SECOND DIVISION. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN AND ROMAN CHURCH DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.198 (continued 8)

§ 106.3. The Church Doctrine of the Hereafter.―All who had perfectly observed every requirement of the penances and sacraments of the church to the close of their lives had the gates of Heaven opened to them. All others passed into the Lower World to suffer either positively=sensus, inexpressible pains of fire, or negatively=damnum, loss of the vision of God. There are four degrees corresponding to four places of punishment. Hell, situated in the midst of the earth, abyssus (Rev. xx. 1), is place and state of eternal punishment for all infidels, apostates, excommunicates, and all who died in mortal sin. The next circle is the purifying fire of Purgatory, or a place of temporary punishment positive or negative for all believing Christians who did not in life fully satisfy the three requirements of the sacrament of penance (§ 104, 4). The Limbus infantum is a side chamber of purgatory, where all unbaptized infants are kept for ever, only deprived of blessedness in consequence of original sin. Then above this is the Limbus Patrum, “Abraham’s bosom,” where the saints of the Old Covenant await the second coming of Christ.

§ 106.4. Flagellation.―From the 8th century discipline was often exercised by means of scourging, administered by the confessor who prescribed it. In the 11th century voluntary Self-Flagellation was frequently practised not only as punishment for one’s own sin, but, after the pattern of Christ and the martyrs, as atonement for sins of others. It originated in Italy, had its great patron in Damiani (§ 97, 4), and was earnestly commended by Bernard, Norbert, Francis, Dominic, etc. It is reported of St. Dominic that he scourged himself thrice every night, first for himself, and then for his living companions, and then for the departed in purgatory. The zealous Franciscan preachers were mainly instrumental in exerting an enthusiasm for self-mortification among the people (§ 98, 4). About A.D. 1225, Anthony of Padua attracted crowds who went about publicly lashing themselves while singing psalms. Followers of Joachim of Floris (§ 108, 5) as Flagellants rushed through all Northern Italy in great numbers during A.D. 1260, preaching the immediate approach of the end of the world.319

§ 107. Female Mystics.

Practical mysticism which concerned itself only with the salvation of the soul, had many representatives among the women of the 12th and 13th centuries. Among them it was specially characterized by the prevalence of ecstatic visions, often deteriorating into manifestations of nervous affections which superstitious people regarded as exhibitions of miraculous power. Examples are found in all countries, but especially in the Netherlands, and the Rhine provinces, in France, Alsace and Switzerland, in Saxony and Thuringia. Those whose visions pointed to the inauguration of reforms are of particular interest to us, as they often had a considerable influence on the subsequent history of the church.

§ 107.1. Two Rhenish Prophetesses of the 12th Century.―St. Hildegard was founder and abbess of a cloister near Bingen on the Rhine, where she died in A.D. 1178 in her 74th year. Grieving over clerical and papal corruptions, she had apocalyptic visions of the antichrist, and travelled far and engaged in an extensive correspondence in appealing for radical reforms. St. Bernard and pope Eugenius III. who visited Treves in A.D. 1147 acknowledged her prophetic vocation, and the people ascribed to her wonderful healing power.―Hildegard’s younger contemporary was the like-minded St. Elizabeth of Schönau, abbess of the neighbouring convent of Schönau, who died in A.D. 1165. Her prophecies were mostly of the apocalyptic-visionary order, and in them with still greater severity she lashed the corruptions of the clergy. She also gave currency to the legend of St. Ursula (§ 104, 9).

§ 107.2. Three Thuringian Prophetesses of the 13th Century.―Mechthild of Magdeburg, after thirty years of Beguine life, wrote in a beautiful rhythmical style in German her “Light of Deity,” setting forth the sweetness of God’s love, the blessedness of glorified saints, the pains of purgatory and hell, and denouncing with great moral earnestness the corruptions of the clergy and the church, and depicting with a poet’s or prophet’s power the coming of the last day. Influenced by the apocalyptic views of Joachim of Floris (§ 108, 5), she also gives expression to a genuinely German patriotism. With her it is a new preaching order that leads to victory against antichrist, and the founder of this order, who meets a martyr’s death in the conflict, is a son of the Roman king. In contrast with Joachim, she thus makes the German empire not a foe but the ally of the church. Mechthild’s prophecies largely influenced Dante, and even her name appears in that of his guide Matilda.―Mechthild of Hackeborn, who died in A.D. 1310, in her Speculum spiritualis gratiæ published her visions of a reformatory and eschatological prophetic order, more subjective and personal than those of the former.―Gertrude the Great, who died in A.D. 1311, is more decidedly a reformer than either of the Mechthilds or any other woman of the Middle Ages. A diligent inquirer into the depths of Scripture, she renounced the veneration usually shown to Mary, the saints, and relics, repudiated all the ideas of her age regarding merits, ceremonial exercises, and indulgences, and in the exercise of simple faith trusted only to the grace of God in Christ. She seems to belong to the 16th rather than to the 13th century. Her visions, too, are more of a spiritual kind.

V. Heretical Opposition to Ecclesiastical Authority.

§ 108. The Protesters against the Church.

Mediæval endeavours after reform, partly proceeded from within the church itself in attempts to restore apostolic purity and simplicity, partly from without on the part of those who despaired of any good coming out of the church, and who therefore warred bitterly against it. Such attempts were often lost amid the vagaries of fanaticism and heresy, which soon threatened the foundation of the social fabric, and often came into collision with the State. Most widely spread and most radical were the numerous dualistic sects of the Cathari. Montanist fanaticism was revived in apocalyptic prophesyings. There were also pantheistic sects, and among the Pasagians a sort of Ebionism reappeared. Another group of sects originated through reformatory endeavours of individual men, who perceiving the utter corruption of the church of their day, sought salvation in a revolutionary overthrow of all ecclesiastical institutions and repudiated often the truth with the error which was the object of their hate. The only protesting church of a thoroughly sensible evangelical sort was that of the Waldensians.

§ 108.1. The Cathari.―Opposition to hierarchical pretensions led to the spread of sects, especially in Northern Italy and France, from the 11th century. Hidden remnants of Old Manichæan sects got new courage and ventured into the light during the period of the crusades. In France they were called Tisserands, because mostly composed of weavers. In Italy they were called Patareni or Paterini, either from the original meaning of the word, rabble, riff-raff (§ 97, 5), or because they so far adopted the attitude of the Pasaria of Milan, as to offer lay opposition to the local clergy, or because of the frequent use of the Paternoster. Of later origin are the names Publicani and Bulgări, given as opprobrious designations to the Paulicians. The most widely current name of Cathari, from early times a favourite title assumed by rigorist sects (§ 41, 3), had its origin in the East. In France they were called Albigensians, from the province of Albigeois, which was their chief seat in Southern France.―Of the Writings of the Cathari we possess from the end of the 13th century a Provençal translation of the N.T., free from all falsification in favour of their sectarian views. Their tenets are to be learnt only from the polemical writings of their opponents, Alanus ab Insulis (§ 102, 5), the Dominican Joh. Moneta, about A.D. 1240, and Rainerius, Sacchoni, Dominican and inquisitor, about A.D. 1250.

§ 108.2. Besides their opposition to the hierarchy, all these sects had in common a dualistic basis to their theological systems. They held in a more or less extreme form the following doctrines: The good God who is proclaimed in the N.T. created in the beginning the heavenly and invisible world, and peopled it with souls clothed in ethereal bodies. The earthly world, on the other hand, is the work of an evil spirit, who is held up as object of worship in the O.T. Entering the heavenly world he succeeded in seducing some of its inhabitants, whom he, when defeated by the archangel Michael, took with him to earth, and there imprisoned in earthly bodies, so as to make return to their heavenly home impossible. Yet they are capable of redemption, and may, on repentance and submission to purificatory ordinances, be again freed from their earthly bonds and brought home again to heaven. For this redemption the good God sent “the heavenly man” Jesus (1 Cor. xv. 47) to earth in the appearance of man to teach men their heavenly origin and the means of restoration. The Cathari rejected the O.T., but accepted the N.T., which they read in the vernacular. Marriage they regarded as a hindrance to Christian perfection. They treated with contempt water baptism, the Supper, and ordination, as well as all veneration of saints and relics, and tolerated no images, crosses, or altars. Prayer, abstinence, and baptism of the Spirit were regarded as the only means of salvation. Preaching was next to prayer most prominent in their public services. They also laid great stress upon fasting, genuflection, and repetitions of stated formulæ, especially the Lord’s Prayer. Their members were divided into Cregentz (credentes or catechumens) and Bos homes or Bos crestias (boni homines, boni Christiani=perfecti or electi). A lower order of the catechumens were the Auditores. These were received as Credentes after a longer period of training amid various ceremonies and repetition of the Lord’s prayer, etc. The order of the Perfecti was entered by spiritual baptism, the Consolamentum or communication of the Holy Spirit as the promised Comforter, without which no one can enjoy eternal life. Even opponents such as St. Bernard admit that there was great moral earnestness shown by some of them, and many met a martyr’s death with true Christian heroism. Symptoms of decay appeared in the spread among them of antinomian practices. This moral deterioration showed itself as a radical part of this system in the so-called Luciferians or devil worshippers, whose dualism, like that of the Euchites and Bogomils (§ 71), led to the adoption of two Sons of God. Lucifer the elder, wrongly driven from heaven, is the creator and lord of this earthly world, and hence alone worshipped in it. His expulsion (Isa. xiv. 12) is carried out by the younger son, Michael, who will, however, on this account, whenever Lucifer regains heaven, be sent with all his company into eternal punishment. Of an incarnation of God, even of a docetic kind, they know nothing. They regarded Jesus as a false prophet who was crucified on account of the evil he had done.―Catharist sects suspected of Manichæan tendencies were discovered here and there during the 11th century. In the following century their number had increased enormously, and they spread over Lombardy and Southern France, but were also found in Southern Italy, in Germany, Belgium, Spain, and even in England. They had a pope residing in Bulgaria, twelve magistri and seventy-two bishops, each with a Filius major and minor at his side. In A.D. 1167 they were able to muster an œcumenical Catharist Council at Toulouse. Neither clemency nor severity could put them down. St. Bernard prevailed most by the power of his love, and subsequently learned Dominicans had more effect with their preaching and disputations. They found abundant opportunity of displaying their hatred of the papacy during the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. In spite of terrible persecution, which reached its height in the beginning of the 13th century in the Albigensian crusade (§ 109, 1), remnants of them were found down into the 14th century.

