Volume II Part 4 (2/2)

1307, so well devised were the measures. The grand master, Du Molay, was secured, not, however, without some perfidy. Now were openly brought forward the charges which struck Europe with consternation.

Substantiation of them was offered by witnesses, but it was secured by submitting the accused to torture. The grand master, Du Molay, at first admitted their guilt of the crimes alleged. After some hesitation, the pope issued a bull, commanding the King of England to do what the King of France had already done, to arrest the Templars and seize their property. His declaration, that one of the order, a man of high birth, had confessed to himself his criminality, seems to have made a profound impression on the mind of the English king, and of many other persons until that time reluctant to believe. The Parliament and the University of Paris expressed themselves satisfied with the evidence. New examinations were held, and new convictions were made. The pope issued a bull addressed to all Christendom, declaring how slowly, but, alas! how certainly, he had been compelled to believe in the apostacy of the order, and commanding that everywhere proceedings should be inst.i.tuted against it. A papal commission a.s.sembled in Paris, August 7, A.D. 1309.

The grand master was brought before it. He professed his belief in the Catholic faith, but now denied that the order was guilty of the charges alleged against it, as also did many of the other knights. Other witnesses were, however, brought forward, some of whom pretended to have abandoned the order on account of its foul acts. At the Porte St.

Antoine, on many pleasant evenings in the following May, William de Nogaret revelled in the luxury of avenging the shade of his father.

[Sidenote: Found guilty and punished.] One hundred and thirteen Templars were, in slow succession, burnt at stakes. The remorseless lawyer was repaying the Church in her own coin. Yet of this vast concourse of sufferers all died protesting their innocence; not one proved an apostate. Notwithstanding this most significant fact--for those who were ready to lay down their lives, and to meet with unshaken constancy the fire, were surely the bravest of the knights, and their dying declaration is worthy of our most reverent consideration--things were such that no other course was possible than the abolition of the order, and this accordingly took place. The pope himself seems to have been satisfied that the crimes had been perpetrated under the instigation or temptation of Satan; but men of more enlarged views appear to have concluded that, though the Templars were innocent of the moral abominations charged against them, a familiarity with other forms of belief in the East had undoubtedly sapped their faith. After a weary imprisonment of six years, embittered by many hards.h.i.+ps, the grand master, Du Molay, was brought up for sentence. He had been found guilty.

With his dying breath, ”before Heaven and earth, on the verge of death, when the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight on the soul,”

he declared the innocence of the order and of himself. [Sidenote: Burning of Du Molay.] The vesper-bell was sounding when Du Molay and a brother convict were led forth to their stakes, placed on an island in the Seine. King Philip himself was present. As the smoke and flames enveloped them they continued to affirm their innocence. Some averred that forth from the fire Du Molay's voice sounded, ”Clement! thou wicked and false judge, I summon thee to meet me within forty days at the bar of G.o.d.” Some said that he also summoned the king. In the following year King Philip the Fair and Pope Clement the Fifth were dead.

John XXII., elected after an interval of more than two years spent in rivalries and intrigues between the French and Italian cardinals, continued the residence at Avignon. His movements took a practical turn in the commencement of a process for the recovery of the treasures of Clement from the Viscount de Lomenie. This was only a part of the wealth of the deceased pope, but it amounted to a million and three quarters of florins of gold. The Inquisition was kept actively at work for the extermination of the believers in ”The Everlasting Gospel,” and the remnant of the Albigenses and Waldenses. But all this had no other result than that which eventually occurred--an examination of the authenticity and rightfulness of the papal power. With an instinct as to the origin of the misbelief everywhere spreading, the pope published bulls against the Jews, of whom a b.l.o.o.d.y persecution had arisen, and ordered that all their Talmuds and other blasphemous books should be burnt. [Sidenote: Marsilio's work, ”The Defender of Peace.”] A physician, Marsilio of Padua, published a work, ”The Defender of Peace.”

