’
(Adalbert in Gnesen (§ 93, 13))
§ 96, 23.
Sentence starting: Nicholas I. was, according....
- ‘§ 100, 15’ replaced with ‘§ 110, 15’
(developed into the tiara (§ 110, 15))
§ 97, 3.
Sentence starting: For the exercise of the....
- ‘archepiscopal’ replaced with ‘archiepiscopal’
(exercise of the archiepiscopal office)
§ 98, 10.
Sentence starting: Their order spread over....
- ‘§ 192, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 112, 5’
(Holy Father (Continuation, § 112, 5))
§ 101, 1 (5).
Sentence starting: As a theologian he may be....
- ‘profoundity’ replaced with ‘profundity’
(of acuteness and profundity)
§ 102, 2.
Sentence starting: Abælard found an asylum....
- ‘reconcilation’ replaced with ‘reconciliation’
(effected his reconciliation with Bernard)
§ 103, 1.
Sentence starting: This philosophy, however, from....
- ‘Badgad’ replaced with ‘Bagdad’
(of Bagdad and Cordova)
§ 103, 3.
Sentence starting: The Augustinians, too, won....
- ‘apolegetical’ replaced with ‘apologetical’
(polemical and apologetical purposes)
§ 104, 4.
Sentence starting: Richard St. Victor held that....
- ‘§ 61, 14’ replaced with ‘§ 61, 4’
(pains of purgatory (§ 61, 4))
§ 104, 13.
Sentence starting: The foundation of the former....
- ‘§ 173, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 174, 9’
(completed and consecrated in A.D. 1322 (§ 174, 9))
§ 110, 2.
Sentence starting: The 15th œcumenical Council....
- ‘§ 112, 27’ replaced with ‘§ 112, 2’
(controversies in the Franciscan order (§ 112, 2))
§ 110, 4.
Sentence starting: Both continued in the possession....
- ‘§ 164, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 165, 13’
(the Roman court till A.D. 1791 (§ 165, 13))
§ 112, 3.
Sentence starting: His greatest feat was the repulse,...
- ‘Mohammad’ replaced with ‘Mohammed’
(the Turks, under Mohammed II.,)
§ 112, 7.
Sentence starting: Stories also were current....
- ‘Mohammadanism’ replaced with ‘Mohammedanism’
(apostasy to Mohammedanism,)
§ 113.
Sentence starting: Moral theology degenerated into....
- ‘subtlely’ replaced with ‘subtly’
(abstruse discussion on subtly devised cases)
§ 113, 3.
Sentence starting: He accompanied his general,...
- ‘Cevena’ replaced with ‘Cesena’
(his general, Michael of Cesena,)
Sentence starting: In accordance with his nominalistic....
- ‘§ 170, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 171, 10’
(a precursor of Kant (§ 171, 10))
§ 114.
Sentence starting: The 14th century was the Augustan....
- ‘Reichersburg’ replaced with ‘Reichersberg’
(and the two divines of Reichersberg)
§ 115, 11.
Sentence starting: Among popular preachers John Tauler....
- ‘Kaisersburg’ replaced with ‘Kaisersberg’
(Geiler of Kaisersberg distinguished)
§ 119, 9.
Sentence starting: The anonymous writer of Passau,...
- ‘iniquisitorial’ replaced with ‘inquisitorial’
(the subject of inquisitorial interference)
Sentence starting: On the Waldensians in German....
- ‘orginal’ replaced with ‘original’
(drawn from original documents)
Sentence starting: Finally, Wattenbach has made....
- ‘orginal’ replaced with ‘original’
(which contains the original reports)
§ 119, 9A.
Sentence starting: This movement originated with....
- ‘orginated’ replaced with ‘originated’
(This movement originated with)
§ 123, 9.
Sentence starting: To all this Köstlin has replied....
- ‘correpondence’ replaced with ‘correspondence’
(that his correspondence with Tucher)
§ 131, 1.
Sentence starting: Luther first openly appeared....
- ‘1256’ replaced with ‘1526’
(the Swiss in A.D. 1526)
§ 136, 4.
Sentence starting: The O.T. Apocrypha....
- ‘160, 8’ replaced with ‘161, 8’
(The O.T. Apocrypha (§§ 59, 1; 161, 8))
§ 139, 11.
Sentence starting: After Elizabeth’s death....
- ‘§ 154, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 153, 6’
(the title of James I.[390]--Continuation, § 153, 6.)
