THIRD DIVISION. (Continued.)

SECOND SECTION. CHURCH HISTORY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

I. Relations between the Different Churches.

§ 152. East and West.

The papacy formed new plans for conquest in the domain of the Eastern church, but with at most only transient success. Still more illusory were the hopes entertained for a while in Geneva and London in regard to the Calvinizing of the Greek church.

§ 152.1. Roman Catholic Hopes.―The Jesuit missions among the Turks and schismatic Greeks failed, but among the Abyssinians some progress was made. By promising Spanish aid, the Jesuit Paez succeeded, in A.D. 1621, in inducing the Sultan Segued to abjure the Jacobite heresy. Mendez was made Abyssinian patriarch by Urban VIII. in A.D. 1626, but the clergy and people repeatedly rebelled against sultan and patriarch. In A.D. 1642 the next sultan drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom, and in it henceforth no traces of Catholicism were to be found.―In Russia the false Demetrius, in A.D. 1605, working in Polish Catholic interests, sought to catholicize the empire; but this only convinced the Russians that he was no true czar’s son. When his Catholic Polish bride entered Moscow with 200 Poles, a riot ensued, in which Demetrius lost his life.445

§ 152.2. Calvinistic Hopes.―Cyril Lucar, a native of Crete, then under Venetian rule, by long residence in Geneva had come to entertain a strong liking to the Reformed church. Expelled from his situation as rector of a Greek seminary at Ostrog by Jesuit machinations, he was made Patriarch of Alexandria in A.D. 1602 and of Constantinople in A.D. 1621. He maintained a regular correspondence with Reformed divines in Holland, Switzerland, and England. In A.D. 1628 he sent the famous Codex Alexandrinus as a present to James I. He wrought expressly for a union of the Greek and Reformed churches, and for this end sent, in A.D. 1629, to Geneva an almost purely Calvinistic confession. But the other Greek bishops opposed his union schemes, and influential Jesuits in Constantinople accused him of political faults. Four times the sultan deposed and banished him, and at last, in A.D. 1638, he was strangled as a traitor and cast into the sea.―One of his Alexandrian clergy, Metrophanes Critopulus, whom in A.D. 1616 he had sent for his education to England, studied several years at Oxford, then at German Protestant universities, ending with Helmstadt, where, in A.D. 1625, he composed in Greek a confession of the faith of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was pointedly antagonistic to the Romish doctrine, conciliatory toward Protestantism, while abandoning nothing essential in the Greek Orthodox creed, and showing signs of the possession of independent speculative power. Afterwards Metrophanes became Patriarch of Alexandria, and in the synod, presided over by Lucar’s successor, Cyril of Berrhoë, at Constantinople in A.D. 1638, gave his vote for the formal condemnation of the man who had been already executed.446

§ 152.3. Orthodox Constancy.―The Russian Orthodox church, after its emancipation from Constantinople and the erection of an independent patriarchate at Moscow in A.D. 1589 (§ 73, 4), had decidedly the pre-eminence over the Greek Orthodox church, and the Russian czar took the place formerly occupied by the East Roman emperor as protector of the whole Orthodox church. The dangers to the Orthodox faith threatened by schemes of union with Catholics and Protestants induced the learned metropolitan, Peter Mogilas of Kiev, to compose a new confession in catechetical form, which, in A.D. 1643, was formally authorized by the Orthodox patriarchs as Ὀρθόδοξος ὁμολογία τῆς καθολικῆς καὶ ἀποστολικῆς ἐκκλησίας τῆς ἀνατολικῆς.―Thirty years later a controversy on the eucharist broke out between the Jansenists Nicole and Arnauld, on the one side, and the Calvinists Claude and Jurieu, on the other (§ 157, 1), in which both claimed to be in agreement with the Greek church. A synod was convened under Dositheus of Jerusalem in A.D. 1672, at the instigation of French diplomatists, where the questions raised by Cyril were again taken into consideration. Maintaining a friendly attitude toward the Romish church, it directed a violent polemic against Calvinism. In order to save the character of the Constantinopolitan chair for constant Orthodoxy, Cyril’s confession of A.D. 1629 was pronounced a spurious, heretical invention, and a confession composed by Dositheus, in which Cyril’s Calvinistic heresies were repudiated, was incorporated with the synod’s acts.

§ 153. Catholicism and Protestantism.

The Jesuit counter-reformation (§ 151) was eminently successful during the first decades of the century in Bohemia. The Westphalian Peace restrained its violence, but did not prevent secret machinations and the open exercise of all conceivable arts of seduction. Next to the conversion of Bohemia, the greatest triumph of the restoration was won in France in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Besides such victories the Catholics were able to glory in the conversion of several Protestant princes. New endeavours at union were repeatedly made, but these in every case proved as fruitless as former attempts had done.

§ 153.1. Conversions of Protestant Princes.―The first reigning prince who became a convert to Romanism was the Margrave James III. of Baden. He went over in A.D. 1590 (§ 144, 4), but as his death occurred soon after, his conduct had little influence upon his people. Of greater consequence was the conversion, in A.D. 1614, of the Count-palatine Wolfgang William of Neuburg, as it prepared the way for the catholicizing of the whole Palatinate, which followed in A.D. 1685. Much was made of the passing over to the Catholic church of Christina of Sweden, the highly gifted but eccentric daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. As she had resigned the crown, the pope gained no political advantage from his new member, and Alexander VII. had even to contribute to her support. The Elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus II., passed over to the Roman Catholic church in A.D. 1697, in order to qualify himself for the Polish crown; but the rights of his Protestant subjects were carefully guarded. An awkwardness arose from the fact that the prince was pledged by the directory of the Regensburg Diet of A.D. 1653 to care for the interests of the evangelical church. Now that he had become a Catholic, he still formally promised to do so, but had his duties discharged by a commissioner. Subsequently this officer was ordered to take his directions from the evangelical council of Dresden.

§ 153.2. The Restoration in Germany and the Neighbouring States (§ 151, 1).―Matthias having, in violation of the royal letter of his predecessor Rudolph II. (§ 139, 19), refused to allow the Protestants of Bohemia to build churches, was driven out; the Jesuits also were expelled, and the Calvinistic Elector-palatine Frederick V. was chosen as prince in A.D. 1619. Ferdinand II. (A.D. 1619-1637) defeated him, tore up the royal letter, restored the Jesuits, and expelled the Protestant pastors. Efforts were made by Christian IV. of Denmark and other Protestant princes to save Protestantism, but without success. Ferdinand now issued his Restitution Edict of A.D. 1629, which deprived Protestants of their privileges, and gave to Catholic nobles unrestricted liberty to suppress the evangelical faith in their dominions. It was then that Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, in religious not less than political interests, made his appearance as the saviour of Protestantism.447 The unhappy war was brought to an end in A.D. 1648 by the publication at Münster and Osnabrück of the Peace of Westphalia, which Innocent X. in his bull “Zelo Domus Dei” of A.D. 1651 pronounced “null and void, without influence on past, present, and future.” Germany lost several noble provinces, but its intellectual and religious freedom was saved. Under Swedish and French guarantee the Augsburg Religious Peace was confirmed and even extended to the Reformed, as related to the Augsburg Confession. The church property was to be restored on January 1st, A.D. 1624. The political equality of Protestants and Catholics throughout Germany was distinctly secured. In Bohemia, however, Protestantism was thoroughly extirpated, and in the other Austrian states the oppression continued down to the time of Joseph II. In Silesia, from the passing of the Restitution Edict, over a thousand churches had been violently taken from the evangelicals. No compensation was now thought of, but rather the persecution continued throughout the whole century (§ 165, 4), and many thousands were compelled to migrate, for the most part to Upper Lusatia.

§ 153.3. Also in Livonia, from A.D. 1561 under Polish rule, the Jesuits gained a footing and began the restoration, but under Gustavus Adolphus from A.D. 1621 their machinations were brought to an end.―The ruthless Valteline Massacre of A.D. 1620 may be described as a Swiss St. Bartholomew on a small scale. All Protestants were murdered in one day. The conspirators at a signal from the clock tower in the early morning broke into the houses of heretics, and put all to death, down to the very babe in the cradle. Between four and five hundred were slaughtered.―In Hungary, at the close of the preceding century only three noble families remained Catholic, and the Protestant churches numbered 2,000; but the Jesuits, who had settled there under the protection of Rudolph II. in 1579, resumed their intrigues, and the Archbishop of Gran, Pazmany, wrought hard for the restoration of Catholicism. Rakoczy of Transylvania, in the Treaty of Linz of A.D. 1645, concluded a league offensive and defensive with Sweden and France, which secured political and religious liberty for Hungary; but of the 400 churches of which the Protestants had been robbed only ninety were given back. The bigoted Leopold I., from A.D. 1655 king of Hungary, inaugurated a yet more severe persecution, which continued until the publication of the Toleration Edict of Joseph II. in A.D. 1781. The 2,000 Protestant congregations were by this time reduced to 105.

§ 153.4. The Huguenots in France (§ 139, 17).―Henry IV. faithfully fulfilled the promises which he made in the Edict of Nantes; but under Louis XIII., A.D. 1610-1643, the oppressions of the Huguenots were renewed, and led to fresh outbreaks. Richelieu withdrew their political privileges, but granted them religious toleration in the Edict of Nismes, A.D. 1629. Louis XIV., A.D. 1643-1715, at the instigation of his confessors, sought to atone for his sins by purging his land of heretics. When bribery and court favour had done all that they could do in the way of conversions, the fearful dragonnades began, A.D. 1681. The formal Revocation of the Edict of Nantes followed in A.D. 1685, and persecution raged with the utmost violence. Thousands of churches were torn down, vast numbers of confessors were tortured, burnt, or sent to the galleys. In spite of the terrible penal laws against emigrating, in spite of the watch kept over the frontiers, hundreds of thousands escaped, and were received with open arms as refugees in Brandenburg, Holland, England, Denmark, and Switzerland. Many fled into the wilds of the Cevennes, where under the name of Camisards they maintained a heroic conflict for years, until at last exterminated by an army at least ten times their strength. The struggle reached the utmost intensity of bitterness on both sides in A.D. 1702, when the fanatical and inhumanly cruel inquisitor, the Abbé du Chaila, was slain. At the head of the Camisard army was a young peasant, Jean Cavalier, who by his energetic and skilful conduct of the campaign astonished the world. At last the famous Marshal Villars, by promising a general amnesty, release of all prisoners, permission to emigrate with possessions, and religious toleration to those who remained, succeeded in persuading Cavalier to lay down his arms. The king ratified this bargain, only refusing the right of religious freedom. Many, however, submitted; while others emigrated, mostly to England. Cavalier entered the king’s service as colonel; but distrusting the arrangements fled to Holland, and afterwards to England, where in A.D. 1740 he died as governor of Jersey. In A.D. 1707 a new outbreak took place, accompanied by prophetic fanaticism, in consequence of repeated dragonnades, but it was put down by the stake, the gallows, the axe, and the wheel. France had lost half a million of her most pious, industrious, and capable inhabitants, and yet two millions of Huguenots deprived of all their rights remained in the land.448

