SECOND DIVISION. (Continued.) (continued 7)

§ 117.2. The Inquisition, since A.D. 1232 under the direction of the Dominicans (§ 109, 2), spread through all European countries during the 14th century. While the papal court resided at Avignon the Inquisition was at its height in France, where Waldensians and Albigensians, Beghards and Lollards, Fraticelli and Fanatical Spiritualists, were brought in crowds to the stake and subjected to the most cruel tortures. Bernard Delicieux, a Franciscan, raised his voice, A.D. 1300-1320, against the inhuman cruelty of the inquisitors, and with noble independence and heroic bravery appealed to king and pope against the merciless sacrifice of so many victims. He was shut up for life in a dark dungeon, and fed on bread and water.―In Germany, where, from the murder of Conrad of Marburg in A.D. 1233 (§ 109, 3), for almost a century and a half we find no trace of a regularly constituted Inquisition, it made its appearance again in A.D. 1368. During that year Urban V. issued a bull, by which he required that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Germany should support with their counsel and influence the two inquisitors who were searching out the heretical Beghards and Beguines (§ 116, 5), and place their prisons at the disposal of the Holy Office, which had still no prison of its own. His successor, Gregory XI., in A.D. 1372 increased the number of inquisitors in Germany to five, one in each of the archdioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Salzburg, Magdeburg, and Bremen; while his successor, Boniface IX., in A.D. 1399 added a sixth for North Germany. But these papal bulls would probably, owing to the disinclination of the Germans to the Inquisition, like the attempts of Gregory IX., never have been put in force, had not Charles IV. (§ 110, 4, 5) taken up the matter with an ardent zeal that even went beyond the intentions of Urban and Gregory. During his second journey to Rome, in A.D. 1369, he issued from Lucca four imperial decrees, and in A.D. 1378 from Treves a fifth, by which he granted to the Inquisition throughout Germany all the rights, powers, and privileges which it had anywhere, and required that all civil and ecclesiastical authorities, under pain of severest penalties and confiscation of all their goods, should support the Inquisition in its search for heretics and in its discovery and burning of all religious writings in the vulgar tongue composed and circulated by laymen or semi-laymen.―The Spanish Inquisition was re-established under Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1480, and thoroughly organized by the grand-inquisitor Torquemada, A.D. 1483-1499. One of the first inquisitors appointed by him in A.D. 1484 was an Augustinian, Pedro Arbires, who amid the most unrelenting cruelties performed the duties of his office with such zeal, that in sixteen months many hundreds had perished at the stake; but his fanatical career was ended by his murder at the altar in A.D. 1485. Not only the two who did the deed, but also all their relatives and friends, to the number of two hundred, suspected of complicity in a plot, were burned, while the “martyr” himself was beatified by Alexander VII. in A.D. 1661, and canonized by Pius IX. in A.D. 1867. This terrible tribunal further undertook the persecution of the hated Moors and Jews who had been baptized under compulsion (§ 95, 2, 3), which through numerous confiscations greatly enriched the national exchequer of Spain. This institution reached its highest point under the grand-inquisitor the Cardinal Francis Ximenes, A.D. 1507-1517, under whom 2,536 persons were burnt alive and 1,368 in effigy. The auto da fès, which ended at the stake, were conducted with a horrible pomp. Even those who were acquitted of the charge of heresy were compelled for a long time to wear the san benito, an armless robe with a red cross marked on it before and behind. According to Llorente, who had been general secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid, the Spanish inquisition, down to its suppression by Joseph Buonaparte in A.D. 1808, had executed in person 31,912, burned in effigy 17,659, and subjected to severe punishments 291,456.347

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

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

IV. Attempts at Reformation.

§ 118. Attempted Reforms in Church Polity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 118.5. Friends of Reform in Germany.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 119. Evangelical Efforts at Reform.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Communion under both kinds;

Preaching of the pure gospel in the vulgar tongue;

Strict discipline among the clergy; and

Renunciation by the clergy of church property.

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

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

§ 119.9. The Waldensians.

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

§ 119.9A.