§ 142, 1.
Sentence starting: A restoration of such establishments....
- ‘§ 166, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 165, 5’
(convulsion and revolution.--Continuation, § 165, 5.)
§ 142, 6.
Sentence starting: By his _Catalogus testium veritatis_....
- ‘§ 158, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 159, 4’
(the sixteenth century.--Continuation, § 159, 4.)
§ 144.
Sentence starting: It was followed by Bremen,...
- ‘§ 154A’ replaced with ‘§ 154, 3’
(electoral dynasty of Brandenburg (§ 154, 3).)
§ 147, 6.
Sentence starting: “Christ is not God,...
- Ending quotation mark added.
(and love’ of God.”)
§ 149, 2.
Sentence starting: After the death of Julius III....
- added omitted word ‘the’
(one of the noblest popes)
Sentence starting: At the close of the last session....
- ‘§ 132, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 13’
(Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (§ 139, 13))
§ 149, 5.
Sentence starting: Still more striking, though....
- ‘§ 164, 10, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 165, 10, 13’
(the misfortune of Pius VI. (§ 165, 10, 13))
§ 149, 7, 6.
Sentence starting: They combined works of charity....
- ‘§ 155, 7’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 7’
(erected by them.[434]--Continuation, § 156, 7.)
§ 149, 8.
Sentence starting: They have understood how to....
- ‘§ 155, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 13’
(accomplishing their own ends (§ 156, 13))
Sentence starting: On the death of the founder,...
- ‘164, 9’ replaced with ‘165, 9’
(in 803 houses.[436]--Continuation, §§ 151, 1; 165, 9.)
§ 149, 10.
Sentence starting: They will also be found....
- ‘155, 12’ replaced with ‘156, 12’
(prosecution of foreign missions (§§ 150; 156, 12))
- ‘§ 155, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 13’
(and commercial activity (§ 156, 13))
§ 149, 11.
Sentence starting: In like manner it gave....
- ‘§ 186, 20’ replaced with ‘§ 186, 2’
(amulets, and talismans (§ 186, 2))
Sentence starting: They originated the worship....
- ‘§ 155, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 6’
(the heart of Jesus (§ 156, 6))
§ 149, 13.
Sentence starting: By firmly maintaining the decree....
- ‘§ 155, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 5’
(the other of heresy.--Continuation, § 156, 5.)
§ 150, 1.
Sentence starting:
- ‘§ 155, 11, 12’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 11, 12’
(part of the land.[442]--Continuation, § 156, 11, 12.)
§ 150, 2.
Sentence starting: In consequence of this....
- ‘§ 186, 16’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 11’
(and there crucified (§ 156, 11))
§ 153, 1.
Sentence starting: He went over in....
- ‘superfluous reference - destination uncertain.
(in A.D. 1590 (§ 144, 4))
§ 154, 1.
Sentence starting: Landgrave =William IV.= of Hesse-Cassel....
- ‘§ 142, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 141, 9’
(_ubiquitous_ Christology (§ 141, 9))
- ‘§ 142, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 141, 10’
(_Corpus Doctrinæ Philippicum_ (§ 141, 10))
§ 154, 3.
Sentence starting: In A.D. 1614, owing to....
- ‘§ 158, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 159, 5’
(treatise of Hutter (§ 159, 5))
§ 155.
Sentence starting: They powerfully strengthened....
- ‘§ 131, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 6’
(of the State church (§ 139, 6))
§ 156, 3.
Sentence starting: Although =Louis XIV.= of France,...
- ‘164, 7’ replaced with ‘165, 7’
(against the Jansenists (§§ 156, 5; 165, 7))
§ 160, 4.
Sentence starting: In Denmark, where previously....
- ‘§ 166, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 167, 6’
(Danish national hymnology.[471]--Continuation, § 167, 6)
§ 164, 2.
Sentence starting: =John Locke=, died A.D. 1704,...
- Subsection caption added to text.
(§ 164.2. =John Locke=, died)
§ 165, 1.
Sentence starting: He had a special dislike....
- ‘§ 155, 12’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 12’
(dislike of the Jesuits (§ 156, 12))
§ 165, 8.
Sentence starting: Its beginning was traced back....
- ‘§ 188, 20’ replaced with ‘§ 186, 2’
(rosaries and scapularies (§ 186, 2))
§ 168, 2.
Sentence starting: The settlers were therefore....