§ 153.5. The Waldensians in Piedmont (§ 139, 25).―Although in A.D. 1654 the Duke of Savoy confirmed to the Waldensians their privileges, by Easter of the following year a bloody persecution broke out, in which a Piedmontese army, together with a horde of released prisoners and Irish refugees, driven from their native land by Cromwell’s severities, to whom the duke had given shelter in the valleys, perpetrated the most horrible cruelties. Yet in the desperate conflict the Waldensians held their ground. The intervention of the Protestant Swiss cantons won for them again a measure of toleration, and liberal gifts from abroad compensated them for their loss of property. Cromwell too sent to the relief of the sufferers the celebrated Lord Morland in A.D. 1658. While in the valleys he got possession of a number of MSS. (§ 108, 11), which he took home with him and deposited in the Cambridge Library. In A.D. 1685 the persecution and civil war were again renewed at the instigation of Louis XIV. The soldiers besieged the valleys, and more than 14,000 captives were consigned to fortresses and prisons. But the rest of the Waldensians plucked up courage, inflicted many defeats upon their enemy, and so moved the government in A.D. 1686 to release the prisoners and send them out of the country. Some found their way to Germany, others fled to Switzerland. These last, aided by Swiss troops, and led by their own pastor, Henry Arnaud, made an attack upon Piedmont in A.D. 1689, and conquered again their own country. They continued in possession, notwithstanding all attempts to dislodge them.

§ 153.6. The Catholics in England and Ireland.―When James I., A.D. 1603-1625, the son of Mary Stuart, ascended the English throne (§ 139, 11), the Catholics expected from him nothing short of the complete restoration of the old religion. But great as James’ inclination towards Catholicism may have been, his love of despotic authority was still greater. He therefore rigorously suppressed the Jesuits, who disputed the royal supremacy over the church; and the bitterness of the Catholics now reached its height. They organized the so-called Gunpowder Plot, with the intention of blowing up the royal family and the whole Parliament at the first meeting of the house. At the head of the conspiracy stood Rob. Catesby, Thomas Percy of Northumberland, and Guy Fawkes, an English officer in the Spanish service. The plan was discovered shortly before the day appointed for its execution. On November 5th, A.D. 1605, Fawkes, with lantern and matches, was seized in the cellar. The rest of the conspirators fled, but, after a desperate struggle, in which Catesby and Percy fell, were arrested, and, together with two Jesuit accomplices, executed as traitors. Great severities were then exercised toward the Catholics, not only in England, but also in Ireland, where the bulk of the population was attached to the Romish faith. James I. completed the transference of ecclesiastical property to the Anglican church, and robbed the Irish nobles of almost all their estates, and gifted them over to Scottish and English favourites. All Catholics, because they refused to take the oath of supremacy, i.e. to recognise the king as head of the church, were declared ineligible for any civil office. These oppressions at last led to the fearful Irish massacre. In October, A.D. 1641, a desperate outbreak of the Catholics took place throughout the country. It aimed at the destruction of all Protestants in Ireland. The conspirators rushed from all sides into the houses of the Protestants, murdered the inhabitants, and drove them naked and helpless from their homes. Many thousands died on the roadside of hunger and cold. In other places they were driven in crowds into the rivers and drowned, or into empty houses, which were burnt over them. The number of those who suffered is variously estimated from 40,000 to 400,000. Charles I., A.D. 1625-1649, was suspected as instigator of this terrible deed, and it may be regarded as his first step toward the scaffold (§ 155, 1). After the execution of Charles, Oliver Cromwell, in A.D. 1649, at the call of Parliament, took fearful revenge for the Irish crime. In the two cities which he took by storm he had all the citizens cut down without distinction. Panic-stricken, the inhabitants of the other cities fled to the bogs. Within nine months the whole island was reconquered. Hundreds of thousands, driven from their native soil, wandered as homeless fugitives, and their lands were divided among English soldiers and settlers. During the time of the English Commonwealth, A.D. 1649-1660, all moderate men, even those who had formerly demanded religious toleration, not only for all Christian sects, but also for Jews and Mohammedans, and even atheists, were now at one in excluding Catholics from its benefit, because they all saw in the Catholics a party ready at any moment to prove traitors to their country at the bidding of a foreign sovereign.―The Restoration under Charles II. could not greatly ameliorate the calamities of the Irish. Religious persecution indeed ceased, but the property taken from the Catholic church and native owners still remained in the hands of the Anglican church and the Protestant occupiers. To counterbalance the Catholic proclivities of Charles II. (§ 155, 3), the English Parliament of A.D. 1673 passed the Test Act, which required every civil and military officer to take the test oaths, condemning transubstantiation and the worship of the saints, and to receive the communion according to the Anglican rite as members of the State church. The statements of a certain Titus Oates, that the Jesuits had organized a plot for murdering the king and restoring the papacy, led to fearful riots in A.D. 1678 and many executions. But the reports were seemingly unfounded, and were probably the fruit of an intrigue to deprive the king’s Catholic brother, James II., of the right of succession. When James ascended the throne, in A.D. 1685, he immediately entered into negotiations with Rome, and filled almost all offices with Catholics. At the invitation of the Protestants, the king’s son-in-law, William III. of Orange, landed in England in A.D. 1688, and on James’ flight was declared king by the Parliament. The Act of Toleration, issued by him in A.D. 1689, still withheld from Papists the privileges now extended to Protestant dissenters (§ 155, 3).449

§ 153.7. Union Efforts.

Although Hugo Grotius distinctly took the side of the Remonstrants (§ 160, 2), his whole disposition was essentially irenical. He attempted, but in vain, not only the reconciliation of the Arminians and Calvinists, but also the union of all Protestant sects on a common basis. Toward Catholicism he long maintained a decidedly hostile attitude. But through intimate intercourse with distinguished Catholics, especially during his exile in France, his feelings were completely changed. He now invariably expressed himself more favourably in regard to the faith and the institutions of the Catholic church. Its semi-Pelagianism was acceptable to him as a decided Arminian. In his “Votum pro Pace” he recommended as the only possible way to restore ecclesiastical union, a return to Catholicism, on the understanding that a thorough reform should be made. But that he was himself ready to pass over, and was hindered only by his sudden death in A.D. 1645, is merely an illusion of Romish imagination.450

King Wladislaus [Wladislaw] IV. of Poland thought a union of Protestants and Catholics in his dominions not impossible, and with this end in view arranged the Religious Conference of Thorn in A.D. 1645. Prussia and Brandenburg were also invited to take part in it. The elector sent his court preacher, John Berg, and asked from the Duke of Brunswick the assistance of the Helmstadt theologian, George Calixt. The chief representatives of the Lutheran side were Abraham Calov, of Danzig, and John Hülsemann, of Wittenberg. That Calixt, a Lutheran, took the part of the Reformed, intensified the bitterness of the Lutherans at the outset. The result was to increase the split on all sides. The Reformed set forth their opinions in the “Declaratio Thorunensis,” which in Brandenburg obtained symbolical rank.

J. B. Bossuet, who died in A.D. 1704, Bishop of Meaux, used all his eloquence to prepare a way for the return of Protestants to the church in which alone is salvation. In several treatises he gave an idealized exposition of the Catholic doctrine, glossed over what was most offensive to Protestants, and sought by subtlety and sophistry to represent the Protestant system as contradictory and untenable.451 During the same period the Spaniard Spinola, Bishop of Neustadt, who had come into the country as father confessor of the empress, proposed a scheme of union at the imperial court. The controverted points were to be decided at a free council, but the primacy of the pope and the hierarchical system, as founded jure humano, were to be retained. In prosecuting his scheme, with the secret support of Leopold I., Spinola, between A.D. 1676 and 1691, travelled through all Protestant Germany. He found most success, out of respect for the emperor, in Hanover, where the Abbot of Loccum, Molanus, zealously advocated the proposed union, in which on the Catholic side Bossuet, on the Protestant side the great philosopher Leibnitz, took part. But the negotiations ended in no practical result. That Leibnitz had himself been already secretly inclined to Catholicism, some think to have proved by a manuscript, found after his death, entitled in another’s hand, “Systema Theologicum Leibnitii.” Favourably disposed as Leibnitz was to investigate and recognise what was profound and true even in Catholicism, so that he reached the conviction that neither of the two churches had given perfect and adequate expression to Christian truth, he has apparently sought in this work to make clear to himself what and how much of specifically Catholic doctrines were justifiable, and to sketch out a system of doctrine occupying a place superior to both confessions. In this treatise many doctrines are expressed in a manner quite divergent from that of the Tridentine creed, while several expressions show how clearly he perceived the contradiction between his own Protestant faith and the Romish system, amid all his attempts to effect a reconciliation.

§ 153.8. The Lehnin Prophecy.―The hope entertained, about the end of the seventeenth century, by Catholics throughout Germany of the speedy restoration of the mother church was expressed in the so called Vaticinium Lehninense. Professedly composed in the thirteenth century by a monk called Hermann, of the cloister of Lehnin in Brandenburg, it characterized with historical accuracy in 100 Leonine verses the Brandenburg princes down to Frederick III., of whose coronation in A.D. 1701 it is ignorant, and after this proceeds in a purely fanciful and arbitrary manner. From Joachim II., who openly joined the Reformation, it enumerates eleven members, so that the history is just brought down to Frederick William III. With the eleventh the Hohenzollern dynasty ends, Germany is united, the Catholic church restored, and Lehnin raised again to its ancient glory. Under Frederick William IV., the Catholics diligently sought to prove the genuineness of the prophecy, and by arbitrary methods to extend it so as to include this prince. Lately “the deadly sin of Israel” spoken of in it has been pointed to as a prophecy of the Kultur-kampf of our own day (§ 197). The first certain trace of the poem is in A.D. 1693. Hilgenfeld thinks that its author was a fanatical pervert, Andr. Fromm, who was previously a Protestant pastor in Berlin, and died in A.D. 1685 as canon of Leitmeritz, in Bohemia.

§ 154. Lutheranism and Calvinism.

The Reformed church made its way into the heart of Lutheran Germany (§ 144) by the Calvinizing of Hesse-Cassel and Lippe, and by the adherence of the electoral house of Brandenburg. Renewed attempts to unite the two churches were equally fruitless with the endeavours after a Catholic-Protestant union.