It was a philosophical examination of the principles of government, and of the nature and limits of the sacerdotal power. Its democratic tendency was displayed by its demonstration that the exposition of the law of Christianity rests not with the pope nor any other priest, but with a general council; it rejected the papal political pretensions; a.s.serted that no one can be rightfully excommunicated by a pope alone, and that he has no power of coercion over human thought; that the civil immunities of the clergy ought to be ended; that poverty and humility ought alone to be their characteristics; that society ought to provide them with a decent sustenance, but nothing more: their pomp, extravagance, luxury, and usurpations, especially that of t.i.thes, should be abrogated; that neither Christ nor the Scriptures ever gave St. Peter a supremacy over the other apostles; that, if history is to be consulted, St. Paul, and not St. Peter, was bishop of Rome--indeed, it is doubtful whether the latter was ever in that city, the Acts of the Apostles being silent on that subject. From these and many other such arguments he drew forty-one conclusions adverse to the political and ecclesiastical supremacy of the pope.

It is not necessary to consider here the relations of John XXII. to Louis of Bavaria, nor of the antipope Nicholas; they belong merely to political history. But, as if to show how the intellectual movement was working its way, the pontiff himself did not escape a charge of heresy.

[Sidenote: The ”beatific vision.”] Though he had so many temporal affairs on his hands, John did not hesitate to raise the great question of the ”beatific vision.” In his opinion, the dead, even the saints, do not enjoy the beatific vision of G.o.d until after the Judgment-day. At once there was a demand among the orthodox, ”What! do not the apostles, John, Peter, nay, even the blessed Virgin, stand yet in the presence of G.o.d?” The pope directed the most learned theologians to examine the question, himself entering actively into the dispute. The University of Paris was involved. The King of France declared that his realm should not be polluted with such heretical doctrines. A single sentence explains the practical direction of the dogma, so far as the interests of the Church were concerned: ”If the saints stand not in the presence of G.o.d, of what use is their intercession? What is the use of addressing prayers to them?” The folly of the pontiff perhaps might be excused by his age. He was now nearly ninety years old. That he had not guided himself according to the prevailing sentiment of the lower religious orders, who thought that poverty is essential to salvation, appeared at his death, A.D. 1334. He left eighteen millions of gold florins in specie, and seven millions in plate and jewels.

[Sidenote: It is explained by Benedict XII.] His successor, Benedict XII., disposed of the question of the ”beatific vision:” ”It is only those saints who do not pa.s.s through Purgatory that immediately behold the G.o.dhead.” The pontificate of Benedict, which was not without many good features, hardly verified the expression with which he greeted the cardinals when they elected him, ”You have chosen an a.s.s.” His was a gay life. There is a tradition that to him is due the origin of the proverb, ”As drunk as a pope.”

[Sidenote: Voluptuousness of Avignon.] In the subsequent pontificate of Clement VI., A.D. 1342, the court at Avignon became the most voluptuous in Christendom. It was crowded with knights and ladies, painters and other artists. It exhibited a day-dream of equipages and banquets. The pontiff himself delighted in female society, but, in his weakness, permitted his lady, the Countess of Turenne, to extort enormous revenues by the sale of ecclesiastical promotions. Petrarch, who lived at Avignon at this time, speaks of it as a vast brothel. His own sister had been seduced by the holy father, John XXII. During all these years the Romans had made repeated attempts to force back the papal court to their city.

With its departure all their profits had gone. But the fatal policy of electing Frenchmen into the College of Cardinals seemed to shut out every hope. [Sidenote: Rienzi.] The unscrupulous manner in which this was done is ill.u.s.trated by the fact that Clement made one of his relatives, a lad of eighteen, a cardinal. For a time the brief glories of Rienzi cast a flickering ray on Rome; but Rienzi was only a demagogue--an impostor. It was the deep impression made upon Europe that the residence at Avignon was an abandonment of the tomb of St. Peter, that compelled Urban V. to return to Rome. This determination was strengthened by a desire to escape out of the power of the kings of France, and to avoid the free companies who had learned to extort bribes for sparing Avignon from plunder. He left Avignon, A.D. 1367, amid the reluctant grief of his cardinals, torn from that gay and dissipated city, and in dread of the recollections and of the populace of Rome. And well it might be so; for not only in Rome, but all over Italy, piety was held in no respect, and the discipline of the Church in derision.