- ‘§ 166, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 167, 6’
(pastor of Berthelsdorf (§ 167, 6))
§ 170, 1.
Sentence starting: He founded several Philadelphian....
- ‘§ 162, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 163, 9’
(Philadelphian societies (§ 163, 9))
§ 171, 7.
Sentence starting: Of far greater value....
- ‘J. E. Eichhorn’ replaced with ‘J. G. Eichhorn’
(=J. G. Eichhorn= of Göttingen)
§ 174, 1.
Sentence starting: =The German Philosophy=....
- ‘§ 170, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 171, 10’
(=The German Philosophy= (§ 171, 10))
§ 186, 2.
Sentence starting: Finally the third French Republic....
- ‘§ 206, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 203, 6’
(authorized by the State (§ 203, 6))
§ 203, 1.
Sentence starting: In 1801 Napoleon as Consul....
- ‘§ 111, 14’ replaced with ‘§ 110, 14’
(concordat of Francis I. (§ 110, 14))
Chronological Table
Sentence starting: 692. Concilium Quinisextum....
- ‘§ 63, 3’ replaced with ‘§ 63, 2’
((Trullanum II.), § 63, 2.)
Sentence starting: 960. Atto of Vercelli
- ‘§ 100, 3’ replaced with ‘§ 100, 2’
(Vercelli dies, § 100, 2.)
Sentence starting: 974. Ratherius of Verona....
- ‘§ 100, 3’ replaced with ‘§ 100, 2’
(Verona dies, § 100, 2.)
Sentence starting: 1176. Battle of Legnano,...
- ‘§ 6, 15’ replaced with ‘§ 96, 15’
(Battle of Legnano, § 96, 15.)
Sentence starting: 1248. Foundation stone of Cathedral....
- ‘§ 101, 11’ replaced with ‘§ 104, 13’
(Cologne laid, § 104, 13.)
Sentence starting: 1315. Raimund Lullus dies,...
- ‘§ 93, 17’ replaced with ‘§ 93, 16’
(Lullus dies, § 93, 16; 103, 5.)
Sentence starting: 1321. Dante dies,...
- ‘§ 116, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 115, 10’
(Dante dies, § 115, 10.)
Sentence starting: 1521. Melanchthon’s _Loci_,...
- ‘§ 121, 1’ replaced with ‘§ 124, 1’
(Melanchthon’s _Loci_, § 124, 1.)
Sentence starting: 1609. The Royal Letter,...
- ‘§ 193, 19’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 19’
(The Royal Letter, § 139, 19.)
Sentence starting: 1631. Religious Conference....
- ‘§ 155, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 154, 4’
(Conference at Leipzig, § 154, 4.)
Sentence starting: 1863. Congress of Catholic Scholars....
- ‘§ 190, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 191, 10’
(Scholars at Munich, § 191, 10.)
Index
Sentence starting: Abyssinian Church,...
- ‘187, 19’ replaced with ‘184, 9’
(152, 1; 160, 7; 166, 3; 184, 9.)
Sentence starting: Accommodation Controversy,...
- ‘§ 155, 12’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 12’
(Accommodation Controversy, § 156, 12.)
Sentence starting: Acosta, Uriel,...
- ‘§ 155, 14’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 14’
(Acosta, Uriel, § 156, 14.)
Sentence starting: Albert of Suerbeer,...
- ‘92, 12’ replaced with ‘93, 12’
(Suerbeer, § 73, 6; 93, 12.)
Sentence starting: Alpers,...
- ‘§ 208, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 211, 10’
(Alpers, § 211, 10.)
Sentence starting: Amort,...
- ‘§ 164, 15’ replaced with ‘§ 165, 12’
(Amort, § 165, 12.)
Sentence starting: Apocrisiarians,...
- ‘Apocrisarians’ replaced with ‘Apocrisiarians’
(Apocrisiarians, § 46, 1.)
Sentence starting: Asinarii,...
- ‘§ 23, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 23, 2’
(Asinarii, § 23, 2.)
Sentence starting: Avitus,...
- ‘§ 53, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 53, 5’
(Avitus, § 53, 5; 76, 5.)
Sentence starting: Baptism,...
- ‘58, 1, 5’ replaced with ‘58, 1, 4’
(Baptism, § 35, 2-4; 58, 1, 4; 141, 13.)
Sentence starting: Bernard Sylvester,...
- ‘§ 102, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 102, 9’
(Bernard Sylvester, § 102, 9.)