§ 154.1. Calvinizing of Hesse-Cassel, A.D. 1605-1646.―Philip the Magnanimous, died 1567, left to his eldest son, William IV., one half of his territories, comprising Lower Hesse and Schmalcald, with residence at Cassel; to Louis IV. a fourth part, viz. Upper Hesse, with residence at Marburg; while his two youngest sons, Philip and George, were made counts, with their residence at Darmstadt. Philip died in 1583 and Louis in 1604, both childless; in consequence of which the greater part of Philip’s territory and the northern half of Upper Hesse with Marburg fell to Hesse-Cassel, and the southern half with Giessen to Hesse-Darmstadt.―Landgrave William IV. of Hesse-Cassel sympathised with his father’s union and levelling tendencies, and by means of general synods wrought eagerly to secure acceptance for them throughout Hesse by setting aside the ubiquitous Christology (§ 141, 9) and the Formula of Concord, while firmly maintaining the Corpus Doctrinæ Philippicum (§ 141, 10). The fourth and last of those general synods was held in 1582. Further procedure was meanwhile rendered impossible by the increase of opposition. For, on the one hand, Louis IV., under the influence of the acute and learned but contentious Ægidius Hunnius, professor of theology at Marburg, 1576-1592, became more and more decidedly a representative of exclusive Lutheranism; and, on the other hand, William’s Calvinizing schemes became from day to day more reckless. His son and successor Maurice went forward more energetically along the same lines as his father, especially after the death of his uncle Louis in 1604, who bequeathed to him the Marburg part of his territories. These had been given him on condition that he should hold by the confession and its apology as guaranteed by Charles V. in 1530. But in 1605 he forbad the Marburg theologians to set forth the ubiquity theology; and when they protested, issued a formal prohibition of the dogma with its presuppositions and consequences, and insisted on the introduction of the Reformed numbering of the commandments of the decalogue, and the breaking of bread at the communion, and the removal of the remaining images from the churches (§ 144, 2). The theologians again protested, and were deprived of their offices. The result was the outbreak of a popular tumult at Marburg, which Maurice suppressed by calling in the military. When in several places in Upper and even in Lower Hesse opposition was persisted in, and the resisting clergy could not be won over either by persuasion and threatening or by persecution, Maurice in 1607 convened consultative diocesan synods at Cassel, Eschwege, Marburg, St. Goar, and soon after a general synod at Cassel, which, giving expression on all points to the will of the landgrave, drew up, besides a new hymnbook and catechism, a new “Christian and correct confession of faith,” by which they openly and decidedly declared their attachment to the Reformed church. Soon Hesse accepted these conclusions, but not the rest of the state, where the opposition of the nobles, clergy, and people, in spite of all attempts to enforce this acceptance by military power, imprisonment, and deposition, could not be altogether overcome.―Meanwhile George’s son and successor, Louis V., 1596-1626, had been eagerly seeking to make capital of those troubles in his cousin’s domains in favour of the Darmstadt dynasty. He gave his protection to the professors expelled from Marburg in 1605, founded in 1607 a Lutheran university at Giessen, and made accusations against his cousin before the imperial supreme court, which in 1623, on the basis of the will of Louis IV. and the Religious Peace of Augsburg (§ 137, 5), declared the inheritance forfeited, and entrusted the electors of Cologne and Saxony with the execution of the sentence. These in conjunction with the troops of the league under Tilly attacked Upper and Lower Hesse; the Lutheran University of Giessen was transferred to Marburg, and Upper Hesse, after the banishment of the Reformed pastors, went over wholly to the Lutheran confession. Maurice, completely broken down, resigned in favour of his son William V., who was obliged to make an agreement, according to which he made over Upper Hesse, Schmalcald, and Katzenelnbogen to George II. of Hesse-Darmstadt, the successor of Louis V. In consequence of his attachment to Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years’ War the ban of the empire was pronounced upon William. He died in 1637. His widow, Amalie Elizabeth, undertook the government on behalf of her young son William VI., and in 1646, after repeated victories over George’s troops, made a new agreement with him, by which the territories taken away in 1627 were restored to Hesse-Cassel, under a guarantee, however, that the status quo in matters of religion should be preserved, and that they should continue predominantly Lutheran. The university property was divided; Giessen obtained a Lutheran, Marburg a Reformed institution, and Lower Hesse received a moderately but yet essentially Reformed ecclesiastical constitution.

§ 154.2. Calvinizing of Lippe, A.D. 1602.―Count Simon VI. of Lippe, in his eventful life, was brought into close relations with the Reformed Netherlands and with Maurice of Hesse. His dominions were thoroughly Lutheran, but from A.D. 1602 Calvinism was gradually introduced under the patronage of the prince. The chief promoter of this innovation was Dreckmeyer, chosen general superintendent in A.D. 1599. At a visitation of churches in A.D. 1602, the festivals of Mary and the apostles, exorcism, the sign of the cross, the host, burning candles, and Luther’s catechism were rejected. Opposing pastors were deposed, and Calvinists put in their place. The city Lemgo stood out longest, and persevered in its adherence to the Lutheran confession during an eleven years’ struggle with its prince, from A.D. 1606 to 1617. After the death of Simon VI., his successor, Simon VII., allowed the city the free exercise of its Lutheran religion.

§ 154.3. The Elector of Brandenburg becomes Calvinist, A.D. 1613.―John Sigismund, A.D. 1608-1619, had promised his grandfather, John George, to maintain his connexion with the Lutheran church. But his own inclination, which was strengthened by his son’s marriage with a princess of the Palatinate, and his connexion with the Netherlands, made him forget his promise. Also his court preacher, the crypto-Calvinist Solomon Fink, contributed to the same result. On Christmas Day, A.D. 1613, he went over to the Reformed church. In order to share in the Augsburg Peace, he still retained the Augsburg Confession, naturally in the form known as the Variata. In A.D. 1624, he issued a Calvinist confession of his own, the Confessio Sigismundi or Marchica, which sought to reconcile the universality of grace with the particularity of election (§ 168, 1). His people, however, did not follow the prince, not even his consort, Anne of Prussia. The court preacher, Gedicke, who would not retract his invectives against the prince and the Reformed confession, was obliged to flee from Berlin, as also another preacher, Mart. Willich. But when altars, images, and baptismal fonts were thrown out of the Berlin churches, a tumult arose, in A.D. 1615, which was not suppressed without bloodshed. In the following year the elector forbade the teaching of the communicatio idiomatum and the ubiquitas corporis (§ 141, 9) at the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In A.D. 1614, owing to the publication of a keen controversial treatise of Hutter (§ 159, 5) he forbade any of his subjects going to the University of Wittenberg, and soon afterwards struck out the Formula of Concord from the collection of the symbolical books of the Lutheran church of his realm.―Continuation, § 169, 1.

§ 154.4. Union Attempts.―Hoë von Hoënegg, of an old Austrian family, was from A.D. 1612 chief court preacher at Dresden, and as spiritual adviser of the elector, John George, on the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, got Lutheran Saxony to take the side of the Catholic emperor against the Calvinist Frederick V. of the Palatinate, elected king of Bohemia. In A.D. 1621, he had proved that “on ninety-nine points the Calvinists were in accord with the Arians and the Turks.” At the Religious Conference of Leipzig of A.D. 1631 a compromise was accepted on both sides; but no practical result was secured. The Religious Conference of Cassel, in A.D. 1661, was a well meant endeavour by some Marburg Reformed theologians and Lutherans of the school of Calixt (§ 158, 2); but owing to the agitation caused by the Synergist controversy, no important advance toward union could be accomplished. The union efforts of Duke William of Brandenburg, A.D. 1640-1688, were opposed by Paul Gerhardt, preacher in the church of St. Nicholas in Berlin. On refusing to abstain from attacks on the Reformed doctrine he was deposed from his office. He was soon appointed pastor at Lübben in Lusatia, where he died in A.D. 1676.―The most zealous apostle of universal Protestant union, embracing even the Anglican church, was the Scottish Presbyterian John Durie. From A.D. 1628 when he officiated as pastor of an English colony at Elbing, till his death at Cassel in A.D. 1640, he devoted his energies unweariedly to this one task. He repeatedly travelled through Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, and the Netherlands, formed acquaintance with clerical and civil authorities, had intercourse with them by word and letter, published a multitude of tracts on this subject; but at last could only look back with bitter complaints over the lost labours of a lifetime.452―Continuation, § 169, 1.

§ 155. Anglicanism and Puritanism.453

On the outbreak of the English Revolution, occasioned by the despotism of the first two Stuarts, crowds of Puritan exiles returned from Holland and North America to their old home. They powerfully strengthened their secret sympathisers in their successful struggle against the episcopacy of the State church (§ 139, 6); but, breaking up into rival parties, as Presbyterians and Independents (§ 143, 3, 4), gave way to fanatical extravagances. The victorious party of Independents also split into two divisions: the one, after the old Dutch style, simple and strict believers in Scripture; the other, first in Cromwell’s army, fanatical enthusiasts and visionary saints (§ 161, 1). The Restoration, under the last two Stuarts, sought to re-introduce Catholicism. It was William of Orange, by his Act of Toleration of A.D. 1689, who first brought to a close the Reformation struggles within the Anglican church. It guaranteed, indeed, all the pre-eminent privileges of an establishment to the Anglican and Episcopal church, but also granted toleration to dissenters, while refusing it to Catholics.

