SECOND DIVISION. (Continued.) (continued 6)

§ 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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.