§ 108.3. The small sect of the Pasagians in Lombardy during the 12th century, protesting against the Manichæan depreciation of the O.T. of the Catharists, adopted views of a somewhat Ebionite character. With the exception of sacrifice, they enforced all the old ceremonial observances, even circumcision, and held an Arian or Ebionite theory of the Person of Christ. Their name meaning “passage,” seems to refer to pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and possibly from this a clue to their origin may be obtained.

§ 108.4. Pantheistic Heretics.

Amalrich of Bena taught first philosophy, then theology, at Paris in the end of the 12th century. In A.D. 1204 Innocent III. called him to account for his proposition, Christian in sound, but probably pantheistically intended, that no one could be saved who is not a member in Christ’s body, and obliged him to retract. His death occurred soon after, and some years later we find traces of a pantheistic sect founded on the alleged doctrines of Amalrich vigorously propagated by his disciple William the goldsmith. God had previously appeared as Father incarnate in Abraham, and as Son in Christ, and now henceforth as the Holy Spirit in every believer, who therefore in the same sense as Christ is God. As such, too, he is without sin, and what to others would be sin is not so to him. In the age of the Son the Mosaic law lost its validity, and in that of the Spirit, the sacraments and services of the new covenant. God has always been all in all. We find him in Ovid as well as in Augustine, and the body of Christ is in common bread as well as in the consecrated wafer on the altar. Saint worship is idolatry. There is no resurrection; heaven and hell exist only in the imagination of men. Rome is Babylon, and the pope is antichrist; but to the king of France, after the overthrow of antichrist, shall the kingdoms of the earth be subject, etc. A synod at Paris in A.D. 1209 condemned William and nine priests to be burnt, and four other priests to imprisonment for life, and ordered that Amalrich’s bones should be exhumed and scattered over an open field. Regarding the physical works of Aristotle as the source of this heresy, the council also prohibited all lectures upon these (§ 103, 1). This was seen to be a mistake, and so in A.D. 1225 Honorius III. fixed on the true culprit and condemned the De divisione naturæ of Erigena (§ 90, 6). The penalties inflicted did not by any means lead to the rooting out of the sect. During the whole 13th century it continued to spread from Paris over all eastern France as far as Alsace, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and in the 14th century reached its highest development in the pantheistic-libertine doctrines of the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5). We never again meet with the name of Amalrich, and the sects were never called after him.

David of Dinant at the same time with Amalrich taught philosophy and theology in the University of Paris. He also lived for a long while at the papal court in Rome, high in favour with Innocent III. as a subtle dialectician. The Synod of Paris of A.D. 1209, which passed judgment on the Amalricians, pronounced David a heretic and ordered his works to be burnt. He avoided personal punishment by flight. The central point of his system was the assumption of a single eternal substance without distinctions, from which God, spirit (νοῦς), and matter (ὕλη) sprang as the three principles of all later forms of existences (corpora, animæ, and substantiæ æternæ). God is regarded as the primum efficiens, matter as the primum suscipiens, and spirit as the medium between the two. David’s scholars never formed a sect and never had any connection apparently with the followers of Amalrich.

The Ortlibarians were a sect condemned by Innocent III., followers of a certain Ortlieb of Strassburg about A.D. 1212. They held the world to be without beginning. They looked upon Jesus as the son of Joseph and Mary, sinless like all other children, but raised to be son of God only through illumination from the doctrines of their sect, which had existed from the earliest times. They admitted the gospel story of Christ’s life, sufferings, and resurrection, not, however, in a literal but only in a moral and mystical acceptation. The consecrated host was but common bread, and in it was the body of the Lord. A Jew entering their sect needed not to be baptized, and fellowship with them was sufficient to secure salvation. There is no resurrection of the flesh; man’s spirit alone is immortal. After the last judgment, which will come when pope and emperor are converted to their views and all opposition is overcome, the world will last for ever, and men will be born and die just as now. They professed a strictly ascetic life, and many of them fasted every second day.

§ 108.5. Apocalyptic Heretics.―The Cistercian abbot Joachim of Floris, who died in A.D. 1202, with his notions of the so called “Everlasting Gospel,” as a reformer and as one inclined to apocalyptic prophecy, followed in the footsteps of Hildegard of Bingen and Elizabeth of Schönau (§ 107, 1). His prophetic views spread among the Franciscans and were long unchallenged. In A.D. 1254 the University of Paris, warning against the begging monks (§ 103, 3), got Alexander IV. to condemn these views as set forth in commentaries on Isaiah and Jeremiah ascribed to Joachim, but now found to be spurious. Preger doubts but, Reuter maintains the genuineness of the three tracts grouped under the title of the Evangelium æternum. The main points in his theory seem to have been these: There are three ages, that of the Father in the O.T., of the Son in the N.T., and of the Holy Spirit in the approaching fulness of the kingdom of God on earth. Of the apostles, Peter is representative of the first age, Paul of the second, and John of the third. They may also be characterized as the age of the laity, the clergy, and the monks, and compared in respect of light with the stars, the moon, and the sun. The first six periods of the N.T. age are divided (after the pattern of the forty-two generations of Matt. i. and the forty-two months or 1260 days of Rev. xi. 2, 3) into forty-two shorter periods of thirty years each, so that the sixth period closes with A.D. 1260, and then shall dawn the Sabbath period of the New Covenant as the age of the Holy Spirit. This will be preceded by a short reign of antichrist as a punishment for the corruptions of the church and clergy. By the labours of the monks, however, the church is at last purified and brought forth triumphant, and the life of holy contemplation becomes universal. The germs of antichrist were evidently supposed to lie in the Hohenstaufen empire of Frederick I. and Henry VI. The commentaries on Isaiah and Jeremiah went so far as to point to the person of Frederick II. as that of the antichrist.

§ 108.6. Ghibelline Joachites in Italy, mostly recruited from the Franciscans, sided with the emperor against the pope and adopted apocalyptic views to suit their politics, and regarded the papacy as the precursor of antichrist. One of their chiefs, Oliva, who died in A.D. 1297, wrote a Postilla super Apoc., in which he denounced the Roman church of his day as the Great Whore of Babylon, and his scholar Ubertino of Casale saw in the beast that rose out of the sea (Rev. xiii.) a prophetic picture of the papacy.―In Germany these views spread among the Dominicans during the 13th century, especially in Swabia. The movement was headed by one Arnold. who wrote an Epistola de correctione ecclesiæ about A.D. 1246. He finds in Innocent IV. the antichrist and in Frederick II. the executioner of the Divine judgment and the inauguration of the reformation. Frederick’s death, which followed soon after in A.D. 1250, and the catastrophe of A.D. 1268 (§ 96, 20), must have put an end to the whole movement.

§ 108.7. Revolutionary Reformers.

The Petrobrusians, whose founder, Peter of Bruys, was a pupil of Abælard and a priest in the south of France, repudiated the outward or visible church and sought the true or invisible church in the hearts of believers. He insisted on the destruction of churches and sanctuaries because God could be worshipped in a stable or tavern, burnt crucifixes in the cooking stove, eagerly opposed celibacy, mass, and infant baptism, and after a twenty years’ career perished at the stake about A.D. 1126 at the hands of a raging mob. One of Peter’s companions, Henry of Lausanne, whose fiery eloquence had been influential in inciting to reform, succeeded to the leadership of the Petrobrusians, who from him were called Henricians. St. Bernard succeeded in winning many of them back. Henry was condemned to imprisonment for life, and died in A.D. 1149.

Arnold of Brescia, who died in A.D. 1155, a preacher of great moral and religious earnestness, addressed himself to attack the worldliness of the church and the papacy. Except in maintaining that sacraments dispensed by unworthy priests have no efficacy, he does not seem to have deviated from the church doctrine. Officiating as reader in his native town, his bishop complained of him as a heretic to the second Lateran Council of A.D. 1139. His views were condemned, and he himself was banished and enjoined to observe perpetual silence. He now went to his teacher Abælard in France. Here St. Bernard accused him at the synod convened against Abælard at Sens in A.D. 1141 (§ 102, 2) as “the armour-bearer” of this “Goliath-heretic,” and obtained the condemnation of both. He was then excommunicated by Innocent II. and imprisoned in a cloister. Arnold, however, escaped to Switzerland, where he lived and taught undisturbed in Zürich for some years, till Bishop Hermann of Constance, at the instigation of the Saint of Clairvaux, threatened him with imprisonment or exile. He was now taken under the protection of Guido de Castella, Abælard’s friend and patron, and accompanied him to Bohemia and Moravia. On Guido’s elevation as Cœlestine II. to the papal chair in A.D. 1143, Arnold returned to his native land. From A.D. 1146 we find him in Rome at the head of the agitation for political and ecclesiastical freedom. For further details of his history, see § 96, 13, 14. A party of so-called Arnoldists occupied itself long after his death with the carrying out of his ecclesiastico-political ideal.

§ 108.8.

The so called Pastorelles were roused to revolution by the miseries following the crusades. An impulse was given to the sect by the news of the imprisonment of St. Louis (§ 94, 6). A Cistercian Magister Jacob from Hungary appeared in A.D. 1251 with the announcement that he had seen the Mother of God, who gave him a letter calling upon the pastors to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. Those who have heard the Christmas message are called of God to undertake the great work which neither the corrupt hierarchy nor the proud, ambitious nobles were able to perform; but before them, the poor shepherds, the sea will open a way, so that they may hasten with dry feet to the release of king Louis. His fanatical harangues soon gathered immense crowds of common people around him, estimated at about 100,000 men. But instead of going to the Holy Land, they first gave vent to their wrath against the clergy, monks, and Jews at home by murdering, plundering, and ill treating them in all manner of ways. The queen-mother Blanca, favourable at first, now used all her power against them. Jacob was slain at Bourges, his troops scattered, and their leaders executed.