§ 155.1. The First Two Stuarts.―James I., dominated by the idea of the royal supremacy, and so estranged from the Presbyterianism in which he was brought up (§ 139, 11), as king of England, A.D. 1603-1625, attached himself to the national Episcopal church, persecuted the English Puritans, so that many of them again fled to Holland (§ 143, 4), and forced Episcopacy upon the Scotch. Charles I., A.D. 1625-1649, went beyond his father in theory and practice, and thus incurred the hatred of his Protestant subjects. William Laud, from A.D. 1633 Archbishop of Canterbury, was the recklessly zealous promoter of his despotic ideas, representing the Episcopacy, by reason of its Divine institution and apostolic succession, as the foundation of the church and the pillar of an absolute monarchy. Laud used his position as primate to secure the introduction of his own theory into the public church services, among other things making the communion office an imitation as near as possible of the Romish mass. But when he attempted to force upon the Scotch such “Baal-worship” by the command of the king, they formed a league in A.D. 1638 for the defence of Presbyterianism, the so called Great Covenant, and emphasised their demand by sending an army into England. The king, who had ruled for eleven years without a Parliament, was obliged now to call together the representatives of the people. Scarcely had the Long Parliament, A.D. 1640-1653, in which the Puritan element was supreme, pacified the Scotch, than oil was anew poured on the flames by the Irish massacre of A.D. 1641 (§ 153, 6). The Lower House, in spite of the persistent opposition of the court, resolved on excluding the bishops from the Upper House and formally abolishing Episcopacy; and in A.D. 1643, summoned the Westminster Assembly to remodel the organization of the English church, at which Scotch representatives were to have a seat. After long and violent debates with an Independent minority, till A.D. 1648, the Assembly drew up a Presbyterian constitution with a Puritan service, and in the Westminster Confession a strictly Calvinistic creed. But only in Scotland were these decisions heartily accepted. In England, notwithstanding their confirmation by the Parliament, they received only partial and occasional acceptance, owing to the prevalence of Independent opinions among the people.―Since A.D. 1642, the tension between court and Parliament had brought about the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads. In A.D. 1645, the royal troops were cut to pieces at Naseby by the parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell. The king fled to the Scotch, by whom he was surrendered to the English Parliament in A.D. 1647. But when now the fanatical Independents, who formed a majority in the army, began to terrorise the Parliament, it opened negotiations for peace with the king. He was now ready to make almost any sacrifice, only on religious and conscientious grounds he could not agree to the unconditional abandonment of Episcopacy. Even the Scotch, whose Presbyterianism was now threatened by the Independents, as before it had been by the Episcopalians, longed for the restoration of royalty, and to aid in this sent an army into England in A.D. 1648. But they were defeated by Cromwell, who then dismissed the Parliament and had all its Presbyterian members either imprisoned or driven into retirement. The Independent remnant, known as the Rump Parliament, A.D. 1648-1653, tried the king for high treason and sentenced him to death. On January 30th, A.D. 1649, he mounted the scaffold, on which Archbishop Laud had preceded him in A.D. 1645, and fell under the executioner’s axe.454

§ 155.2. The Commonwealth and the Protector.―Ireland had never yet atoned for its crime of A.D. 1641 (§ 153, 6), and as it refused to acknowledge the Commonwealth, Cromwell took terrible revenge in A.D. 1649. In A.D. 1650 at Dunbar, and in A.D. 1651 at Worcester, he completely destroyed the army of the Scots, who had crowned Charles II., son of the executed king, drove out, in April A.D. 1653, the Rump of the Long Parliament, which had come to regard itself as a permanent institution, and in July opened, with a powerful speech, two hours in length, on God’s ways and judgments, the Short or Barebones’ Parliament, composed of “pious and God-fearing men” selected by himself. In this new Parliament which, with prayer and psalm-singing, wrought hard at the re-organization of the executive, the bench, and the church, the two parties of Independents were represented, the fanatical enthusiasts indeed predominating, and so victorious in all matters of debate. To this party Cromwell himself belonged. His attachment to it, however, was considerably cooled in consequence of the excesses of the Levellers (§ 161, 2), and the fantastic policy of the parliamentarian Saints disgusted him more and more. When therefore, on December 12th, A.D. 1653, after five months’ fruitless opposition to the radical demands of the extravagant majority, all the most moderate members of the Parliament had resigned their seats and returned their mandates into Cromwell’s hands, he burst in upon the psalm-singing remnant with his soldiers, and entered upon his life-long office of the Protector of the Commonwealth with a new constitution. He proclaimed toleration of all religious sects, Catholics only being excepted on political grounds (§ 153, 6), giving equal rights to Presbyterians, and offering no hindrance to the revival of Episcopacy. He yet remained firmly attached to his early convictions. He believed in a kingdom of the saints embracing the whole earth, and looked on England as destined for the protection and spread of Protestantism. Zürich greeted him as the great Protestant champion, and he showed himself in this rôle in the valleys of Piedmont (§ 153, 5), in France, in Poland, and in Silesia. He joined with all Protestant governments into a league, offensive and defensive, against fanatical attempts of Papists to recover their lost ground. When Spain and France sued for his alliance, he made it a condition with the former that, besides allowing free trade with the West Indies, it should abolish the Inquisition; and of France he required an assurance that the rights of Huguenots should be respected. And when in Germany a new election of emperor was to take place, he urged the great electors that they should by no means allow the imperial throne to continue with the Catholic house of Austria. Meanwhile his path at home was a thorny one. He was obliged to suppress fifteen open rebellions during five years of his reign, countless secret plots threatened his life every day, and his bitterest foes were his former comrades in the camp of the the saints. After refusing the crown offered him in A.D. 1657, without being able thereby to quell the discontents of parties, he died on September 3rd, A.D. 1658, the anniversary of his glorious victories of Dunbar and Worcester.455

§ 155.3. The Restoration and the Act of Toleration.―The Restoration of royalty under Charles II., A.D. 1660-1685, began with the reinstating of the Episcopal church in all the privileges granted to it under Elizabeth. The Corporation Act of December, A.D. 1661, was the first of a series of enactments for this purpose. It required of all magistrates and civil officers that they should take an oath acknowledging the royal supremacy and communicate in the Episcopal church. The Act of Uniformity of May, A.D. 1662, was still more oppressive. It prohibited any clergyman entering the English pulpit or discharging any ministerial function, unless he had been ordained by a bishop, had signed the Thirty-nine Articles, and undertook to conduct worship exactly in accordance with the newly revised Book of Common Prayer. More than 2,000 Puritan ministers, who could not conscientiously submit to those terms, were driven out of their churches. Then in June, A.D. 1664, the Conventicle Act was renewed, enforcing attendance at the Episcopal church, and threatening with imprisonment or exile all found in any private religious meeting of more than five persons. In the following year the Five Mile Act inflicted heavy fines on all nonconformist ministers who should approach within five miles of their former congregation or indeed of any city. All these laws, although primarily directed against all Protestant dissenters, told equally against the Catholics, whom the king’s Catholic sympathies would willingly have spared. When now his league with Catholic France against the Protestant Netherlands made it necessary for him to appease his Protestant subjects, he hoped to accomplish this and save the Catholics by his “Declaration of Indulgence” of A.D. 1672, issued with the consent of Parliament, which suspended all penal laws hitherto in force against dissenters. But the Protestant nonconformists saw through this scheme, and the Parliament of A.D. 1673 passed the anti-Catholic Test Act (§ 153, 6). Equally vain were all later attempts to secure greater liberties and privileges to the Catholics. They only served to develop the powers of Parliament and to bring the Episcopalians and nonconformists more closely together. After spending his whole life oscillating between frivolous unbelief and Catholic superstition, Charles II., on his death-bed, formally went over to the Romish church, and had the communion and extreme unction administered by a Catholic priest. His brother and successor James II., A.D. 1685-1688, who was from A.D. 1672 an avowed Catholic, sent a declaration of obedience to Rome, received a papal nuncio in London, and in the exercise of despotic power issued, in A.D. 1687, a “Declaration of Freedom of Conscience,” which, under the fair colour of universal toleration and by the setting aside of the test oath, enabled him to fill all civil and military offices with Catholics. This act proved equally oppressive to the Episcopalians and to Protestant dissenters. This intrigue cost him his throne. He had, as he himself said, staked three kingdoms on a mass, and lost all the three. William III. of Orange, A.D. 1689-1702, grandson of Charles I. and son-in-law of James II., gave a final decision to the rights of the national Episcopal church and the position of dissenters in the Act of Toleration of A.D. 1689, which he passed with consent of the Parliament. All penal laws against the latter were abrogated, and religious liberty was extended to all with the exception of Catholics and Socinians. The retention of the Corporation and Test Acts, however, still excluded them from the exercise of all political rights. They were also still obliged to pay tithes and other church dues to the Episcopal clergy of their dioceses, and their marriages and baptisms had to be administered in the parish churches. Their ministers were also obliged to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, with reservation of those points opposed to their principles. The Act of Union of A.D. 1707, passed under Queen Anne, a daughter of James II., which united England and Scotland into the one kingdom of Great Britain, gave legitimate sanction to a separate ecclesiastical establishment for each country. In Scotland the Presbyterian churches continued the established church, while the Episcopal was tolerated as a dissenting body. Congregationalism, however, has been practically limited to England and North America.456―Continuation, § 202, 5.

II. The Roman Catholic Church.

§ 156. The Papacy, Monkery, and Foreign Missions.

Notwithstanding the regeneration of papal Catholicism since the middle of the sixteenth century, Hildebrand’s politico-theocratic ideal was not realized. Even Catholic princes would not be dictated to on political matters by the vicar of Christ. The most powerful of them, France, Austria, and Spain, during the sixteenth century, and subsequently also Portugal, had succeeded in the claim to the right of excluding objectionable candidates in papal elections. Ban and interdict had lost their power. The popes, however, still clung to the idea after they had been obliged to surrender the reality, and issued from time to time powerless protestations against disagreeable facts of history. Several new monkish orders were instituted during this century, mostly for teaching the young and tending the sick, but some also expressly for the promoting of theological science. Of all the orders, new and old, the Jesuits were by far the most powerful. They were regarded with jealousy and suspicion by the other orders. In respect of doctrine the Dominicans were as far removed from them as possible within the limits of the Tridentine Creed. But notwithstanding any such mutual jealousies, they were all animated by one yearning desire to oppose, restrict, and, where that was possible, to uproot Protestantism. With similar zeal they devoted themselves with wonderful success to the work of foreign missions.