Sentence starting: Bonald,...
- ‘§ 186, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 188, 1’
(Bonald, § 188, 1.)
Sentence starting: Calas,...
- ‘§ 164, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 165, 5’
(Calas, § 165, 5.)
Sentence starting: Calixt, Geo.,...
- ‘158, 2, 8’ replaced with ‘159, 2, 4’
(Calixt, Geo., § 153, 7; 159, 2, 4.)
Sentence starting: Charlemagne,...
- ‘79, 5’ replaced with ‘79, 1’
(Charlemagne, § 78, 9; 79, 1;)
Sentence starting: Claudius of Turin,...
- ‘92, 3’ replaced with ‘92, 2’
(Claudius of Turin, § 90, 4; 92, 2.)
Sentence starting: Constantine the Great,...
- ‘§ 28, 7’ replaced with ‘§ 22, 7’
(Constantine the Great, § 22, 7;)
Sentence starting: Cross, Sign of....
- ‘72, 5’ replaced with ‘73, 5’
(Sign of the, § 39, 1; 59, 8; 73, 5.)
Sentence starting: _Defensores_,...
- ‘§ 45, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 45, 3’
(_Defensores_, § 45, 3.)
Sentence starting: Demetrius Mysos,...
- ‘§ 139, 36’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 26’
(Demetrius Mysos, § 139, 26.)
Sentence starting: _De salute animarum_,...
- ‘§ 193, 11’ replaced with ‘§ 193, 1’
(_De salute animarum_, § 193, 1.)
Sentence starting: Dinter,...
- ‘§ 173, 3; 180, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 174, 8’
(Dinter, § 174, 8.)
Sentence starting: Dionysius of Alexandria,...
- ‘§ 31, 6, 14’ replaced with ‘§ 31, 6; 32, 8;’
(Dionysius of Alexandria, § 31, 6; 32 8;)
Sentence starting: Döllinger,...
- ‘§ 190, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 190, 1’
(Döllinger, § 190, 1;)
Sentence starting: East Indies,...
- ‘155, 11’ replaced with ‘156, 11’
(East Indies, § 64, 4; 150, 1; 156, 11;)
Sentence starting: Estius,...
- ‘§ 150, 14’ replaced with ‘§ 149, 14’
(Estius, § 149, 14.)
Sentence starting: Euler,...
- ‘§ 150, 14’ replaced with ‘§ 171, 8’
(Euler, § 171, 8.)
Sentence starting: Fichte, J. G.,...
- ‘§ 170, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 171, 10’
(Fichte, J. G., § 171, 10.)
Sentence starting: Francis, St.,...
- ‘106, 5’ replaced with ‘105, 4’
(§ 93, 16; 98, 3; 104, 10; 105, 4.)
Sentence starting: Franco of Cologne,...
- ‘§ 144, 11’ replaced with ‘§ 104, 11’
(Franco of Cologne, § 104, 11.)
Sentence starting: Gellert,...
- ‘§ 176, 11’ replaced with ‘§ 171, 11’
(Gellert, § 171, 11; 172, 1.)
Sentence starting: Gerbert,...
- ‘100, 3’ replaced with ‘100, 2’
(Gerbert, § 96, 2; 100, 2.)
Sentence starting: Gil, Juan,...
- ‘§ 129, 21’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 21’
(Gil, Juan, § 139, 21.)
Sentence starting: Grabow,...
- Name not found--Invalid reference.
(Grabow, § 210, 10.)
Sentence starting: Gundioch,...
- Name not found--Invalid reference.
(Gundioch, § 75, 5.)
Sentence starting: Hebrews, Gospel of the,...
- ‘§ 31, 16’ replaced with ‘§ 32, 4’
(Hebrews, Gospel of the, § 32, 4.)
Sentence starting: Huguenots,...
- ‘166, 5’ replaced with ‘165, 5’
(Huguenots, § 139, 14, ff.; 153, 4; 165, 5.)
Sentence starting: _In commendam_,...
- ‘§ 86, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 85, 5’
(_In commendam_, § 85, 5; 110, 15.)
Sentence starting: Innocent IV.,...
- ‘72, 6’ replaced with ‘73, 6’
(Innocent IV., § 96, 20; 73, 6.)
Sentence starting: Irene,...
- ‘§ 66, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 66, 3’
(Irene, § 66, 3.)
Sentence starting: Italy,...