[Sidenote: Irreverence of Barnabas Visconti.] When Urban sent to Barnabas Visconti, who was raising trouble in Tuscany, a bull of excommunication by the hands of two legates, Barnabas actually compelled them, in his presence, to eat the parchment on which the bull was written, together with the leaden seal and the silken string, and, telling them that he hoped it would sit as lightly on their stomachs as it did on his, sent them back to their master! In a little time--it was but two years--absence from France became insupportable; the pope returned to Avignon, and there died. [Sidenote: The popes return to Rome.] It was reserved for his successor, Gregory XI., finally to end what was termed, from its seventy years' duration, the Babylonish captivity, and restore the papacy to the Eternal City, A.D. 1376.

[Sidenote: Causes of the great schism.] But, though the popes had thus returned to Rome, the effects of King Philip's policy still continued.

On the death of Gregory XI., the conclave, meeting at Rome--for the conclave must meet where the pope dies--elected Urban VI., under intimidation of the Roman populace, who were determined to retain the papacy in their city; but, escaping to Fondi, and repenting of what they had thus done, they proclaimed his election void, and subst.i.tuted Clement VII. for him. They were actually at one time on the point of choosing the King of France as pope. Thus began the great schism. It was, in reality, a struggle between France and Italy for the control of the papacy. The former had enjoyed it for seventy years; the latter was determined to recover it. The schism thus rested originally on political considerations, but these were doubtless exasperated by the conduct of Urban, whose course was overbearing and even intolerable to his supporters. Nor did he amend as his position became more consolidated.

In A.D. 1385, suspecting his cardinals of an intention to seize him, declare him a heretic, and burn him, he submitted several of them to torture in his own presence, while he recited his breviary. Escaping from Nocera, where he had been besieged, he caused the Bishop of Aquila to be killed on the road-side. Others he tied in sacks, and threw into the sea at Genoa. It was supposed, not without reason, that he was insane.

[Sidenote: Pecuniary necessities of the rival popes.] If there had formerly been pecuniary difficulty in supporting one papal court, it, of course, became greater now that there were two. Such troubles, every day increasing, led at length to unhappy political movements. There was an absolute necessity for drawing money to Rome and also to Avignon. The device of a jubilee was too transitory and inadequate, even though, by an improvement in the theory of that festival, it was expedited by thirty-three years, answering to our Saviour's life. At Avignon, the difficulty of Clement, who was of amiable and polished manners, turned on the French Church being obliged to support him; and it is not to be wondered at that the French clergy looked with dislike on the pontifical establishment among them, since it was driven by its necessities to prey on all their best benefices. [Sidenote: Organization of simony.] Under such circ.u.mstances, no other course was possible to the rival popes and their successors than a thorough reorganization of the papal financial system--the more complete development of simony, indulgences, and other improper sources of emolument. In this manner Boniface IX. tripled the value of the annates upon the papal books. Usurers or brokers, intervening between the purchasers of benefices and the papal exchequer, were established, and it is said that, under the pressing difficulties of the case, benefices were known to have been sold, many times in succession, to different claimants in one week. Late applicants might obtain a preference for appointments on making a cash payment of twenty-five florins; an increased preference might be had for fifty. It became, at last, no unusual thing to write to kings and prelates for subsidies--a proof how greatly the papacy had been weakened by the events of the times.

[Sidenote: Indignation of religious Europe.] But religious Europe could not bear with such increasing scandals. The rival popes were incessantly accusing each other of falsehood and all manner of wickedness. At length the public sentiment found its expression in the Council of Pisa, called by the cardinals on their own responsibility. This council summoned the two popes--Benedict XIII.

and Gregory XII.--before it; declared the crimes and excesses imputed to them to be true, and deposed them both, appointing in their stead Alexander V. [Sidenote: Three popes.] There were now, therefore, three popes. But, besides thus rendering the position of things worse than it was before in this respect, the council had taken the still more extraordinary step of overthrowing the autocracy of the pope. It had been compelled by the force of circ.u.mstances to destroy the very foundation of Latin Christianity by a.s.suming the position of superiority over the vicar of Christ. Now might be discerned by men of reflexion the purely human nature of the papacy.