§ 156.1. The Papacy.―Paul V., A.D. 1605-1621, equally energetic in his civil and in his ecclesiastical policy, in a struggle with Venice, was obliged to behold the powerlessness of the papal interdict. His successor, Gregory XV., A.D. 1621-1623, founded the Propaganda, prescribed a secret scrutiny in papal elections, and canonized Loyola, Xavier, and Neri. He enriched the Vatican Library by the addition of the valuable treasures of the Heidelberg Library, which Maximilian I. of Bavaria sent him on his conquest of the Palatinate. Urban VIII., A.D. 1623-1644, increased the Propaganda, improved the Roman “Breviary” (§ 56, 2), condemned Jansen’s Augustinus (§ 156, 5), and compelled Galileo to recant. But on the other hand, through his onesided ecclesiastical policy he was led into sacrificing the interests of the imperial house of Austria. Not only did he fail to give support to the emperor, but quite openly hailed Gustavus Adolphus, the saviour of German Protestantism, as the God-sent saviour from the Spanish-Austrian tyranny. For this he was pronounced a heretic at the imperial court, and threatened with a second edition of the sack of Rome (§ 132, 2). At the same time his soul was so filled with fanatical hatred against Protestantism, that in a letter of 1631 he congratulated the Emperor Ferdinand II. on the destruction of Magdeburg as an act most pleasing to heaven and reflecting the highest credit upon Germany, and expressed the hope that the glory of so great a victory should not be restricted to the ruins of a single city. On receiving the news of the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632 he broke out into loud jubilation, saying that now “the serpent was slain which with its poison had sought to destroy the whole world.” His successor, Innocent X., A.D. 1644-1655, though vigorously protesting against the Peace of Westphalia (§ 153, 2), was, owing to his abject subserviency to a woman, his own sister-in-law, reproached with the title of a new Johanna Papissa. Alexander VII., A.D. 1655-1667, had the expensive guardianship of his godchild Christina of Sweden (§ 153, 1), and fanned into a flame the spark kindled by his predecessor in the Jansenist controversy (§ 156, 5), so that his successor, Clement IX., A.D. 1667-1670, could only gradually extinguish it. Clement X., A.D. 1670-1676, by his preference for Spain roused the French king Louis XIV., who avenged himself by various encroachments on the ecclesiastical administration in his dominions. Innocent XI., A.D. 1676-1689, was a powerful pope, zealously promoting the weal of the church and the Papal States by introducing discipline among the clergy and attacking the immorality that prevailed among all classes of society. He unhesitatingly condemned sixty-five propositions from the lax Jesuit code of morals. Against the arrogant ambassador of Louis XIV. he energetically maintained his sovereign rights in his own domains, while he unreservedly refused the claims of the French clergy, urged by the king on the ground of the exceptional constitution of the Gallican church. Alexander VIII., A.D. 1689-1691, continued the fight against Gallicanism, and condemned the Jesuit distinction between theological and philosophical sin (§ 149, 10). Innocent XII., A.D. 1691-1700, could boast of having secured the complete subjugation of the Gallican clergy after a hard struggle. He too wrought earnestly for the reform of abuses in the curia. Specially creditable to him is the stringent bull “Romanum decet pontificem” against nepotism, which extirpated the evil disease, so that it was never again openly practised as an acknowledged right.―Continuation, § 165, 1.

§ 156.2. The Jesuits and the Republic of Venice.―Venice was one of the first of the Italian cities to receive the Jesuits with open arms, A.D. 1530. But the influence obtained by them over public affairs through school and confessional, and their vast wealth accumulated from bequests and donations, led the government, in A.D. 1605, to forbid their receiving legacies or erecting new cloisters. In vain did Paul V. remonstrate. He then put Venice under an interdict. The Jesuits sought to excite the people against the government, and for this were banished in A.D. 1606. The pious and learned historian of the Council of Trent and adviser of the State, Paul Sarpi, proved a vigorous supporter of civil rights against the assumptions of the curia and the Jesuits. When in A.D. 1607 he refused a citation of Inquisition, he was dangerously wounded by three dagger stabs, inflicted by hired bandits, in whose stilettos he recognised the stilum curiæ. He died in A.D. 1623. After a ten months’ vain endeavour to enforce the interdict, the pope at last, through French mediation, concluded a peace with the republic, without, however, being able to obtain either the abolition of the objectionable ecclesiastico-political laws or permission for the return of the Jesuits. Only after the republic had been weakened through the unfortunate Turkish war of A.D. 1645 was it found willing to submit. Even in A.D. 1653 it refused the offer of 150,000 ducats from the Jesuit general for the Turkish campaign; but when Alexander VII. suppressed several rich cloisters, their revenues were thankfully accepted for this purpose. In A.D. 1657, on the pope’s promise of further pecuniary aid, the decree of banishment was withdrawn. The Jesuit fathers now returned in crowds, and soon regained much of their former influence and wealth. No pope has ever since issued an interdict against any country.457

§ 156.3. The Gallican Liberties.―Although Louis XIV. of France, A.D. 1643-1715, as a good Catholic king, powerfully supported the claims of papal dogmatics against the Jansenists (§§ 156, 5; 165, 7), he was by no means unfaithful to the traditional ecclesiastical polity of his house (§§ 96, 21; 110, 1, 9, 13, 14), and was often irritated to the utmost pitch by the pope’s opposition to his political interests. He rigorously insisted upon the old customary right of the Crown to the income of certain vacant ecclesiastical offices, the jus regaliæ, and extended it to all bishoprics, burdened church revenues with military pensions, confiscated ecclesiastical property, etc. Innocent XI. energetically protested against such exactions. The king then had an assembly of the French called together in Paris on March 19th, A.D. 1682, which issued the famous Four Propositions of the Gallican Clergy, drawn up by Bishop Bossuet of Meaux. These set forth the fundamental rights of the French church:

In secular affairs the pope has no jurisdiction over princes and kings, and cannot release their subjects from their allegiance;

The spiritual power of the pope is subject to the higher authority of the general councils;

For France it is further limited by the old French ecclesiastical laws; and,

Even in matters of faith the judgment of the pope without the approval of a general assembly of the church is not unalterable.

Innocent consequently refused to institute any of the newly appointed bishops. He was not even appeased by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in A.D. 1685. He was pleased indeed, and praised the deed, and celebrated it by a Te Deum, but objected to the violent measures for the conversion of Protestants as contrary to the teaching of Christ. Then also there arose a keen struggle against the mischievous extension of the right of asylum on the part of foreign embassies at Rome. On the pope’s representation all the powers but France agreed to a restriction of the custom. The pope tolerated the nuisance till the death of the French ambassador in A.D. 1687, but then insisted on its abolition under pain of the ban. In consequence of this Louis sent his new ambassador into Rome with two companies of cavaliers, threw the papal nuntio in France into prison, and laid siege to the papal state of Avignon (§ 110, 4). But Innocent was not thus to be terrorized, and the French ambassador was obliged, after eighteen months’ vain demonstrations, to quit Rome. Alexander VIII. repeated the condemnation of the Four Propositions, and Innocent XIII. also stood firm. The French episcopate, on the pope’s persistent refusal to install bishops nominated by the king, was at last constrained to submit. “Lying at the feet of his holiness,” the bishops declared that everything concluded in that assembly was null and void; and even Louis XIV., under the influence of Madame de Maintenon (§ 157, 3), wrote to the pope in A.D. 1693, saying that he recalled the order that the Four Propositions should be taught in all the schools. There still, however, survived among the French clergy a firm conviction of the Gallican Liberties, and the droit de régale continued to have the force of law.458―Continuation, § 197, 1.

§ 156.4. Galileo and the Inquisition.―Galileo Galilei, professor of mathematics at Pisa and Padua, who died in A.D. 1642, among his many distinguished services to the physical, mathematical, and astronomical sciences, has the honour of being the pioneer champion of the Copernican system. On this account he was charged by the monks with contradicting Scripture. In A.D. 1616 Paul V., through Cardinal Bellarmine, threatened him with the Inquisition and prison unless he agreed to cease from vindicating and lecturing upon his heretical doctrine. He gave the required promise. But in A.D. 1632 he published a dialogue, in which three friends discussed the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, without any formal conclusion, but giving overwhelming reasons in favour of the latter. Urban VIII., in A.D. 1636, called upon the Inquisition to institute a process against him. He was forced to recant, was condemned to prison for an indefinite period, but was soon liberated through powerful influence. How far the old man of seventy-two years of age was compelled by torture to retract is still a matter of controversy. It is, however, quite evident that it was forced from him by threats. But that Galileo went out after his recantation, gnashing his teeth and stamping his feet, muttering, “Nevertheless it moves!” is a legend of a romancing age. This, however, is the fact, that the Congregation of the Index declared the Copernican theory to be false, irrational, and directly contrary to Scripture; and that even in A.D. 1660 Alexander VII., with apostolic authority, formally confirmed this decree and pronounced it ex cathedrâ (§ 149, 4) irrevocable. It was only in A.D. 1822 that the curia set it aside, and in a new edition of the Index (§ 149, 14) in A.D. 1835 omitted the works of Galileo as well as those of Copernicus.459

§ 156.5. The Controversy on the Immaculate Conception (§ 112, 4) received a new impulse from the nun Mary of Jesus, died 1665, of Agreda, in Old Castile, superior of the cloister there of the Immaculate Conception, writer of the “Mystical City of God.” This book professed to give an inspired account of the life of the Virgin, full of the strangest absurdities about the immaculate conception. The Sorbonne pronounced it offensive and silly; the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and Rome forbad the reading of it; but the Franciscans defended it as a divine revelation. A violent controversy ensued, which Alexander VII. silenced in A.D. 1661 by expressing approval of the doctrine of the immaculate conception set forth in the book.―Continuation, § 185, 2.

§ 156.6. The Devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.―The nun Margaret Alacoque, in the Burgundian cloister of Paray le Monial, born A.D. 1647, recovering from a painful illness when but three years old, vowed to the mother of God, who frequently appeared to her, perpetual chastity, and in gratitude for her recovery adopted the name of Mary, and when grown up resisted temptations by inflicting on herself the severest discipline, such as long fasts, sharp flagellations, lying on thorns, etc. Visions of the Virgin no longer satisfied her. She longed to lavish her affections on the Redeemer himself, which she expressed in the most extravagant terms. She took the Jesuit La Colombière as her spiritual adviser in A.D. 1675. In a new vision she beheld the side of her Beloved opened, and saw his heart glowing like a sun, into which her own was absorbed. Down to her death in A.D. 1690 she felt the most violent burning pains in her side. In a second vision she saw her Beloved’s heart burning like a furnace, into which were taken her own heart and that of her spiritual adviser. In a third vision he enjoined the observance of a special “Devotion of the Sacred Heart” by all Christendom on the Friday after the octave of the Corpus Christi festival and on the first Friday of every month. La Colombière, being made director, put forth every effort to get this celebration introduced throughout the church, and on his death the idea was taken up by the whole Jesuit order. Their efforts, however, for fully a century proved unavailing. At this point, too, their most bitter opponents were the Dominicans. But even without papal authority the Jesuits so far succeeded in introducing the absurdities of this cult, and giving expression to it in word and by images, that by the beginning of the eighteenth century there were more than 300 male and female societies engaged in this devotion, and at last, in A.D. 1765, Clement XIII., the great friend of the Jesuits, gave formal sanction to this special celebration.―Continuation, § 188, 12.

§ 156.7. New Congregations and Orders.

At the head of the new orders of this century stands the Benedictine Congregation of St. Banne at Verdun, founded by Didier de la Cour. Elected Abbot of St. Banne in A.D. 1596, he gave his whole strength to the reforming of this cloister, which had fallen into luxurious and immoral habits. By a papal bull of A.D. 1604 all cloisters combining with St. Banne into a congregation were endowed with rich privileges. Gradually all the Benedictine monasteries of Lorraine and Alsace joined the union. Didier’s reforms were mostly in the direction of moral discipline and asceticism; but in the new congregation scholarship was represented by Calmet, Ceillier, etc., and many gave themselves to work as teachers in the schools.