In the Apostolic Brothers we have a blending of Arnoldist and Joachist tendencies. Their founder, Gerhard Segarelli, an artisan of Parma, was moved about A.D. 1260 by the sight of a picture of the apostles in their poverty to go about preaching repentance and calling on the church to return to apostolic simplicity. He did not question the doctrine of the church. Only when Honorius in A.D. 1286 and Nicholas IV. in A.D. 1290 took measures against them did they openly oppose the papacy and denounce the Roman church as the apocalyptic Babylon. Segarelli was seized in A.D. 1294 and perished in the flames with many of his followers in A.D. 1300. Fra Dolcino, a younger priest, now took the leadership, and roused great enthusiasm by his preaching against the Roman antichrist. He bravely held his ground with 2,000 followers for two years in the recesses of the mountains, but was reduced at last in A.D. 1307 by hunger, and died like his predecessor at the stake. He distinguished four stages in the historical development of the kingdom of God on earth. The first two are those of the Father and the Son in the O.T. and the N.T. The third begins with Constantine’s establishment of the Christian empire, advanced by the Benedictine rule and the reforms of the Franciscans and Dominicans, but afterwards falling into decay. The fourth era of complete restoration of the apostolic life is inaugurated by Segarelli and Dolcino. A new chief sent of God will rule the church in peace, and the Holy Spirit will never leave the restored communion of His saints. Remnants of the sect were long in existence in France and Germany, where they united with the Fraticelli and Beghards. Even in A.D. 1374 we find a synod at Narbonne threatening them with the severest punishments.

§ 108.9. Reforming Enthusiasts.

A certain Tanchelm about A.D. 1115 preached in the Netherlands against the corruptions of the church. He claimed like honour with Christ as being assisted by the same Spirit, is said to have betrothed himself to the Virgin Mary, and to have been killed at last in A.D. 1124 by a priest.

A Frenchman, Eon de Stella of Brittany, hearing in a church the words “per Eum qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos,” and understanding it of his own name, went through the country preaching, prophesying, and working miracles. He secured many followers, and when persecuted, fled to the woods. He denied the Divine institution of the hierarchy, denounced the Roman church as false because of the wicked lives of the priests, rejected the doctrine of a resurrection of the body, denied that marriage was a sacrament, and regarded the communication of the Spirit by imposition of hands the only true baptism. In A.D. 1148 troops were sent against him, and he and many of his followers were taken prisoners. His adherents were burnt, but Eon was brought before a synod at Rheims, where he answered the question of the pope Eugenius III., “Who art thou?” by saying Is qui venturus est, etc. He was then pronounced deranged and delivered over to the custody of the archbishop.

§ 108.10. The Waldensians.

Their Origin.―A citizen of Lyons, named Valdez (Valdesius, Waldus, the Christian name of Peter, given to him first 120 years later, is quite unsupported), who had become rich by the practice of usury, an occupation condemned by the church, was about A.D. 1173 deeply impressed by reading the legend of St. Alexius, and was in his spiritual anxiety directed by a theologian to the words of Christ to the rich young ruler in Matthew xix. 21. Making over to his wife only his landed property, and distributing all the rest of his possessions among the poor, and then, for further instruction in regard to the imitation of Christ required of him, having applied himself to the study of the gospels, the Psalter, and other biblical books, and a selection of classical passages translated for his use by two friendly priests out of the writings of the Fathers into the Romance dialect, he founded in A.D. 1177, in company with certain men and women, who were prepared like himself to abandon the world and all its goods, a society for preaching the gospel among the people. In accordance with the Lord’s command to the seventy disciples (Luke x. 1-4), they went forth two and two in apostolic costume, in woollen penitential garments, without staff or scrip, their feet protected with merely wooden sandals (sabatas, sabots), preaching repentance, and proclaiming the gospel message of salvation throughout the land, in order to bring back again among the people the Christian life in its purity and simplicity. The Archbishop of Lyons prohibited their preaching; but they referred to Acts v. 29, and appealed, praying for a confirmation of their association, to the Third Lateran Council of A.D. 1179, under Alexander III., which, however, scornfully dismissed their appeal. As they nevertheless still continued to preach, Pope Lucius III., at the Council of Verona, in A.D. 1184, laid them under the ban. They had hitherto no intention of offering any sort of opposition to the doctrine, worship, or constitution of the Catholic church. Even the Catholic authorities did not so much take offence at what they preached but rather only at this, that they without ecclesiastical call and authority had assumed the function of preaching. Innocent III., also, admitted the imprudence of his predecessor, and favoured the plan of a Waldensian who had left his brethren to transform the association of the Pauperes de Lugduno into the monastic-like lay union of Pauperes Catholici, to which in A.D. 1208 he assigned the duties of preaching, expounding Scripture, and holding meetings for edification under episcopal supervision. But this concession came too late. Since the church had itself broken off the fetters which had previously bound them to the traditional faith of the Catholic church, the Leonists had gone too far upon the path of evangelical freedom to be satisfied with any such terms. Innocent now renewed the ban against them at the Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215. Of the later life and work of the founder we know with certainty only this, that he made extensive journeys in the interests of his cause. Even during his lifetime (he died probably about A.D. 1217) the members (socii) of the society (Societas Valdesiana) founded by him had spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of the south of France, the east of Spain, the north of Italy, and the south of Germany, and had even crossed the Channel into England. They were named, in accordance with their fundamental principle, as well as from the starting point of their apostolic mission, Pauperes de Lugduno or Leonistæ=from Lyons, also from the covering of their feet, Sabatati; but they styled themselves among one another fratres and sorores, and their adherents among the people amici and amicæ; while the Catholic polemical writers, who for a similar class among the Cathari had employed the distinctive terms Perfecti and Credentes, made use of these designations in treating of the Waldensians. The latter continue “in the world,” that is, in the exercise of their family duties, and the discharge of civil obligations, and all the positions and entanglements connected therewith; while the former devoted themselves to a celibate life, to absolute poverty, to incessant preaching from place to place, and to unconditional refusal of all oathtaking, and a literal acceptance of all the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, involving the rejection of any sort of fixed residence, and on the basis of Luke x. 7, 8, any handiwork that would earn for them the necessaries of life. They had their own ministri for the administration of the sacraments; but these were elected only ad tempus, namely once a year, simply for the discharge of that duty. At the head of the whole community down to his death stood the founder himself. He led the entire movement, received new members into the societas, and chose and ordained the ministri.―The two most important sources for the primitive history of the Waldensian movement, mutually supplementing one another, are, the Chronicon Laudunense of an unnamed canon of Laon in the Mon. Germ. Scrr. xxvi. 447, and the tract De Septem Donis Spir. S. of the inquisitor Stephen de Borbone, who died A.D. 1261, which is given in full in de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, etc., Paris, 1877.

§ 108.11.

Their Divisions.―One of the oldest, most important, and most reliable sources of information regarding the affairs of the old Waldensians was first published by Preger in 1875, in his Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Waldensier im MA., namely, an epistle embodied by the “anonymous writer of Passau” in his heretic catalogue, from the “Poor Men of Italy” to their fellow believers in Germany, ad Leonistas in Alamannia, in which they give a report of the proceedings at a convention held at Bergamo in A.D. 1218, with the deputies from “the ultramontane,” that is, the French, “Poor Men.” On the basis of this communication Preger has contested the view that the “Poor Men of Italy” were the Waldensians, and traces their origin rather to the working men’s association of the Humiliati that had already sprung up in the eleventh century (§ 98, 7), which having even before this, by adopting Arnoldist ideas, become estranged from the Catholic church, came also into connection with Valdez, appropriated many of his opinions, and then entered into fraternal relations with the French Waldesians. This theory, as also no less the explanations connected therewith of the constitutional and doctrinal differences of the two parties, has been proved by Carl Müller in his Die Waldensier u. ihre einzelne Gruppen bis Auf d. 14. Jhd. to be in many particulars untenable, and he has shown that the Waldensian origin of “the Poor Men of Lombardy” is witnessed to even by this epistle. The results of his researches are in the main as follows: The movement set on foot in A.D. 1177 by Valdez of Lyons in the direction of an apostolic walk and conversation was transplanted at a very early period into northern Italy, and found there a favourable reception, especially in the ranks of the Humiliati. These, too, as well as Valdez, in A.D. 1179, approached Alexander III. with the prayer to authorize their entering on such a vocation, but were also immediately repulsed, attached themselves then to the “Poor Men of Lyons,” submitting to the monarchical rule of their founder, and along with them, in A.D. 1184, fell under the papal ban. Yet among the Lombards a strong craving after greater independence and freedom soon found expression, which asserted itself most decidedly in the claim to the right of their own independent choice and ordination of lifelong organs of government for their society, as well as for priestly services, which, however, Valdez, fearing a dissolution of the whole society from the granting of such partial independence, answered with a decided refusal. With equal decision did he insist upon the disbanding of those workmen’s associations for common production, which the Lombards, as formerly the Humiliati, formed from the laymen belonging to them, and forbade them even engaging in any handicraft which they had hitherto pursued alongside of their spiritual vocations, as inconsistent with the apostolic life according to the prescriptions of Christ in Luke x. Thus it came about, in consequence of the unyielding temper of both parties, that there was a formal split; for the Lombards appointed their own independent præpositus, who, just like their ministri charged with the conduct of worship, held office for life. In the course of the year the split widened through the adoption of other divergences on the part of the Lombards. Yet after the death of the founder, about A.D. 1217 they entered upon negotiations about a reunion, which found a hearty response also among the French. By means of epistolary explanations a basis for union in regard to those questions which had occasioned the separation had already been attained unto. The French granted to the Lombards independent election and ordination of their ministers for church government and worship, and allowed the appointment to be for life, while they also agreed to the continuance of their workmen’s associations. In May, A.D. 1218, six brethren from the two parties were at Bergamo appointed to draw up definite terms of peace, and to secure a verbal explanation of other less important differences, which was also accomplished without difficulty. The whole peace negotiations, however, were ultimately shattered over two questions, which first came to the front during the verbal explanations: (i.) Over the question of the felicity of the deceased founder, which the Lombards were disposed to affirm only conditionally, i.e. in case he had been penitent before his death for the sins of which he had been guilty through his intolerant treatment of them, while the French would have it affirmed unconditionally; and (ii.) over the controversy about the validity of the dispensation of the sacrament of the altar by an unworthy person. On both sides they were thoroughly agreed in saying that not the priest, but the omnipotence of God, changed bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper into the body and blood of Christ. But while the French drew from this the conclusion that even an unworthy and wicked priest could truly and effectually administer the sacrament, the Italians persisted in the contrary opinion, and quoted Scripture and the writings of the Fathers to prove the correctness of their views.