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 119.11. An Italian Reformer.―Jerome Savonarola, born A.D. 1452, monk and from A.D. 1481 prior of the Dominican cloister of San Marco in Florence, was from A.D. 1489 in high repute in that city as an eloquent and passionate preacher of repentance, with even reckless boldness declaiming against the depravity of clergy and laity, princes and people. With his whole soul a Dominican, and as such an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas, practising rigid self-discipline by fasts and flagellations, he was led by the study of Augustine and Scripture to a pure and profound knowledge of the evangelical doctrine of salvation, which he sought, not in the merits and intercession of the saints, nor in the performance of good works, but only in the grace of God and justification through faith in the crucified Saviour of sinners. But with this he combined a prophetic-apocalyptic theory, according to which he thought himself called and fitted by Divine inspiration, like the prophets of the Old Testament, to grapple with the political problems of the age. And, in fact, he made many a hardened sinner tremble by revealing contemplated secret sins, and many of his political prophecies seem to have been fulfilled with surprising accuracy. Thus he prophesied the death of Innocent VIII. in A.D. 1492, and proclaimed the speedy overthrow of the house of the Medici in Florence, as well as the punishment of other Italian tyrants and the thorough reformation of the church by a foreign king crossing the Alps with a powerful army. And lo, in the following year, the king of France, Charles VIII., crossed the Alps to enforce his claims upon Naples and force from the pope recognition of the Basel reforms; the Medici were banished from Florence, and Naples unresistingly fell into the hands of the French. Thus the ascetic monk of San Marco became the man of the people, who now began with ruthless energy to carry out, not only moral and religious reformatory notions, but also his political ideal of a democratic kingdom of God. In vain did Alexander VI. seek by offer of a cardinal’s hat to win over the demagogical prophet and reformer; he only replied, “I desire no other red hat than that coloured by the blood of martyrdom.” In vain did the pope insist that he should appear before him at Rome; in vain did he forbid him the pulpit, from which he so powerfully moved the people. An attempt to restore the Medici also failed. At the carnival in A.D. 1497 Savonarola proved the supremacy of his influence over the people by persuading them, instead of the usual buffoonery, to make a bonfire of the articles of luxury and vanity. But already the political movements were turning out unfavourably, and his utterances were beginning to lose their reputation as true prophecies. Charles VIII. had been compelled to quit Italy in A.D. 1495, and Savonarola’s assurances of his speedy return were still unfulfilled. Popular favour vacillated, while the nobles and the libertine youth were roused to the utmost bitterness against him. The Franciscans, as members of a rival order, were his sworn enemies. The papal ban was pronounced against him in A.D. 1497, and the city was put under the interdict. A monk of his cloister, Fra Domenico Pescia, offered to pass the ordeal of fire in behalf of his master, if any of his opponents would submit to the same trial. A Franciscan declared himself ready to do so, and all arrangements were made. But when Domenico insisted upon taking with him a consecrated host, the trial did not come off, to the great disappointment of a people devotedly fond of shows. A fanatical mob took the prophet prisoner. His bitterest enemies were his judges, who, after torture had extorted from him a confession of false prophecy most repugnant to his inmost convictions, condemned him to death by fire as a deceiver of the people and a heretic. On 23rd May, A.D. 1498, he was, along with Domenico and another monk, hung upon a gallows and then burned. The believing joy with which he endured death deepened the reverence of an ever-increasing band of adherents, who proclaimed him saint and martyr. His portrait in the cell once occupied by him, painted by Fra Bartolomeo, surrounded with the halo of a saint, shows the veneration in which he was held by his generation and by his order. His numerous sermons represent to us his burning oratory. His chief work is his Triumphus crucis of A.D. 1497, an eloquent and thoughtful vindication of Christianity against the half pagan scepticism of the Renaissance, then dominant in Florence and at the court. An exposition of the 51st Psalm, written in prison and not completed, works out, with a clearness and precision never before attained, the doctrine of justification by faith. It was on this account republished by Luther in A.D. 1523.352

§ 120. The Revival of Learning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 120.6. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam was the most brilliant of all the humanists, not only of Germany, but also of all Europe. Born in A.D. 1465, he was educated by the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer and Herzogenbusch, and afterwards forced by his relatives to enter a monastery in A.D. 1486. In A.D. 1491 he was relieved from the monastic restraints by the Bishop of Cambray, and sent to finish his studies at Paris. He visited England in A.D. 1497, in the company of young Englishmen to whom he had been tutor. There the humanist theologian Colet of Oxford exerted over him a wholesome influence that told upon his whole future life. After spending a year and a half in England, he passed the next six years, sometimes in France, sometimes in the Netherlands; was in Italy from A.D. 1507 till A.D. 1510; then again for five years in England, for most of that time teaching Greek at Cambridge; then other six years in the Netherlands; and at last, in A.D. 1521, he settled with his publisher Frobenius in Basel, where he enjoyed intercourse with the greatest scholars of the day, and maintained an extensive correspondence. He refused every offer of official appointment, even the rank of cardinal, but in reality held undisputed sway as king in the world of letters. He did much for the advancement of classical studies, and in various ways promoted the Protestant Reformation. The faults of the scholastic method in the study of theology he unsparingly exposed, while the misdeeds of the clergy and the ignorance and sloth of the monks afforded materials for his merciless satires. The heathenish spirit of many of the humanists, as well as the turbulent and revolutionary procedure of Ulrich von Hutten, was quite distasteful to him; but his Pelagianising tendencies also prevented him from appreciating the true character of the gospel. He desired a reformation of the Church, but he had not the reformer’s depth of religious emotion, world-conquering faith, self-denying love, and heroic preparation for martyrdom. He was much too fond of a genial literary life, and his perception of the corruption of the church was much too superficial, so that he sought reformation rather by human culture than by the Divine power of the gospel. When the Reformation conquered at Basel in A.D. 1529, Erasmus withdrew to Freiburg. He returned to Basel in A.D. 1536 for conference with Frobenius, and died there under suspicion of heresy without the sacraments of the church. His friends the monks at an earlier period, on the occasion of a false report of his death, had said in their barbarous Latin that he died “sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus.” The most important of his works are his critical and exegetical treatises on the N.T. The first edition of his Greek N.T., with Latin translation, short notes, and three introductory sections, was published in A.D. 1516. In the second edition of A.D. 1519, one of these introductory sections, Ratio veræ theologiæ, appeared in a greatly extended form; and from A.D. 1522 it was issued separately, and passed through several editions. Scarcely less important were his paraphrases of all the biblical books except the Apocalypse, begun in A.D. 1517. He did much service too by his editions of the Fathers. On his polemic with Luther see § 125, 3. His Ecclesiastes s. concionator evangelicus of A.D. 1535 is a treatise on homiletics admirable of its kind. In his “Praise of Folly” (Ἐγκώμιον μωρίας, s. Laus stultitiæ) of A.D. 1511, dedicated to his friend Sir Thomas More, he overwhelms with ridicule the schoolmen, as well as the monks and the clergy; and in his “Colloquies” of A.D. 1518, by which he hoped to make boys latiniores et meliores, he let no opportunity pass of reproaching the monks, the clergy, and the forms of worship which he regarded as superstitious. Also his Adagia of A.D. 1500 had afforded him abundant scope for the same sort of thing. A piety of the purest and noblest type, derived from the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and from intercourse with Colet, breathes through his Enchiridion militis christiani of A.D. 1502.358―Continuation § 123, 3.