Much more important for the promotion of theological science, especially for patristics and church history, was another Benedictine congregation founded in France in A.D. 1618 by Laurence Bernard, that of St. Maur, named after a disciple of St. Benedict. The members of this order devoted themselves exclusively to science and literary pursuits. To them belonged the distinguished names, Mabillon, Montfaucon, Reinart, Martène, D’Achery, Le Nourry, Durand, Surius, etc. They showed unwearied diligence in research and a noble liberality of judgment. The editions of the most celebrated Fathers issued by them are the best of the kind, and this may also be said of the great historical collections which we owe to their diligence.

The Fathers of the Oratory of Jesus are an imitation of the Priests of the Oratory founded by Philip Neri (§ 149, 7). Peter of Barylla, son of a member of parliament, founded it in A.D. 1611 by building an oratory at Paris. He was more of a mystic than of a scholar, but his order sent out many distinguished and brilliant theologians; e.g. Malebranche, Morinus, Thomassinus, Rich, Simon, Houbigant.

The Piarists, Patres scholarum piarum, were founded in Rome in A.D. 1607 by the Spaniard Joseph Calasanza. The order adopted as a fourth vow the obligation of gratuitous tuition. They were hated by the Obscurantist Jesuits for their successful labours for the improvement of Catholic education, especially in Poland and Austria, and also because they objected to all participation in political schemes.

The Order of the Visitation of Mary, or Salesian Nuns, instituted in A.D. 1610 by the mystic Francis de Sales and Francisca Chantal (§ 157, 1). They visited the poor and sick in imitation of Elizabeth’s visit to the Virgin (Luke i. 39); but the papal rescript of A.D. 1618 gave prominence to the education of children.

§ 156.8.

The Priests of the Missions and Sisters of Charity were both founded by Vincent de Paul. Born of poor parents, he was, after completing his education, captured by pirates, and as a slave converted his renegade master to Christianity. As domestic chaplain to the noble family of Gondy he was characterized in a remarkable degree for unassuming humility, and he wrought earnestly and successfully as a home missionary. In A.D. 1618 he founded the order of Sisters of Mercy, who became devoted nurses of the sick throughout all France, and in A.D. 1627 that of the Priests of the Missions, or Lazarists, who travelled the country attending to the spiritual and bodily wants of men. After the death of the Countess Gondy in A.D. 1625, he placed at the head of the Sisters of Mercy the widow Louise le Gras, distinguished equally for qualities of head and heart. Vincent died in A.D. 1660, and was subsequently canonized.460

The Trappists, founded by De Rancé, a distinguished canon, who in A.D. 1664 passed from the extreme of worldliness to the extreme of fanatical asceticism. The order got its name from the Cistercian abbey La Trappe in Normandy, of which Rancé was commendatory abbot. Amid many difficulties he succeeded, in A.D. 1665, in thoroughly reforming the wild monks, who were called “the bandits of La Trappe.” His rule enjoined on the monks perpetual silence, only broken in public prayer and singing and in uttering the greeting as they met, Memento mori. Their bed was a hard board with some straw; their only food was bread and water, roots, herbs, some fruit and vegetables, without butter, fat, or oil. Study was forbidden, and they occupied themselves with hard field labour. Their clothing was a dark-brown cloak worn on the naked body, with wooden shoes. Very few cloisters besides La Trappe submitted to such severities (§ 185, 2).

The English Nuns, founded at St. Omer, in France, by Mary Ward, the daughter of an English Catholic nobleman, for the education of girls. Originally composed of English maidens, it was afterwards enlarged by receiving those of other nationalities, with establishments in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. It did not obtain papal confirmation, and in A.D. 1630 Urban VIII., giving heed to the calumnies of enemies, formally dissolved it on account of arrogance, insubordination, and heresy. All its institutions and schools were then closed, while Mary herself was imprisoned and given over to the Inquisition in Rome. Urban was soon convinced of her innocence and set her free. Her scattered nuns were now collected again, but succeeded only in A.D. 1703 in obtaining confirmation from Clement XI. Their chief tasks were the education of youth and care of the sick. They were arranged in three classes, according to their rank in life, and were bound by their vows for a year or at the most three years, after which they might return to the world and marry. Their chief centre was Bavaria with the mother cloister in Munich.―Continuation, § 165, 2.

§ 156.9. The Propaganda.―Gregory XV. gave unity and strength to the efforts for conversion of heretics and heathens by instituting, in A.D. 1662, the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Urban VIII. in A.D. 1627 attached to it a missionary training school, recruited as far as possible from natives of the respective countries, like Loyola’s Collegium Germanicum founded in A.D. 1552 (§ 151, 1). He was thus able every Epiphany to astonish Romans and foreigners by what seemed a repetition of the pentecostal miracle of tongues. At this institute training in all languages was given, and breviaries, mass and devotional books, and handbooks were printed for the use of the missions. It was also the centre from which all missionary enterprises originated.―Continuation, § 204, 2.

§ 156.10. Foreign Missions.―Even during this century the Jesuits excelled all others in missionary zeal. In A.D. 1608 they sent out from Madrid mission colonies among the wandering Indians of South America, and no Spaniard could settle there without their permission. The most thoroughly organized of these was that of Paraguay, in which, according to their own reports, over 100,000 converted savages lived happily and contented under the mild, patriarchal rule of the Jesuits for 140 years, A.D. 1610-1750; but according to another well informed, though perhaps not altogether impartial, account, that of Ibagnez, a member of the mission, expelled for advising submission to the decree depriving it of political independence, the paternal government was flavoured by a liberal dose of slave-driver despotism. It was at least an undoubted fact, notwithstanding the boasted patriarchal idyllic character of the Jesuit state, that the order amassed great wealth from the proceeds of the industry of their protégés.―Continuation, § 165, 3.

§ 156.11. In the East Indies (§ 150, 1) the Jesuits had uninterrupted success. In A.D. 1606, in order to make way among the Brahmans, the Jesuit Rob. Nobili assumed their dress, avoided all contact with even the converts of low caste, giving them the communion elements not directly, but by an instrument, or laying them down for them outside the door, and as a Christian Brahman made a considerable impression upon the most exclusive classes.―In Japan the mission prospects were dark (§ 150, 2). Mendicants and Jesuits opposed and mutually excommunicated one another. The Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese were at feud among themselves, and only agreed in intriguing against Dutch and English Protestants. When the land was opened to foreign trade, it became the gathering point of the moral scum of all European countries, and the traffic in Japanese slaves, especially by the Portuguese, brought discredit on the Christian cause. The idea gained ground that the efforts at Christianization were but a prelude to conquest by the Spaniards and Portuguese. In the new organization of the country by the shiogun Ijejasu all governors were to vow hostility to Christians and foreigners. In A.D. 1606 he forbad the observance of the Christian religion anywhere in the land. When the conspiracy of a Christian daimio was discovered, he caused, in A.D. 1614, whole shiploads of Jesuits, mendicants, and native priests to be sent out of the country. But as many of the banished returned, death was threatened against all who might be found, and in A.D. 1624 all foreigners, with the exception of Chinese and Dutch, were rigorously driven out. And now a bloody persecution of native Christians began. Many thousands fled to China and the neighbouring islands; crowds of those remaining were buried alive or burnt on piles made up of the wood of Christian crosses. The victims displayed a martyr spirit like those of the early days. Those who escaped organized in A.D. 1637 an armed resistance, and held the fortress of Arima in face of the shiogun’s army sent against them. After a three months’ siege the fortress was conquered by the help of Dutch cannon; 37,000 were massacred in the fort, and the rest were hurled down from high rocks. The most severe enactments were passed against Christians, and the edicts filled with fearful curses against “the wicked sect” and “the vile God” of the Christians were posted on all the bridges, street corners, and squares. Christianity now seemed to be completely stamped out. The recollection of this work, however, was still retained down to the nineteenth century. For when French missionaries went in A.D. 1860 to Nagasaki, they found to their surprise in the villages around thousands (?) who greeted them joyfully as the successors of the first Christian missionaries.

§ 156.12. In China, after Ricci’s death (§ 150, 1), the success of the mission continued uninterrupted. In A.D. 1628 a German Jesuit, Adam Schell, went out from Cologne, who gained great fame at court for his mathematical skill. Louis XIV. founded at Paris a missionary college, which sent out Jesuits thoroughly trained in mathematics. But Dominicans and Franciscans over and over again complained to Rome of the Jesuits. They never allowed missionaries of other orders to come near their own establishments, and actually drove them away from places where they had begun to work. They even opposed priests, bishops, and vicars-apostolic sent by the Propaganda, declared their papal briefs forgeries, forbad their congregations to have any intercourse with those “heretics,” and under suspicion of Jansenism brought them before the Inquisition of Goa. Clement X. issued a firm-toned bull against such proceedings; but the Jesuits gave no heed to it, and attended only to their own general. The papal condemnation a century later of the Jesuits’ accommodation scheme, and their permission of heathen rites and beliefs to the new converts, complained against by the Dominicans, was equally fruitless. In A.D. 1645 Innocent X. forbad this practice on pain of excommunication; but still they continued it till the decree was modified by Alexander VII. in A.D. 1656. After persistent complaints by the Dominicans, Innocent XII. appointed a new congregation in Rome to investigate the question, but their deliberations yielded no result for ten years. At last Clement XI. confirmed the first decree of Innocent X., condemned anew the so called Chinese rites, and sent the legate Thomas of Tournon in A.D. 1703 to enforce his decision. Tournon, received at first by the emperor at Pekin with great consideration, fell into disfavour through Jesuit intrigues, was banished from the capital, and returned to Nankin. But as he continued his efforts from this point, and an attempt to poison him failed in A.D. 1707, he went to Macao, where he was put in prison by the Portuguese, in which he died in A.D. 1710. Clement XI., in A.D. 1715, issued his decree against the Chinese rites in a yet severer form; but the Franciscan who proclaimed the papal bull was put in prison as an offender against the laws of the country, and, after being maltreated for seventeen months, was banished. So proudly confident had the Jesuits become, that in A.D. 1720 they treated with scorn and contempt the papal legate Mezzabarba, Patriarch of Alexandria, who tried by certain concessions to move them to submit. A more severe decree of Clement XII. of A.D. 1735 was scoffed at by being proclaimed only in the Latin original. Benedict XIV. succeeded for the first time, in A.D. 1742, in breaking down their opposition, after the charges had been renewed by the Capuchin Norbert. All the Jesuit missionaries were now obliged by oath to exclude all pagan customs and rites; but with this all the glory and wonderful success of their Asiatic missions came to an end.―Continuation, § 165, 3.