- ‘189, 7’ replaced with ‘187, 7’
(Italy, § 139, 22; 187, 7; 204.)
Sentence starting: Jansenists,...
- ‘§ 157, 15’ replaced with ‘§ 157, 5’
(Jansenists, § 157, 5; 165, 6.)
Sentence starting: John of the Cross,...
- ‘§ 49, 6, 16.’ replaced with ‘§ 149, 6, 16.’
(John of the Cross, § 149, 6, 16.)
Sentence starting: Lambeth Articles,...
- ‘§ 144, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 143, 5’
(Lambeth Articles, § 143, 5.)
Sentence starting: Lee, Bishop,...
- ‘§ 211, 74’ replaced with ‘§ 211, 14’
(Lee, Bishop, § 211, 14.)
Sentence starting: Leyser,...
- ‘§ 155, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 141, 14; 142, 6’
(Leyser, § 141, 14; 142, 6.)
Sentence starting: Liptinä, Synod of,...
- ‘§ 75, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 78, 5’
(Liptinä, Synod of, § 78, 5; 86, 2.)
Sentence starting: Loyson,...
- ‘§ 189, 8’ replaced with ‘§ 187, 8’
(Loyson, § 187, 8.)
Sentence starting: Maistre,...
- ‘§ 187, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 188, 1’
(Maistre, § 188, 1.)
Sentence starting: Marcionites,...
- ‘64, 5’ replaced with ‘64, 3’
(Marcionites, § 27, 12; 54, 1; 64, 3.)
Sentence starting: Martyrs, Acts of,...
- ‘§ 32, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 32, 8’
(Martyrs, Acts of, § 32, 8.)
Sentence starting: Montalembert,...
- ‘§ 189, 9; 190, 1’ replaced with ‘§ 188, 1; 189, 1’
(Montalembert, § 188, 1; 189, 1.)
Sentence starting: Mouls,...
- ‘§ 190, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 190, 3’
(Mouls, § 190, 3.)
Sentence starting: Nägelsbach,...
- ‘§ 173, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 174, 4’
(Nägelsbach, § 174, 4.)
Sentence starting: Nectarius,...
- ‘§ 61, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 61, 1’
(Nectarius, § 61, 1.)
Sentence starting: Norwegians,...
- ‘201, 13’ replaced with ‘201, 3’
(Norwegians, § 93, 4; 139, 2; 201, 3.)
Sentence starting: Noyes,...
- ‘§ 208, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 211, 6’
(Noyes, § 211, 6.)
Sentence starting: O’Connell,...
- ‘§ 199, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 202, 9’
(O’Connell, § 202, 9.)
Sentence starting: Οἰκόνομοι,...
- ‘§ 45, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 45, 3’
(Οἰκόνομοι, § 45, 3.)
Sentence starting: Orange,...
- ‘§ 53, 6’ replaced with ‘§ 53, 5’
(Orange, Synod of, § 53, 5.)
Sentence starting: Oratory, Fathers of the,...
- ‘§ 155, 7’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 7’
(Oratory, Fathers of the, § 156, 7.)
Sentence starting: Paul V.,...
- ‘§ 155, 1, 2, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 156, 1, 2, 4’
(Paul V., § 154, 1, 2, 4; 149, 13.)
Sentence starting: Pellico, Silvio,...
- ‘§ 173, 7’ replaced with ‘§ 174, 7’
- ‘Pellico-Silvio’ replaced with ‘Pellico, Silvio’
(Pellico, Silvio, § 174, 7.)
Sentence starting: Perfectus,...
- ‘§ 21, 1’ replaced with ‘§ 81, 1’
(Perfectus, § 81, 1.)
Sentence starting: Phœbe,...
- ‘§ 18, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 17, 4’
(Phœbe, § 17, 4.)
Sentence starting: Pilate, Acts of,...
- ‘§ 14, 2’ replaced with ‘§ 13, 2’
(Pilate, Acts of, § 13, 2; 31, 2.)
Sentence starting: Poetry, Christian,...
- ‘173, 6’ replaced with ‘174, 6’
(Poetry, Christian, § 48, 5, 6; 105, 4; 174, 6.)
Sentence starting: _Postilla_,...
- ‘116, 6’ replaced with ‘108, 6’
(_Postilla_, § 103, 9; 108, 6.)
Sentence starting: Prochorus,...
- ‘§ 31, 18’ replaced with ‘§ 32, 6’
(Prochorus, § 32, 6.)