§ 108.12.

Attempts at Catholicizing.―On the origin, character, and task of the Pauperes Catholici referred to above, the epistles of Pope Innocent III. regarding them afford us pretty accurate and detailed information. The first impulse toward their formation was given by a disputation with the French Waldensians held by Bishop Diego of Osma at Pamiers in A.D. 1206, by means of which he succeeded, aided by the powerful co-operation of his companion St. Dominic, in persuading a number of the heretics to return to the obedience of the Catholic church. Among those converted on that occasion was the Spaniard Durandus of Osca (Huesca), who now laid before the pope the plan of forming from among the converted Waldensians a society of Catholic Poor Men under the oversight of the bishops, which, by appropriating and carrying out all the fundamental principles of the Waldensian system―apostolic poverty, apostolic dress, apostolic life, and apostolic vocation, according to Luke x.―would not only paralyse or outbid the ministry of the heretical Poor Men among the people, but would also open up the way for their own return and attachment again to the church. The pope approved of his plan, and confirmed the union founded by him in A.D. 1208. The undertaking of Durandus seems to have been from the first not altogether without success in the direction intended. At least we find that Bernard Primus was encouraged one and a half years later to found a second similar society on essentially the same basis, which Innocent III. approved and confirmed. This later association was distinguished from the earlier only in this, that it allowed its members, besides their itinerant preaching and pastoral work, to engage also in their own handicraft. We are now led, by this difference, to the conclusion that, as the institution of Durandus issued from the bosom of the French Waldensians, that of Bernard had its origin among the groups of the Poor Men of Lombardy. This supposition is further confirmed when we observe that the latter, in drawing up its Catholic confession of faith, expressly abjures the formerly cherished conviction of the inefficacy of sacramental actions performed by unworthy priests. But the reason why both these unions, notwithstanding papal approval and support, failed to exert any permanent influence is to be sought pre-eminently in this, that, tainted as their reputation was with the memory of their former heresy, they were soon far outrun and overshadowed by the two great mendicant orders, which wrought with ampler means and appliances in the same direction.

§ 108.13.

The French Societies.―What these found fault with in the Catholic church was, not its dogmatics, to which, with the single exception of the doctrine of purgatory and all therewith connected, indulgence, masses for souls, foundations, alms, and works of piety on behalf of the dead, they firmly adhered; nor yet its liturgical institutions, which, with the exception of masses for souls, they left untouched; nor yet its hierarchical constitutions per se, for they transferred its leading principles into their own organization: but it was simply this, that its clergy had become guilty of the deadly sin of assuming and exercising the apostolic prerogative without undertaking the obligations of apostolic poverty, the apostolic life, and the apostolic vocation, which alone warranted such assumption. But as they thus, nevertheless, firmly adhered to the Catholic principle of the validity of a sacrament administered even by an unworthy person, if only he had authority for doing so from the church, they could allow themselves, and specially their lay adherents, to take part in all Catholic services and acts of worship, without regarding themselves or their followers as under obligation to yield obedience to the pope and the bishops, or to recognise their spiritual jurisdiction, authority to inflict punishment, and right of arbitrary legislation in regard to fasts, festivals, impediments to marriage, etc.―As to the organization of the society, it is now perfectly clear that there was a threefold division of offices: bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Reception into the Societas Fratrum was consummated by the imparting of the ordination of deacon. This, however, was preceded by a longer or shorter novitiate, i.e. a period of trial and preparation for the apostolic vocation of preaching. The entrance into this novitiate (conversio) required the surrender of all property for the benefit of the poor, and on the part of those already married the abandonment of every form of marital relationship; and on reception into the brotherhood the vow of obedience to the superiors was exacted, as well as a vow of celibacy and chastity.―To the bishop, who as such was also called minister and major or majoralis, belonged the right to administer the sacraments of penance and ordination, as well as the consecration of the eucharistic elements; he might preach wherever he chose, and he assigned to presbyters and deacons their spheres of labour. The presbyters, in addition to preaching, also heard confessions, imposed penance, and granted absolution, but did not administer the punishments imposed, for this was the exclusive function of the bishop.―The deacons were only to preach, but not to hear confession, and their special duty consisted in collecting contributions for the support of the brethren. That also women, on the basis of Titus ii. 3, 4, were admitted into these societies is an undoubted fact. Their position was essentially the same as that of the deacons; but the number of preaching sisters continued always relatively small.―After the death of the founder the society once a year chose from among the existing bishops two rectores, who now together administered that supreme government and high priesthood which had previously been exercised by the founder alone. It was, however, by-and-by found desirable to revert to the older monarchical constitution, but all through the 13th century this office was held only by a yearly tenure. The retiring bishops, however, received for life the rank and title of major. But even over the rector stood the commune or congregatio; i.e. the general chapter assembled once or twice in the year, in which the brethren of all the three orders had a seat and vote. The obligation to wear the apostolic dress, persistence in which would have in a very short time thrown all the brethren into the Moloch arms of the Inquisition, was abandoned soon after the erection of that tribunal in A.D. 1232.―The lay adherents attracted by the preaching and pastoral activity of the brethren, the so-called Amici, Fautores, Receptatores, were not organized as exclusive and independent communities, because their continued participation in the services and sacraments of the Catholic church was regarded as permissible. On the other hand, they maintained, as far as possible, regular intercourse with the brethren, who in various styles of dress visited them secretly, preached to them, exhorted and instructed them, prayed with them and said grace at their tables, heard their confessions, imposed penances and granted absolution, uttering the formula of absolution, however, not in the language of an absolute judicial proclamation, but as a supplication and fervent desire. The Amici were allowed to make their Easter confession and observance of the Supper at the Catholic service. The brethren had of course also an independent celebration of the Lord’s Supper, which occurred only once a year, on Maundy Thursday, but was confined as a rule to the brothers and sisters there assembled. The profound acquaintance with Holy Scripture, especially the New Testament, not only among the preaching “brothers,” but also among their “friends,” many of whom knew by heart a large portion of the New Testament, was the subject of general remark and the occasion of astonishment. Besides Holy Scripture, the selection of patristic passages used by Valdez and the Moralia of Gregory the Great were in high repute as means of instruction and edification.―The systematic efforts put forth from A.D. 1232 for the uprooting and extirpating of heresy wrought effectually among the French Waldensian “brethren” and “friends.” The remnants of them that survived the persecution were driven farther and farther into the remotest valleys of the western and eastern spurs of the Cottian Alps, into Dauphiné and Provence on the French side, and into Piedmont on the Italian side.―The most important sources are: Adv. Valdens. sectam, of Bernard Abbot of Fonscalidus, who died in A.D. 1193; Doctrina de Moda Procedendi a Hæret. of the Inquisition at Carcassone and Toulouse of A.D. 1280; the consultatio of Arch. Peter Amelius of Narbonne and the provincial synods held under him in A.D. 1243, 1244; and the recently published Practica Inquisition. of the inquisitor Bernard Guidonis of A.D. 1321.―Continuation, § 119, 9A.

§ 108.14.

A representation of the origin and character of the old Waldensian movement completely different from that given in the sources mentioned and used in the preceding sections, especially in reference to the French societies, has been current since the middle of the 16th century in the modern Waldensian tradition, and by means of falsified or misunderstood documents has been repeated by most Protestant historians down to and including U. Hahn. The investigations of Dieckhoff and Herzog first demolished for ever those fabulous creations of Waldensian mythology, though more recent Waldensian writers, e.g. Hudry-Ménos, but not Comba, seek still tenaciously to assert their truth. According to these traditions, long before the days of Waldus of Lyons there were Waldensian, i.e. Vallensian communities in the valleys of Piedmont, the “Israel of the Alps,” the bearers of pure gospel truth, whose origin was to be traced back at least to Claudius of Turin, while others fondly carried it back to the Apostle Paul, who on his journey to Spain (Rom. xv. 24) may have also visited the Piedmontese valleys. It was to them that Peter of Lyons owed his spiritual awakening and his surname of Waldus, i.e. the Waldensian. For proof of this assertion we are referred to a pretty copious manuscript literature said to be old Waldensian, written in a peculiar Romance dialect, deposited in the libraries of Geneva, Dublin, Cambridge, Zürich, Grenoble, and Paris. Upon close and unprejudiced examination of these literary pieces, of which the oldest portion cannot possibly claim an earlier date than the beginning of the 14th century, it has become quite apparent that these, in so far as they are not fabrications or interpolations, do not afford the least grounds for justifying those Waldensian fantasies. This view is further corroborated by the fact, that the most careful and thorough investigator in this department, Carl Müller, confidently maintains the conviction and shows the basis on which it rests, “that the whole so-called Waldensian literature of the pre-Hussite period has been without exception derived from Catholic and not from Waldensian sources.” The falsifications in this reputed old Waldensian group of writings referred to, by means of interpolation, omission, and alteration in the tracts belonging to that collection, as well as the forging of new writings, and that simply for the purpose of vindicating for their society the mythical fame of a primitive, independent, and ever pure evangelical church, first found place after the Protestantizing of the Romance or Piedmontese Waldensians, and were thereafter successfully turned to account bona or mala fide by their historians, Perrin, Leger, Muston, Monastier, etc. In the Nobla laiczon (=lectio), e.g. a religious doctrinal poem, in the statement of vv. 6, 7, that since the origin of the New Testament writings 1,400 years had passed (mil e 4 cent anz) the figure 4 was erased, so that it might appear to be an ascertained fact that in A.D. 1100, seventy years before the appearance of Waldus, there were already Waldensian communities in existence. But when, in A.D. 1862, the Morland manuscripts, which had been lost for 200 years, were again discovered in Cambridge library, there was found among them a copy of the Nobla laiczon, in which before the word cent an erasure was observable, in which the outlines of the loop of the Arabic numeral 4 were still clearly discernible. In another piece contained in this collection the passage referred to was quoted as “mil e CCCC anz.” Hussite writings translated from the Bohemian were also palmed off as genuine Waldensian works of the earlier centuries, and were in addition provided with the corresponding date. A manuscript of the New Testament at Zürich was assigned to the 12th century; but on more careful scrutiny it was shown that the writer must have had before him the Greek Testament of Erasmus. But the most glaring case of falsification is seen in the “Waldensian Confession of Faith,” first adduced by Perrin as evidence of the faith of the old Waldensians, to which a later hand had ascribed as the date of its composition the year 1120. It copies almost word for word the utterances of Bucer as given in Morel’s report of his negotiations with that divine and Œcolampadius. In this way a new stamp has been put upon the doctrinal articles of the old Waldensians.320

§ 108.15.