§ 156.13. Trade and Industry of the Jesuits.―As Christian missions generally deserve credit, not only for introducing civilization and culture along with the preaching of the gospel into far distant heathen lands, but also for having greatly promoted the knowledge of countries, peoples, and languages among their fellow countrymen at home, opening up new fields for colonization and trade, these ends were also served by the world-wide missionary enterprises of the Jesuits, and were in perfect accordance with the character and intention of this order, which aimed at universal dominion. In carrying out these schemes the Jesuits abandoned the ascetical principles of their founder and their vow of poverty, amassing enormous wealth by securing in many parts a practical monopoly of trade. Their fifth general, Aquaviva (§ 149, 8), secured from Gregory XIII., avowedly in favour of the mission, exclusive right to trade with both Indies. They soon erected great factories in all parts of the world, and had ships laden with valuable merchandise on all seas. They had mines, farms, sugar plantations, apothecary shops, bakeries, etc., founded banks, sold relics, miracle-working amulets, rosaries, healing Ignatius- and Xavier-water (§ 149, 11), etc., and in successful legacy-hunting excelled all other orders. Urban VIII. and Clement XI. issued severe bulls against such abuses, but only succeeded in restricting them to some extent.―Continuation, § 165, 9.

§ 156.14. An Apostate to Judaism.―Gabriel, or as he was called after circumcision, Uriel Acosta, was sprung from a noble Portuguese family, originally Jewish. Doubting Christianity in consequence of the traffic in indulgences, he at last repudiated the New Testament in favour of the Old. He refused rich ecclesiastical appointments, fled to Amsterdam, and there formally went over to Judaism. Instead of the biblical Mosaism, however, he was disappointed to find only Pharisaic pride and Talmudic traditionalism, against which he wrote a treatise in A.D. 1623. The Jews now denounced him to the civil authorities as a denier of God and immortality. The whole issue of his book was burnt. Twice the synagogue thundered its ban against him. The first was withdrawn on his recantation, and the second, seven years after, upon his submitting to a severe flagellation. In spite of all he held to his Sadducean standpoint to his end in A.D. 1647, when he died by his own hand from a pistol shot, driven to despair by the unceasing persecution of the Jews.

§ 157. Quietism and Jansenism.

Down to the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Spanish Mystics (§ 149, 16), and especially those attached to Francis de Sales, were recognised as thoroughly orthodox. But now the Jesuits appeared as the determined opponents of all mysticism that savoured of enthusiasm. By means of vile intrigues they succeeded in getting Molinos, Guyon, and Fénelon condemned, as “Quietist” heretics, although the founder of their party had been canonized and his doctrine solemnly sanctioned by the pope. Yet more objectionable to the Jesuits was that reaction toward Augustinianism which, hitherto limited to the Dominicans (§ 149, 13), and treated by them as a theological theory, was now spreading among other orders in the form of French Jansenism, accompanied by deep moral earnestness and a revival of the whole Christian life.

§ 157.1. Francis de Sales and Madame Chantal.―Francis Count de Sales, from A.D. 1602 Bishop of Geneva, i.e. in partibus, with Annecy as his residence, had shown himself a good Catholic by his zeal in rooting out Protestantism in Chablais, on the south of the Genevan lake. In A.D. 1604 meeting the young widowed Baroness de Chantal, along with whom at a later period he founded the Order of the Visitation of Mary (§ 156, 7), he proved a good physician to her amid her sorrow, doubts, and temptations. He sought to qualify himself for this task by reading the writings of St. Theresa. Teacher and scholar so profited by their mystical studies, that in A.D. 1665 Alexander VII. deemed the one worthy of canonization and the other of beatification. In A.D. 1877 Pius IX. raised Francis to the dignity of doctor ecclesiæ. His “Introduction to the Devout Life” affords a guide to laymen to the life of the soul, amid all the disturbances of the world resting in calm contemplation and unselfish love of God. In the Catholic Church, next to À Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ,” it is the most appreciated and most widely used book of devotion. In his “Theotime” he leads the reader deeper into the yearnings of the soul after fellowship with God, and describes the perfect peace which the soul reaches in God.461

§ 157.2. Michael Molinos.―After Francis de Sales a great multitude of male and female apostles of the new mystical gospel sprang up, and were favourably received by all the more moderate church leaders. The reactionaries, headed by the Jesuits, sought therefore all the more eagerly to deal severely with the Spaniard Michael Molinos. Having settled in Rome in A.D. 1669, he soon became the most popular of father confessors. His “Spiritual Guide” in A.D. 1675 received the approval of the Holy Office, and was introduced into Protestant Germany through a Latin translation by Francke in A.D. 1687, and a German translation in A.D. 1699 by Arnold. In it he taught those who came to the confessional that the way to the perfection of the Christian life, which consists in peaceful rest in the most intimate communion with God, is to be found in spiritual conference, secret prayer, active and passive contemplation, in rigorous destruction of all self-will, and in disinterested love of God, fortified, wherever that is possible, by daily communion. The success of the book was astonishing. It promptly influenced all ranks and classes, both men and women, lay and clerical, not only in Italy, but also by means of translations in France and Spain. But soon a reaction set in. As early as A.D. 1681 the famous Jesuit Segneri issued a treatise, in which he charged Molinos’ contemplative mysticism with onesidedness and exaggeration. He was answered by the pious and learned Oratorian Petrucci. A commission, appointed by the Inquisition to examine the writings of both parties, pronounced the views of Molinos and Petrucci to be in accordance with church doctrine and Segneri’s objections to be unfounded. All that Jesuitism reckoned as foundation, means, and end of piety was characterized as purely elementary. No hope could be entertained of winning over Innocent XI., the bitter enemy of the Jesuits. But Louis XIV. of France, at the instigation of his Jesuit father confessor, Lachaise, expressed through his ambassador his surprise that his holiness should, not only tolerate, but even encourage and support so dangerous a heretic, who taught all Christendom to undervalue the public services of the Church. In A.D. 1685 Innocent referred the matter to the tribunal of the Inquisition. Throughout the two years during which the investigation proceeded all arts were used to secure condemnation. Extreme statements of fanatical adherents of Molinos were not rarely met with, depreciating the public ordinances and ceremonies, confession, hearing of mass, church prayers, rosaries, etc. The pope, facile with age, amid groans and lamentations, allowed things to take their course, and at last confirmed the decree of the Inquisition of August 28th, A.D. 1687, by which Molinos was found guilty of spreading godless doctrine, and sixty-eight propositions, partly from his own writings, partly from the utterances of his adherents, were condemned as heretical and blasphemous. The heretic was to abjure his heresies publicly, clad in penitential garments, and was then consigned to lifelong solitary confinement in a Dominican cloister, where he died in A.D. 1697.462

§ 157.3. Madame Guyon and Fénelon.―After her husband’s death, Madame Guyon, in company with her father confessor, the Barnabite Lacombe, who had been initiated during a long residence at Rome into the mysteries of Molinist mysticism, spent five years travelling through France, Switzerland, Savoy, and Piedmont. Though already much suspected, she won the hearts of many men and women among the clergy and laity, and enkindled in them by personal conference, correspondence, and her literary work, the ardour of mystical love. Her brilliant writings are indeed disfigured by traces of foolish exaggeration, fanaticism and spiritual pride. She calls herself the woman of Revelation xii. 1, and the mère de la grace of her adherents. The following are the main distinguishing characteristics of her mysticism: The necessity of turning away from everything creaturely, rejecting all earthly pleasure and destroying every selfish interest, as well as of turning to God in passive contemplation, silent devotion, naked faith, which dispensed with all intellectual evidence, and pure disinterested love, which loves God for Himself alone, not for the eternal salvation obtained through Him. On her return to Paris with Lacombe in A.D. 1686 the proper martyrdom of her life began. Her chief persecutor was her step-brother, the Parisian superior of the Barnabites, La Mothe, who spread the most scandalous reports about his half-sister and Lacombe, and had them both imprisoned by a royal decree in A.D. 1688. Lacombe never regained his liberty. Taken from one prison to another, he lost his reason, and died in an asylum in A.D. 1699. Madame Guyon, however, by the influence of Madame de Maintenon, was released after ten months’ confinement. The favour of this royal dame was not of long continuance. Warned on all sides of the dangerous heretic, she broke off all intercourse with her in A.D. 1693, and persuaded the king to appoint a new commission, in A.D. 1694, with Bishop Bossuet of Meaux at its head, to examine her suspected writings. This commission meeting at Issy, had already, in February, A.D. 1695, drawn up thirty test articles, when Fénelon, tutor of the king’s grandson, and now nominated to the archbishopric of Cambray, was ordered by the king to take part in the proceedings. He signed the articles, though he objected to much in them, and had four articles of his own added. Madame Guyon also did so, and Bossuet at last testified for her that he had found her moral character stainless and her doctrine free from Molinist heresy. But the bigot Maintenon was not satisfied with this. Bossuet demanded the surrender of this certificate that he might draw up another; and when Madame Guyon refused, on the basis of a statement by the crazed Lacombe, she was sent to the Bastile [Bastille] in A.D. 1696. In A.D. 1697 Fénelon had written in her defence his “Explication des Maximes des Saintes sur la Vie Intérieur,” showing that the condemned doctrines of passive contemplation, secret prayer, naked faith, and disinterested love, had all been previously taught by St. Theresa, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, and other saints. He sent this treatise for an opinion to Rome. A violent controversy then arose between Bossuet and Fénelon. The pious, well-meaning pope, Innocent XII., endeavoured vainly to bring about a good understanding. Bossuet and the all-powerful Maintenon wished no reconciliation, but condemnation, and gave the king and pope no rest till very reluctantly he prohibited the objectionable book by a brief in A.D. 1699, and condemned twenty-three propositions from it as heretical. Fénelon, strongly attached to the church, and a bitter persecutor of Protestants, made an unconditional surrender, as guilty of a defective exposition of the truth. But Madame Guyon continued in the Bastile [Bastille] till A.D. 1701, when she retired to Blois, where she died in A.D. 1717. Bossuet had died in A.D. 1704, and Fénelon in A.D. 1715. She published only two of her writings: “An Exposition of the Song,” and the “Moyen Court et très Facile de faire Oraison.” Many others, including her translation and expositions of the Bible, were during her lifetime edited in twenty volumes by her friend, the Reformed preacher of the Palatinate, Peter Poiret.463

§ 157.4. Mysticism Tinged with Theosophy and Pantheism.―Antoinette Bourignon, the daughter of a rich merchant of Lille, in France, while matron of a hospital in her native city, had in A.D. 1662 gathered around her a party of believers in her theosophic and fantastic revelations. She was obliged to flee to the Netherlands, and there, by the force of her eloquence in speech and writing, spread her views among the Protestants. Among them she attracted the great scientist Swammerdam. But when she introduced politics, she escaped imprisonment only by flight. Down to her death in A.D. 1680 she earnestly and successfully prosecuted her mission in north-west Germany. Peter Poiret collected her writings and published them in twenty-one volumes at Amsterdam, in A.D. 1679.―Quite of another sort was the pantheistic mysticism of Angelus Silesius. Originally a Protestant physician at Breslau, he went over to the Romish church in A.D. 1653, and in consequence received from Vienna the honorary title of physician to the emperor. He was made priest in A.D. 1661, and till his death in A.D. 1677 maintained a keen polemic against the Protestant church with all a pervert’s zeal. Most of his hymns belong to his Protestant period. As a Catholic he wrote his “Cherubinischer Wandersmann,” a collection of rhymes in which, with childish naïveté and hearty, gushing ardour, he merges self into the abyss of the universal Deity, and develops a system of the most pronounced pantheism.