It had broken down. Out of the theological disputes of preceding years a political principle was obviously emerging; the democratic spirit was developing itself, and the hierarchy was in rebellion against its sovereign.

Nor was this great movement limited to the clergy. In every direction the laity partic.i.p.ated in it, pecuniary questions being in very many instances the incentive. Things had come to such a condition that it seemed to be of little moment what might be the personal character of the pontiff; the necessities of the position irresistibly drove him to replenish the treasury by shameful means. [Sidenote: Balthazar Cossa made pope.] Thus, on Alexander's death, Balthazar Cossa, an evil but an able man, who succeeded as John XXIII., was not only compelled to extend the existing simoniacal practices of the ecclesiastical brokers'

offices, but actually to derive revenue from the licensing of prost.i.tutes, gambling-houses, and usurers. [Sidenote: Dissatisfaction in England.] In England, for ages a mine of wealth to Rome, the tendency of things was shown by such facts as the remonstrance of the Commons with the crown on the appointment of ecclesiastics to all the great offices; the allegations made by the ”Good Parliament” as to the amount of money drawn by Rome from the kingdom. They a.s.serted that it was five times as much as the taxes levied by the king, and that the pope's revenue from England was greater than the revenue of any prince in Christendom. It was shown again by such facts as the pa.s.sage of the statutes of Mortmain, Provisors, and Praemunire, and by the universal clamour against the mendicant orders. This dissatisfaction with the clergy was accompanied by a desire for knowledge. [Sidenote: Wiclif, the English reformer.] Thousands of persons crowded to the universities both on the Continent and in England. In a community thus well prepared, Wiclif found no difficulty in disseminating his views. He had adopted in many particulars the doctrines of Berengar. He taught that the bread in the Eucharist is not the real body of Christ, but only its image; that the Roman Church has no true claim to heads.h.i.+p over other churches; that its bishop has no more authority than any other bishop; that it is right to deprive a delinquent Church of temporal possessions; that no bishop ought to have prisons for the punishment of those obnoxious to him; and that the Bible alone is a sufficient guide for a Christian man.

[Sidenote: He translates the Bible.] His translation of the Bible into English was the practical carrying out of that a.s.sertion for the benefit of his own countrymen. All cla.s.ses of society were becoming infected.

The government for a season vacillated. It was said that every other man in England was a Lollard. The Lollards were Wiclifites. But the Church at last persuaded the government to let her try her hand, and the statute ”de heretico comburendo” was pa.s.sed A.D. 1400. [Sidenote: Burning of English heretics.] William Sautree, a priest who had turned Wiclifite, was the first English martyr. John Badbee, a tailor, who denied transubstantiation--accused of having said that, if it were true, there were 20,000 G.o.ds in every corn-field in England--next suffered in like manner at the stake, in presence of the Prince of Wales. Lord Cobham, the head of the Lollards, who had denounced the pope as Anti-Christ, the Son of Perdition, was imprisoned; but escaping, became involved in political movements, and suffered at length the double penalty for heresy and treason, being hung on a gallows with a fire blazing at his feet. It is interesting to remark the social rank of these three early martyrs. Heresy was pervading all cla.s.ses, from the lowest to the highest.

[Sidenote: The Council of Constance deposes the pope,] The Council of Constance met A.D. 1415. It had a threefold object: 1. The union of the Church under one pope; 2. The reformation of the clergy; 3. The suppression of heresy. Its policy from the first was determined. It proclaimed itself supreme. It demanded the abdication of the pope John XXIII.; exhibited articles of accusation against him, some of them of such enormity as almost to surpa.s.s belief, and justifying the epithet that he was ”a devil incarnate.” The suffrage of the council was changed. The plan of voting by nations, which reduced the Italians to a single vote, was introduced. These incidental facts may indicate to us that there were present men who understood thoroughly how to manage the machinery of such an a.s.sembly, and that the remark of aeneas Sylvius, afterward Pope Pius II., respecting the Council of Basle was equally true as to that of Constance, that it was not so much directed by the Holy Ghost as by the pa.s.sions of men. The influence that lawyers were now exercising in social affairs--their habits of arrangement, of business, and intrigue, is strikingly manifested in the management of these a.s.semblages; their arts had pa.s.sed to the clergy, and even in part to the people. But how vast was the change that had occurred in the papacy from the voluntary abdication of Celestine to the compulsory abdication of John!