The Lombard-German Branch.―In regard to the Lombards themselves, since the epistle of Bergamo we have only scanty reports, and these are found in the treatise of Monata, of 1240, Adv. Catharos et Valdenses, and in the Summa de Catharis et Leonistis of the Dominican inquisitor Rainerius Sacchoni, of 1250. We have ampler accounts, however, from their German mission-field, which had already extended so far as to stretch from the Rhine provinces into Austria. From the time of the unsuccessful endeavours at Bergamo to effect a union between the two principal groups, there was, so far as we are aware, no further intercourse between the two. On the other hand, the German Waldensians during the 13th and 14th centuries maintained a pretty regular communication with their Italian brethren.―In general, too, the Lombards continued, along with their German offspring, to hold firmly by the fundamental tenets of the primitive Waldensian faith. Their preaching brothers and sisters were also called in Germany Meister (magistri) and Meïsterinnen, the men also Apostles and Twelve-Apostles, or, since also there, next to preaching, they had as their most essential and important spiritual function the administration of the sacrament of penance, Beichtiger (bihter), confessors. The view that had been already so vigorously maintained at Bergamo, that a priest guilty of mortal sin, and such in their eyes were all Catholic priests, could not efficaciously administer any sacrament, led them naturally to assume a much freer attitude toward the Catholic church, which summed itself up in the radical principle, that everything connected with that church which cannot be shown from the New Testament to have been expressly taught and enjoined by Christ or His apostles, is to be set aside as an unevangelical human addition. This position however was insisted upon by them less in criticism and confutation of the church doctrine than in opposition to the practices of the church as a whole. In consequence of this criticism, they, transcending far the mere negations of the French, rejected not only all church festivals, beyond the simple Sunday festival, not only all processions and pilgrimages, all ceremonies, candles, incense, holy water, images, liturgical dress and cloths, all consecrations and blessing of churches, bells, burying grounds, candles, ashes, palms, robes, salt, water, etc., but also the centre and climax of all Catholic worship, the mass; not only of purgatory and everything in church practice that had sprung from it, not only ban and interdict, but also invocation of saints, image and relic worship, etc. Yet all the masters did not go equally far in this negative direction. Especially during the second half of the 13th century a remarkable reaction set in against the severity and exclusiveness of that negation, because increasing persecution obliged them to withdraw into secrecy as much as possible with their confession and their specifically Waldensian forms of worship, or to suspend their services altogether, and indeed, to save themselves from the suspicion of heresy, to allow to themselves and their lay adherents liberty to engage in the services of the Catholic church, and to submit to the indispensable demands of the church, such as the attendance at mass, making confession, and taking the communion at Easter. They held indeed firmly by the principle, Quod sacerdos in mortali peccato sacramentum non possit conficere, but they comforted themselves by the assurance already expressed at Bergamo, that the Lord Himself directly gives to the worthy communicant who, in case of need, receives the sacrament from the hand of an unworthy priest, what by him cannot be communicated, for the transubstantiation is effected not in manu indigne conficientis, but in ore digne sumentis. Thus during the times of oppression they kept their own observance of the supper quite in abeyance, the dispensation of which was not among them, as among the French, restricted to the masters; but on this account they laid all the greater weight on the necessity of confession to their own clergy as those who could alone give absolution. Also the prohibition of all oaths as well as bloodshedding, therefore also of military service, and the acceptance of magisterial and judicial offices, was strictly adhered to.―A peculiar adaptation of the Roman Catholic tradition of the baptism and donation of Constantine, which seems to have found no acceptance among the French, became a favourite legend among all the Lombard and German Waldensians. According to it the ancient church had existed for three hundred years in apostolic humility, simplicity, and poverty. But when the Roman bishop Sylvester was endowed by the emperor Constantine the Great with such superabundance of worldly might, riches, and honour, the period of general decline from the apostolic pattern set in. Only one of his fellow clergy protested, and was, when all enticements and threatenings proved of no avail, driven away along with his adherents. The latter increased and spread by-and-by over the earth. After a violent persecution, which had almost cut off all of them, Peter Waldus made his appearance with his companion, John of Lyons, as the restorer of the apostolic life and calling, etc. To this there was subsequently attached another legend. The brethren had previously based their right to discharge all priestly functions with the greatest confidence simply on their apostolic life, and so they could not conceal from themselves at a later period the fact that the want of continued apostolic succession, on which the Catholic church rested the claims of their priests, would place the Waldensian masters very much in the shade as compared with the Catholics. They began, therefore, not only to claim that their founder Waldus had been previously a Roman presbyter, but also to devise the fable of a bishop or even a cardinal of the Romish church, through whose favour that defect had been overcome.―Continuation, § 119, 9.

§ 108.16.

Relations between the Waldensians and Older and Contemporary Sects.―Owing to the extraordinarily lively and zealous propagandist activity of the sects at the time of the origin and early development of the Waldensian movement, there can scarcely be a doubt that the latter, after it had freed itself from all obligation of obedience to the pope and bishops, and had been driven out by them, must at various points have come into close relations with the other sects which, like it, had risen in rebellion against the papacy and the hierarchy, and like it had been persecuted by these. The numerous sect of the Cathari holds a conspicuous position in this connection. That Waldus and his companions must have decidedly repudiated the dualistic principles which all these otherwise greatly diverging Catharist sects had in common is indeed quite self-evident; but this by no means prevented them from recognising and appropriating such particular institutions, forms of organization or modes of worship, peculiar moral requirements, etc., practised by them as might seem fitted to further their own ends. And that this actually was done, many noticeable points of agreement between the two plainly indicate. Thus on both sides we find a similar division of members, the Perfecti and Credentes corresponding to the Fratres and Amici, and the kind of spiritual care which the former took of the latter, the grace at table said by the itinerant preachers, the importance attached to the possession and use of bread that had been blessed by the brethren, the frequent use by both of the Lord’s Prayer, the rejection of purgatory and everything connected therewith, also the prohibition of swearing and of military service, the refusal of the magisterial jus gladii, etc. On the other hand, however, it is more than probable that at last the remnants of the Cathari which escaped the Inquisition in great part had found refuge among the Waldensians in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, and there became assimilated and amalgamated with them (§ 119, 9A).―Further, the assumption that the Lombard Waldensians had first reached the principle by which they are distinguished from their French brethren, about the incapacity of unworthy priests for dispensing the sacraments, from outside influences, perhaps from the Arnoldists, is raised almost to a certainty by the statement made by their deputies at Bergamo in A.D. 1218, that they had even themselves in earlier times held the opposite view.―Even the pantheistic tendency of an Amalrich and the Brethren of the New Spirit may have found entrance among the German Waldensians, and have there given origin to the sect of the Ortlibarians.

§ 109. The Church against the Protesters.

The church was by no means indifferent to the spread of those heresies of the 11th and 12th centuries, which called in question its own very existence. Even in the 11th century she called in the aid of the stake as a type of the fire of hell that would consume the heretics, and against this only one voice, that of Bishop Wazo of Liège († A.D. 1048), was raised. In the 12th century protesting voices were more numerous: Peter the Venerable (§ 98, 1), Rupert of Deutz, St. Hildegard, St. Bernard, declared sword and fire no fit weapons for conversion. St. Bernard showed by his own example how by loving entreaty and friendly instruction more might be done than by awakening a fanatical enthusiasm for martyrdom. But hangmen and stakes were more easily produced than St. Bernards, of whom the 12th and 13th centuries had by no means a superabundance. By-and-by Dominic sent out his disciples to teach and convert heretics by preaching and disputation; as long as they confined themselves to these methods they were not without success. But even they soon found it more congenial or more effective to fight the heretics with tortures and the stake rather than with discussion and discourse. The Albigensian crusade and the tribunal of the Inquisition erected in connection therewith at last overpowered the protesters and drove the remnants of their sects into hiding. In the administration of punishment the church made no distinction between the various sects; all were alike who were at war with the church.

§ 109.1. The Albigensian Crusade, A.D. 1209-1229.―Toward the end of the 12th century sects abounded in the south of France. Innocent III. regarded them as worse than the Saracens, and in A.D. 1203 sent a legate, Peter of Castelnau, with full powers to secure their extermination. But Peter was murdered in A.D. 1208, and suspicion fell on Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse. A crusade under Simon de Montfort was now summoned against the sectaries, who as mainly inhabiting the district of Albigeois were now called Albigensians. A twenty years’ war was carried on with mad fanaticism and cruelty on both sides, in which guilty and innocent, men, women, and children were ruthlessly slain. At the sack of Beziers with 20,000 inhabitants the papal legate cried, “Slay all, the Lord will know how to seek out and save His own.”321

§ 109.2. The Inquisition.―Every one screening a heretic forfeited lands, goods, and office; a house in which such a one was discovered was levelled to the ground; all citizens had to communicate thrice a year, and every second year to renew their oath of attachment to the church, and to refuse all help in sickness to those suspected of heresy, etc. The bishops not showing themselves zealous enough in enforcing these laws, Gregory IX. in A.D. 1232 founded the Tribunal of the Inquisition, and placed it in the hands of the Dominicans. These as Domini canes subjected to the most cruel tortures all on whom the suspicion of heresy fell, and all the resolute were handed over to the civil authorities, who readily undertook their execution.322―Continuation § 117, 2.