§ 157.5. Jansenism in its first Stage.―Bishop Cornelius Jansen, of Ypres, who died in A.D. 1638, gave the fruits of his lifelong studies of Augustine in his learned work, “Augustinus s. doctr. Aug. de humanæ Naturæ Sanitate, Ægritudine, et Medicina adv. Pelagianos et Massilienses,” which was published after his death in three volumes, Louvain, 1640. The Jesuits induced Urban VIII., in A.D. 1642, to prohibit it in his bull In eminenti. Augustine’s numerous followers in France felt themselves hit by this decree. Jansen’s pupil at Port Royal from A.D. 1635, Duvergier de Hauranne, usually called St. Cyran, from the Benedictine monastery of which he was abbot, was the bitter foe of the Jesuits and Richelieu, who had him cast into prison in A.D. 1638, from which he was liberated after the death of the cardinal in A.D. 1643, and shortly before his own. Another distinguished member of the party was Antoine Arnauld, doctor of the Sorbonne, who died in A.D. 1694, the youngest of twenty children of a parliamentary advocate, whose powerful defence of the University of Paris against the Jesuits called forth their hatred and lifelong persecution. His mantle, as a vigorous polemist, had fallen upon his youngest son. Very important too was the influence of his much older sister, Angelica Arnauld, Abbess of the Cistercian cloister of Port Royal des Champs, six miles from Paris, which under her became the centre of religious life and effort for all France. Around her gathered some of the noblest, most pious, and talented men of the time: the poet Racine, the mathematician and apologist Pascal, the Bible translator De Sacy, the church historian Tillemont, all ardent admirers of Augustine and determined opponents of the lax morality of the Jesuits. Arnauld’s book, “De la fréquente Communion,” was approved by the Sorbonne, the Parliament, and the most distinguished of the French clergy; but in A.D. 1653 Innocent X. condemned five Jansenist propositions in it as heretical. The Augustinians now maintained that these doctrines were not taught in the sense attributed to them by the pope. Arnauld distinguished the question du fait from the question du droit, maintaining that the latter only were subject to the judgment of the Holy See. The Sorbonne, now greatly changed in composition and character, expelled him on account of this position from its corporation in A.D. 1656. About this time, at Arnauld’s instigation, Pascal, the profound and brilliant author of “Pensées sur la Religion,” began, under the name of Louis de Montalte to publish his famous “Provincial Letters,” which in an admirable style exposed and lashed with deep earnestness and biting wit the base moral principles of Jesuit casuistry. The truly annihilating effect of these letters upon the reputation of the powerful order could not be checked by their being burnt by order of Parliament by the hangman at Aix in A.D. 1657, and at Paris in A.D. 1660. But meanwhile the specifically Jansenist movement entered upon a new phase of its development. Alexander VII. had issued in A.D. 1656 a bull which denounced the application of the distinction du fait and du droit to the papal decrees as derogatory to the holy see, and affirmed that Jansen taught the five propositions in the sense they had been condemned. In order to enforce the sentence, Annal, the Jesuit father confessor of Louis XIV., obtained in 1661 a royal decree requiring all French clergy, monks, nuns, and teachers to sign a formula unconditionally accepting this bull. Those who refused were banished, and fled mostly to the Netherlands. The sorely oppressed nuns of Port Royal at last reluctantly agreed to sign it; but they were still persecuted, and in A.D. 1664 the new archbishop, Perefixe, inaugurated a more severe persecution, placed this cloister under the interdict, and removed some of the nuns to other convents. In A.D. 1669, Alexander’s successor, Clement IX., secured the submission of Arnauld, De Sacy, Nicole, and many of the nuns by a policy of mild connivance. But the hatred of the Jesuits was still directed against their cloister. In A.D. 1705 Clement XI. again demanded full and unconditioned acceptance of the decree of Alexander VII., and when the nuns refused, the pope, in A.D. 1708, declared this convent an irredeemable nest of heresy, and ordered its suppression, which was carried out in A.D. 1709. In A.D. 1710 cloister and church were levelled to the ground, and the very corpses taken out of their graves.464―Continuation, § 165, 7.

§ 158. Science and Art in the Catholic Church.

Catholic theology flourished during the seventeenth century as it had never done since the twelfth and thirteenth. Especially in the liberal Gallican church there was a vigorous scientific life. The Parisian Sorbonne and the orders of the Jesuits, St. Maur, and the Oratorians, excelled in theological, particularly in patristic and historical, learning, and the contemporary brilliancy of Reformed theology in France afforded a powerful stimulus. But the best days of art, especially Italian painting, were now past. Sacred music was diligently cultivated, though in a secularized style, and many gifted hymn-writers made their appearance in Spain and Germany.

§ 158.1. Theological Science (§ 149, 14).―The parliamentary advocate, Mich. le Jay, published at his own expense the Parisian Polyglott in ten folio vols., A.D. 1629-1645, which, besides complete Syriac and Arabic translations, included also the Samaritan. The chief contributor was the Oratorian Morinus, who edited the LXX. and the Samaritan texts, which he regarded as incomparably superior to the Masoretic text corrupted by the Jews. The Jansenists produced a French translation of the Bible with practical notes, condemned by the pope, but much read by the people. It was mainly the work of the brothers De Sacy. The New Testament was issued in A.D. 1667 and the Old Testament somewhat later, called the Bible of Mons from the fictitious name of the place of publication. Richard Simon, the Oratorian, who died in A.D. 1712, treated Scripture with a boldness of criticism never before heard of within the church. While opposed by many on the Catholic side, the curia favoured his work as undermining the Protestant doctrine of Scripture. Cornelius à Lapide, who died A.D. 1637, expounded Scripture according to the fourfold sense.―In systematic theology the old scholastic method still held sway. Moral theology was wrought out in the form of casuistry with unexampled lasciviousness, especially by the Jesuits (§ 149, 10). The work of the Spaniard Escobar, who died in A.D. 1669, ran through fifty editions, and that of Busembaum, professor in Cologne and afterwards rector of Münster, who died A.D. 1668, went through seventy editions. On account of the attempted assassination of Louis XV. by Damiens in A.D. 1757, with which the Jesuits and their doctrine of tyrannicide were charged, the Parliament of Toulouse in A.D. 1757, and of Paris in A.D. 1761, had Busembaum’s book publicly burnt, and several popes, Alexander VII., VIII., and Innocent XI., condemned a number of propositions from the moral writings of these and other Jesuits. Among polemical writers the most distinguished were Becanus, who died in A.D. 1624, and Bossuet (§ 153, 7). Among the Jansenists the most prominent controversialists were Nicole and Arnauld, who, in order to escape the reproach of Calvinism, sought to prove the Catholic doctrine of the supper to be the same as that of the apostles, and were answered by the Reformed theologians Claude and Jurieu. In apologetics the leading place is occupied by Pascal, with his brilliant “Pensées.” Huetius, a French bishop and editor of Origen, who died in A.D. 1721, replied to Spinoza’s attacks on the Pentateuch, and applying to reason itself the Cartesian principle, that philosophy must begin with doubt, pointed the doubter to the supernatural revealed truths in the Catholic church as the only anchor of salvation. The learned Jesuit Dionysius Petavius, who died in A.D. 1652, edited Epiphanius and wrote gigantic chronological works and numerous violent polemics against Calvinists and Jansenists. His chief work is the unfinished patristic-dogmatic treatise in five vols. folio, A.D. 1680, “De theologicis Dogmatibus.” The Oratorian Thomassinus wrote an able archæological work: “Vetus et Nova Eccl. Disciplina circa Beneficia et Beneficiarios.”

§ 158.2. In church history, besides those named in § 5, 2, we may mention Pagi, the keen critic and corrector of Baronius. The study of sources was vigorously pursued. We have collections of mediæval writings and documents by Sirmond, D’Achery, Mabillon, Martène, Baluzius; of acts of councils by Labbé and Cossart, those of France by Jac. Sirmond, and of Spain by Aguirre; acts of the martyrs by Ruinart; monastic rules by Holstenius, a pervert, who became Vatican librarian, and died at Rome A.D. 1661. Dufresne Ducange, an advocate, who died in A.D. 1688, wrote glossaries of the mediæval and barbarous Latin and Greek, indispensable for the study of documents belonging to those times. The greatest prodigy of learning was Mabillon, who died in A.D. 1707, a Benedictine of St. Maur, and historian of his order. Pet. de Marca, who died Archbishop of Paris A.D. 1662, wrote the famous work on the Gallican liberties “De Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii.” The Jansenist doctor of the Sorbonne, Elias du Pin, who died A.D. 1719, wrote “Nouvelle Bibliothèque des Auteurs Eccles.” in forty-seven vols. The Jesuit Maimbourg, died A.D. 1686, compiled several party histories of Wiclifism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism; but as a Gallican was deprived of office by the pope, and afterwards supported by a royal pension. The Antwerp Jesuits Bolland, Henschen, Papebroch started, in A.D. 1643, the gigantic work “Acta Sanctorum,” carried on by the learned members of their order in Belgium, known as Bollandists. It was stopped by the French invasion of A.D. 1794, when it had reached October 15th with the fifty-third folio vol. The Belgian Jesuits continued the work from A.D. 1845-1867, reaching in six vols. the end of October, but not displaying the ability and liberality of their predecessors. In Venice Paul Sarpi (§ 155, 2) wrote a history of the Tridentine Council, one of the most brilliant historical works of any period. Leo Allatius, a Greek convert at Rome, who died in A.D. 1669, wrote a work to show the agreement of the Eastern and Western churches. Cardinal Bona distinguished himself as a liturgical writer.―In France pulpit eloquence reached the highest pitch in such men as Flechier, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fénelon, Massillon, and Bridaine. In Vienna Abraham à St. Clara inveighed in a humorous, grotesque way against the corruption of manners, with an undercurrent of deep moral earnestness. Similar in style and spirit, but much more deeply sunk in Catholic superstition, was his contemporary the Capuchin Martin of Cochem, who missionarized the Rhine Provinces and western Germany for forty years, and issued a large number of popular religious tracts.―Continuation, § 165, 14.