Sentence starting: Prosper Aquit.,...
- ‘53, 8’ replaced with ‘53, 5’
(Prosper Aquit., § 47, 20; 48, 6; 53, 5.)
Sentence starting: Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse,...
- ‘Raimund of Toulouse, § 109, 4.’ replaced with
‘Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse, § 109, 1.’
(Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse, § 109, 1.)
Sentence starting: _Recursus ab abusu_,...
- ‘194, 9’--Invalid reference.
(_abusu_, § 185, 4; 192, 4; 194, 9; 197, 9.)
Sentence starting: Revenues of the Church,...
- ‘45, 6’--Invalid reference.
(Revenues of the Church, § 45, 6; 86, 1.)
Sentence starting: Rudolph II.,...
- ‘§ 129, 19’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 19’
(Rudolph II., § 139, 19; 137, 8.)
Sentence starting: Russia,...
- ‘219, 3, 4’ replaced with ‘210, 3, 4’
(163, 8; 166; 206; 210, 3, 4; 212, 6.)
Sentence starting: Sergius I. of Rome,...
- ‘63, 3’ replaced with ‘63, 2’
(Sergius I. of Rome, § 46, 11; 63, 2.)
Sentence starting: Severa,...
- ‘§ 23, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 22, 4’
(Severa, § 22, 4; 26.)
Sentence starting: Stephanas,...
- ‘§ 18, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 17, 4’
(Stephanas, § 17, 4.)
Sentence starting: Switzerland,...
- ‘189, 7’ replaced with ‘169, 2’
(§ 78, 1; 130; 138; 162, 6; 169, 2;)
Sentence starting: Sylvester, Bern.,...
- ‘§ 102, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 102, 9’
(Sylvester, Bern., § 102, 9.)
Sentence starting: Sympherosa,...
- ‘§ 32, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 32, 8’
(Sympherosa, § 32, 8.)
Sentence starting: Thorwaldsen,...
- ‘§ 173, 9’ replaced with ‘§ 174, 9’
(Thorwaldsen, § 174, 9.)
Sentence starting: Turrecremata [Torquemada], John,...
- ‘112, 14’ replaced with ‘112, 4’
(John, § 110, 15; 112, 4.)
Sentence starting: Turretin, J. A.,...
- ‘§ 164, 1, 6.’ replaced with ‘§ 169, 2, 6.’
(Turretin, J. A., § 169, 2, 6.)
Sentence starting: Union, Lutheran Reformed,...
- ‘§ 155, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 154, 4’
(Reformed, § 154, 4; 167, 4; 169, 1, 2.)
Sentence starting: Vienna, Peace of,...
- ‘§ 139, 40’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 20’
(Vienna, Peace of, § 139, 20.)
Sentence starting: Vinet,...
- ‘§ 129, 5’ replaced with ‘§ 199, 5’
(Vinet, § 199, 5.)
Sentence starting: Voltaire,...
- ‘§ 105, 5, 14, 15’ replaced with ‘§ 165, 5, 14, 15’
(Voltaire, § 165, 5, 14, 15.)
Sentence starting: Wechabites,...
- ‘§ 65, 4’ replaced with ‘§ 65, 1’
(Wechabites, § 65, 1.)
Sentence starting: William of Conches,...
- ‘§ 102, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 102, 9’
(William of Conches, § 102, 9.)
Sentence starting: William of Thierry,...
- ‘§ 102, 2, 10’ replaced with ‘§ 102, 2, 9’
(William of Thierry, § 102, 2, 9.)
Sentence starting: William I. of Orange,...
- ‘§ 129, 12’ replaced with ‘§ 139, 12’
(William I. of Orange, § 139, 12.)
Sentence starting: Wittenberg, Sketch of Reform,...
- ‘§ 135, 13’ replaced with ‘§ 135, 9’
(Wittenberg, Sketch of Reform, § 135, 9.)
Sentence starting: Zwickau, Prophets of,...
- ‘§ 121, 1’ replaced with ‘§ 124, 1’
(Zwickau, Prophets of, § 124, 1.)
Footnote 82.
- ‘Assumtio’ replaced with ‘Assumptio’
(Enoch, Assumptio, Ezra, Bk. of Jub.)
Footnote 251.
- ‘Hadden’ replaced with ‘Haddan’
(Haddan and Stubbs)
Footnote 536.
- ‘Stoddard’ replaced with ‘Stoddart’
(Translated by Miss Stoddart,)
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