§ 109.3. Conrad of Marburg and the Stedingers.―The first Inquisitor of Germany, the Dominican Conrad of Marburg, also known as the severe confessor of St. Elizabeth (§ 105, 3), after a three years’ career of cruelty was put to death by certain of the nobles in A.D. 1233. Et sic, say the Annals of Worms, divino auxilio liberata est Teutonia ab isto judicio enormi et inaudito. He was enrolled by Gregory IX. among the martyrs. Perhaps wrongly he has been blamed for Gregory’s crusade of A.D. 1234 against the Stedingers. These were Frisians of Oldenburg who revolted against the oppression of nobles and priests, refused socage and tithes, and screened Albigensian heretics. The first crusade failed; the second succeeded and plundered, murdered, and burned on every hand. Thousands of the unhappy peasants were slain, neither women nor children were spared, and all prisoners were sent to the stake as heretics.

THIRD SECTION. HISTORY OF THE GERMANO-ROMANIC CHURCH IN THE 14th AND 15th CENTURIES (A.D. 1294-1517).

I. The Hierarchy, Clergy, and Monks.

§ 110. The Papacy.323

From the time of Gelasius II. (§ 96, 11) it had been the custom of the popes whenever Italy became too hot for them to fly to France, and from France they had obtained help to deliver Italy from the tyranny of the latest representatives of the Hohenstaufens. But when Boniface VIII. dared boldly to assert the universal sovereignty of the papacy even over France itself, this presumption wrought its own overthrow. The consequence was a seventy years’ exile of the papal chair to the banks of the Rhone, with complete subjugation under French authority. Under the protection of the French court, however, the popes found Avignon a safe asylum, and from thence they issued the most extravagant hierarchical claims, especially upon Germany. The return of the papal court to Rome was the occasion of a forty years’ schism, during which two popes, for a time even three, are seen hurling anathemas at one another. The reforming Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel sought to put an end to this scandal and bring about a reformation in the head and the members. The fathers in these councils, however, in accordance with the prevalent views of the age, maintained the need of one visible head for the government of the church, such as was afforded by the papacy. But the corruptions of the papal chair led them to adopt the old theory that the highest ecclesiastical authority is not the pope but the voice of the universal church expressed in the œcumenical councils, which had jurisdiction over even the popes. The successful carrying out of this view was possible only if the several national churches which had come now more decidedly than ever to regard themselves as independent branches of the great ecclesiastical organism, should heartily combine against the corrupt papacy. But this they did not do. They were contented with making separate attacks, in accordance with their several selfish interests. Hence papal craft found little difficulty in rendering the strong remonstrances of these councils fruitless and without result. The papacy came forth triumphant, and during the 15th century, the age of the Renaissance, reached a degree of corruption and moral turpitude which it had not approached since the 10th century. The vicars of God now used their spiritual rank only to further their ambitious worldly schemes, and by the most scandalous nepotism (the so-called nephews being often bastards of the popes, who were put into the highest and most lucrative offices) as well as by their own voluptuousness, luxury, revelry, and love of war, brought ruin upon the church and the States of the Church.

§ 110.1. Boniface VIII. and Benedict XI., A.D. 1294-1304.―Boniface VIII., A.D. 1294-1303 (§ 96, 22), was not inferior to his great predecessor in political talents and strength of will, but was destitute of all spiritual qualities and without any appreciation of the spiritual functions of the papal chair, while passionately maintaining the most extravagant claims of the hierarchy. The opposition to the pope was headed by two cardinals of the powerful Colonna family, who maintained that the abdication of Cœlestine V. was invalid. In A.D. 1297 Boniface stripped them of all their dignities, and then they appealed to an œcumenical council as a court of higher jurisdiction. The pope now threatened them and their supporters with the ban, fitted out a crusade against them, and destroyed their castles. At last after a sore struggle Palæstrina, the old residence of their family, capitulated. Also the Colonnas themselves submitted. Nevertheless in A.D. 1299 he had the famous old city and all its churches and palaces levelled to the ground, and refused to restore to the outlawed family its confiscated estates. Then again the Colonnas took up arms, but were defeated and obliged to fly the country, while the pope forbade under threat of the ban any city or realm to give refuge or shelter to the fugitives. But neither his anathema nor his army was able to keep the rebellious Sicilians under papal dominion. Even in his first contest with the French king, Philip IV. the Fair, A.D. 1285-1314, he had the worst of it. The pope had vainly sought to mediate between Philip and Edward I. of England, when both were using church property in carrying on war with one another, and in A.D. 1295 he issued the bull Clericis laicos, releasing subjects from their allegiance and anathematizing all laymen who should appropriate ecclesiastical revenues and all priests who should put them to uses not sanctioned by the pope. Philip then forbade all payment of church dues, and the pope finding his revenues from France withheld, made important concessions in A.D. 1297 and canonized Philip’s grandfather, Louis IX. His hierarchical assumptions in Germany gave promise of greater success. After the first Hapsburger’s death in A.D. 1291, his son Albert was set aside, and Adolf, Count of Nassau, elected king; but he again was overthrown and Albert I. crowned in A.D. 1298. Boniface summoned Albert to his tribunal as a traitor and murderer of the king, and released the German princes from their oaths of allegiance to him. Meanwhile, during A.D. 1301, Boniface and Philip were quarrelling over vacant benefices in France. The king haughtily repudiated the pretensions of the papal legate and imprisoned him as a traitor. Boniface demanded his immediate liberation, summoned the French bishops to a council at Rome, and in the bull Ausculta fili showed the king how foolish, sinful, and heretical it was for him not to be subject to the pope. The bull torn from the messenger’s hands was publicly burnt, and a version of it probably falsified published throughout the kingdom along with the king’s reply. All France rose in revolt against the papal pretensions, and a parliament at Notre Dame in Paris A.D. 1302, at which the king assembled the three estates of the empire, the nobles, the clergy, and (for the first time) the citizens, it was unanimously resolved to support Philip and to write in that spirit to Rome, the bishops undertaking to pacify the pope, the nobles and citizens making their complaint to the cardinals. The king expressly forbade his clergy taking any part in the council that had been summoned, which, however, met in the Lateran, in Nov., 1302. From it Boniface issued the famous bull Unam Sanctam, in which, after the example of Innocent III. and Gregory IX., he set forth the doctrine of the two swords, the spiritual wielded by the church and the temporal for the church, by kings and warriors indeed, but only according to the will and by the permission of the spiritual ruler. That the temporal power is independent was pronounced a Manichæan heresy; and finally it was declared that no human being could be saved unless he were subject to the Roman pontiff. King and parliament now accused the pope of heresy, simony, blasphemy, sorcery, tyranny, immorality, etc., and insisted that he should answer these charges before an œcumenical council. Meanwhile, in A.D. 1303, Boniface was negotiating with king Albert, and got him not only to break his league with Philip, but also to acknowledge himself a vassal of the papal see. The pope had all his plans laid for launching his anathema against Philip, but their execution was anticipated by the king’s assassins. His chancellor Nogaret and Sciarra, one of the exiled Colonnas, who, with the help of French gold, had hatched a conspiracy among the barons, attacked the papal palace and took the pope prisoner while he sat in full state upon his throne. The people indeed rescued him, but he died some weeks after in a raging fever in his 80th year. Dante assigns him a place in hell. In the mouth of his predecessor Cœlestine V. have been put the prophetic words, Ascendisti ut vulpes, regnatis ut leo, morieris ut canis.324 His successor Benedict XI., A.D. 1303, 1304, would have willingly avenged the wrongs of Boniface, but weak and unsupported as he was he soon found himself obliged, not only to withdraw all imputations against Philip, who always maintained his innocence, but also to absolve those of the Colonnas who were less seriously implicated.

§ 110.2. The Papacy during the Babylonian Exile, A.D. 1305-1377.―After a year’s vacancy the papal chair was filled by Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a determined supporter of Boniface, who took the name of Clement V., A.D. 1305-1314. He refused to go to be enthroned at Rome, and forced the cardinals to come to Lyons, and finally, in A.D. 1309, formally removed the papal court to Avignon, which then belonged to the king of Naples as Count of Provence. At this time, too, Clement so far yielded to Philip’s wish to have Boniface condemned and struck out of the list of popes, as to appoint two commissions to consider charges against Boniface, one in France and the other in Italy. Most credible witnesses accused the deceased pope of heresies, crimes, and immoralities committed in word and deed mostly in their presence, while the rebutting evidence was singularly weak. A compromise was effected by Clement surrendering the Templars to the greedy and revengeful king. In the bull Rex gloriæ of A.D. 1311 he expressly declares that Philip’s proceeding against Boniface was bona fide, occasioned by zeal for church and country, cancels all Boniface’s decrees and censures upon the French king and his servants, and orders them to be erased from the archives. The 15th œcumenical Council of Vienne in A.D. 1311 was mainly occupied with the affairs of the Templars, and also with the consideration of the controversies in the Franciscan order (§ 112, 2).―Henry VII. of Luxemburg was raised to the German throne on Albert’s death in A.D. 1208 in opposition to Philip’s brother Charles. Clement supported him and crowned him emperor, hoping to be protected by him from Philip’s tyranny. At Milan in A.D. 1311 Henry received the iron crown of Lombardy; but at Rome the imperial coronation was effected in A.D. 1312, not in St. Peter’s, the inner city being held by Robert of Naples, papal vassal and governor of Italy, but only in the Lateran at the hands of the cardinals commissioned to do so. The emperor now, in spite of all papal threats, pronounced the ban of the empire against Robert, and in concert with Frederick of Sicily entered on a campaign against Naples, but his sudden death in A.D. 1313 (according to an unsupported legend caused by a poisoned host) put an end to the expedition. Clement also died in the following year; and to him likewise has Dante assigned a place in hell.