[Sidenote: and murders John Huss.] To this council, also, came John Huss, under a safe-conduct from the Emperor Sigismund. Scarcely, however, had he arrived when he was imprisoned; this treachery being excused from the necessity of conceding it to the reforming party. On June 5th, A.D. 1416, Huss was brought in chains before the council. It was declared unlawful to keep faith with a heretic. His countrymen, the Bohemian lords present, protested against such perfidy, and loudly demanded his release. Articles of accusation, derived from his works, were presented. He avowed himself ready to defend his opinions. The uproar was so great that the council temporarily adjourned. Two days afterwards the trial was resumed. It was ushered in by an eclipse of the sun, said to have been total at Prague. No one of the bloodthirsty ecclesiastics laid to heart the solemn monition that, after his moment of greatest darkness was over, the sun shone forth with recovered effulgence again. The emperor was present, with all the fathers. The first accusation entered on related to transubstantiation. On this and on succeeding occasions the emperor took part in the discussions, among other things observing that, in his opinion, the prisoner was worthy of death. After a lengthy inquiry into his alleged errors, a form of recantation was prepared for Huss. [Sidenote: n.o.ble conduct of Huss.]

With modest firmness he declined it, concluding his n.o.ble answer with the words, ”I appeal to Christ Jesus, the one all-powerful and all-just Judge. To him I commend my cause, who will judge every man, not according to false witnesses and erring councils, but according to truth and man's desert.” On July 1st the council met in full session. Thirty articles against Huss were read. Among other things, they alleged that he believed the material bread to be unchanged after the consecration.

In his extremity the prisoner looked steadfastly at the traitor Sigismund, and solemnly exclaimed, ”Freely came I here under the safe-conduct of the emperor.” The conscience-stricken monarch blushed.

Huss was then made to kneel down and receive his sentence. It condemned his writings and his body to the flames.

[Sidenote: He is burnt.] He was then degraded and despoiled of his orders. Some of the bishops mocked at him; some, more merciful, implored him to recant. They cut his hair in the form of a cross, and set upon his head a high paper crown on which devils were painted. ”We devote thy soul to the devils in h.e.l.l.” ”And I commend my soul to the most merciful Lord Christ Jesus.” He was then led forth. They pa.s.sed by the bishop's palace, where Huss's books were burning. When they fastened him with a chain to his stake, the painted crown fell off, but the soldiers replaced it. ”Let him and his devils be burned together.” As the flames closed over him, he chanted psalms and prayed to the Redeemer. Can that be true which requires for its support the murder of a true man?

[Sidenote: It murders, also, Jerome of Prague.] So acted without a dissenting voice the Council of Constance. It feared the spread of heresy, but it did not fear, perhaps did not consider, that higher tribunal to whose inexorable verdict councils, and popes, and emperors must submit--posterity. It a.s.serted itself to be under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. It took profit by a shameful perfidy. It was a conclave of murderers. It stifled the voice of an earnest man, solemnly protesting against a doctrine now derided by all the intellect of Europe. The revolution it was compa.s.sing it inaugurated in blood, not alone that of John Huss, but also of Jerome of Prague. These martyrs were no common men. [Sidenote: His singular eloquence.] Poggio Bracciolini, an eye-witness, says, in a letter to Leonardo Aretino, speaking of the eloquence of Jerome, ”When I consider what his choice of words was, what his elocution, what his reasoning, what his countenance, his voice, his action I must affirm, however much we may admire the ancients, that in such a cause no one could have approached nearer to the model of their eloquence.”

John XXIII. was compelled to abdicate. Gregory XII. died. Some time after, Benedict XIII. followed him. The council had elected Martin V., and in him found a master who soon put an end to its doings. [Sidenote: What the council did.] It had deposed one pope and elected another; it had cemented the dominant creed with blood; it had authorized the dreadful doctrine that a difference in religious opinion justifies the breaking of plighted faith between man and man; it had attempted to perpetuate its own power by enacting that councils should be held every five years; but it had not accomplished its great object--ecclesiastical reform.

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