§ 110.3. After two years’ murderous strife between the Italian and French cardinals, the French were again victorious, and elected at Lyons John XXII., A.D. 1316-1334, son of a shoemaker of Cahors in Gascony, who was already seventy-two years old. He is said to have sworn to the Italians never to use a horse or mule but to ride to Rome, and then to have taken ship on the Rhone for Avignon, where during his eighteen years’ pontificate he never went out of his palace except to go into the neighbouring cathedral. Working far into the night, this seemingly weak old man was wont to devote all his time to his studies and his business. The weight of his official duties will be seen from the fact that 60,000 minutes, filling 59 vols. in the papal archives, belong to his reign.―In Germany, after the death of Henry VII. there were two rivals for the throne, Louis IV. the Bavarian, A.D. 1314-1347, and Frederick III. of Austria. The pope, maintaining the closest relations with Robert of Anjou, his feudatory as king of Naples and his protector as Count of Provence, and esteeming his wish as a command, refused to acknowledge either, declared the German throne still vacant, and assumed to himself the administration of the realm during the vacancy. At Mühldorf in A.D. 1322 Louis conquered his opponent and took him prisoner. He sent a detachment of Ghibellines over the Alps, while he made himself master of Milan and put an end to the papal administration in Northern Italy. The pope in A.D. 1323 ordered him within three months to cease discharging all functions of government till his election as German king should be acknowledged and confirmed by the papal chair. Louis first endeavoured to come to an understanding with the pope, but soon employed the sharp pens of the Minorites, who in May, 1324, drew up a solemn protest in which the king, basing his claims to royalty solely on the election of the princes and treating the pope as one who had forfeited his chair in consequence of his heresies (§ 112, 2), appealed from this false pope to an œcumenical council and a future legitimate pope. John now thundered an anathema against him, declared that he was deprived of all his dignities, freed his subjects from their allegiance, forbade them, under pain of anathema, to obey him, and summoned all European potentates to war against the excommunicated monarch. Louis now sought Frederick’s favour, and in A.D. 1325 shared with him the royal dignity. In Milan in A.D. 1327 he was crowned king of Lombardy, and in A.D. 1328 in Rome he received the imperial crown from the Roman democracy. Two bishops of the Ghibelline party gave him consecration, and the crown was laid on his head by Sciarra Colonna in the name of the Roman people. In vain did the pope pronounce all these proceedings null and void. The king began a process against the pope, deposed him as a heretic and antichrist, and finally condemned him to death as guilty of high treason, while the mob carried out this sentence by burning the pope in effigy upon the streets. The people and clergy of Rome, in accordance with an old canon, elected a new pope in the person of a pious Minorite of the sect of the Spirituales (§ 112, 2), who took the name of Nicholas V. Louis with his own hand placed the tiara on his head, and was then himself crowned by him. All this glory, however, was but short lived. An unsuccessful and inglorious war against Robert of Naples and a consequent revolt in Rome caused the emperor in A.D. 1328, with his army and his pope, amid the stonethrowing of the mob, to quit the eternal city, which immediately became subject to the curia. He did not fare much better in Tuscany or Lombardy; and thus the Roman expedition ended in failure. Returning to Munich, Louis endeavoured in vain amid many humiliations to move the determined old man at Avignon. But Nicholas V., the most wretched of all the anti-popes, went to Avignon with a rope about his neck in A.D. 1328, cast himself at the pope’s feet, was absolved, and died a prisoner in the papal palace in A.D. 1333. Next year John died. Notwithstanding the expensive Italian wars 25,000,000 gold guldens was found in the papal treasury at his death.―Roused by his opposition to the stricter party among the Franciscans (§ 112, 2), its leaders lent all their influence to the Bavarian and supported the charge of heresy against the pope. Against John’s favourite doctrine that the souls of departed saints attain to the vision of God only after the last judgment, these zealots cited the opinions of the learned world (§ 113, 3), with the University of Paris at its head. Philip VI. of France was also in the controversy one of his bitterest opponents, and even threatened him with the stake. Pressed on all sides the pope at last in A.D. 1333 convened a commission of scholars to decide the question, but died before its judgment was given. His successor hasted to still the tumult by issuing the story of a deathbed recantation, and gave ecclesiastical sanction to the opposing view.

§ 110.4. Benedict XII., A.D. 1334-1342, would probably have yielded to the urgent entreaties of the Romans to return to Rome had not his cardinals been so keenly opposed. He then built a palace at Avignon of imposing magnitude, as though the papacy were to have an eternal residence there. Louis the Bavarian retracted his heretical sentiments in order to get the ban removed and to obtain an orderly coronation. The first diet of the electoral union was held at Rhense near Mainz, in A.D. 1338, where it was declared that the election of a German king and emperor was, by God’s appointment, the sole privilege of the elector-princes, and needed not the confirmation or approval of the pope. This encouraged Louis to assert anew his imperial pretensions. Benedict’s successor Clement VI., A.D. 1342-1352, added by purchase in A.D. 1348 the city of Avignon to the county of Venaissin, which Philip III. had gifted to the papal chair in A.D. 1273. Both continued in the possession of the Roman court till A.D. 1791 (§ 165, 13). Louis, now at feud with some of the powerful German nobles, sought to make terms of peace with the new pope. But Clement was not conciliatory, and made the unheard of demand that Louis should not only annul all his previous ordinances, but also should in future issue no enactment in the empire without permission of the papal see; and on Maunday Thursday, A.D. 1346, he pronounced him without title or dignity and called upon the electors to make a new choice, which, if they failed to do, he would proceed to do himself. As fittest candidate he recommended Charles of Bohemia, who was actually chosen by the five electors who answered the summons, under the title of Charles IV., A.D. 1346-1378, and had his election confirmed by the pope. The new emperor solemnly promised never to set foot on the domains of the Roman church without express papal permission, and to remain in Rome only so long as was required for his coronation. Louis died before he was able to engage in war with his rival, and when, six months later, the next choice of Louis’ party also died, Charles was acknowledged without a dissentient voice. He was crowned emperor in Rome by a cardinal appointed by Innocent VI., in A.D. 1355. Without doing anything to restore the imperial prestige in Italy, Charles went back like a fugitive to Germany, despised by Guelphs and Ghibellines. But in the following year, at the Diet of Nuremberg, he passed a new imperial law in the so called Golden Bull of A.D. 1356, according to which the election of emperor was to be made at Frankfort, by three clerical electors (Mainz, Cologne, and Treves) and four temporal princes (Bohemia, the Palatine of the Rhine, Saxony, and Brandenburg), and he appeased the pope’s wrath by various concessions to the curia and the clergy.

§ 110.5. The famous Rienzi was made apostolic notary by Clement VI. in A.D. 1343, and as tribune of the people headed the revolt against the barons in A.D. 1347. Losing his popularity through his own extravagances he was obliged to flee, and being taken prisoner by Charles at Prague, he was sent to Avignon in A.D. 1350. Instead of the stake with which Clement had threatened him, Innocent VI., A.D. 1352-1362, bestowed senatorial rank upon him, and sent him to Rome, hoping that his demagogical talent would succeed in furthering the interests of the papacy. He now once more, amid loud acclamations, entered the eternal city, but after two months, hated and cursed as a tyrant, he was murdered in A.D. 1354, while attempting flight.―By A.D. 1367 things had so improved in Rome that, notwithstanding the opposition of king and court and the objections of luxurious cardinals unwilling to quit Avignon, Urban V., A.D. 1362-1370, in October of that year made a triumphal entrance into Rome amid the jubilations of the Romans. Charles’ Italian expedition of the following year was inglorious and without result. The disquiet and party strifes prevailing through the country made the position of the pope so uncomfortable, that notwithstanding the earnest entreaty of St. Bridget (§ 112, 8), who threatened him with the Divine judgment of an early death in France, he returned in A.D. 1370 to Avignon, where in ten weeks the words of the northern prophetess were fulfilled. His successor was Gregory XI., A.D. 1370-1378. Rome and the States of the Church had now again become the scene of the wildest anarchy, which Gregory could only hope to quell by his personal presence. The exhortations of the two prophetesses of the age, St. Bridget and St. Catherine (§ 112, 4), had a powerful influence upon him, but what finally determined him was the threat of the exasperated Romans to elect an anti-pope. And so in spite of the renewed opposition of the cardinals and the French court, the curia again returned to Rome in A.D. 1377; but though the rejoicing at the event throughout the city was great, the results were by no means what had been expected. Sick and disheartened, the pope was already beginning to speak of going back to Avignon, when his death in A.D. 1378 put an end to his cares and sufferings.

§ 110.6. The Papal Schism and the Council of Pisa.―Under pressure from the people the cardinals present in Rome almost unanimously chose the Neapolitan archbishop of Bari, who took the name of Urban VI., A.D. 1378-1389. His energies were mainly directed to the emancipating of the papal chair from French interference and checking the abuses introduced into the papal court during the Avignon residence; but the impatience and bitterness which he showed in dealing with the greed, pomp, and luxury of the cardinals roused them to choose another pope. After four months, they met at Fundi, declared that the choice of Urban had been made under compulsion, and was therefore invalid. In his place they elected a Frenchman, Robert, cardinal of Geneva, who was enthroned under the name of Clement VII., A.D. 1378-1394. The three Italians present protested against this proceeding and demanded, but in vain, the decision of a council. Thus began the greatest and most mischievous papal schism, A.D. 1378-1417. France, Naples, and Savoy at once, and Spain and Scotland somewhat later, declared in favour of Clement; while the rest of Western Europe acknowledged Urban. The two most famous saints of the age, St. Catherine and St. Vincent Ferrér (§ 115, 2), though both disciples of Dominic, took different sides, the former as an Italian favouring Urban, the latter as a Spaniard favouring Clement. Failing to secure a footing in Italy, Clement took possession of the papal castle at Avignon in A.D. 1379. The schism lasted for forty years, during which time Boniface IX., A.D. 1389-1404, Innocent VII., A.D. 1404-1406, and Gregory XII., A.D. 1406-1415, elected by the cardinals in Rome, held sway there in succession, while at Avignon on Clement’s death his place was taken by the Spanish cardinal Pedro de Luna as Benedict XIII., A.D. 1394-1424. The Council of Paris of A.D. 1395 recommended the withdrawal of both popes and a new election, but Benedict insisted upon a decision by a two-thirds majority in favour of one or other of the two rivals. An œcumenical council at Pisa, in A.D. 1409, dominated mainly by the influence of Gerson (§ 118, 4), who maintained that the authority of the councils is superior to that of the pope, made short work with both contesting popes, whom it pronounced contumacious and deposed. After the cardinals present had bound themselves by an oath that whosoever of them might be chosen should not dissolve the council until a reform of the church in its head and members should be carried out, they elected a Greek of Candia in his seventieth year, Cardinal Philangi, who was consecrated as Alexander V., A.D. 1409-1410, and for three years the council continued to sit without effecting any considerable reforms. The consequence was that the world had the edifying spectacle of three contemporary popes anathematizing one another.

§ 110.7. The Council of Constance and Martin V.―Alexander V. died after a reign of ten months by poison administered, as was supposed, by Balthasar Cossa, resident cardinal legate and absolute military despot, suspected of having been in youth engaged in piracy. Cossa succeeded, as John XXIII., A.D. 1410-1415. He was acknowledged by the new Roman king, Sigismund, A.D. 1411-1437, and soon afterwards, in A.D. 1412, by Ladislas [Ladislaus] of Naples, so that Gregory XII. was thus deprived of his last support. The University of Paris continued to demand the holding of a council to effect reforms. Sigismund, supported by the princes, insisted on its being held in a German city. Meanwhile Ladislas [Ladislaus] had quarrelled with the pope, and had overrun the States of the Church and plundered Rome in A.D. 1413, and John was obliged to submit to Sigismund’s demands, He now summoned the 16th œcumenical Council of Constance, A.D. 1414-1418 (§ 119, 5). It was the most brilliant and the most numerously attended council ever held. More than 18,000 priests and vast numbers of princes, counts, and knights, with an immense following; in all about 100,000 strangers, including thousands of harlots from all countries, and hordes of merchants, artisans, showmen, and players of every sort. Gerson and D’Ailly, the one representing European learning, the other the claims of the Gallican church (§ 118, 4), were the principal advisers of the council. The decision to vote not individually but by nations (Italian, German, French, and English) destroyed the predominance of the Italian prelates, who as John’s creatures were present in great numbers. Terrified by an anonymous accusation, which charged the pope with the most heinous crimes, he declared himself ready to withdraw if the other two popes would also resign, but took advantage of the excitement of a tournament to make his escape disguised as an ostler. Sigismund could with difficulty keep the now popeless council together. John, however, was captured, seventy-two serious charges formulated against him, and on 26th July, A.D. 1415, he was deposed and condemned to imprisonment for life. He was given up to the Count Palatine Louis of Baden, who kept him prisoner in Mannheim, and afterwards in Heidelberg. Meanwhile the leader of an Italian band making use of the name of Martin V. purchased his release with 3,000 ducats. He now submitted himself to that pope, and was appointed by him cardinal-bishop of Tuscoli, and dean of the sacred college, but soon afterwards died in Florence, in A.D. 1419. Gregory XII. also submitted in A.D. 1415, and was made cardinal-bishop of Porto. Benedict, however, retired to Spain and refused to come to terms, but even the Spanish princes withdrew their allegiance from him as pope. The cardinals in conclave elected the crafty Oddo Colonna, who was consecrated as Martin V., A.D. 1417-1431. There was no more word of reformation. With great pomp the council was closed, and indulgence granted to its members. As the whole West now recognised Martin as the true pope the schism may be said to end with his accession, though Benedict continued to thunder anathemas from his strong Spanish castle till his death in A.D. 1424, and three of his four cardinals elected as his successor Clement VIII. and the fourth another Benedict XIV. Of the latter no notice was taken, but Clement submitted in A.D. 1429, and received the bishopric of Majorca.―Martin V. on entering Rome in A.D. 1420 found everything in confusion and desolate. By his able administration a change was soon effected, and the Rome of the Renaissance rose on the ruins of the mediæval city.325

§ 110.8. Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basel.―Martin V. commissioned Cardinal Julian Cesarini to look after the Hussite controversy in the Basel Council, A.D. 1431-1449. His successor Eugenius IV., A.D. 1431-1447, confirmed this appointment. After thirteen months he ordered the council to meet at Bologna, finding the heretical element too strong in Germany. The members, however, unanimously refused to obey. Sigismund, too, protested, and the council claimed to be superior to the pope. The withdrawal of the bull within sixty days was insisted upon. As a compromise, the pope offered to call a new council, not at Bologna, but at Basel. This was declined and the pope threatened with deposition. A rebellion, too, broke out in the States of the Church; and in A.D. 1433 Eugenius was completely humbled and obliged to acquiesce in the demands of the council. One danger was thus averted, but he was still threatened by another. In A.D. 1434 Rome proclaimed itself a republic and the pope fled to Florence. The success of the democracy, however, was now again of but short duration. In five months Rome was once more under the dominion of the pope. Negotiations for union with the Greeks were begun by the pope at Ferrara A.D. 1438. A small number of Italians under the presidency of the pope here assumed the offices of an œcumenical council, those at Basel being ordered to join them, the Basel Council being suspended, and the continuance of that council being pronounced schismatical. Julian, now styled “Julianus Apostata II.,” with almost all the cardinals, betook himself to Ferrara. Under the able cardinal Louis d’Aleman (§ 118, 4), archbishop of Arles, some still continued the proceedings of the council at Basel, but in consequence of a pestilence they moved, in A.D. 1439, to Florence. A union with the Greeks was here effected, at least upon paper. The Basel Council banned by the pope, deposed him, and in A.D. 1439 elected a new pope in the person of Duke Amadeus of Savoy, who on his wife’s death had resigned his crown to his son and entered a monkish order. He called himself Felix V. Princes and people, however, were tired of rival papacies. Felix got little support, and the council itself soon lost all its power. Its ablest members one after another passed over to the party of Eugenius. In A.D. 1449 Felix resigned, and died in the odour of sanctity two years afterwards.326

§ 110.9. Only Charles VII. of France took advantage of the reforming decree of Basel for the benefit of his country. He assembled the most distinguished churchmen and scholars of his kingdom at Bourges, and with their concurrence published, in A.D. 1438, twenty-three of the conclusions of Basel that bore on the Gallican liberties under the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, and made it a law of his realm. For the rest he maintained an attitude of neutrality towards both popes, as also shortly before the electors convened at Frankfort had done. Those assembled at the Diet of Mainz in A.D. 1439 recognised the reforming edicts of Basel as applying to Germany. Frederick IV., A.D. 1439-1493, who as emperor is known as Frederick III., under the influence of the cunning Italian Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (§ 118, 6), though at first in the opposition, went over to the side of Eugenius IV. in A.D. 1446 upon receiving 100,000 guldens for the expenses of an expedition to Rome and certain ecclesiastical privileges for his Austrian subjects. Some weeks later the electors of Frankfort took the same steps, stipulating that Eugenius should recognise the decrees of the Council of Constance and the reforming decrees of Basel, and should promise to convene a new free council in a German city to bring the schism to an end, which if he failed to do they would quit him in favour of Basel. But at the diet, held in September of that year at Frankfort, the legates of the pope and of the king succeeded by diplomatic arts in coming to an understanding with the electors met at Mainz. Thus it happened that in the so-called Frankfort Concordat of the Princes a compromise was effected, which Eugenius confirmed in A.D. 1447, with a careful explanation to the effect that none of these concessions in any way infringed upon the rights and privileges of the Holy See. In the following year Frederick in name of the German nation concluded with Eugenius’ successor, Nicholas V., the Concordat of Vienna, A.D. 1448. The advantages gained by the German church were quite insignificant. Frederick received imperial rank as reward for the betrayal of his country, and was crowned in Rome, in A.D. 1452, as the last German emperor.

§ 110.10. Nicholas V., Calixtus III., and Pius II., A.D. 1447-1464.―With Nicholas V., A.D. 1447-1455, a miracle of classical scholarship and founder of the Vatican Library, the Roman see for the first time became the patron of humanistic studies, and under this mild and liberal pope the secular government of Rome was greatly improved. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, in A.D. 1453, produced excitement throughout the whole of Europe. The eloquence of the pope roused the crusading spirit of Christendom, and oratorical appeals were thundered from the pulpits of all churches and cathedrals. But the princes remained cold and indifferent. After Nicholas, a Spaniard, the cardinal Alphonso Borgia, then in his seventy-seventh year, was raised to the papal chair as Calixtus III., A.D. 1455-1458. Hatred of Turks and love of nephews were the two characteristics of the man. Yet he could not rouse the princes against the Turks, and the fleet fitted out at his own cost only plundered a few islands in the Archipelago. Calixtus’ successor was Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the able and accomplished apostate from the Basel reform party, who styled himself, with intended allusion to Virgil’s “pius Æneas,” Pius II., A.D. 1458-1464. The pope’s Ciceronian eloquence failed to secure the attendance of princes at the Mantuan Congress, summoned in A.D. 1459 to take steps for the equipment of a crusade. A war against the Turks was indeed to have been undertaken by emperor Frederick III., and a tax was to have been levied on Christians and Jews for its cost; but neither tax nor crusade was forthcoming. Pius demanded of the French ambassadors a formal repudiation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and when they threatened the calling of an œcumenical council, he issued the bull Execrabilis, which pronounced “the execrable and previously unheard of” enormity of an appeal to a council to be heresy and treason. In A.D. 1461 the pope, by a long epistle, attempted the conversion of Mohammed II., the powerful conqueror of Constantinople. As the discovery of the great alum deposit at Rome in A.D. 1462 was attributed to miraculous direction, the pope was led to devote its rich resources to the fitting out of a crusade against the Turks. He wished himself to lead the army in person, in order to secure victory by uplifted hands, like Moses in the war with Amalek. But here again the princes left him in the lurch. Coming to Ancona in A.D. 1464 to take ship there upon his great undertaking, only his own two galleys were waiting him. After long weary waiting, twelve Venetian ships arrived, just in time to see the pope prostrated with fever and excitement.